Even if you haven’t walked into a pole or driven your car into a pond because you were staring at your smartphone, there’s a chance you’ve wondered if it’s time to cut back.If you enjoy Android phone as much as I do, there’s little doubt it’s your most personal device and hardly leaves your side. You’re not alone. A Pew study from 2015 pointed to how much the smartphone is central to most people’s lives in important ways, like looking up a medical condition, real estate listings, or a job search.All those messaging apps and handy tools from Google make your phone the ideal companion. And as trendy and cool as going on a “digital detox” may be, it’s just not practical. The right path is to go for the middle road. There are smart ways to curtail your use that won’t mean disconnecting from the people and events that are important in your life. Here are some tips to get you started.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Seeing the lightImage by PexelsA lightbulb. We can connect a lightbulb in our house to the internet in case we need to turn the lights on or off while we’re away – or if we’re too lazy to walk to the light switch. The more lightbulbs, devices, apps and online services we use and connect with on a daily basis, the more we expose ourselves to security risks. This is the nature of how our digital lives have evolved and it requires more active participation as individuals to protect ourselves and minimize exposure.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Watson and Einstein are teaming up, and IBM and Salesforce hope the pairing proves as smart as it sounds. The two companies are working together to bring information from IBM systems into Salesforce’s products through a series of integrations announced Monday.As part of the partnership, joint customers will be able to combine Watson's insights from their unstructured data with Einstein's insights about information stored with Salesforce. That comes alongside other integrations that bring weather and application data into Salesforce.Both Salesforce and IBM have massive customer bases that could be reached by this partnership. It's an interesting deal given IBM's historic strength in on-premises computing and Salesforce's cloud focus. Each tech titan has been focused on machine intelligence, so collaborating makes sense. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Nearly two-thirds of consumers are worried about home IoT devices listening in on their conversations, according to a Gartner survey released Monday.Those jitters aren’t too surprising after recent news items about TV announcers inadvertently activating viewers’ Amazon Echos, or about data from digital assistants being used as evidence in criminal trials. But privacy concerns are just one hurdle smart homes still have to overcome, according to the survey.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
GE is rethinking many aspects of IT, including its internal reporting structure, where and how it supports apps, and how it networks its 4,500 offices. Network World Editor in Chief John Dix got an update from Chris Drumgoole, Chief Technology Officer of IT. GE
Chris Drumgoole, GE Chief Technology Officer of IT
As Chief Technology Officer for GE IT (GE also has a CTO on the product side), how do you work with the IT teams in the business units?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft last week repeated its assertion that future Windows 10 feature upgrades will shrink in size later this year, and supported the claim with a smattering of data.Those running Windows 10's preview, labeled "Insider," will see the largest reductions in download size, the data showed. Microsoft
Windows 10's new update delivery system reduces the size of downloads -- in this case by 65% for an Insider refresh (in green) -- compared to a full-install "canonical" update (in blue), by sending only what has changed since the last update.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
IT organizations put great focus into drawing up their outsourcing contracts, but those agreements alone do not guarantee satisfactory outcomes. Attorney Brad Peterson has seen it time and time again. “Time and money are spent on drafting the contract—often a substantial amount of money. And a tremendous amount of potential value is created in that contract,” says Peterson, partner in Mayer Brown’s Chicago office and leader of its technology transactions practice.But then the engagement is handed over to a well-intentioned supplier management team that wasn’t involved in the contract and often can’t make heads or tails of what’s in it. “It’s understandable. Contracts are complex and confusing, and relationship managers are selected based on their knowledge of technology or their skill in building relationships, not on their knowledge of how to run a contract,” Peterson says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Kaspersky Labs announced new research this morning that shows some links between the massive Shamoon attack that took down 35,000 computers in Saudi Arabia to a new attack against a target in Europe.The Shamoon attack, which occurred in 2012, was followed by a series of related against against Gulf States earlier this year. The attacks were widely attributed to Iran.The new malware, called StoneDrill, is, like Shamoon, a wiper -- it destroys all the data on a computer.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Joomla has exploded in popularity as an open-source website creation tool for individuals, small and medium-sized businesses, enterprises, and developers. It has been downloaded 78 million times and currently powers millions of websites.Joomla websites have not been entirely unaffected by the cyber crime problems that have plagued content management systems (CMSs) and the internet in general. A wave of fake jQuery attacks hit Joomla and WordPress sites in 2015 and 2016, affecting over 4.5 million sites.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Consumer Reports, a major source for gadget and appliance reviews in the U.S., plans to start rating products on data security and privacy.On Monday, the non-profit publication unveiled a set of new testing standards it hopes will push the tech industry to create safer products."The goal is to help consumers understand which digital products do the most to protect their privacy and security, and give them the most control over their personal data," the publication said.Already, cybersecurity experts are constantly finding new tech products, whether they be cars or smart teddy bears, that are often poorly secured and easy to hack. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A mounting list of robot-related accidents has experts questioning whether the devices will be prone to more dangerous malfunctions or even programmed attacks.Notable mishaps that have been documented include a robotic security guard knocking over a child at a California shopping mall, a demonstration robot smashing a window at a Chinese conference—it caused a bystander to get injured, and 144 deaths in the United States caused by robotic surgery. All this according to security firm IOActive.+ Also on Network World: How secure are home robots? +
These incidents “clearly demonstrate the serious potential consequences of robot malfunctions,” the consultancy says in a white paper it recently published about existing robot security (PDF).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Easy or tough?Image by ThinkstockLinux has a bad rap as a daily driver – the programs aren’t written to run on Linux, it’s tricky to install stuff, and so on. But it might surprise people who think along those lines to learn that plenty of the distributions out there are actually quite simple to use. Here’s our latest appreciation of the desktop Linux landscape.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The MagGrip Vent Car Mount is a sturdy, cradle-less device holding system focused on simplicity. Pop it onto your car's air vent, and magnets do all the work. Currently a 2-pack is discounted significantly to just $8 on Amazon, where the product averages 4.5 out of 5 stars from over 7,000 people. See this deal now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Despite the fact that Apple had no presence at the big Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona this past week, rumors about the iPhone 8 or iPhone X did not subside.Sure, Android and Windows had their week in the spotlight at MWC, but inquiring minds also wanted to know what's up with rumors about a possible new port on the next flagship iPhone.LIGHTNING FAST CHARGING
The Wall Street Journal and others reported that a USB Type-C port might be coming to the iPhone 8 to deliver faster charging and data transfer speeds. But by the end of the week, in part because of commentary from KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo (revealed by MacRumors), the consensus seemed to be that the USB Type-C connecter will indeed come to the next iPhone, but on the other end of the cord from the Lightning connector. That's similar to what you find in the 12.9-inch iPad Pro.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Market watcher IDC anticipates the worldwide smartphone market will bounce back over the next few years from a sluggish 2016, but Microsoft is not expected to take part in that celebration.In fact, while Android smartphone shipments are projected to edge up from 85% this year to 85.3% in 2021 and Apple iPhones are expected to slip a tad from 14.7% to 14.6%, Windows Phone's meager 0.1% share in 2017 will drop to 0% if IDC is on the mark.While Windows Phone's predecessor, Windows Mobile, led the U.S. market as recently as 10 years ago, iOS and BlackBerry blew by it before long in the United States, and Symbian ruled worldwide until its own decline beginning in 2011.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Now available for pre-order, if you're an Amazon Prime Member (or have a free trial -- get one here) you'll see the price drop an extra 20% on Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands (PlayStation 4 or Xbox One). Price drop activates when you add it to your cart, and sinks the price from $59.99 to $39.99.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
On the campaign trail, candidate Donald Trump was so determined to present himself as the solution to H-1B visa abuse – the kind that has American IT workers training their foreign replacements -- that he promised to launch an investigation of the program on day one of his administration. Not in due time, on day one.
Today is day 43. No investigation has been launched. No changes have been made to the H-1B program. And it’s not clear when or if any will be forthcoming.
That no one should be surprised does not mean no one has taken notice. From a Computerworld story:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Managing a growing hybrid cloud infrastructure, no matter the size of your team, can introduce a lot of complexity. You want to be able to take inventory, diagnose and respond to misconfigurations, and monitor deployments across your environment. You want to be able to scale, and do it securely.We’ve put together a resource kit to show you how cloud management can be done. It includes:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
By 2020, an average internet user will use 1.5GB of traffic a day, and daily video traffic will reach 1PB, Intel predicts. A huge amount of data will be generated by autonomous vehicles, mobile devices, and internet-of-things devices.Every day, more information is being collected and sent to faster servers in mega data centers, which analyze and make sense of it. That analysis has helped improved image and speech recognition and is making autonomous cars a reality.Emerging superfast data networks like 5G -- a melting pot of wireless technologies -- will dispatch even more gathered information, which could stress data centers. Servers are already being redesigned to handle more data, and throughput technologies like Gen-Z and fiber optics will reduce latency.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
HackerOne, the company behind one of the most popular vulnerability coordination and bug bounty platforms, has decided to make its professional service available to open-source projects for free."Here at HackerOne, open source runs through our veins," the company's representatives said in a blog post. "Our company, product, and approach is built on, inspired by, and driven by open source and a culture of collaborative software development. As such, we want to give something back."HackerOne is a platform that makes it easier for companies to interact with security researchers, triage their reports, and reward them. Very few companies have the necessary resources to build and maintain bug bounty programs on their own with all the logistics that such efforts involve, much less so open-source projects that are mostly funded through donations.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here