In some ways, the smartphone business resembles the movie business. The general public knows more about the major releases from big companies because that's what the companies push and the media writes about. But in both the phone and movie industries, there are hundreds of smaller releases targeted at very specific markets -- and if you're not in those markets, you may never hear about them.As a result, the majority of smartphone reviews you'll read about are for top-of-the-line flagship phones selling for roughly $800. It's a little unusual for a manufacturer to make a big deal about phones in the second or third tier of the market. Yet that's just what Huawei is doing with the Mate 9 and Honor 6X, two phones that represent good-to-excellent value but would otherwise not set the world on fire.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft is encouraging developers to move to the 4.6.2 version of the .Net Framework, so they can benefit from significant changes to the garbage collector, which provides automatic memory management..Net Framework 4.6.2 was released late last summer, but Microsoft is now advising upgrades to take advantage of benefits in object handling. These changes were made in order to improve the framework's performance and to allow the garbage collector to operate more efficiently, Microsoft said. Garbage collection enables developers to build applications without needing to free memory; it also allocates objects on the managed heap and reclaims objects no longer in use.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Sketchy charactersImage by ThinkstockYou’ve heard of big business owners like Jeff Bezos, Larry Page and Warren Buffet. However, did you know there’s a long list of business owners, all of who have access to millions of dollars at their fingertips, that you’ll never hear about. These people are the owners of crimeware-as-a-service (CaaS) businesses. For underground cybercriminals, CaaS provides a new dimension to cybercrime by making it more organized, automated and accessible to criminals with limited technical skills. Today, cybercriminals can develop, advertise and sell anything from a botnet to a browser exploit pack or DDoS attack toolkits. Aditya K Sood, director of security and cloud threat labs at Blue Coat Systems, a part of Symantec, details how cybercriminals can obtain sensitive data, like credit card numbers, names and addresses, with just a couple of clicks and a payment.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Facebook has appointed former Xiaomi executive Hugo Barra to lead its virtual reality initiatives, including the Oculus VR business that was acquired in 2014.The appointment was announced by the company's founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who said that Barra will lead all of Facebook's virtual reality efforts including the Oculus team.Facebook's decision to hire Barra as vice president of virtual reality may have been influenced in part by his exposure to the Chinese market, which is forecast by IDC to account for 20 percent of worldwide virtual reality head-mounted displays next year.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Facebook has appointed Xiaomi executive Hugo Barra to lead its virtual reality initiatives, including the Oculus VR business that was acquired in 2014.The appointment was announced by the company's founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who said that Barra will lead all of Facebook's virtual reality efforts including the Oculus team.Facebook's decision to hire Barra as vice president of virtual reality may have been influenced in part by his exposure to the Chinese market, which is forecast by IDC to account for 20 percent of worldwide virtual reality head-mounted displays next year.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Tired of conventional passwords? So is Nuance Communications, a tech firm that is promoting the human voice as a way to secure user accounts.The company’s voice biometric product is among the technologies that promise to replace traditional -- and often vulnerable -- password authentication systems, which can be easy to hack. That isn’t the case with Nuance’s solution, the company claims. “To determine if it’s you or not, we are looking at over 100 different characteristics of your voice,” said Brett Beranek, Nuance’s director of product strategy.The problem with passwords
The need to move beyond passwords hasn’t been more urgent, given that hackers are routinely finding ways to steal them. Last year, Yahoo, LinkedIn and Dropbox all reported major data breaches involving account details such as email addresses and hashed passwords. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Merck KGaA is getting cozier with Silicon Valley, seeking partnerships with leading technology companies and universities to further its fortunes in a pharmaceutical industry undergoing a significant transformation around software and data, says CIO Alessandro De Luca. The German pharmaceutical firm, best known for its cancer and multiple sclerosis drugs, earlier this month inked partnership inked with Palantir, a maker of big data analytics software.Palantir will help Merck research which patients will respond to certain drugs to improve patient outcomes, the company said in a statement. Merck will eventually use Palantir's software with other commercial applications, including artificial intelligence software, to help predict drug demand and automate the supply chain.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It looks like the Donald Trump administration is interested in encryption backdoors, but, like his predecessor’s, so far it has fallen short of coming out for them or against them.
Trump himself famously urged a boycott of Apple for refusing to help the FBI crack an iPhone used by the terrorist who attacked in San Bernardino, Calif., which indicated he favored backdoors. But that was last year.
The latest comes from Sen. Jeff Sessions, Trump’s nominee for attorney general, who says he favors strong encryption but also favors law enforcement being able to “overcome encryption” when necessary.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When you think of augmented reality (AR), names like Microsoft Hololens, MagicLeap, Vuforia and Blippar come to mind. When you think of social media, you think of Instagram, Snapchat, Linkedin and Facebook. However, one of these social media players is an augmented reality company in disguise—Snapchat.Snapchat, owned by Snap Inc., is one of the biggest AR companies today. Over the past few years, Snapchat has been rolling out more and more features to its ephemeral photo sharing app that are blurring the line between our physical and digital worlds. Snapchat’s evolution
In July 2014, we saw Snapchat’s first move towards AR with geofilters. AR overlays digital assets on the real environment. With geofilters, users could now place location-based image tags on their photos. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Late last year, Microsoft announced the launch of Trimble's SketchUp Viewer for its HoloLens headset, which would allow for 3D images designed in SketchUp to be viewed in a more life-like scenario. The Viewer is just for viewing models but is done on a flat monitor. With HoloLens, the models appeared real. Since then, Microsoft has been working with Trimble and the Construction Information Technology Lab at the University of Cambridge to expand on use of HoloLens and mixed reality technology in the architecture, engineering, construction and operations (AECO) industries. Today, the Microsoft announced details of two new trials that are underway at Cambridge. The first is Automated Progress Monitoring, a way to address routine maintenance and inspection of remote structures. It can be a laborious, time consuming and error-prone procedure, one where automation can replace humans because machines don’t get sloppy. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Portions of this post were originally posted on the Puppet blog, and are republished here with Puppet's permission.Puppet is pleased to announce our sixth annual State of DevOps survey. It's the biggest, most in-depth survey of IT professionals in the industry. Just as we have for the past few years, we've created the survey in collaboration with the principals of DevOps Research & Assessment (DORA): Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble and Gene Kim.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
More than eight in 10 U.S. IT workers support the nation's net neutrality regulations, and many are worried that President Donald Trump administration's likely repeal of the rules will hurt their industry.Eighty-two percent of 411 IT workers responding to an online survey by Spiceworks support the net neutrality rules, while just 11 percent oppose them, the company said Wednesday. If the Federal Communications Commission's net neutrality rules are repealed, 59 percent of respondents said they believe their companies' internet costs will rise, and 47 percent said they believe their companies' access to important internet services will be degraded.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Identity as a service (IDaaS), also known as identity and access management as a service, uses a cloud infrastructure for securely managing user identities and access enforcement. At its most basic level, IDaaS enables single sign-on (SSO) for systems in the cloud or on-premises, but it goes well beyond that to include access provisioning and deprovisioning, governance and analytics.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
About three months ago, an instructor at Gurnick Academy, a California-based nursing school, had his biggest fear come alive. When he tried to access his lectures, the files were encrypted. The teacher was literally locked out of his classroom.If it wasn’t for a quick acting IT department, the entire school might have been in the same situation. They noticed the incident at the early stage and managed to prevent the encryption from spreading by disconnecting the infected device from the corporate network.Val Paschenko, IT department manager at the school, said the instructor was met with a ransomware note demanding 1 bitcoin or $740 in exchange for the files to be decrypted. The instructor called support and requested to get his files back, but it was already too late. He lost some recently created files, and he needed to redo some of his work. It took a few hours to reinstall the OS and configure everything; obviously during that time he was not able to work on his PC. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
As you can see from my profile picture above, I’ve been around the tech industry for a while now. And while I’ve surely learned a thing or two over the years, much of that wisdom has come at a heavy price. I’ve spent years following dead-end technologies down rabbit holes, getting up to speed on promising new software that never came close to living up to its hype, and jumping on board publications that were just about to give up the ghost. But lately I took some time to think about the absolutely worst tech product I ever bought with my own hard-earned dineros. And as it turned out, it was pretty much a no-brainer to settle on the winner (or loser, I guess, depending on how you look at it) as well as two runners-up. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Arlo camera is a 100 Percent Wire-Free, completely wireless, HD smart home security camera – so you can get exactly the shot you need – inside or out. The Arlo camera is weatherproof and includes motion detection, night vision, and apps. It can capture clips and send you alerts whether you’re at home or away for round-the-clock peace of mind. These motion activated cameras initiate automatic recording and alert you via email or app notifications. Free apps enable remote monitoring from anywhere and with the built-in night vision you’ll even see in dark. This security camera currently averages 4 out of 5 stars on Amazon from almost 10,000 customers (read reviews) and its list price of $219.99 is currently discounted 41% to $129.99.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple’s plans to manufacture in India made headway on Wednesday as executives of the company presented detailed plans to the country's federal government.It may be some time though, before Apple gets permission for its proposal to manufacture in India as it reportedly involves a request for deep cuts in the import duties for components. The meeting on Wednesday is said to have ended inconclusively, according to sources close to the situation.The Apple executives included Priya Balasubramaniam, a company vice president."We've been working hard to develop our operations in India and are proud to deliver the best products and services in the world to our customers here,” Apple said in a statement after the meeting. “We appreciate the constructive and open dialogue we’ve had with government about further expanding our local operations.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple’s plans to manufacture in India made headway on Wednesday as executives of the company presented detailed plans to the country's federal government.
It may be some time though, before Apple gets permission for its proposal to manufacture in India as it reportedly involves a request for deep cuts in the import duties for components. The meeting on Wednesday is said to have ended inconclusively, according to sources close to the situation.
The Apple executives included Priya Balasubramaniam, a company vice president.
"We've been working hard to develop our operations in India and are proud to deliver the best products and services in the world to our customers here,” Apple said in a statement after the meeting. “We appreciate the constructive and open dialogue we’ve had with government about further expanding our local operations.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If you believe the reviewers on Amazon, you may not find a better sounding pair of earbuds at this price point, which at the current 28% discount is just $10.86. The ErgoFit earbuds from Panasonic are designed to fit comfortably and securely in your ear, isolating outside noise while delivering great sound with a wider frequency range than most comparable buds. The earbuds come in various colors and features a generous 3.6 ft. cord that easily fits through or around your clothes, coats and bags. The ErgoFit earbuds average 4.5 stars from over 39,000 people on Amazon (read reviews) which lends some credibility to Panasonic's claim that the earbuds deliver dynamic, crystal clear sound while successfully blocking ambient noise. Its typical list price of $15 has been reduced 28% to just $10.86.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Spark Board meeting device that Cisco Systems introduced on Tuesday is not so much a whiteboard or a videoconferencing screen as a giant tablet that everyone in the room can share.There’s even a “home” button in the center of the bottom bezel that takes you back to the main menu. If Apple didn’t have a partnership with Cisco, you might even expect it to accuse the networking giant of copying its iPad design.But Apple and Cisco are in fact working together, so closely that iPhones can work with the Spark Board a little more smoothly than other phones do. And in developing the new all-in-one device, Cisco focused on simplicity and ease of use, which haven’t exactly been hallmarks of the networking giant’s products up to now.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here