Did you ever have one of those days where you were so busy from 9 to 5 that the day just blew by? But at quitting time, you looked back and realized nothing really got done? . , as in having control over how you do your work. Control is eroded in a number of ways, often by micromanaging and domineering bosses who dictate every facet of how a job is to be done. But an over-reliance on technology can also erode control. Distractions caused by over-multitasking and by bombarding staff with emails cause them to lose focus on their work. This erodes that sense of control that evolves into decreased job satisfaction.
. app noticed is a bit like winning the lottery. Productivity and enterprise-oriented apps are rarely, if ever, at the top of the most downloaded apps, and they have a hard time gaining attention through the traditional app distribution model. One of Box's greatest strengths is its platform-agnostic ecosystem that provides the same type of seamless integration and syncing that its customers would experience if they remained inside the Microsoft, or Apple, or Google ecosystems. But Box works across a broader spectrum of platforms and devices, so its cusomters are never painted into a corner. Box developed Box $rev to serve as a showcase for third-party apps that integrate with and enhance Box, making it easier for Box customers to find valuable tools. Chris Yeh, Box's VP of Platform, explained that the $rev name is a sort of inside joke for developers—it's intended to mimic a PHP variable.
indicates it will be a laid-back month for IT admins—with one significant exception. Microsoft has five security bulletins scheduled for next week. It’s the fewest bulletins for a single month so far this year, so IT admins are getting a bit of a break from the normally hectic pace of patch implementation. On top of that, of the five bulletins only one is rated as Critical, while the other four are merely Important. , points out that 2013 is eight bulletins ahead of last year at the halfway point. He also notes, however, that there has been the exact same number of Critical bulletins thus far, with 16. The biggest priority for June will be Bulletin 1: a cumulative update for Internet Explorer—addressing 19 of the 23 issues fixed by Microsoft for Patch Tuesday.
Taiwan-based Gigabyte may be more widely known for making motherboards and components. But it caught our eye at Computex this week with some new two-in-one devices about to hit the market. The S1185 is a laptop-tablet hybrid that has a stand and detachable keyboard. The device has a variety of connectivity and ports including USB 3.0, VGA and HDMI. It will be out in the beginning of July and for around $1000. There’s also the U21M convertible. It has an 11.6-inch screen that can swivel and turn the laptop into a tablet. It weighs about 1.4 kilograms or 3.3 pounds and is powered by . It supports up to a 256GB SSD and a 1TB hard disk drive. It will also be in out in July and start at $700.
While you might not want to walk down the street pointing your laptop’s webcam at unfamiliar street signs, Microsoft has made the option available to travelers voyaging in distant lands. , with a key difference: typed text and camera images can be translated, but voice can not. Otherwise, the Windows app can be used much like the Windows Phone app, including its nifty trick of superimposing the translated text over the source language. Unfortunately, to take advantage of it, you’ll either need to own a laptop with a rear-mounted camera or an external camera that can be swiveled. Otherwise, you’ll essentially need to take a “selfie,” holding the laptop out at arm’s length with both you and the text you’ll want to capture in the background.
lets them choose either—even if you have a landline phone system. Services for enabling texting to landline phone numbers aren’t new, but TextGen’s all-purpose communication platform takes the concept a few steps further. Not only does it let you receive both voice calls and text messages on a landline, it can also automatically reply to texts with questionnaires and collect responses in a database—or enable a human being to intervene with chat. You can integrate TextGen access into your web site. And since it’s a cloud-based service, you can access the text/chat responses from anywhere. TextGen executives maintain that they can set up the service on any phone number, including existing landline numbers, numbers on a PBX, and call centers. Once the service is set up, even non-technical users can create automated responses and questionnaires. Examples of applications on TextGen’s website include pizza orders, roadside help (texting the license plate number instead of calling it in), and product registration.
a popular Web hosting administration software package, that could allow attackers to inject arbitrary PHP code and execute rogue commands on Web servers. Wednesday on the Full Disclosure mailing list. The hacker claims the exploit was successfully tested against Plesk 9.5.4, Plesk 9.3, Plesk 9.2, Plesk 9.0 and Plesk 8.6 used in combination with the Apache Web server software on 32-bit and 64-bit Linux distributions including Red Hat, CentOS and Fedora. However, Parallels, the Seattle-based company that develops Plesk Panel, claims that Plesk 9.5 and later versions are not affected by the exploit. “This vulnerability is a variation of the long known CVE-2012-1823 vulnerability related to the CGI mode of PHP only in older Plesk [versions],” a Parallels representative said Thursday via email. “All currently supported versions of Parallels Plesk Panel 9.5, 10.x and 11.x, as well Parallels Plesk Automation, are not vulnerable.”
Three U.S. lawmakers have introduced legislation that would allow the Obama administration to deny U.S. travel visas to cyberattackers sponsored by foreign governments and to freeze their U.S.-based assets. The Cyber Economic Espionage Accountability Act, introduced Thursday in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, is a “small step” toward holding the Chinese, Russian and other governments accountable for cyberespionage they sponsor, said Representative Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican and lead sponsor of the bill. The legislation would allow the State Department to deny visas to cyber hackers sponsored by foreign governments and to expel them from the U.S. and freeze their assets if they are residing inside the country. The bill also calls on the U.S. Department of Justice to bring more economic espionage cases against foreign cyberattackers. “The sheer volume of intellectual property, the blueprints of American innovation and ingenuity, that have been stolen, repurposed and are competing artificially against U.S. companies is staggering,” Rogers said during a press conference. “This is as serious as it gets.”
, gesture typing and all, is finally coming to the entire Android line-up by way of the Google Play store. Previously only available on the Nexus line, Google’s keyboard was sorely missed by consumers that opted to purchase other Android devices, like Samsung or HTC phones. Now, any device running on Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) or later will be able to install the keyboard as an app. The stock Google keyboard offers voice typing, dictionaries for 26 languages, and word suggestion/completion tools. Most notable among its assets, though, is gesture typing. When you swipe your finger in one smooth motion across the keys, the gesture tool determines the most appropriate word. The more you use it, the more intuitive and accurate the system becomes. Similar gesture-type programs have been baked into other devices besides the Nexus, but none have received the same level of praise as Google’s stock keyboard. Third party keyboard apps have also attempted to replicate the experience as a downloadable add-on, but none of them have been as successful as Google. processors integrated into many leading smartphones, consumers have a wider breadth of viable choices than ever before.
Surging tablet sales and the muted response to Windows 8 have opened the door for Android at this year's Computex—and exposed deeper cracks in the established powerhouses of Windows software and Intel chips. Microsoft and Intel have dominated the Computex trade show for decades, with faster chips and new versions of Windows making the headlines each year. They are still a dominant force, but Taiwan's PC makers are branching out to save their skins and compete better with smartphones and tablets from Apple and Samsung. PCs still make headlines at the show, but some of the biggest developments this week have been around products with Android or Mozilla software using chips from Intel rivals like Qualcomm and Nvidia. Microsoft and Intel are no longer the devoted partners they once were, with Microsoft promoting software for ARM chips and Intel cozying up to Google's Android. "Taiwan always used to be a Wintel country, Computex was a Wintel show. That's just not the case any more," said Dan Nystedt, head of research for TriOrient Investments in Taiwan. "People came to Computex to see what was new in PCs and laptops, now it's to see how the PC industry is adapting to the mobile world."
A hot computer is a bad computer. Excess heat can cause malfunctions and crashes, and permanently damage your hardware. And although laptops generally put out less heat than desktops (energy efficiency is a higher design priority), they have their own unique problems. They're rarely as well ventilated as a desktop, and much more difficult to clean. Keeping a laptop cool is all about ventilation. If the hot air can't escape, you're going to have a problem.
The BI (business intelligence) software market cooled off a bit in 2012 after “a few historic banner years” of spending growth, due to difficult economic conditions and even confusion over industry buzzwords such as “big data,” according to a report from analyst firm Gartner. Global spending on BI software was $13.1 billion last year, a 6.8 percent rise over 2011’s $12.3 billion total, but the pace of growth slowed considerably from the approximately 17 percent rate experienced in 2011, Gartner said in the report released Thursday. “While this seems a dramatic drop, it was in line with our forecasts published during 2012,” analysts Dan Sommer and Bhavish Sood wrote in the report. However, “global macroeconomic conditions cannot be ignored,” the report adds. “They led to increased budget scrutiny of both net-new as well as maintenance spending across the entire IT space, and BI was no exception.”
Intel is clearly tired of Nvidia and AMD kicking sand in its face when it comes to graphics performance. The company has had a talented GPU engineering team for many years. With the fourth generation of Intel’s Core CPU line those engineers finally get to strut their stuff. And Intel has launched a new brand to mark the occasion: Iris. Intel claims that the Iris Graphics 5100 and Iris Pro Graphics 5200 GPUs integrated into some of its Haswell SKUs deliver as much as twice the 3D performance of its existing integrated graphics processors. Intel is claiming 3D performance on par with Nvidia’s GeForce GT 650M, a discrete mobile GPU found in high-end notebooks with credible (not high end) gaming performance. Iris and Iris Pro GPUs support advanced APIs, including DirectX 11.1, OpenCL, and OpenGL 4.0. DirectX 11.1 is very important for delivering all the best visual effects in modern games. Photo- and video-editing programs, such as Adobe’s Photoshop and Sony’s Vegas Pro, use OpenCL to tap a graphics processor so they can render images faster. And engineering, design, modeling, and animation programs such as Autodesk’s 3DS Max rely on OpenGL to talk to the GPU. Intel has also boosted the performance of the rest of its integrated graphics processors: the Intel HD Graphics 4200, 4400, 4600, and 5000. While all of Intel’s integrated GPUs will continue to share system memory with the CPU, the Iris Pro Graphics 5200 will also have access to 128MB of dedicated RAM that will be located on a separate die, but in the same package as the CPU. (Discrete video cards, in comparison, typically have 1GB or more of dedicated memory.)
Despite Microsoft's endless attempts to crush my enthusiasm, I continue to be a fan of Windows Media Center. At least, I'm trying to be: It's not included with Windows 8. I'd literally have to spend $100 to get it as part of Microsoft's Pro Pack. (Windows 8 Pro users can buy WMC for $9.99, a slap in the face to the rest of us.) Thankfully, I still run Windows 7 on my tuner-equipped media-center PC, and therefore still get to enjoy the benefits of the software. , is the best one yet. True to its name, My Channel Logos adds TV-network logos to the program guide in Windows Media Center. That may not sound like a big deal, but it really enhances the look of the guide, while at the same time making your favorite channels easier to spot at a glance.
Microsoft and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation have taken aim at a botnet network based on malware called Citadel that is held responsible for stealing people’s online banking information and personal identities. The company, however, warned that because of Citadel’s size and complexity, it does not expect to fully take out “all of the botnets in the world using the Citadel malware.” Botnets are networks of computers infected by malware, which can be controlled by cybercriminals to send automated spam email, spread viruses, attack computers and servers, and commit other kinds of crime and fraud, without the knowledge of the owner of the computer. In an action, code-named Operation b54, more than 1,400 Citadel botnets, which are said to be responsible for over half a billion U.S. dollars in losses to people and businesses worldwide, were disrupted, according to late Wednesday by Richard Domingues Boscovich, assistant general counsel of Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit.
The U.S. National Security Agency has been allowed by a court order to collect phone records of a large number of customers of Verizon, according to a report in the Guardian on Thursday. The April 25 order from the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in Washington, D.C., requires Verizon to produce call records or “telephony metadata” on an ongoing daily basis, according to the British newspaper, which published what it said was a copy of the . The metadata includes communications routing information such as session-identifying information, trunk identifier, telephone calling card numbers, and time and duration of call, according to the document. It will not, however, contain the content of a communication, or the name, address, and financial information of the customer. The authorization expires on July 19, and the order can only be declassified by April 2038.
Intel is showing off what it called the “world’s fastest thumb drive,” which uses Thunderbolt technology to provide breakthrough data transfer speeds compared to flash drives that plug into USB ports. At the Computex trade show in Taipei, Intel showed a key-shaped prototype 128GB thumb drive that plugged directly into a computer’s Thunderbolt port. The drive required no cable and resembled flash drives in size. This is one of the first thumb drives demonstrated using Thunderbolt connectivity, which is the fastest technology available to transfer data between computers and peripherals, said Oren Huber, a Thunderbolt engineer at Intel Israel. Thunderbolt can transfer data at a speed of 10Gbps, which is faster than USB 3.0 and USB 2.0. Right now USB 3.0 is about half the speed of Thunderbolt.
Taiwan's Acer is breaking Android out of its comfort zone and has installed the operating system on a 21.5-inch all-in-one desktop PC that is expected on sale in the U.S. later this year. A prototype version of the computer, called the Acer N3-220, was on show at this week's Computex IT expo in Taipei. The model was running Android 4.2.2, was based around a 1.6GHz Nvidia Tegra 3 processor, and sported full high-definition resolution of 1,920 pixels by 1,080 pixels. It had just 8 gigabytes of storage, but an Acer representative said that was likely because it was a demonstration version. Many of the specifications could change with the eventual production version. The computer carried the brand name of Gateway, the U.S. company that is expected to put it on sale.
The new laws would impose certain requirements on police and judicial authorities as well. Authorities would be required to respond to urgent requests for help within eight hours.
Summer’s approaching, and with it energy bills are going up. And if you want to cut your PC’s power bill, you should use—Microsoft’s Internet Explorer? That’s the result of a Microsoft-sponsored (PDF) by Fraunhofer, which found that Internet Explorer consumed less power than both Chrome and Mozilla’s Firefox when accessing the Web’s top ten sites. Unfortunately for Microsoft’s case, the differences are minuscule—on the order of about a watt when laptops were measured surfing Web sites, or just 2 percent or so between the other two. When using Flash, however, the differences are more pronounced: Microsoft’s Internet Explorer uses 18.6 percent less power than Chrome, Microsoft said.
Red Hat has put out a beta release of Software Collections 1.0, in a bid to let developers use newer versions of languages such as Ruby and Python with support. For certain applications, a more recent version of a language than what’s included in the base Enterprise Linux (RHEL) system is needed, according to Red Hat. Software Collections 1.0 is the first in a series of releases designed to allow developers to take advantage of new capabilities in their web apps faster with the safety net of support from Red Hat, it said. The beta includes access to the latest stable versions of Ruby 1.9.3 with Rails 3.2.8; Python 2.7 and 3.3; PHP 5.4; and Perl 5.16.3. Developers can also get their hands on a technology preview of node.js version 0.10. It is available now for use with RHEL 6 to customers with the right RHEL, Workstation or developer-related subscriptions. With the exception of Node.js, all components are supported. They are functionally complete and intended for production use. The included versions of Ruby and the related web application development framework Rails, have substantial performance improvements for faster load times. Python 3.3 offers significant improvements in language consistency and Perl version 5.16.3 has enhanced security, according to Red Hat.
The Internet Systems Consortium (ISC), the organization that develops and maintains the widely used BIND DNS (Domain Name System) software, has patched a publicly disclosed vulnerability that can be used to remotely crash DNS servers running recent releases of BIND 9. The vulnerability affects DNS servers that use BIND 9.6-ESV-R9, 9.8.5, and 9.9.3 and are configured to run as recursive resolvers—a very common DNS server configuration. Older versions of the BIND 9 software, including versions 9.6.0 through 9.6-ESV-R8, 9.8.0 through 9.8.4-P2, and 9.9.0 through 9.9.2-P2 are not affected. published Tuesday. The organization rates this vulnerability as highly severe. There are no known cases of intentional exploitation of this flaw, ISC said. However, the vulnerability was disclosed on an open mailing list with enough details that would allow attackers to develop an exploit, it said.
Google’s open standard for its Calendar service received a stay of execution Wednesday, as the search giant promised that developers large and small will be able to tap into Google Calendar for the foreseeable future using freely available protocols. Unfortunately, Windows users won’t be able to sync Outlook or their Windows Calendar app with Google Calendar unless Microsoft steps up its game and hops on the CalDAV bandwagon. It’s just another battle in the ongoing war between Google and Microsoft. “From Microsoft’s point of view, I hope they think about the end users,” says Patrick Moorhead, founder and principal analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy. “The smaller end users, like consumers and smaller businesses that can’t afford IT staff and can’t support Exchange, who rely on Google to support their business.”
After three and a half years in operation, Amazon Web Services’ RDS is finally generally available, and users can also get a service-level agreement if they choose to run the database in multiple places. The combination of customer adoption, numerous new features and a lot of operational experience has taken RDS (Relational Database Service) to a level where Amazon thinks its mature enough to be made generally available. Until now, users could gain access to it under a beta testing program. Just like Amazon’s other services, the hosted database service includes set-up, operations and scaling. For example, the service automatically patches the database software and backs up data. Code, applications, and tools that IT staff already use with their existing on-premise databases can also be used with RDS, according to Amazon. The general availability comes with a service-level agreement (SLA) with 99.95 percent availability for Multi-AZ database instances on a monthly basis. That percentage equals a maximum of 22 minutes of downtime per instance and month. If availability falls below that level users are eligible for service credits.
Though barely a year old, Google Drive is already a very popular service. It’s easy to use if you already have a Google account, and its prices put Dropbox to shame. On Google Drive, 100GB costs a mere $5 a month (and Google even bumps up your Gmail storage to 25GB as a bonus). Dropbox charges double the price for 100GB. But like , Google Drive becomes even more useful when you take advantage of third-party add-ons and services. These five totally free and easy-to-use tools will help you to encrypt your data, play your music, collaborate on slides, back up automatically, share files, and more. Some live on the desktop, some in Chrome, and some online, but all of them work to make Google Drive a happier online home for your data.
Rakuten, Japan’s largest online retailer, is acquiring a U.S. logistics firm as it continues to build out its infrastructure to compete with foreign rivals like Amazon.com. The company said Thursday it will acquire Webgistix, which provides warehouse and shipping services to online retailers. Webgistix says it can provide 1-2 day shipping for customers from its U.S. facilities in New York, Las Vegas, Atlanta and Reno. The acquisition fits with Rakuten’s larger strategy of operating a giant online shopping mall for merchants, as opposed to selling directly to customers. Earlier this year, Rakuten converted U.S. site Buy.com, which it acquired in 2010, over to its model. Buy.com now redirects to , and it has become one of thousands of online retailers on Rakuten. Webgistix will help Rakuten offer its online retailers, many too small to have their own infrastructure, the ability to ship quickly to customers. Webgistix has marketed itself as a way for smaller retailers to compete with Amazon without selling their products through the site.
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: Bing Pushes To Build Marketshare Through “Bing It On” For Faster Airport Wifi I got a surprise recently on my trip through Orange County’s John Wayne Airport....
Driving inbound leads from SEO, social media and PR makes sense for your clients, however it’s not an easy concept to sell. In this white paper, Optify explains the top 4 proof points needed to make a business case for your inbound marketing services. Plus, ideas for using these points with...
I got a surprise recently on my trip through Orange County’s John Wayne Airport. When I tapped into the free wifi there, I was offered a “premium connection speed upgrade” if I took Bing’s Bing It On challenge. It turns out Bing has been doing this in several airports since...
In the comments of my last column about how I doubled e-commerce revenue for clients by focusing on user intent, readers asked for some more specific e-commerce SEO tips that they could apply in their own client work. Today’s article shares some valuable lessons gathered over a decade of SEO...
In February of this year, Google made headlines with its launch of enhanced campaigns. Since the initial outpouring of both interest and concern, advertisers have been seeking to understand how enhanced campaigns will not only reshape their campaign structures and strategies, but also how this will...
Earlier this week blekko, which just introduced a bold new UI, had a reduction in force. Eight people were let go “as part of an effort to reduce costs,” said CEO Rich Skrenta, who added, “blekko’s revenues are growing and these cost reductions will help us as we work toward...
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: Bing Ads Will Copycat Google AdWords Enhanced Campaigns With New Bid Adjustments It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Microsoft is adjusting the Bing Ads platform...
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Microsoft is adjusting the Bing Ads platform to play nicely with AdWords enhanced campaigns. The company said they would be making changes back in early April, and now they are providing specifics. Bing Ads has supported incremental bidding by...
Since September, people using Safari in iOS 6 and searching on Google have appeared to publishers as if they’ve come directly to their sites, as opposed to having been driving by search. At last, the reason behind the Dark Google cut-off of data has been found: mobile Safari doesn’t...