Is your password on this list?

SplashData has released it’s kinda disturbing yet entertaining annual list of the 25 most commonly used passwords for 2014. The data was collected from about 3.3 million passwords in North America and Western Europe. ( So there might be some hope for the rest of the world?)

Hackings have become a highly talked about subject over the past little while, making it kinda silly that the most common password is still – since 2011 – 123456 and – wait for it – password.

It is recommended that you don’t use password for your password. What is recommended is that you use a password with 8 or more characters, including numbers, both lower and uppercase letters and symbols. Yeah, it can be a pain the the you-know-what but it’s important. You can also use a password manager to help you protect your passwords.

So here are the top 25 most common passwords. Is your password on the list? ( Hint – it shouldn’t be)

What we would really like to know is – who is Michael??

Want to win a Private Jet flight for Valentines Day?

So, Valentines day, Huh. What are you guys thinking? Chocolates & Wine? Bourbon & Frisbee Golf? Whale Watching and Diamonds? Netflix and Gin? Or are you looking past Valentines day to March 14th?

Well, we have an idea for you. How about this Valentines day you start thinking new places & Private Jets?

Yump.

Private jet charter Jetsmarter is offering empty leg flights to non-members on February 14th. For $4 in taxes. Four dollars. 

The contest ends on Cupids Birthday, February 14th, and to take part you need to follow Jetsmarter on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, download the company’s app, and add your current location as well as all the cities within the US, Bahamas, and Canada you’d like to fly to under “Frequent Locations” in “My Settings”.

Dozens of lucky lovers will be given the rare opportunity of trippin’ in a Private Jet from  Miami to New York, Los Angeles to Las Vegas, Chicago to Aspen, Boston to New York among hundreds more journeys.

Check it out, Yo! And download the App here for free! 

Apple earnings call & Apple Watch release update

Tim Cook has had a busy day. But – a pretty good one by all accounts. He had to make the earnings call which covered the first fiscal quarter of 2015. In it, he told financial analysts and investors that not only did Apple sell about 9 million more iPhones than what was expected and forecast, but that they also had reported earnings of $3.06 per share on revenue of $74.6 billion which is way more than anyone was expecting.

According to a consensus estimate from Thomson Reuters, analysts had actually expected Apple to report earnings of about $2.60 a share on $67.69 billion in revenue.

Yeesh.

The iPad was the only soft note in the earnings call, with sales hitting a quieter 21.4 million units instead of the 22.2 million unit estimate. However, Apple’s cash rose to almost $178 billion, up 15 percent from the prior quarter.

Again – Yeesh.

So – to the best news! Straight from the Sauce, Mr Cook himself –

“Development for Apple Watch is right on schedule, and we expect to begin shipping in April… My expectations are very high on it. I’m using it every day and love it and can’t live without it.”

Bam. Bam. Bam. April. Early April, Apple Watch, tech we apparently can’t live without. Excellent! And with a battery that can be charged just by thinking good thoughts. Right Tim?

Google translate update

What do we think about Google translate? Pretty good…right? Except sometimes it doesn’t… make a lot of sense? Yeah? It’s a good tool, but not a great tool.

This is all about to change. The Google Translate app has been updated and is better than ever before. It will now allow users to have the spoken word efficiently interpreted in real time. Fancy. The update will make it so the App automatically recognizes the language being spoken and translates it.

It will also, magically, be able to integrate your smart phone camera into it’s translation toolkit. Aim the camera at a sign or words that are in another language and it will translate it for you. This feature magically works without Wi-Fi or data connection.

The update has been launched! Go check it out! Speak to some people who don’t speak your language! The future is now!

Check out the awesome tech that is Microsoft Hololens

Ok Guys, remember how we’re always saying how awesome tech is right now?

SO, YEAH, we’ve got another GEM of an SUPER DOOPER exciting future product to show you. Check this out and try not to smack that guy next to you in excitement.

Whaaaaaaaaaat.

Read Bill Gates’ 2030 goals.

Bill Gates is kind of a big deal. If you look at the blazing path he created in the tech industry, it’s pretty awesome, but then if you take into account the blazing path he and his wife Melinda are currently creating in the industry of philanthropy- it’s amazing.

He’s the kind of dude where, if he speaks, you probably want to listen. 

Gates and his wife Melinda started The Gates Foundation 15 years ago with the aim of backing innovative work in health and education towards reducing inequity. They’ve made exiting progress.

Now, see what he has to say in his annual letter about their goals for the next 15 years, looking forward to 2030. Listen up.

“The lives of people in poor countries will improve faster in the next 15 years than at any other time in history. And their lives will improve more than anyone else’s.”

HEALTH: Child deaths will halve, more diseases to be wiped out.

“When we look at the progress the world has made in the past generation, since 1990, we believe global health equity is an achievable goal,”

By 2030, Gates is predicting that massively destructive diseases including both Polio and Guinea worm will be eliminated. Almost all countries will vaccinate against debilitating illnesses such as pneumonia and diarrhea.

Although elimination seems a little out of reach for 2030, progress will made in the fight against the big guys – Malaria and HIV.

“As we make progress toward a[n HIV] vaccine or a cure, the number of people beginning treatment in sub-Saharan Africa will finally outstrip the number of people newly infected. When we reach that point in the region with the most dense HIV transmission in the world, cases will start going down everywhere around the globe for the first time since the disease was discovered more than 30 years ago.”

Between 1990 and now, the number of deaths for children under five was cut in half. This will happen again by 2030, bringing the death rate down to one child in 40.

Better sanitation — through simple actions like hand-washing as well as innovations like new toilets designed especially for poor places — will cut the spread of disease dramatically.

FARMING: Africa will be able to feed itself.

“With the right investments, we can deliver innovation and information to enough farmers in Africa to increase productivity by 50 per cent for the continent overall.”

70% of people living in sub-saharan Africa are farmers, and yet currently the continent relies on air and imported food. Providing African farmers with the technology to produce more nutritious, drought and disease resistant crops will allow them to increase their productivity and feed themselves.
 

BANKING: Mobile banking will transform lives of the poor.

“Not having access to a range of cheap and easy financial services makes it much more difficult to be poor.”

Mobile phones are the key. There are already people in developing countries who are storing and transferring money digitally on their phones. The prediction, or goal, is that by 2030 2 billion people who don’t have a bank account today, will be storing and transferring money with their mobile phones.

They will also have access , via their mobile money providers, to a full range of financial services. Digital banking will allow the poor to have control over their assets.

EDUCATION: Better software will revolutionize learning

“As high-speed cell networks grow and smartphones become as cheap as today’s voice-only phones, online education will flourish,”

Online learning will be fully accessible in developing countries in 2030, providing more gender equality in education.

“Education is a great leveler, but if the factors that hold girls back are not addressed, and if access to education isn’t equal, then education will become another cause of inequity, rather than a cure for it.”

Easy access to online education also leads to a larger resource of education workers, which in turn leans to to a higher GDP and a higher overall standard of living.

If you would like to read the entire letter, please check it out here. If you would like to learn more about the philanthropy that Bill and Melinda gates are involved with, check out The Gates Foundation here. 

Apple camera patent threatens GoPro?

GoPro has been the King of portable, wearable camera’s for ages now and every thrill seeking, snowboarding, globetrotting guy with some cash worth his salt has one.

Now, something has sent their stock down a pretty shocking 12% ! What could it be? Um.. step on up Apple?

According to PatentlyApple, Apple has patented a design for a digital video camera that will be some serious competition for GoPro.Although the Patent was applied for quite a while ago, it was approved this past Tuesday and has since had the tech world buzzing.

The camera, whose existence Apple has not officially acknowledged, will be small, remote controlled, and wearable, but may improve on the GoPro by being less susceptible to damage and creating a smaller profile which creates less wind resistance.

Now, Apple patents a lot of designs. A lot.   So the likelihood that this wearable camera design will come to fruition at all, let alone any time soon, is relatively slim. But still possible, and certainly still possible enough for people to rethink their wearable camera stock options.

Go Pro’s shares are currently $48.35

Google Modular Phone

Google has been busy. Well, Google is always busy, but in this context, we’re talking about their vision of bringing a Google Modular smart phones into life.

Modular: involving a module as the basis of design or construction.

Umm… Module: each of a set of standardized parts or independent units that can be used to construct a more complex structure.

So. A phone made from a bunch of individual and independent parts. The idea is that you can buy each part separately, depending on what you want and require out of a smartphone instead of buying a whole phone with functionality you might not want or need.

This would also mean you could replace an individual part when it fails or when an update comes out without needing to replace the whole phone. Pros: cheaper and more customizable. You want two camera’s on your smart phone? Buy two camera modules. Use your phone a lot? buy multiple batteries, replace one and charge it while you’re using the other.

Google have just announced their plans to release a Market pilot version of their modular smart phone, called Project Ara in Puerto Rico later this year.

Exciting.

In true Google PR style, they’ll be using a bunch of food trucks running around Puerto Rico to demo the phones later this year. Because, obviously. 

After they’ve understood how customers are going to react to the amount of choice presented to them by a modular phone, and how successful it is, how they can make it more successful, etc, the idea is that the rest of the world will then be introduced to the Google Modular phone too.

See the video for the Google Project Ara modular smartphone here!

The new Steve Jobs Biopic has begun filming!

The new Steve Jobs film has been in the news of late with buckets of casting rumors and actors dropping out and studio’s dropping out and other studios picking it up and …etc etc.

But! On Friday afternoon the Danny Boyle directed biopic finally began filming!

Exciting!

Film crews set up outside Steve Jobs childhood home in Los Altos after the production crew had transformed the garage into what it would have looked like when Jobs and Steve Wozniak were there, working on the Apple 1 computer in 1976.

The movie is said to cover three important launches of Apple, and filming will occur later in San Jose and Berkeley. Star-spotters unite!

Casting has been confirmed as Michael Fassbender as Steve Jobs, Seth Rogen as Steve Woniak, Kate Winslet as a lead female role and Jeff daniels as former Apple CEO John Sculley. Other cast members includeKatherine Waterston as JOb’s ex-girlfriend Chrisann Brennan and Michael Stuhlbarg as early Apple Employee Andy Hertzfield.

Check out some photos of the filming over at CNET.

Apple highlights Martin Luther King Day

If you take a wander over to the Apple homepage today, you’ll see that it has been changed to honor Martin Luther King Day, with a full page memorial.  The message on the page reads:

“Today we reflect on the life and vision of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the work that continues in service of the broader concerns of humanity.”

Last year CEO Tim Cook explained in an interview that he keeps photos of both Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy in his office at Apple.

“I had the — just tremendous respect for both of them, and so I do,” he said. “I look at them every day because I think for people — there’s still too many cases in the world and in the United States where there’s a class kind of structure or where voting or people are trying to convince each other that this other group of people don’t deserve the same rights. And I think it’s crazy, I think it’s un-American.”

Mr Cook also tweeted about the importance of honoring the life and legacy of Martin Luther King, with these words:

‘Timeless words from #MLK,  “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”’

An important message for us all to remember.

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