Facebook is lifting restrictions on teens' privacy settings, which is sure to anger parents.
In another example of the blurred lines between business and personal computing, Whirlpool chose Google Apps because the home appliances giant is convinced Google’s focus on consumers gives it a special innovation edge as a provider of enterprise software. The way Whirlpool sees it, battling in the ferociously competitive and fast-changing consumer Internet market forces Google to innovate at breakneck speed and to stretch its technology vision into the future. “With Google, you get the relentless consumer-based innovation pressure on the products that can then be promoted into the enterprise suite,” Whirlpool CIO Mike Heim told IDG News Service after Google his decision last week. Over the coming year, Whirlpool, the home appliances giant, will move about 30,000 employees globally from an on-premises IBM Lotus Notes email and collaboration system to Google Apps, which is cloud-based and includes Gmail, Calendar, Sites, Docs and Drive.
Pop quiz: Would you consider even visiting a house for sale without looking at photos on the Web first? Would you buy a television online if the store didn’t include a picture? Would you visit a doctor or dentist if you couldn’t see what they looked like in advance? Most people would likely say no to all of these questions, and it’s easy to understand why. We live in a visual age, a time when stories are increasingly told not by an eloquently penned paragraph but through the uncompromising image created by a camera’s lens. The use of photography online is inexorably on the rise. ” than the average text-only missive on the site. So maybe it’s time you made photos a bigger part of your small business strategy. Here are some ideas to help make that happen, whether or not you’re a Leibovitz behind the lens.
Hewlett-Packard has assembled a number of its data-mining software programs into a service, called the HP Digital Marketing Hub, that can synthesize multiple sources of marketing data to help organizations better identify potential customers. “The number one thing marketers are struggling with now is data integration,” said Randy Cairns, HP Autonomy vice president of marketing. “A lot of work has been done so marketers can look at various segments and understand what sets of content would resonate.” The HP Digital Marketing Hub will use HP’s , a collection of technologies that the company has assembled into a big-data-styled analysis platform. HAVEn stands for Hadoop, Autonomy, Vertica, enterprise security, and the n stands for the number of applications that the user may wish to incorporate with the platform. Digital marketing “is a great application area for HAVEn. It is a combination of several technologies coming together to address line-of-business challenges and opportunities,” Cairns said.
Hiring managers are busy bees who sometimes have to close a deal from their mobile phones, which is apparently what led LinkedIn to offer a mobile app for recruiters on the go. On Wednesday, the social network launched , a mobile version of many of the recruiter tools the company offers on the desktop. LinkedIn’s already provides tools such as targeted candidate search, direct messaging and organizational features for recruiters and hiring managers, for a fee. But more people are migrating away from the desktop in favor of smartphones and tablets—even when they’re job hunting—and LinkedIn wants to provide a mobile-focused service for the recruiters on the other end.
More than two weeks after the Obama administration launched a website allowing uninsured U.S. residents to sign up for health coverage, officials still aren't releasing the numbers of people who have successfully navigated the error-prone process. After widespread reports of a slow or malfunctioning HealthCare.gov site since its launch Oct. 1, officials with the Obama White House and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said residents have been able to sign up for health insurance on the site this week. U.S. residents are also able to sign up for health insurance over the phone and at some government centers, and have made more than 560,000 calls to the phone number set up to help people buy insurance, White House spokesman Jay Carney said Wednesday during a press briefing. "Health care reform is more than a website," Carney said. "People across the country are getting health insurance."
Is this a car or a fast-moving spa? The S550’s new technologies include a scent-control system, passenger massage, and oh yeah, some things that improve the safety and driving experience as well.
Windows XP users will get another 18 months free of worry from security holes in Google’s Chrome browser. Google says until at least April 2015, one year after extended Windows XP support from Microsoft is due to end. (Microsoft ended mainstream support for the aging operating system in 2009.) “We recognize that hundreds of millions of users, including a good chunk of current Chrome users, still rely on XP,” a Google blog post said. “Moreover, many organizations still run dozens or even hundreds of applications on XP and may have trouble migrating.” The blog post explained that malware often exploits unpatched security bugs in Web browsers to infect computers. By keeping Chrome up to date until 2015, Google can at least prevent browser-based attacks from wreaking havoc while organizations move to newer versions of Windows.
After releasing the first version of Knox security software following a long testing period, Samsung is working on version 2.0. Knox 2.0 will offer more security features and work in more devices, said Jae Shin, vice president of the Knox Business Group in Samsung’s mobile communications division. Shin did not provide details of the new features in Knox 2.0, but development of features will depend on user needs. Knox is built on Android, and taps into the OS and chipset features to secure a device. Samsung has partnered with mobile-device management software companies MobileIron, AirWatch, SAP, Citrix, Centrify and Mocana to take advantage of Knox. “When we give [Knox] to them, we have a minimum feature guideline,” Shin said, adding that the companies adapt the security layer to match their mobile-device management software.
suite. The new version adds some key features and capabilities and blurs the line between mobile security and mobile device management. One element that stands out from the rest, though, is Webroot’s new service to help IT admins understand the risk posed by installed apps. The new version of Webroot SecureAnywhere Business—Mobile Protection provides IT admins with device and group-level policies for both Android and iOS devices. Alerts are sent to the management console when a mobile device does not comply with the policy, giving IT admins an opportunity to address the situation. In this version, Webroot has extended the SecureWeb browsing protection for Android to apply to both the stock Android Web browser and Google Chrome. Perhaps the biggest news about the new release, though, is the Mobile App Reputation Service. Webroot has scanned more than 4.8 million Android and iOS apps and counting. While some apps are inherently malicious and can be identified as malware, there are many more apps out there that are not malware per se, yet still do suspicious or insidious things. Webroot analyzes the permissions requested by apps and the actual behavior of the apps to assign a score that helps IT admins determine the level of risk posed. Another key improvement in the new version is the use of cloud scanning. This gives Webroot protection a smaller footprint on the mobile device endpoints, and it consumes fewer processor or memory resources. The biggest benefit, perhaps—especially for a mobile device—is that it uses less power on the device so battery life is extended.
Unexpected demand? Or a glitch? For whatever reason, the ship date of Microsoft’s highest-end Surface Pro 2 tablets have slipped more than a month to mid-December. Microsoft’s $1299 Surface Pro 2 with 256GB of flash storage now shows a ship date of December 15, according to . Ditto for the 512GB version, priced at $1799. More than a week ago, Microsoft had before they sold out. And, at the time, the ship dates of 256GB and 512GB versions of the Surface Pro 2 had slipped to October 28, a few days after the new Surface tablets ship on October 22. But Microsoft didn’t say then why the ship date had slipped, and it still hasn’t. Other Surface ship dates remain unchanged; the Surface Pro 2 with 64GB of storage is scheduled to ship on October 21, while the 129GB version will ship on October 25. Microsoft said last week that the Type Cover 2 and the Touch Cover 2 were also sold out; the Microsoft Store ship dates reflect that, with a shipping date of October 29 for both. The Surface Wireless Adapter is still scheduled to ship on October 21.
ThinApp users have scored a victory as VMware has decided to keep offering it as a separate product and said a new version will arrive soon. ThinApp uses virtualization to encapsulate applications and isolate them from the underlying operating system. Doing that helps eliminate version conflicts and simplify application delivery and management, according to VMware. The company said in March that it planned to consolidate ThinApp licensing into the Horizon Suite. That news didn’t sit well with customers, whose complaints led VMware to change its mind. A stand-alone ThinApp will continue to be available until further notice and also be part of the Horizon Suite, the company . The company is also putting the finishing touches on ThinApp version 5.0. The update “is coming very, very soon,” VMware said.
If you're new to Windows 8 (or Windows 8.1), you're no doubt battling the learning curve. And some areas aren't as intuitive as they could be, like trying to navigate your way to the PC Settings menu. keyboard shortcut), but you won't see PC Settings in the list of options up top or in the icons near the bottom. . Why Microsoft stuck it down there instead of in the main list, I have no idea. .
After recent revelations about the National Security Agency’s widespread surveillance of Internet communications, the coordination of the Internet’s technical infrastructure should move away from U.S. government oversight, said 10 groups involved in the Internet’s technical governance. The groups—including the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the Internet Society, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)—said Internet groups should accelerate the “globalization” of the Internet domain name functions performed by ICANN and traditionally overseen by the U.S. government. Internet governance should move toward “an environment in which all stakeholders, including all governments, participate on an equal footing,” the groups said in a . During a meeting this month in Uruguay, the 10 groups “expressed strong concern over the undermining of the trust and confidence of Internet users globally due to recent revelations of pervasive monitoring and surveillance,” they said in the statement. The groups signing the statement didn’t go into further detail. A spokesman for ICANN declined comment, referring to the statement, and representatives of the Internet Society and W3C didn’t immediately respond to a request for comments.
Leaving Google TV in the dust, Vizio's new streaming box will bring the Web to any HDTV.
tablet by $30. Dubbed the Miix2, Lenovo will offer a second SKU with 64GB of memory for just $349. The Miix2’s 800-by-1280-pixel display provides 10 touch points, but it can also be used with a stylus for more precise work. Lenovo offers an optional stylus and a detachable cover for the tablet for $20. The stylus can be stored inside the cover, and the cover can be folded to form a stand to hold the tablet upright. The Miix2’s onboard memory can be expanded by an additional 32GB via a MicroSD card slot. The tablet will have a front-facing 2-megapixel camera and a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera. There will be a 3G option, too; unfortunately, U.S. buyers will be limited to Wi-Fi. of the Miix earlier this year.
Amazon's Kindle Fire HDX may be an absolutely stunning slate, but under the hood, iFixit says it's a repairability nightmare.
A new website compares top movie torrent downloads to the movie's legal availability, and it doesn't look good for Hollywood.
Square's war against PayPal continues with a new free service that lets you transfer small amounts of money between friends using nothing more than email. Called Square Cash, the new service is available now to anyone with a U.S. bank account and is dead simple to use. Seriously: It couldn't be easier. Unlike PayPal, Square Cash doesn’t require you to sign-up for a Square account first, and all funds are transferred directly between bank accounts with no third-party holding account. But while the service sounds fantastic, its simplicity also gives us pause. We can’t help but think that scammers are rubbing their hands in glee over the possibility of using phony Square Cash emails to steal your identity. To send a Square Cash payment you have to follow Square’s simple email format. Let’s say Brad wanted to send me a $1 payment.
A small Swiss app developer has invented what it claims is a way to securely and anonymously transfer files between a browser and a mobile device without having to leave any traces of the user's identity, device ID or location. after scanning a QR Code using a dedicated app running on their mobile device. This code creates a unique and time-limited window for files to be transferred to the user's mobile (or shared with a third party that has a download code), secured using what the company calls 256-bit "variable encryption," essentially a way to randomise conventional symmetric keys for each transfer.
that introduces the new app and expounds on the changes coming to some familiar faces. —all the way when the update was still going by its "Windows Blue" codename—but it disappeared in subsequent releases, including the final RTM release of the operating system, with nary a peek of it mentioned since. It turns out there's a good reason for that: Movie Moments will be available via the Windows Store, rather than baked into Windows 8.1 itself. Microsoft didn't show much of the Movie Moments interface in its blog post, but it doesn't seem to be made for heavy-duty editing. The "simple app"—as Microsoft calls it—will be able to trim videos, add music, and slap captions on your videos, as shown in the example below. In short, the app seems like an even more "streamlined" (perhaps too much so?) version of the Windows Movie Maker software that first appeared in Windows XP.
Ask a hundred entrepreneurs where they draw inspiration and you'll probably get a hundred different answers, but few are likely to be as unusual as that of Marcus Weller. The CEO of Skully Helmets came up with his idea for a high-tech motorcycle helmet after smashing into a car on a street in Barcelona.
As it embarks on what’s likely to be a long journey to its next big increase in speed, ethernet is in some ways a victim of its own success. Years ago, birthing a new generation of ethernet was relatively straightforward: Enterprises wanted faster LANs, vendors figured out ways to achieve that throughput and hashed out a standard, and IT shops bought the speed boost with their next computers and switches. for Terabit ethernet in its data centers. That’s what the IEEE 802.3 400Gbps Study Group faces as it tries to write the next chapter in ethernet’s history. With billions of ethernet devices in use on networks around the world, it’s harder to define a specification to that satisfies everyone. “You have a lot of different people coming in to the study group,” said John D’Ambrosia, the group’s chair, in an interview at the ethernet Alliance’s Technology Exploration Forum in Santa Clara, California, on Tuesday.
Oracle fixed on Tuesday 127 security issues in Java, its database and other products, patching some flaws that could let attackers take over systems. This is the first time Oracle has included Java in its quarterly Critical Patch Update (CPU), as part of the company’s previously announced plan to increase the frequency of Java security releases from one every four months to one every three months. (7u45) version released Tuesday contains 51 of the 127 security fixes in this CPU. Fifty of those fixes address vulnerabilities that can be exploited remotely without authentication and 12 of them have the highest possible severity rating which means they can be used to take complete control of the underlying operating system. Out of 51 vulnerabilities patched in this Java security update, 40 affect only client deployments which include the frequently targeted Java Web browser plug-in and 8 affect both client and server deployments.
A new tool from security vendor Onapsis aims to secure SAP’s in-memory database HANA, the German company’s fastest-growing data processing product. suite, which scans for vulnerabilities and configuration problems in SAP deployments. is a cornerstone of SAP’s strategy to compete with Oracle and IBM. Available as a cloud service and an appliance, it’s designed to process analytical and transaction workloads much faster for SAP’s ERP, CRM, supply chain and business intelligence applications. HANA became generally available last year, and SAP has called it the fastest-growing product in its history, with more than 1,000 customers at the end of 2012.
New Tilera co-processors tuned for Hadoop, video and networking applications can free up the primary CPUs of x86 servers to run other applications. The company’s Tile-IQ series of chips will have up to 72 low-power CPU cores, which will bring extra computing muscle to speed up servers, said Bob Doud, director of processor strategy for Tilera. The Tile-IQ series includes the Tilencore-GX chips, which will come with nine, 16, 36 and 72 cores. Doud claimed servers with the chips will run network and Hadoop applications four times faster, and deliver a performance-per-watt that is 10 times better than that of systems without the co-processor. The co-processor plugs into PCI-Express slots and is designed to work alongside the main x86 chips, which typically carry up to 16 CPU cores. Tilera’s chips are based on the architecture used in existing Tile-GX chips, which were announced in 2009 and can also function as main CPUs in a server. Some data centers have custom installations in which Tile-GX chips are being used alongside x86 chips, and the company now has a specific product line for the co-processors and made them widely available, Doud said.
If you want to avoid traffic accidents or aren’t very good at parking, the latest SoC (System-on-Chip) from Texas Instruments offers relief. On Wednesday, the chip maker announced the TDA2x, which will be used to power so-called advanced driver assistance systems that help improve safety and reduce the number of collisions on the road. The TDA2x uses a mixture of ARM cores and ones developed by TI in-house to simultaneously run front-camera applications such as high beam assist, lane keeping assist, traffic signal recognition, pedestrian or object detection, and collision avoidance, according to TI. Additionally, the SoC enables park assist applications with surround view and rear collision warning, TI said. To help improve performance, the TDA2x can combine radar and camera sensor data.
The Apache Software Foundation unveiled its latest release of its open source data processing program, Hadoop 2. It runs multiple applications simultaneously to enable users to quickly and efficiently leverage data in multiple ways at supercomputing speed, Apache said Wednesday. Apache Hadoop is a framework that allows for the distributed processing of large data sets across clusters of computers using simple programming models. It enables organizations to more efficiently and cost-effectively store, process, manage and analyze the growing volumes of data being created and collected every day. Hadoop is deployed at enterprise organizations around the globe, including Amazon Web Services, AOL, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Netflix and Hewlett-Packard. The latest version of the platform, released Wednesday, has been more than four years in the making and has a number of new components. Most notable is the addition of , (Yet Another Resource Negotiator), which is a successor to Hadoop’s MapReduce. The new version splits major functions into two separate daemons, with resource management in one, and job scheduling and monitoring in the other.
Protect your tablet from destructive kiddies. (And protect your kids from grown-up content.)
Schweizer Ingenieure haben den berühmtesten Berg der Schweiz mit Drohnen abgeflogen. Vermessen wurde dafür eine Fläche, so gross wie die Stadt Frauenfeld.
Simpel und genial: Zwei Entwickler verwandeln mit ihrer App und der löchrigen iPhone-5C-Hülle das Gerät in eine moderne Version des Spiels «Vier gewinnt».
Apple hat für den 22. Oktober die Medien an einen Event geladen. Erwartet werden unter anderem neue iPads. 20 Minuten wird live für Sie vor Ort berichten.
Facebook will Werbung künftig zielgerichteter gestalten. Nutzer des sozialen Netzwerks sollen gleichzeitig mehr Kontrolle darüber erhalten, welche Anzeigen sie sehen.
Die Gerüchte um ein Amazon-Handy reissen nicht ab: Der weltweit grösste Online-Händler bastelt angeblich mit HTC an einem Gerät, das Apple und Google die Stirn bieten soll.
Mit der Mobilbonus-App sammelt man beim Zugfahren Kilometer, um Gutscheine abzugreifen. Mit Apps, die den GPS-Standort verändern, können Zugfahrten ganz einfach simuliert werden.
Google experimentiert gern mit neuer Hard- und Software. Wenn es um die interne Benutzung fremder Programme und Geräte geht, ist man restriktiver.
Die über 400 durchgestylten Stores sind das Aushängeschild von Apple. Für die Führung des Bereichs holte sich das Unternehmen die Chefin der Modemarke Burberry, Angela Ahrendts.
Bessere Bedienung und Unterstützung von Vierkern-Prozessoren: Microsoft hat mit dem Update 3 für Windows Phone 8 zahlreiche Neuerungen vorgestellt.
Nur einen Monat nach dem Launch des neuen iPhone 5S erscheint bereits der erste Android-«Ableger» mit einem Fingerabdruckscanner. Die Premiere gebührt HTC.
Pro Jahr trägt der US-Geheimdienst NSA eine Viertelmilliarde Kontakte aus Adressbüchern zusammen. Das Archiv ist so umfangreich, dass die Speicher teils an ihre Grenzen stossen.
«Der Polder» vermischt Realität mit virtueller Welt. Ab 24. Oktober können Spieler mit einer App in der Stadt Zürich in die düsteren Szenarien eintauchen.
Anonyme Mailkonten, verschlüsselte E-Mails - mit allen Mitteln versuchen Internetuser das Spionageprogramm des US-Geheimdienstes an der Nase herumzuführen.
Das neue Smartphone von LG soll ein flexibles und somit unzerbrechliches Display haben. Jetzt sind angeblich erste Bilder des Gerätes aufgetaucht.