While iPhone users might want it all – thinner, faster, indestructible –iPhone 7 might not quite have all those things, with Apple making the usual trade-offs between power and elegance.BIGGER BATTERY
The latest rumors, started via leaked photos on the Chinese Twitter (Weibo), suggest Apple has higher capacity batteries in the works for its next flagship smartphones: we’re talking 1735 mAH and 2810 mAH for the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus vs. 1715 mAH and 2750 mAH for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus (the 6 and 6 Plus actually had smaller batteries than their predecessors).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
On May 9th, The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists will release a searchable database that will detail over 200,000 entities that are part of the Panama Papers investigation.
While this will be intriguing for most of us, if you’re in a financial organization of any kind and there’s the remotest chance that you might have dealings with any of these entities, or with parties who might be fronting for or involved with them, May 9th will be (or depending on when you read this, is or has been), shall we say, “a bad day” for you.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Lenovo has fixed a vulnerability in its Lenovo Solution Center support tool that could allow attackers to execute code with system privileges and take over computers.The Lenovo Solution Center (LSC) is an application that comes pre-installed on many Lenovo laptops and desktops. It allows users to check their system’s virus and firewall status, update their software, perform backups, check battery health, get registration and warranty information and run hardware tests.The tool has two components: a graphical user interface and a service called LSCTaskService that runs in the background at all times even if the user interface is not started.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
“Timber!” That’s what you hear from a lumberjack in movies before a tree comes crashing down.But that’s not what you’ll hear in rainforests while one tree after another is cut down. Why? The logging is often illegal, and the last thing the culprits want is to attract attention.Rainforests once covered 14 percent of the earth's land surface. Now they cover just 6 percent, and experts estimate that the last remaining rainforests could be consumed in less than 40 years. (The Amazon rainforest itself produces 20 percent of the world’s oxygen.)Worst still, wildlife and local cultures that depend on the rainforest ecosystem are being wiped as well. Local authorities and indigenous tribes are fighting back against the illegally clearing of the rainforest for commercial farming. This tussle between poor villagers and well-funded commercial logging interests is pretty one-sided, but IoT is helping to level the playing field a little.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. Cyber attackers use deception to try to get inside your network by doing everything from spoofing email addresses in spear phishing attacks to hiding malware on legitimate websites. So, if deception is standard operating procedure for the bad guys, perhaps it's time to fight back with some deception of your own. In fact, Gartner says it's a good complement to your existing security infrastructure.Deception technology designed to lure and trap malicious actors has been around since at least 1999 when Lance Spitzner, founder of the Honeynet Project, published a paper on how to build a honeypot. Early honeynets were pretty resource intensive and they had to be maintained to ensure the honeynet wasn't turned against the host organization. Since then, the advent of virtual machines has helped ease the deployment and use of deception technology.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
By now we're all well aware of what makes a bad password … it's us.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
In an effort to expand its presence in the enterprise market, Apple this week announced another major partnership with a business-software giant. In a wide-ranging deal with SAP that's set to begin later this year, Apple will work alongside one the stalwarts of enterprise to develop more native iOS apps, as well as an SDK for SAP's HANA cloud platform. The SDK is designed to let SAP's more than 2.5 million developers build native iOS apps that can tap into SAP systems and access data in real time. The agreement also includes a plan to establish a new "SAP Academy for iOS," a place where SAP customers and partners can meet in person to design apps for iPhones and iPads and received related training. Apple and SAP engineers will work together to build apps, and the concept is similar to Apple's IBM MobileFirst for iOS initiative.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
According to this ACM article, the seven coding constructs that have been the most frequent source of bugs are function calls, assignments, conditions, pointers, uses of NULL, variable declarations, function declarations, and return statements. There are dozens of other conference presentations, books, and taxonomies that provide statistically valid guidance — or at least opinions — on coding practices to avoid.But so far, I haven’t found anything like that for coding in the cloud.And make no mistake about it, the distributed, multi-language environment inherent in the cloud presents some real coding challenges. But before we nerd out entirely, let’s do a bit of bug triage. There are three interesting categories of bugs:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Making enterprise voice-over-Wi-Fi systems comply with emergency call regulations requires shoehorning new techniques into a very old architecture. It also exposes some unfinished technology and fragmented implementation models. We can do it, but no one is happy with the contortions.There’s a large population of enterprise unified communications (UC) systems from Microsoft, Cisco, Avaya, Shoretel and others using Wi-Fi endpoints, whether dedicated Wi-Fi phones or client apps on smartphones. When it comes to emergency call functionality, we should expect these to work at least as well as landlines, PBX extensions and cell phones.One of the most important emergency call (E911) functions is locating the caller. To make emergency call location work, we first need to find the location, then send the call, with caller location attached, to the correct emergency answering center in a form it can understand. Both of those steps present problems.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When the ransomware demands come in it’s really too late to come up with a good response plan, so do that as soon as you can, an Interop audience was told.“You need to decide beforehand whether you will pay and under what circumstances,” John Pironti, president of IP Architects, says. “It’s a cost benefit decision in the end.”+More on Network World: FBI: Ransomware threat at all-time high; how to protect company jewels | See all the stories from Interop +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Cambridge SoundWorks OontZ Angle 3 Next Generation Ultra Portable Wireless Bluetooth Speaker currently averages 4.5 out of 5 stars from over 5,000 people on Amazon (read reviews). It's regular list price is $99.99, but with the current 72% discount you can get it for just $27.99. The OontZ Angle 3 connects effortlessly to your device via bluetooth. It is designed to be loud and clear, with rich bass delivered through their proprietary passive subwoofer design. IPX5 water resistance makes the unit splashproof, rainproof, dustproof, and sandproof. A good consideration for the beach, poolside, in the outdoor shower, car, boat or golf cart. At only 9 ounces and just 5 inches long, it's very light and easy to fit in a backpack. Its high capacity rechargeable 2200 mAh battery lasts for up to 7 hours of playtime. Check out the dramatically discounted OontZ Angle 3 from Cambridge Soundworks now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft announced that Windows 10 surpassed the 300 million devices mark, and that momentum continues despite what some have perceived as a slowdown in installations.Writing on the Microsoft corporate blog, Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president of the Windows and Devices Group, said Windows has become “one of the largest online services in less than a year,” an interesting choice of words for an operating system.“We’re seeing people at home, at schools, at small businesses, at large companies and other organizations adopt Windows 10 faster than ever, and use Windows 10 more than ever before,” he wrote.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A vulnerability in an Android component shipped with phones that use Qualcomm chips puts users' text messages and call history at risk of theft.The flaw was found by security researchers from FireEye and was patched by Qualcomm in March. However, because the vulnerability was introduced five years ago, many affected devices are unlikely to ever receive the fix because they're no longer supported by their manufacturers.The vulnerability, which is tracked as CVE-2016-2060, is located on an Android component called "netd" that Qualcomm modified in order to provide additional tethering capabilities. Malicious applications could exploit the flaw in order to execute commands as the "radio" system user, which has special privileges.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A U.S. trade body has launched an investigation into seven smartphone companies on charges of patent infringement, which could lead to a ban on the sale of certain phones imported and sold by these vendors in the country.The U.S. International Trade Commission said it had instituted an investigation into devices from a group of mainly Asian companies, including Lenovo and its Motorola subsidiary, Samsung Electronics, ZTE, Sony, LG Electronics, HTC and BlackBerry.The complaint was filed against these companies by Creative Technology of Singapore and its U.S. subsidiary Creative Labs of Milpitas, California, on March 24.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The White House is doing a lot more thinking about the arrival of automated decision-making -- super-intelligent or otherwise. No one in government is yet screaming "Skynet," but in two actions this week the concerns about our artificial intelligence future were sketched out.The big risks of A.I. are well-known (a robot takeover), but the more immediate worries are about the subtle, or not-so-subtle, decisions made by badly coded and designed algorithms.+ ALSO: How enterprises can use artificial intelligence +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Happy Mother's Day, Tech Moms!Image by ThinkstockTo help celebrate Mother’s Day, we asked some successful and hard-charging entrepreneurs, who also happen to be moms, to share their insights into managing the many rigors of creating a startup company, all while juggling the daily challenges of parenting. They share how their work lives and home lives sometimes have balance – and sometimes not – and why a strong support network is sacred, and perfection is overrated.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
LAS VEGAS -- Apparently Ethernet isn’t all THAT ubiquitous. That is judging by the number of new applications, speed changes and future options for the networking standard that were discussed at the Interop symposium here.“We are now beyond the ‘let’s just go faster’ development of Ethernet and are now looking at developing Ethernet for specific applications,” said David Chalupsky, Ethernet Alliance BASE-T subcommittee chair and principal engineer at Intel.+More on Network World: Ethernet everywhere!+That’s not to say Ethernet won’t continue to get faster – it is. There is currently work to develop 50Gbps, 200Gbps and 400Gbps Ethernet in the next three years. But perhaps more telling, the Ethernet community is also looking to standardize on slower speeds 2.5Gbps, 5Gbps and 25Gbps.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Experience in the open-source world is a valuable asset for technology job-seekers, and it’s getting more so over time, according to the latest Open-Source Jobs Report, which was published today by Dice and the Linux Foundation.The report, which surveyed tech hiring managers, found that nearly two-thirds were planning to increase open-source hiring more than other areas of their business in the near future, and that 59% had definite plans to add open-source workers.+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: A look at Apple's rise in the enterprise with IBM's help | Former insider’s book explores morality of offshore outsourcing +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple has stepped up its efforts to target enterprise customers through a new partnership with SAP.The companies will deliver native apps for the iPhone and iPad that tap SAP's Hana in-memory computing platform, as well as a new iOS software development kit (SDK)."SAP is the ideal partner to help us truly transform how businesses around the world are run on iPhone and iPad," said Apple CEO Tim Cook.As part of the deal, SAP will develop native iOS apps using Apple's Swift programming language. An app might enable a field maintenance worker to order parts or schedule service, for example; another might allow a doctor to share the latest patient data with other healthcare workers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It might be the fastest, most important water buoy ever invented. That would be the Emergency Integrated Lifesaving Lanyard or EMILY – a 25lb, 4ft-long, bright orange, red and yellow colored cylindrical buoy powered by a jet engine similar to a mini jet ski, and travels up to 22 MPH.+More on Network World: 26 of the craziest and scariest things the TSA has found on travelers+“EMILY is made of Kevlar and aircraft-grade composites and is virtually indestructible,” said inventor Tony Mulligan, CEO of Hydronalix, a maritime robotics company that developed EMILY along with the Office of Naval Research. “The devices can be thrown off a helicopter or bridge and then driven via remote control to whoever needs to be rescued.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here