MechChem Africa February 2017

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6 ¦ MechChem Africa • February 2017
The world of electronic applications
(apps) has always been associated
with high school teenagers using
Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and all
the many other social media apps, to tell the
worldwhat they had for dinner orwithwhom
theywent to themovies. Hearing about other
apps that are designed to make engineers’
lives easier was therefore quite refreshing.
And while I recognise that some people are
vehemently opposed to our smart-
phones runningour lives, here are
some apps that will undoubtedly
help you to manage your life bet-
ter, personally andprofessionally.
Passwordmanager: Let’sstart
with your passwords. You prob-
ably have one or two passwords
that youuse for all your accounts,
from logging into your computer
at work to accessing your online
banking profile. And you know
deep down that this is a bad idea
but the alternative is keeping a
diary and hoping that you never
lose it. The answer is a pass-
word manager such as KeePass.
KeePass is a freeopen sourcepassword
manager, which helps you to manage your
passwords in a secure way. You can put all
your passwords in one database, which is
locked with one master key or a key file. So
youonly have to remember one singlemaster
password or select the key file to unlock the
wholedatabase. Thedatabases areencrypted
using the best andmost secure encryption al-
gorithms currently known (AES andTwofish).
For more see
Apps to make an engineer’s life easier
With apps such as Dropbox and Trello, you can set up meetings and
synchronise them with your personal calendar, upload documents
for sharing and set up tasks with reminders.
The ECT Act clearly
indicates that electronic
signatures are legally recognised in South African law.
At the SAIChE IChemE Gauteng members’ group meeting last year, Carl Sandrock, a senior lecturer
at the University of Pretoria, presented a talk about software applications (apps), highlighting those
that may be of particular interest to engineers.
Collaboration: Another very useful group
of apps can be used for online collaboration.
Working togetherwithgroups of people scat-
tered across the city, the country or even the
globe, can be a logistical nightmare but, with
apps such as Dropbox, ,
forms.google.com and Trello you can set up
meetings – and synchronise them with your
personal calendar – upload documents for
people to add their contributions and set
up tasks with reminders to ensure that your
project runs smoothly.
Google+: Gone are the days that Google
is merely a search engine; having a Google+
account will absolutely change your life,
especially if you use a smartphone that runs
on Android. Switching on the location setting
on your device lets you use GoogleMaps as a
GPS –personally I ama proponent ofWaze as
aGPS app, since it tells youwhen
to leave if you don’t want to be
late for your next appointment,
but I digress. With Google Maps
you also have a history of when
and where you went, which can
beusedas a travel log, and it picks
up when you are in a shopping
centre and you get a notification
of the relevant store directory.
From your travel history it an-
ticipates when you are travelling
to work or home and warns you
about traffic incidents on the
way. It’s a lifesaver.
Google Photos: Still on the
same platform, Google Photos
uses machine learning that
allows you to
take photos of
your old pho-
tos – you know
that box in your attic – which the app then
converts to an electronic picture by remov-
ing the shine from the flash and cropping
out everything that is not the original photo.
Google Photos also uses facial recognition
to put together albums and animations of
people you regularly take pictures of.
These get stored in your Google+
account and you never again have
to worry about losing your phone
or the photo albums in your study.
It also allows you to search your
pictures forwhat they contain, for
instance finding all the pictures of
babies or puppies.
Electronic signatures: Lastly,
never again agree to scanning and
emailingadocumentwithyoursig-
natureon it.With the introduction
of the Electronic Communications
and Transactions Act 25 of 2002
(ECT Act) South Africa followed
a global trend to recognise the
legality of electronic signatures. The
ECT Act defines an ‘electronic signature’
as ‘data attached to, incorporated in, or logically
associatedwith other data andwhich is intended
by the user to serve as a signature’.
The ECT Act further provides – in
Section 13(2) – that: ‘an electronic signature is
not without legal force and effect merely on the
grounds that it is in electronic form’. This clearly
indicatesthatelectronicsignaturesarelegally
recognised in South African law. For simple
signatures, a picture of your signature is
legally equivalent to writing your name in
plain text on thedocuments.Makeuseof apps
such as Adobe Acrobat or GnuPG to create
cryptographically secure signatures, which
allows you to detect if a document has been
tamperedwith. GnuPG is a complete and free
implementation of the OpenPGP standard
as defined by RFC4880, also known as PGP.
GnuPG allows encrypting and signing your
data and communication, features a versatile
key management system as well as access
modules for all kinds of public key directories.
For the full presentationbyCarl Sandrock,
please visit
orfollowCarlonTwitterat@chthonicdaemon.
Written on behalf of SAIChE IChemE Gauteng
Members Group by Zita Harber.