Blockchain is the buzzword today and many people do no understand what it is and where the term came from. You will of course have heard about bitcoin which is a cryptocurrency and blockchain is the technology used for it. Blockchain is the centralised ledger of all transactions across a peer to peer network. This infographic portrays the vital role of Blockchain Technology with respect to businesses and its essence in the monetary world today. Our friends at fullestop sent us over this useful detailed infographic to let you see what it is all about.
Urbanista have just launched a summer sale across their store, We have been reviewing their products some time now and they stand the test of time to date, Urbanista name their products after cities with great colour schemes and design. Check out their sale right now and use the special code SUMMER18 and you also get free shipping worldwide on top of that.
Code valid until Thursday, 12th of July at midnight CEST and can’t be combined with other offers
With the iPhone X’s TrueDepth camera, and the LIVE FACE app for CrazyTalk Animator 3, users can instantly capture facial performances to animate illustrative or photo characters to produce fast cartoon animations, also for broadcast shows on TV, YouTube, Twitch, Facebook or any other live service.
iPhone X’s exclusive face tracking power was only known for usage with Animojis in Facetime, but now Reallusion’s LIVE FACE app unlocks its full potential by live data streaming facial mocap data to any desktop client.
The new LIVE FACE app live captures facial performances via an iPhone X to create 2D facial animations with CrazyTalk Animator 3 (CTA 3) on a Mac or PC, turning an iPhone X into a powerful production tool that anyone can use.
With the iPhone X’s TrueDepth camera, and the LIVE FACE app for CrazyTalk Animator 3, users can instantly capture facial performances to animate illustrative or photo characters to produce fast cartoon animations, also for broadcast shows on TV, YouTube, Twitch, Facebook or any other live service.
“LIVE FACE by Reallusion made my jaw drop, both literally and figuratively when I used it. LIVE FACE is the game changer I’ve been waiting for to execute funny, quick animations utilizing the iPhone X for live TV.”
Jesse Griffith – Chief Animator, Jimmy Kimmel Live “Thousands of dollars of cumbersome equipment and connections are being whittled down into an app that students can easily use on an iPhone X they already have, on or off campus. Not only does LIVE FACE simplify the entire educational process, but it looks to bridge the significant gap that students face once they graduate and try to incorporate technology into their own pipelines.” John Blalock, Digital Applications Supervisor, Chapman University
LIVE FACE features..
LIVE FACE for iPhone X can track up to 57 face signals through Wi-Fi, to drive character facial expressions including; head angle, brows, eyeball rotation, as well as controlling talking mouth shapes.
Customise sprite-based expressions
Import custom facial animation sprites, or convert expression sets directly from Photoshop layers. You can further add different levels of Free Form Deformations (FFD) to smoothly alter each facial feature.
Flexible capture from different angles.
No matter where you place your iPhone, the unique Zero Pose design will quickly recalibrate the angle offset of your face, and accurately standardize the facial tracking in one-click.
Supports various face profiles
CrazyTalk Animator 3 will automatically choose the appropriate face profile, for front-facing or angled-facing characters. Mocap facial profiles provide optimized facial mocap for both sprite-based and image-based characters.
All users can now download the extended trial version of CTA 3.3 pipeline version ($299 value ) for free until July 31st, 2018.
Esri Ireland, the market leader in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), today announces the launch of an interactive story map highlighting the €570,000 redevelopment of Castlerock Golf Club, Co. Londonderry. The map was developed by Tourism NI as part of a campaign to promote local golf courses ahead of next year’s Open Championship at Royal Portrush.
Established in 1901, Castlerock Golf Club has hosted a number of National Championships and is today rated as one of the finest links courses on the island of Ireland. The course is set on the Causeway Coastal Route, a well-known Northern Ireland tourist attraction, and is closely located to other championship links courses such as Royal Portrush and Portstewart golf clubs.
Esri Ireland maps redevelopment of Castlerock Golf Club
The recent redevelopment of the course initially started out as a small project to improve and reshape the existing bunkers. However, it gradually evolved into a much larger development encompassing six holes. The redesign of this part of the course was led by established golf course architect Dr Martin Hawtree. Dr Hawtree has been involved with the design of a number of well-known links courses, including Royal Birkdale, Trump Aberdeen, Muirfield and Lahinch.
The story map, created using Esri Ireland’s innovative ArcGIS mapping platform, provides a detailed overview of the course and the renovations undertaken, along with useful information including the location of nearby accommodation, transportation hubs and tourist attractions. An interactive map allows visitors to plan their journey to the golf club and each hole redeveloped is profiled along with photographs of the work carried out.
Esri Ireland maps redevelopment of Castlerock Golf Club
Bert MacKay, General Manager, Castlerock Golf Club, said: “With the 148th Open Championship coming to Royal Portrush in 2019, the spotlight has been thrown on the range of breath-taking and exquisite golf courses available to players in Northern Ireland. The redevelopments to our course firmly place it as one of the finest links holes in Northern Ireland and through this innovative story map, developed by Tourism NI, we can clearly show the extent of the renovations and vividly highlight what Castlerock Golf Club offers players.”
Paul Synnott, Director and Country Manager, Esri Ireland, said: “With Esri’s story maps, Castlerock was able to demonstrate to members and visitors exactly what improvements have been made to each of the six redeveloped holes. Meanwhile, Tourism NI has also included key tourism details, with pinpoints to popular attractions like the Old Bushmills Distillery and Giants Causeway, making the map a super-handy resource for both avid golfers and travellers of the world-famous Causeway Costal Route alike.”
Dave Vincent, Chief Digital Officer at Tourism NI, said: “Using Geographic Information Systems to create this interactive story map is one example of how we are leveraging digital technologies to enhance the visitor experience, be it online or on-site at a tourist attraction. Golf tourism is a key priority at Tourism NI, where our vision is to grow its value to £50m per year by 2020. Courses like Castlerock are crucial to our Golf Tourism Strategy, which aims to attract high spending visitors and disperse their spending power throughout the visitor economy.”
Novi has invested €160,000 in a new service called CyberView, which will help Irish businesses identify hidden threats on their network. The investment in developing and launching the new platform and technology will help Irish organisations combat increasingly sophisticated cyber-attacks by giving a comprehensive insight into the hidden goings on in the IT-environment.
Cyber-attacks have become increasingly sophisticated, and several strains of malware have evolved to hide within IT networks that they successfully infiltrate. Traditional antivirus solutions are frequently unable to detect this malware, allowing it to lie dormant and activate when it can cause maximum impact.
Novi CyberView is a cloud-based service that is designed to identify these hidden threats and make users aware of them. It collects logs and internet usage patterns from businesses’ firewalls which are then analysed and converted into easy to understand reports. CyberView processes tens of thousands of events on a daily basis and can scale to meet customer demands. It enables organisations to set a benchmark and more easily identify anomalies on their networks that may otherwise go unnoticed. This provides IT teams with actionable intelligence, enabling them to quickly take action to resolve issues.
To save time, CyberView generates automated reports that provide a summary of what’s happening on the network. These can help organisations to quickly identify malware and other suspicious activity on the network. These reports can be customised for the individual needs of an organisation, to include information such as an overview of abnormal internet usage that may point to suspicious activity. CyberView can also help companies to identify hidden issues that could be causing network performance issues. Reports on top websites accessed combined with bandwidth reports can help to identify bottlenecks that may be causing network slowdown.
Following a €160,000 investment, Novi has launched CyberView, a new cloud-based cybersecurity analysis and reporting platform. George O’Dowd, managing director, Novi, is pictured.
George O’Dowd, managing director, Novi, said: “Cyber-attacks are evolving constantly, increasing in frequency while simultaneously growing in their potential to cause financial and reputational damage to businesses. Many of the newer strains of malware are also designed to evade the very best antivirus systems, and can therefore go undetected for years. To protect against these advanced threats, businesses need a comprehensive insight into the hidden goings on in the IT environment.
“This is where Novi CyberView comes in. As an automated service, CyberView is a huge step forward when compared to other cybersecurity monitoring and reporting services on the market. It monitors suspicious network activity and collects logs, gathering this valuable information in easy-to-understand reports which help organisations to pinpoint hidden threats that might otherwise go unnoticed. Together with Novi’s suite of cybersecurity services, including our off-site data recovery service Novi AirGap, and Novi PatchGuard, our vulnerability and patch management service, CyberView will enable IT teams to more effective defence against emerging threats.”
Imagine if you could put on a robotic exoskeleton, become a superhero – just like Tony Stark in Iron Man – and save the world. It’s the stuff of comic books, right? But what if I told you it wasn’t a fiction? What if the ability to enhance ourselves and do things we never thought possible was all around us?
Greg White, Director, Security Operations at ServiceNow discusses the benefits of adopting automation in cybersecurity teams explains more below.
Take the example of the automobile. In the 19th century, we could never have imagined driving down the motorway at 70 miles an hour in our own car. The idea that you could do that in car without a driver would have been unfathomable. But is happening now, and it is happening thanks to automation. And automation is the key to giving regular people far more superpowers – none more so than in the cybersecurity sector.
The automation era
Automation is having its moment. It was one of the biggest topics at this year’s World Economic Forum (WEF), and it has featured across the TED and Davos circuit. Economists, business leaders and politicians are trying to understand the future changes that it will bring.
Technological innovation is already changing the skill set required for a wide range of jobs. Greater adoption of automation will result in further incremental improvements that can deliver massive efficiency gains across a wide range of industries.
These changes are largely a good thing. When technology works well, as in the case of the car during the last 100 years, it sticks because it benefits those using it. Today, the right software and automated workflows go a long way to enhancing how we do things, in and out of our working lives.
What this could mean for cybersecurity
With access to more information and data than ever before, IT security teams don’t have enough time in the day to process everything. Moreover, there is currently a massive cybersecurity talent gap. Organisations are struggling to hire and retain cybersecurity professionals in a very competitive climate – such is the shortage, one third of cybersecurity job postings get no views at all according to job site Indeed.
With the right employees in short supply then, automation’s ability to give people superpowers is in much demand. As such, automation is already transforming the way organisations are protected.
For example, the incident investigation process is a typically long and tedious process. It involves cutting and pasting items such as IP addresses, malware hashes and URLs into multiple systems to learn about them, determine if an incident is real and if any action that should be taken. These tasks that are more efficient when carried out by machines and automated systems are stepping into the fold. All of sudden it means that a security analyst can simply see the results of the investigation and then make a decision on how to proceed – their metaphorical superpowered exoskeleton.
When implemented effectively machines and people create a symphony, where machines play the “instruments” of mundane time-consuming work while humans step up into a conductor role, overseeing machines and the benefits of automation in an altogether new way.
For security teams this is vital in enabling them to work more efficiently and focus on critical events quickly. It gives them the bandwidth to step back and prioritise the important things ahead of time, resulting in analysts being able to be proactive and available when a real problem happens.
Technology assisting humans – working together in harmony
Whether its security teams or everyday consumers, users intuitively understand the possibilities of technology. As new devices and tools hit the market, users form organic relationships with the ones that best suit their needs and identities, and find ways to use that technology to create entirely new workflows, concepts and processes. Think of how people interact with their Amazon Echo or iPhone — good technology connects with us.
Automation means making tasks faster, better, cheaper and more reliable, and in sectors such as cybersecurity it is creating another new world around us. Automating the incident investigation process is just the start, but it is already allowing overextended security teams to become superhuman so they take on the real challenges to protect their organisation.
