TECHNOLOGY TOOLS of the TRAD E

display HDMI output port. Battery life system is much more conve - that’s is up to 7.2 hours. nient. As you write on the Boo - coated with a www.lenovo.com/yoga3pro gie Board, you touch a button low-glare finish. to save, and a blank page ap - The overall size of Boogie Board pears. You can save up to 1,000 this latest Lenovo Sync 9.7 pages before you transfer your Yoga is smaller than its Boogie Board eWriters from Im - work to your computer or Ever - predecessor, but the prov are paperless note cloud. The stylus is like a Lenovo Yoga 3 screen has been maintained at a notepads designed for writing full-sized pen, and the feel is Pro generous 13.3". The Yoga is and sketching with the added pretty close to that of writing on In an effort to survive the wave classified as an Ultrabook, ability to save your work on paper. The slate is black, and the of 7" and 10" tablets that are smaller and lighter than a sub - your computer. The most recent pen strokes are a light gray, but getting lighter and faster, note - notebook, with the typical low- version of these slates is the when synced to your computer/ book manufacturers now offer a power Core processor, a Sync 9.7, which will wirelessly tablet/phone, the images be - confusing array of alternative solid-state drive, and unibody transfer your notes to your Win - come black lines on a white portable computers. There are construction. The Yoga 3 Pro is dows or Mac computer or your “paper” background. The on- notebooks, netbooks, subnote - actually the slimmest Ultrabook, iOS or Android phone or tablet. board battery will last approxi - books, Ultrabooks, and even only 0.5" thick and weighing The sync happens automatically mately one week, and it takes Chromebooks (a built 2.62 lbs. It’s thinner and lighter when you activate the Sync App about six hours for a full charge. around an operating system than a MacBook Air. Lenovo on your computer or device. The It goes into sleep mode after that’s built around a browser). says the “watchband hinge” transfer is made via a Bluetooth about one hour of inactivity. What they all seem to have in provides six separate hinges for connection. The notes that are In that mode, the battery will common is a striving for a stability. When you fold back the synced can be directed to your last up to 100 days. lighter, more compact, yet still screen, the computer can lay flat Evernote, Facebook, Twitter, or www.myboogieboard.com powerful form factor. Some, like on a table with both the key - e-mail accounts or just tucked the new Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro, board and screen facing up, or away in the folder system you NewerTech simplify the process of deciding you can stand it in a triangle create on your computer. The Wireless Keypad between a tablet and notebook display mode or flip it all the connection for the earlier Boo - The creators of NewerTech’s by incorporating the two into way back as a tablet. The key - gie Board slates was via a wired Aluminum Keypad relied on in - one. The Yoga 3 Pro is a super board is disabled when you fold USB connection, but this new put from accountants to ensure thin, very light computer with a it more than 180 degrees. It best key-throw, feel, design, beautiful, high-density touch - has an Intel Core M 70 size, and connectivity for its screen and a 360-degree hinge processor running Windows new full-sized 28-key nu - that lets you fold it into a working 8.1. There are two USB 3.0 meric keypad. Designed to tablet. The screen is a 3,200 × ports and one USB 2.0 port, an complement the look of the 1,800 IPS (In-Plane Switching) SD card reader, and a micro- Apple wireless keyboards, the

58 STRATEGIC FINANCE I January 2015 TECH FORUM

Just Now By Michael Castelluccio, Editor

Just as December has become a convenient vantage point from which to look back at the expiring year, January has become the traditional time for predic - lining surrounds and protects tions and resolutions. But when do we get the chance the screen and the back of the to step on the brakes and just look around at where we tablet while leaving the screen are now? Well, this year we’ll skip the New Year predic - exposed. All the corners and tions about where technology will take us and instead edges have the same rigid drop take a few moments to step out and glance around the protection as the outer cover, digital landscape for a closer look at what we’re all and cutouts allow access to all plugged into right now. the ports, controls, cameras, and keypad easily attaches to Apple microphones. The front cover CHANGE keyboards with a bracket. It folds and has a magnetized flap As for the hardware in our tech ecosystem, the churn is works with all Bluetooth-com - that snaps shut when folded everywhere, and it’s as loud as ever—powerful enough to patible computers, , and over. The same magnet lets you move even the largest forces. Take the Apple Corporation, devices and features quick pair - attach the cover to the back, for instance. Apple hasn’t only pushed aside IBM and Mi - ing and a range of up to 30 feet creating the correct angle for crosoft, but it now possesses a market capitalization of with automatic repairing. The 28 typing or a stable stand for $680 billion. Forbes.com points out that it’s more than keys include delete, tab, naviga - viewing videos. The viewing , Amazon, Netflix, and Twitter combined, and tion, and more. Power is pro - stand is more secure than the the website wonders, “Can Apple be the first trillion-dol - vided by two AAA batteries, and Apple Smart Cover. The STM lar company?” the small power drain provides cover also triggers instant on/off Well, one counterintuitive element of Apple’s massive long life. The brushed aluminum with opening and closing. Made presence is that it’s almost certainly temporary. Recall model features white keys, and in Australia, the cover comes in that this corporation was facing bankruptcy in the 1990s there are versions with black four colors and makes a nice when, ironically, Microsoft kicked in $250 million to save keys. International versions with step up from the standard Apple it from oblivion. Remember Compaq and the more re - illustrative black or white keys iPad Air Cover. The Galaxy cently receding giants Blackberry and HP? Or Nokia— will be announced soon. model comes in red or black. the once, and relatively recent, undisputed master of the www.newertech.com www.stmbags.com mobile universe? As we watch Apple ascending like a planet-sized STM Studio satellite on the horizon, there’s a lesson in the cycle of Cover empires, present and past: Nothing stands still. The Greek STM Studio Covers for the iPad philosopher Heraclitus (born 535 BC) had a great Air and Samsung Galaxy tablets metaphor to explain how the only thing that doesn’t provide lightweight and slim change is change itself. He said you can never step into construction in a form that feels the same river twice because it’s constantly becoming really good in your hands. You something else. And so, there’s a downstream for Apple snap the tablet into the snug, continued on next page hard shell bracket, and a soft

Janaury 2015 I STRATEGIC FINANCE 59 TECHNOLOGY TECH FORUM

where giants like and Borland are computers that can write their own programs to correct now flow away from our memory. and improve themselves. There are programs and satellite systems that produce accurate weather intelligence that’s es - THE DIGITAL DIVIDE sential and occasionally lifesaving. Thousands of new robots As we look around, it isn’t just the large corporate presences are now buzzing all over Amazon warehouse floors, while in the landscape. It seems that computers are now absolutely their cousins are in the air over war zones delivering dead - everywhere. Where once they used to be on our desks at lier packages. work and somewhere in the basement at the bank, they now Computers will be getting smarter. Just how smart is un - are packed in our briefcases, in our pockets, on our wrists, known, but if their intentions ever become their own, then embedded as chips in our pets, in our televisions, and in our the digital divide will become critical. Today, there are those appliances—not to mention the wide digital currents of who insist that machine intelligence has limits well short of countless networks that flow silently around us and that we human capabilities. Others, like the Oxford physicist wade through without a notion of whose cellular traffic or Stephen Hawking, worry about artificial intelligence. In an Internet packets are passing through us. There are few places interview, Hawking told the BBC, “I think the development left on the planet where computers and their networks aren’t of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the hu - ubiquitous, and this presents a few additional problems. man race. Once humans develop artificial intelligence, it will Usually when you think of “the digital divide” you think take off on its own and redesign itself at an ever-increasing of the cyber haves and the have-nots. But there’s another rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, kind of separation as well. We might be cocooned by our couldn’t compete and would be superseded.” personal devices, but we’re further from, rather than closer to, understanding how these devices work and how they’re IS ANYTHING SECURE? working on us. One last key feature of the current landscape is cyber security Granted, we have been surrounded by machines since the or, rather, the lack of it. In a recent New York Times article on burgeoning of the Industrial Revolution, but mechanical de - hacking, Nicole Perlroth reports a 10,000-fold increase in the vices are simpler to understand than computers. With com - number of new digital threats over the last 12 years. She con - puters, the chips, circuitry, and programmed instruction sets cludes, “There are only two types of companies left in the are a little more opaque as the combined effort of electrical United States: those that have been hacked and those that do engineering and computer programming. Not many stop not yet know they have been hacked.” and wonder, “Where’s the cloud, and what’s it doing when I Last year, 552 million people had their identities stolen, get its attention on my phone?” Figuratively and literally, according to Symantec, and as more and more of the vital that kind of question is beyond the reach of most. And as infrastructure of the country goes online, there’s a conse - we get closer to our devices, seemingly never without them, quent increase in the risk to all. we seem to be getting further from understanding how they There are measures that can be taken, but it might take manage what they do for us. an event bigger than the Home Depot attack to move people But isn’t that the way it has always been since we started to act. Perlroth quotes former defense secretary Leon importing machines into our daily lives? And who needs to Panetta, who said the catalyst will probably have to be a know how your watch or even your cellphone works? If it “cyber-Pearl Harbor.” breaks, you aren’t going to fix it yourself. Whatever the inspiration, there are three avenues that Well, with computing, it’s a little different. Computers could be taken by companies and individuals. The first is to have the potential to be smart. Some would extend that po - start using stronger passwords and/or biometrics like tential to include “intelligent.” In their current state, our dig - fingerprint or retina recognition. The second is to encrypt ital machines can solve complicated math and mechanical whatever you need to save or send to others. And the most problems, and they even have begun doing things like recog - important for companies is to begin to build in layers of nize patterns, translate languages, and beat the best human protection and give up the current reliance on patching after competition in chess and at Jeopardy! What we see when an attack has taken place. Also, companies have to identify looking around the digital landscape today are glimmers of the resources that need the greatest protection. what might be classified as human-like intelligence. There Welcome 2015 and wherever it’s likely to take us. SF

60 STRATEGIC FINANCE I Janaury 2015