Tag Archives: Social Networking

Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Google Meet Now Available On Gmail Using Mobile Devices

Google recently published a blog post that didn’t get much attention, but that outlines a major change to the way the company’s video collaboration tool “Meet” works.

The blog post reads in part, as follows:

“In the coming weeks, you’ll soon notice a new Meet tab on your phone’s Gmail app where you can see upcoming meetings scheduled in Google Calendar, and easily join them with a single tap….If you don’t want Meet to appear as a tab in the Gmail app, access the Settings from the hamburger menu in the top left corner of your inbox, tap on your account, scroll down and uncheck Meet.”

This is a small change, but it represents a huge improvement in the way Meet works. The change makes it much more streamlined and efficient, which dramatically improves the quality of the user experience.

The change builds on Google’s decision earlier this year to make Google Meet free for all users, which arose from the changes the global pandemic wrought in how the world works. Demand is spiking for video conferencing services due to worldwide lockdowns. Popular video conferencing service Zoom is stumbling over security concerns. Google and other tech giants moved quickly to take advantage of the surge in demand. This represents the latest manifestation of those changes.

Google has made a number of tweaks and improvements to Meet since the surge in demand began. Although they’re playing it close to the vest in terms of the future changes they have planned, one thing that seems clear is the fact that more changes and improvements are coming.

Kudos to Google for rising to the challenge and making their video conferencing service more accessible and more user friendly. It is rapidly becoming the default choice for a growing number of organizations. If you’re not currently using it and you’re not 100 percent satisfied with the video conferencing service you are using, it’s well worth checking out.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Google Added A Video Conferencing Tool For Users

Google Meet is a video conferencing tool the company originally designed for Enterprise users.

There are serious security issues with some of the more popular free or low-cost options available for the masses.

So, Google made the decision to make Meet free to anyone with an email address.

The rollout took two weeks to complete, but is now available to all. It can be yours simply by heading to meet.google.com, or by paying a visit to the Google Play or Apple App store.

Since the global pandemic forced so many people to work from home, Google has seen a huge surge in demand for the service. Last month alone, Meet added an average of 3 million new users a day. Seeking to further capitalize on the increased demand, the company is taking steps to make their offering even more attractive. They are among other things, adding a new feature that makes it directly accessible from Gmail.

Google isn’t alone in the rush to capture an increasing percentage of this burgeoning new market. Last month, Facebook announced a whole raft of new video products, including Messenger Rooms. Rooms are consumer-focused video conferencing solutions that leverage the company’s well-established technology.

Even with the rush of competition into this sphere, however, Google is well-positioned to utterly dominate the market. The G-Suite is incredibly popular among Enterprise users. By opening Meet’s features up to the general public, the company should be able to capture a significant portion of the new demand for home video conferencing services.

Even after the pandemic is behind us, industry experts are predicting that there won’t be much of a decline in demand, and that video conferencing will come to increasingly define the way the world works. Only time will tell. Meanwhile, if you’re a fan of the Google ecosystem, you can get your hands on a new, high value video conferencing tool for free.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Facebook’s AI Might Be Able To Find Offensive Memes

Facebook recently released an intriguing research paper called “The Hateful Memes Challenge: Detecting Hate Speech in Multimodal Memes.”

It’s well worth the read and a closer look at the database developed over the course of the research. The idea is simple: Use machine learning to help identify ‘mean’ and hateful memes.

If such a tool could be developed, it would help not just Facebook. It would help the entire online ecosystem better police the internet, stopping a significant portion of hate speech in its tracks.

Unfortunately, as the research shows, the AI still has a ways to go before it can truly be considered effective.

To conduct the search, the company compiled a data set consisting of a million samples of memes from all across the web. They eliminated any that were in clear violation of Facebook’s Terms of Service, which left them with 162,000 samples.

They re-created those memes by copying the text onto a new image, sourced via a partnership with Getty Images. That done, they had human reviewers judge whether the memes were “hateful”. Once a consensus was reached, they culled the remaining memes down to a final data set of 10,000, using these to attempt to “teach” the AI to identify hateful memes.

The result? The human reviewers had an average accuracy rate of 84.7 percent, versus the AI’s 64.73 percent accuracy rate. It was a good effort by the AI, especially since this was the first attempt. Clearly, much more work needs to be done before the AI routine can be said to be truly effective.

A researcher involved in the project had this to say about the results:

“If we knew what is missing, it would be easy to fix and the gap between AI and humans would be lower. Generally speaking, we need to work on improving multimodal understanding and reasoning.”

One thing you can be sure of is this: The company will keep hammering away at the problem, and the AI’s percentages will increase in time. It’s an interesting, challenging project that could have an enormous impact. Kudos to Facebook for their work to this point.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Tweets Can No Longer Be Sent From SMS To Twitter

If you use Twitter on a regular basis, then you probably saw the official tweet from the company. Effective immediately, they’ve shut down the functionality that allowed users to tweet via SMS, something that has been a part of the platform since its earliest days.

For the time being, the company is keeping SMS-based two-factor authentication for account holders, but that may change.

Currently, it’s too soon to say with any degree of confidence. The recent action was taken in response to serious security flaws with tweeting via SMS that made user accounts vulnerable.

This is not the first time the company has suspended use of the feature. The first time they did it though, the suspension lasted just two days. It happened September 4th and 5th of 2019 after CEO Jack Dorsey’s Twitter account was hacked. This time, there’s no end in sight.

Users who rely on SMS-based tweeting are urged to make the transition to the social network’s Twitter mobile app, which serves as a viable alternative.

It should also be noted that while SMS-based tweeting has been suspended for most of the world, there are a few remote areas where it’s the only option available, and in those places, the capability to send a tweet via SMS remains intact.

The Twitter support team’s message about the change was short and to the point, reading simply:

“We want to continue to help keep your account safe. We’ve seen vulnerabilities with SMS, so we’ve turned off our Twitter via SMS service, except for a few countries. If you were using Twitter vis SMS, you can log in at twitter.com or download our mobile app to enjoy the full Twitter experience.”

At this time, there is no word on if or whether the service will be restored. If it’s something you’ve been in the habit of relying on in the past, be aware that you’ll have to make a few changes to your routine.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

PC Users Beware Of Downloader For Zoom Created By Hackers

Are you working from home right now? If so, you’re certainly not alone. Tens of millions of people are doing the same, and there are untold millions around the world doing likewise.

Working from home presents a host of new challenges, not the least of which is finding ways of communicating face to face without violating social distancing rules.

For an increasing number of people, Zoom is becoming the communications tool of choice. That is a fact that hackers around the world are only too happy to exploit.

The simple truth is that Zoom has been found to have significant security risks, which the developers are working hard to address. Even if they succeed in their goal and make the communications platform more secure, hackers have already found a new inroad: They’re now offering fake Zoom downloaders that install a wide range of malware.

Researchers at TrendMicro have been tracking the issue and have found that the RevCode WebMonitor RAT is the current malware of choice for this most recent campaign.

The researchers stress that the poisoned downloaders aren’t coming from the download center on Zoom’s corporate site. Instead, they’re being loaded onto a large number of thinly disguised domains promising free tools, including Zoom. Given this reality, it’s important to pay close attention to exactly where the software you’re downloading is coming from. If you’re not getting it from a trusted source, there’s no telling what you might wind up installing on your phone or computer, in addition to the software you originally meant to acquire.

This is hardly a new tactic. Hackers have long relied on poisoned installers that deliver both legitimate software and quietly install a malicious payload in the background. These days though, the tactic is becoming more common than ever, so be on your guard against it. Be mindful of where you’re getting your downloads from.

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