The old “IT glitch” was reportedly the cause of British Airways’ multi-continent check-in delays on Monday. Angry travelers waited in check-in queues for hours while the airline fell back on the old school method of handwriting records, boarding passes and baggage labels.British Airways has been rolling out a new check-in system since last year; a BA spokesperson described the check-in delays as “teething problems.”At first, BA claimed the glitch causing check-in delays was not a worldwide problem, but a “patchy” problem. While the glitch in the check-in system affected more than people in the U.K., travelers took to Twitter to complain about long delays in at least San Diego, Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco, Rome, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Vancouver, the Bahamas, D.C., Seattle, Zurich, and Mexico City.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Choosing the right wine for a meal takes both skill and a little luck. It’s an area where many wine drinkers could use some help.Sommely wine caps help when a sommelier isn’t available.This elegant IoT-based solution combines wine recommendations, inventory management and the ability to physically locate wine bottles. It addresses a need that’s common in managing other perishable inventories, such as:
What is in the inventory?
When are the items in inventory about to expire?
Which items in the inventory best meet the demand?
Where is the physical location of the items so that they can be easily retrieved?
Wine selection is a complex decision with dozens of wine varieties and thousands of brands. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The introduction of Windows 10 in October 2014 also brought along a new default web browser named Edge. The company has been touting Edge as a replacement for Internet Explorer (IE), which is now into its third decade of service for the company. But user adoption of the new browser isn’t piling up the way the company would probably like.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Intelligence and law enforcement agencies are reportedly investigating whether Russia has launched a broad, covert operation to disrupt the U.S. elections in November.Officials believe that Russia appears to be attempting to spread disinformation and hack into U.S. political systems in an effort to undermine confidence in the upcoming election, according to a report in the Washington Post. Investigators do not have "definitive" proof of a Russian operation, but there is "significant concern," the Post quoted an anonymous senior intelligence official as saying.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Companies that want to try simplifying the tangled mess of their internal workflows will be able to use a new tool from Box to help.Box Relay is a new product the enterprise storage company announced on Tuesday that's aimed at giving employees a way to manage and track the process of doing repetitive work, like submitting expense reports and getting agreements approved.Using Relay, power users will be able to design workflows that they can then share with co-workers inside an organization and people from other companies who work with them. According to Chris Yeh, Box's senior vice president of product, Relay is aimed at making Box the system that people use to get work done together, in addition to storing files.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
There’s broad recognition among enterprises of the need for network modernization, but many decision-makers are constrained by the prospect of capital equipment outlays, proving a solid return on investment, or fear of being locked into a proprietary solution. Those are key findings in a soon to be published survey conducted by IDG Research Services.
One third of IT decision-makers think it’s highly likely their organizations will modernize their network connectivity strategies over the next year and another 46 percent indicate there’s some likelihood. Today, virtually every enterprise places a premium on flexibility and agility, and few are willing to commit to long-term, costly outlays for network technology that can’t adapt to their future needs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A bad malware signature caused Sophos antivirus products to detect a critical Windows file as malicious on Sunday, preventing some users from accessing their computers.The false positive detection flagged winlogon.exe, an important component of the Windows Login subsystem, as a Trojan program called Troj/FarFli-CT. Because the file was blocked, some users who attempted to log into their computers were greeted by a black screen.Sophos issued an update to fix the problem within a few hours and said that the issue only affected a specific 32-bit version of Windows 7 SP1 and not Windows XP, Vista, 8 or 10."Based on current case volume and customer feedback, we believe the number of impacted systems to be minimal and confined to a small number of cases," the company said in a support article.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Two different hacking groups, both which claim to be of the non-malicious variety, have been busy bringing suspended Twitter accounts back from the dead and power-spamming Variety subscribers.OurMine hacked Variety, power-spammed subscribersIf folks who like news about Hollywood hadn’t heard of the hacking group OurMine, then some of them are very familiar with the group’s name now.OurMine reportedly compromised Variety’s content management system around 9 am PT on Saturday and published a post which Engadget said was later removed, but the hacking collective’s antics didn’t stop there. Variety’s subscribers were hammered with spam.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Security experts have been saying for decades that human weakness can trump the best technology.Apparently, it can also trump conventional wisdom.Since passwords became the chief method of online authentication, conventional wisdom has been that changing them every month or so would improve a person’s, or an organization’s, security.Not according to Lorrie Cranor, chief technologist of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), who created something of a media buzz earlier this year when she declared in a blog post that it was, “time to rethink mandatory password changes.” To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Iris scanner technology is emerging in smartphones, including the new Samsung Note 7, but is expected to come soon to cars and ATM machines to verify a user’s identity.Experts say an iris scan can be more reliable than a fingerprint scan, which is a big reason it is expected to be used in more devices in coming years. Each iris, the colorful part of the eye that forms a ring around the pupil, is unique and therefore a good biometric indicator.Samsung’s Android 6-based Note 7, which shipped on Aug. 19, takes advantage of the technology as well as the Windows 10 Mobile-based HP Elite X3.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In cryptography, the "man in the middle" is usually an attacker -- but when Keezel wants to get between you and the Wi-Fi connection in your hotel or your home, it's for your own good.After a long crowdfunding campaign, the company is getting ready to ship its Wi-Fi security device, also called Keezel, in October. Any orders it picks up at the IFA trade show in Berlin this week will be fulfilled from a second production run in November, said Keezel CEO Aike Muller.One problem Keezel aims to solve is that hotel and other public Wi-Fi services are often unencrypted, leaving your data wide open to eavesdropping by others in the area. If there is authentication, it's often only for billing purposes, and performed by a captive portal after the traffic has gone over the air in the clear.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Open and easy access to rare earth materials -- which are critical parts of electronics in everything from cars to computers -- is still more a dream than reality.One of the ways to address that anxiety is to harvest and reuse such material from used electronic components – in particular computer hard drives.+More on Network World: Quick look: World’s largest e-waste dump+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The all-purpose, all-weather companion JBL Flip 3 is the next generation wireless speaker in the award-winning Flip series. It is a comprehensive portable Bluetooth speaker that delivers surprisingly powerful, room-filling stereo sound everywhere. This ultra-compact speaker is powered by a 3000mAh rechargeable Li-ion battery that offers up to 10 hours of continuous playtime. Sporting a durable, splashproof fabric and available in 8 vibrant colors, Flip 3 is the all-purpose, all-weather companion that integrates music into every aspect of your life - from tabletop to poolside, from sunny mornings to rainy nights. Flip 3 also features a built-in noise and echo cancelling speakerphone for crystal clear conference calls, and JBL Connect technology that can wirelessly link multiple JBL Connect-enabled speakers together to amplify the listening experience. The JBL Flip 3 Speaker averages 4.5 out of 5 stars from 1,600+ people on Amazon (read reviews) and its typical list price of $104.95 is currently reduced to just $81.95.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Resumes aren't easy for anyone. And James Park was no different. Park works with the Information Systems and Control Association (ISACA) and recently earned his master's degree. While his career his distinguished, his resume needed some work. After speaking with the candidate, Laura Smith-Proulx, award winning resume writer and author of three books (How to Get Hired Faster, Solve Your Toughest Resume Challenges and Finding Your Next Job with LinkedIn), knew there was far more to Park's career history than his resume suggested.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Just say noImage by Andy ArmstrongWhen ransomware locks down a computer or an entire system at your organization, what do you do? If you get an email from a hacker threatening a DDoS attack that will level your website, how do you respond?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
With hundreds of programming languages already in existence, why invest the considerable effort in creating a new one? For developers of three newfangled open source languages -- Coconut, Crystal, and Oden -- the answer is simply that, in programming, there are always new niches to fill and new needs to be met.Scratching the proverbial itch and unwilling to settle for existing tools that they found somewhat lacking, these developers set out to build their own languages, driven by specific goals. For Coconut, which compiles to Python, it’s all about bringing functional programming to the Python language. Crystal is devoted to combining multiple programming capabilities. And the driving force behind the development of Oden is filling in some capabilities absent from Google’s popular Go language.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It's September, the psychological start to a new year. If your IT career spent the summer in the doldrums, maybe it's time to channel your inner student -- open up a fresh notebook, sharpen your proverbial pencil and get serious about launching an A+ job search.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
At the 11th hour, the popular Sunrise calendar app’s execution has been stayed—though not permanently.Microsoft purchased Sunrise’s parent company in February 2015 to bolster Outlook’s capabilities. And in a post last October, Microsoft confirmed plans to kill Sunrise, though it promised that “We will leave Sunrise in market until its features are fully integrated into Outlook, the exact timing of which we will communicate in advance.” This past March, the Sunrise blog confirmed that the app would be shut down completely on August 31.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
What will back up all the data on your smartphone, but doesn't physically exist? No, it's not another cloud backup service, it's the centerpiece of Toshiba Storage Peripherals' booth at IFA.The as-yet-unnamed (and unfinished) product will be about the size of a small plate, to judge by the prototype in a glass case on the booth. It will have a USB connection to charge your smartphone and back up its contents to an included 500 GB hard disk. There will be no cloud servers involved, and no internet connection needed: Everything will stay inside the device, said Toshiba's product manager for hard disks, Eun-Kyung Hong."This is for home backup where you know all your data is in your home, not in the cloud where you don't know whether it's secure or not," she said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If you thought your smartphone was safe(r) from the wild west of malware, spyware and other viruses compared with the PC space, think again. A new report from Nokia proclaims a “sharp rise in the occurrence of smartphone malware infections” in the first half of 2016.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)