Whether traveling the world or just crossing town, Voice over Internet Protocol or VoIP for short, can dramatically reduce the cost of reaching out to anyone, anywhere in the world.

Find out more about the gift of freedom this Cloud-based technology can provide you, in my latest Travel Technology post on Solo Traveler Blog.

The Announcements

If you were hoping for revolutionary, and were disappointed by the evolutionary announcements from Apple on September 10, take a break from hype and the haters to see it for what it is. I'm not going to describe every feature and curve of the phone, Apple are masters of that, so start by having a look at their website if you missed what's new.

A7 64bit Processor

64bit processors matter where you're dealing with math that can't fit into 32bit. The obvious winner from this is the iPhone 5S and later owner. This would seem to indicate that Apple is serious about security since one of the key benefits is cryptography.

Another key benefactor of 64bit architecture is graphics. There will be a new iPad soon and having better gaming graphics was highlighted in the iPhone keynote. Harmonizing 64bit apps across the top sellers makes perfect sense.

Touch ID

Apple's mysterious new fingerprint scanner to unlock your phone and purchase items from the App Store, some have commented is one of few innovations in this latest generation of iPhone. On the surface, it definitely sounds as though Apple has taken the time to do this properly out of the gate.

Security-wise, it stores your impression as an encrypted hash. This is good, as it means that even if someone were to somehow gain access to the stored information representative of your fingerprint, it would be useless to them.

Although it's early to make a call, many who understand biometrics are claiming that simply analyzing a print without measuring temperature leaves the iPhone 5S open to spoofing by lifting prints and copying them on a 3D printer. Once the phone is in the hands of the public, we'll have the answer, because you just know there's a line up of hack attempts waiting for it.

Still, the fact that Apple is putting their money where their mouth is by allowing purchases from their store, says a lot about their confidence in this new feature.

The M7 coprocessor

This power saving addition has had very little mention versus the 64bit architecture, Touch ID and what the phone doesn't have. But even though Phil Schiller only mentioned fitness uses for the M7, this isn't to say that it won't have strong benefits to mapping and navigation. Trying to navigate in areas with spotty GPS coverage can be helped tremendously by a low powered coprocessor that can continue to report direction, movement and orientation even durning a loss of coverage.

What's most interesting about the M7 chip is not the stated use, but the potential uses from constantly tracking how an iPhone is oriented and what direction its facing. Is the phone moving and if so, how fast? This is significantly important realtime data.

True Tone Flash

I'm personally an iPhone user and strong admirer of the great innovations in Android and the phones that are challenging Apple to keep their composure. One thing that has kept me content with iPhone is the exceptionally good photos (for a phone anyway).

There's no question that Phil Schiller caused an outburst from many photographers by stating the iPhone 5S camera was in anyway DSLR level. Every iPhone is said to have a better camera than before, higher this and bigger that.

But what is exceptionally important is the idea that we can now have smartphone cameras that will balance flash photography before taking the picture. This is a big deal, since up to this point, smartphone flash photography has been a dismal effort.

iOS 7

Let face facts, the real changes are coming with iOS 7. Borrowing from Android, features like control center to put common settings in one panel will make the iPhone easier to use.

Another long awaited improvement is the ability to store passwords on the iPhone. Perhaps Apple just wasn't satisfied with their previous security capabilities, but it's been odd to have this feature only exist in MacOS until now. Regardless, you won't find me personally giving up the security and convenience of LastPass unless the NSA forces them to shut down.

AirDrop for iPhone makes perfect sense as a simple way to share photos between iPhones. This has been a wonderful feature to use since it was introduce to MacOS. Emailing or sharing via the cloud is not at all difficult, but AirDrop trumps it in terms of easy to use sharing with other iPhone users in close range. Unfortunately, you will need to have at least an iPhone 5, 4th gen iPad, iPad mini, 5th gen iPod Touch and iCloud to take advantage of AirDrop in iOS 7.

iTunes Radio, while seemingly a me too product to competing services like Pandora, Spotify, Rdio, etc., some have pointed out that they are only being served music related ads, which helps with discovery of even more music.

What's missing?

Let's face it, haters are going to hate, so let's put it all out on the table.

NFC

There's no NFC (Near Field Communication) for paying at designated stores and coffee shops. I really wanted this feature when it first stated to appear in the Google Nexus phones, but the adoption in North America has been so slow that technologies like Geo-fencing, used by Square and others have made it almost obsolete before it's really even taken root.

It's rumored that Apple is testing low energy Bluetooth radio as an alternate mobile payment system and will bypass NFC altogether.

5G WiFi

Apple skipped adding the new, faster WiFi known as 802.11ac or 5G. Possibly because of its effect on battery life. I tested a Samsung S4 for 802.11ac performance with the latest Archer C7 router from TP-Link. While the speed was nice, I didn't find that it was a significantly better experience than similar phones with only 802.11n. While my testing did not involve battery capacity, users of the first two phones with 802.11ac, the HTC One and Samsung S4, have complained that their phones need charging more frequently than the previous HTC One and Samsung S3.

Bigger Screen Size

Although many were still hoping to see screen sizes like the Android phones are getting, it was pretty obvious that if the leaked images were true, as they turned out to be, then the next iPhone screen would not grow in size, and that turned out to be accurate.

Apple has no need to follow the other phone manufactures in widening their screen size. While it seems an attractive feature, many don't want a phone that fills their pocket more or feels larger in their hand. I've heard as many complaints as praises for the size of these larger phones. Many think it's what they want until they start using the phone regularly and discover it's larger than what is comfortable for them.

While I'm not betting against Apple eventually increasing the iPhone screen size, I wouldn't be surprised to find that they resist increasing it longer than expected.

What are your thoughts about the iPhone 5S? Has Apple missed the mark or are you planning to purchase when they're available beginning September 20?

What features were you hoping for that you'll now have to wait and see if they appear in iPhone 6?

Please leave me your comments or send me a Tweet @dougkrug

Advances in solid state memory read/write speed and lower manufacturing costs are making Solid State Drives attractive options in new computers. Not to mention that your smartphone, tablet, and USB flash drives all use this technology.

One problem - 

Flash memory cannot actually be erased

A study by researchers at University of California San Diego revealed that between 4% to 75% of a files contents remain completely intact when an attempt is made to erase flash memory. USB flash drives fared worse, were researchers could recover between 0.57% to 84.9% percent of file contents remaining on a USB flash drive after an overwrite attempt was made.

Testing 12 Solid State Drives, UCSD researchers found that none of the available software techniques for erasing individual files proved effective. Erasing entire SSDs with native sanitize commands was most effective, but only when performed correctly. The software techniques were found to work most, but not all of the time. Of the twelve solid state drives they tested using the native "Erase Unit" command, only four were actually erased. One SSD had reported itself to be sanitized, yet the data was recoverable by the researchers.

Additionally, the methods used by the researchers to determine if the data has been truly wiped from flash memory is not available to the average consumer. Without a way for consumers to verify data has actually been completely removed from flash memory, there is no way to know if so called "data sanitation" is truly effective.

The key issues stem from the way that flash memory differs vs a conventional magnetic hard drive. Flash memory works by pushing electrons from one side to another of a barrier. This change of position is monitored and registered as either a 1 or 0, the binary code that is the basis of all modern computing.

Problem is, this pushing of electrons back and forth, causes the material to fatigue rapidly. To combat this, solid state memory manufactures use a method called "Wear Leveling". This moves data around so read/write is not constantly occurring in the same physical spot on the memory.

Wear Leveling creates a security issue

Flash memory doesn't actually erase data at the time new data is written, it just marks it for deletion. Then comes Wear Leveling, duplicating chunks of data and moving it around between the time it's first written and then overwritten. Data marked for deletion is duplicated and moved by wear leveling and the so called "garbage collection" algorithm that was supposed to go back later and erase data marked for deletion, knows nothing about the data that was duplicated by wear leveling.

Since mobile smartphones, tablets and computers with solid state memory are purchased, sold and discarded at an ever increasing rate, it's important going forward that you are aware that your personal information and data cannot simply be permanently "sanitized" from these devices and could be recovered at a later time by someone who should not have it.

One workaround that researchers suggest for manufacturers to employ is called "Crypto-Erasure". But this method requires that the data is encrypted at the time it's first written. The idea is to encrypt all data on the device, so even if it can be recovered later, it will be useless to anyone who does not have the encryption key to access it. For the majority of devices, this is not the case and unsecured data has already been written to flash memory. This means any data already written to the device cannot necessarily ever be made secure.

Why not just use degaussing to erase flash memory?

Degaussing is a method used to render conventional magnetic media unreadable by exposing it to a very powerful magnetic field. For magnetic media, it is very effective, but flash memory is not affected by magnetic fields. In their research document, the method was evaluated and found to be completely ineffective on flash memory.

So what's the answer? How do you protect yourself?

Anyone with a Windows desktop or laptop can use TruCrypt or PGPDisk to protect their data on an SSD or USB flash drive. Mac users can take advantage of the built in FileVault function found in the Security & Privacy settings. Using these methods, the data will be useless without the encryption key, leaving the device or storage media to be erased and securely re-written to again.

For smartphones and tablets, end user privacy and security is largely in the hands of the manufacturer. While some data could be encrypted before storing on the device, native applications on the phone like note pad, address book, etc would not necessarily encrypt the data and protect your privacy when the device is end of life, and no longer in your possession.

Thankfully there are highly affordable, secure solutions such as LastPass and 1Password that can store your passwords, notes, credit card and other personal information securely so they cannot be accessed without a secure master password.

Hopefully these issues will come to the forefront of mainstream media, forcing all manufactures to provide verifiable encryption on all devices that use flash memory, which for now will increasingly be the storage media of choice until the day when data storage using nanostructures, in so called "Superman Memory Crystals" makes the leap from laboratory to commercially viable and affordable.

With all the news over the NSA's intrusion into privacy, the latest poll shows that 50% of users don't care. Where do you stand on the subject?

Do you care if your personal data can be retrieved after you no longer own a device or storage disk?

Please leave me a comment or send me a Tweet @dougkrug

Image courtesy of thanunkorn/Freedigitalphotos.net