Accepting LinkedIn Invitations

An interesting article in inc.com suggests that you should ask yourself “11Questions to Ask Before Accepting a LinkedIn Invitation”.

My rule of thumb is that if I don't know the person, the company or organization they are with, or if the organization is not one that I think fits my general group of companies I want to work with then I probably don't want or need to accept their invitation.

So the reasons not to just accept any old invitation that comes along is that you'll start receiving all sorts of information that is not necessarily relative to you or even more dangerous you are very, you could possibly open yourself up to somebody that is trying to scam you.

So you will want to think about the parameters that you want to use, that makes sense to you, but if you feel you need a little more help than take a quick gander at the article listed above. It is a great is a starting place but is by no means definitive.

Inc’s Criteria:

1. Do I know this person?	5. What is their industry and job description?	9. Do they have any recent activity?
2. Did they send a personal message?	6. Where are they from?	10. What does the profile tell me about the person?
3. Who else are they connected to?	7. Do they have any endorsements or recommendations?	11. How many connections do they have?
4. Does their profile have a photo? If so, what does it convey?	8. Have they published anything on LinkedIn?

(Cloud) Tip of the Day: FreeBSD now available in Azure Marketplace

FreeBSD is Now being supported in the Azure Marketplace.

HikVision’s new PanoVu DS 2DP1636Z D & DS 2DP0818Z D

Presentation of the Camera PanoVu 16 Megapixel 360 ° + PTZ Darkfighter of HIKVISION DS - 2DP1636Z - D, mounting and installation in the showroom of the company DIXYS

Naked Security Post: NIST’s new password rules – what you need to know

by Chester Wisniewski

It’s no secret. We’re really bad at passwords. Nevertheless, they aren’t going away any time soon.

With so many websites and online applications requiring us to create accounts and think up passwords in a hurry, it’s no wonder so many of us struggle to follow the advice of so-called password security experts.

At the same time, the computing power available for password cracking just gets bigger and bigger.

OK, so I started with the bad news, but this cloud does have a silver lining.

It doesn’t need to be as hard as we make it and the government is here to help.

That’s right, the United States National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) is formulating new guidelines for password policies to be used in the whole of the US government (the public sector).

Why is this important? Because the policies are sensible and a great template for all of us to use within our own organizations and application development programs.

Anyone interested in the draft specification for Special Publication 800-63-3: Digital Authentication Guidelines can review it as it evolves over on Github or in a more accessible form on NIST’s website.

For a more human approach, security researcher Jim Fenton did a presentation earlier this month at the PasswordsCon event in Las Vegas that sums up the changes nicely.

To see what is new click here

This pen blew my mind when I saw the video

The Cronzy pen puts over 16 million colors in your pocket

I pulled this one from the Verge and it was pretty cool if it really works. I included the video that was on the Verge site below showing the pan in operation. Currency claims that it can scan and draw 16 million colors, “collecting all the existing colors and shades of the world!” That's a pretty big claim but even if it works only half as well as they show in the video this is a pretty neat capability for those of you that have an artistic temperament. See the full article on Verge.

SharePoint for iOS mobile app is now available

So part of this month’s Office 365 newsletter discussed that the iOS app is now available for access to your SharePoint site. Here is the Microsoft posting discussing this and below is a video running though the functions of this new application. Enjoy!

Office 365 Newsletter just showed up

If you are a subscriber to Microsoft Office 365 you may want to take a quick glance at some of the new features have just been added to your subscription. Now, you may not have everything that is shown here because of your subscription level, but this may give you a reason to update if you don't have these options available to you.

I'm a big proponent in using Skype for business so I was real happy one I was able to get my hands on an E5 license of Office 365 to try out the web conference features that are built into this subscription. 8 vital online meeting features

Microsoft Office Store has all sorts of add in functions to make your life easier both in your mobile devices as well as your PC. It is probably worth a visit to it every so often to make sure that you haven't missed anything that might be useful to you.

For a complete list of the Office 365 updates that are relevant to your subscription, read the action and awareness notifications in the Message Center.

The Office 365 Admin app allows you to remain informed on the go.

OneNote July Updates

I love OneNote and it has become a central point of my daily information collection and distribution medium. Combine it with Office 365 and SharePoint file access on the internet and you have a product that will provide you a wonderful tool to capture your ideas and notes.

The earlier versions of OneNote when compared to the ability of products like EverNote was a little lacking. If you haven’t tried it out recently you really should. It is nothing like what it was a few years ago. Whether you are a school student, office worker or retired, this product is a winner.

In this article from blogs.office.com, they posted some of the new July updates to the OneNote program. The three main areas that have been added to include Inking, Clipping and Notifications. Take a look!

Hands-on: Ubiquiti’s Amplifi covers the whole house in a Wi-Fi mesh

We are very impressed with all of Ubiquiti’s products and this one look pretty good for the home environment. If you have a rambling home that you want to be able to light up with a mesh network wireless setup this might be a good answer to this issue that we have many customers coming in to us to discuss.

While extenders can sometimes fit the bill, having a complete system that is somewhat pre-configured for you that gives you a single connection from anywhere in your home and surrounding yard is a very positive thing. Take a look at this ArsTechnica review of the Ubiquiti Amplifi System.

Lost Outlook Folders Display

Here is a quick video I just put together showing how to restore your Outlook folders display if you accidentally lose it. It could happen in one of two ways so I have both of them listed in the video. Let me know if you have any questions.

Amazon is talking with the UK Government about the safe use of drones in small package delivery

While the idea of placing a One-Click order on Amazon Prime and having the package delivered to you just thirty minutes later is very intriguing, this really is taking the shopping experience to a level that is suggesting pure laziness on our part. But is does fuel my geeky side as well.

This service dubbed “Amazon PrimeAir” suggests that there is a real strong case for the service as shown in the video below because we really need to instantly quiet down the screaming child.

While this is old news the video above shows a new drone prototype that has been released. This drone is designed to fly up to fifteen miles and up to 400 feet. It will be able to carry up to 5 lbs of cargo and unlike the original images we saw it will no longer be delivering your stuff in a plastic box but in a normal cardboard box that is carried internally in the drone.

While the same concerns that were mentioned in earlier reviews of this service still exists, Amazon is still actively pursuing this avenue of delivery.

1. Review: Concerns over Drone Delivery
2. One of the original Amazon Videos
3. New Drone Look

Google adds robocall warnings to Phone app – Naked Security

I sure you have seen an increase in unwanted solicitation call on your mobile phones like I have. Some are spam call any others are outright con artists trying to con you our or your hard-earned money. This article discusses how the FCC is requesting help from our phone carriers and Google’s plans on helping you to determine which calls should be blocked and their suggested method of letting you know and control these unwanted calls.

So, if you are interested click here to read more…

Surface Book 2 coming in first half of 2017

I am going to have to really control my need to have the newest and greatest gadget next spring when it is expected the replacement for the current Surface Book is expected to be released. While this one took me about a year of drooling over before I finally bit the bullet the new one might go come to me much more quickly.

So what should we expect for the next generation? First, the Intel next-gen Kaby Lake processor that will give you lower power consumption and it is suspected that it will be even thinner than it is now (how can that be). We may see NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 10 series inside, either the GTX1050 or GTX1060. That would make it extremely popular for those who need the graphics power.

The current Surface Book has a 3000x 2000 resolution display so expect we will reach 4k resolution of  3840 x 2160 or so. It is not expected to release until late Q2 2017 but with all these upgrades it should be worth the wait. I just hope that the battery life is still going to be there. That would be a big disappointment if we lose that aspect.

Yahoo ordered to show how it recovered ‘deleted’ emails in drug case – Naked Security

Interesting reading about Yahoo recovering supposedly deleted files from their servers for a U.K. drug case. It makes you wonder what else is available that can be handed over to the government to prosecute you. I am not totally unhappy that these drug dealers information was made available for prosecution, however, this may be a real issue for the general private market out there. Just something to think about!

If this is peak your interest you can read more here.

Researcher and Editor Intro Video

Office 365 Other New Features

Microsoft is getting some new online app additions to help you do your research and to clean up your grammar. Microsoft is adding Researcher which is touted to give you easier access to credible sources and and cited content.

Researcher helps you find and insert reliable sources and content for your paper in fewer steps. Within your Word document you can explore material related to your topic and add it, including his properly formatted citation, with just a single click. Researcher uses the bing knowledge graph to pull the appropriate content from the web and provide a safe structured and credible information.

Microsoft plans on expanding Researcher’s source of reference materials to also include places like national science and health centers, well-known encyclopedias, history databases and much more. Microsoft plants also bring this program to your mobile devices so that no matter what you are using you will have this resource available to you. Researcher is available today for Office 365 subscribers using Word 2016 on Windows desktops.

Another new Office 365 app called Editor, will assist you with advanced proofing and editing of your documents. Microsoft is leveraging machine learning and natural language processing-mixed with input from their own team of linguists-to make suggestions to help you improve your writing. Initially it will help you simplify and streamline written communications by flagging unclear phrases or complex words. As an example:  recommending “most” in place of “the majority of”.

Since editor is a cloud-based service, it should get better in time. This fall, it will expand upon words current spelling and grammar tools to help you with understanding why words or phrases may not be accurate. By doing this it is teaching you at the same time it is correcting.

Microsoft shortens recovery rollback period to 10 days in Windows 10 anniversary update

When one did an upgrade ever since Windows 10 began Microsoft offered the opportunity to recover their system by rolling back in upgrade. They now have shortened it to just 10 days instead of the 30 that they had done for previous versions.

They must figure that if you like Windows 10 you're going to really like the new anniversary update. You probably already know what Windows 10 is all about so you shouldn't need to have the longer period to check things out. If you are unhappy with the new version you should probably be able to figure that out within the 10 day timeframe.

According to winsupersite.com, a Microsoft spokesperson it was a data-driven decision to change rollback timeframe from 30 to just 10 days:

"Based on our user research, we noticed most users who choose to go back to a previous version of Windows do it within the first several days. As such, we changed the setting to 10 days to free storage space used by previous copies."

According to Microsoft they were seeing that people were rolling back in less than a week if they were going to do so and so in their mind, they were helping the end-user to recover somewhere between three and 5 GB of storage space on the device that was being used by the rollback recovery. This could be very significant for  low storage space devices so probably is a good thing that this has been shortened to help you out. I'm sure a lot of you will be able to come up with a case for why this would not be a good thing. .

Microsoft Outlook’s Focused Inbox

Here’s a quick video from Microsoft showing this feature.

Microsoft Replacing Clutter in Upcoming Office 365 Update

Internally and almost everybody here has been turning off the clutter function in Microsoft Outlook. It is been a feature that none of us have really liked very much because of its inconsistencies in the way that it operates. It is planning on replacing it with a feature called “Focused Inbox” which is all ready running in the iOS and android Outlook apps.

Focused Inbox uses a ta andb system separating "information between "focused" and "other" tabs. So now you have a program that is determining what is low or high priority and separating them into these two containers. I have not thought much of the algorithm that that phone apps is using two separate these messages so hopefully it'll start to get better as time goes on.

Clutter did not work particularly well for people who had complex inbox rules already in place to manage their email, or who did not receive enough email for the Clutter algorithms to learn what to do with it. For businesses, the sudden disappearance of email into a separate folder caused some support issues, with administrators having to seek out the administrative controls for Clutter after the CEO's important company-wide email didn't get read by half the employees.

Microsoft promises that when this new feature rolls out in Outlook that the messages and color will automatically be moved over to the other tab. When your outlook is updated Microsoft says that it will give you an opt in option that will appear in Outlook and he will give you the option to start using focused inbox. There will also be an option for you to turn off Focused Inbox at any time as well.

There's going to be another feature that is being added called the Outlook @Mentions Feature. It is a quick tagging function that will allow you to add users to email discussion. All you will need to do is to add the @ symbol in a message and you'll get a list of names with the next letter typed. Recipients of your email that have been tagged in this manner will see their email name in a blue highlight color, so they'll know that they had been added to the thread.

Microsoft states that this feature in Outlook will work with any email service you're using in Outlook. However the blue highlight feature will just be available for Outlook.com and office 365 accounts. This function should be added later in the year for other services like Gmail and Yahoo.

Do you want to leap ahead in queue to begin your W10 Anniversary Update!

So you are telling me that you are a bit impatient and want to jump the line ahead of some of the other 350 million people waiting to upgrade to the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. If this is what you want you can manually perform the update by going to the Windows 10 update history page.

This page will allow you to access the Get the Anniversary Update now button and will grab a small executable that you can run to pull in the update. It will go through a device check and then begin the download process. It will then begin the process of performing your upgrade.

If you find you don’t like the update it is easy to reverse the installation. But if you are already into using Window 10 I’m sure this upgrade will tickle you pink as well!