Protect Your Digital Self: Tech Brawta

It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world.

Until that changes, and I strongly recommend no breath holding, we have to take the securing to our digital identity into our own hands.

There is no foolproof way to protect our digital identity, but every step towards tighter security is a step further away from digital danger.  So, let’s take a few steps together.

Step 1:  Strong, Unique Passwords

By now, you’ve heard it a million times, but it is clear that some of us, including Kayne West, simply do not listen.  Having a strong, unique password for every account and every device is both necessary and effective.

I no longer expect you to remember every password.  I expect you to use a good password manager like Last Pass or 1Password.  If you’re a Mac, consider using Keychain.  Each of these options will help you create long and complex passwords, keep track of account login information, and add an extra layer of protection for your data.

Step 2: Turn On 2FA

Two Factor Authentication requires you to use a secondary, separate verification method to access your account.  Often, an access code is generated by, or sent to, your mobile phone.  Alternately you may have a dedicated physical device, often called a token.  There are even further options.

Regardless of the 2FA methodology, the short version is, it makes it harder for bad guys to get into your account because it is less likely that they would have both your password and access to your secondary authentication method.

Step 3: Use a Secondary Email Account

Speaking of secondary, do not use your primary email for social media and other non-mission critical website or accounts.

Take the time to set up an alternate email address specifically for registrations.  This account would not be for friends and family, nor would it be for correspondence with your financial institutions.  This account would be exclusively for the ‘other stuff’.

Step 4: Keep Your Devices Updated

You don’t need the latest device, but you do need the latest Operating System (OS) and apps.  Developers are always on the hunt for bugs and vulnerabilities.  They fix these with updates.  Without updates, you may be leaving your system open to hackers.  Close up all possible loopholes by updating your OS, your anti-virus software, your firmware and your applications across all devices.

Step 5: Review and Refresh Settings

Something else developers do, change privacy policies, terms and settings.  Often, without telling you.

So, you may think your profile is private and unable to be shared with third parties, only to find out the hard way that six months after you took nearly an hour to perfectly tweak your privacy settings that the website you visited is using your clever content in a not so clever marketing campaign.

Put to stop to this, or at least try, by periodically reviewing your settings and refreshing where necessary.  Look closely to ensure you didn’t 'opt-in' to something you wish you’d never heard of. Double check to make sure that the privacy policies match your expectations.

These five steps are the first steps, to maintaining the credibility of your identity online.  Execute.  Repeat.




Tune in to @RJR94FM every Wednesday morning at 8:15 AM for #Tech4Life

Decoding Cryptocurrencies

By now, you’ve probably heard of Bitcoin which means you’re on the spectrum ranging from heavily invested to totally spooked.

If you’re closer to spooked, allow me to share some simple facts.



Bitcoin is the first decentralized, unregulated, most popular, most valuable, cryptocurrency, sometimes call digital currency.  Bitcoin is the first, but far from the only cryptocurrency.  Other popular cryptocurrencies include Namecoin and Dogecoin (commonly referred to as ALT coins).

Unlike traditional currency, cryptocurrencies rely on cryptography and blockchains.  Even kids in primary school use basic cryptography to pass secret notes to each other in class.  However,  blockchain is a term more familiar to hardcore coders than casual internet users.  In this case, a blockchain is a distributed network of verifiable, updated, encrypted and synchronized ledgers.

Blockchains are maintained by “miners” who receive a reward and/or transaction fee for updating, maintaining, verifying the blockchain.  There are a fixed number of bitcoin, 21 million to be exact.  And “mining” bitcoin requires an increasing amount of time and computing power.

Cryptocurrencies are virtually impossible to counterfeit, hack, duplicate or accidentally “double spend”.  It’s these remarkable features that help bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to retain their value.

The trifecta of features including anonymity, security and potential reward combine to make cryptocurrencies very attractive to criminals, failed Governments and legitimate investors.

Are you ready to jump in and invest?  Well then, you’ll need some money (which kinda goes without saying) and you will also need to set up a “wallet” on an “exchange” such as Coinbase.  It also goes without saying that you should always backup your data including your private and public key.

We can thank Satoshi Nakamoto for the invention of bitcoin back in 2008.  I’d like to tell you who Nakamoto is, but no one really knows.  We don’t know if Nakamoto is a person or a group.  Like bitcoin itself, the Nakamoto’s true identity is secure and anonymous.

Tech4Life airs every Wednesday morning on @RJR94FM at 8:15 AM

Social Stardom In a Real Sense

Event organizers Corve DaCosta and Shane Bennett

The irony is, it took a social media event for me to meet a social media star.

Thanks to Digital Media Week Jamaica #DMWJamaica, I was able to meet in person and physically mingle with a few social media stars that I follow or converse with regularly.

#DMWJamaica is an “unconference” that seeks to share social success stories and highlight Jamaicans excelling in the social media space.  The four-day series of events included a panel discussion at the trendy ATL Showroom on Tuesday, June 29, 2016.

RJR’s own Krystal Tomlinson, a star in her own right across multimedia media formats, hosted the panel on The New Rules of Social Stardom.  The group of experts included “certified student” @OneRomone, multi-tasker @NicoleMcLarenCampbell, fitness and nutrition expert @IAMKimilaMcDonald and transformational coach @PatriceJWhite.

#DMW Panelists Kimila McDonald, Nicole McLaren-Campbell,  Romone Robinson, Krystal Tomlinson (Host) and Patrice White.

Real is often overused these days, but “real” is exactly how the conversation is best described.  The presenters were revealing and raw while sharing their personal experiences, challenges, and successes.  Here's an interesting point, their least favourite platform: Snapchat.

The panel was preceded by an eye-opening keynote by Dr. Anissa Holmes of Jamaica Cosmetic Dental Services.  The audience who clearly had a preference for Instagram (IG) was schooled in benefits of Facebook.  Dr. Holmes opening discussed her methodology and impressive returns on her investment in the platform.

Dr. Anissa Holmes

She clearly illustrated the power and potential of the world’s most successful social media network and provided tips on how others good navigate the platform for their own success.  Notable, she said, “You have to have your business right first!”  Social media can’t make a business better, more efficient, or more appealing.  Start with a good business model and then leverage social media to draw attention, engagement and profits to that model.

#DMWJamaica continues with a Women in Digital Tech charity event this evening at the Courtyard by Marriott.  Congrats to @CorveDaCosta, @iamsgb and the team for a stellar event.

Tech4Life airs on @RJR94FM.com every Wednesday morning at 8:15 am.

T4L: I want my own Alfred

You could be a mogul running a multi-million dollar global enterprise.  Or, you could be a mom with three kids.  Either way, you’d probably like to have an assistant.

An assistant can be a life saver.  The best assistants are great at managing your appointments and taking notes.  They are always available and accurate.  And they always expensive!

Well, perhaps not.

Siri, Cortana, Alexia and the androgynous Google Now are virtual assistances immediately available for hire and they are free - if you have the accompanying expensive hardware.

Each service can provide (now) basic information on weather, directions, and reminders.  Many can search for trivia and control phone functions.  For way cool Star Trek: The Next Generation like control over your home, pair up your virtual assistant with some third party, IOT enabled devices and never press a button again to turn on your lights.

If an investment of a few thousand dollars to pimp out your house to have a conversation with your phone doesn’t entice you, at least you can still put your “free” virtual assistant to work to give you location based reminders, tell you a joke or read your email and text messages out loud.

Ironically, Facebook is the last to market with a virtual assistant, trending behind Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Google.  But, FB is not far behind with recent announcements of their own assistant to come to wild later this year.

You don’t have to wait.  Hire an assistant right now.

Tech4Life airs on @RJR94FM every Wednesday morning at 8:15 am.

IG Panic

So, Instagram (IG) announced that it was experimenting with changing its timeline.  Instead of the reverse chronological order we’ve all become accustomed to, they now want to tweak the algorithm to show the “most relevant posts” first.

Sound familiar?  Well, it should.  Facebook, the largest social media platform in the world, tweaked its timeline back in 2009 to ditch the chronological model for an “interest and tastes” model designed to ensure that you’re not bored by a bunch of random posts (from say, the errant cousin you can’t unfriend because their family) and leave the platform.

The detail of the algorithm is a closely guarded trade secret, but presumably, they take your likes, shares, comments and several other factors into account to make a guess about what you want to see and what you don’t.

Despite MUCH initial rebellion, the modified timeline was eventually accepted by the near 1.6 billion users.  So successful was the final roll out of Facebook’s modified algorithm, microblogging site Twitter attempted their own tweak earlier this year.

If unlike me, you’re following 10 accounts on Twitter, you probably won’t have a problem.  But, the more accounts you follow, the more tweets are going to fill your timeline, the more likely that you’re going to miss some tweets during your periodic social media check in.

Twitter introduced “While You Were Away” a collection of tweets it determined are most interesting to you based on your previous favorites, re-posts, mentions and the like (no pun intended).

On Monday, March 28, IG users were flooded with “Turn On Notification” posts imploring them to guarantee no missed posts from their favorite accounts.  Celebrities, like John Mayr, issued statements appealing to IG to abandon their new policy.  The thing is, it's not policy.  It is an experiment.  IG never announced that it was actually changing its initial reverse chronological timeline.

Still, mark my words, a change is coming.  And we better jump on board.

As social networks get more popular and by extension more crowded, we need ways to filter out content that is just not relevant.  Algorithms do the heavily lifting aka filtering.  If you think you can manage to do the digital social media filtering on your own and still have a physical social life, by all means try.  IG will likely make the algorithm optional for its 400 million users.

Either way, there is no need to panic … unless of course, you have no data/wifi.

Tech4Life airs every Wednesday morning on @RJR94FM.

Digital Jam 3 Sets Stage for Economic Development

Joseph M. Matalon speaks at Digital Jam 3.0

The Digital Jam 3.0 "Caribbean Edition" tech conference kicked off on Saturday, March 1, 2014 with a collection of powerful speakers that reinforced the connection between technology employment and entrepreneurship with personal and national economic development.

Suitably staged at the University of the West Indies Regional Headquarters, the Get Up, Start Up Conference opened with presentations from Jamaica Development Bank Chairman, Joseph M. Matalon, Caribbean Development Bank Operations Officer, Lisa Harding, State Minister in the Ministry of Science, Technology, Energy and Mining, the Hon. Julian Robinson and keynote speaker The Hon. Dr. Peter Phillips, Minister of Finance.

The full and overflowing audience was populated with finalists in the app competition, developers, programmers, visionaries, entrepreneurs and investors in addition to media anxious to report on the insights being shared at the conference.  Notably, the audience was not limited to Jamaican nationals but rather reflected support from the region.  Participants from Haiti, Barbados, Dominica, St. Kitts, Trinidad and Tobago and Antigua were also in attendance.

During his exhaustive presentation, Minister Robinson clearly illustrated the relationship between developing technology and nation building.  Mr. Matalon encouraged developers, programmers and entrepreneurs to get ready for the funding options that will become available in the next few months while Ms. Harding highlighted that never has there been a better time to capitalize on business opportunities as technology levels the global playing field.

Digital Jam 3.0 "Caribbean Edition"

The conference continued with a number of panel discussions and breakout sessions designed to put potential tech luminaries with current tech leaders for knowledge sharing, insights and networking.

Interspersed between the speeches, talks, presentations, demonstrations, handouts and consistent unfolding of critical information was a lighter, energetic yet equally significant performance of singer/dub poet/entertainer Randy McLaren.

The two day conference continues on March 2, 2014.

Go online and make money

During his presentation to the packed room of participants at the Digital Jam 3.0 “Caribbean Edition” Get Up, Start Up conference at the University of the West Indies Regional Headquarters on Saturday, March 1, 2014, Minister Julian Robinson, State Minister in the Ministry of Technology, Energy and Mining called on young people to, “go online and make money!”

During his presentation, Minister Robinson outlined the strategy, policies and legislation being undertaken by the Government to support the technology sector on a macro level.  He went on to speak to the improvements planned for the National ICT Infrastructure and even alluded to the technology efficiencies planned for public sector modernization.

But most interesting to the room were the pronouncements regarding capacity building and innovation enabling.  The Government of Jamaica (GOJ) had participated in and/or supported events such as Digital Jam 2.0 and now Digital Jam 3.0, KingstOOn Animation Festival, Open Data Pilots and the GOJ Innovation Awards.  

The StartUp Jamaica Innovation Programme is slated to come online before year end.  Also due before year end is legislation to facilitate licenses for mobile money opening the door for a slew of developers to create suitable apps for the local market.

In principle, technology levels the playing field.  A developer in Kingston has the same opportunity to create an app as a developer in the Silicon Valley.  But the catch is, technology can only level the playing field if players have access.

Digital Jam 3.0 "Caribbean Edition" Get Up, Start Up Conference

Jamaica is well poised to take advantage of opportunities in the tech sector with deep penetration of broadband and increasing penetration of mobile broadband.  Telecoms LIME and Flow have partnered with the government to provide high speed internet access in schools and the tablet programme will put tens of thousands of internet enabled tablets in the hands of students by the start of the next academic year.

Ultimately, Minister Robinson delivered a road map for economic development through technology.  Likely, the Digital Jam 3.0 participants will speed right along.