IBM Watson’s next trick: Helping you write better

IBM’s Watson has already proven its mettle in the kitchen and on game shows, but its latest skill set is one that could help us all: making sure our writing conveys what we want it to.Now in experimental mode, Watson Tone Analyzer is a new service that can analyze text for the attitude and tone that underlie it. The tool could help anyone refine an email, marketing message, presentation or blog post before releasing it into the world, IBM said.“To read a message and to judge the tone conveyed in the message comes naturally to humans,” explained Rama Akkiraju, a distinguished engineer and master inventor for IBM Watson User Technologies, in a Thursday blog post announcing the project. “But, at times, the tone may be overlooked, undesired or not conveyed well by the author.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

T-Mobile to pay $17.5 million fine for 911 outages

T-Mobile USA will pay a US$17.5 million fine in a settlement with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission for two 911 emergency dialing outages on the company’s mobile network last year.The separate but related outages left T-Mobile customers without the ability to dial in to emergency response centers for about three hours. In the settlement, T-Mobile agreed to strengthen its 911 service procedures and adopt compliance measures ensuring it adheres to the FCC’s 911 service reliability and outage notification rules in the future, the agency said in a press release.The settlement represents the largest fine that the FCC has assessed against a carrier in connection with a 911 outage.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Latest Flash Player version has improved exploit defenses

The Flash Player update released Tuesday not only fixed two vulnerabilities that were being targeted by attackers, but added additional protections that will make entire classes of security flaws much harder to exploit in the future.There were three low-level defenses added in Flash Player 18.0.0.209, two of which block a technique that has been used by many Flash exploits since 2013.The technique involves corrupting the length of an ActionScript Vector buffer object so that malicious code can be placed at predictable locations in memory and executed. ActionScript is the programming language in which Flash applications are written.This method was used by at least two of the Flash Player exploits found among the files leaked from Italian surveillance software maker Hacking Team, as well as in two other flash zero-day exploits used by cyberespionage groups this year, researchers from Google said in a blog post Thursday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Upload: Your tech news briefing for Friday, July 17

Google reports strong earnings, but slowing growthGoogle’s second quarter income of $3.93 billion reported Thursday was up 17 percent year-on-year, but its sales of $17.73 billion represented an 11 percent growth rate, the smallest revenue increase reported by the company since 2012. Google is struggling to grow its ad revenue on mobile devices: ads in mobile search results are smaller, and can yield fewer interactions from users, driving down their price.Apple, Samsung may join in launch of embedded SIM cardsTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Upload: Your tech news briefing for Friday, July 17

Google reports strong earnings, but slowing growthGoogle’s second quarter income of $3.93 billion reported Thursday was up 17 percent year-on-year, but its sales of $17.73 billion represented an 11 percent growth rate, the smallest revenue increase reported by the company since 2012. Google is struggling to grow its ad revenue on mobile devices: ads in mobile search results are smaller, and can yield fewer interactions from users, driving down their price.Apple, Samsung may join in launch of embedded SIM cardsTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Spam rate falls below 50 percent for first time in a decade

Spam fell to less than 50 percent of all email in June, the lowest in a decade, Symantec said Thursday in its latest Intelligence Report.The levels of spam have been slowly falling since 2010 for multiple reasons. Network providers are more tuned into the problem and take action faster when there are issues on their services.Also, unlike six or seven years ago, sending billions of messages per day from massive botnets isn’t as feasible anymore.Law enforcement, along with companies including Microsoft, have aggressively gone after some of the largest botnets over the last few years and worked to technically shut them down. Although some botnet operators have been able in some instances to regain control, the increased attention makes it more difficult for them to work.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Bogus news app used to deliver Hacking Team spy tool

Data stolen from Hacking Team continues to yield information about the company’s infiltration techniques. The latest find is a fake Android news app, which was used to install its flagship surveillance tool.The app is called “BeNews,” the same name as a long-shuttered news website, wrote Wish Wu, mobile threat response engineer, on Trend Micro’s blog.Inside the app is a backdoor that appears to have been used to load the Android version of Hacking Team’s Remote Control System (RCS), also known as Galileo, a data-collecting tool the company sold to law enforcement and security agencies worldwide.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The average mobile YouTube session is now 40 minutes, Google says

Why stop your video for a snack, or when nature calls, when you’ve got a smartphone?On mobile devices, the average length of a viewing session on YouTube is now more than 40 minutes, Google reported Thursday. That’s double what it was last year, CFO Ruth Porat said during the company’s quarterly earnings call.Google didn’t say what types of video people are watching for that long of a stretch. You can imagine how individual music videos, movie trailers, and tutorials could add up throughout the day, but the fact that Google’s figure is for uninterrupted viewing shows how popular it’s become to watch video on mobile devices.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google reports strong earnings, propelling its stock

Google’s stock jumped more than 7 percent in the after-market hours on Thursday, after the company reported strong earnings results for the second quarter.Total income for the period ended June 30 was US$3.93 billion, up 17 percent from $3.35 billion in the second quarter of 2014, Google announced Thursday. Excluding certain expenses, Google reported earnings of $6.99, beating analysts’ estimates of $6.71, as polled by the Thomson Financial Network.The company’s stock was trading at around $620 after Google reported its earnings at the end of trading, up from closing at $579.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google reports strong earnings, propelling its stock

Google’s stock jumped more than 7 percent in the after-market hours on Thursday, after the company reported strong earnings results for the second quarter.Total income for the period ended June 30 was US$3.93 billion, up 17 percent from $3.35 billion in the second quarter of 2014, Google announced Thursday. Excluding certain expenses, Google reported earnings of $6.99, beating analysts’ estimates of $6.71, as polled by the Thomson Financial Network.The company’s stock was trading at around $620 after Google reported its earnings at the end of trading, up from closing at $579.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft snaps up FieldOne to enrich Dynamics CRM

Microsoft and FieldOne have been partners for several years already, but on Thursday Microsoft took the relationship a step further and acquired the New Jersey-based provider of field-service software.Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but it comes just four months after the two companies signed a global strategic agreement to integrate Microsoft Dynamics CRM and FieldOne’s Sky platform, which offers features such as automated routing, scheduling and dispatch, work-order management, mobile collaboration and more.Field-service management software is used by companies that need to send workers to customers’ locations to provide on-site support. Typically, it relies heavily upon cloud and mobile technologies, with an increasing use of data science and predictive analytics.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Here’s how to keep your employees engaged in their jobs

What matters most in improving employee engagement levels--defined as the sense of purpose and commitment employees feel toward their employer and its mission— is valuing employees, that is, an authentic focus on their performance, career development, and inclusion and involvement in decisions affecting their work. The key is identifying what practices to implement and how to implement them.+GAO: Early look at fed’s “Einstein 3” security weapon finds challenges+Those thoughts were but a few found in a report on employee engagement from the watchdogs at the Government Accountability Office this week which took a look at how private- and public-sector organizations increased levels of engagement to see what can lead to better organizational performance.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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