Despite the abundance of technology that I surround myself with (laptop, phone, tablet, camera, all-in-one desktop and second monitor, the two tools that never outlive their welcome in my world is a pen and notepad.

It’s this same sentiment that sits behind the Rocketbook Wave: a pen and paper notebook that can be instantly uploaded into a cloud of your choice.

On each page are seven programmable symbols that can be attached to an existing or new folder in either your Dropbox, Google Drive, Evernote, OneNote or even your email address.

When you put a cross through one of them and take a photo of the page with your smartphone, it crops and enhances each page and neatly stores them in the destination you selected.

When you take notes with a Pilot Frixion pen – which you can buy almost anywhere online – you can do something ridiculous once you’ve filled your notepad.

The ink inside those pens are “thermochromic” which means it becomes clear under the heat. So to erase the notebook completely, you simply stick it in the microwave for a few minutes then voila, the ink is gone. There’s even a special logo on the front of the Rocketbook that will change color once the process is complete.
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What you have is an ever lasting notebook – as long as you don’t tear or destroy it during a fit of creative rage – that will keep your notes in digital format. For a $27 pledge on Kickstarter, it sure beats paying nearly $1,000 for a tablet and electronic stylus.

Right now for the most part, the touchscreens that we interact with are only as large as manufacturers make them, and as expected, the bigger they are, the more expensive they get. However, what if you could have a touchscreen display as big as a kitchen countertop, or as small as a coffee table?

Turns out Sony is experimenting with that idea because during the recent South by Southwest Interactive (SXSW), Sony introduced a prototype projector that can turn any flat surface into a touch-sensitive display. To top things off, it also comes with a depth sensor so that the projector will be able to see what has been placed on the table, and in turn offer up information about it.

The “Interactive Tabletop” can also recognize various objects that are placed on a flat surface. In the demo at SXSW, the Interactive Tabletop recognized when a copy of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland was placed on the table. Light projection of its characters then sprang to life from the projector, and those projections could then be dragged around the table with a user’s finger.
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Sony’s new device isn’t something the company has said it plans to commercialize at this time. It’s simply a prototype. Indeed, right now the commercial uses for such a device seem limited to simple gaming or entertainment applications. However, the concept does bode well for a future where we can interact with light-projected holograms as easily as we interact with physical objects today.

KPMG and IBM announced plans to apply IBM’s Watson cognitive computing technology to KPMG’s professional service offerings, with a focus on audit services.

The agreement comes on the heels of several successful projects using cognitive technologies to enhance and deliver professional services.

Providing greater collaboration between humans and artificial intelligence (AI) systems, cognitive technology enables communication in natural language, analyzing massive amounts of data to quickly deliver insights. Watson, accessible through a variety of applications, integrates machine learning and other AI technologies in a scalable system.

“The cognitive era has arrived,” said KPMG chairman and CEO Lynne Doughtie. “KPMG’s use of IBM Watson technology will help advance our team’s ability to analyze and act on the core financial and operational data so central to the health of organizations and the capital markets. In addition to the unprecedented possibilities for enhancing quality, the potential for cognitive and related technologies to help us pursue new business offerings is extraordinary.”

As many of KPMG’s audit, tax, advisory and other professional services rely on judgment-driven processes, the data analysis and innovative learning capabilities of cognitive technology can transform how the firm deploys talent, capital and other resources.

“Auditing and similar knowledge services are increasingly challenged with tackling immense volumes of unstructured data,” stated John Kelly, senior vice president of cognitive solutions at IBM Research. “Cognitive technologies such as Watson can transform how this data is understood and how critical decisions are made. By applying Watson, KPMG is taking a forward-looking approach to extending its expertise, helping professionals and clients gain new insights from critical enterprise information.”

KPMG will be working with Watson to develop select cognitive services to meet extensive audit-specific security, confidentiality and compliance requirements. For example, one of the Big Four firm’s current initiatives focuses on employing supervised cognitive capabilities to analyze large volumes of structured and unstructured data related to a company’s financial information as auditors “teach” the technology to fine-tune those assessments, giving those teams faster access to precise measurements used to analyze anomalies.

With cognitive technology’s ability to analyze a larger percentage of data, KPMG professionals can obtain enhanced insights into the client’s financial and business operations, in turn giving them the opportunity to focus on higher value activities like risk assessment.
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“Including cognitive technology with KPMG’s innovative capabilities, robust methodologies and processes, and 100-plus year history of excellence, is a real game changer that underscores our commitment to reinforcing confidence in the capital markets,” stated Doughtie.

Public Wi-Fi systems such as those found on airplanes, in cafes or at malls are completely insecure and anyone using them should think of everything they type as being broadcast to a billboard in Times Square, say security professionals.

In a recent article by a journalist working for USA Today, the author said he was hacked while he used the plane’s Gogo onboard Wi-Fi network as he flew home last week.

The hacker could have used a device or software to access the columnist's data flow. Both are easy to find online, said John Kuhn, a senior threat researcher with IBM Security.

"These tools are reasonably priced and you don’t have to be extremely technical to use them,” he said.
However easy it might be, electronic eavesdropping is still illegal, said Joel Reidenberg, director of the Center on Law and Information Policy at Fordham Law School in New York City.

“It’s an Electronic Communications Privacy Act violation and subject to fines of up to $10,000,” he said. The law dates to 1986.

There's nothing magically safe about Wi-Fi purchased on a plane. The only thing that makes a flight slightly more secure than a mall or Starbucks with free Wi-Fi is that there are potentially fewer people around because it’s "limited to the population of the plane in which you’re flying,” said Michael Belton, vice president of applied research at Optiv, a security firm.

”Say you are in the Dallas-Ft. Worth airport and your wireless shows DFWNet, no password, free connection.  How many people do you think have the skills or even the mindset to question the legitimacy of that wireless connection? And wonder if that’s nothing more than a hacker’s device lurking around? You connect, you browse, you email, and all the while, he’s logging all your data and hacking your computer,” said Pierluigi Stella, chief technical officer for Network Box USA.

 “A hacker can go on a flight that has no Wi-Fi and present an open network with the name of the airline, and people connect to it thinking it is legit. They try to reach popular websites and the hacker can present the login screen to capture their user name and password, and then present an error message, after which the hacker has access to the account when they land.”

Another common fake-out occurs in hotels.

“Many hackers present spoof Wi-Fi networks, such as 'HILTON GUEST WIFI.' If they have a stronger signal than the hotel, it will appear as a preferred choice — ahead of the hotel’s legitimate network — and a tired, frustrated traveler doesn’t always check,” said John Gunn, vice president of communications for VASCO Data Security.

That’s why many companies require that employees use a virtual private network, or VPN, when accessing public Wi-Fi.

Gogo itself recommends that for anyone trying to send sensitive information over a public Wi-fi network such as Gogo use a virtual private network to protect their data, said CEO Michael Small.
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“VPN's use strong encryption and are a road block that most criminals do not attempt to overcome,” said John Kuhn, a senior threat researcher with IBM Security.