Yearly Archives: 2020

Mozilla, makers of Firefox, have released a VPN service available on Windows 10, Android and iOS. The VPN will be available soon on macOS and Linux.

Mozilla’s VPN is a full stand-alone product that offers system-wide protection for all your apps. It uses servers from Mullvad VPN which connect via the WireGuard protocol to both encrypt your network activity and hide your IP address. Mozilla claims to be very conscious of user data & privacy, and does not store online activity logs on their servers, which is a common key concern with VPN services.

Also, by using Mullvad, one of the most privacy-focused providers, Mozilla’s VPN is put ahead of most others in trustworthiness. More information about Mozilla’s policy on privacy can be found here – www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/mozilla-vpn.

The Mozilla VPN costs £3.95 pcm, with the option to unsubscribe at any point. They have a large number — 280 plus — of servers in 30 plus countries, showing reliability. Getting started requires creating a Firefox account, but this only involves providing your email address and age.

Mozilla’s VPN includes some great features such as a ‘kill switch’ —which kicks in if the VPN drops, ensuring your traffic won’t accidentally be sent over a suddenly unprotected connection. It also features split tunneling that allows apps which don’t require protection to run on a regular network rather than the VPN, reducing the load and increasing performance and speed of Mozilla’s VPN.

The Mozilla VPN only works with up to five devices, meaning if you want to add a sixth device you will need to remove one first. Currently Mozilla’s VPN is offered in the US, the UK, Canada, New Zealand, Singapore and Malaysia, with plans to extend this to more countries.

Mozilla VPN appears to be a good choice, with good speed, protection and ease of use, however it can’t beat the top names such as ExpressVPN (our recommendation) and NordVPN, who offer more features, apps, locations and range of plans. Nevertheless Mozilla are promising a 30-day money-back guarantee with no small print, so if you are not satisfied you can get a full refund within 30 days despite previous usage. If you’re already a Firefox user and need a VPN, this is certainly worth a try.

In September, Apple officially released its iOS 14 software update, which introduced some new green and orange dots at the top of device screens.

Apple has added these as ‘recording indicators’, which clearly demonstrate to you if an app has access to your device’s microphone or camera – to give you more control over the permissions that apps have

The green dot is used to indicate when the camera is in use, and the orange dot indicates when the microphone is in use. It is then possible to determine what apps are accessing the camera or microphone and, if desired, such access can be turned off.
To change app permissions on iOS, go to Settings and then into Privacy. Read more from Apple on this point here.

Wikipedia, the world famous online encyclopedia, has been a huge part of the web since it started in 2001. For the first time since then, Wikipedia is being redesigned to be more user-friendly and easier to read and navigate.

The site’s parent company, the Wikimedia Foundation, announced that the changes will happen incrementally over a long period of time, allowing users to test the new features before they officially roll out.

The first update that will be made is that the sidebar will be collapsible, making articles easier to read with less distractions. Wikipedia will also add improvements to the in-site search tool to make it easier to find other pages. Contents menus/links will also change, making it easier to skip to sections without needing to scroll. Lastly, the logo is being reconfigured to make it smaller on each page.

You can preview all the proposed new features in this MediaWiki post. Wikipedia plans to complete the redesign of the entire look of their desktop version by the end of 2021.

Twitter is working on a ‘read the article before you retweet’ prompt for all users.

The platform began testing such a prompt in June on Android for users who were retweeting a story they hadn’t read – as an attempt to promote informed discussions on their platform. Headlines often don’t tell the whole story, and can even be actively misleading. Therefore retweeting something that hasn’t actually been read can easily spread misinformation.

Since the testing, Twitter announced that 40% of users opened the article after seeing such a prompt. Users opening articles before retweeting increased by 33%, and some even chose not to post their tweet after reading the article. Demonstrating that the prompt is having a noticeable effect on users thinking twice before retweeting headlines without knowing the full stories.

Twitter is working on making the prompt smaller once you have seen it initially, so as not to become an annoyance in the interface. Twitter claims that these prompts will be applied for all users globally soon.

See Twitter’s thread of these prompts here

Google has announced the G Suite will now be called Google Workspace.

G Suite is now Google Workspace, with different branding and pricing. Google services, such as Gmail, Docs, Meet, Sheets, and Calendar, are being integrated with one another to be more user friendly and attractive to new users.

We have already seen the integration of Google Meet into Gmail, and now Google is stepping up its efforts even further as a competitor to Microsoft 365 by combining more services without need to change tabs. For example, you can now instantly call users that are working on a Google Doc with you, from within the document itself without opening a new chat window.

Further features will be released shortly, such as the ability to create a document directly from a chat window and start a video call from within a presentation. These are said to be coming in the near future (weeks or months).

Google has also changed its pricing tiers a little, adding a new ‘Business Plus’ plan with more device management features.

Business Starter
£4.14 per user per month for first 20 users for 12 months, £4.60pcm thereafter.

• Custom and secure business email
• 100 participant video meetings
• 30 GB cloud storage per user
• Security and management controls

Business Standard
£8.28 per user per month for first 20 users for 12 months, £9.20 thereafter.

Business Plus
£13.80 per user per month.

For the full announcement from Google on Google Workspace see here.

Google held its digital event ‘Launch Night In’ this week, announcing the Google Pixel 5, Pixel 4a 5G, new Chromecast with Google TV, and new Nest Audio.

Google Pixel 5 and Pixel 4a 5G
The Pixel 5 includes 5G capability, Portrait Light and Night Sight features within portrait mode in the camera, and new Google One cloud storage services. Google have also updated their Pixel 4a phone up to 5G. Both the Pixel 5 and Pixel 4a 5G have the same Snapdragon 765G processor, the same camera setup (now with an ultrawide secondary lens), and very similar display size and battery. Aside from the extra features of the Pixel 5 listed above, the Pixel 5 has a 90Hz refresh rate display, 8GB of RAM (over 6GB), a bigger battery, wireless charging, and IP rating for waterproofing. The Pixel 4a 5G in comparison has a slightly bigger screen, and a headphone jack.

The Pixel 5 costs £599 and is available to pre-order now, with a release date of October 15. The Pixel 4a 5G costs £499 and will be released in the UK on November, 9.

Google TV
Google has released Google TV, similar to Apple TV, where you can stream from many different services such as Netflix or Amazon Prime. Voice control is available, and you can also create watchlists and set programmes to record from your phone. Google TV will work with other Google devices, such as Chromecast and Google Nest.

Chromecast
The new Chromecast has been built to work seamlessly with Google TV, now coming with a remote with buttons to instantly take you to Netflix and YouTube. You can also use the remote to speak with Google Assistant to play whatever you want. The new Chromecast with Google TV costs £60, in comparison to Apple TV’s cost of £149.

Google Nest Audio
Google has announced new Google Nest Audio, which is said to be 75% louder and has 50% stronger bass response than the original Google Home. Some adaptive features have also been added, such as Media EQ, where you can autotune the speaker depending on what you’re listening to, and Ambient IQ, which puts the volume up or down depending on the ambient noise level.

Microsoft held its annual Ignite event digitally for the first time on September 22-24, 2020. Microsoft has many interesting announcements and changes coming soon. Below we have listed the highlights from Microsoft Ignite.

SharePoint Syntex
Microsoft’s ‘Project Cortex’ has been talked about for the last three years and was hoped to have been released this summer – a new knowledge management service. It is now going to be released in parts with different branding. The first release will be Sharepoint Syntex on 1 October. SharePoint Syntex is based on machine learning technology and will allow processes, routing and metadata to be automated. Once using SharePoint Syntex, it will learn how you work and how you need your documents to be handled.

Power Platforms and Azure
Microsoft has heavily boosted how developers can extend and build apps within Microsoft. Power Platforms give the ability for developers to add Azure functions and use Azure API management within apps they have built.

Developers can pull in data from Azure into Power apps for no extra cost, bringing more control and security. With Private Endpoints, indexers now can connect to a data source behind Azure Virtual Network (VNet). Users also can request Azure Cognitive Search to create an outbound private endpoint connection to securely access data from data sources via indexers. Also Managed Identities provides role-based access control (RBAC) assignments, enabling a secure connection between an indexer and the data source. It also enables you to connect to a data source without having to enter credential information as part of the configuration.

There is also an integration with Github (now also owned by Microsoft), allowing developers to work and collaborate on projects together. See here for more about Power Platforms.

Teams
Power Platforms will also give the ability to build apps and embed them into Teams. To read more about this see here.

Teams will be having new features added later this year, such as new scenes and backgrounds. Custom layouts will also be available so hosts can control how the content is presented during the meeting. Finally, Breakout Rooms will be enabled, which will allow hosts to split up participants within a meeting into smaller groups for different sessions – for example for group activities and brainstorming sessions.

Video Conferencing
The Microsoft Stream video service is being rebuilt and will be moving to use SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business, for storing and managing videos across Microsoft 365.

New Edge browser on Linux
Microsoft is releasing a preview to Edge Insider testers of the new version for Linux starting in October.

Power BI
Power BI, Microsoft’s business analytics platform, will soon be available on a per-user basis, at what the company promises will be an affordable price. Until now, the Premium subscription was only available by “capacity”, meaning dedicated infrastructure, and for an entire organization., With a pricing entry point of about $5,000/month. New features are also being brought to Power BI such as “smart narratives,” augmented analytics, usability in Microsoft Teams, and a new visual interface.

Microsoft Defender and Azure Defender
The Microsoft 365 Defender line will change to:

• Microsoft 365 Defender (previously Microsoft Threat Protection)
• Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (previously Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection)
• Microsoft Defender for Office 365 (previously Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection)
• Microsoft Defender for Identity (previously Azure Advanced Threat Protection)

The Azure Defender line will change to:

• Azure Defender for Servers (previously Azure Security Center Standard Edition)
• Azure Defender for IoT (previously Azure Security Center for IoT)
• Azure Defender for SQL (previously Advanced Threat Protection for SQL)

We a Microsoft Partner, for more information or updates please contact us.

Apple held its latest event online on Tuesday, during which it unveiled the new Series 6 Watch, new versions of the iPad, Apple One subscription bundles, a fitness class service, and the release of iOS 14

The release of a new model phone has been delayed by several weeks, which has caused some disappointment for those waiting for the iPhone 12.

Apple Watch 6
The new key feature of Apple’s Series 6 watch is a blood oxygen monitor that uses a series of sensors to measure light reflected off a wearer’s blood. Blood oxygen levels can be used to measure fitness and heart health. The Series 6 watches start from £379 with GPS and £479 with GPS plus mobile service capability. The price in the UK is once again higher than that in the US, which starts from $399 (equivalent circa £309).

Fitness+
Fitness+ is a new service, which will connect to an Apple Watch to monitor heart rate and calories. This will also play workouts on a screen, as a response to the closures of gyms around the world.

Watch SE
Alongside the Series 6 Watch, Apple has launched a lower-cost smartwatch – the Watch SE. The cost of the Watch SE is £269 compared to the price of £379 for the Series 6 watches. The Watch SE has been released with younger users in mind, and has the ability for parents to monitor its locations and control with whom they are able to communicate (without needing an iPhone).

iPad and iPad Air
Another of the key announcements was the new iPad and iPad Air 4. The new (‘standard’) iPad has received a few enhancements inside its 10.2-inch housing, and now starts at £329. The iPad Air 4 now includes key elements of the iPad Pro such as the same 12MP rear camera but at a lower price. It also uses the new A14 Bionic chipset, which is expected to be used in the new iPhone 12 and next-generation Touch ID. The iPad Air 4 starts at £579.

Apple One
Apple unveiled an all-in-one monthly subscription, Apple One, combining their services into one bundle. Apple One subscriptions start from £14.95 per month for a combination of Apple TV+, Apple Music, Apple Arcade games, and iCloud cloud storage. The most expensive Apple One bundle is £29.95 a month, which includes higher storage capacity, Apple News newspaper and magazine subscriptions, as well as the above-mentioned new virtual fitness classes.

Cables cables cables
Apple announced it will no longer bundle a USB adapter cable with the Apple Watch. The decision is claimed to have come about as a desire to help against climate change by reducing production/consumption of this cable, but it is not unlike Apple to change its chargers thereby forcing users to buy specific products to solve this.

iOS 14
Lastly, Apple announced it will release iOS 14 – the latest version of its mobile operating system for phones, tablets, etc. Typically, major iOS updates have come out on the same day as the company’s latest iPhones, but not so this year. Some of the more notable additions are new home screen widgets and a new way to organise apps with the App Library. The new version is available on the iPhone 6s and above from 16 September.

The event has brought some interesting announcements, such as the lower-cost Apple Watch SE and iPad Air 4. Apple seems to be responding to current events, such as wellness and gym closures, with more focus on health and fitness. Lower cost models and customer needs, such as child protection, have also been addressed.

One confusing aspect is the new iPad Air 4 specification, which has moved close to that of the iPad Pro. Previously the iPad ranges were clearly delineated, with iPad as the standard, iPad Air as the mid range, and iPad Pro as the top end. This is no longer the case. We have seen Apple cause similar confusion before, for example with the release of the iPhone X at the same time as the iPhone 8 in 2017.

As an Apple Partner, we can provide lower costs and details on products – please contact us for more information and discounted pricing.

Apple is soon to hold its annual event, online this year, on September 15th. The event will be streamed from the company’s website starting at 17:00 GMT.

Apple is expected to unveil a new iPad Air (4th generation) and new Apple Watch 6 models. They are also working on a smaller HomePod and the first pair of Apple-branded over ear headphones, which are hoped to be released later this year. Bloomberg has reported that new iPhones won’t launch until October, delayed due to the pandemic

The new iPad Air is rumoured to feature an edge-to-edge display, and would serve as a middle-ground option between the standard version iPad and the high-end iPad Pro. The new Apple Watch 6 models are said to be lighter and have new health features including bloody oxygen level analysis. Also, a new budget-friendly Apple Watch is rumored, to replace the existing Apple Watch Series 3 and other older models.

You can watch the Apple Event online on Apple’s website and also on YouTube. We will post a follow-up article after the event discussing the announcements and releases.