The Amazon spring sale is ending today, along with your chance to bag big discounts on a range of Amazon’s finest devices. We’ve seen the best prices of 2019 on the likes of the waterproof Kindle Paperwhite, Fire TV Sticks and multiple Amazon Echo smart speakers.
We aren’t expecting to see any better deals than this anytime soon, either. You certainly shouldn’t worry about Amazon suddenly dropping an even better Easter Sale this weekend, for example, as Amazon’s Easter Weekend deals last year were nothing worth remembering – so this is it! You might be waiting for Amazon Prime Day 2019 if you want to see some of these cheap deals again.
The best Amazon sale deals
Amazon Echo Dot | £49.99 £29.99 at Amazon This is the best price Amazon’s most popular smart speaker has been this year. Actually, after a massively successful Christmas sales season, it was sold out until late March, making today’s £20 discount even better. This is likely to be the best price you’ll see before the Amazon Prime Day deals event in the summer. View Deal
Amazon 4K Fire TV Stick | £49.99 £34.99 at Amazon 4K streaming from an Amazon device used to come via a large box, then a rather clumsy hanging dongle after that, but Amazon has now refined the powerful technology into this tiny stick and made it even cheaper than the older devices too. An absolute bargain at £34.99 especially with the new Alexa voice remote too. View Deal
Kindle Paperwhite | £119.99 £99.99 at Amazon Amazon revamped the already excellent Paperwhite towards the end of last year by waterproofing the design and making the backlit screen flush with the bezel, meaning you no longer have to worry about dust or strands of hair getting caught at the edge of the screen. All this without increasing the price! Previously if you wanted a waterproof Kindle you’d have to shell out for the top-end Kindle Oasis for £229. We’ll take this one for £99 instead thanks! View Deal
Those are our favourite three deals in the Amazon sale today, but there are lots of other discounts available too. If you’re after a cheap smart speaker with a screen you might be tempted by the Amazon Echo Dot for £94.99 (save £25). If you want a bigger sound than the Echo Dot offers, the larger version is on sale too. Get the Amazon Echo for £64.99 (save £25).
If you already have a great speaker setup at home but would like to make them ‘smart’ by adding Alexa features, you want to grab an Echo Input for £19.99 (save £15).
Need a cheap tablet? iPad ‘deals’ making you sad? Then how about this for a sweet deal? Get the Amazon Fire HD 8 for just £59.99 (save £20). That’s a great deal for a reliable slate. That’s only £10 more than the 7-inch version, but we’re not massive fans of that one as it doesn’t come with an HD screen.
The non-4K Fire Stick Stick is just £24.99 (save £15), making it a super cheap way to add smart features to your TV or add apps that your older smart TV might be missing – we find some older models don’t come with Amazon Prime video installed for example. To be honest though, we think it’s worth spending the extra tenner on the version we highlighted earlier instead.
There are plenty of other bargains to be had until midnight tonight too. TVs, laptops, coffee machines, smart home products, gardening items, DIY tools and so on. Hurry though as this Amazon sale ends tonight.
The importance of technology to businesses across all economic sectors is at an all-time high. While medium-sized businesses and Fortune 500 companies have been competing to secure tech talent for the past decade and more, small business owners are beginning to realize that new technology and consumer-focused software is becoming a must-have for companies of every size.
The ultra-low unemployment rate of under 2% for software engineers makes the search for experienced programmers particularly difficult for all but the most recognizable of businesses. That’s why so many firms are turning to software outsourcing companies to help them secure the best tech talent, no matter where a particular software engineer is located.
Read on to learn how to successfully outsource development for your business.
Choosing the right outsourcing partner
The single most important part of the software outsourcing process involves selecting the right outsourcing partner. The industry is bursting at the seams with new companies interested in capitalizing on the increasingly large tech industry; however, many of these firms simply do not have the experience or resources necessary to serve as a trusted business partner.
When you begin your outsourcing search, it is important to look for things like a potential partner’s industry reputation, past work, recruitment process, and knowledge of the field. A thorough initial assessment will ensure that your next software development project begins on the right track.
The first step in outsourcing development services is to figure out exactly what type of outsourcing model is right for your business. This process begins with an internal assessment, which involves taking an honest look at your in-house development team’s experience, capabilities, and weaknesses. Most companies do not maintain an extensive software engineering staff, for good reason, so there may be quite a few gaps to fill. In addition, it is important to properly assess your team’s project management skills and experience leading this sort of large-scale initiative.
Once your initial assessment is complete, it’s time to look closely at the most popular software outsourcing models. Staff augmentation is one of the most widely-used partnerships. This outsourcing arrangement involves filling key weaknesses in your in-house staff by bringing in skilled software engineers on an as-needed basis. Alternatively, you may want to consider outsourcing development to an autonomous delivery team, which consists of a project manager, software engineers, and testers who can take an idea and create a piece of custom software with little supervision. This arrangement is particularly valuable for companies without the time or staff necessary to develop custom software in-house.
Set clear expectations
Perhaps the most frustrating situation that new managers can find themselves in is having spent several months and a huge sum of money collaborating with an outsourcing partner, only to realize that the final product does not meet expectations. Yet, many businesses find themselves in this exact situation during their first experience outsourcing development.
The best way to avoid this scenario and ensure that your development project goes off without a hitch is to make sure that your goals and design expectations are as clear as possible from the very beginning. In addition, make sure that several assessment points are built into the process so that you can quickly identify progress and offer suggestions before too many resources have been invested.
Setting up a clear line of communication from the very beginning of the project is crucial to success in your next software development project. The best software outsourcing companies will have a set of processes in place to ensure that you stay updated on your team’s progress (if using an autonomous delivery team) or that your outsourced developers are properly integrating into your team and following internal procedures (if using staff augmentation services).
It is important that you speak with potential software outsourcing partners about their communication style and ensure that the strategy is clearly defined in writing. In addition, make sure to verify exactly what time of day your outsourced team is expected to be working if they are located in a different part of the world.
Post-development strategy
So you’ve invested months (and possibly years) into developing this piece of amazing software. Where do you go from now? Many executives find that they were so busy focusing on completing this software development cycle that little thought was given to the post-release phase.
The top software outsourcing companies will set up a maintenance plan at the start of the project, ensuring that there is a strategy to phase-out your augmented staff and redirect your in-house team’s attention once coding and testing are complete. Make sure that any potential outsourcing partners have a blueprint in mind on how to slowly phase-out contractors, train in-house staff on key responsibilities, and ensure that a regular software maintenance schedule is in place.
There was a time when being an audio enthusiast meant living with wires. Lots and lots of wires. That was the price you had to pay for quality audio, especially if you wanted a home theater system with true surround sound. Well, if WiSA (Wireless Speaker & Audio Association) has its way—and considering how many industry heavyweights, including LG, Polk, and JBL are now on board, it likely will—your next audio system could be virtually wire free. Well, except for the wires in your power cables. I’ll get into that later.
First introduced way back in 2012, WiSA has largely been the province of all-in-one speaker/transmitter implementations from vendors such as Klipsh and Bang & Olufsen. WiSA is now concentrating on getting vendors of playback devices such as smart TVs and A/V receivers to support the standard—with great success.
Why you might want WiSA
For starters, WiSA systems supports up to eight channels of uncompressed 24-bit audio. It’s super-easy to set up, and it eliminates cable connections between components, leaving only the power cables to worry about. WiSA delivers super-low latency, too—latency being the time it takes for an audio signal to travel from a source to emanate from the speaker.
Enclave Audio
Enclave Audio’s multi-channel WiSA audio system.
I’m not talking the 40-millisecond delay that’s considered low by the Bluetooth folks, but a mere 2.6ms at 96kHz sample rates (5.1ms at 48kHz), which is nearly imperceptible to humans. That means little to no compensation is required on the part of a TV or other audio device to keep audio in sync with dialog and on-screen action. That’s as great for watching movies as it is for playing video games on an Xbox or PlayStation.
What exactly is WiSA?
WiSA is an audio technology that establishes a discrete wireless local network exclusive to WiSA audio sources (TVs, receivers, video-game consoles, etc.) and destinations (speakers). It steers clear of with your Wi-Fi router and privately uses less-populated 5GHz frequency bands (with 24 RF channels available in the 5.1- to 5.8GHz spectrum) along with various techniques such as spread spectrum, error correction, and dynamic frequency hopping to avoid interference and maintain signal strength.
Earbuds, headsets, and portable speakers aren’t in the mix yet, simply because the current shipping module that Summit Wireless Technologies, Inc. showed me isn’t small enough for those form factors, and its power consumption is still too high. The specified power requirements, however, are stated to be about the same as that of Bluetooth. So according to WiSA, those types of products remain a distinct possibility.
WiSA has a 30-foot range and supports 24-bit resolution with sampling rates of 44.1-, 48- and 96kHz without any compression or conversion. It can handle other sample rates by up- or down-sampling the material if the playback device doesn’t handle that natively.
If you’re not familiar, the CD standard is 44,100, 16-bit samples per second, which delivers a noise floor that’s low enough that most users won’t hear digital noise, and a sampling rate that’s fast enough to capture and play back frequencies up to 22.05kHz—that’s well beyond the range humans can hear. Supporting 24 bits delivers an even lower noise floor, and a 48kHz sampling rate takes care of supposed golden ears.
A 96kHz sampling rate is overkill in terms of capturing or reproducing frequencies (it can represent up to 48kHz waves): There’s hardly any recording equipment that will capture frequencies above 20kHz, and no listening equipment—i.e., your ears—that can hear it. The higher sampling rate, however, does allow faster processing and gives you the lower 2.6ms latency I mentioned earlier. The 5.2ms latency associated with 48kHz transmissions is still barely noticeable, and hardly annoying. But it is distinguishable if you enjoy torturing yourself about such things.
If the WiSA standard is sample accurate in its timing between channels, as is claimed, synchronization between channels is also twice as tight at 96kHz. From what I’ve experienced, any synchronization issues that do occur are inaudible.
Easy setup, USB audio, and now THX
As WiSA is a closed Wi-Fi network, pairing devices devices should be no hassle at all. For the most part, it’s said to be auto-magical, with everything just connecting out of the box as you turn it on. The only time you might conceivably run into issues is when you change audio sources. At that point, a simple reset button should have you up and running with your new source in no time.
Obviously, there’s a lot of legacy audio equipment out there that’s near and dear to owners’ hearts. For WiSA to work with that, you’ll need a separate transmitter. There are a couple of USB audio transmitters appearing in the $80 to $120 price range that will work with anything that supports USB audio devices (that’s how LG supports WiSA), but I haven’t seen a standalone transmitter that offers legacy audio connections. The network-capable Aximm Q UHD Wireless Media Center ($1,199) has six HDMI inputs and supports up to 7.1-channel WiSA-based surround-sound speaker systems for home theater applications, but you won’t find anything that’s cheap.
The WiSA organization has an interoperability certification program that components must go through before they can display the WiSA logo, and the group has also formed a strategic partnership with THX. That effort is aimed at certifying the quality of WiSA-branded audio components. At some point, you’ll also see hardware bearing WiSA-ready logos, which will indicate that a device can output audio via a WiSA transmitter—you’d just need to pair it with WiSA-certified speakers.
There will still be wires
Wireless speakers must be self-powered, so they will require power cables (or batteries, although keeping the batteries in a multi-speaker array charged could be problematic). Yup, a WiSA setup will have you trade long, thin speaker wires for shorter, thicker power cables. If you have a lot of conveniently placed outlets, that will at least reduce your cable clutter. If you don’t, you might actually wind up with an uglier setup.
But at least WiSA gives you a choice, and perhaps revolutionary battery tech is just down the road. It might also be a better choice for high-end sound bars or simple stereo setups.
Look for WiSA
I’ve heard WiSA and it sounds very good. It’s transparent in the sense that it sounds pretty much like the same material transmitted over cables. By pretty much, I mean I could not tell the difference. My experience has been very limited, however, so if you’re blessed with particularly acute hearing, check out a demo or two at your favorite audio dealer.
WiSA doesn’t eliminate every wire, but at least you won’t need to run power cords the length and width of your room—that alone should render the wires you will have easier to hide. And perhaps it’s more important that the standard can delivery very low latency, very high resolution, multi-channel wireless audio without any sacrifice in quality.
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In two separate announcements last week, Google and Linux’s Hyperledger project launched tools aimed at enabling secure identity management for enterprises via mobile and other devices.
Google unveiled five upgrades to its BeyondCorp cloud enterprise security service that enables identity and access management for employees, corporate partners, and customers.
Hyperledger, the blockchain-based, open-source project under the Linux Foundation, announced that its Indy distributed ledger for identity management is now live after nearly a year of development.
Google wants to make its enterprise cloud platform the center of the universe for identity and access management (IAM) and security, according to Jack Gold, principal analyst with J. Gold Associates.
“Cloud, in the past, has been questioned by some organizations as not being as secure as on-prem[ises],” Gold said. “With these announcements, Google is trying to show that it can provide very high-level security features that are as good as, and in some cases even better than, on-prem solutions – even when running on their cloud.”
Google’s upgrades include context-aware enhancements through the launch of the BeyondCorp Alliance, which is a partnership with endpoint security and management vendors who feed device posture data into Google’s context-aware access engine.
Google
Context aware access high-level architecture
“Initially, we are working with Check Point, Lookout, Palo Alto Networks, Symantec and VMware, and will make this capability available to joint customers in the coming months,” Google said in a statement.
Google’s G Suite customers will automatically get the upgrades.
There are a number of medium and some large enterprise customers who have standardized on G Suite, so the upgrades could prevent, “say, a hacker getting your credentials and trying to log in from London when the system knows you are actually in Boston,” Gold said.
“There is also an API that allows [identity and access management] functions to be added to any on-premises or public cloud web-based apps,” Gold continued. “It’s basically a service you can call. And they are working with the MDM vendors to make the link from devices to bring context info to the app servers in the cloud. This can help with access security and help avert data breaches.”
Additionally, Google added:
Security keys for Android phones based on FIDO (Fast IDentity Online) Alliance authentication standards, which it said will help defend against phishing attacks.
Cloud Identity enhancements, including single sign-on capabilities to thousands of cloud-hosted apps and integration with human resource management systems (HRMS).
General availability of Identity Platform, an encryption protected, single sign-in authentication tool.
And the availability of Managed Service for Microsoft Active Directory for select customers.
The most interesting upgrade, Gold said, is the addition of Google’s key technology to all Android phones (running Android 7 and above), which will turn the phone into a two-factor authentication device.
Everyone is carrying a phone these days, so the ability to work as a 2FA device without having to have something unique (like an RSA token), and [being] much more secure than via a text message, is pretty interesting,” Gold said. “It should be attractive and cost effective to many more enterprises beyond the extremely security-conscious regulated industries like financial and healthcare.”
Hyperledger Indy
Hyperledger Indy, a distributed ledger built for decentralized identity, leverages blockchain technology to create a platform for issuing, storing, and verifying credentials that are transferable, private, and secure.
“An enterprise can use Hyperledger Indy for managing employee identities and, with the right set-up and agents, manage them over mobile devices,” a Hyperledger spokesperson said via email. “However, the self-sovereign nature of Indy goes much further, as it lets individuals own their own data and creates trusted frameworks for employees, partners, customers, etc.”
With its activation notification, the Linux Foundation also announced it has a number of “diverse” people and organizations already building “real-world solutions” using Indy.
For example, the Sovrin Foundation has organized the largest production network powered by Indy. The Province of British Columbia was the first to deploy a production use case to the Sovrin Network with work on its Verifiable Organizations Network, a platform for managing trust at an institutional level.
Fintech firms, software makers, telecom providers and other businesses have joined forces to develop a blockchain-based network that will enable anyone to exchange digital credentials online and without the risk of unintentionally exposing any private data.
The companies are part of the Sovrin Foundation, a new nonprofit organization now developing the Sovrin Network, which could enable anyone to globally exchange pre-verified data with any entity also on the network.
The online credentials would be akin to identify information a person might have in a physical wallet: a driver’s license, a bank debit card or a company ID.
Instead of a physical card, however, the IDs in digital wallets would be encrypted and link back to the institutions that created them, such as a bank, a government or even an employer, which, through the blockchain, would automatically verify information to a requestor.
The owner of the digital wallet can determine what information a requesting business receives, and no more.
British Columbia created an online directory service using an Indy-powered blockchain to enable businesses to quickly verify whether a client they’re dealing with is legally registered to do businessas as a corporation. The blockchain-based service can also find “Doing Business As” names registered by corporations.
In addition, BC’s blockchain ledger makes applying for credentials faster and less error prone, and issuing (and reissuing) credentials simpler and more secure, as well as being able to verify those credentials from anywhere in the world.
“Can we create a quick and easy way to navigate through the maze of services from your local, provincial, or federal governments?” BC’s product lead John Jordan said, referring to his time working for the federal government in Ottawa.
Jordan estimated BC spent about $1 million while Ontario and the Canadian government each spent another $300,000 to $500,000, mostly on salaries for a handful of developers to create the identify management system.
“We’ve got a $2 million investment that we’re all benefitting from, and we didn’t have to pay $2 million, right?” Jordan said. “So we actually saved taxpayers millions of dollars.” He noted that the larger team had richer ideas, delivered code faster, and tested it more thoroughly, a collaborative approach that benefited everyone.
Facebook and Instagram face a ban on letting under-18s “like” posts on their platforms while Snapchat could be prevented from allowing the age group to build up “streaks”, under new rules proposed by the UK’s data watchdog.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said these techniques exploit “human susceptibility to reward”.
This, it said, encouraged users to share more personal data and spend more time on apps than desired.
The proposal is part of a 16-rule code.
To ensure its success, the watchdog says that online services must also adopt “robust” age-verification systems.
Location tracking
In addition to calling for an end to children being exposed to so-called “nudge techniques”, the ICO advocates internet firms make the following changes among others for their younger members:
make privacy settings “high” by default
switch location-tracking off by default after each session and make it obvious when it had been activated
give children choices over which elements of the service they want to activate and then collect and retain the minimum amount of personal data
provide “bite-sized” explanations in clear language about how users’ personal data is used
make it clear if parental controls, such as activity-tracking, are being used
The ICO suggests that firms that do not comply with the code could face fines of up to 20 million euros (£17.2m) or 4% of their worldwide turnover under the General Data Protection Regulation.
“The internet and all its wonders are hardwired into their everyday lives,” commented Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham.
“We shouldn’t have to prevent our children from being able to use it, but we must demand that they are protected when they do. This code does that.”
Her office is now seeking feedback as part of a consultation that will run until 31 May. It is envisaged that the rules would come into effect next year.
Bad nudges
Restrictions on Facebook’s like button – which registers a user’s interest in another user or advertiser’s post – and Snapchat streaks – which count the number of consecutive days two members have messaged each other – are not the only nudge behaviours being targeted.
The ICO also says that apps should not:
show boxes where the Yes button is much bigger than that for No
use language that presents a data-sharing option in a much more positive light than the alternative
make it much more cumbersome to select the high-privacy option by, for example, requiring more clicks to turn it on
However, the regulator said it was appropriate in some cases to use nudges that encourage children to opt for privacy-enhancing settings, or to take a break after using an online service for some time.
The ICO’s rules follow a proposal from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) for the creation of an independent tech watchdog that would write its own “code of practice” for online companies.
The suggestions have already been welcomed by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC).
“Social networks have continually failed to prioritise child safety in their design, which has resulted in tragic consequences,” commented the charity’s Andy Burrows.
“This design code from the ICO is a really significant package of measures, but it must go hand in hand with the government following through on its commitment to enshrine in law a new duty of care on social networks and an independent regulator with powers to investigate and fine.”
The Internet Association UK – which represents Facebook, Snap and other tech firms – has yet to comment.
But the code has drawn criticism from the Adam Smith Institute think tank.
“The ICO is an unelected quango introducing draconian limitations on the internet with the threat of massive fines,” said its head of research Matthew Lesh.
“It is ridiculous to infantilise people and treat everyone as children.”
There’s some bad news for Outlook.com users, as it’s emerged that the webmail service has been compromised and some folks have had their accounts hacked, with the perpetrators even able to read emails in a limited number of cases – despite Microsoft’s initial denial that email content was viewable.
Details of the security breach were revealed when TechCrunch ran a report claiming that some Outlook.com accounts – and those with Hotmail email addresses (the old name for Outlook.com) or MSN.com users – had been compromised.
Apparently the hackers managed to get hold of a customer support tech’s login credentials, which they used to access the various consumer user accounts (paid business accounts weren’t affected).
Microsoft clarified that this “affected a limited subset of consumer accounts” and that the malicious activity began at the start of January 2019 and ran through to almost the end of March, so essentially lasted three months.
However, Microsoft said the hackers could only see the user’s email address, folders, and subject lines of messages (as well as addresses the user has emailed), but that they couldn’t actually read the contents of an email, or view attachments (or indeed gain access to the login credentials of the account).
The worry was that even limited information like email subject lines could enable malicious parties to concoct a more convincing phishing scam to aim at the user whose email they have (and they could also employ extra details like the names of friends, gleaned from the email addresses the user has contacted).
Emails have been read
However, it then emerged that matters were worse than Microsoft first admitted: Motherboard spoke to a source who claimed that a ‘large number’ of accounts were affected, and what’s more, in some cases, contents of emails were read by the hackers – and Microsoft subsequently confirmed the latter was true.
Specifically, Microsoft admitted it had sent notifications of a security breach to some users which informed them that their email content had (potentially) been read, but that this only applied to a small amount of the affected users, around 6%.
We don’t know how many accounts that is, because Microsoft didn’t provide an estimate of the overall number of users who were hit by this hack.
Motherboard’s source further claimed that the hackers actually had access to emails for around six months prior to March, but Microsoft firmly denies that.
Despite the perpetrators not gaining access to account passwords, Microsoft is still recommending that if you’ve been affected, you should change your password just as a precautionary measure. Of course, if you have been affected then you should have had an email informing you of this by now.
It’s also worth underlining that it could be a good idea to keep an eye out for potential scam or phishing emails, because as we’ve already mentioned, the data gleaned from your email account – even things as simple as subject lines – could well be used to fashion a much more convincing attack to attempt to deliver malware onto your PC.
A new PlayStation VR patent from Sony doesn’t want you alone to step into its virtual reality worlds, but representations of your friends too.
Siliconera spotted two new filings relating to Sony’s virtual reality headset which could point to the sort of experiences the company is planning for the future. The pair were filed in 2017 and 2018 respectively, suggesting that (if they’ve been pursued by Sony) they could soon bear fruit.
The first relates to live events. Sony’s patent describes a scenario where a user is in attendance at a real world location, such as a sports stadium, with the headset “anchoring” them “to a physical location in the venue”.
They’d be surrounded by real-world attendees, letting them watch the event as if they were actually there. It sounds similar to other live VR applications, like Next VR, Melody VR or Oculus Venues.
‘It’s in the game’? You’re in the game
More interesting, then, is the second application. This one speaks of turning buddies from your PSN games list into spectators of your games as you play. So, rather than generic NPC crowds in the stands of a FIFA match or along the track of a Gran Turismo race, your friends could chose to have an avatar representation of themselves turn up in your game.
These avatars could be true to life, or any sort of stylized representation they choose to submit. They could either choose to spectate in real-time in virtual reality, or show their support through a “pre-programmed” clip.
It’s an interesting idea – especially in the context of the rise of eSports – and could make for not only more interesting crowds, but make the often-solitary feeling VR experience more communal.
Here’s hoping Sony doesn’t apply it to something like a VR Grand Theft Auto though – we’re not sure we much fancy seeing our digital avatars mowed down by a maniac.
