AS HEARD ON: WGAN Mornings with Ken and Matt: Cisco's WebEx Offer for Businesses, Coronavirus Remote Working and Apps and more

Good morning everybody!

I was on with Ken and Matt and we had a good discussion about how Coronaviruses were affecting businesses and Cisco's WebEx offer for collaborating securely.  We also talked about how Apple is tightening up the types of Apps that will be in their AppStore. Here we go with Ken and Matt.

These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com

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Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Craig
But particularly those that are in regulated or sensitive industries. Of course, we have those right down in the south of Maine, think of those in the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard where a lot of people work. Apple, because they are trying to be sensitive to all of these security needs are even tightening them up more for businesses that deal with this. The new standard for military contracts is the CMMC, and it is coming out in June.

Craig
Good morning, everybody. Craig Peterson, here. They have this "Eggs and Issues" thing over in Portland, which is kind of cool. In New Hampshire, we call it "Politics and Eggs" that happens every once in a while, but Eggs and Issues, seems to be I don't know monthly. Anyhow, Ken and Matt, were over there this morning and we had an excellent chance to chat about a couple of things. I wanted to cover in better detail, and I think I did a better job with Ken and Matt than I did yesterday on WTAG talking about Coronavirus, work from home issues, and also the Mandalorian. I took a little bit of a different angle on it, which is kind of ironic because we're talking about how they shot the video for the TV show.

Matt
Craig Peterson, our tech guru, joins us as he always does on Wednesdays at this time to go over the world of technology. Craig, welcome to the program.

Craig
Hey, good morning, gentlemen.

Ken
You know, it's rare where I see a topic from you that just excites me as much as talking about The Mandalorian. I mean, because we never talk about lifestyle issues here. So this is so exciting. How does the Mandalorian deal with tech issues, pray-tell?

Craig
That almost sounds sarcastic.

Ken
No No, no, we love the Mandalorian

Craig
Okay, okay. For those who don't know, the Mandalorian is a new science fiction series that's in the Star Wars universe released recently here by Industrial Light and Magic. It is a significant change in how movies they make movies. You've seen over the years, variations, of course, I was watching Hogan's Heroes the other day, and upfront, it said CBS in color. Ken and I both remember our first color televisions and things. And then moviemaking TV making moved into the world, of course, where we have greenscreens, and they use greenscreens when an actor is trying to talk to something that isn't there. Think of the Lord of the Rings movies for that one. It had Golem who was this character that was a guy, and they put these little like golf ball things on him so that computers could track his movement and the That was neat because they put this character in that was kind of there the actor could interact with this character. But the computers put in the actual figure ultimately. And then the complete green screens that we've seen more and more of where the only thing that the actor seizes, the table, the actor, city mat, or the chair that they're in, perhaps a couple of items scattered around the room, the whole rest of the room is green. And after all of the filming is done, and it's in production, they add in all the scenery, they said the room, they said everything else. Well, what they did was the Mandalorian is entirely different. They built this room, if you will, in a stage that was 21 by 75 feet, and it was entirely screens, digital screens all around them. The actors now saw everything going on around them. The cameras were shooting on the stage exactly what would end up being in the film, if you will, at the end? It's amazing. So the actors can see these virtual objects, the directors can see the objects. One of the things that were cool about this and I watched some video of it as the Mandalorian was filmed on this stage, is that the director could say, Hey, I don't like that building's placement, and change it right there almost instantly, and move things around. Everything on the screens is dependent on the camera angles. Think about all the incredible mathematics involved in this type of production. If you look at this stage, with the naked eye, you'd see all kinds of mess and distortions in some cases. Still, the camera was seeing everything perfect. They also use these LED panels that were displaying everything to provide excellent lighting. And they had an iPad that was there, and they were able to move the lights around, brighten this up dim that up. It usually would take out a whole bunch of time. The specific names for these people are gaffers, and they are responsible for moving and setting up lights. No need for any of those people. Amazing. The crews, the director, all of the creative people, all of these subdirectories could be more flexible in production, try different approaches, and do it almost instantly. And they did all of this using video game technology. It is absolutely the future. It's going to cut production costs a lot and increase the quality of production. It's just amazing, mainly if you saw the Mandalorian. It's just a whole new thing that came right out of Industrial Light and Magic.

Matt
We are talking to Craig Peterson, our tech guru, who joins us at this time every Wednesday to go over what's happening in the world of technology. Craig, I don't think we can get around asking you a coronavirus question, and I did notice that Cisco is telling you to use WebEx stay at home. Don't go to those meetings. Use WebEx.

Craig
Yeah. Now I've got to say Cisco is something that I sell and use, but it is the only, believe me, conferencing teamwork application available, but is secure. Zoom is a very, very popular one. I'm sure a lot of people use it. I've even used it. Continue to use it off and on with people that only have the availability of zoom. But the zoom has had some major security problems. And I don't mean like a breach. I mean, what ad is designed this because it allowed direct access into your networks at the office for hackers and viruses and everything else. So all those who may be one of the easier ones to use, it is not one of the safer ones. Also, with something like WebEx, you get the advantage of the team collaboration. So obviously, I'm a proponent. You can tell by the way I'm talking about it. It just works, and it's now free due to the Coronavirus as many businesses are having people work at home. It's free for companies to use. So seriously, consider using something like this. I've used slack before, which is pretty good. But again, it's not a secure end to end platform. WebEx, I think, is the hands-down winner. A lot of businesses are going to be looking at VPN. two factor authentication tokens are something that we've talked about on the show before. Now's the time you should be using them. I've got to say, if you want to know more, I do webinars where I cover these things all the time. They are 100% completely free, not trying to sell you anything, and I've got some coming up. I'm going to try and do webinars on Thursday, Friday, and Sunday, on how to work safely from home. We're probably going to have them not just for an end-user, but also for small businesses. I teach people how they can use self-service portals to make their life a little bit easier so that the people who are trying to work from home can kind of set things up themselves and what are the pros and cons. We're putting together a little playbook, all of this stuff. I hope to get you to the point where you can work from home relatively safely. Still, I do like WebEx. I have used zoom, and it's a reasonable alternative if you're not worried about some of the significant security errors that have been made by the designers of zoom.

Ken
We're talking with Craig Peterson, our tech guru. You can always go to Craig Peterson dot com by the way if you want to get all of this information also you can hear him on Saturdays at one o'clock on WGAN. Yeah. Um, so I'm a big user of Apple's App Store because I like apps. I understand they have a new policy to fight spam and abuse. But there some negatives to that?

Craig
Yeah, there, there always are some negatives. I think the pros outweigh them, however. We talked about how Google just got rid of basically millions of apps if you will. The Google Chrome Store, they just got rid of apps that people downloaded millions of times because they were spying on people and uploading the information. They got rid of those in the Google Play Store, which by the way, again, is a reason only to use the official app stores from Android. Of course, it's the Google Play Store, and for iOS, it's the Apple App Store. What Apple's done now is they've tightened up the review guidelines, because Apple reviews every app that's on the store, to help make sure that they're safe. They, of course, require apps to meet the guidelines, right. But there, they've expanded the definition of a BAM app. In other words, apps that are using the push notifications to serve ads to users, and they're limiting this the submissions of these types of apps, to trusted organizations, etc. but particularly those that are in regulated or sensitive industries. Of course, we have those right down types of industries right here in southern Maine. Think of Portsmouth Naval Shipyard where a lot of people work. Apple, because they are trying to be sensitive to all of these security needs, is even tightening them up more for businesses that deal with this. It's now called CMMC. It's the new standard coming out in June for military-affiliated companies. Anyways, there's a little bit of controversy here. But I think, ultimately, Ken, things are going to be good. It is an excellent thing. And I'll be talking more about this and VPN stuff, working from home as well. This weekend. If you want to sign up for the courses. Go to Craig Peterson dot com you can sign up right there on the homepage or any page, just sign up for my mailing list, and I'll make sure you know about them, and I'll talk more about this on Saturday. At 1 pm right here.

Matt
Indeed that is Craig Peterson. Ladies gentlemen. He is our tech guru, and he joins us at this time every Wednesday to go over the world of technology. Craig, thank you as always, and we will talk to you again next week, sir.

Craig
Gentlemen, thank you very much. Bye Bye. Thanks. All right.

Ken
All right, we will take a quick break here. We will go into the newsroom.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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