My Appearance on WGST's "The Sully Show" 7/18/14 Wintergreen Resort and Tech
Sunday, July 20, 2014 at 8:16AM Rick joins Sully this week from Wintergreen Resort in Virginia to talk about what a great family, golf and ski resort this is, right in the Blue Ridge Mountains. They also discuss the tech issues of the week.
You can find out more about Wintergreen Resort at www.wintergreenresort.com.
Have a listen and you can read the show notes below:
Android Data Wipe Leaves Personal Data - be careful when wiping data off smartphone
Factory reset tool on Android smartphones does not remove all photos, emails, chats, and other personal data, says security firm.
When Android users choose to reset their smartphones, they generally believe their personal data is deleted. But Avast Software, which makes and markets device-side security apps, says that's not necessarily the case. The company was able to recover vast stores of personal data from wiped smartphones using off-the-shelf software. Time to rethink your selfies?
Avast purchased 20 different Android smartphones from eBay, which typically has tens of thousands of such devices for sale at any given time. The previous owners performed a factory reset, deleting all the content from the phones, before selling them. The factory reset option is buried in the settings menu, but it claims to erase everything from the phone and memory card.
"The amount of personal data we retrieved from the phones was astounding. We found everything from a filled-out loan form [to] selfies of what appear to be the previous owner,” said Avast's Jude McColgan.
Avast restored 40,000 photos -- including 1,500 of children, 750 of women in various stages of undress, and 250 male nudes -- from just 20 phones. Avast also recovered 1,000 Google searches, 750 emails and text messages, and 250 contact names and email addresses. Amazingly, Avast managed to identify only four of the 20 previous owners, but an identity ratio of one-in-five should be alarming to most smartphone users.
So how do you protect yourself? Obviously Avast wants you to download and install its Android app, which overwrites everything on the device and then deletes it. Avast's app is free. There are innumerable other options in the Play Store that provide similar services, including apps from Trend Micro, Norton, McAfee, Kaspersky, BitDefender, and LookOut Mobile. Another option is to encrypt the device. All Android smartphones support encryption, which must be enabled by the user.
Samsung Galaxy Note 4 is coming.... already?
Seems like we just got the Galaxy Note 3
Fans of the niche device series have been throwing out concept images of the new phone for months. Rumor and speculation continue to fly as fans eagerly await announcements from Samsung detailing the ins and outs of their plans at the Internationale Funkausstellung, or IFA, in Berlin, Germany. Directly translated, the title means International Radio Exhibition Berlin (sometimes called the Berlin Radio Show), which has been a springboard for the newest technologies for years, and this year, on September 5th through the 10th, some companies will jump farther than ever.
The history of the IFA in Germany is very rich, indeed. 2014 marks the 54th IFA conference since the first conference held in 1924. Some 180,000 people attended the inaugural conference, then called the “Great German Radio Exhibition,” to seek out the newest technology of the day -vacuum tube and early detector radio receivers. In 1930, Albert Einstein gave the keynote speech, emphasizing the importance of such events. The peak attendance of the IFA occurred in 1991 with just over 500,000 people coming to see technology presented by approximately 1,000 exhibitors.
IT Salaries Going Up
Looking for a good salary that keeps going up and job stability?
Look for a career in IT
For many positions, 2014 IT salaries are up a robust 5 percent over last year. Paychecks for Project Managers have risen an impressive 6 percent. Even better: Network Architects are up 6.8 percent, Developer/Programmer Analysts have jumped 7.1 percent, mobile app developers are getting 7.8 percent more. This in a period when core inflation is tame (or so the government numbers tell us).
Even Technical Writers are seeing a 3.2 percent boost.
For IT salaries, companies now need to compete for tech talent. My favorite part of this year’s Robert Half Salary Guide – the source for these IT salary numbers – is the section advising companies on how to hire tech talent. The tone is decidedly aggressive.
Retaining top tech talent is just as serious about being supportive toward IT staff. It lists seven perks that firms use to keep tech pros on board. The list includes some standards, like professional development and family leave; it goes up a few notches with on-site health services and fresh food. And then – incredibly – notes that some employers offer housecleaning and a stipend for vacation travel.
Free housecleaning? Cash for vacation trips? Tech talent, are you feeling loved yet? Suffice it to say, these terms of endearment were nowhere to be found in the dark days of 2008-2009.
Apple Patent Hints The 'iPhone 6' Will Be Made Of Indestructible Glass
Good news for those of you that keep dropping your iPhones
A new Apple patent gives more weight to rumors that the next iPhone will be made of a nearly indestructible type of glass.
Apple won a patent this week for “fused glass device housings," a new method of fusing together pieces of glass, which could be used to make casings for devices like the iPhone and iPad, Apple Insider reports.
The patent award comes amid rumors that the front panel of Apple's next phone, which may or may not be called the "iPhone 6," will be built with a super-durable substance known as sapphire glass.
The Comcast Cable Canceling Fiasco
A tech writer in San Francisco tried to cancel his cable service last week, but spent almost 20 minutes onthe line trying to make headway. He taped the call.
Rick had a similar experience.
Comcast says it’s "embarrassed" by the recording of a customer service rep desperately refusing to cancel a subscriber’s account that had the entire Internet gawking in horror yesterday. However, the company would like to assure us all that this was simply a case of a single, misguided employee leaping over the edge.