iZotope launches portable, pro-quality recording device Spire Studio

A big part of a musician’s life is travelling and touring their music. That doesn’t mean they have to stop creating music on the go. A lot of them don’t but to make their lives easier, iZotope just launched the Spire Studio, a one-touch, professional quality, portable recording studio. It works together with a free, integrated iOS app and offers a suite of tools that use iZotope’s intelligent audio processing.

It has a one touch Soundcheck button that automatically sets ideal microphone and instrument levels to get rid of distortion and clipping. It has studio-quality effects like reverbs, delays, and amp models. It has two combo jacks to let its users plug in instruments or mics with +48 V phantom power. And it can mix together up to eight tracks you record with it. It has editing tools that let you do thing like quickly mute or audition tracks and since this is done wirelessly, it’s easy to share with collaborators. The Spire Studio retails for $449 and is available at Best Buy, Long & McQuade, and Amazon.

Facebook quiz app may have leaked personal data of 120 million users

While the whole Cambridge Analytica scandal isn’t that far in our past, we knew it was going to unearth a lot of skeletons in Facebook’s closet. The latest one is a Facebook quiz app that may have leaked personal data of around 120 million users who’ve answered the quizzes. Security researcher who goes by the username Inti De Ceukelaire discovered the leak by taking part in Facebook’s data abuse bounty program launched in April 10. One of the third-party apps he looked through was from NameTests.com and there he discovered that the site exposed Facebook users’ data to “any third-party that requested it.” He found that the app exposed user information through javascript, which could easily share files between sites as part of its basic functions.

The site has possibly leaked information since the end of 2016 and De Ceukelaire reported it to Facebook by April 22. Unfortunately, Facebook’s response wasn’t as speedy as the fix only came around the end of June. According to NameTests’ parent company, Social Sweethearts, they have investigated the issue but no user data has been compromised and they are working on measures to avoid these risks from happening in the future. 

Source: TechCrunch

How Canadian businesses can succeed in wake of NAFTA uncertainty

The NAFTA renegotiations are resulting in quite the tumultuous turn for many Canadian industries, particularly those that have been slapped on with unreasonable tariffs from the United States government.

Though Canada has responded with its own carefully selected list of tariffs, chosen with a politically strategic plot in mind, Canadian businesses still must weather the storm until a more permanent solution solidifies. In short, Canadian businesses must look both nationally, and internationally, to substitute its lost revenues. This means trading more closely with the EU, and, of course, by selling directly to the Canadian consumer. To accomplish this, all Canadian businesses should aim to:

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Key Operator: The BlackBerry Key 2 review

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

BlackBerry Mobile, which is owned by TCL Communications, has proven that there's a niche of smartphone users who want keyboards. More importantly, it shows that there is still innovation and evolution in keyboard-focused devices.

The BlackBerry KEY2, takes the ideas and design of the BlackBerry KEYOne and pushes them forward in a sleeker, more powerful and upgraded QWERTY keyboard smartphone.

Tapping into its heritage, BlackBerry has used the Bold 9600’s keyboard as the inspiration for the KEY2. Which now has a larger and even more responsive QWERTY keyboard. All the tricks and features are present, including the ability to use the keyboard as a trackpad and the flick-typing functionality for predictive text completion.

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