Ditching Passwords With Your Phone

Google has finally enabled Passkeys for normal Google accounts (Work/School accounts coming soon TM). Passkeys is a standard Google and many other tech companies came up with in the FIDO Alliance, as an alternative to passwords.

The TLDR as to how it works is, your phone keeps the keys for your account in something like keychain if you use an iPhone, and when you go to log in to say google you will be prompted to authenticate on your phone with either a face scan, fingerprint, or a pin code. However, you normally unlock your phone is how it will know the right person is logging in to Google.

Other sites allow for this type of authentication like Paypal, Shopify, and a few others. More will likely follow now that Google has implemented passkeys.

Now let's go over how to set up passkeys for Google.

1. Go to your Google account settings.

2. Then go to your security settings.

3. Click Add Passkeys.

4. Click the create Passkey button.

5. The click Use another device.

6. Scan the QR code with your phone (you can use the camera app on most smartphones or your QR scanner app of choice).

7. Follow the prompt to authenticate with your phone (Face scan, fingerprint scan, or pin).

8. Add the account keys to your device (iCloud key chain or Google Password Manager).

9. You're done!

You can now use your phone to log in to your Google account. This is something you might see more and more in the coming years.

What to Expect when you are Expecting an Apple Education Event

Tomorrow is the day, Apples Education event. Now is the time to make predictions as to what will be announced at this event tomorrow. I feel like it isn’t going to be much, and they will stay on the topic of education. For the past few years now Apple has lived streamed just about every event they have done, but tomorrows event will not be lived streamed. They are recording it and will have video of it shortly after. 

Cheaper MacBook Air:

Being a event for education price will be a major feature of anything Apple announces at this event. The Mac Air might be the mobile computer that they position as the cheap Mac. Now I don’t think they will do with a new Mac Air but I think they will come out with a new up dated Mac Air that will be a bit thinner and will only have USB-C. Then Apple will keep the current Mac Air and maybe just up its RAM and a few other updated configurations, then just slash the price to say $499 for a base model Mac Air. They may not go that low but my point is it will be much cheaper then any of the other Mac Laptops currently available. 

Mac mini:

I feel the Mac mini will follow the same events. They will most likely announce a new Mac mini with the latest CPU’s and maybe SSDs, better discreet graphics. Then keep the current model with a few new configuration options and discount it to hell making it the cheapest Mac you can buy.

iPad:

Before I go any further I will say you will not see a new iPad mini, this line is all but dead. What will see is a new iPad capable of using AR apps like the iPhone X. This iPad will also support Face ID and maybe due away with the home button on the iPad. This new iPad might also support use of the Apple Pencil. Once they have announced this they will probably keep the current iPad and discount it as well making it the cheapest iPad. 

OS updates Release:

Once everything is said and done apple will most likely release the iOS 11.3 and Mac OS 10.13.4. This will bring new Animoji to the iPhone X and things like iMessage cloud sync and lots of be hind the seances fixes.  

The Rest of the Event:

Majority of this event will be Apple making a case as to why schools should use Apple products and not Chromebook's and Microsoft products. They might even show off a future version of their OS’s that have a better way to manage devices for schools. I wouldn’t expect to hear anything about the Mac Pro, or the iPhone at this event. This event is first and foremost a education event.

I truthfully would like to be wrong about most of this and we get or hear about something really cool, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up.

TrueCrypt Audit Report

The NCC group came out with there finding of the Truecrypt audit. They didn't find too much wrong with the code and what they did find wasn't anything earth shattering that would allow any encrypted files to be compromised. What they did find wrong was a problem with the random number generator and they way it deletes information from RAM. Though sadly none of this will be fixed in Truecrypt since the developers decided to end development on the project. Though thanks to lifehacker I found out a program named VareCrypt which has taking up the development of TrueCrypt and hopefully they will fixed what is wrong. If you want you can read the whole TrueCrypt audit here.

Roku Remote for Windows 8.1

Here is something I don't talk much about, an app for Windows 8.1. I checked out the Roku Remote app for Windows. I use my Roku everyday and Im on Windows at least twice a week so I thought I should check it out.

I should mention that this app is made for touch screen devices and if you don’t have one you will get a warning before downloading. But the computer I tried it on didn’t have a touch screen and it worked just fine with my mouse. If the app docent work for you then that could be why. 

The app is pretty simple. When you open it, it will search your network to find Roku boxes on your network. Once it has you will see all your channels on the screen.   You just have to select 

an app and your Roku will go right to that channel. It will also pop out a remote that looks just like the one on the Android and iOS apps, to let you navigate the channel UI. 

If you lose the remote screen just right click and click remote to get it back at anytime.

The app seems a little lacking compared to the iOS and Android app. These apps allow you to browse the channel store and to add new channels to your box. The other thing is the mobile apps allow you to stream content from your device to your Roku. The Windows app dosent do this at all. I feel like this is a opportunity missed. But these are things they could add over time. 

For now it dose what the title says it is a Roku Remote and it does a good job. It will have a eternal spot on my start screen. You can get this in the Windows App Store.

Facebook Paper 1.2

Facebook pushed out a new update to its Paper app today version 1.2. I won't lie I haven't used this app in awhile. I liked it when it came out cause it looked and worked a lot better than the normal Facebook app. But over time I just slowly started going back to the normal Facebook app cause I could do more in it. My biggest problem when it came out was you couldn't use your lists as sections in Paper. You still can't do that in this version but I'm still taking a look at what you can do now.

One of the first things I noticed was a new section called trending which shows you all the things that are trending on Facebook. It's nice to see that they are at least adding new sections to the app, but I would really like them to let you create your own sections or pull in your lists from Facebook. If you can't tell I'm a very heavy user of lists.

I always like to look at the settings of apps after a major update, and I noticed a switch that lets you make Paper your default Facebook app for notifications. So when you get a notification that someone has liked your status on Facebook it will open in Paper. This is a nice thing to turn on if you want to use Paper as your Facebook app but would like to keep the normal one for back up.

I also noticed that when I pulled down the section I was in to show the main menu there was a hamburger icon so touched it to see a list of my Liked pages and groups I have joined. I didn't see anyway to pin them to make it a section but it gives the pages a nice look to browse your liked pages and groups. It lets you easily move threw the years of the Page right to its founding.

 

I'm going to try and use Paper as my Facebook app on my phone. They seem to have made enough changes to make it more useable. If you want to give Paper a try for yourself you can download it to your iPhone here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/paper-stories-from-facebook/id794163692?mt=8 . It is a iPhone only app but it will work on iPad.  

Amazon Music a Quick Look

Well it seems the New York Times was right the other day when they said that Amazon was close to launching a music streaming service and today they did just that. So like I said the other day I would take a look at the service and I did. Like the New York Times article said the service docent have a lot of music but I was able to find stuff I like right away. Just like Spotify they have a playlist section and you can make your own as well. You can even download songs that are marked prime to your devices so you can listen when you are offline. I took some screen shots of the iPhone app if you have the Amazon music app and have prime all you have to do is upgrade the app and if you don't have the app already just get it here https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/amazon-music/id510855668?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/amazon-music/id510855668?mt=8 .

iCloud Redesign Coming Soon

It looks like Apple pushed out a new iOS 7 design of icloud.com. All the web apps but the iWorks web apps have been redesign to have a flatter look to them. I didn't see any new functionality to any of the apps. The only thing new I saw was in the reminders app their is a schedule view for reminders. But out side of that nothing new but there looks. I'm still hoping one day they will add Photo Stream to icloud.com. You can check out the new look today if you want at beta.icloud.com just know things might be buggy. Here are some screen shots I took of some of the apps.

Skyping Pets

Today I had to leave the house to go help my grandfather get groceries. I've been tasked to watch after the family dog this week. She docent like to be alone so I came up with this idea to leave my laptop on and call it to check on her and make sure she wasn't barking too much. In this post I'll list what I did to make this work cause its easy and you want to keep an eye on your pets while you are not home.

• Fist off you need Skype installed on booth devices you are going to use and the one you will be calling should be a Mac or a PC. For me I used my laptop and my iPhone 4S.
• You will also need 2 Skype accounts one for your one for each device.
• Next on the device you will be calling go to Tools>Calls then click show advanced options and check mark accept incoming calls automatically and start my video automatically when I'm in a call.

 

•  Then you can change any settings you want to change like the cam settings and audio settings. I had to do this cause I used an external web cam and mic, not the one that came with my laptop.
• Once you have done all this you can sign in on your calling device and add your receiving account to your friends list and call it to test it out. When you call the receiving computer it should pick right up and start video.

 

This is a good way to just check up on your pets quick when you are out of the house. I'm sure for some ambitious people out there you could get something like a Raspberry Pie and make a dedicated Skype computer to use to check up on your pets. For me I'm using an old laptop to do this kind of thing in the future. I hope someone out there will find this useful.