The latest IT news, articles and advice from Astaris

Microsoft’s ‘Teams Connect’ Challenges Slack

New features for Microsoft’s Teams include cross-organisation channel sharing called ‘Teams Connect’ that has been likened to a very similar feature in Slack. Announced at Ignite At Microsoft’s ‘Ignite’ annual conference, held online this year, Microsoft announced a number of new collaborative working features for its Teams platform. Microsoft Teams Connect One key new feature […]

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UK’s First Till-less ‘Walk Out’ Shop

Amazon has opened its first ‘no-till, just walk out’ grocery store in London where customers are automatically billed on exiting the store. Frictionless The new Amazon Fresh store offers a “frictionless” experience to shoppers as they are given what feels like an incredible level of trust and hopefully save time in the shop thanks to […]

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‘LitterCam’ Target Motorists Who Throw Rubbish From Cars

The first UK pilot scheme using CCTV to specifically target motorists who throw litter from their cars will shortly begin in Maidstone, Kent. LitterCam The Maidstone Borough Council is enlisting the help of LitterCam technology, which uses AI to remotely detect vehicle-based littering, and number plate recognition to identify cars involved in littering. LitterCam is […]

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Google Tracking Cookies

As Google has announced an end to third-party cookies, we look at the issues that have led to the decision, and at what may replace these cookies. The Difference Between First and Third-Party Cookies A cookie is a piece of code (used for tracking) that takes the form of a small text file that is […]

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More Remote Workers Trusting Mobile Data For Important ‘Stuff’

New research from O2 (conducted online by YouGov) shows that more remote workers are switching to mobile data to stay online and avoid connectivity issues. Switching The survey, involving more than 4,000 adults (1,351 of whom were working from home) showed that nearly half (47 per cent) were experiencing stress from connectivity issues and that […]

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Google Alerts Used In Malware Scam

It has been reported that hackers have been able to spread malware using fake news stories via the Google Alerts service. Google Alerts Launched in 2003, Google Alerts is Google’s content change detection and notification service which sends emails to a user when it finds new results (e.g. web pages, newspaper articles, blogs) that match […]

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Get Paid By Your ‘Super Followers’ on Twitter

Twitter has announced that it will soon launch a ‘Super Follow’ feature where account holders can charge their followers for access to exclusive content such as newsletters, videos and deals. What is ‘Super Follow’? The Super Follow feature, which was announced in an investor presentation last week, will allow Popular Twitter users to charge a […]

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What Is Clubhouse?

With ‘audio-only’, social media app Clubhouse starting to hit the news after its launch one year ago, we take a look at exactly what it is and why you might consider using it. What Is It? Clubhouse is an invitation-only iPhone app where users can set-up their own (or join other users’) virtual public or […]

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Google Workspace

Google doesn’t let Workspace / GSuite customers change how they’re being billed. For instance customers who are being billed by Google Germany, can not alter the billing to be Google UK in GBP. However, this issue can be solved by transferring their subscription to a reseller, and the reseller billing them (the reseller will be […]

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Scotland Shames The Rest of UK for Free Electronic Car Charging

Zap-Map figures show that Scotland has the largest number of free electronic vehicle (EV) charging points in the UK. More Than A Quarter of the UK’s Free Chargers The latest figures from EV charging infrastructure trackers Zap-Maps show that of the 21,000 charging devices listed on Zap-Map, 4,900 are free to use. This means that […]

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Energy – Consumption & Carbon From Bitcoin and Other Tech

With the news that mining Bitcoin uses more electricity annually than the whole of Argentina, we take a closer look at the carbon footprint of technology today. Cambridge Researchers from Cambridge recently highlighted how power-hungry “mining” for the Bitcoin cryptocurrency is because it requires heavy computer calculations to verify transactions. The researchers reported that it […]

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Coronavirus Lockdown Increases ‘Romance Fraud’

UK Finance and Action Fraud have both reported increases in fraud related to romance scams over the lockdown period. What Is Romance Fraud? Romance fraud/romance scams refers to fraudsters adopting fake personas online in order to fool a victim into thinking they are in a serious romantic relationship with the aim of convincing the victim […]

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