Bolstered by a new Goldman Sachs research note which put a target price of $150 on AAPL, shares of the Cupertio-based company opened strong today and closed at $133.29. In turn, shares of Apple reached a new all-time closing high today, besting the previous high of $132.54 which the company hit back in May of 2015.The Goldman Sachs research note aside, investors seem to be unusually optimistic about Apple's future prospects, primarily due to the impending iPhone 8 which already has all the trappings of huge record-breaking release. Based on recent reports, it appears that the iPhone 8 will eliminate the iPhone's traditional top and bottom bezels and will instead feature a completely edgeless OLED display. Additionally, there are rumors that the iPhone 8 will introduce some new augmented reality features while delivering a huge leap forward in battery life.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A top White House adviser Sunday outlined two key principles underlying the administration's approach to H-1B reform. It wants a system requiring employers to first consider U.S. workers for a job before hiring visa-holding workers, and it intends to distribute H-1B visas under a "merit-based" system.Stephen Miller, senior policy adviser for President Donald Trump, said the administration will seek an immigration program where "American workers are given jobs first."In a television interview Sunday on Meet the Press, Miller also said that Trump "has made clear" his interest in creating "a merit-based system where individuals coming into the country bring the kinds of benefits economically that will grow our economy and help lift up wages for everybody." (You can find the transcript here).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
I’ve always been confused as to why my homeland isn’t actually more of an API world leader. After all, Australia has an ideal environment to see the growth of API-led business and government initiatives:
The distance and the off-kilter time zone mean APIs could help Australian businesses appeal to international audiences at all times of the day and night without having to have an around-the-clock staff employed.
Australian businesses could integrate their services better into a global marketplace by leveraging APIs. There has been a long history of Australia’s skills at assessing international world practice and then implementing the best locally.
Australia’s small population spread across a large land mass means delivering digital government services using APIs could support much more of the population at a lower cost.
On the negative side, Australia has squandered much of its mining economy boom without advancing a digital economy; dragged its heals on implementing a national broadband network, which is now noticeably slower than in my adopted homeland of Spain; and has regularly slipped in annual rankings for innovation and capacity to support tech startup ecosystems.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The release of version 5.3 of LibreOffice, the free software productivity suite, has pushed the number of donations to the Document Foundation to a record high, according to the group’s co-founder, Italo Vignoli.“Donations are the key to the life and development of the project,” he wrote in a blog post.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: Lessons from the rise and fall of an open source project | Intel now supports Vulkan on Windows 10 PCsTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When Microsoft first unveiled its HoloLens augmented reality headgear, the company used a special camera to show viewers third-person images of the digital objects being rendered in the headset.Now, anyone who owns two HoloLenses can recreate the same setup, thanks to a project that Microsoft released on Monday. Called Spectator View, it lets users sync up information from a HoloLens about where augmented reality objects are and what they look like with footage from a camera. Using that makes it possible to create a third-person view of augmented reality action.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Expect ransomware to grow more aggressive in the coming years, including higher ransom payments and attempts to go beyond attacking data -- by shutting down entire computer systems to utilities or factories.“I see no reason for ransomware to stop,” said Neil Jenkins, an official with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. “It’s shown to be effective.”On Monday at the RSA cybersecurity conference, experts gave a grim outlook on the future of ransomware, which they fear will spread. Through the attacks, cybercriminals have already managed to rake in US$1 billion last year, according to at one estimate.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Motherboard has an interesting look at the somewhat surprising survival of physical software in shrink-wrapped boxes, which continues to account for roughly a third of software sales.This is true even though in most cases the boxes contain little or nothing.
Most of these physical packages are virtually empty, with only a tiny piece of paper inside with a download link and an activation code. Companies who sell software this way (say) that including a DVD is often a useless endeavor, as new laptops lack optical drives. Even when companies do sell physical media, users would still need to download the latest version of the software, as opposed to the one that's on the optical disk.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Japan will kick off a drive this week to collect old smartphones and other portable gadgets so that they can be turned into medals for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and Paralympics.The project will be launched on Thursday by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government with a goal of collecting up to 2 million used devices to recycle.Gadgets like smartphones contain small amounts of precious metals in their chips and circuit boards. The quantities are tiny but they're valuable enough to make recovery worth the expense.In the case of a smartphone, there's about 0.048 grams of gold, 0.26 grams of silver, and 12.7 grams of bronze. To make the roughly 5,000 medals that will be awarded in 2020, organizers will need 10 kilograms of gold, 1,230kg of silver, and 736kg of bronze. (The amount of gold is much less because those medals are plated and not solid gold).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Back when Apple was the plucky young upstart that dared to be different, the Mac was the machine for creative types and there was a perception that it wasn’t a target for hackers because of its cultural cool factor.You would expect the same rules to apply to the legalized marijuana market, but a major hack attack on a pot dispensary last month set that notion up in smoke.MJ Freeway, providers of popular medical marijuana tracking software, suffered a point-of-sale system hack that left over 1,000 marijuana dispensaries across 23 states unable to track their sales and inventories. Because of the state regulations regarding the sale of marijuana, some dispensaries were forced to close early or shut their doors completely. The disruption lasted weeks and caused patients to suffer long delays with obtaining access to their medicine.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It is not surprising that Cisco, Mitel and others are targeting Avaya’s customers as the networking company goes through Chapter 11 bankruptcy but sometimes it is a bit startling in its boldness.
For example, Cisco wrote: “Let’s not dance around it. Avaya’s recent announcements have put a lot of people into the decision process. Change and uncertainty usually do. So then, what to do next? I’m not bold enough to say, ‘Hey, come on over and write me a check right now.’ That’s not how this works. It’s not an overnight decision. You have to figure out who you trust with your unified communications and customer care solutions. And to get there means asking a lot of questions – and getting the answers you need.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The information security industry hasn't made any significant strides in addressing the workforce shortage, according to a report released this morning by ISACA.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Verizon is just full of surprises. Over the past year, Verizon went negative on its legacy unlimited data customers by purging anyone using too much data. Now, the company wants more unlimited data customers—at least up to a point. Starting Monday, you can sign up for the company’s new unlimited data plan, called Verizon Unlimited.For $80 a month, Verizon customers receive unlimited 4G data on a single smartphone. Anyone with multiple devices can add two lines on Verizon Unlimited for $70 per line per month ($140 total), three for $54 ($162 total) per line, or four for $45 ($180 total) per line.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
While Apple CEO Tim Cook is looking forward to his company’s next big idea, which sounds like it’s going to be augmented reality-related, he’s also stunned by the tech industry’s inability to stem the tide of fake news.In between tours of schools and meetings with developers in a trip to Britain, Cook spoke excitedly about the potential of AR in Apple devices to The Independent, and was equally impassioned about the scourge of fake news in comments to The Telegraph.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A dispute between Intel and security expert John McAfee over the use of his name for another company is headed for settlement talks, according to court records.The move comes shortly after the federal court refused John McAfee and MGT Capital Investments, the company to be renamed, a preliminary injunction on Intel’s transfer of marks and related assets containing the word McAfee, as part of a proposed spin-out by the chipmaker of its security business as a separate company that would be called McAfee.The chip company said in September it had signed the agreement with TPG to set up a cybersecurity company in which Intel shareholders would hold 49 percent of the equity with the balance held by the investment firm.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
This Sunday, Feb. 12 will be a huge night for horror on TV: AMC's The Walking Dead returns at 9PM EST after its mid-season hiatus and the 59th Grammy Awards program in all its self-congratulatory glory kicks off at 8PM EST from Los Angeles. (Though I suppose last Sunday was an even bigger night of horror for those rooting against the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl...)Adele, Beyonce, Justin Bieber, Drake and Sturgill Simpson are all looking to win Record of the Year, while Chuck D, Jack White and Kelly Clarkson will be among performers during the Grammy show. Ample attention will no doubt be given as well to honoring the many famous musicians, such as Prince and David Bowie, who died last year. Late night talk show host and carpool karaoke crooner James Corden emcees the program.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
As your business grows, it’s increasingly important to understand how to scale engineering processes and methodologies. The amount of time spent on setup, deployment and manually testing code is often ignored by technology teams and managers. Manual server configuration and code quality tests are not only error prone, but they ultimately result wasted time and money.3 steps to automate software development
Introducing automation into your Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) and infrastructure scaling projects is the most effective way to improve code quality and deployment velocity. These three steps will help you do that:1. Implement a continuous integration strategy
Continuous integration (CI) is a development practice where code is checked into a code repository, tested and verified in an automated process. By regularly integrating changes into a centralized repository that is automatically tested for code quality, syntax errors and unit/integration test issues, errors can be detected and located more easily.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
This column is available in a weekly newsletter called IT Best Practices. Click here to subscribe. Gartner estimates that global spending on cybersecurity solutions exceeded $81 billion in 2016. The average enterprise with 1,000 or more employees spends about $15 million fighting cybercrime each year, according to the Ponemon Institute. Despite such heavy investments in all types of solutions, many CISOs still find it challenging to answer the questions, “How likely are we to have a breach, and if we do incur a breach, what will be the financial impact?”The main obstacle to answering those fundamental questions is that much of the information needed to reveal an organization’s state of cyber risk is trapped in product silos, and it’s seldom fully mapped to the organization’s compliance policies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Companies concerned about cybersecurity have a fleet of new Microsoft tools coming their way. The company announced a host of new security capabilities Friday morning as part of the run-up to the massive RSA security conference next week in San Francisco.On the Windows front, the company announced that it's adding the ability to use on-premises Active Directory with Windows Hello, its system for allowing biometric-based logins with Windows 10. Microsoft also launched new tools to help organizations get more use out of mobile device management products by giving them tools to migrate group policy settings to cloud-managed devices.What's more, Microsoft has launched a new tool that’s designed to help customers configure the Surface hardware under their administration, doing things like disabling the tablets' cameras. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In a year that’s already been marked by uncertainty, one thing is clear: IT outsourcing customers will need to reexamine their approaches to IT services in 2017. “We see a big year ahead for technology transactions,” says Brad Peterson, partner in the Chicago office of Mayer Brown, in a recent webinar on the law firm’s 2017 predictions for the IT and business services space.[ Related: Outsourcing trends to watch in 2017 ]There are big changes afoot in a number of areas — from a political climate that threatens to reshape the already shifting global IT services industry to new data protection and privacy regulations and the drive to extract more value from data to the widespread adoption of new digital technologies to a revolution that’s begun in the more rapid delivery of software and other systems.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Reduce some of that cable clutter with the ultra compact Jackery Bolt 6,000mAh external battery charger that features a built-in Apple Lighting cable for your iPhone or iPad and a built-in micro-USB cable for other mobile devices. With an additional open USB port you can charge up to 3 devices at once. Powerful 6000 mAh capacity can fully charge an iPhone 6 at up to 3 times. The Jackery Bolt averages 4.5 out of 5 stars from over 240 people on Amazon (read reviews), where its list price of $69.99 has been reduced 63% down to just $25.99. See the discounted external power bank now on Amazon. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here