Inside the Briefcase
Today in international tech news: The European Commission has added Google’s Android to its list of grievances; Apple finds a way to avoid the fights and egg-tossing that had marred previous product launches in China; Australia’s Sex Party is ticked about Google refusing to run its ads; and for the first time, more Chinese access the Internet via mobile phone than desktops.
Featured ArticlesBack in March I wrote a blog entitled The Many Dimensions of User Experience Management, in which I suggested that UEM was not in any way just a subset of APM or application performance management, but part of a larger continuum inclusive of business impact, user productivity and even portfolio planning.
Today in international tech news: Google adapts Gmail so low-tech phones in Africa can receive and send emails in the form of text messages. Also: Apple is forced to run an “advertisement” clarifying that Samsung did not, after all, copy the iPad design; the judge in the Kim Dotcom extradition case quits after calling the U.S. an “enemy”; an expert weighs in on just how much money Microsoft might have to pay the EU.
Featured ArticlesGoogle offers Street View-esque images of Antarctica; a man wearing computer-assisted glasses is assaulted at a Paris McDonald’s; the WTO rules on China’s e-commerce market; a French court decision could mean Google has to censor file-sharing-related results from autocomplete; Microsoft apologizes to the EC, though it could still face huge fines.
Featured ArticlesThere is no question that one of the biggest challenges for Big Data today is properly filtering and putting to use all of the information that has been collected. Ian Fyfe, VP of big data product marketing at Orlando and San Francisco based Pentaho, outlines below ways in which companies can not only make good use of the information they are collecting, but also capture the full benefit of the data. Read More >>>
The most worrying issue for C-level security professionals, and the thing that often keeps them awake at night, is the fear of the unknown. The chief information security officer (CISO) is the person in direct line of fire when security breaches occur, and given the deteriorating state of information security, taking overall responsibility for security-related issues is a perilous role.
Being open to third-party extensions and customizations is becoming an increasingly desirable property for software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms. It’s also a must-have for the emergence of an ecosystem around a SaaS platform. But what kind of impact does such openness have on a platform’s stability and reliability? This is one of the questions that the Information & Knowledge Management group at the South-East European Research Centre (SEERC) has been working to answer. Read More >>>
At the core of the dot-com collapse was the problem that folks running a lot of companies simply lacked the key skills necessary to run those firms. Both Google and Facebook are demonstrating behaviors suggesting they too lack critical skills, and unless that is fixed, their initial success will eventually be overshadowed by their catastrophic failures.
Featured ArticlesIs there room in the smartphone space for another OS? Mozilla is banking on the answer being “Yes.” Its HTML5-based Firefox OS “will likely be a low-end alternative to Android,” said tech analyst Greg Sterling. “It’s unlikely to rival top-of-the-line Android devices or the iPhone. Developer and consumer acceptance are wild cards. But I could see it succeeding in selected developing markets.”
Featured ArticlesVisual Data Group delivers Alaras™ for Ultimate Overviews and Drill Downs of Web Visitors, Social Media and Beyond; Available as Standalone or Licensed
Featured ArticlesFacebook has a knack for irritating its membership with the changes it imposes, but it seems to regard those user backlashes as an inevitable cost of pursuing revenue. In the case of its latest brute-force move, though — changing everyone’s email address to “@facebook.com” — it appears to be getting more criticism for how it implemented the change than for making it in the first place.
Featured Articles, SOCIAL BUSINESSThe Nexus 7 is what Google is calling its upcoming Android tablet, according to documents leaked just before the device’s expected debut at this week’s Google I/O Conference. The device, built by Asus, will be a seven-inch slate that costs as little as $200, according to the report. It will ship with the next-gen version of Android, Jelly Bean, and feature an Nvidia processor
Featured ArticlesEnterprise social software may end up as shelfware — software that never gets used or falls into disuse — unless customers make the right efforts to change corporate culture and employee habits, speakers said Wednesday during the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston.
For users of high-tech mapping technologies, the more detail the better. However, if a person happens to be caught in the sights of a drone photographer, it’s likely a different story. “If an object or person is in plain sight from a vantage point that is the public domain, it is not illegal to watch or take pictures,” noted law professor Joel Reidenberg. That includes objects or persons inside a building.
Featured ArticlesDescartes Systems Group /quotes/zigman/19331/quotes/nls/dsgx DSGX -1.29% /quotes/zigman/19345 CA:DSG -0.11% , the global leader in uniting logistics-intensive businesses in commerce, announced that Salient Management Company, a leading provider of performance management solutions, has selected Descartes’ advanced geographic information system (GIS) platform for incorporation into Salient’s performance management solution.
Featured ArticlesSelecting the right controls for our business and making sure they’re doing what we expect is a significant amount of work. And since these tasks are non-discretionary and time-consuming, sometimes we don’t have time to address other hidden dimensions of control operations. This situation is understandable, but there are other things to consider as well.
Featured ArticlesOracle reported financial results that exceeded Wall Street’s expectations and said it would buy back up to $10 billion of its shares. But the bigger surprise was the timing of the company’s announcement; the numbers were not expected to be released until Thursday.
Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) invited reporters and industry experts this week to a special event on Monday in Los Angeles, where it promises to make a “major” announcement. Since then, speculation has been rampant about exactly what that announcement will be, though Microsoft has not released any further details. Theories that the announcement will be tablet-related are dominating the conversation at the moment.
Featured ArticlesCIOs, and senior IT decision makers, are facing challenges with their existing network infrastructure to support the migration of their business applications to the cloud.
An avalanche of new use cases, content types and interaction models expands the scope for tomorrow’s BI platforms.
If the company claims to be a social business, look for evidence of real corporate transformation in the CEO’s letter to shareholders.
A new IBM (NYSE: IBM) global study of midmarket Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) indicates that nearly twice as many midmarket CEOs see creating a more collaborative work environment with a higher level of openness and transparency as a top priority compared to the findings from the IBM CEO study conducted in 2010.
Getting hacked was bad enough, but it seems LinkedIn did not take the time to both hash and salt its users’ passwords, which would have made them much more difficult for the intruders to decode. Now, though, the theft of the apparently unsalted data has exposed millions of users’ login info. Meanwhile, Apple wound up to kick Google, the iPhone went prepaid, and Facebook brooded over whether to have kids.
Featured ArticlesAdd widgets and shortcuts if your install is a keeper. You’ll be able to change desktop layout and preferences, like autofit, that can fix anomalies with look; change user preferences like gesture behavior; configure the status bar and its content; tweak the colors and tints; customize text preferences; change battery indicator preferences; and reboot the launcher.
Featured ArticlesToday in international tech news: U.S. tech companies are among those feeling the squeeze from Europe’s worsening economic crisis. Also: In response to the U.S. Embassy’s BeijingAir Twitter account, China warns other countries to quit publishing reports about its air quality. Meanwhile, heeding the Twitter era, the Queen’s English Society says “GTG.”
Featured ArticlesToday in international tech news: A British researcher analyzes the strength of some 70 million passwords, and then breaks down the results by country. Also: European soccer coaches impose social media rules ahead of next week’s European Championship, and media outlets — even more so than usual — bemoan China’s Internet censors on the 23rd anniversary of Tiananmen Square.
Featured ArticlesSalesforce.com Inc. on Monday said it has agreed to buy social-marketing company Buddy Media for $689 million.
A conscientious employee will alert IT when a mobile device containing sensitive data is lost. IT can then do a remote wipe and rest easy. But what happens when an employee doesn’t realize it’s been lost for hours or days? The info is left floating in the breeze, and that’s when the decision to encrypt sensitive data really pays off.
Featured Articles“Axis” is what Yahoo is calling its new browser, designed for iOS. It also offers plug-ins for desktop browsers. Axis lets users preview and interact with visual search results without leaving the page they’re on. Used together, the mobile browser and plug-in duo lets users share searches between their devices.
Featured ArticlesMicrosoft’s latest entrant in the online social networking scene made itself available to all users Monday. So.cl — pronounced “Social” — is meant as an experimental destination for finding and sharing content, with an emphasis on educational environments. Microsoft doesn’t appear to have positioned So.cl as a Facebook killer though. You can even sign on to So.cl via Facebook.
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