Design Better Together

nsquared tabletop re-imagines the way you design on the DIGITABLE. We have made it easier than ever to furnish a floor plan, or even build a custom brochure based on your furnishing needs.

With the Content Explorer pack for nsquared tabletop:

nsquared attractor cloud - Preload the DIGITABLE with company brochures and artifacts ready to be used to furnish client floor plans.

nsquared artifacts - Layer client floor plans with artifacts to furnish a space that suits their requirements.

nsquared drawing - Annotate floor plans based on decisions made.

nsquared web - Open up a web browser and search for some living room inspiration.

nsquared sharing - Share custom brochures and floor plans directly from the DIGITABLE to your clients inbox.

Watch the video below to find out how Freda and Joel come to an agreement and furnish their living space using the DIGITABLE:

To find out more about how we can help you design better together, contact us at info@nsquaredsolutions.com

Security and nsquared documents

One of the questions commonly asked about nsquared documents is around the security of the NFC tags and the associated PIN.

It is difficult to know how much we should disclose about the way we secure your authentication information. Therefore I will keep this post at a fairly high level and explain the concepts that keep your details safe.

First the obligatory disclaimer; nothing is truly safe. Seriously, if you believe you have a system that is 100% secure you are naïve. In order for encrypted data to be useful it needs to be decrypted. The encryption and decryption is done in software using mathematical algorithms to make it hard for people without the correct corresponding components to access the data. The question, with security, is how hard do you make it for "bad" people to access your information? At nsquared we believe we have made it difficult for anyone to access your data without substantial effort.

When you log in to one of your cloud document stores (OneDrive, Dropbox etc) the service responds with a token that enables the software to access that cloud store. Somehow nsquared documents needs to store that token. We don’t need to store your username and password. In fact we don’t even have access to your username and password. That is hidden by the login screens provided by the cloud store providers (Microsoft and Dropbox). Even if we did have that data we wouldn’t store it, as we don’t need it.

We then associate an NFC tag to that token. The NFC tag contains a unique ID, nothing else. We do not store the token or your PIN on the tag. The tag is like a locker number. It uniquely identifies a place your data is stored. Except it is encrypted. So even with that unique number on your tag your still need to know how to decrypt it in order to find the locker.

So what about the PIN? We never store your PIN anywhere. The only place the PIN is stored is in your head. Please don’t write it down somewhere, your security will be lower. The PIN is a bit like your locker key. We use the PIN in combination with your tag ID to identify who you are, where your data is stored and how to decrypt your data.

If you lose your tag and are concerned about the fact your PIN was written on a sticky note on your desk (yes, you know who I am talking about). Then you can go to your cloud store provider and disable access for nsquared documents to access your store. You can then create a new tag using nsquared documents and this will generate a whole new setup.

• How to unlink from DropBox
• The list of apps connected to your OneDrive Personal account
•  Office 365 app permissions

If you are using a Surface Hub please download the free trial of nsquared documents from here. 

If there are any features you would like to see added to nsquared documents please let us know.

nsquared documents 2.1

The Surface Hub is an incredible achievement. As an interactive multi-user screen it presents a canvas (or surface if you will) upon which your team can collaborate, create, brainstorm, and present ideas.

As a true multi-user device, you do not login to the Surface Hub; who would be the person logged in when a team needs to work together at the screen? Authenticating the entire session for a single person makes sense if only one person is going to need to access their data. The latest update to Windows 10 Creators update does do this, and it alleviates the challenge for a single presenter.

When you have a meeting with multiple people, who want to bring their content to the screen, you need a way for each person to authenticate. Authentication on the Surface Hub is a cumbersome experience. If you log in using the on-screen touch-keyboard you are sharing your password with all the people watching. This is made far worse if your Surface Hub is projected out to other screens on a teleconference or in room.

To solve this problem at nsquared we built nsquared documents, an application that allows multiple people to authenticate with their accounts on the Surface Hub, in the same session. With nsquared documents you associate an NFC tag with your account the first time you use the application.

In the first version we released you could connect to your OneDrive for Business account using your Office 365 account. In version 2.0 we expanded nsquared documents to support your SharePoint and Dropbox accounts. You still only need a single NFC tag and you can access any of the accounts you have added to your profile.

This latest release enables you to also add your OneDrive personal account to the same tag.

With nsquared documents 2.1 you and your team can access files from Dropbox, Office 365, and OneDrive personal accounts.

Create an NFC tag to connect to any of these cloud document stores

Add other cloud document stores to your tag in nsquared documents 2.1

If you are using a Surface Hub, please download the free trial of nsquared documents from here

If there are any features you would like to see added to nsquared documents please let us know.

For more details please watch the video

Microsoft Surface Hub - Whiteboard collaboration settings

At a recent Sydney Surface Hub user group meeting there was a question asked about preventing the Whiteboard app from sharing. 

There are a some settings that can be changed on the Surface Hub to enable or disable sharing of the Whiteboard. 

Disable Sharing

Hide entry points from the Share button, hiding export in the Share charm and Collaboration.

Disable Export

Users cannot send Whiteboards using email, thumb drives, or other mechanisms through the Share charm.

Please follow the link below for more information:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-au/surface-hub/manage-settings-with-mdm-for-surface-hub

Microsoft Surface Hub - BitLocker Issue

At a recent Sydney Surface Hub user group the topic was raised on how to recover a Surface Hub from a BitLocker locked situation.

If the Surface Hub is BitLocker locked for whatever reason without BitLocker code recorded, in addition to the option of sending a spare SSD, the other option is to ‘reset’ the locked device using ‘Cloud Recovery’. This feature is only supported in Creator’s Update. Refer to below screen flow for process. This process can take up to 2-3 hours.

1. Press 'Esc' on keyboard.

2. Press 'Skip this drive'.

3. Click 'Recover from the cloud'.

4. Press 'Yes'.

5. Press 'Reinstall'.

Microsoft Build Tour June 2017

During June,  Dr. Neil Roodyn visited Shanghai, Beijing, Munich, Helsinki, and then thankfully came back to Sydney, all for the great Microsoft Build Tour of 2017.

Neil got the first hand gossip from the Microsoft experts on the latest technical news and updates. The event was designed for developers building Line of Business or consumer applications, using Cloud or traditional desktop tech. The days started with a keynote address. Then a full day of practical sessions covering recently released Cloud and Windows technologies followed. These were all topical to building applications using the latest technology.

Many cities also hosted a workshop on the second day, where developers attending could get hands on with the latest technology presented on the previous day. Neil gave over 300 hands-on demos of Microsoft HoloLens in the cities visited. 

Did you get a HoloLens demo? What did you think?

(If not get in touch and we can try to organize one for you)

Full days but so rewarding!

Here are some photos from the first day of the Sydney Event, June 29th

Missed the Microsoft Build Tour this year? Click here to watch all the highlights from the Sydney event

The Bots Are Coming

How will you interact with the technology in your life in the coming year?

Currently we are forced to interact with computers in unnatural ways. Humans are forced to learn how to use their technology. What if the technology could learn to interact with us on our terms?

This is a future we are building here at nsquared. One of the many ways this future will come true is through the use of conversational agents, also called chat bots, or just bots.

The team at nsquared has been working closely with Microsoft on their Bot Framework,Language Understanding Intelligence System (LUIS), and other machine learning technologies. These technologies enable us to build rich conversational software applications that talk to our customers on the channels they are already using to communicate with each other; Skype, Slack, Facebook, SMS, and others.

At nsquared we have been building Bot applications, as well as training materials to teach developers how to build better conversational bots.

Contact us at enquiries@nsquaredsolutions.com to find out how we can help you.

Git Event

Tripti Wani who is a team member here at nsquared attended a learn to git event in the Microsoft Store in the Sydney CBD on the 27^th April.

She joined the Women Who Code Sydney for food and drinks (kindly provided by the Microsoft Azure  dev. team) followed by a hands-on workshop on the essentials of Git.

She started off for a dinner at the ChatThai in Westfield, where attendees caught up and the first timers were introduced and soon jumped into the conversations. Needless to say everyone hit it off.

The event then moved to the Pitt St Microsoft Store and for the next 2 and ½ hours, attendees experienced Git commands and how to use them in the terminal, and the use of applications like SourceTree and Git Extensions.

Attendees learnt how to:

• work with Git
• clone a repository 
• create a branch and with those
• commit changes  
• push changes
• merge origin masters
• merge back into master 
• resolve merge conflicts 
• push your changes to origin 

.. and just understand what all the above means…

All that attendees needed was a laptop, background knowledge of Git and that it's used for version control. But no programming experience was required.

Tripti thoroughly recommends anyone to come and attend the next event. It only takes a few hours of your time which goes by so fast, but you still seem to be so much in a relaxed social atmosphere.

For more information from the event click here

Here are some of Tripti's photos from the event:

  

Microsoft Build 2017 Conference In Seattle, Washington State

Only a few more sleeps till the exciting (well we find it exciting) Microsoft Build 2017 conference in Seattle, Washington State, to kick off on May 10^th to 12th.

Dr Neil Roodyn will be attending deep technical sessions, learning new technologies and getting advance notice of Microsoft’s new plans. 

He will be meeting and learning, from more than 5,000 developers in the industry, from all over the World and yes, the place will be a buzz with it’s own tech speak.

The Build up is underway. Announcements are thick and fast. You can feel the excitement. We’ve had updates to Cognitive Services that help developers build apps that understand people and the world around us.  The current SDK for the Windows Creators Update feature was shipped. Also announced Azure Managed Disks and VM scale sets, for ease of use and scale benefits to PaaS to IaaS developers.

Microsoft Build 2017, May 10-12 in Seattle, in person or Live Streamed will teach you as developers, how to put these latest and coming innovations to create:

·       AI-powered apps we have yet to imagine

·       Apps that make your customers more productive

·       Cutting edge, intelligent cloud apps

·       Mixed-reality experiences

·       Mobile experiences for nearly any device

·       Simplified end-to-end development ops experiences

There will be keynotes, deep technical sessions, hackathons and opportunities to collaborate and code with your fellow technologists and engineers. 

There’s never been a more exciting time to be a developer.

 Click here to watch the conference via live stream