eStormAdmin, Author at eStorm Australia

A Bachelor’s Degree in VR

August 30, 2016 By eStormAdmin

An Arizona university is bringing back a long dormant Bachelor’s degree program allowing students the chance to major in virtual reality studies.

The major you choose sets a tone for your life. Majoring in CS can net you a high paying job at an exciting startup. Majoring in biology could set you on the path for medical school and an eventual MD. And majoring in history can lead to you having a very pretty piece of paper to frame and put on your wall. But your parents will have to pay for the frame.

The University of Advancing Technology in Tempe, Arizona is announcing that it will be resurrecting a degree program that has been buried for decades. This program will allow students the option to major in virtual reality and begin careers working in one of the world’s most exciting new technologies.

According to a release from UAT, the institution originally began offering this unique degree tract all the way back in 1991. The VR scene was present at that point in history but it did not poses anywhere near the traction and mass-market potential that it does today in a post-Oculus world. Because of this resurgence in VR’s popularity, and its potential as a viable job market, UAT made the decision to bring back the VR major 25 years after it was shuttered.

The UAT virtual reality degree will be available for students to embark in beginning in the upcoming Autumn 2016 semester. The program is only available for students attending the school in person (ironic) and will not be possible as an online course at this time.

UAT is also exploring other immersive education options including Augmented Reality as well. The school will begin to offer its first AR class this Autumn although no major is available for that particular discipline at present.

WELCOME TO SWIFT PLAYGROUNDS

August 2, 2016 By eStormAdmin

At WWDC 2016, Apple announced Swift Playgrounds for iOS. Swift Playgrounds is an app that is connected to a larger initiative from Apple called “Everyone Can Code”.
Everyone Can Code comprises the Swift Playgrounds app itself, a series of teacher and student guide books on the iBookstore and a suite of curriculum content delivered inside the Swift Playgrounds app.

THE APP ITSELF

Playgrounds is genuinely a full Swift interpreter built into an iPad app. Although the demo in the Keynote focussed on some simple concepts, it’s not a toy or limited version of the language.
The app is comprised of two parts: the source view on the left and the live view on the right. The source view is where you type your program and the live view is where you see any output. At the same time, in the right margin of the editor, you can see intermediate results as they are calculated. This has been part of Swift Playgrounds on macOS for some time.

The app supports two kinds of files. The first is the Playground file that you can create using Xcode on a Mac. These files can be transferred to the iPad and run as-is inside Playgrounds on iOS.
The second kind of file is called a Playground Book. This is what you saw in the keynote. It’s much richer and supports a nested chapter and page structure that supports navigation as well as basic assessments of success inside each page. The package format is documented online.

There are also a range of things that authors can do with each page in a Playground Book to make it easier for beginning programmers to meet success. These include hiding setup code that doesn’t need to be seen by the learner, defining “editable regions” to constrain the learner to only type in certain areas and providing hint text in those editable areas.

Another feature of the app is that it freely allows import and export of Playgrounds and Books to other users via AirDrop. In my experience with beginner programming environments, being able to inspect and adapt someone else’s code is a very good way to build learners’ curiosity and confidence – as well as a bit of competitiveness!
The app also features certain other simplifying tools for entering code. There are colour pickers, image literals and other gestures that make it easier for learners to avoid syntax errors. One simple example is that you can drag out the lower brace of a conditional statement or loop to enclose other statements and everything springs into place when you let go.

The QuickType bar above the keyboard (the area where you get text suggestions) has also been adapted to give code completion suggestions that are sensitive to the context and only let you complete legal code in the language. Authors of Playground Books can also give hints to the suggestions mechanism to constrain it to only show certain symbols or only symbols from certain packages.

It’s important – and not at all obvious on first sight – to understand that Playgrounds is not in itself an authoring environment for Playground Books. When a learner works with a Playground Book, their edits to the code in the book are stored as a diff against the original content in the book. The original content is never modified, but the diffs do get transferred with the book when it’s sent to other users. The reason it’s done this way is that it facilitates resetting a page in the book to its original state if the user needs to. You can also reset the entire book.

The other thing that is not entirely obvious is that Playgrounds has full access to the entire iOS API. This means that there is effectively no limit on the complexity of Playground that you can build. You can use APIs like Core Location, WebKit, MapKit, Core Motion, Networking and Core Bluetooth. One of the demos given in the session on Playgrounds was of Playground Swift code controlling a Sphero robot over Bluetooth.

WHAT IS SWIFT LIKE

A broader question than “is the app any good?” is whether or not the Swift language itself is any good for Computer Science education.

As a teacher, you would need to know that Swift is a good language for learning to program with. One simplistic approach to promoting Swift in CS is simply to make the argument that kids love smartphones and apps are written in Swift therefore CS education should happen in Swift. I get the thinking behind that but it feels similar to other moves that some teachers make to co-opt anything that kids like and turn it into “education”. Remember Second Life? And …. dare I say it …. Minecraft In the fullness of time?

I prefer to ask which specific language features in Swift make the language a good choice for learners. When Apple were set this challenge, they gave some good points. One of the things I particularly liked was that Swift leans toward explicitness rather than implicit or inferred behaviours.

Swift also has API design guidelines focused on expressiveness and understandability rather than terseness. It’s also a relatively new language. This certainly has its drawbacks in that the language has changed substantially over the last two major revisions but there is a consistency and clarity to its approach that is sometimes missing from languages like Python.

IS THERE A DOWNSIDE?

Swift Playgrounds is a very new app on iOS. Although it’s fairly complete, there are a few things I feel that it still needs.

Firstly, I mentioned that there are ways to get the Playgrounds app to render your code by omitting and hinting certain areas. There’s currently no way to get that rendered view out of the app. This is important for teaching in two ways: firstly, it would allow students to submit work to a teacher through iTunes U. The second reason is that a teacher authoring a solution would be able to give a printout of a completed (rendered) version to a pupil who needed it for whatever reason – perhaps a pupil with learning difficulties for whom copying in a provided solution would represent a good achievement. Giving these pupils the full unrendered source would be overwhelming.

The bigger issue right now is that the authoring environment for Playground Books is Xcode on macOS. It may be difficult to find a lot of teachers who even have a Mac and are familiar with Xcode.
I have seen before that the phrase “you use a Mac for that” is a show-stopper in education. This was true for iTunes U before Course Manager came to iOS and it’s still true for iBooks Author.

I think there might, in time, be ways to create Playgrounds and Playground Books on iOS but it will be neither easy nor convenient for some time to come. This isn’t an unexpected problem but it is still a problem.
Overall, though, it’s hard to find anything seriously bad to say about Swift Playgrounds except that it’s an early, immature product right now. Despite that, it already has serious power under the hood and some impressive curriculum content. Can’t wait to see where this goes.

SIP, VoIP – What does it all mean??

June 29, 2016 By eStormAdmin

When it’s time to replace your old traditional phone system there are a number of Internet Protocol (IP) based solutions that are available to small business. The challenge is to select the system to suit your needs so that you can fully reap the rewards of cost efficiency and increased productivity. Before you purchase, it’s an idea to understand more about the underlying technology that will support your business today and into the future.

There are two terms that you may come cross when shopping for a new system – SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) and VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol). When looking into these technologies it may seem like these are either/or options. So let’s clarify this up-front: VoIP refers to a group of protocol technologies (both proprietary and open) that enable calls to be made over the internet, while SIP is one of the many protocols that enable VoIP.

It can be confusing when shopping for a new system given the acronyms involved so let’s go into this with a bit a more detail.

FOLLOWING PROTOCOL

Firstly, why is protocol important? Internet phone systems depend on protocols to function. Protocols determine technology rules and parameters that enable digital devices, phone systems and computers to communicate with each via message exchanges. Protocols also dictate the very nature of that communication and therefore create an essential rule book that can be followed by developers to create “end points” or devices such as computers, smartphones, tablets or printers.

VOIP PRIMER

VoIP technology lets you use the internet to make and receive telephone calls instead of using traditional phone lines. It works by breaking down an audio signal into very small segments that are converted into code that are transmitted over the internet.

For VoIP you need a broadband Internet connection, a traditional phone and an adapter; a VoIP-enabled phone; or VoIP software on your computer.

VoIP systems function from a central network that manages traffic. This leads to cost savings as there’s only one network for your voice and data with one supplier. With a broadband connection you can make PC to PC phone calls for free, anywhere in the world. You can also make PC to phone calls for a modest fee. You have the option of paying as you go or can subscribe to a VoIP service provider and pay a monthly fee that gives you unlimited calls.

With a VoIP phone system, your phone number is virtual allowing you to take it with you when you change premises or are on the road. VoIP also gives you a range of communication extras like call forwarding, voicemail and caller ID. You can also add videoconferencing at a reasonable price.

This means they can become overloaded when your network has volumes of data, creating lag times in communication. For this reason, this protocol is a good option for small businesses for mainly voice communications requiring fewer locations.

As they connect directly in the data network, to activate a call you just lift the receiver. Your chosen service provider then links your handset via the internet to the regular phone system.

VoIP helps you to reduce costs due to a number of factors including reduced equipment and line rental charges; reduced long distance call charges; reduced hardware and maintenance costs; and flexible subscription plans that allow you to select a plan best suited to your usage requirements.

SIP – A POWERFUL PROTOCOL

When shopping for a new phone system you may also come across SIP (Session Initiation Protocol). This is a “signalling” protocol that’s used in VoIP communications and allows voice, video calls, internet conferencing and instant messaging. It has become a popular VoIP protocol with companies that provide unified communication (UC) solutions. UC applications give your business voice, video and streaming media capabilities like web conferencing.

To explain it differently, SIP is the underlying technology that starts a voice communication session over the internet (or another type of data network). This might be a VoIP phone call between two people or conference call with several parties.

This form of IP telephony uses SIP trunks and does the same job as a traditional phone line. No longer physical wire, these virtual phone lines or trunks connect your phone system back to the phone provider’s network.

SIP Trunking is another term you may come across when researching new phone systems. The SIP Protocol enables SIP Trunking, a virtual connection to the regular phone network or public switched telephone network (PSTN) over a physical line that is often shared over your existing data connection. SIP Trunking uses a packet switched model for making voice connections between people over a data network. When it’s combined with IP PBXs and IP VPNs it can transform the way your business handles phone calls and multimedia applications like video and unified communications.

By using SIP Trunking you can rationalise disparate legacy networks and reduce costs. It’s also an ideal way to introduce unified communications and multimedia.

SIP Trunking can help your business to replace ISDN and analogue phone lines with a simpler, more cost-effective alternative. Also, you can centralise your IP PBX to reduce equipment and carriage costs as well as provide a more consistent experience for your customers. And finally you can “converge” your voice and data networks to help reduce costs and use your bandwidth more efficiently.

SIP is designed to handle heavy data flow as the processing is not centralised. As a result, SIP is used by businesses with a lot of branches or remote workers that need multimedia communications.

SIP Trunking allows the voice and data traffic in your business to be carried over a single private IP virtual private network (VPN). This means you can reduce overall line rental and bandwidth costs as well as simplify maintenance as you have a single network.

Telephone systems are an important part of every small business. The terminology involved can be confusing. However, by understanding a little more about the underlying technologies you’re in a better position to make the right choice for your unique needs.

To find out more about communications options that’s right for your business, contact one of the friendly staff at eStorm.

eStorm at EduTECH!

June 3, 2016 By eStormAdmin

EduTECH is the largest Education event in Asia-Pac and the Southern Hemisphere, and eStorm were happy to be a part of it in 2016!

We had the opportunity to meet a lot of interesting people, and it was great to hear the different ways that learning institutions are using technology. There were some really interesting technologies on display also, and a few things we can’t wait to sink our teeth in to and show our clients.

Our competition that saw guests try and replicate the Mona Lisa using the all new iPad Pro and Apple Pencil was a great success. Some people just had fun with it… some others were truly impressive though they swear they were not art teachers. We will be announcing the winner of that competition next week.

We spoke to a lot of institutions about our online portal that we customise for schools. This gives teachers, parents, and students a place they can log on to and access great pricing for devices that have been chosen for their institution.

We also spoke to several places about Mobile Device Management and what eStorm does to manage mobile devices on these networks.

We were excited to demo Apple Classrooms to a lot of people, and it was great to see the mostly positive feedback for this long awaited utility.

There was also a lot of interest around our Moodle customisation and hosting with many people excited to know that their Moodle can be improved.

We answered a lot of questions around our PD too. Making all of this work, and work well of course depends on teachers using this equipment to its fullest potential. Our PD people make sure that happens.

If you have any questions on any of this, or simply want some more information, please reach out to the eStorm team on 1800 ESTORM.

Ransomware – Just how much of a threat is it?

May 20, 2016 By eStormAdmin

RANSOMWARE ACTIVITY IS INCREASING THROUGHOUT 2016

Ransomware is becoming quite a common method of cyber extortion for financial gain. This is a type of malware that prevents users from accessing their files, applications or systems until a ransom is paid, usually using an anonymous currency such as Bitcoin. While individual computer users have long been targets of ransomware, over the last couple of years, the threat has expanded. Ransomware has been in mainstream media of late due to attacks against organisations such as hospitals.

It’s important to note that not all ransomware operates the same way. The file-encrypting type is probably the most dangerous. Not only have you lost access to your own files, but this data often contains confidential material, and the perpetrators technically do have full access. The issue is made worse however because paying the ransom offers no guarantee that the files will be unlocked. Ultimately, making frequent backups is by far the best defence against ransomware.

Since the average figure demanded is relatively low, usually only a few hundred dollars, the attackers tend to spread the attack quite far, and just randomly to maximise their potential gains. These are usually in the form of emails with malicious attachments, or links to malicious websites.

Ransomware Variants

Cryptolocker Through this increase in ransomware activity from mid-2015 to early 2016, there has been a myriad new variants of the attack.

Common Ransomware Families

We continue to see sustained distribution of many well-established ransomware families used in mass infection campaigns. In many cases these renowned variants, such as CryptoWall and TorrentLocker, spawned updated versions with improved encryption capabilities and obfuscation techniques. These established attacks will continue to be a significant threat to global enterprises as malware functionality, encryption techniques, and counter-mitigation measures are adapted and introduced into new versions. Examples include:

TorrentLocker: Throughout 2015, we’ve seen the continued distribution of TorrentLocker, a ransomware attack based on both CryptoLocker and CryptoWall. TorrentLocker has been active since at least early 2014 and is most often used in geographically-specific spam campaigns.
CTB-Locker: CTB-Locker – a name that represents the key elements of the ransomware, Curve (for Elliptic Curve Cryptography), Tor and Bitcoin, was first reported around mid-2014 and remained steadily active throughout 2015. During this time, we saw many campaigns spreading CTB-Locker and its variants, including CTB-Locker distributors capitalising on the free upgrade to Windows 10. They did this by sending out emails masquerading as Microsoft emails offering the upgrade.

We have also seen several new ransomware variants that use a range of new tactics. Based on increased growth, we expect ransomware developers to continue developing variants with novel features in order to expand their targets

Chimera: The operators behind the Chimera ransomware used the malware to encrypt victims’ files, but also threatened to publish the encrypted data if victims refused to pay the ransom. The attackers targeted German-based small and mid-sized businesses in mid-September 2015.
Ransom32: Ransom32 was first publicly reported in late December 2015. It was one of the first ransomware variants based entirely on JavaScript. This potentially allowed for compatibility with not only Windows, but also Linux and Mac OS.
LowLevel04: Operators of LowLevel04 purportedly spread their ransomware using the less commonapproach of exploiting Remote Desktop and Terminal Services.
Linux.Encoder.1:Linux.Encoder.1 debuted in late 2015 as one of the first ransomware variants targeting Linux web-based servers. While the encryption capabilities in the early versions proved to be suspect, many reports alleged faults in its predictable encryption key. The targeting associated with this branch of malware family is far from more traditional Windows-based attacks.

Where to from here?

We expected to see the ransomware threat landscape increase from levels observed in 2015, and sadly we have been right. Cyber extortion has gained notoriety and momentum, with huge profits from highly publicised campaigns spreading among cyber criminals. Recent campaigns in which victims paid the ransom reinforce the success and popularity of this particular attack method.

One of the most worrying threats is the deployment of ransomware after the attackers have already had access to the network. In these cases, attackerscould conceivably conduct reconnaissance and even disable or delete backups, or identify systems that are most critical to an organisation’s operations before deploying the ransomware. To increase the difficulty of such an attack, enterprises are encouraged to properly segment networks and implement strong access controls. In addition, companies should evaluate backup strategies regularly, and test those backups to ensure that recovery is successful. As always, “offline” copies of backups should be stored offsite in case onsite backups are targeted.

Overall, the best way to stay protected is through education. Emails that insist you change settings so you can read them, or ask you to follow a links to access information should be heavily scrutinised. Do you know the sender? Is it likely that person would be trying to share files with you that require you accessing a website to get them? Commonly we say the malicious emails appear from a courier company, or Australia Post telling you a package is waiting for you, and click here fore details etc. Also we have seen emails claiming to be from the Australian Federal Police (AFP) asking you to appear in court. We have also seen others appearing to come from your local council and is referring to parking fines and things like that.

Make your staff aware of the real risks of an infection like this, and encourage them to not take the risk opening those attachments.
As soon as you notice the infection, shutdown your PC. If you are on a network and you leave the system running, these infections will spread to the server rendering that data useless. The sooner the infected machine is switched off, the less impact it will have.

If you do find yourself a victim of one of these attacks, contact the team at eStorm immediately so we can get you back on track. In saying that, prevention is always better than a cure, so call us so we can make sure your backup strategy is comprehensive enough to minimise the impact of an attack like this.

The NEW Apple Classroom. Is it right for your Institution?

April 29, 2016 By eStormAdmin

SO WHAT IS APPLE CLASSROOM?

First of all, Apple Classroom is not really like Google Classroom. Google Classroom is more equivalent to Apple’s iTunes U, which is basically a place where teachers and students can share content.

Apple Classroom is more like a basic “Apple Remote Desktop” for iOS. Apple Remote Desktop (ARD) is a Mac app that allowed admins to monitor and control multiple Macs over the network. ARD was mostly a sysadmin tool but teachers would sometimes use it because of its ability to monitor and lock computer screens in a classroom scenario. In general, ARD was a little too complex for classroom use.

ARD was also able to gather information and statistics about your Macs, and generate reports. These included usage of disk space, device ID’s and so on. With iOS, these functions are handled by a Mobile Device Management (MDM) server such as Casper or AirWatch.

Apple Classroom finally brings the teacher features of ARD to iOS, and it’s a welcome improvement.

WHAT FEATURES ARE THEY?

Apple Classroom can do many things with a class full of iPads:

Lock and unlock the iPad
Navigate the iPads to a web page or a chapter in a book in iBooks
Open an app on all devices
View a device’s screen remotely
Initiate an AirPlay session between a single student device and the classroom Apple TV

These are all very useful capabilities! In a Shared iPad deployment, Apple Classroom can also assign a student to a specific iPad, log a student out of a shared iPad and reset the student’s Managed Apple ID password (which is their login password to a shared iPad).

HOW DO I SETUP APPLE CLASSROOM?

Classroom is powerful, and it’s obvious that it’s not a capability that should be in the hands of just anyone in the school. So just how do we deploy it correctly?

Firstly, Classroom is freely available from the App Store. Anyone can download it, but it does nothing until it is configured by an MDM server. Additionally, while the teacher’s iPad does not need to be Supervised, the student iPads do. You can’t use this to just wander around peeking at strangers’ iPad screens.

Classroom configures itself automatically when your MDM server sends a Configuration Profile that contains an “Education Configuration” payload. This is a structure in a Configuration Profile that contains information about which teachers have which classes and which students are in those classes. This ensures that a teacher only sees those iPads that are actually in front of their class at any given time, instead of all the iPads on the network.

SO WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE?

Classroom basically has two views: the My Classes and the in-class screen. My Classes is a very simple interface that lets you pick from a list.

Apple Classroom My Classroom eStorm Australia Managed Service Provider

The in-class screen is where all the action happens. The basic idea is that the controls are at the top of the screen, and the groups are below. The controls across the top of the screen – Open, Navigate, Lock and Screens – act on all the iPads in the currently selected group.

This is really nice because you don’t have to go through a Select All step before doing an operation like locking the class screens.

GROUPS IN APPLE CLASSROOM

Classroom creates a single group to start with: All. This contains all the devices that are in the class. The teacher can then create static groups as required – for example project teams. Note that the Boys and Girls group in my screenshot above are static groups; they’re not default groups in Classroom.

Classroom also creates dynamic groups based on the apps currently in use by students in the class. You might see groups like “Safari (10)” and “Keynote (20)” where the numbers denote the number of students in those apps.

Unfortunately, though, Classroom only creates two dynamic groups and then creates an overflow item of “Other Apps”. I think I would rather have the option to see all app groups but I understand how that could get complex in a large class doing diverse things.

Classroom also creates another dynamic group called “Low Battery” for devices that are below 20% I believe.

The nice thing about groups is that you can use them as shortcuts to Lock, Navigate or Open items on certain students’ devices.

OPENING APPS IN CLASSROOM

In order to open an app in Classroom, the teacher has to have that app on their iPad. The teacher is presented with a scrolling list of the apps installed on the teacher’s device, and can pick one to launch on all the iPads in the current group.

Apple Classroom Actions and In App Lock eStorm Australia Managed Service Provider

I have a couple of quibbles about this interface. Firstly, there’s no way to filter through the apps. If your iPad has a lot of apps installed, finding one can be a little tricky. There are four “Recents” slots at the top, which helps a bit.

Secondly, as is common with many Apple Education apps, this interface doesn’t really care to dynamically resize for the available space on the screen. It can be a little frustrating to have to scroll a tiny area for dozens of screenfuls when I have all this screen space available.

Finally, there is no indication of which apps the students have available to them. The teacher is presented with all the teacher’s apps – some or all of which will not be available to the pupils. Classroom actually handles this situation gracefully – by quickly failing with a useful error message – but it does seem rather pointless to provide the teacher with a list of hundreds of apps when only a few might actually work.

I’d like to be able to create shortcut buttons for launching frequently used apps. Most teachers will have a few that they use routinely, iTunes U for example. Having direct shortcuts for those would be most helpful.

Apple Classroom Failed to Open Screen eStorm Australia Managed Service Provider

There is an option to lock the student into an app after launching it. This could be useful for a test situation. Classroom seems to do two things when you select this option. Firstly it hides all other apps from the home screen, and secondly, it initiates a guided access session for that app.

I noticed a weird visual glitch on the home screen when coming out of this single app mode. All the apps came back but the folder icons were darkened as if apps were being reinstalled. They weren’t but it looked that way.

One nicely thought-through workflow feature is that, once the teacher has launched an app on the students’ iPads, a button is provided to “Open app on this iPad” in case you’re about to demonstrate it. This also works when navigating students to URLs.

NAVIGATING TO URLS AND BOOKS IN CLASSROOM

The Navigate button provides two options. To launch a URL on all selected devices or to open a book to a specific chapter.

Launching URLs is fairly straightforward. The teacher is shown their Safari bookmarks and can pick one to launch on all iPads.

This feature is a bit limited however. There’s no way to type or paste a URL straight into Classroom without bookmarking it first. There’s also no way to take a URL that you’re currently looking at in Safari and Navigate students to in Classroom without bookmarking it.

I can imagine that a Share Sheet action for Safari to send its current URL to Classroom might be in future versions. It would also be nice to be able to pick from the currently-open Safari tabs and iTunes U URL materials right inside Classroom.

As with opening apps, navigating students’ iPads to URLs is extremely fast. Less than two seconds to initiate the load on an entire class.

Apple Classroom iOS Deployment Process eStorm Australia Managed Service Provider

Navigating to books is similarly slick. Inside classroom, the teacher can select any book they have in iBooks. Classroom then lets the teacher navigate the book’s Table of Contents and pick a chapter to launch on the students’ iPads. Unlike apps, if the student doesn’t have the book installed, they will be directed to the iBookstore to get it.

MONITORING AND VIEWING SCREENS

This is the feature that many teachers have been waiting for – the ability to monitor what is happening on the iPad screens in their classroom. I’m happy to say that it works quite effectively. Classroom does not monitor screens by default. There is a button at the top of the group view that lets you toggle between a student’s image and their screen.

If needed, the teacher can take a single iPad into full-screen monitoring on the teacher iPad. This can be useful if the teacher’s iPad is already on AirPlay and you just want to show a quick glance to the class of what someone is working on.

The frame-rate on the full screen view of a student iPad is a bit low. I would estimate it’s as low as 1-2 frames per second. You won’t help someone with their animation remotely but it is good for static content.

Students are always aware that their screen is being monitored. The standard AirPlay blue status bar appears on each student’s iPad when the teacher is viewing thumbnails of all screens or one individual screen.

I would have liked to see a new colour for the status bar as a way to differentiate between regular AirPlay, and the screen being monitored. Students may just wonder why their iPad is AirPlaying and where it was sending their screen to. Perhaps even being able to silently monitor the screens could be an advantage.

Apple Classroom Lock ScreeneStorm Australia Managed Service Provider

LOCKING SCREENS WITH CLASSROOM

Classroom’s Screen Lock feature is very sensitively implemented. It is light security, perfectly appropriate for a classroom situation. I found locking and unlocking entire classes to be fast and reliable. It took about 1-2 seconds for the operation to complete across the classroom.

How secure is the screen lock? Well, when the device is locked, the home button is inactive. Sleeping and waking the iPad does not bypass the lock.

If the teacher’s iPad loses connection to the student iPad, the student iPad will unlock within 20 seconds. I tested this by locking a student iPad and then turning off wifi and Bluetooth on the teacher iPad. If either of those radios goes down, the student iPad will auto-unlock.

I haven’t tested this extensively but my sense is that this is designed to avoid the situation where one teacher locks the class, the bell goes and the class moves on to another teacher who can’t then unlock the iPads. This also solves the problem of how to unlock the devices if the teacher’s iPad runs out of power during the class. If the teacher leaves the class with their iPad, I assume that will mean the student devices would unlock as soon as the teacher’s iPad is out of Bluetooth range. Also, if the student reboots their iPad, the lock is bypassed.

This clearly isn’t designed to keep the FBI out. iOS has other features for that, as we know. It’s light touch attention management (what a horrible phrase), but speed and reliability are key in school and Classroom certainly delivers on this.

AIRPLAY AND APPLE CLASSROOM

One other feature that Classroom supports is initiating AirPlay between a student device and an Apple TV. There is no special configuration required for this. Classroom does the usual AirPlay discovery and finds nearby Apple TVs. I found this feature to be fast and reliable.

This may not be a feature that is very useful for teachers of older classes, but I can see it being very useful in younger years.

HOW TO DEFEAT APPLE CLASSROOM

The Achilles heel of Apple Classroom right now is its total reliance on Bluetooth. If you are a student, the simple way to hide from Classroom is simply to turn Bluetooth off. This results in a total defeat of the system and is clearly something that needs to be addressed in future configuration profile options.

My aim here has been to cover the technical features of Classroom rather than focus on its use in teaching situations. I’ve only had a half day or so with it at this point, so it’s too early to say what the utility of all these features will be.

I can see teachers using the screen locking and URL launching features quite a bit with certain age groups. More than that, though, I think the awareness of current apps in use through Classroom will help greatly in keeping the honest people honest.

Learn more about how your institution can utilise and implement Apple.

Solid State Drives vs Traditional Hard Drives. Which is right for you?

April 19, 2016 By eStormAdmin

Gone are the days of simply choosing the drive that had the largest capacity that your budget could afford. Solid-state drives have made huge advances in recent years and have started to become affordable for the average consumer. So which should you choose?

Hard-Disk Drives

These are the traditional type of computer storage and have been around for decades with minor changes under the hood. Due to there age, they’re a mature technology and considered by many as the default storage medium. Basically they are rotating magnetic platters and with read/write heads that move across the surface to access the data. These drives are called “mechanical” because of the moving parts, and are susceptible to failure from time to time… usually at the least convenient time.

They are available in several speeds that are measured by how fast the platters spin. Most drives in desktop PC’s are 7,200 RPM, but in laptops you may find 5,400 RPM. Occasionally in servers or higher end storage you will find 10,000 RPM. The faster they are, the more expensive they are. You can increase performance and speed by using other technology such as RAID, but that’s another article.

Modern drives are readily available in up to 8TB these days, with 2 or 3TB being considered pretty standard.

In summary. HDDs are best used when you need to store a lot of data, and high performance is not essential. As a result, HDDs are the norm for a desktop computer, and every day home consumer.

Solid-State Drives

Solid-state drives essentially perform the same role as a HDD. But rather than using mechanical moving parts, they use NAND flash memory. This means they are far more robust than traditional hard drives, and offer significantly greater performance.

Solid state drives normally connect using the same SATA interface as a HDD, but a few can use PCI for very high performance applications. Data access is typically a fraction of a millisecond and data transfer can be in excess of 500MB per second.

With those fast data access speeds, your operating system usually boots within a few seconds.

So far this all sounds pretty good! So where’s the catch? As always, it comes down to money. This performance, when compared to HDDs, does not come cheap. If you want to spend the same money as you would on a HDD, but you want the performance of SSD, expect to be dealing with a much smaller capacity. The capacity of SSDs range from about 60GB to 2TB with the larger cost around $1300. In most cases, this is above the budget of the average consumer. It is however becoming popular to buy a smaller SSD for installing applications and your operating system, and then a larger traditional HDD for storing your data such as photos, music and movies. Be warned though, HDDs would often give warning signs of imminent failure… SSDs will tend to simply go from working perfectly, to being completely dead in the blink of an eye. BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP!

Hybrid

A hybrid hard drive is a mixture of a traditional HDD drive and a small solid-state/flash drive in a single package. The drive monitors the usage of data being read and keeps a copy of the most frequently accessed data on the flash memory as a cache. This results in SSD like performance at a fraction of the cost. They cost slightly more than traditional hard drives but nowhere near as much as solid state drives. They can often make an ideal cost effective solution.

All in all, I’m a fan of SSD. And for me, if it’s in the budget, I will always get, and always recommend SSD.

How a Hosted PBX can benefit you!

March 23, 2016 By eStormAdmin

What is Hosted PBX

A Hosted PBX system is basically your phone system in the cloud. Instead of you having a clunky old piece of hardware stuck on the wall in your office, the heavy lifting is done off-site. All you really need is an account, a handset, and an Internet connection.

Cost Effective

A Hosted PBX solution has far fewer expenses for repairs and downtime that you often have to deal with for legacy systems housed on premise. A hosted PBX is managed by a third-party vendor with maintenance included in your monthly fees. Also a hosted telephony system requires virtually no complex hardware to purchase or configure as it simply leverages an internet connection to work.

Scalability

A huge advantage of a hosted PBX is that it grows seamlessly as your business’ requirements do. The hosted solution allows businesses to easily add phone lines and extensions with minimal fuss or time. Limitations on older PBX systems usually make this a painful, and often expensive process.

Outsourced Maintenance

The day to day maintenance of a hosted PBX system is managed by the system provider, and stored off-site,usually in a data centre. You no longer have to dedicate staff resources, or time and money to keeping a local PBX up and running. As you will not need to coordinate downtime for up-keep, you will enjoy more uptime of your phone system.

Reliability

When paired with the right Internet connection, a hosted PBX will connect every call without any lag or lapses in call quality. You will enjoy clear reception for every call as Internet-based telephony is now known for its improved quality over a traditional PSTN connection.

Disaster Recovery

In an event such as a storm, fire or power outage, it is usually the phones that go down first. This can bring your business to a grinding halt, which in turn affects your bottom line due to an inability to communicate with suppliers and clients. As you Hosted PBX is protected in a hosted environment, you can solve this problem. If your internet goes down, we can easily and instantly have calls forwarded to your mobile.

If you’re interested in knowing how you specifically could benefit from a Hosted PBX, please contact our friendly staff at eStorm Australia. We can advise you on an appropriate PBX system, and ensure you have the right internet connection to go with it!

Why we need to talk about Uploads… Not Downloads…

March 17, 2016 By eStormAdmin

This country is home to some very high-tech businesses, and we can access some outstanding services with the quality of internet currently available. Compared to the rest of the world, our download speeds are ok. In the very long and annoying argument about the National Broadband Network, we’re all getting caught up talking about downloads, and for business at least, it’s uploads that really matter.

Australian Bureau of Statistics Internet Activity data shows that Australians are downloading nearly an entire exabyte of data, one million terabytes, every quarter.

Over two million Australians get download speeds of higher than 24Mbps, and another 6.25 million get between 8 and 24Mbps. When you’re watching cat videos on YouTube, downloading a game from Steam, or getting the latest episode of Game Of Thrones (from iTunes or another paid service of course), these speeds are acceptable.

So what does this means? Well, our download speeds are ahead of the world average, although the gap is closing. But each year since 2008, we have been falling further and further behind in upload speeds. Where we once placed 48th in the world for uploads, we’re now 100th.

When YouTube launched in 2005, I had an ADSL connection. I had around 6Mbps download, and around 800k uploads. This was fine for sending email, or uploading a short video… but it’s over a decade later… and while my downloads are now up to a whopping 12Mbps (sarcastic tone required), my uploads are… yep… around 800k. People all over the world are now uploading High Res footage to YouTube. I won’t be doing that from home any time soon. My phone can shoot more bytes worth of video data in a second than I can upload to YouTube in one minute.

With the roll-out of NBN, upload speeds will improve. Even the most basic NBN service should get a minimum download speed of 25Mbps and, more importantly, an upload speed of 5Mbps. But the disparity between those speeds is, when talking about the internet, pretty big.

So while NBN takes us forward, it’s still not going to be the best solution for all businesses… especially those embracing the advantages of cloud services. Add to that the fact that most people don’t have access to NBN yet.

The good news is that if you want to use cloud services, you don’t have to wait for the NBN to get to you. There are better services already available now.

We have plans available that give you upload speeds ranging from 10Mbps all the way up to 1Gbps.

If you want to know what internet connections are available to you, please get in touch with the eStorm team. We can perform a site qualification and give you an obligation free quote.

Cloud Accounting with Xero – Is it right for you?

March 7, 2016 By eStormAdmin

‘Working in the Cloud’, ‘Cloud Computing’, ‘Cloud Accounting’… All terms we are hearing more and more. Momentum is growing for all businesses from SMB to Major Enterprise as people gain a better understanding of the true benefits of Cloud.

Not sure what ‘The Cloud’ is?

Put simply, cloud computing refers to applications and services being made available over the internet. Essentially this means they are available on demand where ever you are, without you having to install applications and servers.

Could ‘Live Accounting’ benefit you and your business? Here are some advantages to consider.

Available 24/7 from anywhere in the world provided you have an internet connection.
You get a ‘Real-time’ view of your cashflow and bank balances.
Automated Bank Feeds can minimise manual and cumbersome data entry.
Collaborate with your accountant in ‘Real-time’… no more sending data files back and forth.
No hardware or server installations, no manual back-ups, maintenance or support costs.
System upgrades occur while you’re offline, minimising your downtime.
No longer do you need to send your MYOB or QuickBooks files to your accountant leaving you unable to edit your own file while they work.
Fixed monthly costs that are cashflow friendly.

Do you want to know more about Xero?