With the incredible increase in concern about COVID-19, it’s prudent that we think about not just washing our hands frequently but also sanitizing the electronics we handle all day. Think about it. Everything we touch throughout the day comes back to our phones. We might take public transportation, press elevator buttons and open doors all while texting and scrolling (and that's all before our workday even begins). Then, you sit down at your desk and get down to business on equipment that probably hasn't been sanitized in weeks or months, if ever. 

So how can you effectively "wash" the germs off of the things around you? Well, one of the easiest and most effective ways to sanitize and disinfect your phone and other gadgets is with UV light technology.

How Does UV Light Sanitization Work? The UV light spectrum consists of UV-A, UV-B, and UV-C lights. It's the UV-C light that can kill germs, so that's what you want to look for when searching for a sanitizing product. When aimed at dirty surfaces, UV-C light permanently destroys the DNA or RNA of bacteria and viruses, so they no longer pose a threat. 

But Does It Really Work? Because UV-C sanitization works best on smooth surfaces, it is likely to be most effective on phones and cases without a lot of crevices for germs to hide. Some products, however, are designed to hit objects with UV-C light from multiple angles to try and cover as much surface area as possible.

Sure, you could just use antibacterial wipes — if you can find them these days — but UV light sanitizers have the added environmental benefit of producing less waste. So that's another tick in the "pro" column. Plus, they bring great peace of mind to back up your good hygiene habits, especially during cold and flu season – not to mention when we're in a global pandemic.

Two UV-C Sanitizers.Here are two Homedics products – one specifically for smartphones and one that’s a larger pouch design for not only phones, but also keys, glasses, earbuds, and other small items.

HoMedics UV-Clean Phone Sanitizer ($80).With this perfectly portable pop-up sanitizer, you'll just place your phone inside, and two germicidal LEDs get to work on disinfecting your device in only one minute. That gives you the perfect opportunity to wash your hands thoroughly, and your phone will be all good to go by the time you get back. Then, you just collapse the case flat and slide it back into your bag or laptop case for patented UV-C LED sanitization on-the-go.
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HoMedics UV-Clean Portable Sanitizer ($100).Another excellent option for portable protection is this generously-sized pouch. It harnesses the power of four UV-C germicidal LEDs to sanitize and disinfect your phone and other gadgets from every angle. It even includes interchangeable phone and platform clips to ensure that your items sit perfectly inside for optimal germ-killing effect. Aside from blasting bacteria from your phone, you can use it to clean your keys, glasses, remotes, and whatever else you can fit inside.

For better and for worse, our lives have been revolutionized by the internet. But a new high-tech innovation known as 5G is set to transform everything once again.

The internet plays a pivotal role in our lives, thanks to broadband piped through our homes. But 'fifth generation' 5G will take this a giant step forward.

It will enable mobile phones to use wireless broadband that matches the best fiber optic speeds. We will be able to rip out old phone lines and internet cables that clutter the house – and instead use mobile reception for all our needs.

Experts believe 5G will lead to an explosion of new 'smart' gadgets that talk to our mobile phones through more reliable superfast signals – offering everything from fridge cameras that order groceries when the contents are running low, to robot chauffeurs that can take us around in a self-driving car.

The possibilities of this connection of gadgets – known as the ‘Internet of Things' (IoT) – seem almost limitless.

The 5G technology will start by making pin-sharp video phone calls the norm so we can ditch our landlines if we haven't already.

And with broadband download speeds of perhaps 200 Megabits per second (Mbps) – which is more than four times faster than the current average home broadband speed – the technology will also help us economize and be more secure.

Smartphone apps controlled by 5G will monitor our heating and lights – turning gadgets off when not needed – while providing 24-hour security with cameras viewed from our phones.

Get It to Everyone. But all of the good that is forecast for 5G will only happen when 5G is available to everyone.  In the UK, where 5G is moving more quickly than in the U.S., Ernest Doku, a technology expert at comparison website uSwitch, said, “5G has the potential to transform the way we live – but at this stage, it is no silver bullet as we still need to ensure everyone has access to the connection before it can change the world.”

Last year, it started was rolled out in several major cities though connectivity was still small and patchy. And you need an expensive new smartphone such as the Samsung Galaxy S10 to gain access.

So far, Apple devices cannot connect to the 5G network, and the revolution cannot begin in earnest until they do – which may happen when the latest iPhone models come out in September.

Beware New Malware. New 5G technology offers an exciting opportunity to improve our networks – but it also opens a new door for fraudsters.

One of the critical concerns is the threat of so-called ‘stingrays.’ This is where a criminal intercepts your mobile signal with a copycat aerial that tricks it into sharing encrypted identifying data about the phone.

Using this information, the fraudster knows what handset you are using, can track your exact whereabouts, and might even be able to hack into your phone operating system’s software.

Cybersecurity expert Colin Tankard, of Digital Pathways, said, “The public needs to be aware of the dangers of this new technology – and with more gadgets being hooked up to 5G, it increases the risk of problems if you should get hacked.”

Tankard believes those that embrace 5G must ensure they add a layer of security to their smartphones by downloading ‘virtual private network’ (VPN) software on to their handsets via an app and using a subscription service. 

Doku says: “Although it may be exciting to be among the first people to embrace this new technology, prices for 5G phones and access to the 5G network should both fall if you hold on for at least 12 months.”

Also, as a newbie, you may initially be disappointed as national coverage is still poor, and the number of gadgets connecting to 5G is limited.
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But the potential for 5G to transform the way we live and manage our homes is really exciting.

The Smart Home market is currently badly fragmented because each vendor has been focusing on creating a separate ecosystem with devices that are difficult or impossible to connect with those of their competitors.
This situation may be about to end with the announcement of a new project called Project Connected Home over IP.

In a surprising move, Amazon, Apple, Google, along with the Zigbee Alliance have announced a joint effort to define a new standard that would remove those barriers by increasing interoperability and simplifying development for smart device manufacturers. They will join Zigbee Alliance members such as IKEA, NXP Semiconductors, Samsung SmartThings, Schneider Electric, and Signify in contributing to a project that aims to increase trust and adoption of smart things.

The new project is essentially a way to certify that whatever smart device you buy will work with your existing home setup and connect with your smartphone or voice assistant of choice. In other words, it will allow smart things to speak a common language, so they know what the other devices do and how to interact with them, hopefully, governed by better, end-to-end security and privacy protections.

The success of this project hinges on the idea that if companies build their products to connect using Internet Protocol-based technologies, it will be easier for consumers to invest in building up mixed ecosystems that are "secure, reliable, and seamless to use."

The companies involved will take an open-source approach, so each will bring some of their smart home technologies to the table so that a common protocol can be developed as quickly as possible with relatively lower costs. That includes Amazon's Alexa, Apple's HomeKit and Siri, Zigbee's Dotdot, and Google Weave and Thread.

Once that new standard is ready, it will work alongside existing connectivity standards such as Wi-Fi, cellular, and Bluetooth Low Energy. A logo on the boxes of smart things will make it easy for consumers to discern what devices are guaranteed to work with each other, and this should also make things easier for manufacturers who no longer need to worry about which standards to support. Similarly, developers will be able to follow a standard for "lifecycle events such as provisioning/onboarding, removal, error recovery, and software update."

Before you get too excited about the new development, keep in mind that a preliminary draft will be completed by the end of 2020, so we'll probably have to wait until at least 2021 to see this project bear fruit. And be ready to buy new smart things if you want these benefits, as existing ones won't necessarily be able to work with the new protocol.
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The new industry group will initially focus on physical safety products like smart locks, gas sensors, smoke alarms, security cameras, smart electrical plugs, and thermostats. Then they'll move on to cover most other smart home and commercial devices.

Mobile hotspots are a crucial tool for travelers needing to keep all their gear connected. But with the advent of 5G, Netgear’s new Nighthawk M5 5G Wi-Fi 6 Mobile Router could replace all of your home’s Wi-Fi equipment with a pocket-friendly hotspot that will provide fast Wi-Fi even when you take it on the road.

As 5G mobile networks continue their slow but steady rollout across the country, mobile internet seems like it is increasingly becoming a viable alternative for users tired of having their internet delivered through a prehistoric coaxial cable with questionable reliability. With 5G capable of delivering download speeds up to one or two gigabits/second, with a strong enough signal reaching a home, it could theoretically deliver more than enough throughput for everything from streaming 4K content to online gaming.

Netgear’s Nighthawk M5 Mobile Router includes features that are now standard on most hotspots, including a dedicated touchscreen display for accessing its settings, showing its connection status, and keeping an eye on how much data you’ve used, and your monthly limit. What other hotspots don’t have is the ability to connect to not only the next-generation 5G mobile networks, but also the next wave of Wi-Fi 6 devices which promise the fastest wireless performance and minimal bottlenecks, even with several smartphones, tablets, computers, and IoT devices all connected at the same time.

Netgear is also positioning the Nighthawk M5 as both an alternative to getting your home internet through wires, and as a reliable backup for when your cable internet or even fiber service goes on the fritz. The M5 includes a removable rechargeable battery so that when used at home, you can instead plug into an outlet. Because hotspots typically don’t have the same Wi-Fi range as larger routers or even mesh networking hardware, the mobile router also includes a gigabit ethernet port so you can connect it to a dedicated Wi-Fi router that will provide a stronger signal throughout your entire home.
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The Nighthawk M5 won’t be available until sometime in the second half of 2020 at the earliest, with pricing being revealed at that time. And it will also be dependent on a mobile plan, and a carrier who’s operating a 5G network in your area. In other words, ditching cable internet is going to be an expensive proposition when this thing arrives, but the ultimate conveniences could easily outweigh the cost.

The majority of phones sold today are enabled for 4G connectivity, but if you’re looking to get yourself a new phone with your holiday money, you would be wise to bide your time and get yourself a 5G phone.
Here are five of the best reasons why:

1. 5G networks are better than ever, and keep improving. When launched earlier this year, 5G was limited to a few of the busiest areas of the biggest cities. But now, 5G is present in many more locations than before and will soon spread further.

2. 5G phones will be far more widespread this year. It’s not just the networks that will see significant expansion this year; we also expect to see a far greater number of the devices themselves becoming available. Qualcomm has unveiled its two latest top-of-the-line processors, the Snapdragon 865 and the Snapdragon 765, and both of them have 5G enabled.

The Samsung Galaxy A90 5G is just one of a whole new wave of 5G phones hitting the market. That means there’s no option for a 4G flagship running Qualcomm this year, which is undoubtedly essential news when one considers the ubiquity of the chipsets among Android-sporting brands such as OnePlus, Sony, Motorola, Asus, and more. You’ll have a far greater choice of a 5G phone if you wait for 2020, and depending on your commitment to your favored brand, you might not even have the option to stick to 4G this year.

3. iPhones will almost certainly adopt 5G, so no need to switch to Android. It was mildly surprising that the most prominent tech brand in the world didn’t offer the option of a 5G handset last year, but they will most likely be offering multiple 5G models this coming year. What’s more, a report has indicated that 80 million 5G modems are being readied for the September launch of the iPhone 12, so there’s strong evidence that we may see the whole range enabled for 5G.

4. 5G phones will become more affordable. Also, at the Qualcomm conference, Xiaomi announced that they would release a minimum of 10 new 5G phones throughout 2020, but more crucially, that these new devices would fall in the mid-range and possibly even budget segments of the market.

Most reviewers have been impressed with Xiaomi’s new devices, even though the 5G handsets are costly. So, if Xiaomi brings out models in the mid-range with better pricing and 5G capability, it should be welcome news for the whole market.

Moreover, most industry insiders doubt that Xiaomi will be the only brand to offer mid-range devices.

5. 5G’s excellent performance means it is the future of mobile tech. The most persuasive argument in favor of 5G comes not in the form of words, but numbers. Qualcomm’s latest X55 modem promises top download speeds of 7Gbps, and upload speeds hitting 3Gbps.

The early real-world experience says that performance improvements will be eye-opening. This massive performance improvement to your daily usage would be reason enough to adopt 5G, but it’s the implications for future tech that mean you’ll want to be a part of this new revolution.

If it seems like all your friends have smartphones, you may be on to something. A new report by Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that reports on technology and media for children, found that by the age of 11, more than half of kids in the U.S. have their own smartphone. By age 12, more than two-thirds do, and by 14, teens are just as likely as adultsto own a smartphone. Some kids start much younger. Nearly 20% of 8-year-olds have a smartphone!

Now, let’s speak to the kids. So, what’s the right age? The best answer is when both you and your parents feel the time is right.

Here are some points to consider to help you and your parents make this decision.

Responsibility.Have you shown that you are generally responsible? Do you keep track of valuable belongings? Do you understand the value of money, and can you save up to buy things you want? These are all good signs that you may be ready for a phone. If not, it might be wise to wait a bit longer.

Safety.Do you travel to or from school or after-school activities without an adult? This is when phones often go from a “want” to a “need.” Sometimes parents report that they feel better knowing they can reach their children directly and that their kids can reach them, too.

Social Maturity.Do you treat your friends with kindness and respect? Do you understand the permanence of the internet, the fact that once something goes out onto the web, it can never truly be deleted? It is critically important that you have a grasp on these issues before you own a smartphone.

Bullying. We all get angry and say hurtful things we don’t mean sometimes, but when you post something on the internet that you might not mean later, or might wish you could take back. It can have real and lasting harmful effects. In the era of smartphones, there have been considerable increases in cyberbullying.

Be Smart. If you and your parents decide this is an excellent time to take that step, here are some tips for creating a healthy relationship between you and your phone.
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Parents should model good behavior! Your parents are the number one most important influence in your life, and that goes for technology use as much as anything else. If parents are glued to their phones all day, guess what? Their children probably will be, too.
On the flip side, if parents model smartphone habits like putting the phone away during meals and not texting and driving, that will go a long way toward helping kids develop similar healthy behaviors.
You and your parents should talk together about the importance of setting rules and limits around your phone use and screen time. Understanding why rules are made and set in place can help kids stick to a system.

If you’re leaving a phone or tablet in your car for some reason, you probably put it in the glovebox or out of sight under something a fair bit less valuable. That’s just common sense. But in fact, your gadget’s Bluetooth may be making them way more visible than they ever could be with the naked eye.

As Outside Magazine notes, enterprising thieves have been using Bluetooth scanner apps – particularly in otherwise deserted areas like trailheads – to quickly scan their surroundings for high-value targets. To avoid this fate, simply put your device into Airplane mode (Android, iOS), turn it all the way off or, of course, avoid having to leave it in the car in the first place.

Better yet, you can test your own preventative measures by downloading a readily available Bluetooth scanner app yourself to see if your devices are visible by this method even after you have attempted to disable them. Certain devices like wireless headphones and fitness trackers can be pretty insistent on sending out Bluetooth signals for pairing purposes, so it is worth double-checking you actually know how to disable them fully.
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Or, for a dead-simple approach that will cost you a few bucks, pick up a signal-blocking “Faraday bag” to keep in your car, so you can be sure the gadgets inside it can’t signal the outside world no matter how hard they try.

The world has been hard at work, trying to find solutions to store the 100 zettabytes of data that are expected to hit the cloud by 2023. 

Microsoft and Warner Bros, for their parts, have just demonstrated why they think they are ahead of the game – in both protecting past archives, and in storing those to come.

At Microsoft's Ignite conference, CEO Satya Nadella showed off a piece of quartz glass the size of a drink coaster. Within the glass was stored a 143-minute Warner Bros movie – fittingly, the film was Superman. 

The technology is the result of Microsoft Research's Project Silica, which was set up to design new storage systems for the cloud. 

Project Silica's researchers have been working on developing ultrafast laser optics, which they used to encode the entire film in glass.

Using an ultrafast pulse laser, they wrote 'voxels' inside the glass – that is, the three-dimensional equivalent of the pixels that make up an image. Each voxel, therefore, has its own orientation, depth, and size, making it a unique encoder for the movie. 

Because voxels are engraved at the nano-scale level, they can be written in multiple layers throughout the glass. A two-millimeter piece, for example, can contain more than 100 layers of voxels, making for high-density storage. 

According to Microsoft, the glass and the data it contains can resist being boiled in water, baked in an oven, microwaved, flooded, scoured, and demagnetized. By permanently changing the structure of the glass, the laser ensures that the information is securely printed for potentially thousands of years.

Ant Rowstron, deputy lab director at Microsoft Research - Cambridge, said: "One big thing we wanted to eliminate is this expensive cycle of moving and rewriting data to the next generation."

"We really wanted something you can put on the shelf for 50 or 100 or 1,000 years and forget about until you need it." 

To carry out Project Silica, Microsoft partnered with the University of Southampton in the UK, where scientists had already developed a laser-writing technology to record data back in 2016, which they claimed could have "a virtually unlimited lifetime at room temperature."

Peter Kazansky, who worked on the project, said at the time that this would open a new era of data archiving. "This technology can secure the last evidence of our civilization: all we've learned will not be forgotten," he said.

For a media company like Warner Bros, this could have huge implications. Storing its 100-year film and television archives is indeed currently causing it some headaches. 

The company keeps three copies of each asset stored in various locations around the world. It has plans in place in case an earthquake, a hurricane or a fire struck one of its storage locations. And every three to five years, it migrates its digital content to stay ahead of degradation issues.

The company's chief technology officer, Vicky Colf, said: "Imagine if a title like The Wizard of Oz or a show like Friends wasn't available for generation after generation to enjoy… That's why we take the job of preserving and archiving our content extremely seriously."

As intriguing as storing data on glass may seem, though, the technology is not made for users to be able to play films at home on a specially made quartz glass DVD player. 

The voxels encoded by the laser in the glass can only be read by a computer-controlled microscope that uses machine learning to decode and reconstruct the patterns that come out when polarized light is shone through the glass. 

So, the data stored in the new technology won't be information that needs to be accessed regularly. Instead, Microsoft spoke of it as 'cold data,' or archival data that companies are required to maintain but don't need to see for months or years. 

Cold data includes media archives like those held by Warner Bros, but also medical data, or legal contracts, or even urban building plans that cities have to retain.

"We are not trying to build things that you put in your house or play movies from," said Rowstron. "We are building storage that operates at the cloud scale."

In other words, Microsoft is interested in technology that exists exclusively for the cloud – something that it previously outlined in its mission statement for Project Silica, in which it said that its research was not concerned with the deployment of information outside the cloud, such as offices, homes, mobile phones or enterprise data centers. 

Microsoft cautions that there is much work ahead before physical quartz-glass archives can be used at scale. To do so, Microsoft engineers would need to speed up data encoding, as well as increase the data density.

You can now bring your old whiteboards into the 21stcentury with Rocketbook Beacons. These four restickable, reusable Beacons convert your writing surface into a smartboard by integrating with popular cloud services in the free Rocketbook app. 

Brainstorm the next great mission with your crew, capture and share your ideas, and then take your Beacons with you to your next adventure. The Beacons Go-Pack is $15.
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• Set of 4 Beacons
• 2.5-inch triangles
• Fluorescent orange
• Restickable Yupo adhesive 
• Wash with soap and water
• Free Go-Pack carry case

Rocketbook Beacons allow you to capture, organize, and broadcast important notes, diagrams, and big ideas on any whiteboard or wall surface in real-time. Just four restickable "beacons" for any sized surface and one smartphone app that connects with many of the popular cloud services you already use.
Using Beacons involves four easy steps:

1. Place the four Beacon quadra-triangles in each corner of a whiteboard or your preferred writing area. Do your best to make it straight, but it doesn’t have to be perfect. Now document your ideas and discussions on the whiteboard the way you usually would.
2. Got an iPhone or Android? Use the free Rocketbook app to configure popular cloud services as your scan destinations. Rocketbook has partnered with some of your favorite services, such as Evernote, One Note, Dropbox, and Google Drive. You can also use regular email if you wish.
3. For crucial missions with scattered participants, you can stream your whiteboard in real-time. Switch to “Snapcast” mode, share the unique URL, and collaborate with your team anywhere in the world. Your private, real-time page is updated every time you scan your whiteboard. Or prop your phone facing your whiteboard and set the app to auto-scan every 5 seconds. 
4. Is your next mission destined for a different whiteboard? No problem. Peel the Beacons off of the board and prepare for your next voyage. Beacons have a space-aged micro-suction surface that can not only be reused over and over but even cleaned with soap and water.

Whether you love paper and pen or prefer to live paper-free, you still probably need to take notes, read PDFs, or maybe even illustrate an idea with a sketch. Smart notebooks help bring ideas typically captured on paper into a digital format. Some smart notebooks also involve real paper.

Smart notebooks don’t really conform to a firm definition. There’s still a lot of interpretation as to what a smart notebook is. That said, they are different from tablets: Tablets usually have color screens, like the Retina display on any recent iPad. Smart notebooks use some other kind of technology for the interface.

Some smart notebooks work best as digital tablets for writing and sketching. Others are paper-based notebooks with either a pressure-sensitive pad behind them to capture what you write or a companion app you use to scan pages.

Also included is one unique product that is something of an “honorary” smart notebook even though it’s a pen. It’s so smart, however, that it turns any notebook into a smart notebook.

Here are five of the best options listed in alphabetical order:

LiveScribe Echo 2GB ($179). It’s not a smart notebook per se, but the LiveScribe Echo pen turns any notebook into a smart one. This special pen has the unique ability to remember what you write or draw, the order in which you did so, and any audio that played while you wrote. That means you can take lecture notes while also recording the speaker. Or you can write your notes and dictate additional thoughts. When you’re done with your work, you can sync the memory from the LiveScribe Echo pen to a macOS or Windows computer and see all your notes reappear in the order that you took them on screen in a digital notebook.

Onyx Boox Max 3 ($859). It may seem like you need a money-is-no-object attitude to buy the Onyx Boox Max 3, and maybe you do. But the key thing to know about this smart notebook is just how much it’s capable of. It’s a big, 13.3-inch e-reader with E-Ink Mobius (making reading easy on the eyes) running Android 9 that’s Wi-Fi-capable, so you can also use it to surf the web or connect to digital libraries. About the only thing it can’t do is display color since it’s grayscale only. The Onyx Boox Max 3 is especially useful for anyone who spends hours a day pouring over PDFs and needs to make notes on the pages, mark them up, highlight passages, or even translate text. It ships with 4GB of RAM, a stylus, charging cable, HDMI cable, and protective sleeve.

reMarkable ($499). ReMarkable is billed as the digital notebook for people who don’t want to give up paper. It’s designed to feel like paper as you read, draw, and write on it. This 10.3-inch smart notebook not only feels like paper but also sounds like it when you write or draw on it with the included marker. The pressure-sensitive marker never requires charging or pairing. This notebook doubles an e-reader. The surface contains the company’s own Canvas technology, which uses black ink particles to reflect natural light. When you buy a reMarkable tablet, it ships with not only the marker but also with eight replacement tips and a cable for recharging.

Rocketbook Everlast ($32). The Rocketbook Everlast Notebook is a smart and reusable paper notebook. The predecessor version of the Rocketbook had users write with a special pen and then use a microwave oven to remove the writing. In the 2019 version, you write on special waterproof pages with a Pilot Frixion pen and wipe the pages clean with a damp microfiber cloth when you’re done. So, what makes it a smart notebook? Using a companion app, you scan your pages to turn them into digital notes. At the bottom of each page are a few icons. You assign each symbol to a destination in one of your cloud storage services, such as a particular folder in Google Drive or a notebook in Evernote. Whenever you write on a page, you put color in the corresponding icon, and the app files your pages accordingly when you scan them. The app works with Dropbox, Google Drive, Evernote, Microsoft OneNote, and email, with support for a few other services in the works. The book comes in four colors (black, red, midnight blue, and teal) and two sizes (8.5 X 11 inches with 32 pages or 6 X 8.8 inches with 36 pages).

Wacom Bamboo Folio ($199). The Wacom Bamboo Folio is for people who love to write on paper with a pen but also want the benefits of digitized notes. Wacom has long been a leader in digital tablets, especially those for drawing and sketching. The Bamboo Folio puts an exciting twist on the concept of a smart notebook, however. It’s a paper pad tucked into a little folio case, and the back of the case is a smart surface. When you write or draw on the paper, the smart surface records your marks. It stores them and later transfers them wirelessly to a companion app. You never have to scan your handwritten pages, but you get the same result as if you did.
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Wacom also sells a less expensive Bamboo Slate ($129.99). It works similarly, but it’s a slab rather than a folded folio.