A Tech Nation Report has shown that AI investment in the UK reached record levels in the first six months of the year making it the third biggest market in the world for AI investment, just behind the US and China. Surge Crunchbase figures show that AI investment in the UK reached £859.29m in just the first six months of this year, compared to £825.85m for the whole of last year. This latest surge in AI investment marks five years of consecutive growth and a massive six-fold increase between 2014 and 2018. Also, AI start-ups in the UK raised almost [...]

Reports from online tech commentators indicate that Microsoft will soon be enhancing its Your Phone app with the ability to make phone calls from a desktop PC, thereby making the app a serious challenger to Apple’s iMessage and FaceTime. The Your Phone App Microsoft’s Your Phone desktop App connects your phone to your PC thereby giving you access to your phone’s notifications, photos and texts while working on your PC. Giving the desktop Phone App the details of your phone (Android or Apple, phone number) means that you receive a download link to the ‘Phone Companion’ via SMS text. Installing [...]

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has warned those retiring or taking a new job that under the Data Protection Act 2018, employees can face regulatory action if they are found to have retained information collected as part of their previous employment. Old Investigation The renewed warning was issued following the regulator concluding its dealings in an old investigation of two (former) police officers interviewed (by the media) about an historic case they'd worked on as serving officers involving an MP, and had been accused of disclosing details about the case to the media. In this case, the investigation appears to [...]

If you’d like to optimise your Wi-Fi signal by being able to quickly analyse Wi-Fi networks directly from your Android device, measure signal strength and identify crowded channels, Wi-Fi Analyzer may be the app for you. This open-source, free app, which has no-adverts and claims not to collect any personal information, uses as few permissions as possible to perform the analysis and does not require access to the Internet. WiFiAnalyzer is available from the Google Play store.

Kaspersky’s blog is warning students who are about to go back after the summer holidays to beware of the risk of malware that’s masked as textbooks and essays online. Students Targeted According to Kaspersky, K-12 and college students who may want to save money on textbooks by seeking online essays and study materials may end up unwittingly downloading malware instead. A study by the security company of school and student-related filenames over the past academic year has revealed that out of 356,000 attempted attacks on Kaspersky users, 233,000 cases involved malicious essays that were downloaded to computers owned by more [...]

A Google security researcher has discovered a sustained and indiscriminate hacking attack on iPhones that is believed to have been going on for more than two years. Google Project Zero Details of the attack are outlined on Google’s ‘Project Zero’ blog (https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com) by security researcher Ian Beer. Using Hacked Websites For The Attack On the blog, Mr Beer highlights how Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) discovered a small collection of hacked websites that were being used in indiscriminate ‘watering hole’ attacks against their visitors, using iPhone 0-day.  Watering hole attacks are where the browsing patterns of particular groups are observed in [...]

Some Tesla Model 3 car owners found themselves decidedly locked out in the cold due to a vital Phone Key app being down for maintenance. Labor Day Dismay On US Labor Day, some owners of Tesla Model 3 cars who tried to use their Phone Key app, the smartphone app that will open a Model 3 without the owner having to take the phone out of their pocket, found themselves locked out when the app didn’t work, and they hadn’t brought a physical key fob/card with them. Net Fret Some of the immobilized owners took to social media platforms to [...]

The BBC has announced that it will be launching its own digital voice assistant ‘Beeb’ next year to work on all smart speakers, TVs, and mobile devices. Accents The new digital (AI) voice assistant, which is being developed by an in-house team, will be trained to have a good understanding of the many different UK regional accents.  This has meant that BBC staff from around the UK have been invited to record their voices to help train the programme. Competing? Even though the BBC has not said that ‘Beeb’ will be sold with its own hardware device (smart speaker), as [...]

Telecoms regulator Ofcom has announced the introduction of 10 million new 0204 landline numbers for London in a move to keep up with a growing demand fuelled by Broadband connections. Running Out There are only 500,000 of the 30 million (020)3, (020)7 and (020)8 numbers left to be handed out and Ofcom says that these remaining numbers are being allocated at a rate of 30,000 each week! Broadband In addition to the fact that numbers from the existing groups will be used up within the year, the new numbers have been created to help feed demand for fixed-line broadband. For [...]

If you would like a handy way to make copies of work documents for future reference, the Office Lens app lets you turn your smartphone into a whiteboard and document scanner. The Office Lens app means that you never need to lose a receipt or important document or lose any of the ideas sketched onto a whiteboard at meetings or courses.  Snap a picture of your chosen document with the app and Office Lens allows you to save the output as images, PDFs or Word documents, and save to OneNote, OneDrive, or to your local device. Office Lens is available [...]