Lenovo phone features virtual keyboard

 
Chinese electronics giant Lenovo has unveiled a phone with a built-in laser projector that can be used to display a virtual keyboard or display.

The interactive display can replicate the phone's touch screen, a full-size computer keyboard or even piano keys.
The laser projector can also be used to beam images and videos onto walls.
The Smart Cast phone was unveiled at the company's Tech World conference in Beijing, where the firm also unveiled a new type of smartwatch.

'Headline-grabbing'

The laser projector measures just 34mm by 26mm by 5mm and, said Lenovo, does not need focussing to project sharp images onto walls or other flat surfaces.
A video showing the Smart Cast in action shows how twisting the mounting for the device's lens turns it from a standard wall projector into "surface mode" that beams the display on to a table top.
A kickstand mounted on the back of the phone keeps the device upright while the virtual keyboard is in use.
At Tech World, Chinese concert pianist Lang Lang used the virtual keyboard to play a version of The Entertainer.
Mike Lowe, reviews editor at gadget site Pocket-lint, who has tried out the phone said there was far less delay using the virtual keyboard with the Smart Cast than was apparent on other devices with similar input systems.
"The history of the projector phone is hardly rosy," he said. "Samsung launched the Galaxy Beam in 2012 and that bombed. It's not been a booming industry for any other manufacturer since."
Mr Lowe said his experience with the phone did not convince him that the Smart Cast would break that cycle."It's fun, but ultimately a gimmick," he said. "It's hard to be accurate with the increased scale of the keys for starters, plus the demo was in a dimly-lit room."
In a separate demonstration, he added, Lenovo showed ways to use the interactive projected display to play games.
"It's fun, it's headline-grabbing, but it's also impractical, not coming to the UK and well, just isn't a product anyone is likely to genuinely need," he said.
Tech World also saw Lenovo show off a smart watch, called Magic View, that has two screens.
The device has a standard "public" screen viewable by anyone and a second "private" projected screen only visible when the watch is held close to the face and at a specific angle.
source: BBC

Top Ten Tablets for your Kids

Though kids these days might not have any clue how to work an Apple II or atypewriter, they know tablets. Remember that baby who tried to swipe through a physical magazine and was confused when it didn't perform like her iPad?

Last year, market research firm Smarty Pants published a list of kids' top 50 brands, and Apple's tablet trumped even the most iconic kid-based brands, including Nickelodeon, Crayola, and Eggo. "In just five years, the iPad has risen from ranking 109th to being kids' favorite brand," Wynne Tyree, president of Smarty Pants, said in a statement. "Early on, it captured the hearts of tweens and middle- and upper-class families, but [the] iPad is now an indispensable part of childhood for the masses."

But the iPad is not the only tablet on the market that will appeal to your tech-savvy toddler, tween, or teen. There are a number of Android-based slates that won't break the bank, Amazon has a kid-focused Kindle Fire, and toy manufacturers are turning their attention toward rugged tablets that can withstand a few drops, crashes, or throws.

If the child in your life has been begging for a tablet, or keeps stealing yours, check out our list of the top tablets you should consider.
Amazon Fire HD 6 Kids Edition

1. Kindle HD 6
2. LeapPad3 Learning Tablet
3. LeapPad Ultra XDi Learning Tablet
4. Fuhu Nabi 2 Tablet
5. Apple iPad mini
6. Apple iPad Air 2
7. Asus VivoTab Note 8
8. Nexus 9
9. Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 Kids

Career Planning for IT Professionals

To get the best results from your IT career, you should have a plan for it. Developing a career plan is a great way to get to where you want to go, to enjoy your career and get the most money you can out of it. Read some tips on how to develop a career plan as an IT professional.

The Stages of Career Planning

There are a few main stages of planning a career:
-Self assessment
-Specialising
-Requirements
-Action

These steps loosely follow an IT project. You start with your current state, where you are now. Next, you determine where you want to go, how you want to get there, and then take some action to get there. Let’s take a look into these four steps in more detail.

Perform a Self Assessment

The first place to start planning your career is to do a little self assessment. This is an analysis of your own skills and experience in the IT industry. What education do you currently have? What experience in the IT industry do you have? These are two of the most common questions that we can ask ourselves when performing a self-assessment.

There are, however, more areas of assessment you can look at.
What are your strengths when it comes to the IT industry and the workplace?
What are your weaknesses?
What do you like working on?
What kind of roles do you think you can do effectively?

Performing a thorough and honest self-assessment of your IT career and any IT skills will help you work out where you currently are and where you can end up with your career.

Choose A Specialisation

To be an effective IT professional, you need to have a specialisation. There aren’t many IT professionals who can excel at many different fields, and if there are, it’s not what they are hired for.

IT professionals are employed and trained in a single field or specialisation – such as .NET developers, Windows administrators, network engineers, SQL database administrators. People in each of these roles would ideally be able to do their role very well, but may not be able to perform other roles. It’s important to choose a specialisation to get the most out of your IT career and make it easier to find a job.

Part of career planning is choosing a specialisation, which can be done in a few ways:
Perhaps you have some education already (a degree or certifications) that are focused on one or a few areas?
Do you already know what kind of work in the IT industry that you like doing?
Is there someone that you know whose work sounds fascinating to you?
Is there a desired position or “end point” to a certain career path you’d like to take?

These questions can help you decide what your specialisation should be.

Determine The Career Requirements

Another part of your career planning is to determine the requirements to get to where you need to go. Depending on the career, you don’t always jump right into the position straight away – there are some prerequisites that need to be done first.
Do you need any certifications or extra education to get a position in your chosen area?
How many years of experience do you need?
Are there any lead-up positions, or roles that you’re encouraged to do before moving in to this position?
What path do other people in this field or position usually take to get there?

Take Some Action

Alright, at this point we’ve done most of the work. We know what we want to do, and what the requirements are. Now that we’ve determined that, it’s time to do something about it!

It’s time to take action.

Start by doing something to move you closer to this goal, this ideal career position. Your career planning steps have been performed to allow you to work out what the requirements are, so you should have some idea what the next steps are. It might involve looking into certifications, doing some research on positions, finding a new job, speaking to your manager about new roles, or speaking to other people who have done the role before.

There are many actions you can do, but it’s important to do something to move towards it. As the saying goes, “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step“. It might seem like a long time away, or an unattainable goal, but you’ve done your career planning and have identified some actions and now it’s time to move towards it!

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4 Examples Of Long Term Career Goals

Sometimes you’ll get asked about your long term career goals. How do you come up with them? I’ve shared some examples of long term career goals in this article that can help you decide on your own goals.

Why Long Term Career Goals?

Long term career goals are goals that you set for your career that have something to achieve in the long term. For your career, long term is probably anything over five years.

While it’s easier to set short term career goals (get a promotion, pass an exam, finish a project), long term career goals are harder. They require you to think of where you want to go in your career and what you ultimately want to do.

The reason for setting long term career goals is to define where you want to go in your career. It’s hard to know if your career is successful if you don’t know what success is, in your own terms.

Where To Use Long Term Career Goals

Long term career goals are used in a few places. While short term career goals are used perhaps on your resume (in an Objective statement) or in a cover letter, long term career goals aren’t.

The main place where I think long term career goals can be used is in job interviews. A common question in job interviews is around your long term vision or what you want to do with your career. Have you ever been asked that? I know I have.

If you know what your vision is, your long term goal for your career is, then you can answer this question easier. Knowing what you want to do 5/10/20 years in the future is a good thing.

That’s not to say it needs to stay that way. Long term career goals can change, of course. They are just focused for the long term. My career goal has probably changed twice since I started working in the IT industry.

Another place I see long term career goals being used is in conversations with other people, such as co-workers, bosses, or friends. People can sometimes ask you, “where do you want to go in your career?” or “what’s your career goal?” or something to that effect. Knowing what your long term goal is makes it easier to answer that question.

Think Of What You’re Doing Now and Where You Want To Be

I think the best way to come up with a long term career goal is to think of where you are now in your career, think of where you want to be, and then fill in the gap.

Well, actually, the long term goal is more of the “where you want to be”, and filling in the gap is how to get there, but it can help to think like that to come up with your goal. It can help you decide if that’s what you want to do and how to get there as well.

Examples of Long Term Career Goals

Alright, so now let’s take a look at some examples of long term career goals. I’ve listed in some roles here, which can be substituted for other roles that fit your desires.

“Effective and experienced project manager capable of delivering multi-year projects”. This demonstrates the kind of role you want to move in to, and the level of experience or responsibility needed for it. Multi-year projects are not simple as they take a few years to deliver.

“Team leader for a large team of software developers.” This could be for someone who is a software developer and wishes to move into a team leadership role, focusing on larger teams. Many skills need to be learnt for this transition.

“Become the most knowledgeable and effective Java developer in the area.”Becoming knowledgeable is a good aspiration, and knowing the development language inside and out is a great goal to have, especially for your local area.

“To gain the Expert level ISTQB CTEL certification for software testing.” Getting a certification in your focus area is a common goal, but you also need to determine why you want it. This certification is for software testing, but you can rewrite it for other areas of IT.

So, there’s a few examples of long term career goals that work for the IT industry. You can take those and rewrite them to match your desires. Remember, these are just examples of long term career goals. Goals are quite personal and you should put in your own plans into these goals.

6 Reasons to Try Microsoft's Edge Browser

Among the many fascinating reveals in the opening keynote of the Microsoft Build 2015 developer conference—Android and iOS code running on Windows phones,holograms that can attach themselves to physical robots, and Visual Studio for Mac and Linux—was the Microsoft Edge browser.

Internet Explorer's more modern and fast successor, previously code-named Project Spartan, is now Edge, and one of its most notable new features is extensions. Edge also maintains Spartan innovations like page markup, reading view, and Cortana integration. It's also a Universal Windows app, meaning one application runs on PCs, phones, tablets, and whatever other Windows-running devices emerge.

Perhaps Edge's greatest asset is that it's not Internet Explorer, which, even after lots of improvements in speed and tightened design, was one of the most reviled pieces of software in history. Though Edge's icon still sports an "E," it really isn't IE. Even underneath, it runs a new page-rendering engine called…wait for it—Edge. Yes, that was the name of Project Spartan's engine, and it has now been elevated to the full product name. It tops IE's longtime Trident engine in speed and compatibility with new Web standards such as HTML5.

Windows 10 will still ship with IE11 for legacy compatibility, especially for corporate intranets and other entreprise Web apps, but it won't get new features and Edge will be the default browser.

Edge Browser Extensions

Extensions are hardly a new capability in Web browsers, and even Internet Explorer had some extensibility, with toolbars, WebSlices, and Accelerators. But Edge brings the promise of full Firefox- and Chrome-style extensions.

In fact, Edge's extension developers will use the same JavaScript and HTML standard code used by those two competing browsers for their extensions. Furthermore, Microsoft's Vice President for PC-Tablet-Phone, Joe Belfiore, stated that extensions programmed for Chrome or Firefox would only require minimal coding to work in Edge. At the keynote, he demoed an extension for Reddit that would let you vote on stories and a Pinterest extension that let you share pages.

An important note about extensions in Edge is that the feature won't ship with Windows 10 RTM (release to manufacturing) this summer, but will come in a later update.

Cortana

Windows 10's voice assistant seems to be popping up everywhere, and Edge is no exception in this regard. When you land on a page for which directions make sense—say you're on a restaurant's webpage—Cortana pops up with her familiar blue circle in the browser toolbar proposing relevant information. You can also right-click on selected text to have Cortana find info about the selection.

New-Tab Page

People hit that bar atop the browser to open a new tab over a billion times a day, and Microsoft wants to make good use of that real estate. IE's new-tab page was actually one of the more useful among the browsers, all of which let you search and see thumbnails of your most-visited sites, but also let you re-open closed tabs and see site suggestions. In Edge, the new-tab page still shows top sites, but also app suggestions, weather, sports scores, and video suggestions. Interestingly, the page doesn't show an address bar, but you can type a URL into its search box.

Reading Mode

Another feature that's been available in other browsers for years (particularly in Apple's Safari) but is making its debut in Microsoft's new browser is Reading Mode. This lets you strip out all the extra junk on a webpage aside from the main text and images —ads, sidebars, and so on—so you can read undistracted.

Page Annotations

This one has not appeared on competing browsers from Mozilla, Google, and Apple, though I've seen a similar feature in the lesser-known Maxthon browser. Edge lets you mark up webpages with a highlighter or drawing tool and then share them as an image file in email or social apps.

New Coding Support

A Build session on the Edge browser highlighted just how many forward-looking features Edge supports, and noted that the browser doesn't appear as IE to sites, so they're more likely to work as they do in Firefox, Chrome, and Safari (mobile and desktop). The browser will support Object RTC, a newer form of WebRTC, the protocol that allows sites access to media communications; think Skype via a Web browser. Here's a slide showing other new features in Edge:

An Edge Among Browsers

Microsoft's new browser shows promise, and seems to be moving in all the right directions—faster speed, more standard support, extensions, and even a couple of unique features like page markup and Cortana integration. The fact that it will deliver the same experience on every device size—from Raspberry Pi to HoloLens to Xbox One—is another advantage. To try it out (on a non-critical PC), you can join the Windows Insider program and install Windows 10.

source: PCmag

Better Passwords

Passwords are not the best method of authenticating users on a network, but they are the most commonly used method. They are easier and less expensive to implement and use than most of the alternatives, and are definitely better than no authentication method at all.

The biggest problems with passwords are that they are easily forgotten, easily learned by others and often easily guessed. 
Unless proper precautions are taken, password security is easily broken. In the early 1980s film War Games, a teenage hacker broke into a computer that controlled the U.S. missile defense system. Although the film was fiction, the techniques used are common. In the film, two programs were used—one to dial phone numbers and locate modem tones, and another to repeatedly try commonly used login names and passwords. With everything you want connected to the internet, you no longer need a war dialer.  Brute force attack tools are easily available on the web and also easy to write.

Things are not as hopeless as they seem, however. There are several methods that can be used to increase password security on a network.

Easy-to-Guess Passwords. To prevent passwords from being easy to guess, they should not contain:

¦    Any portion of the user's name 
¦    Any portion of a family member's name 
¦    The name of the user's pet or make or model of his or her car 
¦    Any keyword of the user's job or function, like "entry" or "finance" 
¦    Any known interest of the user, like "bicycles" or "49ers"

Forced Password Changes. Many network operating systems allow you to force users to change their passwords periodically. The major benefit of this is that if one user learns another user's password, it will only be valid for a certain period of time, limiting the exposure to security breaches. On the downside, when people are forced to change their passwords they often forget them or write them down. When they write them down, they usually do so in a place that is easy to locate, such as a piece of paper in the top desk drawer, or taped to the front or side of their monitor!

If you are going to implement forced password changes, make sure that you keep the time periods reasonable. (Two days is probably too short, and two years is definitely too long!) Thirty days is probably a minimum, and 60 or 90 days is probably more reasonable in most circumstances.

Non-Dictionary Words. In his book, The Cuckoo's Egg (Pocket Books), Cliff Stoll recounts the story of a West German hacker who was breaking into U.S. Government computers and selling information to the Soviet Union. One of the methods he used for breaking into systems was to download a system's encrypted password file, then compare its contents with an encrypted English-language dictionary. If a user's password was in the dictionary, the cracker had access to that user's account. Although not all operating systems make it so easy to access their password files, it is still a good idea to have users avoid passwords that are in the dictionary.

Non-Alpha Characters. One easy way to create passwords that are difficult to guess, easy to remember and long enough to be difficult to break is to use two short words separated by a non-alpha character. Here are some examples:

WHAT?FOR 
CLUB$T1E 
GOOD%FRIEND 
CROSS#$TICK

Most systems now offer methods for enforcing password complexity that can look at a user’s password on creation and ensure that they meet certain rules like: having both upper and lower case letters; including at least one numeric digit; and requiring the use of at least one special character like $ or % in their passwords.

Setting a Minimum Password Length. Passwords that are too short are easy to break, while passwords that are too long are difficult to remember. Obviously, then, passwords should be short enough to remember but long enough to be difficult to break. There are a couple of factors you should consider here, however. If you have implemented forced periodic password changes, you may want a shorter minimum password length. If you use the two short words and a non-alpha character approach, you might be able to get away with a longer minimum. In any case, a minimum length between eight and twelve characters should suffice in most circumstances.

Password Encryption. There are two types of password encryption: passwords can be stored in encrypted format, and they can be encrypted across the wire. Both are important. When passwords are stored in encrypted format they are not readable by anyone, even a system administrator (see Non-Dictionary Words, above). This allows a user to use the same password on different systems without fear that the administrator from one system will learn the user's password on another system. Across-the-wire encryption means that the password is encrypted during the login process before it is sent across the network to a server or host. This prevents someone with a protocol analyzer from intercepting a user's password. Most network operating systems support both methods of encryption.

Supervisor-Level Passwords. If you have more than one user who needs supervisor-level access to a file server, give them each a supervisor-level account rather than having them share a supervisor password. These accounts should also be separate accounts from their day to day login accounts for email. This will give you a better audit trail and also makes it easier to change rights or a password for one person without affecting the others.

Written Password Policies. If you don't have a written password policy, you might consider implementing one. It should discuss the importance of maintaining the confidentiality of passwords and provide guidelines for selecting passwords.

How To Find The Path To Your Ideal Job In The IT Industry

Getting in to the role that you want in your career can be challenging. You’ll need to know what the role is, then the steps needed to get there, and then do the work. Where do you get started? How do you get the role that you want in the IT industry?
Let’s take a look at the steps.

Decide On Your Ideal Role

The first step to getting the role that you want is to actually work out what it is that you want to do. This is easier said than done.
Do you know the job title of the role that you want to do? For example, you may want to become a Senior Software Engineer at a technology company. Or, you may want to become a Database Administrator in the finance industry.
If you know the job title, it helps, because we’ll use that in the next step.
If you’re not sure of the job title, do you know anyone who is in the position you’d like to be in? For example, a co-worker, or someone from a book you’ve read?
Write this down somewhere. You’ll use it in the next step.

Search LinkedIn For That Job Title

Once you have your job title, it’s time to pay a visit to LinkedIn.
If you don’t have a profile already, I highly recommend setting one up. It’s great for your career.
Assuming you have one already, log in to LinkedIn.
Why are we visiting LinkedIn? Well, we’re going to use it to do research on this job title.
For this example, let’s go with the title of Senior Software Engineer. Put that title into the search box at the top of the page.

The results will appear. At the time of writing, there is a list of job opportunities. This is probably on purpose, but LinkedIn may change this in the future.



We only want to see people. Click on the People link on the left, and the page will show people who have that title.


Now, the thing to note here is that the list of people will be dependent on your connections. So, it will show people who are closely connected to you at the top of the list. It’s also dependent on their profile setup and keywords they have used, as LinkedIn tries to show you the most relevant people based on your search.
So, we have a list of people with that title. Now what?

Look At The Job History Of People With That Title

The next step is to have a look at the job history of people who are currently working in that role.
Why do we do this?
Well, the best way of finding out how to become a certain role is to find people who have done it before, or are doing it now, and see how they got there. LinkedIn is a great way to find this, as people usually list their employment history in their profile.
So, find a profile from the list what has the title you want and click on the name.
Now, I’ve blocked out some of the details of this profile to maintain privacy of the person in question, but you should be able to get the general picture.

This summary section will show an overview of the person, which usually includes their qualifications and experience. However, for most profiles, it’s too broad to use for this research.
Scroll down below that and have a look at the section titled Experience.

You can see, in this example, that the person currently works as a Senior Software Engineer, because the date says “August 2010 – Present”. They have been in this role for almost 5 years at this company. You can also see what kind of work is involved and usually a little bit about the company.
However, to find out what you need, keep scrolling down.
There should be more entries in this Experience section for this person. LinkedIn profiles, unlike resumes, don’t have a limit on experiences, so you should see all of their roles here.
Sure enough, scrolling to the bottom will see this person’s first role.

This will show how they got started in this industry.
What do you need to do with this information?

Write Down Their Job History

Make a list of their roles and dates.
This helps with working out how to get where you want to be, and how long it takes.
So, go through this person’s profile and make a list of:
Their job role
Their tenure (how long they spent in the role)
Both of these are easily visible in the profile.
But, that’s not all you’ll need. You also need the Education part.

Include Their Education

Experience is one thing. Another factor to consider is the education.
Keep scrolling down in the profile you’re looking at, until you see the Education section.
This is important, as it shows you how the person got started in their first role.

As you can see, this person has a Bachelor in Computer Studies from a university, then went on to get a Masters in Engineering. They also did some independent coursework, and got a PRINCE2 foundation (which is in the Project Management field).
Once again, take note of these points from the Education, Certifications and Courses section:
The achievement (e.g. bachelor’s, master’s, certification)
The date achieved
This will show what extra things you need to get into this role.

Repeat for More People

Alright, so you’ve got the information from one profile. Now what?
One result is not a definitive guide to getting the role you want.
You should go back to the search results, choose someone else from the list, and repeat the same task.
How many times should you do this? Well, as many as you can until you understand what needs to be done to become this role. As an indication, I would probably get information from 10 different profiles if I was doing this myself.
If you have a large list of people, or are looking for a particular kind of role, you can use filters.
There are filters on the left that let you filter by your relationship, location, company, industry, and more.
I would suggest filtering by country, as different countries may have different requirements. You may also want to filter by company or industry, if you’re looking for those in particular.
The research for each person should take about 10 minutes. Before long, you’ll have a pretty good list of different profiles.

Combine and Look for Trends

Once you have a list of people in the role that you want, as well as their history, you should now combine the data.
By this, I don’t mean add them all into a long list. I mean, create some kind of summary that shows the most popular route to getting in to that role.
For example, let’s say you have information on 10 people.
Let’s start with Education. 7 of the 10 got a Bachelor’s degree, 1 has a master’s, and the other 2 didn’t have anything. You could then write down that the education requirement is to get a Bachelor’s degree.
The next step is their first role. Let’s say 6 of them started as a junior software developer, 1 in help desk, 1 as a software engineer, and 1 as a web designer. You should pick the majority here, and note that the first role is a junior software developer.
How long did they stay a junior software developer? Find the most common answer here as well. Let’s say it’s 3.5 years – so write that down. Don’t forget to include the next jobs, as some people move to a different company in the same role, which comes up as two entries on their LinkedIn profile.

Keep going until you get a complete picture of the path to the role you want.

For example, it could look like this:

Senior Software Engineer

-Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science
- years Junior Software Developer
-5 years Software Developer
-2.5 years Software Engineer
-5 years Senior Software Engineer

From this information, you can see the education needed, the job roles on the way to that role, and the time spent in each role. In this example, it shows you need a Bachelor’s degree and 10.5 years experience to become a Senior Software Engineer.

Well, I hope this guide has been helpful if you’re trying to work out where your career is going and how to find the path to your ideal job. If you have a long term career plan (link), it’s one step you should be doing. If you don’t have a long term career plan, make one!

Career Action Tip: Perform this process for the job role that you want in your IT career.

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