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95 articles, 2016-06-23 18:00 1 Opera beats out Microsoft Edge in new battery life test, Microsoft says it doesn't count A few days ago Microsoft showed that its Edge browser was the best (1.03/2) when it comes to battery usage. But now Opera is disputing those claims with its own test, while Microsoft is still claiming it won. 2016-06-23 07:18 2KB feedproxy.google.com 2 Opera rebuts Microsoft claim that Edge eats less power Opera Software today disputed Microsoft's claim that Edge, the (1.03/2) default browser in Windows 10, consumes less power on a laptop than Opera's flagship. 2016-06-23 06:12 4KB www.computerworld.com.au 3 Eclipse Foundation Ships Neon Release Train The Eclipse Foundation shipped its eleventh annual release train, featuring 84 projects and 69 million lines of code from nearly 800

(1.02/2) developers. 2016-06-23 00:51 4KB www.eweek.com

4 Nikon Rolls Out Firmware 1.10 for Its New D5 Digital Camera The update adds a huge number of fixes and new features (1.02/2) 2016-06-23 08:32 1KB drivers.softpedia.com 5 CCleaner 5.19 Released with New Tools for Windows 10 Users New version of the famous system optimization tool available (1.02/2) 2016-06-23 08:01 1KB www.softpedia.com

6 Windows 10 Mobile to Finally Launch for Verizon’s Lumia Icon

(0.03/2) The new operating system to go live for the Icon on June 23 2016-06-23 05:19 2KB news.softpedia.com 7 IBM to Buy EZSource to Help Developers Modernize Mainframe Apps IBM will acquire EZSource to help customers modernize mainframe (0.02/2) apps for migration to hybrid cloud as part of digital transformation efforts. 2016-06-23 13:54 5KB www.eweek.com 8 News News for the Open Source Professional 2016-06-23 18:00 480Bytes www.linux.com

16 Barack Obama to appear on Facebook Live with Mark Zuckerberg this Friday It was reported yesterday that Facebook Live is negotiating with a number of high-profile celebrities and publications to ensure they use the service, but on Friday the biggest name of them all will be making a live video appearance: Barack… 2016-06-23 14:01 2KB www.techspot.com 17 Narvar raises $22 million to help internet retailers deliver physical goods without frustrating customers Battery Ventures led a $22 million, Series B investment in Narvar Inc., a company helping internet retailers keep their customers happy post-purchase, meaning.. 2016-06-23 00:00 2KB feedproxy.google.com 18 Apple eyeing touch controls to extend the power of the stylus Apple has been looking at ways to extend the control power of stylus input methods, patenting a touch sensitive stylus which could allow for users to.. 2016-06-23 00:00 3KB feedproxy.google.com 19 SecurityScorecard raises $20 million from Google Ventures SecurityScorecard, the platform that monitors and assesses companies' cybersecurity strength, has raised $20 million in Series B funding from GV (the.. 2016-06-23 00:00 3KB feedproxy.google.com 20 Intel, SAP, other tech companies pledge to get more inclusive in hiring Over 30 Silicon Valley companies have signed a 'Tech Inclusion Pledge' to make their workforce more fully representative 2016-06-23 03:34 4KB www.infoworld.com 21 Japan firm rolls out smile-rating app How do you know if you've got that winning smile? There's an app for that. 2016-06-23 00:00 1KB phys.org 22 PlayStation Vue Internet TV service lands on Roku, coming to Android devices next week PlayStation Vue, Sony’s over-the-top service for live television aimed at cord cutters, is now available on Roku devices including Roku set-top boxes, the Roku Streaming Stick and Roku TVs. 2016-06-23 13:55 2KB www.techspot.com

23 You're likely to get charged more if you tell the PC repair shop you have insurance Researchers at the University of Innsbruck recently conducted a study to determine whether or not having a computer repaired with the backing of an insurance provider would affect the overall cost charged by a repair shop. The results probably won’t… 2016-06-23 13:55 2KB www.techspot.com 24 With Ghostbot, you don't have to deal with persistent texters who can't take a hint In today’s connected society, text message etiquette can be a tricky minefield - especially when it comes to rejecting amorous advances. But an answer may be at hand with a program from the makers of Burner, an app that lets… 2016-06-23 13:55 2KB www.techspot.com 25 Steam game charges $35 for DLC that only consists of a printable certificate Video game history is littered with examples of DLC so unbelievably poor that it’s surprising charges weren’t brought against the creators. But if you thought Oblivion’s functionless $2.50 horse armor and the $3 it cost to see nipples in The… 2016-06-23 13:55 2KB www.techspot.com 26 A third of Valve employees are working on VR projects Virtual reality is still very much in its infancy. While the technology is slowly gaining traction, it needs continued developer support to ensure it spreads to more gamers. Valve, which co-developed the Vive headset along with HTC, knows this and… 2016-06-23 13:55 2KB www.techspot.com 27 Facebook is spending loads of money to get celebrities to use its livestreaming service Everywhere you turn, it seems as though celebrities and other public figures are jumping on the livestreaming bandwagon. These people are flocking to platforms like Facebook and Snapchat in an effort to reach out to their fans and ultimately, build… 2016-06-23 13:55 2KB www.techspot.com 28 Microsoft's Wallet 2.0 preview brings NFC payments to Windows 10 phones Windows Phones may only make up a tiny amount of the smartphone market, around 0.7 percent, but Microsoft is still bringing new features to the platform. Yesterday, the company announced that the updated version of its Wallet app will include… 2016-06-23 13:55 2KB www.techspot.com

29 Revised FAA rules allow US companies to fly drones without a pilot's license The Federal Aviation Administration has unveiled a new set of rules that dictate the use of drones by commercial operators. “Part 107” doesn’t bring us any closer to drone deliveries but it is an important step forward for those that… 2016-06-23 13:55 1KB www.techspot.com 30 Ultimate Ears adds Google Now, Siri voice integration to Boom Bluetooth speakers UE Boom 2 and Megaboom wireless Bluetooth speakers are now a bit more functional thanks to a new software update that integrates push-to-talk voice commands via Siri and Google Now. 2016-06-23 13:55 2KB www.techspot.com 31 Samsung's SM961 PCIe SSD hits 1TB mark, ships out next week Samsung's follow-up to the excellent SM951 NVMe SSD is set to arrive next week. The new SM961 will be an OEM product meant to ship primarily inside high end systems, but as with its SM951 and XP941 predecessors there will… 2016-06-23 13:55 2KB www.techspot.com 32 Don't just code: Career advice from the programming masters Dev tech founders Eich, van Rossum, Johnson, Hickey, and Schleuter offer advice to programming newcomers 2016-06-23 18:00 9KB www.computerworld.com.au 33 Microsoft SharePoint App Now On iOS Microsoft is rolling out the SharePoint mobile app to iOS devices, giving corporate users the ability to access their company intranet content, portals, and contacts while on the go. 2016-06-23 13:06 4KB www.informationweek.com 34 Twilio IPO May Be Key Indicator for Other Unicorns in 2016 NEWS ANALYSIS: A good response to Twilio June 23 could help determine whether companies such as Dropbox, Uber and others decide to test the IPO waters later this year. 2016-06-23 13:54 4KB www.eweek.com 35 Eclipse Updates Four IoT Projects, Launches a New One The Eclipse Foundation announced new releases of four open- source IoT projects to accelerate IoT solution development. 2016-06-23 13:54 3KB www.eweek.com

36 Companies Large, Small Exploring Cognitive Technology in Latest Apps IBM, Microsoft and Apple are among the companies large and small that are working to build cognitive computing capabilities into the latest applications. 2016-06-23 13:54 5KB www.eweek.com 37 Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Selects Andela for First Major Investment Andela, a company that pairs developers in Africa with opportunity in the U. S., has been selected as the first major investment of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. 2016-06-23 13:54 4KB www.eweek.com 38 IBM Adds New Bluemix OpenWhisk Tools for IoT Development IBM added new tools for its Bluemix OpenWhisk serverless computing platform that utilizes Docker. OpenWhisk also features user interface updates. 2016-06-23 00:51 3KB www.eweek.com 39 Bitcoin For Everyone Programming book reviews, programming tutorials,programming news, C#, Ruby, Python,C, C++, PHP, Visual Basic, Computer book reviews, computer history, programming history, joomla, theory, spreadsheets and more. 2016-06-23 13:54 9KB www.i-programmer.info 40 Microsoft Targets Legal Marijuana Industry With Azure Offering Microsoft will partner with cannabis tech startup KIND Financial to develop software for tracking the legal growth and sale of marijuana. 2016-06-23 12:05 3KB www.informationweek.com 41 Microsoft Talks Up Its Containers At DockerCon At the DockerCon show this week in Seattle, Microsoft took the stage to tout its ability to run containers on its Azure cloud and the company's overall support for the technology. 2016-06-23 12:05 4KB www.informationweek.com 42 Salesforce Unifies Mobile App Dev, Updates Marketing Automation Salesforce has introduced Cloud App Mobile, an app dev platform that unifies all its efforts to help non-coders develop business applications. The company has also released its Pardot Engagement Studio for marketing automation to general availability. 2016-06-23 11:05 5KB www.informationweek.com

43 Equinix embarks on big data push to inform new datacentre designs and builds Colocation giant outlines its plans to use IoT and big data analytics to improve the design of its carrier neutral facilities 2016-06-23 10:45 3KB www.computerweekly.com 44 Crypto-ransomware attacks increase five fold Ransomware has become a big problem in recent years, particularly crypto-ransomware, which encrypts data on users' systems. New research by Kaspersky Lab looking at how it’s evolved over the last two years points to just how big. Ransomware has become a big problem in... 2016-06-23 10:30 2KB feeds.betanews.com 45 Vivaldi Web Browser Explained Take a look at this fully customizable web browser that adapts to your needs and brings back old Opera features 2016-06-23 10:15 887Bytes www.softpedia.com 46 LibreOffice Online Is Now Ready for ownCloud Enterprise, Thanks to Collabora ownCloud and Collabora join forces on extending the LibreOffice Online adoption across enterprises and organizations 2016-06-23 10:00 2KB news.softpedia.com 47 KDE Plasma 5.7 Offers Many Wayland Improvements, but GTK Apps Will Still Use X11 The final release of the KDE Plasma 5.7 desktop ships July 5 2016-06-23 09:42 2KB news.softpedia.com 48 OnePlus to Release OTA with sRGB Mode and Improved RAM Management The OTA will be available for OnePlus 3 review units 2016-06-23 09:28 2KB news.softpedia.com 49 KFC Launches a Meal Box That Lets You Recharge an iPhone While Eating Chicken Watt a Box campaign launched in India for iPhone users 2016-06-23 09:17 1KB news.softpedia.com 50 HTC might be bringing its Sense skins to all Android phones, with Sense Home 8 HTC's Sense Android skin and features might soon be available on many more Android phones. The company seems to be planning to launch the Sense Home 8 app to everyone on the Google Play store. 2016-06-23 09:16 2KB feedproxy.google.com

51 OSMC Linux Media Center Brings Kodi, Debian GNU/Linux 8.5 to Raspberry Pi Zero The distro was formerly known as Raspbmc 2016-06-23 09:11 2KB news.softpedia.com 52 Samsung Commits $1.2 Billion To IoT Research In US Open standards, shared approaches to privacy and security, and more open wireless spectrum are needed to help the internet of things to reach its full potential of making people's lives better, according to the company. 2016-06-23 09:06 3KB www.informationweek.com 53 Stockport council ditches HDS SAN for Nutanix hyper-converged Council SAN had reached end of life and was experiencing operational issues and scalability problems so shifted to hyper- converged server storage boxes from Nutanix 2016-06-23 09:00 3KB www.computerweekly.com 54 UK social media habits are a corporate security risk, warns Intel Security Companies should educate employees not to connect to strangers on social media to reduce the risk of phishing attacks, Intel Security has warned. 2016-06-23 08:46 3KB www.computerweekly.com 55 Apple Leaves iOS 10 Kernel Unencrypted on Purpose for Increased Security Security isn’t compromised, but increased, Apple says 2016-06-23 08:46 2KB news.softpedia.com 56 Huawei Working on its Own Mobile OS to Reduce Dependence on Android Huawei is developing an alternative mobile OS 2016-06-23 08:45 1KB news.softpedia.com 57 Check your privacy settings -- Facebook is (probably) sharing your employment history Somewhat out of the blue, Facebook has decided to change the way it displays certain information on your profile. Not content with showing your current place of work -- whether this is real, or some clever pun you've engineered -- it now... 2016-06-23 08:27 1KB feeds.betanews.com 58 Tracker Search Engine to Adapt to New GKqueue Monitor Mapping for GNOME 3.22 Tracker 1.9.0 is now available for public testing 2016-06-23 08:23 2KB news.softpedia.com

59 iPhone 7 to Get More Small Tweaks in Addition to Dual Camera, Bigger Battery Report points to new small changes on the iPhone 7 2016-06-23 08:15 1KB news.softpedia.com 60 Software Industry's $1 Trillion Impact On US Economy BSA|The Software Alliance has issued its first report looking beyond GDP and direct employment statistics to estimate the direct and indirect ways the software industry influences the US economy. 2016-06-23 08:06 4KB www.informationweek.com 61 Puppy Linux 6.3.2 "Slacko" Gets New 64-Bit UEFI Boot Capability, F2FS Support The distro is now powered by Linux kernel 3.14.55 LTS 2016-06-23 07:54 2KB news.softpedia.com 62 Kiloo axes support for Subway Surfers on Windows Phone, Windows 10 Mobile version on the way After supporting Windows Phone for more than two years, Kiloo has ended support for popular endless runner, Subway Surfer. However, fret not, a Windows 10 Mobile version is in the works. 2016-06-23 07:50 1KB feedproxy.google.com 63 Millennials would trust tech companies with money transactions There’s a new report suggesting that banks need to seriously consider innovating, if they don’t want to hand over their business to tech companies. There’s a new report suggesting that banks need to seriously consider innovating, if they don’t want to hand over their business to tech... 2016-06-23 07:43 2KB feeds.betanews.com 64 APT 1.3 Debian Package Manager to Forbid Insecure Repositories by Default APT 1.2.14 release landed in the unstable channel 2016-06-23 07:27 2KB news.softpedia.com 65 10 SaaS Startups Every Enterprise Should Know Often thought of as a small-business tool, Software-as-a-Service offers plenty of potential for large enterprise customers, as evidenced by the 10 startups we're exploring here. Our list includes SaaS applications for big organizational challenges, such as supply- chain, payroll, sales, recruiting, and company-wide collaboration. 2016-06-23 07:06 3KB www.informationweek.com

66 Fedora 22 Linux to Reach End of Life on July 19, 2016, Move to Fedora 24 Now Users need to use the DNF system upgrade 2016-06-23 06:51 1KB linux.softpedia.com 67 Health Organization Spends Millions to Upgrade from Windows XP to… Windows 7 Queensland Health spends $25.3 million to move to Windows 7 2016-06-23 06:33 2KB news.softpedia.com 68 openSUSE Tumbleweed Linux Is Now Entirely Built Using GCC 6 as Compiler KDE Applications 16.04.2 software suite has landed 2016-06-23 06:27 2KB news.softpedia.com 69 iPhone Users Can Now Create Microsoft Office Documents with Dropbox App Create Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files on your iPhone 2016-06-23 05:59 2KB news.softpedia.com 70 Microsoft Edge Beats Google Chrome and Firefox in Latest JavaScript Benchmarks Redmond optimizes JavaScript in Edge with Redstone update 2016-06-23 04:50 2KB news.softpedia.com 71 More code deploys means fewer security headaches Contrary to what you might think, updating code a lot can cut security issues in half -- and improve software quality 2016-06-23 03:00 3KB www.infoworld.com 72 Japan’s e-commerce leader Rakuten gets into agriculture tech Rakuten may be cutting back its e-commerce business in Europe and Southeast Asia, but, at home in Japan, the internet giant is stepping into a new field --.. 2016-06-23 00:00 2KB feedproxy.google.com 73 Salesforce Communities update shoots for simplification and personalization As companies try to move to more of a self-service type of approach to customer service, online forums become more important than ever to help users find the.. 2016-06-23 00:00 3KB feedproxy.google.com

74 Advanced Concepts of Java Garbage Collection Explore some of the areas of memory management, along with the APIs related to garbage collection. 2016-06-23 00:00 8KB www.developer.com 75 Have You Overlooked Your Printers' Security? You may think that your organization is secure. Your employees know best practices for creating passwords; your data is... Read more. 2016-06-23 00:00 1KB www.pcconnection.com 76 Bing Ads Editor for Mac beta is now available Microsoft today introduced Bing Ads Editor for Mac beta, which is available now. The new application promises everything you love about Bing Ads Editor 11, but on your Mac. 2016-06-22 22:40 1KB feedproxy.google.com 77 JavaScript improvements are coming to Microsoft Edge in the Windows 10 Anniversary Update Microsoft today outlines improvements to the open-source Chakra JavaScript engine in the Microsoft Edge browser, which are slated to arrive next month in the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. 2016-06-22 21:48 2KB feedproxy.google.com 78 Security Flaws in File Compression Library Affect Hundreds of Other Projects Libarchive security bugs have a wide-ranging impact 2016-06-22 21:35 3KB news.softpedia.com 79 macOS Sierra release date, news and features The next generation of OS X isn't OS X at all 2016-06-22 21:08 4KB www.techradar.com 80 You can buy Samsung's Gear 360 camera for $350, if you're in California later this week Samsung has launched its Gear 360 camera in the United States, but there's a catch. You have to be at VidCon in California to purchase it; otherwise, you'll have to wait until the end of the year. 2016-06-22 19:42 1KB feedproxy.google.com 81 A win for privacy: Senate blocks FBI from gaining warrantless access to browsing histories A Senate amendment brought forward by John McCain that would have given the FBI the right to browse suspects' phone and internet records without a warrant has been narrowly defeated. A Senate amendment brought forward by John McCain that would have given the FBI the right to browse... 2016-06-22 19:25 2KB feeds.betanews.com 82 Mozilla MOSS 'Mission Partners' makes it rain $385,000 on open source project developers Open source is very important nowadays, especially from a privacy and security standpoint. Look, closed source ideology is not inherently bad -- it is a good way to protect a company's code. The problem, however, is that users are increasingly suspicious... 2016-06-22 19:18 2KB feeds.betanews.com 83 Businesses want to spend more money on making apps Businesses want to increase their spend on mobile app development, but we’re still a long way to go before that spending becomes more relevant, a new study by Gartner has shown. According to the market analysts’ report, overall app development budget allocated to mobile is 10... 2016-06-22 18:51 2KB feeds.betanews.com 84 Android 6.0 Marshmallow is finally available for the Galaxy Note 5 and S6 edge+ on AT&T Three months after other major US carriers began upgrading Samsung's Galaxy Note 5 and S6 edge+ to Marshmallow, AT&T has finally started its Android 6.0.1 rollout for both of those devices. 2016-06-22 18:34 2KB feedproxy.google.com 85 Pirate Bay co-founder goes on the offensive, plans to sue record labels for defamation It was revealed last week that Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde had been ordered by a judge in Finland to pay a fine totaling $395,000 to a group of five record labels for his alleged involvement in a piracy lawsuit… 2016-06-23 00:51 1KB www.techspot.com 86 Google details when your Nexus device will stop receiving updates One of the benefits of buying a Nexus is that you’re guaranteed prompt updates and security patches, whereas with many Android manufacturers you’re often left waiting for months. Nexus devices are also supported longer term. Specifically, Google promises at least… 2016-06-23 00:51 2KB www.techspot.com 87 VLC 2.0 for Android released with pop-up video view, network play and more VLC for Android has received a major update that adds a number of highly requested new features to the popular video player. Among the big ones in version 2.0 is the ability to watch videos in a pop up windowed… 2016-06-23 00:51 1KB www.techspot.com 88 Hasselblad unveils world's first compact mirrorless medium format camera Swedish medium-format camera manufacturer Hasselblad has unveiled the world’s first compact mirrorless medium format camera. 2016-06-23 13:55 2KB www.techspot.com 89 Amazon's new entry-level Kindle is thinner, lighter, faster Amazon on Wednesday took the wraps off a refreshed version of its entry-level Kindle e-reader which is now thinner, lighter and packs twice as much memory as its predecessor. 2016-06-23 13:55 2KB www.techspot.com 90 The Basslet is a watch-sized wearable subwoofer for your body One of the great things about headphones is that they allow you to experience music at enjoyable volumes without disrupting those around you. While there are plenty of great options out there that do a respectable job of delivering tunes,… 2016-06-23 13:55 2KB www.techspot.com 91 Mark Zuckerberg photo reveals that the CEO puts tape over his webcam Mark Zuckerberg posted a photo of himself yesterday celebrating Facebook-owned Instagram reaching 500 million users. At first glance, there doesn’t appear to be anything out of the ordinary going on in the image, but if you look closely you’ll see… 2016-06-23 13:55 2KB www.techspot.com 92 Apple is saving its biggest iPhone design changes for 2017, sources say Those hoping for a total revamp of the iPhone this fall will be sorely disappointed according to sources familiar with the matter as reported by The Wall Street Journal. 2016-06-23 13:55 3KB www.techspot.com 93 Instagram passes the half a billion users milestone When Facebook paid $1 billion for Instagram back in 2012, some people thought that Mark Zuckerberg’s company may have spent too much for the photo- and video-sharing app. But today Instagram passed the half a billion users milestone, proving yet… 2016-06-23 13:55 2KB www.techspot.com 94 RedEye could let your phone see 24-7: Energy-stingy tech could give wearable computers continuous vision -- ScienceDaily Researchers have just the thing for information overload: image- processing technology that sees all and remembers only what it should. RedEye could allow computers to continuously see what their owners see. 2016-06-23 13:54 6KB feeds.sciencedaily.com 95 Self-learning arm controlled by thought -- ScienceDaily Scientists are developing a robotic arm prototype and its control algorithm using myoelectric signals. The mechanical limb will independently recognize the motions of its owner and be able to perform all the same motions like a healthy arm. The scientists estimate the final cost of the device of 600... 2016-06-23 13:54 2KB feeds.sciencedaily.com Articles

95 articles, 2016-06-23 18:00

1 Opera beats out Microsoft Edge in new battery life test, Microsoft says it doesn't count (1.03/2) A few days ago Microsoft put out a video and an article showing that its new Edge browser offered the best battery life for your mobile devices. Now, Opera, one of the browser that Edge beat in that test, is disputing the results and putting out a test of its own. Opera says that it does not agree with Microsoft’s results and that, as any team of engineers would do, they’re accepting the Windows maker’s challenge and running the test again. Unfortunately, Microsoft did not provide the exact methodology it used to test Edge’s battery drain, so the Opera team did their own separate test. The company ran a developer build of its own Opera browser, with all of its power-saving and ad-blocking features enabled. It pitted the browser against the likes of Chrome, the most popular browser in the world, and Edge, Microsoft’s own special baby boy. The test cycled through popular websites continuously until the device’s battery was drained. Perhaps not surprisingly, Opera came out on top achieving just shy of 4 hours of continuous browsing time. Microsoft’s Edge came out in second place, with 3 hours and 12 minutes of browsing, while Chrome was happy to kill the device’s battery after less than 3 hours. As a reminder, in Microsoft’s tests, which were focused on video streaming, Edge came out on top with 7 hours and 22 minutes, while Opera came in second with a score of 6 hours and 18 minutes. So is Microsoft phased by the new results from Opera’s tests? Not at all. The company is still claiming a win, and dismissed Opera’s findings as relying on ad-blocking technology, something Microsoft did not use in its own tests. Purists might agree with that assessment, but then again the whole point of these tests is to see which browser, overall, is better. So it wouldn’t make much sense for Opera to not rely on a feature it had introduced earlier this year. Source: Opera 2016-06-23 07:18 Vlad Dudau

2 Opera rebuts Microsoft claim that Edge eats less power (1.03/2) Opera Software today disputed Microsoft's claim that Edge, the default browser bundled with Windows 10, consumes less power on a laptop than Opera's flagship. "We love it when someone picks a fight," wrote Blazej Kazmierczak, Opera's director of software development for the desktop Opera browser, in a Wednesday post to a company blog. "If we get beaten in a test like this, we consider it a bug. " Opera has waged a minor public relations campaign the last several months, supported by new features -- including an optional power saver and an also-optional baked-in ad-blocker -- in a bid to boost usage. The power consumption-reduction setting, which is off by default, was introduced in mid-May to Opera's developer preview channel, then rolled out to the production-grade build with version 38 two weeks ago. At both times, Opera trumpeted the power savings of the feature, asserting that running its browser resulted in a 45% to 54% increase in battery longevity compared to Google's Chrome. Opera had not included Edge in its test -- nor Mozilla's Firefox -- but instead focused on the leader, Chrome, which became the world's most-run browser in April. Kazmierczak said that Edge had been untested until today because it ran only on Windows 10; he then presented new findings that claimed Opera ran 35% longer than Edge before the test notebook's battery died. But while Kazmierczak acknowledged that the two tests -- Microsoft's and Opera's -- were similar, not identical, he omitted other details. Opera was run with both the battery saver and the native ad-blocker enabled. Microsoft, on the other hand, said that it had tested browsers "without any special battery saving mode or changes to the default settings," which indicated that it did not switch on either Opera's battery saver nor the ad-blocker. An ad-blocker should result in longer battery life, as some of the PC's prime power consumers -- the central processing unit (CPU) and the graphics chipset -- will be called less often, and when engaged, will work less hard, when the browser does not render and display advertisements. (For example, Opera's argument for putting an ad-blocker in its browser has been largely based on power savings.) Other browser makers waded into the debate over power today. "We've made significant improvements to power consumption in the past few releases, and it's an area of continued focus and investment," Google said in a response to a request for comment. "Since the beginning of the year, we've made a 33% improvement in video playback GPU/CPU [graphics processing unit/central processing unit] power consumption on Windows 10. And by Chrome 53, we feel confident that we'll be at parity with other browsers in terms of power consumption for the majority of video playback on the internet. " The stable build of Chrome is currently on version 51; version 53 should reach users in early September. Google also contended that its tests -- which measure CPU and GPU power consumption -- showed that all browsers, including Edge and Chrome, depleted the battery at similar rates on Windows 10. Mozilla did not immediately reply to a request for comment on Microsoft's original claims. Opera is in fifth place among the top five browsers in all analytics tracking of user estimates and actual usage. Net Applications, for instance, said Opera accounted for 1.7% of all browsers used during May. Chrome, meanwhile, was in the top spot with a 45.6% usage share. Net Applications pegged Edge's share at 5% of all browsers on all desktop platforms, or 28.5% of those on Windows 10. Tags opera Microsoft Edge More about Google Microsoft Mozilla Opera Software 2016-06-23 06:12 www.computerworld

3 3 Eclipse Foundation Ships Neon Release Train (1.02/2) The Eclipse Foundation shipped its eleventh annual release train, featuring 84 projects and 69 million lines of code from nearly 800 developers. The Eclipse Foundation on June 22 announced the availability of its Neon release, the eleventh annual coordinated release train of open-source projects from the Eclipse community. The Neon release includes 84 Eclipse projects consisting of more than 69 million lines of code, with contributions by 779 developers, 331 of whom are Eclipse committers. Last year's release train, the Mars release, had 79 projects. "It takes a great amount of coordination and effort by many developers within our community to ship a release that is on-time," said Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation, in a statement. Ian Skerrett, vice president of marketing at the Eclipse Foundation, said one of the key focus areas for the Neon release was improving Eclipse's JavaScript development tooling. The foundation upgraded the JavaScript integrated development environment (IDE) in the Eclipse platform known as JavaScript Development Tools, or JSDT. "There's been a lot of work on improving the usability and performance of our JavaScript tooling, including support for the latest version of JavaScript," Skerrett said. "That team did a lot of work on the whole JavaScript tool chain and we have integration with JavaScript build systems like Grunt and Gulp that JavaScript developers use. We have integration with the Chromium V8 debugger so you can have a tight compile and debug cycle. We also improved our support for Node.js development to make it easier to build and debug Node.js applications. " In addition, Eclipse JSDT 2.0 includes new tools for JavaScript developers, including a JSON editor along with the support for Grunt/Gulp and a new Chromium V8 Debugger. The Neon release also features an updated PHP Development Tools Package (PDT). The new Eclipse PDT 4.0 release for PHP developers provides support for PHP 7 and improved performance. Another key area of focus was improving the lot of Java developers on the Eclipse platform, Skerrett said. In the core Eclipse platform and the Java Development Tools project, the foundation added HiDPI support, which supports advanced monitors with graphics cards in them. That support is on Mac, Windows and Linux. There are also updates to JDP, such as auto-save, automatically saving things as developers type into the IDE. And there are improvements to JDT's Content Assist so that when developers are using it they can highlight search fields that they put in, as Content Assist now highlights matched characters and provides substring completion. Other improvements and additions include updates to Automated Error Reporting. The Eclipse Automated Error Reporting client can now be integrated into any third-party Eclipse plug-in or stand-alone Rich Client Platform (RCP) application. The Neon release also features improved support for Docker Tooling and introduces the Eclipse User Storage Service (USS). The Eclipse USS is a new storage service that enables projects to store and retrieve user data and preferences from Eclipse servers creating a better user experience (UX) for developers. "Neon noticeably returns focus to essential coding improvements, like editor auto-save, HiDPI support, better dark theme and more intelligent Java Content Assist," said Todd Williams, vice president of Technology at Genuitec , a founding member of the Eclipse Foundation that offers tools supporting the Eclipse platform such as MyEclipse and Webclipse. "These changes, along with Neon's increased responsiveness, will help ensure that Eclipse remains competitive in its core market segments. " 2016-06-23 00:51 Darryl K

4 Nikon Rolls Out Firmware 1.10 for Its New D5 Digital Camera (1.02/2) This new update implements Flicker reduction capabilities via the PHOTO SHOOTING MENU, adds Dynamic-area AF (9 points) to AF-area mode options, and improves Viewfinder Photography Autofocus tracking and camera response. In addition to that, Nikon also adds an SL (silent) icon to the release mode button, allows exposure compensation to be adjusted by up to ±3, and changes “number of shots remaining” display for continuous release modes so that it now shows the time remaining. Moreover, the producer fixes compatibility problems with the Mac OS X edition of the Wireless Transmitter Utility and access points, as well as implements several other changes, as highlighted in the Release Notes below. As for installation, first of all, make sure your camera is currently running the stock C:1.00 firmware, save and run the downloadable package (available for Mac OS and Windows platforms), and transfer the newly extracted .bin file onto a formatted memory card. Afterwards, insert the SD card into the camera’s slot, turn the unit on, confirm that Network connection is OFF (SETUP MENU > Network), go to SETUP MENU > Firmware version, and follow the on-screen instructions to complete the firmware update. 2016-06-23 08:32 Iulian Pascal

5 CCleaner 5.19 Released with New Tools for Windows 10 Users (1.02/2) And last but not least, CCleaner keeps receiving updates and improvements regularly, and adding support for Windows 10 features has become a priority. The latest version, CCleaner 5.19, brings improved cleaning for Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome history files, but also optimized browser plugin detection routine. As for Windows 10 users, the app includes better most recently used cache cleaning, a feature that was already available in CCleaner since the previous releases but has improved with this update. Those who are using the Professional version of the app also receive enhanced system monitoring. “CCleaner is… how do I put it mildly… Don’t… let’s just move on!” he said. 2016-06-23 08:01 Bogdan Popa

6 Windows 10 Mobile to Finally Launch for Verizon’s Lumia Icon (0.03/2) This can only be good news for Verizon customers who were waiting for the official release of Windows 10 Mobile, especially because the Icon was already running preview builds of the operating system quite flawlessly, so there was no reason to hold it back for too long. In an announcement spotted by WindowsCentral , Verizon reveals that the release of Windows 10 Mobile to Lumia Icon would begin on June 23. “Verizon Wireless is pleased to announce a software update for your device. This software update has been tested to help optimize device performance, resolve known issues and apply the latest security patches,” Verizon says in the announcement. “Windows 10 Mobile is full of new features and improvements. Please allow additional time for the apps on your device to continue to download after the software update. Ensure your battery is fully charged before starting the software update.” The first preview build of Windows 10 Mobile was rolled out for Lumia Icons on Verizon on May 7, so after more than one month of testing, the final update can finally go live for this model. There was pretty much no reason not to release Windows 10 Mobile to the Lumia Icon since it’s nearly identical to the Lumia 930, one of the devices that received both the upgrade to the stable version and preview builds. Verizon should press the release button in just a few hours, so make sure you charge your Icons to be among the first getting the update. 2016-06-23 05:19 Bogdan Popa

7 IBM to Buy EZSource to Help Developers Modernize Mainframe Apps (0.02/2) IBM will acquire EZSource to help customers modernize mainframe apps for migration to hybrid cloud as part of digital transformation efforts. The mainframe is not dead, and IBM is doing its part to ensure that big iron will not be going anywhere for some time. Big Blue announced on June 1 its intent to acquire EZ Legacy ( EZSource ), an Israel-based application discovery company, to help developers easily understand and change mainframe code based on data displayed on a dashboard and other visualizations. The acquisition is expected to close in the second quarter of 2016. Financial terms of the deal were not released. The ability to quickly evaluate existing enterprise applications and modify them represents a critical piece of the digital transformation puzzle. IBM is intent on helping its customers transform their organizations for the digital age by gaining value out of their mainframe assets. The company will integrate its expertise in hybrid cloud, the API economy and DevOps with EZSource's mainframe application modernization technology. EZSource provides a visual dashboard that shows developers which applications have changed to ease the process of modernizing applications, exposing APIs and opening up development resources. IBM's decision to acquire its long-term partner EZSource is largely driven by the fact that the digital transformation and API economy is estimated at being a $3.75 billion market, and to capture some of this share, companies must first understand and modify legacy mainframe software to be at the center of their digital enterprise, IBM said in a post by Mary Hall, an IBM marketing and social media staffer, on the IBM Mainframe Insights blog . "The mainframe is the backbone of today's businesses," said Ross A. Mauri, general manager of IBM z Systems, in a statement. "As clients drive their digital transformation, they are seeking the innovation and business value from new applications while leveraging their existing assets and processes. " Combining EZSource's offerings with IBM's will obviate the need for developers with specialized skills handling processes that previously were manually intensive, Mauri noted. IBM's API management solutions, including z/OS Connect and IBM API Connect , integrated with EZSource's technology will help connect services from core mainframe applications to new mobile, cloud, social and cognitive workloads, IBM said. "While they have always been highly exaggerated, rumors of the IBM mainframe's death continue to circulate," said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT. "The platform's notable longevity and success are due to numerous factors but first and foremost has been IBM's efforts to continually evolve mainframe technologies and make them relevant for new business processes and use cases. " King said this deal should add a few more years to the mainframe's "remarkable" life. Meanwhile, IBM's DevOps offerings, such as IBM Application Delivery Foundation for z Systems and IBM Rational Team Concert , will combine with the EZSource software to help developers migrate legacy mainframe apps faster. IBM said EZSource provides developers with information about which sections of code access a particular entity, such as a database table, so they can easily check them to see if updates are needed. Without the advanced analytics in the EZSource solution, developers would need to manually check thousands or millions of lines of code to find the ones that need to be changed. EZSource delivers three key products: -- EZSource:Analyze , which provides a graphical visualization of application discovery and understanding for developers and architects; -- EZSource:Dashboard , which offers multiple categories of application metrics for managers and executives; and -- EZSource:Server , which integrates with third-party source code management, workload automation and CMDB tooling systems to provide application to infrastructure mapping. "The subtext of IBM's purchase of EZSource is the critical importance of reconciling and integrating new mobile and social apps with traditional backend 'systems of record'—particularly the IBM mainframes residing in major banks and financial organizations that power 30 billion business transactions every day," King said. Supporting and streamlining the integration process is crucial for IBM and its customers since failure could cripple emerging processes, like smartphone "pay" apps, he added. Meanwhile, enabling a newer generation of developers to support the mainframe has been Compuware's mission for the last several years. Tools that provide deep application understanding via visualization enable both mainframe and non-mainframe developers to manipulate mainframe data and implement code changes, faster and with fewer mistakes, Compuware said. "As businesses increasingly compete via digital means and the mainframe serves as a back-end server for mobile and web front ends, development teams must keep pace with the requirements of modern application delivery," Chris O'Malley CEO of Compuware, told eWEEK. Compuware's Topaz product has offered visualization tools since January 2015, he said. 2016-06-23 13:54 Darryl K

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9 Why Diversity and Inclusion Matters, and How to Drive It Leveraging and harnessing different ideas, perspectives and experiences from a talented and capable workforce regardless of their organizational position and background drives effectiveness in organizations, argues Shaheen Akram, an organisational D&I consultant. Several more people have noted why diversity and inclusion matters to reach business objectives and be seen as a social responsible organization. In his blog post " What We’re Doing To Keep Building A Diverse Editorial Operation " Buzzfeed’s editor in chief, Ben Smith, defined diversity as: Enough people of a particular group that no one person has to represent the supposed viewpoint of their group — whether ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, gender identity, socioeconomic background, or disability. Speaking at QCon New York about diversity BuzzFeed’s director of engineering Swati Vauthrin said that for Buzzfeed hiring for diversity is an ethical imperative: All individuals who are interested in tech and are willing to work hard and are willing to learn, build, and ship products should have access to the same opportunities. It’s also, she argued, a sound business practice because it’s so hard to find good engineers. In an interview about the business case for diversity in organizations , Silicon Valley Bank VP Regina Chien stated: Senior leaders in an organization will set the tone for the rest of the organization through their actions and stories that they tell about why diversity is important to business objectives. It isn’t easy but framing the business objectives and showing that diversity and inclusion fit into the strategy for success is crucial. Diversity and inclusion cannot be a standalone initiative. Sven Peters from Atlassian explained in his article on coding culture why diversity is important if you want to establish a culture that enables developing better products: You should not only hire people who fit a certain stereotype. Believe me when I say you don’t want a bunch of programmers, and this may happen if you only hire your buddies. Your culture and productivity will grow with diversity. Culture dies if it isn’t invigorated by new influencers. Hire women, hire people of different ages, backgrounds, education and work experience, ethnicities, etc. and make sure that they are welcomed. Akram will speak about driving diversity and inclusion at Spark the Change London 2016. InfoQ interviewed her about the role of leaders in driving diversity and inclusion, what organizations can do to create an inclusive environment, how diversity and inclusion strengthen each other, how diversity can improve collaboration in teams, and the benefits that enterprises can gain from having a strategy that supports diversity and inclusion. InfoQ: What role do leaders have in driving diversity and inclusion? Shaheen Akram : Leaders with the job title and those without have a great opportunity to set the tone, vision and practices for diversity and inclusion. Aligned to business objectives, their aim is to bring the words to life through everyday interactions. This in my experience carries the most weight – not what is said but what is done. It starts with leaders understanding the changing external and internal landscape and how this is affecting an organisation to think, innovate, and act differently. Leaders who share strong personalised stories, highlight their "light bulb" moments, are very powerful incentives. Furthermore, sharing real examples such as "I want to create a place where my daughters can enter a workplace where they can thrive, I want my sons to be able to access all the opportunities available" shows that we are all human and the forever-changing landscape requires us all to adapt and change to not only survive in business but flourish. To ensure that organisations are changing, it is important to measure progress – we have all heard the phrase "what gets measured gets done". Progress should be reviewed periodically, transparently and shared with the wider organisation and good work and individuals should be recognised! InfoQ: What can organizations do to create an inclusive environment where everyone has access to the same opportunities? Akram : There are lots of practices and examples out there, where organisations are continuously trying to build an even more inclusive environment. There is no silver bullet but in my experience the relationship of the manager and employee is critical in not only building an inclusive environment but to actually feeling and being in one. Employees are savvy individuals; they know when then have been listened to, they know if a manager truly understands them, they know if they can speak openly. It is often said that people leave managers, not organisations. So equipping managers to be effective managers is critical and in my experience is the starting point. Encouraging managers to build better relationships, to trust and grow their people, to be conscious of potential bias or stereotypes they may carry will only enhance the experience of both parties. This should deliver positive results in terms of engagement, commitment and meeting objectives. In addition, ensuring policies, procedures and practices are reviewed with the "inclusion lens" so they do not inadvertently exclude employees is also a necessary step. InfoQ: How do diversity and inclusion strengthen each other? Akram : Often I have heard leaders say "we are a diverse organisation" but when you look across the room it is often made up of similar looking people, be this in terms of their demographic background or work experiences. This in my experience greatly affects the diversity of thought in the room, and therefore decision making. Let’s just pause and think about senior leadership teams... how diverse and inclusive are they? I would say that there is a lot of work to do and therefore a great opportunity. An effective organisation should strive to take advantage of the different ideas, perspectives and experiences that a talented and capable workforce brings regardless of where they sit in an organisational structure. There is no point in bringing "diversity" into the organisation and then excluding its contribution – you might as well not have bothered. The aim is to enable people to be fully present, contributing, and valued. InfoQ: Can you give examples how diversity can improve collaboration in teams? Akram : Different people with different experiences automatically bring to teams different ideas and ways of working. This dynamic works effectively where ideas are generated and built upon. Sometimes, diverging ideas can cause friction, even chaos if not managed in the right way. In my mind, there are a couple of steps that should be taken to ensure diverse teams collaborate effectively and successfully: It is critical that teams are aligned and agree on the core purpose and ways of working. Strong stewardship or management of the team may be required to ensure that all adhere. Conditions should be set for ideas, debates and discussions, testing ideas, and collaboratively agreeing on a way forward. Disruption should be encouraged. In my experience, it is essential to respectfully challenge thinking. Sparking thoughts is important and often leads to robust team outcomes. InfoQ: Which benefits can enterprises gain from having a strategy that supports diversity and inclusion? Akram : There is a lot of research out there that demonstrates the power of diversity and inclusion in financial and non-financial terms. Large and small organisations across the world are actively harnessing this power. The question for organisations is if they want to comply, compete, or lead in this space? Among demographic changes, fierce competition, new and emerging markets, changing needs of customers, and aspirations of talented people, organisations must find ways of better connecting customers, people, and communities if they are to thrive. Innovation, collaboration, and working partnerships are essential ingredients. To get the best products and services to customers and employee requires organisations to work and harness differences, do things differently, and take calculated risks. Doing this, I believe, will drive the organisation to grow its bottom line, will deliver results over and above for both the customer and employee, and will be seen as a responsible business in the communities that it operates in. Win, win, and win! Spark the Change London 2016 will be held July 6-7. This conference brings together leaders from across the business to explore how they can work together to create lasting and total change. It aims to inspire people and offer practical help in overcoming obstacles and developing skills to make a change. InfoQ will be filming sessions at Spark the Change London and cover the conference with Q&As, summaries, and articles. 2016-06-23 15:04 Ben Linders

10 Microsoft Streamlines Visual Studio Installation Microsoft is refactoring its Visual Studio installation to be smaller, faster, more reliable and easier to manage. As Microsoft moves to become all things to all developers, the company has undergone some growing pains in terms of making that happen via its core toolset, Visual Studio. The move to take its. NET platform cross-platform and to support all different kinds of development from the Visual Studio toolset has bloated the size of the tools. And now Microsoft is moving to provide developers with a streamlined acquisition experience for Visual Studio, based on the type of development they are involved in. At its Build 2016 conference, Microsoft delivered the first preview of the next version of Visual Studio and gave an early look at a lightweight acquisition experience with Visual Studio. "The challenges we are seeing with our customers is that as we pivoted to support any developers building for any applications on any platform, the application model matrix is really exploding," Julia Liuson , Microsoft's corporate vice president of Visual Studio, told eWEEK . If you just think about the mobile space alone, there's the Android software development kit (SDK), the Cordova tools, the different emulators and more that a developer can use, she said. The overall collection of tools, SDKs and emulators is a very large set. Combining that large tool set with customers who have a habit of simply checking the "Select All" box when installing a product can lead to some disgruntled customers. Indeed, according to Liuson, with customers who download the entire product on their machine, Microsoft frequently gets feedback about the size of the download and questions of why Visual Studio is now 40 gigabytes. That's one of the problems the company is tackling—how to provide customers with a far more optimized experience for the particular workload that they are working on. For instance, if developers just want to do Python programming, they don't really need all of the Visual Studio mobile tools or the cloud tools. If they're doing Xamarin development, they don't necessarily need all of the cloud and server development offerings. "We're working on more workload-oriented acquisition experiences for our customers," Liuson said. "So when the product comes down to their machine, it's easily updateable and they can get the pieces they need easily. And what they decide not to use they can get rid of easily. " This is a key experience Microsoft is working on for the next release of Visual Studio, code-named Visual Studio 15. "We're hoping that with most of the users, the amount of stuff that they install to get started should be a lot smaller than what they do today," Liuson said. In a post on the Visual Studio Blog , Tim Sneath, principal lead program manager for the Visual Studio Platform at Microsoft, said based on feedback Microsoft got from developers at Build and from other research, Microsoft has come up with a list of 17 workloads the company is building for developers to choose from in next version of Visual Studio. Those workloads are: 1. Universal Windows Platform development 2. Web development (including ASP. NET, TypeScript and Azure tooling) 3. Windows desktop app development with C++ 4. Cross-platform mobile development with. NET (including Xamarin) 5.. NET desktop application development 6. Linux and Internet of things development with C++ 7. Cross-platform mobile development with Cordova 8. Mobile app development with C++ (including Android and iOS) 9. Office/SharePoint add-in development 10. Python Web development (including Django and Flask support) 11. Data science and analytical applications (including R, F# and Python) 12. Node.js development 13. Cross-platform game development (including Unity) 14. Native Windows game development (including DirectX) 15. Data storage and processing (including SQL, Hadoop and Azure ML) 16. Azure cloud services development and management 17. Visual Studio extension development "You can select one or more of these when setting up Visual Studio, and we’ll pull down and install just the relevant Visual Studio components that you need to be productive in that stack," Sneath said. Liuson noted that Microsoft is very sensitive to the fact that because it is making such a major change to a core part of its product experience, there will be a lot of feedback. And the company wants to hear customers' perspectives and address any concerns people might have. "Even though this is not a new product feature, it's such an important way for people to access all the features that we do offer," she said. "So this is actually a pretty important infrastructure change that the engineering team is working through. And it's a fairly big and disruptive change from an engineering angle. " Sneath's post goes on to inform developers on how they can install Visual Studio faster and leaner. He also provides details on how the new installer will work. 2016-06-23 13:54 Darryl K

11 Appian World 2016 Highlights the Rise of the Citizen Developer Appian , a business process management (BPM) and case management platform provider, held its Appian World user conference in Washington, D. C., last week. The theme of the event was the rise of the citizen developer, a future where any employee with any technical ability can build a "Quick App. " Key among the news of the conference was Appian's release of its new Quick Apps feature. With Quick Apps, citizen developers can create fully functional enterprise applications in 15 minutes or less with no technical knowledge, as there is no coding required. Appian unveiled the latest version of its BPM and Case Management platform, including the new Quick Apps offering. Malcolm Ross, vice president of product marketing at Appian, told eWEEK the new release helps businesses accelerate their digital transformation efforts with new design capabilities, as well as other platform-wide enhancements. "The inspiration of the Quick Apps solution is we've seen this continuing demand from the market, from IT organizations, to do more with less and to allow more people inside the organization to generate technical software solutions to help create a digital transformation inside their organization," Ross said. This slide show offers some highlights of Appian World 2016. 2016-06-23 13:54 Darryl K

12 IBM Launches Two New Watson Services for Twilio IBM announced two new Watson Services on the Twilio Marketplace to give more than 1 million registered developers access to cognitive capabilities. IBM announced a collaboration with cloud communications platform provider Twilio around the company’s Watson cognitive computing technology. At Twilio's Signal 2016 conference, IBM announced two new offerings, IBM Watson Message Sentiment and IBM Watson Message Insights, which will be available as Add-ons in Twilio's recently announced marketplace. Patrick Malatack, vice president of product marketing at Twilio, said as part of Twilio's newly announced Add-ons program, the new IBM offerings are pre-integrated with Twilio's APIs and are accessible to the more than 1 million registered developers in Twilio's community. In addition, developers who currently access Watson technology via IBM's Bluemix platform as a service (PaaS) will have access to the service. Malatack told eWEEK that Twilio noticed a pattern across multiple customers, who wanted to take Twilio's communication building blocks and merge them with other pieces of information, often from third parties. "So with Add-ons you're able to include third-party functionality into your Twilio application," he said. "And that lets you do things that are pretty neat, like when an inbound phone call comes into your call center, you can use some third-party software to take a look at that phone number and tell if it is a robo-dialer or a telemarketer and you can cut it off or you can forward it to an appropriate agent. " The new Watson Add-ons offer additional message enhancement capabilities through natural language processing to help understand sentiment, keywords, entities and high-level concepts from text messages, said Elliot Turner, director of Alchemy in IBM's Watson division. The insights gleaned from this unstructured data will give businesses actionable insights, he added. The new IBM Watson Message Sentiment service uses sentiment analysis to enable users to assess the emotion from SMS messages at scale. "The Watson Message Sentiment solution gives you sentiment so you know if someone who contacts your business is upset or has an issue and you can pop that to the top of your contact center workflow so it is at the top of your queue," Malatack said. "We're taking our IBM Message Sentiment offering, which takes the power of Watson's natural language processing—specifically the ability to understand positive, negative, neutral and mixed emotions in text—and we're exposing this to Twilio developers," said Turner. IBM Watson Message Insights uses a combination of Watson technologies including sentiment analysis, keyword extraction, entity extraction and concept tagging. This capability allows developers to distill key meanings from SMS, he said. "It has the ability to understand sentiment, the ability to extract meaning through natural language-processing capabilities such as the ability to understand keywords and named entities in text," Turner told eWEEK. "A named entity you can think of as the proper nouns of the world—the people, places, companies, organizations, etc. That is a capability that allows Twilio developers to really get at the nuance that's occurring in their SMS stream. " In addition, Malatack said IBM has delivered the capability for users to find other information from messages to enable users to parse out the language the message is written in and route that to an agent with the appropriate message skills for that communication. The new offerings complement the more than 30 Watson services currently available from IBM. Future plans include extending these offerings on third- party platforms, such as the Twilio Marketplace, bringing cognitive technology to where developers work, Turner said. The Watson Speech to Text Add-on, as part of the Recording Add-on category, is up next for Twilio developers, he said. "We are committed to equipping all developers everywhere with self- service AI (artificial intelligence) and IBM's cognitive capabilities, backed by the best science, ease-of-use and scalability," said David Kenny, general manager of IBM Watson, in a statement. "We are motivated by what developers are creating with Watson technology, and are constantly seeking new ways to help them build and innovate. By joining the Twilio Marketplace, we have opened another avenue for many more developers to harness the power of Watson. " Indeed, Turner noted that for IBM, deals such as this one with Twilio are really tied into Watson's broader mission of bringing cognitive technology to the world. "We think that developers are the ones that will take this technology and transform business, and this ability to have over 1 million developers that are leveraging the Watson platform to take advantage of Watson technology seemed like a natural marriage," he said. Meanwhile, Twilio's Add-ons make it possible for developers to do more with their Twilio applications using less code, Malatack said. "The IBM Watson Add-ons apply Watson's sentiment analysis capabilities to customers' text messages at scale, better equipping businesses with insights into how their customers feel," he noted. "Customers can now add the functionality of IBM Watson in a single click. " 2016-06-23 13:54 Darryl K

13 IBM Enhances Support for the Swift Programming Language At WWDC, IBM extended its already-considerable support for the Swift programming language, particularly for using Swift for server-side development. Apple's Swift programming language continues to gain popularity among developers and IBM, as a key Apple partner, is putting its considerable might behind the technology. This week at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), IBM announced new tooling and support for Swift, along with updates on the uptick in momentum Swift has seen at IBM and its developer community. IBM has been creating mobile applications for its MobileFirst for iOS platform using Swift, but the company also is making strides in extending Swift for server-side development. "From IBM's perspective , Swift on the server is already a global phenomenon," John Ponzo, an IBM fellow and vice president and CTO for IBM MobileFirst, wrote in a blog post. "This month, the number of code runs in the popular IBM Swift Sandbox topped 1.5 million. " If you are not familiar with the Sandbox, it's a cloud environment IBM made public last December with the Swift.org launch, Ponzo said. At the time, IBM announced it would be participating in the new project to help extend Swift to the server and the company used its sandbox to test its code and shared access with others. "This enabled developers, regardless of OS, who were interested in server- side Swift to give it a try without needing to stand up their own server," Ponzo said. At last year's WWDC, Apple announced plans to open-source Swift and delivered it to the community last December. This week, the Swift.org community launched the first preview of Swift 3.0 . Calling Swift "a game changer for enterprises," Phil Buckellew, vice president of Enterprise Mobile for the IBM Software Group, said IBM is the first cloud provider to enable the development of applications in native Swift. "IBM has experienced the benefits of Swift on the cloud first-hand, and we are one of the largest digital agencies using Swift today with more than 100 enterprise apps developed in the language," Buckellew said in a blog post . Adding to its potent support for Swift, IBM offered up two new capabilities. One is IBM Cloud Tools for Swift. IBM Cloud Tools for Swift, a free app also known as ICT, provides Mac users with a simple interface for deploying, managing and monitoring end- to-end Swift applications, Brian White Eagle, an offering manager in the Mobile Innovation Lab, said in a blog post . "The application integrates with tools designed by IBM Swift engineers to easily get started writing Swift on the server," White Eagle said in his post, which is a step-by-step guide for getting started with ICT. IBM Cloud Tools for Swift simplifies the management and deployment of server-side assets, he said. It is a Mac Application that enables developers to group client-side and server-side code written in Swift; deploy the server- side code to IBM's Bluemix cloud platform and then manage projects using ICT. Buckellew explained that for some Swift developers the key to productivity is working in the Xcode environment on a Mac. ICT simplifies the management and deployment of server-side assets in an environment complementary to Xcode. "The developer experience is important to us, and we think developing Swift apps on the cloud should be simple and fast," he noted. IBM also announced Swift on LinuxONE , IBM's Linux-based mainframe servers. Developers are now able to use Swift on LinuxONE , Buckellew said. "The safety, speed and expressiveness of Swift are now available with a level of performance and scale unmatched by any previous platform," he noted. "Having Swift on LinuxONE allows developers to do fit-for-purpose placement of workloads that need access to data in a high-performing, secure, reliable and scalable environment. " Also, the IBM Swift Sandbox is now enabled with a beta driver of Swift on LinuxONE. IBM introduced its Kitura Web Framework as an open-source technology in February at its InterConnect 2016 conference. Kitura enables the development of back-end portions of applications for Swift. Written in Swift, Kitura enables both mobile front-end and back-end portions of an application to be written in the same language, simplifying modern application development. Buckellew cited the example of City Furniture, an IBM customer that used Swift for both client-side and server-side development. The furniture retailer created a mobile solution in just six weeks that enabled the company to transform clearance merchandise from a cost-recovery to a profitable product segment, he said. "City Furniture recreated 90 percent of the functionality of their previous API with IBM's Swift server-side development packages using Kitura in a fraction of the time," Buckellew said. Meanwhile, for its part, Apple this week announced Swift Playgrounds , a new app for the iPad that is designed to make learning to code in Swift easy and fun for beginners. Apple delivered a preview release of Swift Playgrounds at WWDC as part of the iOS 10 developer preview and it will be available with the iOS 10 public beta in July. The final version of Swift Playgrounds will be available in the App Store for free this fall. 2016-06-23 13:54 Darryl K

14 9 Tools To Help You Build A Better Bot Companies love bots and would like nothing more than to find ways to automate time-consuming interactions with customers. AIG, Fiat, GM, and Sony have all started using AgentBot, which provides virtual customer service support. Anything to keep customers from tying up support staff on the phone. Virtual customer service is but one of many possibilities for automated interaction. Bots are being used for publishing news, alerts, scores, and other data. They can make reservations, book tickets, take orders for goods, and respond to questions. With sufficiently clever AI, they may be able to get the job done without annoying anyone. What's easily overlooked, though, are the potential legal pitfalls when an individual or company creates a bot to automate time-consuming interactions with a commercial service provider. A lawsuit may follow if the bot in question violates the law, contravenes a terms of service agreement, or otherwise creates an undue burden on the service provider. In 2006, Blizzard sued MDY Industries for making Glider , a bot that automated the often tedious process of building a powerful character in World of Warcraft. The gaming company won a similar lawsuit in 2013 against Ceiling Fan Industries. Last week, Twitch sued seven makers of view-bots, follow-bots, and chat- impersonation bots, because they can, the company alleges, be used to "artificially inflate the apparent view count, follower count, and chat activity on a Twitch channel," according to a blog post by Twitch SVP of marketing Matthew DiPietro. Online social interaction looks less appealing when you're not conversing with real people. [Are you ready for the bot invasion? Read The Rise of the Bots: 11 Ways Your Business Can Prepare .] One of the virtues of bots is they can be built in a way that doesn't require a particular client application to handle interactions. The input and output, whether text, voice, or images, can be sent from a variety of applications -- SMS, chat app, or the like. Companies don't have to rely on customers downloading a company-branded app or adopting new behavior. In many parts of the world, this can be an advantage. AgentBot recently partnered with Zendesk to be integrated into Zendesk's support ticket management tools. AgentBot's software now integrates with Facebook Messenger to allow clients' bots to communicate with customers who favor social communication channels. Facebook opened up its Messenger platform in April, when it invited developers to create Messenger bots. A month earlier, Microsoft introduced the Microsoft Bot Framework at its BUILD developer conference. Google assistant isn't called a bot platform, because it's only available to Google at the moment. But it is a bot platform in the sense that it assumes a conversational pattern of interaction. It is expected to support Google Home and the company's forthcoming messaging app Allo, but isn't yet open to third-party developers through an API. Amazon has its Alexa Voice Service , and Apple introduced an SDK for Siri, called SiriKit. These are only the big names. It's as if suddenly the tech world has rediscovered macros. Macros, or scripts, have been used for decades to automate actions on computers. Bots add a few things to the mix, mainly scope, persistence, and intelligence. Where a macro might have been used to rename the files in a folder, bots typically have to react to input and then generate output relevant to a far broader set of data, often over a network. Where a macro might be invoked to handle a specific task, bots tend to be launched with the assumption they'll remain on duty until deactivated. Where a macro would be invoked to handle a straightforward task, like sorting or batch file processing, bots are being entrusted with interpreting human communication. Artificial intelligence, in the form of machine learning and natural language parsing, separates bots from less sophisticated forms of automation. The current bot frenzy would never have taken hold if we hadn't had some success teaching computers how to understand people more often than not. Years ago, when people made jokes made about Microsoft's Clippy or Apple's Newton, the humor arose from the fact that Clippy wasn't very smart and Apple's handwriting recognition software didn't work well enough. Incompetent AI is worse than no AI. Is the current crop of bots smart enough to be useful to companies? For a variety of commercial applications, like ordering things or some kinds of customer support, the answer is yes, sometimes. But proceed with caution. Voicemail became "voice jail" because automated call-handling technology infuriates people with its stupidity. What's more, there's an obvious disconnect between saying, "Your call is very important to us," and demonstrating how the call is not important enough to hire human support staff. Bots that fail to understand what people are saying, or demonstrate disinterest in a positive customer experience, run a similar risk. What follows are nine of the better bot platforms presently available. There will probably be many more, provided bots don't get dragged down by the worst impulses of advertisers, which will prompt people to tune them out. 2016-06-23 07:06 Thomas Claburn

15 An official Steam Authenticator app could be in the works for Windows devices Steam Authenticator is an application that Valve introduced to increase the level of security for Steam accounts. It generates a code every time a user logs in to their Steam account. This code can only be used once, changes every 30 seconds, and according to Valve, is "unguessable". While this method of two-factor authentication made its way to Android and iOS users, Windows users were left out in the cold - and had to resort to third-party alternatives. However, now it appears that an official app could be in the works for Windows devices. The source code for the app which can be found on GitHub ( via Reddit ), contains numerous references to "WinRT" and "WinRT clients", leading many to believe that they could soon get their hands on the Steam Authenticator app. With that being said, it is important to note that there is still a line of commented code which states "// no version minimum for Windows phones", while correctly indicating that mobile clients for Android and iOS exist, so it probably isn't a good idea to get your hopes up too soon. Many people on the original Reddit thread claim that this is just the Javascript code for the login page, stating that: Similarly, there has been no official statement from Valve as of yet regarding Steam Authenticator being developed for Windows devices. But while Windows Phone may only command a measly 0.7% market share , it is notable that Windows 10 is on over 300 million devices , so a UWP Steam Authenticator app possibly isn't off the table as well. Source: Reddit via MSPoweruser 2016-06-23 06:26 Usama Jawad

16 Barack Obama to appear on Facebook Live with Mark Zuckerberg this Friday It was reported yesterday that Facebook Live is negotiating with a number of high-profile celebrities and publications to ensure they use the service, but on Friday the biggest name of them all will be making a live video appearance: Barack Obama. Obama will be in Silicon Valley tomorrow for the seventh Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES), where over 1200 entrepreneurs from 170 countries will be attending. According to Reuters , the event will focus on connecting those in the tech sectors of emerging markets with their US counterparts. In addition to making remarks at the summit, the President is set to be part of a panel discussion with Mark Zuckerberg. Obama will also do an interview with the Facebook CEO, which will be broadcast on Facebook Live for all to see. It’s not clear if the interview will follow other Facebook Live session formats. So far there have been no requests by Facebook that users submit questions for Obama. It may be that Zuckerberg has the interview planned out and asks the occasional question posed by viewers in the real-time stream. Facebook is reportedly paying more than $50 million to celebrities and publishing partners in exchange for their use of Facebook Live, and is said to be involved in contract deals with the likes of Kevin Hart and Gordon Ramsay. This won’t be Obama’s first interview on the video service but it will hopefully go better than the last one. BuzzFeed’s Facebook Live interview with the President lasted two minutes before it failed, at which point the publication directed the 35,000 viewers to its YouTube channel so they could continue watching the broadcast. It will be interesting to see if Zuckerberg asks Obama the same viewer question he received in his own Q&A: are you secretly a lizard? 2016-06-23 14:01 Rob Thubron

17 Narvar raises $22 million to help internet retailers deliver physical goods without frustrating customers Battery Ventures led a $22 million, Series B investment in Narvar Inc. , a company helping internet retailers keep their customers happy post-purchase, meaning until their packages are delivered, and if need be, successfully returned for an exchange or refund. Battery was joined by Fung Capital , a logistics-focused fund, and Narvar’s earlier backers Accel Partners and Freestyle Capital. The San Bruno, Calif.-based startup is already working with major internet retailers including: Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, Coach, Sephora and Bass Pro Shops. What’s so complicated about delivering physical goods these days? Isn’t this simply outsourced to a handful of mail carriers? According to Narvar CEO and founder Amit Sharma, retailers on average actually use 15 or more shippers to reach their U. S. customers, not just UPS, Fedex and the USPS these days. That includes regional carriers, and will soon include non-traditional services like Postmates or UberRUSH, he predicts. Retailers are also increasingly using their own brick-and-mortar stores to fulfill online orders for customers nearby. At the same time, these e-retailers don’t want to trouble their customers with an overwhelming number of delivery decisions, or for that matter, calls with local delivery services to arrange a schedule to pick up or return an item, whether it’s an engagement ring or a new mattress. The opportunity for retailers online is already massive. Online retail sales in the U. S. alone are expected to generate $373 billion in sales this year, and to grow to more than $500 billion by 2020, according to the most recent available forecasts from Forrester Research. And almost three-quarters of people in the U. S. already buy things online, regularly. Certain categories are picking up steam, too– clothing, accessories and consumer electronics have already been selling in robust amounts online. But now large items like furniture and autos are as well. Battery Ventures General Partner Roger Lee, now a board member at Narvar, said he expects the company to use its funding to build out its software-as-a-servce, leadership and sales team. “Narvar wants to allow every retailer and every brand to deliver an Amazon- like, or Apple-like experience. They all want to do it,” Lee said. 2016-06-23 00:00 Lora Kolodny

18 Apple eyeing touch controls to extend the power of the stylus Apple has been looking at ways to extend the control power of stylus input methods, patenting a touch sensitive stylus which could allow for users to manipulate on screen objects depending on how and where they place their fingers on the stylus shaft itself. The patent , spotted earlier by AppleInsider , was first filed in December 2014, before Apple had its own stylus in the market. Cupertino announced the Apple Pencil in fall 2015 , offering a finer-grained interface option for users of its iPad Pro. The pressure and tilt sensing Apple Pencil is targeted at creatives wanting to achieve pixel-precision on a touchscreen vs poking and hoping with a finger. And also for an enterprise demographic likely to be interested in the more powerful and larger iPad Pro — flagging up the utility of a stylus for annotating documents, for example. Adding even more fine-grained controls to the Apple Pencil would mesh with the creative/pro demographic Apple is targeting the Pencil/iPad Pro at. Especially as the stylus does not work with the broader spectrum of iPad or iOS devices — remaining firmly in the professional tool niche where the iPad Pro sits. In the patent, which is called Stylus With Touch Sensor, Apple notes one example of how an array of touch sensors that are capable of accurately determine finger location and action on a stylus shaft could be useful in supporting advanced device interactions — such as the ability to detect that a user is rotating the stylus. Which in turn could be applied to rotate an onscreen object. Or to perform another control action like selecting brush size in a drawing app or controling system UI parameters such as the zoom level. It’s easy to imagine graphics artists benefiting from control shortcuts they can perform right from the Apple Pencil in their hand, without having to tap through lots of on screen menus. Another cited example of potential utility is being able to run a finger down the touch sensitive stylus to scroll through a menu. Of course Apple patents a continual pipelines of ideas and possible future techniques, the vast majority of which never make it into shipping products. Patents can also be filed defensively, as hedges against rivals’ R&D. But they can still be an interesting indiction of a company’s thinking. The challenge with adding more sensors to support additional controls is the risk of amping up the complexity of the user interface. So while sensor technology could enable a stylus that can do a lot more than just let you scribble creatively on a touchscreen, implementing such a fine-grained touch/gesture UI into a piece of hardware would require a steep learning curve for users. Which in turn might stay Apple’s hand here. Or at least see it scale back any touch options it does decide to introduce in future. In a second patent , filed around the same time as the stylus sensor patent, Apple describes a method for automatically switching the interface on a smartphone-style device based on which hand it’s being held in — so shifting the location of icons and buttons to make them easier to reach — that’s also based on using an array of sensors embedded into the hardware. So expecting future gadgetry to have at least a little more touch sensitivity to help boost its utility does seem a pretty safe bet. 2016-06-23 00:00 Natasha Lomas

19 19 SecurityScorecard raises $20 million from Google Ventures SecurityScorecard, the platform that monitors and assesses companies’ cybersecurity strength, has raised $20 million in Series B funding from GV (the Alphabet-ized new name for Google Ventures). GV led the funding round, which includes investments from previous SecurityScorecard investors Sequoia Capital, Evolution Equity Partners, and Boldstart Ventures. Two Sigma Ventures also joined the Series B round. SecurityScorecard aims to index the cybersecurity posture of all companies online today by unobtrusively scanning their networks and assigning them a grade from A to F. The grades are then used by companies to evaluate the robustness of their vendors and their own cybersecurity. SecurityScorecard currently tracks and grades 100,000 companies, although the founders hope to expand its reach with the new funds. “The big problem that kept me up awake at night was that companies spend all this money to protect themselves, but when it comes to suppliers, they’re in the dark,” says SecurityScorecard CEO Dr. Aleksandr Yampolskiy. The sleepless nights led Yampolskiy to leave his job heading up security at the online retailer Gilt Groupe and co-found SecurityScorecard in 2013. Yampolskiy compares SecurityScorecard’s analysis to that of a doctor looking at a patient, without the aid of an MRI or blood panel. “We look at the signals form the outside,” he says. “Is he coughing; is he flushed in the face?” Investment from GV was a natural fit, Yampolskiy says. “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information. Similarly, we are trying to organize the world’s security vulnerabilities,” he explains. Karim Faris, a GV general partner, says he was drawn to SecurityScorecard because the company outstripped other tools for analyzing vendors’ cybersecurity. “I’ve been looking at this area of vendor risk,” Faris says. He noted that the current state of the art for assessing vendors is for companies to send vendors a questionnaire to assess their own security. “There has to be a way to apply technology to this problem,” he says. “I was very impressed by the tech stack these guys built.” Faris will join SecurityScorecard’s board as part of GV’s investment. Tom Mendoza, vice chairman of NetApp, will also join the board. SecurityScorecard has grown significantly since its $12.5 million Sequoia- led Series A last year — Yampolskiy says the company has expanded from 15-20 employees to over 85. He hopes that the GV investment will help his company grow even more, with a focus on expanding overseas and adding fresh talent. 2016-06-23 00:00 Kate Conger

20 Intel, SAP, other tech companies pledge to get more inclusive in hiring Intel, SAP, Lyft, Spotify and VMware are among over 30 Silicon Valley companies that on Wednesday signed a pledge that they would take action to make their technology workforce "fully representative of the American people, as soon as possible. " The absence of diversity in the tech industry in Silicon Valley was highlighted about two years ago by civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson, who pressed some companies to release data on their employment of Blacks, Hispanics and women. Many tech companies like Google and Intel released data but it was found that their workforce was predominantly male and white. Under pressure from Jackson to set specific goals, some companies announced their plans for promoting inclusion. Intel, for example, made a pledge to invest $300 million on diversity and inclusion and announced a goal to reach full representation of women and underrepresented minorities in its U. S. workforce by 2020. Google also announced a $150 million expenditure to get more women and other minorities into the tech industry. In their letter Wednesday to U. S. President Barack Obama , ahead of a global entrepreneurship summit in Silicon Valley, the companies have committed to implement and publish company-specific goals in the areas of hiring, retaining and advancing diverse technology talent. The companies have also committed to annually publish data and progress metrics on the diversity of their technology employees across functional areas and seniority levels, and to partner to build a diverse pipeline of technology talent. Diversity makes good business sense too, according to a report jointly published by Intel and Dalberg Global Development Advisors. Studying diversity data from nearly 170 companies, the study has found a correlation between more diverse tech work forces and higher revenue, profits, and market value. The report estimates that an additional $470 to $570 billion in new value for the U. S. technology industry could be created through full representation of ethic and gender diversity. Companies that are more diverse are more likely to be innovative and have a higher number of patent applications, according to the study. They are also more likely to be be able to retain talent. As importantly, diverse companies are better able to identify products and services that minorities would like to buy. The challenge for tech companies could be their ability to hire and retain minorities in their workforce. Tech companies like Google find it difficult to recruit and retain women and minorities, wrote Laszlo Bock, Google’s senior vice president for People Operations, in a blog post in 2014, after the company released inclusion data. Women earn roughly 18 percent of all computer science degrees in the U. S. , and Blacks and Hispanics each account for under 10 percent of U. S. college graduates and each bag fewer than 10 percent of degrees in computer science majors, he added. Tech companies are hence trying to get involved in boosting the number of people from minority communities that get trained in skills that are relevant for the tech industry. Part of Intel’s investment, for example, will support scholarships for Hispanic college students who have chosen a science, technology, engineering, or math major, in partnership with the Hispanic Foundation of Silicon Valley. Google is also focused on making computer science education accessible and available to all , besides focusing on areas such as bridging the digital divide. 2016-06-23 03:34 John Ribeiro

21 Japan firm rolls out smile-rating app Japanese cosmetics firm Shiseido says it has come up with a system to rate a person's smile by measuring facial movements. Users look into a tablet device with the app, and it gives them a reading on the quality of their smile on a scale of zero to 120. The app can also tell them how their smile is seen by others in various categories — trustworthy, elegant, attractive, beautiful, positive, friendly and lively. "But even if you have a 120 rating smile, it doesn't mean it's the best smile," a company spokeswoman told AFP. "For instance, a smile could be perceived as more elegant even when the overall rating is 80. " Starting from July, Shiseido will start testing the app on 5,000 Japan Airlines flight attendants, who will use it daily for several months. Their feedback will be used to improve the app , which Shiseido is targeting at the hospitality industry. Details about possible pricing have yet to be decided, the spokeswoman said, adding that it could be launched commercially as early as next year. Explore further: Amazon seeks patent for buying items with a look 2016-06-23 00:00 phys.org

22 PlayStation Vue Internet TV service lands on Roku, coming to Android devices next week PlayStation Vue , Sony’s over-the-top service for live television aimed at cord cutters , is now available on Roku devices including Roku set-top boxes , the Roku Streaming Stick and Roku TVs. Dan Myers, head of product for PlayStation Vue, said they will also be rolling out support for Android smartphones and tablets next week. Sony’s PlayStation Vue service arrived in early 2015. At that time, it was only accessible via Sony’s own PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 game consoles to residents in select cities including Chicago, New York City and Philadelphia. It wasn’t until March 14 of this year that Sony launched nationwide. The service was initially missing some key networks like Disney’s ESPN but those have since been added. Pricing starts at $29.99 per month (or $39.99 in cities with major live local broadcast stations) for a collection of more than 55 channels. Bumping up to the Core package for $34.99 per month grants access to 70+ channels while the Elite bundle at $44.99 per month offers more than 100 channels. PlayStation Vue is also available on Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick as well as iPhone and iPad through the PlayStation Vue mobile app. Users can also access the service on Chromecast though compatible iOS devices. If you’re interested in trying PlayStation Vue, Sony is currently offering a free seven-day trial for newcomers. 2016-06-23 13:55 Shawn Knight

23 You're likely to get charged more if you tell the PC repair shop you have insurance Researchers at the University of Innsbruck recently conducted a study to determine whether or not having a computer repaired with the backing of an insurance provider would affect the overall cost charged by a repair shop. The results probably won’t surprise you. As Ars Technica highlights , researchers purchased a series of identical refurbished computers and disabled one of the two RAM chips inside. With Windows 7 Pro, this prompted a self-diagnostic message while booting up that correctly pointed to a memory issue. The computers were then taken to randomly selected repair shops in Austria. The “owner” followed a pre-determined script when dealing with the shops, noting that the computer wouldn’t boot and they’d like the shop to fix it. The owner also requested an itemized bill although half the time, they added that they needed said bill because the repair was being covered by insurance. Economists note that adding insurance to the equation creates what’s called a moral hazard as neither party has any incentive to minimize cost. If anything, it gives the repair shops the opportunity to be dishonest. Out of the 61 shops researchers visited, three said the computer couldn’t be fixed or that it would be cheaper to just buy a new computer. It’s unclear if the repair technicians were incompetent or simply trying to get the user to buy a new system from their shop but either way, these results were excluded from the analysis. It is worth noting that one shop did the diagnostics for free while the other two charged a fee. The two that charged were informed that the user had insurance. Four shops billed the customer for parts they didn’t install although these were split evenly between the experimental and control groups. Five other shops, meanwhile, charged for repairs that weren’t needed and in each case, the shop had been informed that insurance was handling the matter. All said and done, the study found that uninsured repairs cost an average of €70 (~$79 USD) while insured ones averaged closer to €130 (~$147 USD). Much of this cost had to do with billed labor time. Uninsured repairs on average were billed for half an hour less compared to insured repairs. Image courtesy Tanja Esser, Shutterstock 2016-06-23 13:55 Shawn Knight

24 With Ghostbot, you don't have to deal with persistent texters who can't take a hint In today’s connected society, text message etiquette can be a tricky minefield - especially when it comes to rejecting amorous advances. But an answer may be at hand with a program from the makers of Burner , an app that lets users create and destroy new phone numbers. With the Ghostbot application, which can be assigned to any active Burner number, users can avoid all contact with someone – "ghosting them" – by allowing the bot to send automated responses that show a lack of interest, thereby dissuading further contact. “The idea is to avoid a situation where you don’t want to have a confrontational conversation, but don’t want to go dark on them,” said CEO Greg Cohn. One of the biggest potential uses for Ghostbot is when dealing with unwanted dates. There are those times when telling someone you’re not interested can lead to unpleasantness or even threats. Ghostbot analyzes messages to pick an appropriate response. If, for example, it sees “would you like to meet up?” it will reply with something along the lines of “nope, overwhelmed with work” or “can’t tonight.” It can even use emojis to appear more human. “We hear a lot of anecdotes about terrible texting from dating matches, but sometimes blocking someone creates an awkward social circumstance. Ghostbot helps you go through the motion of ghosting someone without negative consequences,” said Will Carter, co-founder of Ad Hoc Labs. Ghostbot is being shown off as an example of what’s possible using the Developer Connection Platform, which lets people build extensions for the Burner service. If you want to try Ghostbot out for yourself, just go to this site to start autonomously snubbing people. Image credit: Radek Svehla / Shutterstock 2016-06-23 13:55 Rob Thubron

25 Steam game charges $35 for DLC that only consists of a printable certificate Video game history is littered with examples of DLC so unbelievably poor that it’s surprising charges weren’t brought against the creators. But if you thought Oblivion’s functionless $2.50 horse armor and the $3 it cost to see nipples in The Saboteur was bad, have a look at what is possibly the most jaw-dropping piece of downloadable content ever: a $35 certificate. The game in question is an old-school text adventure called Hadean Lands. Like so many of those classic titles from yesteryear, there are no graphics in the game; you simply type in commands and read the story of an apprentice alchemist stranded on an alien planet. As you can imagine, the game is pretty hard, and it’s this difficulty that led to developer Andrew Plotkin adding the unique piece of DLC to Steam. Your $35 gets you a file containing a printable PDF or JPEG certificate, which states that you pledge to complete the game without using walkthroughs or referring to any hints. In Plotkin’s defense, he has said that the DLC is to be taken lightheartedly. Speaking to Kotaku , he added that a higher price was a good way of keeping people invested, but he wanted to make paying more for Hadean Lands optional. Speaking from a player's point of view, he said: “If this was a $5 game I’d just close the game window, but after paying $30 I want to kick its butt.” I wanted a way for players to buy into Hadean Lands at that level of investment. Again, I didn’t think I could *require* it. But as an optional challenge, which a player could opt into? No reward except for a nice certificate and the knowledge that they’d made the choice? Sure. That makes sense. And: It’s funny. I mean, I think it’s funny. I don’t want to kick the joke to death, but people seem generally to take it in good humor. Whatever Plotkin’s reasons for the DLC, it certainly draws attention to his game. And it should come as little surprise to learn that he’s already sold at least one of the certificates so far. 2016-06-23 13:55 Rob Thubron

26 A third of Valve employees are working on VR projects Virtual reality is still very much in its infancy. While the technology is slowly gaining traction, it needs continued developer support to ensure it spreads to more gamers. Valve, which co-developed the Vive headset along with HTC, knows this and has around a third of its staff working in its VR/AR division. Discussing the past and present of virtual reality in a Vive subreddit thread , Valve hardware engineer Alan Yates revealed how large the VR team has grown over the last few years. It was a much smaller team [years ago] than it is now. It has since grown to encompass about a third of the company, but the key individuals that solved most of the really hard technological problems and facilitated this generation of consumer headsets are still here working on the next generation. Valve is estimated to have around 300 to 350 employees in total, which means there are more than 100 people working on its upcoming virtual reality and augmented reality projects. While he didn’t specifically name anything the team was currently developing, it’s certain to be a mix of software and hardware. One demo Valve showed off a couple of months ago was the incredible Dota 2 VR spectator mode. The immersive experience brings a whole new way of viewing the MOBA’s matches and shows that watching games on the Vive could be just as entertaining as playing them. Yates went on to express his enthusiasm for working in the field. "Short of human space flight or life sciences I can't imagine working on something of more significance right now," he said. The big question is, of course, will there ever be a Half-Life 2: Episode 3/Half-Life 3 game for the Vive. Early last year, it looked as if this was a possibility when HTC chairwoman Cher Wang said the company was “co- operating with Half-Life.” She later claimed she “misspoke,” and apologized for the confusion. As reported last month, the chances of ever seeing Gordon Freeman’s return, be it in virtual reality or otherwise, now seems pretty unlikely. Both the Vive and the Rift are currently lacking any killer games or apps that make spending $600 - $800 on the devices seem worthwhile. But companies are continuing to pour resources into the field, and while 2016 marks the arrival of consumer VR, perhaps 2017 will bring the revolution we’ve been promised. 2016-06-23 13:55 Rob Thubron

27 Facebook is spending loads of money to get celebrities to use its livestreaming service Everywhere you turn, it seems as though celebrities and other public figures are jumping on the livestreaming bandwagon. These people are flocking to platforms like Facebook and Snapchat in an effort to reach out to their fans and ultimately, build their brands. Which platform they elect to spend most of their time on, however, has little to do with its potential reach, popularity or ease of use. As The Wall Street Journal reports , it’s all about the Benjamins – cash. The publication recently reviewed a document from Facebook that outlined the spending of more than $50 million to celebrities and publishing partners in exchange for their use of Facebook Live , the social network’s live video streaming service. The Journal cited a number of celebs involved in contract deals including Kevin Hart, Gordon Ramsay, Deepak Chopra and NFL quarterback Russell Wilson as well as publishers like Tastemade, Mashable, the Huffington Post and Vox Media. How much each entity is being paid varies greatly. The highest-paid publisher, for example, is BuzzFeed which will receive $3.05 million for broadcasting content between March 2016 and March 2017. The New York Times is also high on the list with $3.03 million for a 12-month deal followed by CNN’s $2.5 million contract. Justin Osofsky, Facebook’s vice president of global operations and media partnerships, said they wanted to invite a broad set of partners to get feedback from a variety of different organizations about what works and what doesn’t. Osofsky added that they invited publishers partially based on their track record with live video. Image courtesy Omar Vega, Associated Press 2016-06-23 13:55 Shawn Knight

28 Microsoft's Wallet 2.0 preview brings NFC payments to Windows 10 phones Windows Phones may only make up a tiny amount of the smartphone market, around 0.7 percent, but Microsoft is still bringing new features to the platform. Yesterday, the company announced that the updated version of its Wallet app will include NFC tap-to- pay support. Windows Insiders who use a Lumia 650, 950, or 950 XL and are signed up for “Fast Ring” previews can get the updated Wallet 2.0 app now and use the tap-to-pay feature at stores where you see a contactless payment symbol or the Microsoft Wallet logo. It works in the same way as its Android Pay and Apple Pay counterparts – just make a payment by placing your device near the terminal. Microsoft says its “cloud-based payment technology” works at more than 1 million retail locations and supports MasterCard and Visa from eight major banks and credit unions, including Bank of America and Chase. The new wallet 2.0 app also has an area for loyalty and customer cards, such as gym memberships, that can be scanned into the app or input manually. A barcode is then generated for easy scanning and users can pin those individual cards to their Start screen for quick access. As the updated app is still in an early preview mode, don’t expect all the features to work perfectly. Wallet 2.0 will probably be pretty buggy until the final version is released, which is expected to arrive as part of the upcoming Windows 10 Anniversary Update. There’s no word on when or if the new features will be available outside of the US. 2016-06-23 13:55 Rob Thubron

30 Ultimate Ears adds Google Now, Siri voice integration to Boom Bluetooth speakers UE Boom 2 and Megaboom wireless Bluetooth speakers are now a bit more functional thanks to a new software update that integrates push- to-talk voice commands via Siri and Google Now. The new functionality from Ultimate Ears essentially acts as a middle-man between you and your wireless device. Say you’re lounging around in the pool and listening to your favorite jams (the UE speakers carry an IPX7 rating meaning they’re waterproof for up to half an hour at a depth of one meter) and you want to play a different track, message a friend or better yet, order up a pizza. Rather than having to get out of the pool and grab your smartphone, you can just push the Bluetooth button on the speaker to activate Siri or Google Now on your handset remotely. Note that you’ll need to be in the UE app for the voice assistant functionality to do its thing. It sounds great in theory but in practice (at least, early on), it’s far from perfect. Engadget’s Jon Turi got to try out the new functionality for a few hours and noted that while the service works, there’s plenty of room for improvement. On the UE Boom 2, Turi found a significant delay between the moment he pressed the Bluetooth button and the audible prompt to talk. What’s more, he described the prompt as whisper quiet. When the feature did work, the beginning portions of responses were occasionally clipped. Switching to the UE Megaboom seemed to rectify most of these issues although there was still the occasional clipped response, he noted. Ultimate Ears’ Bluetooth speakers don’t come cheap. The UE Boom 2 will set you back $249.95 while the UE Megaboom commands a hearty $379.95. This is the MSRP through Ultimate Ears; you can get them for significantly cheaper through Amazon, for example, where you’ll pay as little as $178.88 or $249.99 for the Boom 2 and Megaboom, respectively. 2016-06-23 13:55 Shawn Knight

31 Samsung's SM961 PCIe SSD hits 1TB mark, ships out next week Samsung's follow-up to the excellent SM951 NVMe SSD is set to arrive next week. The new SM961 will be an OEM product meant to ship primarily inside high end systems, but as with its SM951 and XP941 predecessors there will be distributors selling the drive as well, and now specs and pricing details for the upcoming lineup are popping up online. The SM961 will ship in four capacity sizes: 128GB, 256GB, 512GB and 1TB -- this is Samsung’s first NVMe M.2 SSD to hit the 1TB mark. The drives feature Samsung's new Polaris controller which should bring some performance improvements and help minimize heat output. The SM961 is also expected to use third-gen 48-layer V-NAND to achieve larger storage capacities in the same tiny package, but this hasn’t been confirmed by Samsung, and AnandTech reports the newer memory hasn't made its way to existing product lines. Both 128GB and 256GB models have sequential read speeds of 3,100MBps, while the larger 512GB and 1TB versions go up to 3,200MBps. Sequential write speeds top out at 1,800MBps in the largest drive, dropping to 1,700MBps for the 512GB version, 1,400 MBps for the 256GB drive and 700Mbps for the 128GB. In terms of pricing, a now-removed listing on Australian site RamCity had the 256GB version is priced at $159, the 512GB version at $280 and the 1TB drive priced at $512. Those prices on par with the best deals currently available for the SM951, and undercut retail NVMe M.2 drives like the the Samsung 950 Pro and Toshiba OCZ RD400 by $15 to $40 or more. There’s no pricing information for the smaller 128GB variant so it’s likely we won’t see this drive used outside of the OEM and system integrator market. 2016-06-23 13:55 Jose Vilches

32 Don't just code: Career advice from the programming masters As a career path, software development couldn't be hotter. Programming languages are proliferating and the U. S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that demand for developers will grow at rate of 17 percent from 2014 to 2024 -- much faster than the 7 percent average for all occupations. Given that, it's little wonder why students and non-tech professionals are considering a career in programming. But how exactly should would-be developers prepare themselves to take advantage of the growing demand for programmers? We turned to dignitaries in the software development realm to get their takes on what young programmers should do. Those surveyed included JavaScript creator Brendan Eich , Clojure founder Rich Hickey , Spring Framework originator Rod Johnson , Npm founder Isaac Schlueter , and Guido van Rossum , inventor of the Python language. Here's what they had to say about education opportunities, languages to master, and what makes a great programmer today. While the debate over the value of a computer science degree rages on, these programming leaders emphasize the importance of a well-rounded education, with plenty of time spent studying subjects beyond the console. "The biggest challenges in life do not have technical fixes," Eich says, "so it's important to study history, literature, art, and other kinds of human knowledge than anything to do with computers. " Hickey agrees, placing programming into a broader perspective. "Programming is a very new endeavor in the historical scheme of things," he says. "One shouldn't presume that we understand how best to pursue it. " Instead, Hickey suggests pursuing other educational interests to help understand the kinds of problems programming can solve. "The best programmers are those that can understand, communicate about, and solve problems in the domains they are in," he says. "Software is just a tool for that. " Johnson agrees that would-be programmers should investigate subjects outside the CS lab and mathematics department to help round out their education because, ultimately, "programming is about people rather than math. " Even when it comes to pursuing CS as a degree, Johnson is "torn. " "Mostly one uses things learned on the job," Johnson says. "There's a real value in a good CS education, but I've seen a lot of great programmers who had different backgrounds. " Van Rossum agrees. "You have people who come with an English degree and they go to a Django Girls workshop, and from then on they are Web developers," he says. "You also have people who go through the traditional four years of college with a major in computer science. " Of course, theory does have its place, Johnson says, even in the real world. "Yesterday I used some compiler theory that I learned as a CS student, and it helped me get a neat, robust solution to the problem I had," he says. "But that doesn't happen very often. " Eich sees more value in studying mathematics as mathematics, rather than as a pretext for studying computer science theory. "Programming is not all about mathematics, sometimes hardly at all," he says. "But if you're good at math, study it as math while you are young. Don't worry about programming so much. " Van Rossum goes a bit deeper, recommending "the kind of math that develops logical thinking. " Schlueter has a different theory for going general before becoming a programmer: "A liberal arts education is a great way to spend four years after high school, if you can afford it," he says. "There won't be another time in your life when you can mostly just goof off and party for that long with societal approval. " If you do take him up on his suggestion, Schlueter also offers advice that's deadly practical: "State schools are way cheaper, and student loans are no joke, so be thrifty," he says. "Try to get any scholarship or grants that you can. " Writing, Schlueter argues, is a key facet of being a strong programmer. " Whether you go to college or not, try to make time as early as possible to read lots of literature and philosophy, both primary and secondary sources, and write as much as you can," he says. "If you're not going to college, then as soon as you can, shell out for a writing tutor who'll give you assignments and then help you polish them. This job happens on the Internet, and the written word is how people communicate there. The more effectively you can write, the better off you'll be. " Once you do sit down to program, which languages should you consider first? " OCaml, Haskell, Rust, C++, TypeScript, JS, Racket -- or Scheme as in SICP ," Eich offers. "Obviously I don't expect everyone to learn all of those programming languages. But just a few would be good at the right time and place, especially for undergraduates who have interest and aptitude. " Hickey, too, suggests a multi-language approach, but offers a more philosophical take on putting together a representative mix of the wide variety of languages out there. " [Pick a language that] makes it evident how a computer works (C), one that encapsulates that (Haskell, Prolog), a good statically typed functional language (Haskell, again, fine), and a good dynamic language with a functional emphasis. I'm partial to Clojure," he says. Johnson suggests learning languages with contrasting approaches. "Languages can influence thinking about programming, so it's important to learn more than one language, and to learn languages that have different approaches," he says. "So, for example, an OO language and a functional language, rather than, say, Java and C#. " "I say that Python is a pretty good language to get started in, of course," van Rossum says. "Then immediately the question of which Python version comes up and I would say start with Python 3. It's easy enough to learn Python 2 afterwards if you have to for some job or project. If you're starting from scratch Python 3 is the better language, no doubt about it. " Johnson also suggests young developers take a look at Swift. "It's a nice modern language that includes a lot of good ideas and I think we're going to see it spread from iOS to other platforms," he says. "JavaScript is very useful, although not a great first language. Java is worth learning. It's not a particularly hard language to learn, continues to grow in popularity, and the JVM is everywhere. " Once you've got a few projects under your belt, how do you take your skills to the next level? Eich suggests learning from the early (and current) masters by studying great code. " Read high-quality code, sometimes even on paper printouts, where you can write notes and mark with colored pens," Eich says. " On high-quality code, I think a classic is still Kernighan & Ritchie's The C Programming Language , but I'm showing my age. Also, The Unix Programming Environment. More recent code worth reading: ' Solving Every Sudoku Puzzle ' or anything on norvig.com , really. " Hickey advises patience and preparation. "The most important part of programming happens away from the computer," he says. "Figure out what you are going to do before you start, rather than mashing away at the keyboard until you get something that appears to work. " But once you do sit down at the keyboard, Eich advises, keep at it: "I still find Ken Thompson's ‘When in doubt, use brute force' saying to be eternally helpful. Don't get stuck! " Johnson offers another source for code worth studying: open source. "You can learn a lot from the code of good open source projects and there are lots of opportunities to contribute," he says. "It also helps pick up collaboration skills. I've seen this be a valuable bridge from school to industry, or from a boring job to the potential to get more exciting work. " As for where that exciting work may be for young programmers planning future careers, Eich suggests "space, 3D printing, 3D rendering, bioinformatics, web. " Van Rossum advises against settling when it comes to choosing work: "Avoid accepting work that you don't think you'll have fun. There is so much work for programmers. Find something that you actually enjoy doing because you'll be more productive and happier and it will be better for everyone. " Hickey agrees. " One of the great things about programming is that software is needed in almost all domains. Pick a domain that interests you," he says. Whatever you chose, Schlueter suggests you keep an eye on the horizon. "Programming is pretty easy if you're patient and keep learning. But eventually, all career paths either dead-end or lead to management of some sort," he says. "Even if you're focused on technology, eventually you'll be leading people, so that you can have a bigger reach and accomplish more. " To that end, Schlueter advises reading books on leadership, communication, and business as you go. "That stuff is more complicated than it seems and is super important," he says. More about 2C inventor 2016-06-23 18:00 www.computerworld

33 Microsoft SharePoint App Now On iOS Microsoft launched the SharePoint mobile app for iOS devices on June 21. The app is designed to enable mobile workers to carry their corporate intranet with them and access key materials from wherever they are. Microsoft is also building SharePoint mobile apps for Android and Windows Universal, both of which it plans to launch by the end of 2016. The new SharePoint app for iOS gives users quick access to their team sites, content, organization portals, and resources. It also provides workers with insight into what their colleagues are working on. Microsoft has integrated the app with intelligence from Microsoft Graph, which takes activity from Office 365 and applies machine learning to connect users with people and documents relevant to them. [Microsoft: Edge extends battery life more than competitor browsers .] SharePoint for iOS works with SharePoint Online in Office 365 , SharePoint Server 2013, and SharePoint Server 2016, both on-premises and in hybrid environments. After downloading and launching the app, users can sign in with their SharePoint info and switch between accounts. Let's take a closer look at the different components of SharePoint for iOS: The People tab gives insight into what colleagues are working on. Access this tab to search for colleagues within your network, view their contact card, and learn about their current projects and who they are working with. Info is based on intelligence powered by Office 365. Links brings users to sites and portals intended for company-wide use, curated by SharePoint administrators from the SharePoint home in Office 365. In a blog post announcing the iOS offering , Microsoft's Mark Kashman, senior product manager for the SharePoint team, acknowledged the importance of responsive, mobile-designed portals. He noted the company is investing in responsive design by default for services including Office 365, Delve, and Office 365 Video. On an individual level, the Sites tab brings users to specific sites they follow or visit frequently. Clicking on a site displays recent activity, recently used files, and assets such as documents, pages, lists, and subsites. SharePoint also links to other Office apps. For example, clicking a recently used file will launch the corresponding Office app. Clicking a SharePoint document library within a team site will launch the iOS OneDrive app for viewing and managing Office 365 files. The Search function in SharePoint is a full enterprise search that can be used to find team sites, company portals, OneDrive for Business folders (which users have access to), content recommendations from Microsoft Graph, and content and people from the intranet. Microsoft has been investing in evolving its intranet since the company released a post called " The Future of SharePoint " in May. At the time it shared its plans to build a more personalized experience into a mobile and intelligent intranet. The new SharePoint mobile app is part of Microsoft's broader vision. At the time it detailed its vision, Microsoft shared plans to create a mobile app driven by Office Graph intelligence. The app would improve access to personal and company-wide sites, portals, and contacts. The company also plans to launch: It also announced that SharePoint would be integrated with Microsoft PowerApps and Microsoft Flow. Up next, Kashman said in his blog post, Microsoft will continue improving the SharePoint app on iOS with new features such as companywide announcements. 2016-06-23 13:06 Kelly Sheridan

34 Twilio IPO May Be Key Indicator for Other Unicorns in 2016 NEWS ANALYSIS: A good response to Twilio June 23 could help determine whether companies such as Dropbox, Uber and others decide to test the IPO waters later this year. Information technology IPOs have been AWOL halfway through 2016, and that has had analysts, investors and market watchers scratching their heads, wondering what the heck is going on. There certainly are plenty of quality companies -- Uber, Airbnb and Dropbox, for merely three examples -- rising up that could consider an initial public offering, no question about that. And there still is a ton of money being invested in new and relatively new companies every week. We at eWEEK who report on such venture capital movements know all about this. So why are IPOs not happening? Mainly because: a) the markets at this time are generally perceived to be too volatile (or hostile, as some people would put it) -- especially with hair-trigger automatic trading on projections becoming the norm; and b) larger companies are swallowing up smaller ones at such a breakneck pace that they don't have time to consider going public. Last year $20 billion worth of tech companies went private, according to Bulger Partners, a mergers and acquisitions advisory firm. On the other side, tech IPOs only raised $21 billion. Bulger Partners reported a whopping $232 billion worth of M&A transaction value for 2015 alone. IPOs a Risky Proposition at this Time IPOs have to be successful on Day 1, that's all there is to it. If they are not, the walls often can come crashing in very quickly, and fledgling startups need to have balls of vanadium to weather such a potential crisis. But let's put all of that aside for now, because there has been a development. Twilio Inc., a small but highly regarded startup whose cloud service enables developers to build and operate real-time communications within software applications, is making a breakthough of sorts: It is going public June 23 at $15 per share. Twilio allows software developers to programmatically make and receive phone calls and send and receive text messages using its Web service APIs. Twilio's services, which go a long way toward keeping bugs out of software -- and are especially valuable in rapid iteration-type environments - - are accessed over HTTP and billed based on usage. As of last year, more than 560,000 software developers were using Twilio in their daily production work. The San Francisco-based company raised more than it expected -- about $150 million, or about $11 per share -- in its initial private offering June 22, a good sign for the dozens of other so-called unicorns that have been valued at more than $1 billion through private fund-raising. Twilio Will Start Trading on Nasdaq at $15 Twilio said June 22 that it will start trading June 23 on the NYSE at $15 a share, above the $12-to-$14 range the company had previously indicated. The June 22 investors at $11 are no doubt are pleased with that declaration. The deal, which will be the first Silicon Valley tech IPO of the year, is a closely watched test case to determine whether the market will be receptive of future tech IPOs this year. A good response June 23 could help determine whether companies such as Dropbox, Uber and others decide to test the IPO waters themselves later this year. The offering of the San Francisco-based company comes as U. S.-listed IPOs are on track for their worst year in terms of numbers since the financial crisis year in 2008. 2016-06-23 13:54 Chris Preimesberger

35 35 Eclipse Updates Four IoT Projects, Launches a New One The Eclipse Foundation announced new releases of four open-source IoT projects to accelerate IoT solution development. The Eclipse Foundation , which has been leading an effort to develop open-source technologies for Internet of things application development , announced that the Eclipse Internet of Things (IoT) Working Group has delivered new releases of four open-source IoT projects the group initiated over a year ago. The four projects, hosted at the Eclipse Foundation, are Eclipse Kura 2.0, Eclipse Paho 1.2, Eclipse SmartHome 0.8 and Eclipse OM2M 1.0. These projects are helping developers rapidly create new IoT solutions based on open source and open standards. "We are certain that the Internet of Things will only be successful if it is built on open technologies," Eclipse Foundation Executive Director Mike Milinkovich said. "Our goal at Eclipse is to ensure that there is a vendor- neutral open source community to provide those technologies. " Eclipse IoT is an open-source community that provides the core technologies developers need to build IoT solutions. The community is composed of more than 200 contributors working on 24 projects. These projects are made up of over 2 million lines of code and have been downloaded over 500,000 times, Eclipse officials said. Moreover, the Eclipse IoT Working Group includes 30 member companies that collaborate to provide software building blocks in the form of open- source implementations of the standards, services and frameworks that enable an open Internet of things. In addition to updating four of its existing IoT projects, Eclipse also proposed a new one. Eclipse Kapua is an open-source project proposal from Eurotech to create a modular integration platform for IoT devices and smart sensors that aims to bridge operation technology with information technology, Milinkovich said. Eclipse Kapua focuses on managing edge IoT nodes, including their connectivity, configuration and application life cycle. It also allows aggregation of real-time data streams from the edge, either archiving them or routing them toward enterprise IT systems and applications. "As organizations continue to implement IoT solutions, they are increasingly turning to Eclipse IoT for open-source technologies to implement these solutions," Ian Skerrett, vice president of marketing at the Eclipse Foundation, told eWEEK. "For instance, Eclipse Paho has become the default implementation for developers using MQTT [formerly MQ Telemetry Transport], and Eclipse Kura significantly reduces the costs and complexity of implementing an IoT gateway. It is clear open source will be a major force in the Internet of things and Eclipse IoT has become significant source of open-source technology for IoT. " Eclipse Paho provides open-source client implementations of the MQTT and MQTT-SN messaging protocols. The new Paho 1.2 release includes updates to existing Java, Python, JavaScript, C,. NET, Android and Embedded C/C++ client libraries. Improvements in the new version include automatic reconnect and offline buffering functionality for the C, Java and Android clients; WebSocket support for the Java and Python clients; and a new Go Client, which is a component for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and FreeBSD. Paho 1.2 is now available. 2016-06-23 13:54 Darryl K

36 Companies Large, Small Exploring Cognitive Technology in Latest Apps IBM, Microsoft and Apple are among the companies large and small that are working to build cognitive computing capabilities into the latest applications. When IBM launched its Watson cognitive computing project over a decade ago, it started as an effort deep in IBM's research labs to produce a system that could learn and think like humans. Since then, Watson proved its mettle by winning the TV game show Jeopardy in 2011 and spurring interest in cognitive technology across the industry. IBM is not alone ushering in what Big Blue's CEO Ginni Rometty has dubbed the "cognitive era. " Several other companies have prominent cognitive technology offerings or projects in the works, including Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, HPE, Microsoft and SAS , among others. Driving this new era are data—particularly unstructured data—and cognitive systems that can ingest all types of data and work in natural language. Cognitive systems can understand, reason and learn, Rometty said. In short, cognitive computing is the use of systems that can think and learn. Indeed, cognitive computing encompasses various forms of artificial intelligence (AI), including machine learning, reasoning, natural language processing, speech and vision, human-computer interaction, dialog and narrative generation and more. However, cognitive computing is but a subset of AI. Many attempts have been made over the years to deliver cognitive systems, but until recently these systems haven't been very prevalent or cost-effective. They are more cost effective now with the advent of low-cost, high- performance computing power and data storage. Now businesses are increasingly looking to cognitive technology to help cull through reams of data to glean insights on everything from customer buying patterns, to medical diagnoses and treatment options, to financial advice. As demand for cognitive assistance grows, so has developer interest in building cognitive applications. Cognitive Banking and Machine Learning Capital One, which has emerged as a forward-looking, developer-centric financial services institution, is working on delivering cognitive applications to help its customers. "Being a leader in this new world of banking is going to require competencies around the ability to innovate quickly, the ability to build software that is really compelling and well-designed and [has] the ability to understand data and analytics," said Robert Alexander, CIO of Capital One. The financial industry will "apply modern methods of machine learning and analytics operating in real-time in a way that banking just doesn't know how to do," Alexander said. Capital One is applying cognitive computing in a number of different areas, Alexander said, particularly in cyber-security. Capital One is using machine learning to help secure systems, starting with building a comprehensive data infrastructure of what's going on in their computing environment and building tools that offer insights into things that might be anomalies, he said. "You can use machine learning and AI to discriminate normal behavior from abnormal behavior," Alexander said. "So we've applied machine learning in that context to help us identify malware or anomalous log-in behavior or other kinds of things that are indicators of threats in our environment. Other places are around fraud and risk decisions. " More and more, algorithms are taking over things that humans used to do, said Alex Backer, CEO of QLess , a startup that produces an app that uses AI and machine learning that aims to eliminate the need for people to wait in line at stores, restaurants, government offices and more. "The idea for QLess came from me standing in line and thinking that there ought to be a better way to get service than standing behind other people's butts," Backer said. 2016-06-23 13:54 Darryl K

37 Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Selects Andela for First Major Investment Andela, a company that pairs developers in Africa with opportunity in the U. S., has been selected as the first major investment of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. "Brilliance is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not. " That's the founding principle behind Andela, a 2-year-old startup that's bringing together brilliant developers in Africa with opportunities in America—and that today announced it's the first major funding recipient of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. CZI, founded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Pricilla Chan, led Andela's Series B funding with an investment of $24 million. "The round represents a huge vote of confidence from some of the most respected names in technology," Andela CEO and co-founder Jeremy Johnson wrote in a June 16 letter to investors and advisers, shared on the Andela blog. "Not only is it a vote for Andela, but it's also a recognition of the caliber of software developers and human beings that make up the Andela Fellowship. " Johnson also welcomed investor GV, formerly Google Ventures, to the Andela family. Zuckerberg acknowledged the investment in a post on his Facebook page. "I was lucky to be born in a wealthy country where I had access to computers and the internet. If I had been born somewhere else, I'm not sure I would have been able to start Facebook—or at least it would have taken a lot longer and been more difficult," he wrote. Zuckerberg added that the talent-opportunity gap is among the most dramatic in Africa, where six out of every 10 Africans are younger than 35, and in some places more than half of them are without work. "Priscilla and I believe in supporting innovative models of learning wherever they are around the world—and what Andela is doing is pretty amazing," Zuckerberg added. Andela has offices in Nairobi, Kenya, and Lagos, Nigeria, where it employs close to 200 engineers. Its four-year Fellows program is highly selective—to date, it has accepted less than 1 percent of the candidates from the more than 40,000 applications it has received. Once selected, Fellows receive 1,000 hours of training over six months and then are paired with a U. S. company in need of development help. Andela educates the Fellow about the Andela customer company's culture and needs and then flies the Fellow to that company's headquarters for two weeks, to build trust with the team members and strategize a roadmap. After that, the U. S. team and the Andela developer communicate online daily. "They're working in your time zone, communicating in your Slack channels and participating in your daily stand-ups," explains the Andela site, emphasizing its goal of providing as friction-free a service as possible. The U. S. company gets a great developer; a brilliant person, with fewer local opportunities, gets a great job; and the hiring process is less stressful and time-consuming for the hiring company, as Andela does all the screening and interviewing on its end, it states. To date, Andela clients include Microsoft, IBM and Udacity. Diversity and Success Diversity is a proven contributor to success, as is the inclusion of women in working groups and particularly in leadership positions . Andela has a goal that 35 percent of its software development team should be women, Christina Sass, one of Andela's four co-founders, told CNN Money , adding that it has been "very disciplined" in that effort. In the spring, it hosted an all-female boot camp in Kenya and made an effort to communicate to women's families that Andela is a safe place to work. Ultimately, 1,000 women applied, 41 were selected for the boot camp and nine were accepted into Andela, according to CNN. As part of Andela's vision to train 100,000 world-class developers over the next 10 years, on June 14 it announced three- and six-month internship programs in Lagos for creative thinkers, excellent problem solvers and people willing to "become the CEO" of their own work. Benefits, it noted, include breakfast and lunch, a passionate working environment and, an opportunity to work with some of the brightest minds on the planet. "Oh," it added, "and a chance to change the world! " 2016-06-23 13:54 Michelle Maisto

38 IBM Adds New Bluemix OpenWhisk Tools for IoT Development IBM added new tools for its Bluemix OpenWhisk serverless computing platform that utilizes Docker. OpenWhisk also features user interface updates. IBM has announced a set of new tools for its Bluemix OpenWhisk event-driven programming model, which uses Docker containers. The new tools will enable developers to build intuitive applications that can easily connect into the Internet of things (IoT), as well as tap into advanced services such as cognitive, analytics and more—without the need to deploy and manage extra infrastructure, according to IBM. "What OpenWhisk allows a developer to do is without any server infrastructure they upload their snippet of code, they choose when they want that code to run—like in response to something changing in the database in the cloud, or someone calling a Web URL—and then when that event occurs, the code gets run and IBM will auto-scale it for them," Mike Gilfix, vice president of Mobile & Process Transformation at IBM, told eWEEK . "So we make sure that it scales to as much demand as they need and they only pay for the compute capacity that they need at the time that the code runs," he said. Announced at DockerCon 2016 , IBM's new OpenWhisk tools—NPM Module and Node-RED—will enable developers to more rapidly build event-driven apps that automatically execute user code in response to external actions and events, according to the company. Moreover, IBM also plans to roll out new updates to the OpenWhisk user experience to make it easier for developers, including step-by-step workflows, new wizards to configure third-party services and feeds, and a new editor to manage sequences of actions, said Andrew Hately, CTO of IBM Cloud Architecture. Node-RED is IBM's open-source IoT tool for creating event-driven applications. It enables developers to start prototyping their ideas without having to first write code. Node-RED can invoke triggers and actions within OpenWhisk, giving apps access to Watson analytics, the IBM IoT platform and a host of other Bluemix services. Hately said IBM has been working to make OpenWhisk more intuitive for people developing in whatever programming language they want so they can benefit from the event-driven, serverless style of development. "A lot of this is just continuing the drumbeat of making this more consumable to developers working in the polyglot, language-of-choice-style of development," he said. With that in mind, IBM has continued with its first-class support of Node.js because of its popularity for IoT and device developers, Hately said. "On the Node side we tie into our Node-RED platform," he said. "This is all about taking multiple open technologies that are getting large developer communities and continuing to enhance them and better integrate them. IoT is probably the biggest example of people wanting to do very, very lean, message-based integrations. " "Within the node community, we have a very large contingent of Node.js users," said Todd Moore, vice president of Open Technology at IBM. "And we knew we could make things much easier for them. We see Node as one of the dominant languages within Bluemix these days. More than half of what we see deployed [on Bluemix] is using Node. " 2016-06-23 00:51 Darryl K

39 Bitcoin For Everyone 21, a mixture between a platform, an app and a service, is setting out to become the third world wide web. It draws on the foundations of the www for inspiration, the first built on HTML, the second, the Social Web, built on personalization, and gazes boldly into the future, paving the way for a third kind of the web, the one built on Bitcoin. As it stands, the world wide web cannot address the fundamental issue faced by content and service providers who base their businesses on it, namely financing. Providers have either to rely on ad enabled freemium content, or put their content behind a paywall as a subscriber only service. Both of these options had proved inefficient. As webopedia describes : Paywalls are systems designed to monetize online and other digital information by preventing visitors from accessing web sites and similar content providers without having a paid subscription. Online news and sports web sites are the most frequent users of paywalls. But what if there was a model, in which the consumer could enjoy ad free premium content and the publisher would also be able to maintain a sustainable source of revenue? This basic principle is what formulates and sets the third world wide web in motion. In that kind of the web, things will be simplified; the process of paying for digital goods would be reduced to just clicking on a hypertext link, an action that would automatically initiate an autonomous transaction between the machine paying for the service and the one providing the service, funded by an electronic wallet tied to the payer machine. This way, human intervention would soon become history. Despite the way in which trading digital goods online has already been simplified, it still leaves a lot to be desired as it still carries a set of distinct disadvantages. First you have to create an account or login using credentials to the site offering the goods, then select the resource and pay using Paypal or other online payment services, or use a credit card from a real bank. This process also assumes that a human has set up a traditional bank account and linked it to PayPal. Furthermore he shares the risk of the PayPal account or the associated bank account be shut off at any time, since it's not controlled by the holder himself but by a third party institution. One could argue that with the advent of SOA and platform oriented APIs, a machine could use the service's API keys, i.e Paypal's, to carry the transaction through, but then : What is the solution to these issues? Surely there must be a better way? Enter cryptocurrency. Bitcoin with its decentralized and automated nature, is what's necessary for enabling true machine-to-machine, autonomous transactions, disengaged from any banking system. It is a machine currency. In stark contrast to the state of things currently pertaining, a machine- based, bank-independent transaction system based on bitcoin, would just require each machine to possess a private key associated with a bitcoin ewallet. This has the further advantage that as bitcoin's private keys have a cryptographically irrevocable relationship to their associated accounts, it's not possible for an administrator to “reset the password” and thereby deny a machine's access to its bitcoins. Revolutionary thinking indeed, but there are drawbacks too. First of all, ways of acquiring bitcoin, without having to mine, are pretty limited. Also setting up bitcoin-payable enabled web services over HTTP and discovering third party bitcoin-payable web services to connect to, are not the easiest of tasks. The solution to all of this is 21, software currently in beta that enables any device to gather bitcoins and any app to work with and earn bitcoins on every http request, firmly putting the Machine-Payable Web's foundations into place. In fact, 21 is not just software but assumes a different shape depending on the angle you look at it or the way you're going to treat it: Treat it as an App, and it will assume the shape of a Python command line utility that can get you bitcoins in one, or all, of the following ways: Mining, Buying, Requesting, Earning and Selling micro-services for bitcoins. Treat it as a programming Library and it will shapeshift into the open source 'two1' Python library, (other languages such as JavaScript are coming soon), a library that empowers developers in adding micro-payments to their APIs so that they can be monetized on a per-request basis without requiring access to a credit card or bank institution. Treat it as a Connector and two1 makes the act of gluing disparate and heterogeneous ‘21’ third party services together, as simple as a making a library call from code. Treat it as a Marketplace and gain the ability to navigate through 21's mesh, buying or selling API calls from or to other 21 enabled APIs. For example, for $0.0203 or 2,750 Satoshis per call you can use the Zip Code API to look up detailed information on zip codes like their State, City, Latitude, Longitude, and estimated population. This can be done as easily as firing the '21 buy' command from the shell: Finally, and at its core, 21 is a network for exchanging virtual currency. This takes care of all the details necessary to sustain the machine-payable web, so the eager question that follows is "how do I get at those precious bitcoins? " First of all, there is the easiest and free way - the faucet. You can request free bitcoins from 21's faucet without needing a credit card or bank account. The only thing required is to link your social media account to your 21 profile. Then you can simply generate bitcoins with: Calling '21 faucet' repeatedly can earn you coins up to the limit of 200,000 Satoshis, the caveat being that with every subsequent call the time necessary to complete increases geometrically; still it's the easiest way to get started. Then you can buy coins with '21 buybitcoin'. In that case you exchange real money for bitcoins, as such a credit card, a bank account or Coinbase account is necessary. With '21 sell', you can sell microservices (spare machine resources) for bitcoins. You need not worry about finding a buyer for these microservices; 21 takes care of that for you through the 21 marketplace. This command works by turning your computer into a miniature server that connects to the 21 Marketplace. '21 earn', still in preview mode, earns you bitcoin via microtasks. Finally, the most interesting, '21 mine', mines for bitcoins, but it won't work for any device other than the dedicated Raspberry Pi-based bitcoin machine, available for $399. The most frequently used 21 commands are: The full list of commands can be found on the 21 Command Line Interface How to get started 21 is easily installed from source on a Linux PC by typing: iOS, Android and Windows support soon to follow. Alternatively you can get hold of a premade Docker image with: After installation you should create your profile by signing up. Then, log in to your 21 account with '21 login'; test your 21 installation with '21 doctor'; and join the virtual private marketplace with '21 market join'. After that choose your learning path. Are you a consumer? Run the faucet to earn coins, sell your machine's spare resources, navigate through the marketplace and buy API calls. Are you a developer? Find out how to publish your app to 21's marketplace Then go through the tutorials, explore sample applications like Build a Simple bitcoin Game, Receive an SMS from Anyone for bitcoin, A bitcoin- Payable API, Sell or License Any File for bitcoin or check out other people's projects: So will the notion of the 3rd web someday be realized? It all depends on 21's rate of adoption. The best thing about it is that it makes bitcoin accessible to anyone and everyone. As a consumer, you don’t need to be an expert, just follow the instructions and get involved. For the developer it simplifies the development of micropayment enabled applications and the trading of digital goods or services.- No matter if it succeeds or fails, it has managed to initiate the debate on the web's future, daring to envision the way to a better and more appropriate model for our times. This is a bold move certain to initiate change one way or another. To be informed about new articles on I Programmer, sign up for our weekly newsletter,subscribe to the RSS feed and follow us on, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Linkedin. 2016-06-23 13:54 Written by

40 Microsoft Targets Legal Marijuana Industry With Azure Offering This week Microsoft became the first major tech company to enter the legal marijuana industry. It plans to partner with KIND Financial to develop software for tracking and selling marijuana. KIND is a Los Angeles- based startup focused on technology for cannabis compliance. The goal of this partnership is to pool resources for the purpose of building "seed-to-sale" software for governments navigating the rapidly growing legal marijuana industry. Legal marijuana is a young but hugely lucrative business. States, counties, and municipalities where weed has been legalized for medical and recreational use face the challenge of managing compliance without advanced software. [Microsoft buys Wand Labs to boost communication technology .] Together, KIND and Microsoft have launched KIND Government Solutions, a system to help governments track and sell weed. The software, which runs on the Microsoft Azure cloud, aims to ensure transparency and accountability in managing cannabis programs. KIND was chosen to participate in Microsoft's newly launched Health and Human Services Pod for Managed Service Providers. "KIND's strategic industry positioning, experienced team and top-notch technology running in the Microsoft Azure Government cloud, made for an easy decision to align efforts," explained Kimberly Nelson, executive director of state and local Government Solutions from Microsoft, in a statement on the partnership . Nelson also noted how KIND agreed that Azure Government is the only cloud platform designed to meet government standards for cannabis compliance programs, which are subject to strict scrutiny. The marijuana startup has already established a platform for governments and regulatory agencies to manage the entire spectrum of cannabis compliance. Its Agrisoft Seed to Sale for Government is core to the platform. This software collects and monitors data that governments need to maintain compliance with the strict and varying rules, laws, and regulations of marijuana-related businesses for each state. "No one can predict the future of cannabis legalization, however, it is clear that legalized cannabis will always be subject to strict oversight and regulations similar to alcohol and tobacco; and, KIND is proud to offer governments and regulatory agencies the tools and technology to monitor cannabis compliance," KIND founder and CEO David Dinenberg wrote. This announcement marks the first time Microsoft has established a partnership related to the legal marijuana industry, a business undergoing rapid growth. D. C. and 25 states have legalized the use of marijuana for medical purposes. More states will be voting on cannabis legalization later this year. Each state has different rules and regulations regarding the growth and sale of weed, making compliance a major challenge. Microsoft's partnership with KIND, which will open up opportunities for customers within the cannabis industry, isn't its only record-breaking deal of the week for the company. On June 13, Redmond confirmed plans to buy LinkedIn for a hefty price of $26.2 billion, the most it has ever paid in an acquisition. The purchase will also expand Microsoft's user base as it grows engagement between the professional social network and its cloud-based Office 365 productivity suite. 2016-06-23 12:05 Kelly Sheridan

41 Microsoft Talks Up Its Containers At DockerCon Microsoft looks forward to the day when customers will run Windows containers, built with the popular Docker Engine, on the Azure public cloud and in the enterprise data center in a coordinated fashion. Microsoft displayed that vision June 21 at DockerCon 2016 , which is underway in Seattle. Docker containers still don't run natively under the production versions of Windows Server, but they're slated to later this year when Windows Server 2016 becomes generally available. Windows Server 2016 is now in its fifth technical preview. Its preview release can run Windows Containers. It's expected to become generally available in the third quarter. Microsoft is making Docker Datacenter, an end-to-end container management system, available on its Azure Marketplace. That's the company's online store, where open source and preconfigured applications are available to work with Windows systems. By giving Windows developers a chance to get acquainted with Docker Datacenter, they will be ready to use Docker Engine as Windows Containers become part of Microsoft's product line. Microsoft has worked closely with Docker to ensure the Docker Engine will run under Windows Server 2016. Windows Azure CTO Mark Russinovich wrote in a June 21 blog that Docker Datacenter could be used to manage Windows Containers deployed across both the Azure public cloud and an Azure Stack. The latter allows an Azure-like software environment to be deployed behind the firewall as a private cloud system. "A hybrid cloud solution that can manage container-based applications across on-premises and cloud infrastructure is a compelling proposition," Russinovich wrote. Microsoft is seeking to make containers , a technology that was pioneered in the Linux community, first-class citizens on Azure. The move keeps Microsoft more closely in step with the large contingent of developers who wish to use containers as a convenient packaging device for code. It also makes Azure a suitable environment for future applications being developed for containerized operations. Containers put an application, or a slice of application functionality known as a microservice, into a standard package that can be moved around and handled by software tools in a predictable way. The code become more mobile, requiring only a host with an operating system kernel that resembles the one it left, rather than extensive reconfiguration. In addition, Microsoft is seeking to allow the extensive Windows and. Net developer community participate in building microservice-based applications, sometimes alongside a Linux-oriented team of developers. Although each team would produce services that run under their respective operating systems, both sets of components could be containerized under Docker and handled in similar way by operations. [Want to see how Microsoft is trying to get Docker integrated into the Windows environment? Read Microsoft, Docker Intensify Container Collaboration .] Russinovich also showed the 4,000 DockerCon attendees Microsoft's new Operations Management Suite for managing containers inside the enterprise data center, in the Azure cloud, or with Amazon Web Services . It can also be used to deploy containers to the VMware vCloud Air or an OpenStack cloud. Russinovich also showed a preview of an Azure Container Service to match the container deployment services already available on AWS and Google Cloud Platform. The Azure version will be able to deploy containers using Docker Swarm, Docker's orchestration system for building a container cluster and assigning containers to it. Although Russinovich mentioned Swarm, Azure Container Service won't necessarily be limited to it. In his blog post, he cited "a choice of open source orchestrator technologies," which might include Mesosphere Data Center Operating System and CoreOS's Tectonic, among others. As if to demonstrate the brave new world of combined Windows and Linux technologies, Russinovich made final mention in his blog of SQL Server running as a Docker image, available now in private preview. The Microsoft relational system is running under Ubuntu Linux when it runs in a container today. 2016-06-23 12:05 Charles Babcock

42 Salesforce Unifies Mobile App Dev, Updates Marketing Automation Salesforce continues to make improvements to all its offerings across its suites of cloud-based software for sales and marketing. This week the SaaS CRM and enterprise applications company shared progress in two different niches -- business-to-business marketing and mobile app development. First, Salesforce announced App Cloud Mobile, which brings together Salesforce platforms Force, Heroku, and Salesforce1 into what the company is calling the next generation of its mobile app development platform. The idea is pull together tools that enable non-developers to create their own mobile apps and speed up the development of those apps. It builds on the company's ongoing efforts to open up application development to non- coders. It also provides back-end services such as security; data integration that includes non-Salesforce sources such as Oracle databases, SQL Server, and SAP using REST APIs; and scalability that is based on elastic and multi-tenant infrastructure. [Salesforce is encouraging everyone to create apps. Read Salesforce TrailHeadX: Everyone Can Develop Software.] Salesforce senior vice president for app cloud marketing Brian Goldfarb said in a blog post that this technology brings the best of Salesforce -- including Wave Analytics and Lightning Snap-ins -- into any mobile app. In his post, he shared the experience of one customer, Unilever, which built six apps in six months to streamline approvals, team workflow, workplace logistics, employee feedback, market intelligence, and company news. These apps were offered to a global staff of more than 100,000. Barclays is another customer that has used the technology, again to deploy apps to internal users -- more than 1,000 of its "relationship directors to productively run their businesses from their phone with a native iOS app," Goldfarb wrote in his blog post . In a new Magic Quadrant report for Mobile App Development Platforms (MADP) released earlier this month, Gartner named Salesforce to the Leaders quadrant, along with IBM, Kony, Adobe, and Microsoft. (SAP and Oracle landed in the Challengers quadrant.) In the report, Gartner noted that Salesforce's placement was "based on its strong execution within its large enterprise customer base, and its ability to attract developers on its Heroku platform for mobile. It continues to show its strong vision for MADP as it enhances its Lightning technologies and address broad mobile app use-case requirements. " Salesforce announced general availability of Pardot Engagement Studio, which Salesforce describes as a command center for businesses to manage all touchpoints with prospects and customers, and to perform tasks that include lead generation, nurturing, and reporting on marketing return on investment. The studio is offered under Salesforce's marketing automation operation, Pardot. Engagement Studio was created to close what can be a big gap between marketing and sales activity within the same company, and the technology has been in a limited beta since last year. Salesforce said that this new command center helps organizations offer B2B buyers something that has been missing -- a seamless experience across sales and marketing. "Unfortunately, many companies struggle with this because sales and marketing teams manage customers using different technology solutions, leading to information silos and lackluster results," Salesforce marketing vice president Shannon Duffy wrote in a blog post . Engagement Studio lets marketers automate the buyer's journey while still providing options and choices, according to Salesforce. Marketers can create multi-path journeys by setting up decision trees for buyers at each step. Then these journeys can be used as templates for future programs, speeding up the process the next time around. Marketers can also test these journeys to find gaps and fix them. The studio also includes a simplified process for understanding campaign results. For instance, Salesforce said that metrics are layered over the buyer journey map, which puts all the information on a single screen that identifies the weak points in the journey map so that fixes can be made. Sales reps gain access to the process via a new add-on called Salesforce Engage, which they can use on their desktops, via email, or on their mobile devices in the field. 2016-06-23 11:05 Jessica Davis

43 Equinix embarks on big data push to inform new datacentre designs and builds Colocation giant Equinix is embarking on a datacentre infrastructure management- focused big data analytics project to improve the design and build of its facilities. The initiative will see the company track a wide range of variables in its facilities – including the temperature, humidity and generator status – and combine the findings with weather or energy consumption data to find out how external forces impact on performance. Speaking to Computer Weekly at the Equinix Innovation through Interconnection event in London, Michael Winterson, managing director of Equinix Services, said the project is part of a push by the company to create its own datacentre infrastructure management (DCIM) software. The company previously relied on off-the-shelf DCIM tools to keep tabs on its environment, but their scope and scale proved insufficient for Equinix’s needs, Winterson explained. “Most systems are tied to specific suppliers and have specific limitations on what data they collect, how you can visualise that data and what you can do with it,” he said. “We wanted a system that allows us to incorporate the data from any supplier’s device from anywhere in the world and visualise it in any way we see fit. Once we’ve written it, we expect it to be open,” he added. The initiative is still in the planning stages, but it has the potential to transform the way Equinix kits out its datacentres, of which there are currently 146 worldwide. “We’re going to collect all the data. We don’t know why yet, but – in the long run – the vision is it will help us design a better datacentre,” he said. The threat public cloud services pose to the long-term survival of the colocation market has emerged as a major talking point in the datacentre industry of late. This is a major reason why Equinix has sought in recent years to reposition its carrier neutral colocation facilities as somewhere enterprises can also use to access cloud services from the likes of Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, said Winterson. “Cloud really started coming into its own in 2012, when we started to see enterprises adopting cloud, particularly for bespoke applications that stood apart from the rest of the computer system,” he said. “We looked at that as a threat to our business because – of course – we provide colocation services that house servers and storage, and we began to question our role in this space.” The decision to create colocation sites with interconnection points for various cloud service providers is paying off now, as the way enterprises use cloud continues to evolve and develop. “We are seeing enterprises say they have a multi-cloud strategy, which means figuring out how to connect to as many cloud service providers as they can,” he said. “And they’re also starting to build a matrix of prioritisation for all their disparate applications, and they’re picking off the most important ones and making business decisions about where they should live , and that’s brand new. Twelve months ago very few companies thought that way.” 2016-06-23 10:45 Datacentre Editor

44 Crypto-ransomware attacks increase five fold Ransomware has become a big problem in recent years, particularly crypto- ransomware, which encrypts data on users' systems. New research by Kaspersky Lab looking at how it’s evolved over the last two years points to just how big. Among the findings are that the number of users attacked with crypto-ransomware rose 5.5 times, from 131,111 in 2014-2015 to 718,536 in 2015-2016. The total number of users encountering any type of ransomware between April 2015 and March 2016 also increased by 17.7 percent compared to the period April 2014 to March 2015. The share of users encountering ransomware at least once as a proportion of the total number of users encountering malware rose 0.7 percentage points, 2014-2015 and 2015-2016. The study also shows that the United States, Germany, and Italy are the countries with the highest percentage of users attacked with encryption ransomware. "The biggest problem with crypto-ransomware today is that sometimes the only way to get the encrypted data back is to pay the criminals, and victims tend to pay. That brings a lot of money into the underground ecosystem that has grown up around this malware, and as a result we are seeing new cryptors appear almost daily," says Fedor Sinitsyn, senior malware analyst at Kaspersky Lab. "Companies and regular users can protect themselves by implementing regular backups, using a proven security solution and keeping themselves informed about current cybersecurity risks. The ransomware business model seems to be profitable and safe for criminals, and the security industry and users can change that just by implementing these basic measures". Kaspersky offers a number of tips for consumers to protect themselves, including using a reliable security solution, making sure the software on your machine is kept up to date, and taking regular backups. More detailed information on the findings is available on the Kaspersky website . Photo credit: Bacho / Shutterstock 2016-06-23 10:30 By Ian

45 Vivaldi Web Browser Explained The new Vivaldi web browser adapts to your preferences and gives you full control over its appearance. Check out our article for more info: http://www.softpedia.com/blog/vivaldi-web-browser-explained-usage-video- and-download-504740.shtml 2016-06-23 10:15 Elena Opris

46 LibreOffice Online Is Now Ready for ownCloud Enterprise, Thanks to Collabora ownCloud Server is a robust and self-hosting cloud storage solution. Collabora is a leading global consultancy organization that attempts to distribute the benefits of Open Source software to IMMs (Small and Medium Sized Enterprises) and big companies. They had already released LibreOffice Online to ownCloud users back in December 2015, and they are now extending that support to ownCloud Enterprise. “We are thrilled to release the first ever LibreOffice Online solution in partnership with ownCloud” said Michael Meeks, General Manager at Collabora Productivity. “ownCloud brings Innovative Collaboration to Enterprises and it is a privilege to work alongside their established support and maintenance teams to fulfill their customer’s needs.” LibreOffice Online for ownCloud Enterprise is possible thanks to Collabora's CODE (Collabora Online Development Edition) tool, which has been designed from the ground up to offer users a virtual machine containing both LibreOffice Online and ownCloud Server projects. With CODE, users will be able to edit various office documents through ownCloud's web-based interface. Bringing the powerful capabilities of the LibreOffice open-source office suite to the ownCloud Enterprise ecosystem will definitely boost the productivity and collaboration of users in big organizations. The new solution is available right now from ownCloud, offered under the name of "Collabora Online for ownCloud Enterprise" for the price of EUR 1,000 or USD 1,200 for 50 users per year. An online demo is also available online at https://www.collaboraoffice.com/owncloud. Those interested in buying a subscription are invited to visit the official ownCloud or Collabora websites (links at the beginning of the article). Also, for more details, don't hesitate to take a look at the press release attached below. 2016-06-23 10:00 Marius Nestor

47 KDE Plasma 5.7 Offers Many Wayland Improvements, but GTK Apps Will Still Use X11 In the meantime, KDE developer Martin Gräßlin talks in his latest blog post about the improvements that have been added so far in order to bring better support to the next-generation Wayland display server on the forthcoming KDE Plasma 5 desktop environment. He begins his report on the new Wayland functionalities implemented in KDE Plasma 5.7 with what didn't make it, such as xdg-shell support, which should have landed as part of KDE Frameworks 5.23.0. Because of this, it looks like GTK applications will still use the old X11 display server when running on top of Wayland. "I have a working implementation, but was not yet satisfied with the API. This is a difficult interface to provide an API for due to the unstable nature of the interface. Due to lack of xdg-shell support GTK applications are still going to use X11 on Wayland (like the Firefox window I’m just typing this blog post in)," said Martin Gräßlin. Among the new Wayland features coming in KDE Plasma 5.7, we can mention an improved task manager, the implementation of a new virtual keyboard, better input device support, sub-surface support, and, of course, many quality enhancements to make KDE on Wayland support as stable as possible. To understand how much work is involved in making sure that the KWin window manager and the KWayland framework for Wayland support don't crash, we recommend to read Mr. Gräßlin's blog post in full, but only if you're a tech-savvy user. Otherwise, all you need to know is that KDE Plasma 5.7 on Wayland will be shipped in a state that you can use as your primary system. 2016-06-23 09:42 Marius Nestor

48 OnePlus to Release OTA with sRGB Mode and Improved RAM Management OnePlus 3 is one of the best choices for a smartphone that offers high performance while featuring a price tag under $400. But that seems to be precisely the issue, as owners have been experiencing some issues. Some have criticized OnePlus 3’s RAM management , which rather focuses on an extended battery life rather than actual functionality. Fortunately, OnePlus CEO stated that this can be fixed if users tweak the phone’s build.prop file and change app limits so that the OnePlus 3 would make better use of its 6GB of RAM. Another issue regards a bug in OxygenOS that prevents the smartphone from ringing at times. Incoming calls simply don’t ring even if the handset is set in ring mode while other owners have complained of inaccurate color display on the phone. Because of these issues and some other too, OnePlus has announced that it intends to release an OTA to fix current bugs and provide some more features, like sRGB mode, according to Android Authority . The build version 3.1.4 of Oxygen OS will be arriving to OnePlus 3 review units only so that the company can accurately address issues before releasing a consumer OTA. Unfortunately, no time frame has been given for the OTA version 3.1.4. Still, it seems that OnePlus intends to bring sRGB to OnePlus 3 devices, considering that some people have complained about the inaccurate display on the handset. sRGB mode will tone down the colors on the screen, and the new update will also include improved RAM management so that users won’t need to tweak system files in order to get additional functionality. OnePlus 3’s RAM management is quite aggressive, as it sometimes shuts down apps running in the background, despite the fact that it has 6GB of memory. 2016-06-23 09:28 Alexandra Vaidos

49 KFC Launches a Meal Box That Lets You Recharge an iPhone While Eating Chicken In other words, if you buy this special menu, you get not only chicken but also a portable battery and a Lightning cable to recharge your iPhone. The so-called Watt a Box campaign comes with a 6,100 mAh rechargeable battery and a Lightning cable, but the USB port can be used for virtually any mobile device should you have the cable. So if you want to recharge your Lumia 950 XL, just pull out the USB Type-C cable from your bag, remove the provided Lightning cable, connect yours to the meal box, and you’re done. The battery is large enough to recharge an iPhone 6s Plus more than twice and a regular 4.7-inch iPhone 6s nearly four times, but there’s no mention of who takes care of recharging it. Most likely, KFC employees are reusing the batteries (hopefully, not the meal boxes), so whenever you buy one, you get a fully charged unit to get your iPhone up and running once again. As PatentlyApple notes, this campaign is only available in some select locations in India, including Delhi and Mumbai, and there’s absolutely no mention of whether the restaurant chain plans to bring it in other countries such as the United States. 2016-06-23 09:17 Bogdan Popa

50 50 HTC might be bringing its Sense skins to all Android phones, with Sense Home 8 HTC Android devices usually have a distinctive design style and come with the company’s own Sense skin on top of Google’s OS. It’s part of the company’s value proposition to its customers. But it looks like Sense might soon be coming to non-HTC devices as well. As spotted by AusDroid , HTC is sending out invites as part of its preview program where it’s asking users to try out version 8 of its Sense Home app, on non-HTC devices. Sense Home offers some interesting functionality , including the ability for the phone to display certain apps based on location, change the look and feel of your device with themes, and of course, access to Blinkfeed. And all of that goodness may soon be available on all Android smartphones, going by the “GOOGLE_PLAY_SENSE_GP” project name of this preview. While it may be a bit surprising to see HTC bring one of its iconic features to other smartphones, this move would make some sense. Sense Home comes with in-app purchases for themes, so having access to the full market of Android users might prove to be a lucrative deal. Plus, HTC has been struggling with its smartphone sales for years now, so pushing new features and services outside of its walled ecosystem and embracing more openness seems like the way to go. Still, at this point, it’s not clear if this is just a small experiment or if the company is actually planning on launching Sense for everyone, so until HTC gives us more info all we can do is wait. Source: AusDroid 2016-06-23 09:16 Vlad Dudau

51 OSMC Linux Media Center Brings Kodi, Debian GNU/Linux 8.5 to Raspberry Pi Zero Raspbmc, now known as OSMC, is a Debian-based operating system that brings the well-known, open-source and cross-platform Kodi media center software to various embedded devices, including the popular Raspberry Pi, as well as devices like the Apple TV and Vero. OSMC aims to be a good solution for transforming small appliances into in low- cost HTPC (Home Theatre Personal Computer) setups, boasting the unparalleled Kodi experience and borrowing the latest GNU/Linux technologies from the Debian GNU/Linux project. "Our June update arrives right on time this month with a ton of improvements as well as some welcome fixes for some long standing bugs. We would like to thank the community for working with us to resolve these issues and for their help in making OSMC even better," reads the announcement. The latest release, OSMC 2016.06-2, is based on the recently announced Debian GNU/Linux 8.5 "Jessie" distribution, powered by Linux kernel 4.4.12 LTS, and featuring TVHeadend 4.0.9, latest OpenSSL libraries, as well as numerous improvements for developers. Also new in the OSMC 2016.06-2 update is support for running Vero (late 2014) devices at 1.2Ghz, huge performance improvements to the Wi-Fi drivers to support more wireless cards, support for playing 3D MVC streams, enhancements to MPEG-2 playback and deinterlacing performance for DVD-Videos on Vero 2 devices. With the new OSMC release, owners of Vero 2 devices will benefit from a better DVB signal quality when watching or recording Live TV streams, and it also looks like the stability of these devices has been increased when used in warm environments. Best of all, the overall system performance has been greatly polished for Vero 2. Among other new features implemented in OSMC 2016.06-2, we can mention support for support for the Raspberry Pi Zero Revision 2 single- board computer, support for 802.11ac Wi-Fi dongle for AppleTV, support for backing up the /etc/fstab file, and dozens of bug fixes that can be studied in the official release notes . Download OSMC 2016.06-2 right now via our website. 2016-06-23 09:11 Marius Nestor

52 52 Samsung Commits $1.2 Billion To IoT Research In US Samsung Electronics has committed to spending $1.2 billion over four years on internet of things (IoT) research and development in the US, largely through its Strategy and Innovation Center, Global Innovation Center, and Samsung Research America. Speaking Tuesday in Washington, D. C. at Internet of Things: Transforming the Future , an event for industry leaders and policymakers, Samsung Electronics vice chairman and CEO Oh-Hyun Kwon outlined his company's vision for IoT, in which networked sensors and connected devices improve lives. "For Samsung, IoT means bringing the physical and digital world together to improve quality of life," said Kwon in prepared remarks (PDF). "People must be at the center of everything we do if we want to realize IoT's full potential. " IoT is already affecting people at work and at home by helping them to be more efficient and by saving time, said Kwon, but it can do more to meet human needs. He cited the way a Samsung SmartThings customer has used IoT technology to help her family deal with dementia. A video presented during the event described Jeff, a patient with Lewy Body Dementia, who sometimes leaves his property and walks into town without telling his wife. Because he always talks his keys with him, his daughter Cath installed a SmartThings hub in her parents' home and a presence sensor on her father's keychain. The sensor alerts the hub to broadcast a message that Jeff has left the premises, to keep his caregivers informed. IoT, said Kwon, can keep people out of hospitals and nursing homes, can mitigate the impact of natural disasters by shutting down gas lines, and can promote energy savings if the technology can be deployed at scale and people accept more connected things into their lives. Making that happen will require that policymakers understand how IoT can be a public policy tool, said Kwon, who also called for open standards, shared approaches to privacy and security, and more open wireless spectrum. Toward that end, Kwon announced the National IoT Strategy Dialogue, a forum for industry stakeholders and federal policy experts run by the Information Technology Industry Council. The goal of the initiative, spearheaded by Samsung and Intel, is to develop a national IoT strategy. Gartner last November said it expects to see 6.4 billion connected devices by the end of 2016, a 30% increase from 2015. The consulting firm predicts that number to reach 20.8 billion by 2020 . [See 10 IoT Startups You Need to Know .] Samsung's $1.2 billion commitment adds to previous IoT investments. Last week, the company acquired Joyent , a cloud infrastructure provider funded to the tune of $126 million, for an undisclosed price. One of the goals of the deal is help Samsung deliver IoT services. In April, Samsung launched ARTIK Cloud , a backend service to handle data from IoT devices. In 2014, it acquired consumer IoT device maker SmartThings. Samsung's interest in IoT is part of a broader effort by the traditionally hardware-focused company to develop software and services. 2016-06-23 09:06 Thomas Claburn

53 Stockport council ditches HDS SAN for Nutanix hyper-converged Stockport council has replaced an ageing Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) SAN storage architecture with hyper-converged infrastructure from Nutanix. The move has allowed it much greater flexibility for web-based projects. It has also cut down on the need for dedicated SAN skills and reduced physical footprint by 20x. The council – a Windows shop with 3,500 employees – had an HDS AMS SAN which had reached end of life and was experiencing multiple issues with scalability and operational problems, said IT operations manager Adrian Davies . “Adding more disk had become difficult and costly because of the way different tiers were Raided. It wasn’t just a case of buy another disk and slot it in. We were having to buy an entire tray at £20,000, and it was difficult to anticipate and manage spend,” said Davies. Davies also reported a string of operational issues, such as an HBA card problem that caused I/O saturation in the HDS array’s dual controllers and led to outages across council systems in December 2015. “Management software was not intuitive. It was difficult to extract reports for capacity management out of the SAN. We could have upgraded, but licensing costs were prohibitive,” said Davies. Davies’s team has now nearly completed a switchover to a Nutanix-based hyper-converged architecture at two datacentres – a primary site and a secondary backup site. Hyper-converged products combine compute and storage in one box with virtualisation capability. They have emerged in recent years as competition to discrete server and storage products, with key suppliers including Nutanix, Scale Computing, Simplivity and VMware’s EVO:Rail. Capacity on Nutanix at the primary site consists of 240TB of HDD plus 32TB of flash storage in five two-node clusters of NX8235 boxes, with eight Nutanix clusters totalling around 300TB of HDD and 18TB of flash capacity at the secondary location. Stockport now runs 450 VMware virtual machines on Nutanix, said Davies, but it will consider switching to Nutanix’s Acropolis hypervisor at its secondary site when all data is migrated to the infrastructure in September 2016. Currently, the council’s servers are 95% virtualised, although a few physical servers have been retained as part of a staging process and due to issues of licensing that means some workloads must remain on physical servers. However, Davies believes everything they have could eventually be virtualised. 2016-06-23 09:00 Storage Editor

54 UK social media habits are a corporate security risk, warns Intel Security UK companies need to have a policy on social media, warns Intel Security as a survey reveals that more than one in five employees admit they connect with strangers on LinkedIn. This practice potentially opens up a wealth of information for any cyber attackers collecting personal information to launch a highly effective spear phishing attack. “When a person in a similar industry to us, or a recruiter, requests to connect on LinkedIn, it may look harmless, but hackers prey on this as a means to target senior-level professionals and ultimately the corporate network,” said Raj Samani, CTO for Europe at Intel Security. He described social networking sites as a “treasure trove” of data used by malicious actors to research potential targets for attacks. A common way of accessing this key personal data is by requesting to connect with as many senior executives, mid-level and even junior employees as possible. “They then target senior-level execs, using their existing connections with colleagues as proof of credibility by leveraging the principle of social validation ,” said Samani. “Once these connections are in place, they can launch a targeted phishing campaign. For example, it could well be used as a precursor to a CEO fraud attack, a type of attack that continues to affect more victims and lead to even greater financial losses, according to assessments by the FBI.” Samani expressed concern that many company employees are not aware of CEO fraud scams in which employees are tricked into helping cyber criminals using emails that appear to come from the CEO or another senior executive. Such attacks typically use email spoofing and are also known as whaling attacks or business email compromise (BEC). More than two-thirds of respondents to the Intel Security survey admitted they had never considered that someone on LinkedIn may not be who they claim to be, while the vast majority said their employer had never made them aware of any specific corporate policies around LinkedIn use. As more millennials enter the workplace, businesses need to take such risks more seriously, said Samani. The survey reveals that 71.5% of 18-24-year-olds had never wondered whether someone is not who they say they are on LinkedIn, which Samani said presents a significant risk to the corporate network. According to Samani, a LinkedIn user with malicious intentions may quickly enter a highly influential circle within the network when sporting even one or two shared connections, encouraging other high-status executives to connect with them, too. “Employees often expose their own accounts – and therefore their company data – to threats without realising it,” he said. “Businesses must educate all members of staff on how to avoid common scams, including making them aware of the risks of opening unknown attachments in messages or clicking on unknown links.” Businesses cannot afford to ignore employee training and leave staff to connect with questionable individuals masquerading as peers on LinkedIn, said Samani. “Relatively unskilled cyber criminals may find that connecting with employees through a business-oriented social networking services offers them just the ‘in’ they were looking for,” he said. 2016-06-23 08:46 Security Editor

55 Apple Leaves iOS 10 Kernel Unencrypted on Purpose for Increased Security This is certainly unexpected, given the fact that Apple usually locked down its software in order to prevent exploits and malware writers from taking advantage of flaws in its code, but it turns out that the company is adopting a different strategy for iOS 10. In a statement for TechCrunch , Apple explains that leaving the iOS 10 kernel unprotected isn’t exposing users in any way, but it instead brings back several advantages by allowing more security experts to search for vulnerabilities and report them to the company to fix them in a shorter time. “The kernel cache doesn’t contain any user info, and by unencrypting it we’re able to optimize the operating system’s performance without compromising security,” an Apple spokesperson is quoted as saying. So basically, what Apple is trying to accomplish with this change is to enable more security experts to look at kernel code, find vulnerabilities, and thus help the company fix them in a shorter time. Previously, there were groups of hackers who were believed to be aware of vulnerabilities in the kernel that nobody else could discover because of the security systems put in place by Apple, so this made it pretty difficult for the company to deal with the flaws. Nobody can tell what the flaw that the hackers actually used to unlock the device was, and Apple itself is still trying to figure out the method they employed during the process, so by opening the iOS 10 kernel, the company wants to avoid similar cases in the future. 2016-06-23 08:46 Bogdan Popa

56 Huawei Working on its Own Mobile OS to Reduce Dependence on Android The rumor has been reported by The Information , which quotes three sources briefed on the project. It is said that Huawei is building its own mobile OS in order to remove limitations that Google might impose. The report mentions that the OS is only in the early stages of development and that the team working on the project is based somewhere in Scandinavia. It also specifies that the team is comprised of ex-Nokia employees. This isn’t uncommon, since Huawei recently hired Abigail Brody, former Apple mobile UI design lead. The company decided to contract Brody in order to make significant changes to its EMUI that sits on top of Android OS. The designer has acknowledged the existence of Huawei’s mobile OS and has mentioned that she plans to meet with the team in August. By the looks of it, Huawei isn’t set on implementing the OS on its mobile devices, but it views the project as an alternative, in case Google imposes some restrictions on its EMUI. Either way, Huawei will continue to focus on its EMUI and attempt to make it resemble stock Android more, and not iOS. The company intends to add new icons, vibrant colors and an app drawer for organizing all applications installed on its phones. 2016-06-23 08:45 Alexandra Vaidos

57 Check your privacy settings -- Facebook is (probably) sharing your employment history Somewhat out of the blue, Facebook has decided to change the way it displays certain information on your profile. Not content with showing your current place of work -- whether this is real, or some clever pun you've engineered -- it now also shows your employment history. This is not a direct change to privacy settings as it does not make public anything that had been previously set to be private. It does, however, broadcast your previous places of work to people looking at your profile. You might not like this. You might want to do something about it. In addition to whatever description you've decided to use for yourself on Facebook, the Intro section of your profile now lists a raft of places you have said you worked at. This is something you might prefer to keep a little less public, especially if you're the sort of person who has -- for reasons best known to yourself -- listed something like the "school of hard knocks" or the "mean streets" as previous employers. So why the change? In a statement to the Huffington Post , Facebook said: Thankfully, if there's anything you'd rather others didn't see, it's easily removed. On your profile page, click the Edit link in the upper right hand corner of the Intro section and uncheck anything you want to hide. Photo credit: Alexey Boldin / Shutterstock 2016-06-23 08:27 By Mark

58 Tracker Search Engine to Adapt to New GKqueue Monitor Mapping for GNOME 3.22 Tracker, the open-source semantic data store software, which is responsible for indexing different sources needed for the search engine integration of the GNOME desktop environment, implemented via GNOME Shell and other apps from the GNOME Stack, has been updated to version 1.9.0. The current stable branch of Tracker is the 1.8 series, for the GNOME 3.20 desktop environment, but the development for the major Tracker 1.10 release is currently taking place under the Tracker 1.9.x umbrella. Tracker 1.9.0 is the first in the new development cycle for GNOME 3.22, and it looks like it brings many new features. According to the internal changelog, which we've attached at the end of the article for reference, Tracker will now adapt to the new GKqueue monitor mapping. This should greatly improve its overall performance, recognize DjVu files, enhance the console output of tracker subcommands, as well as add Microsoft Office "owner files" to the list of ignored files. Additionally, regular expressions are now supported for the fn:replace feature, album art from the TPE2 tag in the MP3 extractor is supported as well, and there's now a "tracker reset -f $filename" subcommand. "This will recursively reset all indexed content for the given filename/uri, and trigger reindexing if appropriate, so contents are just like freshly indexed," the developers have explained. If you want an early taste, you can download the Tracker 1.9.0 sources right now via our website, compile and install it for your GNU/Linux operating system. However, please note that you can also test it as part of the GNOME 3.21.3 development release. Again, try to keep in mind that Tracker 1.9.0 and GNOME 3.21.2 are pre-release versions, which means that some bugs might be present. 2016-06-23 08:23 Marius Nestor

59 iPhone 7 to Get More Small Tweaks in Addition to Dual Camera, Bigger Battery And now new information coming from Macotakara reveals that, while the major upgrades would basically come down to the dual cameras and the removal of the Lightning port (which, in turn, would allow for bigger battery), Cupertino is also planning some smaller tweaks here and there that could hardly make a difference when compared to an iPhone 6s. First and foremost, it looks like Apple is planning to make the front-facing ear speaker longer than on the 6s, probably in an attempt to offer better call audio quality, while the ambient light sensor will be moved from the left to the right side of the device. It’s not yet clear why Apple is making this change, but it might have something to do with how all components are placed under the case. While the Plus model will come with a dual-camera system, the standard 4.7-inch iPhone 7 will instead get a larger unit with just one lens and will be moved closer to the top left corner of the phone. All these rumors are living proof that, although the iPhone 7 will look very similar to the iPhone 6/6s and will even have the same dimensions, you won’t be able to use a wide array of accessories, such as back covers or protective films because of the new position of various components. It remains to be seen how much of all these reports proves to be true, but for the moment, just take everything as a rumor and let’s just wait for an official announcement. 2016-06-23 08:15 Bogdan Popa

60 Software Industry's $1 Trillion Impact On US Economy When it comes to assessing how a given industry influences the US economy, the most common metrics look at how many jobs are directly supported by the sector, and how much revenue is contributed to the nation's Gross Domestic Product via the sale of goods and services. Such metrics only tell part of the story. In a new report, "The Economic Impact of Software," BSA|The Software Alliance attempts to go beyond GDP and direct jobs to consider indirect, but very real, ways in which the software industry is aiding the US economy. The report , released June 15, found that the software industry directly contributed $475.3 billion to the US economy in 2014, with an additional $594.7 billion indirectly contributed in the same year through factors such as tangential jobs creation, consumer spending by software industry employees, and investment by the industry in research and development (R&D). The report incorporates analysis conducted by The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) using publicly available government data. [What does the BSA have to say about software audits? Read: Software Licensing Audits: Is Your Company Prepared? ] The definition of the "software industry" used in the study reflects the sector's transformation from a focus on tangible and packaged software products to one that includes software-related services, such as cloud- based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), cloud storage and computing, mobile app development, and app hosting. As a result, the report incorporates the following software sub-industries in its analysis: software publishers; computer systems design, and related services; data processing, hosting and related services; and internet publishing, broadcasting, and web services. According to the report, the software industry directly employed 2.5 million people in the US in 2014. However, the industry's influence on employment is far-reaching, according to the report, which counted another 7.3 million jobs supporting the sector in 2014. The report considers web designers, futurists, project coordinators, administrative assistants, and accountants as among the many job functions supported by the software industry in the US. Average annual salaries were also considered. For example, in 2014 the average annual salary for a fulltime software developer in the US was $108,760, more than twice the national average of $48,320. "Not only does software support millions of good (read 'white collar') jobs, but these are great paying jobs too," the report stated. According to the report, software companies invested $52 billion in R&D in 2012, representing 17.2% of all domestic business R&D for the year (the most recent statistics available). The report also breaks down the economic influence of the software industry in all 50 states. California, New York, Texas, Washington, and Virginia were the five states in which the sector had the greatest economic influence in 2014. Table 1: 10 States Benefitting Most From The Software Industry Wyoming, Alaska, and North Dakota were the states in which the software industry had the least economic impact. Even so, according to the report, "Every state's economy and workforce are benefiting from new jobs that fit our modern digital economy. " BSA, which previously stood for the Business Software Alliance, was renamed BSA|The Software Alliance in October 2012. Its member companies include Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, and other commercial software companies. The group was formed to call attention to the influence of the software industry on the US economy and to lobby the government on behalf of the industry. 2016-06-23 08:06 Charles Babcock

61 Puppy Linux 6.3.2 "Slacko" Gets New 64-Bit UEFI Boot Capability, F2FS Support Puppy Linux 6.3.2 "Slacko" appears to be a point release to the Puppy Slacko 6.3 series, and as usual, it has been built from the binary TXZ packages of the Slackware 64-bit 14.1 GNU/Linux operating system. However, it looks like the distro is now powered by a kernel from the Linux 3.14 LTS series, version 3.14.55. "As mentioned above, Slacko 6.3.2 is shipped with kernel 3.14.55 but 3.18.22 and 4.1.11 are available from the repository and easily changed using the change_kernels script," says Barry Kauler in today's announcement. "Find more information at the Slacko download page including a brief guide to which version is right for you. " Probably the most prominent feature implemented in the Puppy Linux 6.3.2 "Slacko" release is a new 64-bit UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) boot capability that has been designed to allow users to boot the distribution on any x86 computer and non-UEFI systems, but it will only support UEFI 64-bit computers. Thanks to the implementation of a Linux kernel package from the 3 series, Puppy Linux 6.3.2 "Slacko" offers built-in support for the F2FS file system. The latest Joe's Window Manager (JWM) is present as the default desktop environment, along with an updated artwork, including the icon theme. Also new in Puppy Linux 6.3.2 "Slacko" is a newer version of the Mozilla Firefox ESR (Extended Support Release) web browser, the addition of the PTheme utility to allow users to manage desktop themes for the ROX and JWM window managers, and several other tools that make the configuration of Joe's Window Manager a breeze. Out-of-the-box multimedia support is present in Puppy Linux 6.3.2 "Slacko" distro, thanks to the addition of the pMusic audio player and MPlayer video player open-source software, along with the latest FFmpeg multimedia backend. Samba is shipped by default to allow users to connect to Windows shares over a network. Ultimately, Puppy Linux 6.3.2 "Slacko" ships the Evince PDF viewer from the GNOME Stack as default document viewer, improvements to the graphical firewall program, and numerous other updated packages. Download Puppy Linux 6.3.2 "Slacko" right now via our website. 2016-06-23 07:54 Marius Nestor

62 Kiloo axes support for Subway Surfers on Windows Phone, Windows 10 Mobile version on the way Popular Temple Run -styled endless runner Subway Surfers made its way to Windows Phone more than two years ago to the delight of the users of the operating system. The game was regularly updated in line with its Android and iOS counterparts, however, due to a bug, it isn't available on Windows 10 Mobile as of yet. Now, Kiloo states that it is ending support for the title on Windows Phone devices, but is working on bringing a Windows 10 Mobile version soon. According to Winbeta , a spokesperson from Kiloo says that: While this piece of news may anger some Windows Phone owners, it is important to note that the game likely won't be removed from the Windows Store and will still be playable on Microsoft's previous iteration of its mobile OS. With that being said, future updates will only be making their way to Windows 10 Mobile devices and it is certainly refreshing to hear that Kiloo has finally fixed the notorious bug which made the game unavailable on the operating system. Subway Surfers currently boasts a 4.5/5 rating on the Windows Phone Store in the U. S. after almost 42,000 votes. Source: Winbeta 2016-06-23 07:50 Usama Jawad

63 Millennials would trust tech companies with money transactions There’s a new report suggesting that banks need to seriously consider innovating, if they don’t want to hand over their business to tech companies. The report, entitled " Are Banks Losing The Innovation Game? " , was released by financial regulatory framework compliance experts, Neopay. It is based on a poll of 2,000 UK adults on their experience with high street banks and tech companies. Here’s the deal: the younger audience would rather trust a tech company with their e-money than a bank. Now, knowing that eCommerce is rising fast, it’s time for banks to start reacting, even faster. Almost half (41 percent) of 25-34 year-olds wouldn’t trust a bank with e- money transactions, the report says. The older the audience, the bigger the trust. When it comes to tech companies, the metric is reversed. The younger ones (18 - 24 year-olds) would trust a tech company with e-money transactions in 32 percent of cases, dropping down to 17.5 percent among the older generation. "Traditionally, banks have been synonymous with dependability and solidity. However, since the banking crisis, the sturdiness of banks has been cast into doubt", says Scott Dawson, commercial director at Neopay. "Also, the increasing frequency of scandals, combined with concerns about infrastructure and reliability, and the increase of automated processes have all served to erode trust and undermine the reputation of our banks. At the same time, we’ve seen the emergence of new technology companies that are rich with our personal data and are seen to be fueling much of the innovation and growth across the wider economy. Young people still trust banks, just to a much lesser extent than in previous generations. Other providers of financial services, such as apple pay or pre-paid cards are now very much seen as credible alternatives". Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Net Communities Ltd Publication. All rights reserved. Image Credit : nopporn / Shutterstock 2016-06-23 07:43 By Sead

64 APT 1.3 Debian Package Manager to Forbid Insecure Repositories by Default Julian Andres Klode has been the one to report on the release of APT (Advanced Package Tool) 1.3 experimental 3 build, along with the latest unstable APT 1.2.14 release, which is now available for Debian Unstable and other Debian- based operating systems, such as Ubuntu Linux. Things are looking good for the APT 1.3 command-line package manager, and it appears that caching of file hashes has been re-implemented in the apt-ftparchive command, insecure and weak allow-options have been added to sources.list, and APT now makes sure that the file size of .deb packages is included in the hashes list. In order to indicate insufficiency, a tag has been added to hash errors, and it looks like the error messages have been improved for insufficient hashsums. Moreover, APT 1.3 will no longer attempt to uppack the source archive if the download is skipped, and the FindFile functionality will no longer be used for external Dir::Bin commands. Another interesting change that landed for APT 1.3 is the ability to completely forbid insecure repositories by default, except in apt-get. Furthermore, the package manger will be able to handle repositories with weak security as unauthenticated. More details should be found here and here. There are many other small improvements implemented in this third experimental build of APT 1.3, so we recommend that you take a look at the changelog for more details. In the meantime, the APT 1.2.14 package manager landed for Debian Unstable, and you can download the sources right now via our website. 2016-06-23 07:27 Marius Nestor

65 65 10 SaaS Startups Every Enterprise Should Know When it comes to cloud computing options, enterprise IT departments often focus on Infrastructure- as-a-Service (IaaS) or Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). That's because, in my experience, IT professionals at large organizations think of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) as something primarily catering to small- and medium-size organizations. But SaaS indeed can, and does, offer plenty of potential for enterprise customers, as evidenced by the 10 startups we're exploring here. Our list includes SaaS applications for traditional organizational challenges, such as supply-chain, payroll, sales, recruiting, and company-wide collaboration. If your company develops software or sells products or services online, you, too, will find SaaS startups to help you offload many IT tasks, including creating development platforms and running payment fraud protection. In addition, several startups on our list take on the latest and most complex IT services, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), big data analytics, and monitoring inter-cloud networks and applications. [What's next for Platform-as-a-Service? Read 7 PaaS Startups to Watch .] The biggest obstacle facing SaaS in the enterprise is the notion that applications and data residing in the cloud would not be managed directly by in-house staff. It made SaaS a tough sell early on, because data was difficult, if not impossible, to manage, track, and extract. SaaS also held the stigma of vendor lock-in. CIOs are wary of using proprietary software in the cloud, owned and operated by a single vendor. SaaS providers are working overtime to assuage these concerns. Meanwhile, IT leaders are learning to embrace the cloud for a variety of functions and applications. The development opens the door for more SaaS options in the enterprise. Data is becoming more easily accessible and portable -- as is the ability to move from one SaaS product to another through the use of a robust set of cross-platform APIs, which many SaaS providers are introducing. Due diligence should still be performed to make sure the SaaS product you're choosing is the right long-term solution for your organization moving forward. Still, you'll find most of your concerns about vendor lock-in are largely resolved. Once you've reviewed our list of 10 SaaS startups fit for the enterprise, tell us what you think. Are you considering any of the SaaS products listed here for your organization? What is your overall opinion regarding SaaS in the enterprise? Tell us all about it in the comments section below. 2016-06-23 07:06 Andrew Froehlich

66 Fedora 22 Linux to Reach End of Life on July 19, 2016, Move to Fedora 24 Now Officially unveiled on May 26, 2015, Fedora 22 Linux distribution was built around various GNU/Linux technologies that were the norm back then, such as the GNOME 3.16, Xfce 4.12, MATE 1.10.0, and KDE Plasma 5 desktop environments, Linux kernel 4.0, and many others. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, so today we're announcing to our Fedora readers that their Fedora 22 installations will expire soon, which means that Fedora Project will no longer offer security patches and software updates as of July 19, 2016. Therefore, you need to move to a recent Fedora release as soon as possible. "This is a reminder email about the end of life process for Fedora 22. Fedora 22 will reach end of life on 2016-07-19, and no further updates will be pushed out after that time. Additionally, with the recent release of Fedora 24, no new packages will be added to the Fedora 22 collection," says Dennis Gilmore. Now that the Fedora 24 Linux operating system has been officially released, it will be wise for any user who still runs Fedora 22 on their desktop or server computer to move to Fedora 24 immediately. You will need to use the new DNF system upgrade feature. For more details, read https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DNF_system_upgrade . 2016-06-23 06:51 Marius Nestor

67 67 Health Organization Spends Millions to Upgrade from Windows XP to… Windows 7 The health organization is very close to completing the migration off Windows XP, and while this is clearly a good thing since they work with the personal information of thousands of patients, there’s something a little bit unexpected. Although they completed the transition from Windows XP in 2016, their computers aren’t upgraded to Windows 10, but to Windows 7, the operating system whose support ends in 3 years and a half. This means that, very soon, they’ll have to start planning another migration process, which will obviously be quite pricey and involve additional costs linked, for instance, to hardware upgrades. For the record, the transition from Windows XP to Windows 7 was originally estimated to cost just $11 million and to complete in September 2015, but the deadline was then extended to mid-2016, and the budget increased to $25.3 million, which is more than double the original estimate. And although it takes so much time and money to upgrade to Windows 7, not all computers will get rid of Windows XP, Colin McCririck, Chief Executive at eHealth Queensland, Department of Health, told CW . “The core objective of the program - migration of the workstation fleet off Windows XP - will be largely complete by end June/mid-July 2016, with only a relatively small number of devices remaining on Windows XP. Any remaining devices will be managed separately by operational business units within Queensland Health,” he said. According to third-party data provided by market analysts at Net Applications, Windows XP is still running on approximately 10 percent of the desktops computers around the world, which makes it the third most- used PC operating system out there. The risks of staying with Windows XP are obviously quite big, given the fact that no security updates are being released and many vulnerabilities found in the other Windows versions are very likely to exist here too. 2016-06-23 06:33 Bogdan Popa

68 68 openSUSE Tumbleweed Linux Is Now Entirely Built Using GCC 6 as Compiler openSUSE Project's Dominique Leuenberger sent his weekly report at the end of last week to inform the community about what landed in the last three snapshots released during the week of June 6, 2016, and what would be coming next for users of the rolling release GNU/Linux distribution. "It has been a very busy week, but it has shown how much enthusiasm every contributor puts into Tumbleweed," said Dominique Leuenberger in his weekly report. "Starting with Snapshot 0614 (or any higher number, in case openQA won’t agree) the entire distribution is built using GCC 6 as compiler. " We've searched the Tumbleweed mailing list for a newer snapshot since then, and only on June 22 was the Tumbleweed snapshot 20160621 released, which means that the entire distribution is now using the GCC 6 compiler by default. The changelog clearly indicates the GCC6 (5.3.1+r234891 -> 6.1.1+r236988) upgrade. Not only has GCC 6 been enabled, but users are also getting the entire KDE Applications 16.04.2 software suite for their KDE Plasma 5.6 desktop environments, and, of course, many other goodies, such as Wireshark 2.0.4, Xen 4.7, Wine 1.9.12, GraphicsMagick 1.3.24, and more. That being said, openSUSE Tumbleweed has been successfully moved to GCC 6, and it looks like there are many other new GNU/Linux technologies incoming, such as Qt 5.6.1 with various important bug fixes, KDE Framework 5.23.0, TeXLive 2016, and last but not least, Git 2.9.0. Therefore, we recommend that you update your openSUSE Tumbleweed installation as soon as possible to get all the goodies mentioned above, and be aware of the fact that it will be a rather large update. Always keep your Tumbleweed installation up to date! 2016-06-23 06:27 Marius Nestor

69 69 iPhone Users Can Now Create Microsoft Office Documents with Dropbox App Starting with the latest update to the Dropbox app , iPhone owners using this cloud-based storage solution can create Office documents right on their devices and without leaving the app. All they have to do is press the small + (“plus”) button in the main screen to instantly create a new document. Clicking Word, Excel, and PowerPoint launches the app to let you edit the document (if the Office productivity suite isn’t installed on your iPhone, it’ll get you to the store to download them). “The new plus button in the Dropbox iOS app adds a convenient way to create and save Office documents on the go, helping people work better together, wherever they are,” says Rob Howard, Director of Office Marketing at Microsoft. The latest update brings a plethora of other updates, most of them aimed at boosting the productivity side of the device. For instance, you can now scan documents right in the app, and Dropbox Business users can even search inside the scans. Additionally, you can manage photos from your computer, but this obviously implies that you have already connected a PC or laptop to your Dropbox account. There are also new features that let you share files and folders from the desktop, as well as to add comments to a specific part of a file. And last but not least, the Dropbox app now comes with a version history menu to see what’s been changed in the latest releases, as well as with a redesigned sharing hub to easily send files to one or multiple contacts. As for the Office integration, there’s no doubt that it comes in handy to all users who want to work with Word, Excel, or PowerPoint documents stored in the cloud, so make sure you update to the latest version of the Dropbox app if you’re interested in such features too. 2016-06-23 05:59 Bogdan Popa

70 70 Microsoft Edge Beats Google Chrome and Firefox in Latest JavaScript Benchmarks In a blog post published today, the company says that the upcoming Windows 10 Anniversary Update will bring several JavaScript performance updates in Edge and Chakra, which will make the browser significantly faster than its rivals, including Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, when it comes to JavaScript. Redmond adds that it's come up with memory optimizations to make Edge’s JavaScript capabilities better and turns to geeky talk to explain how it managed to do that. You can find the full post here if you’re a tech-savvy user interested in such details. But the most interesting part is the one where Microsoft posts the results of JavaScript benchmarks, revealing that Microsoft Edge managed to outclass both Google Chrome Canary and Firefox Alpha in Octane and JetStream tests (the company put its browser against unreleased versions of Chrome and Firefox because the Anniversary Update version of Edge is also in development). Specifically, Edge achieved a score of 31187 points in the Octane 2.0 benchmark while Google Chrome Canary was the runner-up with 25910 points. Firefox Alpha wasn’t too far behind with 24836 points (higher is better). In JetStream 1.1, Edge once again performed the best and received 233.7 points, followed by Chrome with 168.3 points, and Firefox with 146.6 points (again higher is better). “We are very excited to share our performance effort to reduce memory footprint and start-up time with you. The road to better performance never ends, and we’re as committed to making JavaScript faster as we always have been. There will be more improvements in the summer months,” Microsoft says. The Anniversary Update of Windows 10 is due next month, so all these improvements will become available for everyone in just a few weeks. 2016-06-23 04:50 Bogdan Popa

71 More code deploys means fewer security headaches Organizations with high rates of code deployments spend half as much time fixing security issues as organizations without such frequent code updates, according to a newly released study. In its latest annual state-of- the-developer report, Devops software provider Puppet found that by better integrating security objectives into daily work, teams in "high-performing organizations" build more secure systems. The report, which surveyed 4,600 technical professionals worldwide, defines high IT performers as offering on-demand, multiple code deploys per day, with lead times for changes of less than one hour. Puppet has been publishing its annual report for five years. "We found that the high performers spend 50 percent less time [remedying] security issues. " said Alanna Brown, a senior product marketing manager for Puppet. "This doesn't just represent wasted time, it also shows that low performers are much more susceptible to security issues. " Security is often seen as the "final frontier" for devops, and Brown noted that "now, we have proof that security can be successfully integrated into a devops environment. But if it's not done well, it can be costly to the health of the business. Also in this year's report, Puppet found a widening performance between high performers and low performers -- those who deploy code at rates of between once per month to once every six months. "In the last year, the high performers have seriously improved their throughput, going from 200 deploys a year to 1,460 deploys a year," Brown said. "On the other hand, the low performers are stuck in the mud and haven't had much change in their throughput for the past three years. " Deploying more frequently gives high performers a "huge edge," she said. "They're able to experiment more often and deliver value to customers faster, creating a virtuous circle of learning and improvement. " The 2016 report also took a stab at measuring the quality of software, using unplanned work and rework as a proxy for quality because they're primarily caused by defects. Puppet found that high-performing organizations spend 22 percent less time on unplanned work and rework, and as a result, they're able to spend 29 percent more time on new, value-adding work. Puppet further noted that high performers have more employee loyalty. Employees in high-performing organizations were 2.2 times more likely to recommend their organization to a friend as a "great" place to work, the report said. These employees also 1.8 times more likely to recommend their team to a friend as a great working environment. The report also advocates an experimental approach to product development, with the development cycle starting long before coding. "Your product team's ability to decompose products and features into small batches, provide visibility into the flow of work from idea to production, and gather customer feedback to iterate and improve will predict both IT performance and deployment pain," Puppet said. 2016-06-23 03:00 Paul Krill

72 Japan’s e-commerce leader Rakuten gets into agriculture tech Rakuten may be cutting back its e-commerce business in Europe and Southeast Asia , but, at home in Japan, the internet giant is stepping into a new field — quite literally — after it invested in an agriculture tech company for the first. Weeks after withdrawing e- commerce sites from the UK, Spain and Austria , Rakuten is putting an undisclosed sum into seven-year-old Telefarm , which operates a platform that promotes organic farmers in Japan. Most notably, Telefarm connects consumers with organic farmers and their produce, while it also helps with processes such as storage, transportation, manufacturing, and even the hiring of farm workers. It’s an interesting move for Rakuten, which is best know for its online shopping empire in Japan, where it has also expanding into financial, a mobile service and more. Rakuten’s presence outside of Japan has been less successful. While it has invested in a range of U. S. companies including Lyft and Pinterest , and it has acquired firms like chat app Viber , video platform Viki , and U. S. coupon site Ebates , the company has withdrawn from less lucrative regions as part of a new strategy . Organic farming, or organic products, could be a part of that new focus in Japan. Rakuten said that this invest in Telefarm would lead to it launching new products in its domestic market. Beyond scaling back parts of its global business, Rakuten recently embraced drones — running its first trial on a golf course — and earlier this month it struck an agreement to bring a selection of premium Japanese goods to China via Kaola, the cross-border e-commerce service operated by Chinese internet giant NetEase. 2016-06-23 00:00 Jon Russell

73 Salesforce Communities update shoots for simplification and personalization As companies try to move to more of a self-service type of approach to customer service, online forums become more important than ever to help users find the right answers quickly, whether troubleshooting a problem or making a buying decision. Today, Salesforce released an update to its Community Cloud service that makes it easier for community managers update pages and put the right information in front of the visitor as he or she makes his way through your website. The update, which includes so-called “intelligent Lightning themes” is focused on helping Salesforce Communities customers create a highly personalized web experience, a goal companies have been shooting for, for some time with varying degrees of success. Salesforce’s approach with with this update is to make it as simple as possible for community managers to personalize a page with drag and drop components and built-in intelligence, a word the Salesforce marketing team bandied about quite a bit in during the announcement briefing. In this case, it means it’s supposed to help deliver meaningful content to the visitor automatically based on what you know about them already, their path through the site and the questions they may be asking. That makes this a significant update, says Vanessa Thompson, research vice president for IDC’s Collaboration & Communities program. “The intelligent themes part of the update has made it much easier for community managers to align the brand of the community with other owned digital assets of the company. The self-service and drag-and-drop nature of the interface makes it much easier for users and importantly reduces the reliance on developers (in-house IT or third party) to create a consistent brand experience,” she explained. Photo courtesy of Salesforce By making it easier to make updates without a lot of heavy lifting or outside help, it’s playing to the fact that many community managers are focused on multiple roles, making it more important to be able to perform these kinds of maintenance tasks quickly. From that perspective, it’s really making it easier for these folks to manage their schedules. “Part of the challenge in the communities market is that the community managers often have other day jobs, meaning they might work in marketing or service and don’t have a lot of dedicated time to spend on the community. Making it easier for community managers to add content, change the look and feel of the site, spot anomalies or unwanted content, are all a great help to those folks looking to get some time back,” Thompson said. Where it gets really interesting though is that these experiences are designed to link the systems of record like the CRM database with the system of engagement, the community piece. That means as a customer takes action, assuming the company has Salesforce CRM and Salesforce Service, the information can be shared across the various records creating a much more holistic view of the customer and allowing companies to target more specific offers based on this knowledge. 2016-06-23 00:00 Ron Miller

74 Advanced Concepts of Java Garbage Collection Garbage collection (GC) is a background process run by JVM (Java Virtual Machine) to housekeep memory automatically when a Java application runs in the foreground. The presence of a garbage collector relieves the programmer of the responsibility of writing an explicit memory deallocation routine in every application they develop. This leverages productivity while coding. A programmer can focus exclusively on solving the problem at hand and let JVM handle memory management issues. Garbage collection is a complicated procedure in its own right. Once you dive deeper into the arena, you realize that there is more to it than meets the eye. This article is an attempt to explore some of those areas along with the APIs related to garbage collection. Reclaiming unused memory is a complex procedure and doing it explicitly through code can be error-prone, leading to unexpected behavior of the program. A couple of the problems can be as follows: Memory management in Java takes an alternative approach. Like most modern object-oriented languages, it uses an automatic memory manager called a garbage collector. Garbage collection has three primary functions: Java memory manager segments memory into three categories: young generation, old generation, and permanent generation. Before going further, imagine effacing memory by GC to occur in waves. Fresh, new objects are allocated in the young generation. The old generation contains those objects that have stayed in the young generation for some time; also, some large objects are directly allocated in the old generation segment. Permanent generation objects are those that GC finds easy to manage, such as objects that describe classes and methods. Young generation segments contain an area called Eden and two smaller Survivor Spaces. Eden contains those objects that have survived at least one garbage collection wave and given an opportunity to die before being moved to Survivor Spaces and ultimately to old generation status. Typically, when the young generation is filled up, a minor collection (an algorithm) wave pops up and either and does the cleaning or objects are moved to the next status. When the old generation is filled up, the major collection (another algorithm) wave does the job, which means practically all generations are collected/cleaned. This is a rudimentary idea behind GC design. Refer to "Memory Management in the Java HotSpotTM Virtual Machine, Sun Microsystems" for a detailed explanation. There are four Garbage Collection (GC) algorithm available in Java Hotspot VM. Let's get an idea of each of them in a line or two. Refer to Java Garbage Collection by N. Salnikov-Tarnovski and G. Smirnov for a detail analysis on each of the algorithm. JVM runs the garbage collector as soon as the system is low on memory. Can we invoke garbage collector from our code? Yes, but there is no guarantee that garbage collector would listen. The gc() method in java.lang. Runtime can be used to "suggest" that JVM run garbage collector, which it may totally ignore, so no point in being sentimental here. The Java API Documentation states the method gc() as follows… "Runs the garbage collector. Calling this method suggests that the Java virtual machine expends effort toward recycling unused objects in order to make the memory they currently occupy available for quick reuse. When control returns from the method call, the virtual machine has made its best effort to recycle all discarded objects. The name gc stands for "garbage collector. " The virtual machine performs this recycling process automatically as needed, in a separate thread, even if the gc method is not invoked explicitly. The method System.gc() is the conventional and convenient means of invoking this method. " Output: (may vary in your case) Observe the change in memory size after gc() is called. The invocation to finalize() a method states a set of actions to be performed on the object just before garbage collection reclaims its used memory location. The method finalize() is a member of thee Object class which is the parent class of all classes in Java. Also, it is declared as protected; that means any class can override this method. Objects, when they go out of scope, are marked for finalization and placed on the queue before actual garbage collector reclaims the memory. If, however, you want to finalize all objects waiting to be finalized by Java runtime, you may use the runFnialization() method declared as a member of the Runtime class as well as the System class. It may be invoked either as: or An interesting aspect is that there is a quanta of time available between the object being marked for finalization and the object being actually effaced. Garbage collector comes as the next phase after finalization and checks again if the object to be effaced is still out of scope. Though not a good idea, we can try to resurrect the object between the invocation of the finalize() method and actual garbage collection as follows: This is a very bad idea and a bad programming practice as well. No harm in experimenting, though, yet never do it in real life. The finalize() method is discouraged to be used explicitly because this method is automatically called by the GC to perform a cleanup operation on an object just before GC reclaims the object's memory. GC does not guarantee any specific time of execution. It may never execute before the program terminates; thus, it is highly improbable if or when the method finalize() would be called. As it was said earlier, Java does not give exclusive control over the time when garbage collector will execute. Every method related to garbage collection is just a suggestion to JVM that it may reclaim the memory now. Similarly, the try...finally clause simply states the release of resources used in the try block. The finally block is guaranteed to execute. This ensures that the garbage collector can reclaim the memory used by the object of this class. Java offer different types of references that can be used to designate a reference object class to give a new meaning. A program may use one of these type of reference object that refers to some other object in such a manner that the objects get collected by GC exclusively, depending upon its reference type. If you are not aware of any reference types in Java, that means you have been using only strong reference types. It is ordinary reference types, such as: Apart the from strong reference, there are three other type of reference— namely, soft , weak , and phantom —denoted by the classes SoftReference , WeakReference , and PhantomReference defined in the java.lang.ref package. The reference object type implemented by these types are all subclasses of the abstract base class called Reference. " Soft references are for implementing memory-sensitive caches. " " Weak references are for implementing canonicalizing mappings that do not prevent their keys (or values) from being reclaimed. " " Phantom references are for scheduling pre-mortem cleanup actions in a more flexible way than is possible with the Java finalization mechanism. " Each of these types corresponds to a different level of reachability. According to Java API Documentation , A complete explanation of reference types require a exclusive focus on it. Let's set it aside for now. Garbage collection is a complex subsystem under the aegis of JVM where the most crucial managerial process is taken care of. It may not be perfect, but nonetheless gives a sense of freedom to the programmer from a critical responsibility. This article is an attempt to surface the intricate story behind GC on how it works. Above all, this will give you another reason to appreciate and thank all who shaped GC in its current form. GC is undoubtedly a reason to make Java a prime language, with many improvements yet to be implemented to still prod on.… 2016-06-23 00:00 Manoj Debnath

75 Have You Overlooked Your Printers' Security? You may think that your organization is secure. Your employees know best practices for creating passwords; your data is encrypted at every turn, and your network has the strongest firewalls known to man. But do you know who is using your printers? If your printers are on a network, they can be just as much at risk for malware or a cyber-attack as your desktops, servers, or mobile devices. An unsecured printer can provide just the access point a hacker needs to sneak into your network. A data breach can cost you millions of dollars and disrupt the trust of your employees as well as your customers. Don’t just ensure your computing devices are protected; lock up your printers too. Fortunately, HP printers have embedded security features in the firmware that ensure safe startup every time, reducing the threat of a unauthorized access. Plus HP’s latest fleet of printers, combined with the Jet Advantage security manager software, allow centralized management of the security of your entire fleet. Jet Advantage also provides: Recently, we hosted a webinar LaserJet Innovation Catch the Next Wave at PC Connection with Rick Pearson, a Print Specialist from HP. In it, he takes you through the latest innovations in HP’s new line of printers, including their unique security features. Take a look , and then drop us a line with any questions! 2016-06-23 00:00 Jane Garrity

76 Bing Ads Editor for Mac beta is now available Microsoft today announced the launch of a beta for Bing Ads Editor for Mac. The firm promises "Everything you love about Bing Ads Editor 11, now on a Mac! " The company notes that while it has offerings for its Web UI, Bing Ads V10 API, Bing Ads Editor for Windows, iOS, and Android, it has so far failed to create a robust desktop offering for Mac. The beta for Apple's desktop platform was announced back in November , so it's taken seven months to launch it. Here's some of what Microsoft is offering in Bing Ads Editor for Mac beta: You can sign up for the beta right here. It's currently only available in US English, but it will be offered to all users by the end of the summer. You'll be asked to fill out a short survey, after which you'll be added to a queue to be invited to the beta program. Source: Bing Ads 2016-06-22 22:40 Rich Woods

77 JavaScript improvements are coming to Microsoft Edge in the Windows 10 Anniversary Update Microsoft today announced improvements in the Chakra JavaScript engine in the Microsoft Edge browser, which are slated to arrive next month in the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. The firm says that it has been its mission with the Chakra engine to "make JavaScript faster for the real world web, and to continuously improve the experience of browsing in Microsoft Edge". Indeed, quite a few improvements are noted today. One of the improvements is memory optimization in functions. Microsoft says that there is an abundance of small-sized functions in web scripts. This is true, as it's a very common practice for developers to compartmentalize code for reusability. Microsoft solves this problem by refactoring the metadata format in each function. For example, pointers that point to rarely used functions are "moved to a dynamic auxiliary structure". According to Microsoft, most 32-bit counters rarely offer any values above 256. Because of this, most values can use only a single byte (for those that don't understand binary, a byte is eight bits; 11111111 equals 255 in decimal). Next up is deferred parsing of event handlers. Whenever you go to a website, almost everything you do can trigger an event. Whether you click a button, type in a textbox, hover over a link, or something else, you probably triggered an event in the JavaScript code that tells the site what to do when the event happens. Normally, a browser would parse all of those event handlers when you load the page; however, most of those events never end up being used, making that method a waste of resources. Beginning with the Anniversary Update, Edge will now only parse the handlers that you use, in real-time. All measures collected on 64-bit browsers running 64-bit Windows 10 Insider Preview System Info: Dell Optiplex 7010 Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3475S CPU @ 2.90GHz (4 cores) 4GB ram It's interesting to see Microsoft testing its new features on older hardware, as that's Intel's third generation Ivy Bridge CPU, where the latest model would be the sixth generation, Skylake. Remember, you can always check out the code that makes this happen. Back in January, Microsoft open-sourced the Chakra JavaScript engine. You can head over to the ChakraCore repo on GitHub right here. Source: Windows Blog 2016-06-22 21:48 Rich Woods

78 Security Flaws in File Compression Library Affect Hundreds of Other Projects The library was created in 2004 specifically for the FreeBSD project, but its powerful features soon caught the eye of many other developers, who ported it to other operating systems and included it with their software. Developers love the fact that Libarchive can allow real-time access to a lot of compressed file formats, such as tar, 7z, zip, cpio, pax, rar, cab, and many more. In a blog post published yesterday, the Cisco Talos team has announced that they worked with the Libarchive team to patch a series of security issues in the library. These issues stand apart from various security bugs fixed in software products on a daily basis because they indirectly affect countless of other projects because of Libarchive's wide reach. Exploiting these issues is also somewhat trivial if you know where they are since it only requires an attacker to craft a malicious ZIP file. When Libarchive, or the software where Libarchive was included, reads the malicious archive, the attacker can execute malicious code on the user's system. Imagine you're using an antivirus or a package manager that has included Libarchive in its code to handle reading archived files in real-time. Since all antivirus products decompress archived files to look inside for malware, and since the role of a package manager is to download, unzip, and install software on your PC, the attacker's job is limited to only crafting the malicious archive and finding a way to deliver to your PC. Cisco researchers said they found an integer overflow issue in how Libarchive handles 7-Zip files (CVE-2016-4300), a buffer overflow in how Libarchive handles Mtree files (CVE-2016-4301), and a heap overflow in how the library handles RAR files (CVE-2016-4302). As you can see, all of these are dangerous security flaws that lead to remote code execution on the user's machine. "Writing secure code can be difficult," the Cisco team explains. "The root cause of these libarchive vulnerabilities is a failure to properly validate input --data being read from a compressed file. Sadly, these types of programming errors occur over, and over again. " Cisco reports that all issues are now fixed, but as you can imagine, it may take some time until developers updated all the apps where Libarchive was deployed with the library's latest version (v3.2.1). At the start of May, Cisco's Talos team also helped the 7-Zip project fixed a set of severe vulnerabilities in its software. 7-Zip is similar to Libarchive, being included in many other software products as well. 2016-06-22 21:35 Catalin Cimpanu

79 macOS Sierra release date, news and features With Microsoft's Windows 10 heating up the PC market, Apple is bringing a free upgrade of its own with the launch of a new version of OS X for Mac packed with new features and improvements. OS X 10.12 was officially revealed and renamed macOS Sierra at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). As expected, Sierra does much more than just providing bug fixes and performance updates, as we saw with the move from 10.10 Yosemite to 10.11 El Capitan . So what's in store for Mac users? Follow along and we'll tell you exactly what you can expect from the next version of OS X – we mean macOS. Apple has gotten cycle when it comes to releasing new operating system, Typically they're demoed and debuted during WWDC in June, a beta preview over the summer and having the final OS in our hands by November. macOS Sierra seems to follow that same formula. Following its reveal in mid-June, Apple plans to release a developer preview in July and the final OS in the following fall. The biggest new feature slated for macOS Sierra is the inclusion of the Siri virtual personal assistant. Siri was launched on iOS back in 2011, and Macs are surprisingly the last platform Apple decided to bring it to. Just as with using the virtual assistant on iPhones, users will be able to simply command Siri and ask it questions with their voice. However, being on the Mac opens up a greater swath of options such as searching for files. At WWDC, SVP of software engineering Craig Federighi demonstrated how Siri can help with sophisticated queries for files like, "Show the files I worked on last week about the off-site. " And from there users can narrow down their search based on tags. Siri also has full access to other parts of macOS' including applications such as iTunes, making her your personal DJ. Alternatively, Siri integrates with Safari to act on web searches. By adding Siri to the Mac platform, Apple hopes to offer the same services for iPhone and iPad owners with a Mac. What's more, Apple opened has issued an SDK for developers to make their own applications work with Siri. Continuity between Mac and iOS is a big deal for those engulfed in Apple's hardy ecosystem. Ever since its introduction, users have been able to pick up calls and text conversations from their phones and conveniently pull them up on their Mac computers. With macOS Sierra, not only will you be able to access your computer from other machines including your iPhone, but if you need to copy something from one device to another, you can achieve that using the Universal Clipboard function. By copying something from one device, you can seamlessly paste it over to another. If you thought AirDrop made your life easier, this enhances the Apple ecosystem even further with yet another method of shuffling around files. And, while TouchID isn't coming to Mac anytime soon, auto-unlock is. As the name implies, this new feature will let you unlock your Mac by merely being in close proximity to an Apple Watch or iOS device. What's more, Apple Pay has expanded beyond the restraints of a 4.7-inch screen and onto PCs by way of macOS. Making an effort to compete with ecommerce services like PayPal, a "Pay with Apple Pay" button will soon be integrated in your browser with TouchID on a nearby iPhone or iPad serving as a means of quick authentication. Finally we have the Photos app getting an overhaul in iOS 10 , and because of the way Continuity works, the incoming features also apply to Mac. These include a new "Memories" tab for a more magazine-like viewing mode as well as an AI that automatically sorts photos either by people or topics. Likewise, if you're a skilled multi-tasker interested in watching videos while you work, you'll be delighted to know that macOS Sierra's picture-in-picture mode allows users to take their video windows with them even as they rotate between desktop screens. Article continues below 2016-06-22 21:08 By Kevin

80 You can buy Samsung's Gear 360 camera for $350, if you're in California later this week Samsung has officially launched its Gear 360 camera in the United States; however, there's a catch. To buy it for its $350 price tag, you'll have to be attending VidCon in Anaheim, California. If you can't be there, then you'll have to wait until later this year like everyone else. The device was announced back at Mobile World Congress alongside the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge , and has since launched in South Korea . The tagline for VidCon is "For people that love online video". It's clear that Samsung is targeting a certain kind of audience for its new device. Obviously, the firm is hoping that anyone that throws down $350 for it will use it to produce high quality 360-degree videos. One thing that Samsung has made particularly clear is that it's a company that cares about virtual reality. It partnered with Oculus to create the Gear VR , and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the stage when the Gear 360 was launched. Nevertheless, if you really want the Gear 360 now, you should probably book your plane ticket. Source: VentureBeat 2016-06-22 19:42 Rich Woods

81 A win for privacy: Senate blocks FBI from gaining warrantless access to browsing histories A Senate amendment brought forward by John McCain that would have given the FBI the right to browse suspects' phone and internet records without a warrant has been narrowly defeated. The vote very nearly went the other way -- there were just two votes in it when the counting was over. McCain had hoped that pushing the amendment as a counter-terrorism tool (particularly against " non-U. S. citizen 'lone wolf' attackers ") would be enough to get the required 60 votes. But it seems that the Orlando shooting that McCain cited as an incentive for the changes was not enough to convince others. He had described the proposed changes as a "commonsense amendment" but was quick to point out it was not designed to give the FBI carte blanche to do whatever it wanted. "This amendment would not allow the FBI access to the content of private messages, but will only allow law enforcement to look at non-content electronic communication transactional records in the course of a national security investigation, such as how much time a suspicious individual spends on a website", he said. The amendment would have allowed the FBI the option of using National Security Letter to obtain data about call logs and internet browsing history without the need for a court order. It is possible that the changes will be reconsidered in the future, so there is still a chance that they will be voted through -- but for now privacy advocates are celebrating. Photo credit: Bob Venezia / Shutterstock 2016-06-22 19:25 By Mark

82 Mozilla MOSS 'Mission Partners' makes it rain $385,000 on open source project developers Open source is very important nowadays, especially from a privacy and security standpoint. Look, closed source ideology is not inherently bad -- it is a good way to protect a company's code. The problem, however, is that users are increasingly suspicious of software since Edward Snowden's leaks. There is no telling what kind of back doors or other malicious things are hiding in the code. Mozilla is a longtime open source champion, not only with words, but resources too. Besides producing the wonderful Firefox web browser, the company is increasingly donating money to the cause. Today, the company announces that it is making it rain $385,000 on open source project developers through the Mozilla Open Source Support (MOSS) 'Mission Partners' program. "MOSS is a continuing program. The Mission Partners track has a budget for 2016 of around US$1.25 million. The first set of awards listed below total US$385,000 and we look forward to supporting more projects in the coming months. Applications remain open both for Mission Partners and for the Foundational Technology track (for projects creating software that Mozilla already uses or deploys) on an ongoing basis", says Mozilla. The Firefox-maker further says, "this is only the beginning. Stay tuned for more award announcements as we allocate funds. Open Source is a movement that is only growing, both in numbers and in importance. Operating in the open makes for better security, better accessibility, better policy, better code and, ultimately, a better world. So if you know any projects whose work furthers the Mozilla Mission, send them our way and encourage them to apply". Mozilla shares the following project recipients, and their cut of the $385,000 What do you think of Mozilla's financial contribution to the open source community? Was the money properly distributed, or were some more worthy projects overlooked? Tell me in the comments. Photo credit: pathdoc / Shutterstock 2016-06-22 19:18 By Brian

83 Businesses want to spend more money on making apps Businesses want to increase their spend on mobile app development, but we’re still a long way to go before that spending becomes more relevant, a new study by Gartner has shown. According to the market analysts’ report, overall app development budget allocated to mobile is 10 percent, a two percent decrease compared to the year before. However, almost half (42 percent) of organizations plan to increase their mobile app development spend by an average of 31 percent this year. "Demand for mobile apps in the enterprise is growing, but the urgency to scale up mobile app development doesn’t yet appear to be a priority for most organizations", says Adrian Leow, principal research analyst at Gartner. "This must change, particularly given employees often have the autonomy to choose the devices, apps and even the processes to complete a task. This places an increasing amount of pressure on IT to develop a larger variety of mobile apps in shorter time frames". Businesses are mostly interested in building their own apps from the ground up, rather than use any templates or app builders. This practice has transferred to mobile apps, as well. One of the reasons they do this is that they still need to do a lot to integrate back-end databases and applications in to the mobile front-end. "If developers have to spend 70 percent of their time getting the integration right, they shouldn’t have to make compromises on the front end by constraints inherent in pre-packaged mobile apps", says Leow. "The selection of pre-packaged mobile apps is also still quite limited from many providers". According to Leow, the solution would be a focus on an enterprise app store. Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Net Communities Ltd Publication. All rights reserved. Twin Design / Shutterstock.com 2016-06-22 18:51 By Sead

84 Android 6.0 Marshmallow is finally available for the Galaxy Note 5 and S6 edge+ on AT&T Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 edge+ last August with Android 5.1 Lollipop onboard, just a few weeks before Android 6.0 Marshmallow began rolling out. US carriers started upgrading both of those devices in March. Three months later, AT&T has finally released the Marshmallow update for the two high-end handsets, making it the last major carrier to do so in the United States. As SamMobile reports, Android 6.0.1 is now making its way to the Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 edge on AT&T. The updates for each device weigh in at around 1.6GB, and include the latest security patches, which were published at the beginning of this month. Along with the usual Marshmallow goodies, the update also includes Samsung's own additions, such as its TouchWiz interface, better notifications support, and other improvements. As always, bear in mind that over-the-air rollouts usually proceed in stages, so it may take a little while before all eligible handsets are able to install the update. AT&T has earned itself a poor reputation when it comes to delivering timely Android updates. Last month - following weeks of complaints from customers on its support forums - the company upgraded its Galaxy S6 and S6 edge to Marshmallow , three months after the rollout began elsewhere. Source: SamMobile 2016-06-22 18:34 Andy Weir

85 Pirate Bay co-founder goes on the offensive, plans to sue record labels for defamation It was revealed last week that Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde had been ordered by a judge in Finland to pay a fine totaling $395,000 to a group of five record labels for his alleged involvement in a piracy lawsuit related to the site’s current operations. The judgment took Sunde by surprise as he claims he was never made aware of the lawsuit. The suit even includes the potential for a million-euro fine if pirated material from 60 artists represented by the record labels involved isn’t taken down. Keep in mind that Sunde hasn’t been involved with The Pirate Bay for more than a decade. Now, Sunde is going on the offensive. In an interview with Torrent Freak , Sunde said he has decided to sue the record labels for damage against his good name and stealing a lot of his time. Sunde added that he is a public figure in Finland and they’re calling him a criminal when they know he isn’t involved in what they are suing him for. It’s defamation, he said. Attacking has always been his best defense, Sunde notes, adding that’s it is becoming obvious that his case is strong enough to win. Peter Herkko Hietanen, Sunde’s lawyer, told the publication that last week’s judgment can be appealed within 30 days after which a retrial may follow. 2016-06-23 00:51 Shawn Knight

86 86 Google details when your Nexus device will stop receiving updates One of the benefits of buying a Nexus is that you’re guaranteed prompt updates and security patches, whereas with many Android manufacturers you’re often left waiting for months. Nexus devices are also supported longer term. Specifically, Google promises at least to years of Android version updates from the device’s launch, and security patches the longer of 3 years from availability or 18 months from when the Google Store last sold the device. If you’re not sure exactly where in the product cycle your Nexus is, however, the company is now giving users a much clearer picture of how long they will be supported, with an update to its support site detailing the end-of-life dates for each current model. Users of older devices may still be able to get new Android versions beyond those dates by manually "flashing" a ROM, Google just won’t guarantee any version updates itself so you shouldn’t count on it. Still, a solid two years of updates is more than you can hope for when buying non- Nexus devices. Knowing the end-of-support dates is certainly welcome if you are buying a previous generation or second hand device to save some cash. The support page also mentions that devices part of the Android One program -- Google’s initiative for bringing affordable Android-powered smartphones to all corners of the globe --will receive software updates for at least 18 months after the phone's launch. 2016-06-23 00:51 Jose Vilches

87 VLC 2.0 for Android released with pop-up video view, network play and more VLC for Android has received a major update that adds a number of highly requested new features to the popular video player. Among the big ones in version 2.0 is the ability to watch videos in a pop up windowed mode and network playback, with support for DLNA, Windows network sharing, UPnP, NFS, FTP, and SFTP protocols. The app will also now automatically find subtitles stored locally or via OpenSubtitles, playback history is back (you can turn it off), and there’s finally video playlist functionality, a feature that has long been a part of the desktop version of VLC but was lacking from the Android app. The app is now a unified package across phones, tablets, and Android TV devices, so you can swap between interfaces at will. The Android TV version has a fresh interface, too. Also of note, version 2.0 reduces the number of permissions needed to run, only requesting access to media files. This is in anticipation to a restructuring of the system for granting rights to apps in Android N which is meant to boost security. The update is rolling out now and compatibility has been expanded all the way down to Android 2.2 Froyo devices. You can download it here. 2016-06-23 00:51 Jose Vilches

88 Hasselblad unveils world's first compact mirrorless medium format camera Swedish medium-format camera manufacturer Hasselblad has unveiled the world’s first compact mirrorless medium format camera. The weather and dust sealed Hasselblad X1D features a 50-megapixel CMOS medium format sensor (the same one found in Hasselblad’s full-size H6D system ) that offers 14 stops of dynamic range with an ISO range of 100 to 25,600. As PetaPixel highlights , there’s also a Nikon-compatible hot shoe, a 3-inch 920K-dot touchscreen LCD around back, a 2.36M-dot XGA electronic viewfinder, GPS, Wi-Fi, dual SD card slots, a USB Type-C connector and a Mini HDMI port. Some may be surprised to learn that the camera can’t shoot 4K video, instead capable of just 1080p at 30 frames per second (you’ll understand why this is a bit shocking when we get to the price). The X1D is designed to work with a new line of lenses – XCD – although all 12 H System lenses can be used with an adapter. At launch, Hasselblad will offer a 45mm f/3.5 lens as well as a 90mm f/4.5 model. Shutter speeds will range from 1/2000th of a second to 60 minutes with full flash sync down to the 1/2000th mark. Now, the price. The X1D body alone will set you back $8,995. There will also be kit options that include the 45mm lens for $11,290 or both lenses for $13,985. Purchased separately, that works out to $2,295 for the 45mm lens and $2,695 for the larger 90mm glass. That may seem expensive but it's far cheaper than, say, the H6D system, which starts at $25,995. What's compelling about the new X1D is its compact size and weight, measuring just 150.4 x 98.1 x 71.4 mm (5.9 x 3.9 x 2.8 inches) and tipping the scales at 725g (1.6 pounds) without a lens. Either way, this will likely only attract serious photographers with deep pockets. Hasselblad will begin demoing the new system next month before shipments roll out to early adopters in August. 2016-06-23 13:55 Shawn Knight

89 Amazon's new entry-level Kindle is thinner, lighter, faster Amazon on Wednesday took the wraps off a refreshed version of its entry- level Kindle e-reader which is now thinner, lighter and packs twice as much memory as its predecessor. Known simply as the Kindle, the new e-reader is available in your choice of black or white color schemes. That last bit is significant as this is the first Kindle to be offered in white since the Kindle Keyboard arrived way back in 2010 and the first refresh for the budget-minded e-reader since 2014. The new Kindle carries the same 6-inch display with E Ink Pearl (167 PPI) and features 4GB of local storage plus free cloud storage for all Amazon content. Amazon says a full charge can last up to four weeks (based on a half hour of reading per day with wireless disabled); recharges take around four hours from a fully depleted state. Connectivity-wise, you get 802.11 b/g/n/ Wi-Fi and Bluetooth audio support for blind or visually impaired users (this is the first Kindle to offer Bluetooth connectivity). The slate measures 6.3" x 4.5" x 0.36" (160 mm x 115 mm x 9.1 mm), weighs just 5.7 ounces (161 grams) and now features rounded edges that should make it a bit easier to hold. Pricing is set at $79.99 for the ad- supported version or $99.99 without ads, the same as the model it is replacing. Those interested in the pricier Kindle Paperwhite should note that it, too, is now being offered in white for the first time. The new Kindle is available to pre-order as of writing with a scheduled release date of July 7. 2016-06-23 13:55 Shawn Knight

90 The Basslet is a watch-sized wearable subwoofer for your body One of the great things about headphones is that they allow you to experience music at enjoyable volumes without disrupting those around you. While there are plenty of great options out there that do a respectable job of delivering tunes, there’s still something missing when you remove large speakers from the equation. I’m of course talking about bass, an integral part of many musical genres. I’m not saying that headphones don’t deliver bass – they do, but you don’t get to feel the music the way you do when a large woofer is involved. That’s the inspiration behind the Basslet , a watch-sized wearable subwoofer for your body that promises to deliver the beats and basslines directly to the user. Inside the wearable is a LoSound haptic engine that recreates bass frequencies from 10 to 250Hz as well as a battery. To use it, simply connect the sender (dongle) to the audio device of your choice – smartphone, desktop, laptop or even a VR headset – and then plug your headphones into the sender. It’s totally plug-and-play with no software to fool with. The battery is said to offer up to six hours of listening at max volume and can be recharged in less than an hour. The concept sounds a bit “out there” but it’s already generating loads of attention – and money – on Kickstarter. A pledge of €99 (around $112 USD) "guarantees" you’ll get a Basslet come December, assuming of course that everything goes according to plan. The campaign has already amassed just over $56,000 as of writing and by the time you read this, it’ll have no doubt blown past its $56,785 goal with more than a month to go. 2016-06-23 13:55 Shawn Knight

91 Mark Zuckerberg photo reveals that the CEO puts tape over his webcam Mark Zuckerberg posted a photo of himself yesterday celebrating Facebook- owned Instagram reaching 500 million users. At first glance, there doesn’t appear to be anything out of the ordinary going on in the image, but if you look closely you’ll see that the billionaire takes no chances when it comes to protecting his privacy from hackers. It appears that Zuckerberg thwarts any would-be voyeuristic intruders by placing a piece of tape over his laptop’s webcam. There also seems to be something obstructing either the audio jack or the dual microphones on his Macbook. While physically covering a laptop camera with tape may seem a bit paranoid, the CEO isn’t the first public name to reveal - albeit unintentionally - that he takes the precaution. Back in April, FBI Director James Comey said he also puts tape over his webcam after seeing someone “smarter than I am” do the same thing on the news. Some people have pointed out that the desk isn’t quite the ostentatious, luxury piece of office furniture so often associated with CEOs, and maybe it belongs to someone else. But as noted by Gizmodo , it’s definitely the desk Zuckerberg said was his during a Facebook Live video posted nine months ago, complete with the same books, wooden Facebook sign, and sunscreen. Maybe Zuckerberg purposely left the laptop and tape on show as a way of proving he’s still pretty savvy when it comes to stopping people spying on him. The Facebook co-founder lost some credibility last month when his Twitter and Pinterest accounts were accessed after hackers reportedly found his password – "dadada" – in the leaked LinkedIn data. 2016-06-23 13:55 Rob Thubron

92 Apple is saving its biggest iPhone design changes for 2017, sources say Those hoping for a total revamp of the iPhone this fall will be sorely disappointed according to sources familiar with the matter as reported by The Wall Street Journal. If Apple were to follow its standard practice of overhauling its phone every two years, the iPhone 7 set to arrive later this year would be due for a major update. Instead, sources say Apple will extend the cycle of the current design by one more year which means major design changes won’t arrive until 2017, the 10th anniversary of the iPhone. Instead, sources tell the Journal that this year’s phone will maintain the same 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch displays that were first introduced in 2014. The biggest change this cycle will reportedly be the removal of the 3.5mm headphone jack which is to be replaced by the Lightning connector. This move will allow Apple to slim down its flagship by about one millimeter according to KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Although not mentioned in the Journal's report, we can also expect faster hardware in the form of a new processing chip, the A10, and other improvements that will come along with iOS 10. Intel has also reportedly been brought on as a modem chip supplier. The Journal also neglected to touch on other hot iPhone rumors including whether or not Apple will move to a dual rear camera setup or replace the 16GB entry-level storage option with a 32GB model (or even add a 256GB option). Looking ahead to next year, Apple is reportedly planning to replace the display with an edge-to-edge OLED screen and remove the physical Home button, instead building the Touch ID fingerprint sensor into the main display. Apple Chief Design Officer Jony Ive has reportedly expressed a desire for the iPhone to appear as a single sheet of glass. Implementing an edge-to- edge display would certainly move the iPhone closer to his vision, as would eliminating the physical Home button. It may simply be a matter of not having a choice. At a recent meeting with Apple executives last month, one of the company’s China-based engineers asked why the 2016 iPhone lacked any major design changes. Sources claim Apple said the new technology it was aiming to implement would need more time to develop. Sources say Apple hasn’t yet finalized the design of the 2017 iPhone so it’s possible that such changes may not make it into the product that eventually goes into production. Do you think Apple should put off any major design changes until 2017 or go ahead and roll them out now? Granted, it's probably too late in the process to make a major switch now but we're curious what you think. Would a price cut sway your mind either way? Let us know in the comments section below. 2016-06-23 13:55 Shawn Knight

93 Instagram passes the half a billion users milestone When Facebook paid $1 billion for Instagram back in 2012, some people thought that Mark Zuckerberg’s company may have spent too much for the photo- and video-sharing app. But today Instagram passed the half a billion users milestone, proving yet again that the acquisition was a good deal. Out of its 500 million users - 80 percent of which live outside the US - two-thirds (300 million) are using Instagram every day. It sees an average of 95 million daily photo and video uploads, with around 4.2 billion "likes. " Instagram now boasts roughly double the number of daily active users (DAU) of its closest rival, Snapchat, which has around 150 million DAUs. News of its rapidly increasing popularity will no doubt be a blow to Twitter, which continues to lag behind with about 136 million DAUs. Facebook, meanwhile, continues to see almost two billion people accessing its network each day, and its $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp is also looking like a bargain, as the messaging app recently passed one billion registered users. It seems the visual overhaul that Instagram received last month hasn’t had any negative impact, despite the changes not being universally loved. Gone is the classic, skeuomorphic-style icon, replaced with a flatter, more colorful image. The UI was also updated so it consists of mostly white and gray with the text showing in black. Instagram said it wants the only color to come from the content users upload. It was last September when Instagram reported it had surpassed the 400 million users milestone. At this rate, it’s quickly catching up with that other incredibly popular Facebook-owned application, Messenger. Image credit: charnsitr / Shutterstock 2016-06-23 13:55 Rob Thubron

94 RedEye could let your phone see 24-7: Energy-stingy tech could give wearable computers continuous vision -- ScienceDaily RedEye, new technology from Rice's Efficient Computing Group that was unveiled today at the International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA 2016) conference in Seoul, South Korea, could provide computers with continuous vision -- a first step toward allowing the devices to see what their owners see and keep track of what they need to remember. "The concept is to allow our computers to assist us by showing them what we see throughout the day," said group leader Lin Zhong, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice and the co-author of a new study about RedEye. "It would be like having a personal assistant who can remember someone you met, where you met them, what they told you and other specific information like prices, dates and times. " Zhong said RedEye is an example of the kind of technology the computing industry is developing for use with wearable, hands-free, always-on devices that are designed to support people in their daily lives. The trend, which is sometimes referred to as "pervasive computing" or "ambient intelligence," centers on technology that can recognize and even anticipate what someone needs and provide it right away. "The pervasive-computing movement foresees devices that are personal assistants, which help us in big and small ways at almost every moment of our lives," Zhong said. "But a key enabler of this technology is equipping our devices to see what we see and hear what we hear. Smell, taste and touch may come later, but vision and sound will be the initial sensory inputs. " Zhong said the bottleneck for continuous vision is energy consumption because today's best smartphone cameras, though relatively inexpensive, are battery killers, especially when they are processing real-time video. Zhong and former Rice graduate student Robert LiKamWa began studying the problem in the summer of 2012 when they worked at Microsoft Research's Mobility and Networking Research Group in Redmond, Wash., in collaboration with group director and Microsoft Distinguished Scientist Victor Bahl. LiKamWa said the team measured the energy profiles of commercially available, off-the-shelf image sensors and determined that existing technology would need to be about 100 times more energy-efficient for continuous vision to become commercially viable. This was the motivation behind LiKamWa's doctoral thesis, which pursues software and hardware support for efficient computer vision. In an award-winning paper a year later, LiKamWa, Zhong, Bahl and colleagues showed they could improve the power consumption of off-the- shelf image sensors tenfold simply through software optimization. "RedEye grew from that because we still needed another tenfold improvement in energy efficiency, and we knew we would need to redesign both the hardware and software to achieve that," LiKamWa said. He said the energy bottleneck was the conversion of images from analog to digital format. "Real-world signals are analog, and converting them to digital signals is expensive in terms of energy," he said. "There's a physical limit to how much energy savings you can achieve for that conversion. We decided a better option might be to analyze the signals while they were still analog. " The main drawback of processing analog signals -- and the reason digital conversion is the standard first step for most image-processing systems today -- is that analog signals are inherently noisy, LiKamWa said. To make RedEye attractive to device makers, the team needed to demonstrate that it could reliably interpret analog signals. "We needed to show that we could tell a cat from a dog, for instance, or a table from a chair," he said. Rice graduate student Yunhui Hou and undergraduates Mia Polansky and Yuan Gao were also members of the team, which decided to attack the problem using a combination of the latest techniques from machine learning, system architecture and circuit design. In the case of machine learning, RedEye uses a technique called a "convolutional neural network," an algorithmic structure inspired by the organization of the animal visual cortex. LiKamWa said Hou brought new ideas related to system architecture circuit design based on previous experience working with specialized processors called analog-to-digital converters at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. "We bounced ideas off one another regarding architecture and circuit design, and we began to understand the possibilities for doing early processing in order to gather key information in the analog domain," LiKamWa said. "Conventional systems extract an entire image through the analog-to-digital converter and conduct image processing on the digital file," he said. "If you can shift that processing into the analog domain, then you will have a much smaller data bandwidth that you need to ship through that ADC bottleneck. " LiKamWa said convolutional neural networks are the state-of-the-art way to perform object recognition, and the combination of these techniques with analog-domain processing presents some unique privacy advantages for RedEye. "The upshot is that we can recognize objects -- like cats, dogs, keys, phones, computers, faces, etc. -- without actually looking at the image itself," he said. "We're just looking at the analog output from the vision sensor. We have an understanding of what's there without having an actual image. This increases energy efficiency because we can choose to digitize only the images that are worth expending energy to create. It also may help with privacy implications because we can define a set of rules where the system will automatically discard the raw image after it has finished processing. That image would never be recoverable. So, if there are times, places or specific objects a user doesn't want to record -- and doesn't want the system to remember -- we should design mechanisms to ensure that photos of those things are never created in the first place. " Zhong said research on RedEye is ongoing. He said the team is working on a circuit layout for the RedEye architecture that can be used to test for layout issues, component mismatch, signal crosstalk and other hardware issues. Work is also ongoing to improve performance in low-light environments and other settings with low signal-to-noise ratios, he said. 2016-06-23 13:54 feeds.sciencedaily

95 Self-learning arm controlled by thought -- ScienceDaily According to the developers -- fellows at the Laboratory of Medical Instrument-Making, the Institute of Non- Destructive Testing -- Mikhail Grigoriev, Nikita Turushev and Evgeniy Tarakanets, the manufacturing of human prosthetic limbs has been available for a few decades. But to make them functional, translate them into a full replacement of a lost body part is still impossible. "To date, there are quite available traction prostheses. Their motions are carried out by means of traction belts which are superimposed from the repaired arm across the back as loop around of the healthy shoulder. That is the prosthesis performs by motions of a healthy arm. The drawbacks of this type are in need of unnatural body motions to control it," said Nikita Turushev. The algorithm being developed by the polytechnicers will save people from having to wear traction belts. Sensors on the prosthesis will pick up myoelectric signals. Human brain sends signals to muscles making them to perform the necessary actions. The system will analyze commands coming to the healthy arm part and "guess" what motion the prosthesis should do. "Initially, software will be universal, but we will adapt it to each specific artificial arm. Further, a machine learning algorithm will copy its host wearing the prosthesis: to fix myoelectric signals and choose required motions," says Mikhail Grigoriev. Now the young scientists are "teaching" the algorithm different signals and their meanings. Initially, they will examine at least 150 people with healthy limbs. "Remembered" the signals and following them meanings the software will produce them at the stage of medical trials. The polytechnicers gained the grant of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research on the development in 2015. In two years they should present the prosthesis prototype and software for its operation support. 2016-06-23 13:54 feeds.sciencedaily

Total 95 articles. Created at 2016-06-23 18:00