Mujjo’s Announces New MagSafe Wallet

Posted in Commentary with tags on September 26, 2024 by itnerd

Mujjo has just announced their new MagSafe Wallet.

Here are some highlights of our MagSafe Wallet: An Easy-Access Three-Card Wallet   

  • Made with vegetable-tanned leather that devops a beautiful unique patina over time, that is rather gold by the Leather Working Group for environmental standards. 
  • With top rated protection to keep your cards safe. Includes easy to attach, with silicone stripes with slip resistance for MagSafe compatible products.
  • Lined with luxurious Japanese microfiber lining with a satin-like finish. 
  • Now available in two new colours, Green Smoke and Livid Green, shipping this October. 
  • $44, £44

Learn more about their MagSafe Wallet as well as their entire iPhone 16 collection. 

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Format Partners with Kickback to Capture Canada Basketball Nationals, Spotlighting the Next Generation of Sports Photographers

Posted in Commentary with tags on September 26, 2024 by itnerd

 Format, the leading portfolio website provider for artists, designers, photographers, and creative professionals, is proud to partner with Kickback, an organization dedicated to empowering underserved youth through arts and sports. As part of this collaboration, Format is providing participants in Kickback’s Portfolio program with a free year of its portfolio services. As part of the Kickback program, youth photographers have an extraordinary opportunity to document the Canada Basketball Youth U15 & U17 tournament in Toronto, held from August 5-10, 2024—marking the first professional opportunity for many of these aspiring photographers.

Format sponsored a behind-the-scenes photoshoot of the Kickback youth in action, documented by sports photographer and Kickback alumni, Nicholas Williams. The partnership with Canada Basketball has provided these young photographers with a platform to gain real-world experience.

This year’s collaboration between Kickback and Canada Basketball is a testament to the value of mentorship and the positive impact of providing opportunities to underserved youth in the community. Format and Canada Basketball remain committed to fostering young talents and empowering the next generation of photographers.

Kickback is a non-profit organization that has been in existence since 2016. Founded by Jamal Burger, Kickback began with the belief that a new pair of shoes has the power to keep kids out of trouble. The organization provides sneakers and helps kids reframe the narrative by facilitating experiences and opportunities in sports, art, and education. Kickback is committed to creating a world of opportunity at the intersection of art and sport.

Format is a platform designed to help creative professionals—from emerging talents to seasoned experts—showcase their work and manage their online presence. Joining Zenfolio Inc. in 2021, Format has remained dedicated to supporting and empowering creatives at all stages of their careers.

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Nelson Enhances Edwin, its Digital Learning Platform, to Help Canadian Educators Easily Access Current Curriculum-Aligned Teaching Materials

Posted in Commentary with tags on September 26, 2024 by itnerd

As Ministries of Education introduced new curricula in Ontario, Alberta and other provinces across Canada this school year, school boards need to ensure teachers have the latest, accurate and trustworthy resources for their classrooms. To address those requirements, Nelson Education, Canada’s leading education content provider, has incorporated further updates to Edwin, the company’s digital learning ecosystem, for the 2024/2025 school year to reflect the recent curriculum changes. By popular demand, the company has also enhanced its “browse by curriculum” feature on Edwin, making it easier for teachers to access the latest curriculum-linked content for their subjects.

Committed to the individualized needs of students, teachers and administrators, Nelson aligns with the priorities set by Ministries of Education across Canada with digital content built for Canadian classrooms. It works with school boards and districts nationwide to deliver and update content that is relevant and curriculum-aligned for all learners. Some of the curriculum changes this year include Grades 4-9 Language, Grade 9 Science and Grade 9 Mathematics in Ontario; and Grades 4-6 English Language Arts and Literature, and Social Studies in Alberta, among others changes.

With Edwin, teachers can build culturally relevant, engaging and differentiated learning plans to support classroom equity. Multiple modes of content including text, audio and video enable students to learn and collaborate in ways that are right for them. With all subjects’ resources, interactive tools and notes in one place, the easy-to-use platform can relieve the time pressures felt by teachers.

One month into the school year, Nelson has already seen an 89 per cent increase in the number of teachers trained on Edwin at the end of the first week of school this year compared to last year.

Nelson helps teachers and improves student engagement

Nelson disrupted the education industry by launching Edwin in 2017, virtually reinventing itself from a century-old publisher into a digital content provider. Year over year, Edwin has been proven to reduce strains on teachers and help drive improved student outcomes. In a national survey conducted in January 2024, teachers reported saving almost one hour per week in lesson planning, finding resources and creating assessments by using Edwin, an equivalent of one prep period per week or one full week a year. They gave an A or A+ to Edwin’s subject content, classroom success and support. In 2021, a school board in Ontario also showed a 14 per cent increase in students who met or exceeded the provincial standards in Mathematics after using Edwin.

Engaging and reliable resources to support a variety of learning subjects

Educators rely on Edwin to provide timely, creative lesson ideas. For example, Edwin saw a 70 per cent spike in usage in November 2023 with teachers and students accessing not only curriculum related content, but also content about Remembrance Day, Indigenous Veterans Day and Recognize Treaty Rights and Relationships.

Edwin’s rich library of online resources supports core disciplines, other subjects and contemporary topics. It also goes beyond traditional classroom materials with learning tools to let students explore, create and collaborate. One major difference between Edwin and traditional textbooks or eBooks is users never get just one grade of content; it provides access to multiple grades to cover a wide range of student needs.

Edwin’s Classroom Success Team, made up entirely of educators, provides support for teachers and students throughout the school year. Free, monthly Live Lessons are also available for everyone. Most recently, a three-part series of Live Lessons: Truth and Reconciliation: Then, Now, Tomorrow was developed. Students can take a journey through Truth and Reconciliation in Canada by exploring three key aspects: Learning from the Past (Sept. 25), Navigating the Present (Sept. 30), and Inspiring the Future (Oct. 9).

For more information on Nelson’s digital learning ecosystem, Edwin, visit: https://edwin.app/.

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Review: Apple Magic Trackpad

Posted in Products with tags on September 26, 2024 by itnerd

Since moving my desk setup to having my MacBook Pro in clamshell mode, I’ve missed having a trackpad. The reason being that Apple’s trackpads support gestures that can make doing a lot of things way faster than using a mouse. So after months of stalling, I finally bit the bullet and handed over $169 CDN to Apple to get this:

Meet the Apple Magic Trackpad. It supports both Force Touch which is the ability for the touchpad to react to how hard you press it. That’s handy for apps that actually support this feature. It also has zero moving parts like the touchpads on Apple’s MacBooks. Thus everything you feel is simulated via Apple’s haptic feedback tech. So if you’re used to that, you’ll feel right at home. Finally, it supports multi touch gestures. More on that in a bit. It’s available in white or in the black that you see here. I don’t know about the white version of this, but the black version attracts fingerprints like crazy.

On the back is an on/off switch, as well as a Lightning port for recharging the trackpad seeing as it’s wireless. Much like the Magic Keyboard, I have to ask why do we not have USB-C on this in 2024? I guess that the EU needs to force Apple to get with the times as this is just dumb. For what it’s worth, the battery inside the trackpad lasts just over a month, and it comes with one of these:

It’s a USB-C to Lightning cable that is pretty good quality.

Back to why I got this for myself. Over the years I have come to rely on the multi touch gestures that Apple has offered in their notebooks to navigate and do things in macOS. If you’re interested in learning what these gestures are, this can help you. And that fact that this trackpad supports them immediately makes me way more productive at my desk. For example I often use apps in full screen and swipe between them using the trackpad. And doing that takes far less effort with the trackpad than it does with a mouse. Having said that this trackpad will not completely replace a mouse as it is simply not as accurate as a mouse. Thus I always have a mouse on standby should I need to do something that requires some level of accuracy. Color correcting a photo would be an example of that.

Here’s one thing that makes this trackpad worth considering. Unlike the Magic Mouse which for reasons only Apple understands requires you to flip the over to charge it, rendering it useless in the process, you can use the trackpad while you charge it. It makes me think that these two devices were designed by two groups of people who clearly didn’t talk to each other.

So would I recommend the Apple Magic Trackpad? If you want to accelerate your workflow and don’t mind spending spending some time to learn the multi touch gestures, then yes. If you’re used to how your MacBook behaves and you want to replicate that on your desktop, then yes for that as well. Just don’t throw away your mouse as that will come in handy from time to time.

Oh, I have a message for Apple. You need to move these accessories to USB-C. It’s 2024 and you really have no excuse anymore.

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Privacy Overreach of AI Browser Extensions 

Posted in Commentary with tags on September 25, 2024 by itnerd

The Chrome Web Store is home to hundreds of AI browser extensions. Taking that into account, researchers at WizCase looked into the privacy implications of using these extensions to understand the potential risks and overreach into user data. We explain some highlights of our findings below.

According to their research:

  • Despite being advertised as serverless with no analytics and data collection, WebChat GPT secretly sends data to its own server and records your email address before you even sign up for an account.
  • The Liner AI browser extension collects extremely sensitive user information, including 2FA codes, user credentials, and emails, which is a major security and privacy issue.
  • Wiseone actively logs sites you visit and can extract data — including email, contacts, and other personal information — from your Google account without your permission or consent.
  • LinkedRadar collects excessive browser traffic, actively logging open browser tabs every 10 seconds. 

Why it matters: Their research has shown that, even if browser extensions give users ease-of-use, too often, the software accesses and records information contrary to the Chrome Web Store policies and even the developer’s own, making it almost impossible for consumers to know how secure their information truly is.

You can access their detailed report here: https://www.wizcase.com/blog/privacy-overreach-of-ai-browser-extensions/

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LinkedIn Top Startups 2024: 15 Canadian companies on the rise

Posted in Commentary with tags on September 25, 2024 by itnerd

LinkedIn has released the 2024 Canadian Top Startups List, featuring 15 emerging companies attracting attention and top talent in 2024. Eleven new companies are on this year’s list including Pine, Sweat and Tonic, Quandri, and Felix.  

As the landscape of work changes rapidly around professionals, from what we do to how we do it, startups are a natural place to look for forward thinking and innovation around the future of how we live and work. LinkedIn’s Top Startups list is the place to find the startups Canadians should be paying attention to, whether they’re looking for a new job or inspiration from those leading us through change. 

2024 Top Startups Canada List

  1. Cohere
  2. Float
  3. PostGrid
  4. Hiive
  5. Pine
  6. SALT XC
  7. MedMe Health
  8. Quandri
  9. Sweat and Tonic
  10. Carbon6
  11. Felix
  12. Kensington Grey Agency
  13. Zūm Rails
  14. OwnersBox
  15. pH7 Technologies

Additional details can be found here.

Methodology

LinkedIn measures startups based on four pillars: employment growth, engagement, job interest and attraction of top talent. Employment growth is measured as percentage headcount increase over methodology time frame, which must be a minimum of 10%. Engagement looks at non-employee views and follows of the company’s LinkedIn page, as well as how many non-employees are viewing employees at that startup. Job interest counts the rate at which people are viewing and applying to jobs at the company, including both paid and unpaid postings. Attraction of top talent measures how many employees the startup has recruited away from any global LinkedIn Top Company, as a percentage of the startup’s total workforce. Data is normalized across all eligible startups. The methodology time frame is July 1, 2023 through June 30, 2024.  

To be eligible, companies must be fully independent, privately held, have 30 or more full-time employees, be 5 years old or younger and be headquartered in the country on whose list they appear. We exclude all staffing firms, think tanks, venture capital firms, law firms, management and IT consulting firms, nonprofits and philanthropy, accelerators and government-owned entities. Startups who have laid off 10% or more of their workforce based on corporate announcements or public, reliable sources between July 1, 2023 and the list launch, are not eligible. These decisions are made by the LinkedIn News team based on company statements and/or reputable news outlets. 

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TTC Reverses Course On Killing Free WiFi In The Subway…. For Now

Posted in Commentary with tags on September 25, 2024 by itnerd

I woke up this morning to the news that at least for now, the TTC which had announced that free WiFi was going away in Toronto’s subway system will stay for now:

The service will now continue at least until studies are done on the impact of the move on vulnerable riders — including youth, women and people with low-income. 

TTC staff will also consider a plan to establish a pilot for free Wi-Fi on bus and street platforms, as well as bays at stations, according to the motion, put forward by Coun. Josh Matlow. 

I was never completely comfortable with this decision as I am sure it was predicated on the fact that now that 5G cell service is available in the subway, that the TTC didn’t need to spend the cash to upgrade WiFi. The problem with that logic is that this is Canada and Canada has some of the highest costs for cell phone service on the planet. So there’s plenty of people who would be adversely affected by this decision in my mind. As long as the TTC seriously looks at this again and makes a decision that is based on logic and facts, I’m fine with them keeping WiFi in the subway around.

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Horizon3.ai Publishes Deep Dive On A SolarWinds Web Help Desk Hardcoded Credential Vulnerability

Posted in Commentary with tags on September 25, 2024 by itnerd

Horizon3.ai Chief Attack Engineer Zach Hanley has just published “CVE-2024-28987: SolarWinds Web Help Desk Hardcoded Credential Vulnerability Deep-Dive.”  He details “a hardcoded credentials vuln affecting SolarWinds Web Help Desk. It allows attackers to read all help desk tickets, often containing sensitive IT procedures including user onboarding, password resets and shared resource credentials.”

On August 13, 2024, SolarWinds released a security advisory for Web Help Desk (WHD) that detailed a deserialization remote code execution vulnerability. This vulnerability, CVE-2024-28986, was added to CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerability (KEV) catalog two days later on August 15, 2024.

The advisory states: SolarWinds Web Help Desk was found to be susceptible to a Java Deserialization Remote Code Execution vulnerability that, if exploited, would allow an attacker to run commands on the host machine.

While it was reported as an unauthenticated vulnerability, SolarWinds has been unable to reproduce it without authentication after thorough testing. However, out of an abundance of caution, we recommend all Web Help Desk customers apply the patch, which is now available.

Zach said: “While we initially went in looking for the above vulnerability, we discovered a different vulnerability, now assigned CVE-2024-28987, which allows unauthenticated attackers to remotely read and modify all help desk ticket details – often containing sensitive information like passwords from reset requests and shared service account credentials.

“At the time of writing this, there are approximately 827 instances of SolarWinds Web Help Desk reachable on the internet. The WHD application is seemingly popular with State, Local, and Education (SLED) market segment according to a brief examination of those that expose it to the internet and our own client base.”

Horizon3.ai is publishing the deep dive today (September 25, 2024), having provided SolarWinds more than 30 days’ notice (on August 13, 2024), allowing the SolarWinds team to discover and patch the vulnerability. This is in keeping with Horizon3.ai’s practices to decrease the likelihood of exploitation and protect users.

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Keith Poyser Appointed as Vice President for EMEA at Horizon3.ai

Posted in Commentary with tags on September 25, 2024 by itnerd

Horizon3.ai today announced the appointment of Keith Poyser as Vice President for EMEA. Poyser brings more than 25 years of experience in driving sales growth, strategy, and business development in leading cybersecurity and technology firms. He joins Horizon3.ai at a time of significant market expansion as the company continues to deliver its cutting-edge solution, NodeZero™, to organizations worldwide.

Poyser has built an impressive career in the technology sector, holding key leadership roles at organizations like SentinelOne, Palo Alto Networks, BigFix, and IBM. With a proven track record of building and revamping sales teams, developing go-to-market strategies, and driving sustained growth, Poyser is well-positioned to lead Horizon3.ai’s expansion efforts across the EMEA region.

Poyser’s leadership will focus on strategic talent development, refining go-to-market strategies, operational excellence, and expanding partnerships across key verticals and regions. He emphasizes the importance of efficient resource management and delivering value to clients as Horizon3.ai continues to help organizations address today’s most pressing cybersecurity challenges.

Poyser’s prior roles include leadership positions at SentinelOne, where he served as Area Vice President for Northern EMEA, and Palo Alto Networks, where he led Enterprise Sales and then served as Interim Vice President for Western Europe. His wealth of experience includes leading teams through periods of rapid growth, driving sales excellence, and consistently exceeding performance targets.

With his deep understanding of the EMEA market, Poyser is ready to lead the company’s next phase of expansion. Outside of work, Poyser, who is based just outside of London, enjoys the outdoors and is an accomplished long-range rifle competitor, having represented the UK internationally.

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Review: Bakespace And Bakebot AI

Posted in Products with tags on September 25, 2024 by itnerd

By Ms. IT Nerd

Besides her many other talents, my wife when she isn’t working during the day is a trained baker having studied at George Brown College’s Hospitality and Culinary Arts school. Her cakes and other baked goods are sought after for parties and other events. Thus this makes her the perfect person to do this review.

When BakeSpace reached out to Mr. IT Nerd, I was excited. This dropped into my lap a timely way as I was involved in baking up a cake for my girlfriend’s milestone birthday for her party. This cake needed to feed 40 – 44 people and I needed help. On the suggestion of our planning group chat in Signal, the idea was born where the cake was to be a certain part of the male anatomy. This was uncharted territory for me but I had ideas and a rough plan of attack. Enter Bakebot AI. Let me demonstrate this via a video before I go into detail:


Here’s the interaction that I had with Bakebot AI:

Bakebot AI question: “What cake pans should I use to make a penis cake to serve 45 people?” I had the Home Cook option turned on as I needed Bakebot AI to provide options that I can use at home cook and it delivered suggesting 9 inch round pans and 9 x 13 inch rectangular pan which would be most commonly used by home cooks.   

Out of curiosity I tried the ProChef and Adventurous setting almost expecting the same answer to the same question and I was pleasantly surprised when it gave me a different answer each time and all of the options suggested would work. You can also re-frame the question and ask “how can I make a penis cake using only 9 inch round pans and 9 x 13 inch rectangular pans”.  In fact I was having so much fun conversing with Bakebot AI that it was getting a bit addictive for the baking nerd in me. 

My next hurdle was getting the right colour(s) for my project. I asked BakeBot “what Chef Master colours should I use to mix skin tone?” It provided me with the suggestion of Chef Master Soft Pink (#101), Egg Yellow (#112), Master Brown (#124), Master Red (#107) along with colour mixing suggestions. It will do the same for AmeriColour. I then tried to challenge it by asking for suggestions for a Toronto food colour brand McCall’s.  This is where it provided more general colour vs the specific version of the product. But it had exceeded my exceptions.

I found that I liked using the free BakeBot version as it was very intuitive for me to just click on the BakeBot AI beacon and ask all my questions and it would provide you with the advice that I mentioned above. As a member to utilize the BakeBot AI functionality you would need to go to BakeBot AI Recipe Maker and provide you with a recipe then you see below. Personally I liked the BakeBot AI beacon/icon and think that in the member section they can add “Save Recipe to BakeSpace” as an option that would work better rather than having change the experience. 

As for the rest of the experience, My Cookbooks is the section where you can create, share and sell your cookbook.  

Pro – The creators of BakeSpace thought about you and your privacy in many ways here as you can see in the Privacy Level. You can keep your Grandma’s recipe in the family by setting it as Group Cookbook or you can share it with the world for free or charge a fee. Most of the cookbooks for sale seemed to be published by Bloggers, Pros or the Community usually for a nominal price. The only con that I can think of is that I have a cooking app paid subscription or using recipes from website or my hardcopy cookbooks and BakeSpace is all about Community for Community and does not allow proprietary or paid subscriptions to be integrated.

Pantry Magic – I entered all the ingredients that I use for make my easy comfort food Asian fruit salad and it gave me this recipe with fresh herbs, honey, walnuts, lemon juice to provide texture and some freshness which is definitely a practical way to go.  But you can try it this pantry staple salad using the Asian Kewpie Mayonnaise (a Japanese mayo that gives that umami flavour) and you will change BakeSpace get the Asian pantry fruit salad that you may like.  For anyone reading this article I am sharing this recipe with you as I have saved the recipe and called it Asian Fruit Salad.  Unfortunately I was not able to remove the section “Pairs Well With” with default “This delightful salad pairs well with Sauvignon blanc and non-alcoholic iced green tea” so I modified it to say “This delightful salad pairs wonderfully with any non-alcoholic iced green tea or drink.” as I feel there is no place for alcoholic drink with a fruit salad unless you are one of these people who feel it’s 5 pm somewhere.

Recipes – is where you can access all of the recipes created by BakeBot AI or shared by the BakeBot community.

Overall I feel that BakeSpace exemplifies the best of a sharing community where the love of baking can be shared.  My favorite aspect is the BakeBot AI who hands down has helped me with my many baking projects where I need to “wing it” or take pieces of various recipes to create my unique baking product. 

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