Announcement
68 articles, 2016-07-07 18:01 1 Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Could Receive New Gear VR Samsung has imported a new Gear VR to India for testing (1.03/2) 2016-07-07 09:36 1KB news.softpedia.com 2 Avast to acquire antivirus rival AVG for $1.3BN
(1.02/2) Although Avast and AVG both offer paid security tools, they are best known for their free antivirus software. Although Avast and AVG both offer paid security tools, they are best known for their free antivirus software. Some people confuse the two firms because of the similarity... 2016-07-07 09:13 1KB feeds.betanews.com 3 Avast Announces Plans to Buy AVG for $1.3 Billion (1.02/2) Avast will pay $25/share for all of AVG's stock 2016-07-07 09:05 2KB news.softpedia.com 4 Acer Launches New TravelMate X3 Laptop with Windows 10 Acer TravelMate X349 officially unveiled today 2016-07-07 08:29 2KB (1.02/2) news.softpedia.com 5 Microsoft's new Dynamics 365 will bundle ERP and CRM in the cloud A new app store, meanwhile, will help business users find line-of- (1.02/2) business SaaS applications 2016-07-07 03:58 3KB www.infoworld.com 6 Mozilla Won’t Launch Firefox on Windows Phones No plans for such a project, the company says 2016-07-07 09:39 1KB news.softpedia.com (0.01/2)
7 FFmpeg 3.1 "Laplace" Open-Source Multimedia Framework Gets First Point Release
(0.01/2) FFmpeg 3.1.1 is now available for select GNU/Linux distros 2016-07-07 08:55 2KB news.softpedia.com 8 Ice sheet modeling of Greenland, Antarctica helps predict sea-level rise -- ScienceDaily Predicting the expected loss of ice sheet mass is difficult due to the complexity of modeling ice sheet behavior. To better understand this loss, a team of researchers has been improving the reliability and efficiency of computational models that describe ice sheet behavior and dynamics. 2016-07-07 18:00 7KB feeds.sciencedaily.com
9 Lightbend Helps Developers Build Fast Data, Microservices Apps Lightbend, a pioneer in Reactive Systems, is building out its tools to support enterprises with cloud-first business models built on microservices. 2016-07-07 15:00 5KB www.eweek.com 10 IT professionals: volunteer your skills to help a charity The newly launched Charity IT Association wants to help charities improve their use of technology – and they’re looking for support from IT expert volunteers 2016-07-07 14:01 2KB www.computerweekly.com 11 Passenger Carries Gun-Shaped iPhone Case in Airport, Police Trolls Him Online After previously arresting him, obviously 2016-07-07 11:54 2KB news.softpedia.com 12 Google Now on Tap Features Instant Translations It also comes with improved search and Discover mode 2016-07-07 11:19 2KB news.softpedia.com 13 Lenovo is considering UK price rises, job cuts and other options, to deal with Brexit Following price rises from Dell and OnePlus, Lenovo says that it's also considering increasing prices, and potential job cuts, among other options - but it seems that no decisions have yet been made. 2016-07-07 11:12 2KB feedproxy.google.com 14 Snap Launchers Promise to Better Integrate Desktop Applications with Snaps It follows general desktop theming, global menu integration 2016-07-07 11:01 2KB news.softpedia.com 15 Woman live-streams the police shooting of her boyfriend on Facebook We've had quite a few shooting deaths lately, some of them caught on video. Just yesterday we saw the cell phone video that was captured of an incident in Baton Rouge. That incident resulted in widespread protests, though all peaceful so far. We’ve had... 2016-07-07 10:51 1KB feeds.betanews.com 16 Bulgaria passes law requiring all government-developed software to be open source Bulgarian government shifts towards open source to better support public-sector software development,Open Source,Software ,open source 2016-07-07 18:00 2KB www.computing.co.uk 17 Samba Patched Against Important SMB2/3 Client Security Issue, Update Now An attacker could have downgraded client side SMB2 signing 2016-07-07 10:08 2KB news.softpedia.com 18 ASUS launches ZenBook Flip UX360CA, a Windows 10 notebook with 'Cortana with Voice- Premium' ASUS' new Windows 10 notebook is thin and light with a metal body, 13.3-inch touchscreen and 360-degree hinge - and it's also the first ZenBook to be "certified with Cortana with Voice-Premium". 2016-07-07 10:04 1KB feedproxy.google.com 19 'Megaupload is coming back' The notorious internet mogul, Kim Dotcom, known for his file sharing companies, said that a new service will launch soon. He also hinted that the new service will come in January 2017. 2016-07-07 09:48 1KB feedproxy.google.com 20 Microsoft’s Surface Phone Won’t Be a Rival to Apple’s iPhone Redmond to target businesses with its upcoming phone 2016-07-07 08:51 2KB news.softpedia.com 21 With Thinga.me from Microsoft you can collect and share 'things, not photos' Thinga.me is a new iOS app from Microsoft Garage, which allows users to photograph, crop out, collect and share "objects". It's a bit like Pinterest, but less social and currently in closed beta. 2016-07-07 08:42 1KB feedproxy.google.com 22 NVIDIA SHIELD Android TV Firmware 3.2.0 Is Up for Grabs The version supports YouTube 4K 60FPS videos and Dolby Atmos 2016-07-07 08:18 1KB drivers.softpedia.com 23 Samsung predicting increased profits thanks to healthy Galaxy S7 sales Samsung is predicting higher than expected profits for Q2 2016, up from the same period last year, with healthy Galaxy S7 sales one of the main contributors to this latest success. 2016-07-07 07:58 1KB feedproxy.google.com 24 Windows Phone 8.1 Loses Top Mobile Banking App Wells Fargo pulls support for WP 8.1 app 2016-07-07 07:36 2KB news.softpedia.com 25 First Windows 10 Universal app shows up on Xbox One, as Blu-ray player app gets updated The first Universal Windows 10 app has finally landed on the Xbox One. Unfortunately, it's only an updated Blu-ray player app. Still, more apps should follows after the Anniversary Update. 2016-07-07 07:20 2KB feedproxy.google.com 26 Evolve set to become a free-to-play game on PC, beta starts today When a timer appeared on the website of asymmetrical multiplayer shooter Evolve this week, many thought the game's sequel would be announced once it reached zero. But when the title was removed from Steam yesterday, another theory was put forward:… 2016-07-07 07:00 2KB www.techspot.com 27 Microsoft Launches Exclusive iPhone App That Crops Objects from Your Photos Thinga. Me is the most recent project of Microsoft Garage 2016-07-07 06:53 2KB news.softpedia.com 28 Facebook to Test Video Downloads for Offline Viewing in India Facebook intends to start the test on July 11 2016-07-07 06:47 2KB news.softpedia.com 29 ) Microsoft tries to attract interns with 'dranks' and 'hella noms' Twitter user Patrick Burtchaell says that his roommate received a letter from Microsoft today from a Microsoft recruiter. The invitation for Internapalooza promised 'dranks', 'hella noms', and more. 2016-07-07 06:30 1KB feedproxy.google.com 30 Mozilla wants to help you get around the web in a better way Mozilla's VP of Firefox Product, Nick Nguyen, has announced that Mozilla is working on a sort of forward button for Firefox which will use a context graph to find suitable material for users. 2016-07-07 05:48 2KB feedproxy.google.com
31 Satya Nadella email to employees: Senior leadership team update From: Satya Nadella To: Microsoft All Employees Date: Thursday, July 7, 5:00 a.m... 2016-07-07 05:00 4KB news.microsoft.com 32 Bain Capital & friends pour $11M into BevSpot to stop bars from running dry BevSpot has found a problem worth solving: preventing your local bar from running out of your favorite tipple. Raising an $11 million Series B round from Bain.. 2016-07-07 00:00 1KB feedproxy.google.com 33 Pressed by falling numbers, Apple adds iPhone and iPad Pro to back-to-school promotion The inclusion of iPad Pro also syncs with Apple's assertion that a tablet-keyboard combo can satisfy the laptop itch 2016-07-07 04:06 5KB www.infoworld.com 34 Google fixes over 100 flaws in Android, many in chipset drivers Manufacturers can choose between two patch levels, one dedicated to device-specific fixes 2016-07-07 03:55 3KB www.infoworld.com 35 Samsung just had its most profitable quarter for more than two years Samsung has reported its most profitable quarter of business for over two years thanks to its resurgent smartphone business. 2016-07-07 00:00 2KB feedproxy.google.com 36 Post-quantum crypto startup PQ bags $10.3M Series A Being first to market with complex technology doesn't usually make for a simple sales proposition. Nor does trying to pioneer an alternative approach as a.. 2016-07-07 00:00 8KB feedproxy.google.com 37 SendGrid Launches New Endpoint to Complete API Email Management SendGrid announced its latest endpoint for its Web API: v3/mail/send. The endpoint rounds out the v3 release that began last year. With the new send endpoint, SendGrid has realized its goal of complete API management via API. All of the v2 functionality remains available with additional features. 2016-07-07 00:00 1KB feedproxy.google.com 38 Research: Exploring the connection between DevOps and digital Is adopting DevOps a prerequisite for going digital, or a by-product of the digitalisation process? ,Careers and Skills,Developer ,DevOps,DevOps Summit 2016-07-07 18:01 817Bytes www.computing.co.uk 39 John Lewis CIO Paul Coby promoted to uber-CIO of John Lewis Partnership Paul Coby to oversee IT of both John Lewis and Waitrose,Cloud and Infrastructure,Business Software ,John Lewis,Paul Coby,Waitrose,Oracle 2016-07-07 18:01 895Bytes www.computing.co.uk 40 Oracle must pay $3bn compensation to HPE over Itanium support Oracle loses latest round in five-year legal battle with HPE,Software,Chips and Components,Hardware ,software,Oracle,Itanium,server,Unix,Intel,HPE,HP 2016-07-07 18:01 883Bytes www.computing.co.uk 41 Engineer models heart valves, wind turbines for better designs, performance -- ScienceDaily Computer modeling technologies are being developed to help engineers design better machines. The models are being applied to wind turbines, artificial hearts and gas turbines. 2016-07-07 14:59 4KB feeds.sciencedaily.com 42 How to tame your robot -- ScienceDaily A student has put the power of interacting with robots into our hands — literally. 2016-07-07 14:59 4KB feeds.sciencedaily.com 43 Bioinformatics software developed to predict effect of cancer-associated mutations: Software analyzes 40,000 proteins per minute -- ScienceDaily A new piece of software has been developed that analyses mutations in proteins. These mutations are potential inducers of diseases, such as cancer. The development is free, easy, versatile and, above all, fast bioinformatics application that is capable of analyzing and combining the... 2016-07-07 14:59 4KB feeds.sciencedaily.com 44 Computing a secret, unbreakable key: Researchers develop the first available software to evaluate the security of any protocol for Quantum Key Distribution -- ScienceDaily What once took months by some of the world's leading scientists can now be done in seconds by undergraduate students thanks to new software, paving the way for fast, secure quantum communication. Researchers developed the first available software to evaluate the security of any protocol for Quantum Key Distribution. 2016-07-07 14:59 3KB feeds.sciencedaily.com
45 Computer security: With Boxmate malicious programs have no place left to hide -- ScienceDaily By preventing unexpected behavior changes, the “Boxmate” approach defends existing embedded systems, mobile devices, and even servers against known and as-yet unknown forms of attack. 2016-07-07 14:59 4KB feeds.sciencedaily.com 46 How to Study and Apply Ideas from Successful Organisations Studying successful organisations can inspire you and provide ideas to improve your own organisation. Helena Moore explains how reading case studies about high performance leadership and culture from organisations like Netflix, Zappos, and Virgin, and visiting organisations like Timpson has helped to understand what makes these... 2016-07-07 15:05 10KB www.infoq.com 47 Overcoming Paradigms to Become Truly Agile Truly agile is what you are, and to become agile you need to overcome paradigms, argues Arie van Bennekum, co-author of the agile manifesto. It takes "being agile" and not "doing agile" to achieve success. Agile is an interaction concept... 2016-07-07 15:04 10KB www.infoq.com 48 Professor studies how apps can affect productivity You've been working at your computer all morning and decide to take a quick break. You plan to spend five minutes reading a news article here, watching a short YouTube video there. But before you know it, you glance at the clock and realize an... 2016-07-07 15:04 6KB phys.org 49 Ruby On Rails Reaches 5.0 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. 2016-07-07 14:59 2KB www.i-programmer.info 50 DevOps causing headaches? Tackle the issues head-on, advise experts Expert panel at DevOps Summit 2016 advises tackling DevOps culture problems head-on ,Software,Developer ,DevOps 2016-07-07 11:28 3KB www.v3.co.uk 51 Data Generation Gap: Younger IT Workers Believe The Hype There's a growing generation gap when it comes the promise of revenues from data-driven projects. Where younger workers see the future, older workers may only see another cycle of tech hype. 2016-07-07 11:06 3KB www.informationweek.com 52 Google reportedly working on two Android Wear 2.0 Nexus smartwatches According to a credible report, Google might be getting ready to unveil a couple of smartwatches, powered by the new Android Wear 2.0 and offering Google Assistant integration. 2016-07-07 10:52 3KB feedproxy.google.com 53 Create and edit animated GIFs with SoftDigi Easy GIF SoftDigi Easy GIF is a $20.95 suite of tools for creating and editing animated GIFs. The program doesn’t require any artistic or design ability. Open an existing animation and you can resize it, remove frames, change colors, set transparency and more, all... 2016-07-07 10:24 3KB feeds.betanews.com 54 Windows 10 Anniversary Update, Salesforce On Outlook: Microsoft Roundup Microsoft announced the rollout date for its Windows 10 Anniversary Update. There are plans to kill the Surface 3 in December. There's a Salesforce Lightning add-in for Outlook. 2016-07-07 10:05 5KB www.informationweek.com 55 Predictive Analytics, Wearables Data Driving EHR Growth Electronic health records may not be new, but they are gaining strong adoption. That's driven by trends such as integration with predictive analytics systems and telemedicine. 2016-07-07 10:05 4KB www.informationweek.com 56 Microsoft Updates Office Preview for Android New version now available for download for Insider users 2016-07-07 09:57 1KB www.softpedia.com
57 90 percent of security events are caused by bots Bots account for 49 percent of all internet traffic, most of which is from malicious 'bad bots' according to website security company Incapsula. Bots account for 49 percent of all internet traffic, most of which is from malicious ‘bad bots’ according to website security company... 2016-07-07 09:18 1KB feeds.betanews.com 58 Facebook malware infects 10,000 users in two days A new malware was spotted by security researchers at Kaspersky Lab, targeting Facebook users. According to the researchers’ new report, there have been 10,000 victims in two days. A new malware was spotted by security researchers at Kaspersky Lab, targeting Facebook users. According... 2016-07-07 08:37 2KB feeds.betanews.com 59 Starship Technologies To Test Robot Delivery Service Pedestrians in several European cities will soon see semi- autonomous robots traveling alongside them, delivering goods for local merchants. 2016-07-07 08:06 5KB www.informationweek.com 60 How much storage does your laptop need? The question nags as I prepare to review TarDisk Pear flash memory expansion. The doohickey is available in 128 or 256 gig capacities for either MacBook Air or Pro. It fits neatly and snuggly into the SDXC card slot, which is required; color and finish match... 2016-07-07 07:08 4KB feeds.betanews.com 61 12 Ways To Cultivate A Data-Savvy Workforce Organizations aspiring to become data-driven need to take a close look at their HR practices. If your company's hiring and retention standards aren't keeping up with the times, you may be losing valuable job candidates and employees. To minimize the pitfalls of building a... 2016-07-07 07:06 3KB www.informationweek.com 62 Startups take note: Disruptive apps stand every chance of success Established tech brands need to innovate or risk being muscled out 2016-07-07 06:30 2KB www.techradar.com 63 HTC selects Lifeliqe as educational VR content partner This morning, visual learning platform Lifeliqe announced a strategic partnership with HTC to become their provider of educational virtual reality (VR).. 2016-07-07 00:00 1KB feedproxy.google.com
64 Hillary Clinton and the Blockchain How Secretary Clinton’s unexpected support of “public service blockchain applications” could positively impact Americans. 2016-07-07 00:00 12KB feedproxy.google.com 65 Facebook blames ‘technical glitch’ for temporary removal of Falcon Heights shooting video Facebook has denied censoring a viral video taken after a police officer fatally shot a man in his car in Minnesota. Lavish Reynolds pulled out her phone.. 2016-07-07 00:00 2KB feedproxy.google.com 66 Black Swan Data scores £6.2M to help companies make better use of consumer and public data Data science and tech startup Black Swan Data, which has built a platform to let companies improve their business/marketing intelligence by mining and.. 2016-07-07 00:00 3KB feedproxy.google.com 67 Microsoft to introduce more flexible Enterprise Advantage licensing in 2017 Microsoft moves to let customers mix on-premise and cloud tools in their volume licenses,Licensing,Business Software ,Microsoft,Azure 2016-07-07 18:01 822Bytes www.computing.co.uk 68 Cisco and IBM to partner on collaboration tools and analytics New services underpinned by IBM Watson analytics,Software ,IBM,Cisco 2016-07-07 18:01 670Bytes www.computing.co.uk Articles
68 articles, 2016-07-07 18:01
1 Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Could Receive New Gear VR (1.03/2) Samsung has been putting its focus on mobile-based VR for quite some time now, ever since the company unveiled the Galaxy Note 4 and the first Gear VR in 2014. Since then, the company has been working with Oculus on improving the technology and culminated with the launch of the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge with Gear VR earlier this year. The Gear VR is currently compatible with Galaxy S7 and S6 models, as well as the Note 5, but the phone has to be paired with the Oculus app in order to work. Samsung's upcoming flagship is the Galaxy Note 7, and fans of the company's handsets are wondering if the Gear VR offered with Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge will be compatible with the Note 7. It's a good question since the Note 7 has been tipped to come with USB Type-C port. If that happens, Samsung will be required to release a new Gear VR edition in order to continue the trend of bundling VR headsets with flagships. A new Gear VR has appeared on Zauba (via SamMobile ), this one featuring the model number SM-R323. The VR headset launched with the Galaxy S7 models had the code name SM-R322. It's too early to say for sure if Samsung will actually launch a new Gear VR, but the Zauba listing seems to point in that direction. New information should surface over the next few weeks, and the August 2 debut of the Galaxy Note 7 will certainly disperse all uncertainties on this matter. 2016-07-07 09:36 Alexandra Vaidos
2 Avast to acquire antivirus rival AVG for $1.3BN (1.02/2) Although Avast and AVG both offer paid security tools, they are best known for their free antivirus software. Some people confuse the two firms because of the similarity of what they do, and the fact their names begin with the same letters, they were founded at around the same time, and originated in the Czech Republic, but that confusion soon won’t be an issue as today Avast announces it is set to acquire AVG. Avast is offering $25 per share, about $1.3 billion in total, for its rival and is awaiting AVG shareholder approval (Avast, unlike the public and listed AVG, is itself a private company). As to what this means for users of AVG and Avast products it’s hard to say for certain until the deal is finalized. However, Vincent Steckler, CEO of Avast does point out the benefits of the move: 2016-07-07 09:13 By Wayne
3 Avast Announces Plans to Buy AVG for $1.3 Billion (1.02/2) Vincent Steckler, Avast's CEO, says his company intends to forward a tender offer to AVG to buy all the firm's stock for the price of $25 per share and a total sum of $1.3 billion. Avast Software is a privately owned company while AVG is currently a public enterprise listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Steckler says in a blog post today that AVG's Board of Directors is giving the go-ahead for this transaction and will be recommending shareholders to vote to accept the offer. If the AVG vote goes as planned, the acquisition will then go through the governmental regulatory procedures, and AVG will become part of Avast. The two companies often get mistaken one for the other because they were both founded in the Czech Republic at the end of the ‘80s - the start of the ‘90s (Avast in 1991 in Prague, AVG in 1988 in the city of Brno). Avast currently operates out of Amsterdam, Netherlands. Both AVG and Avast have userbases of around 200 million users. Steckler says that, after the acquisition, Avast will have around 250 million PC and Mac users, and another 160 million mobile users. He also highlights that Avast "will be gaining some exciting mobile technology. " "The process does not allow us to talk a lot about how we would operate after combining, etc. so I can just say a little," Steckler says. Avast has recently received a financial backing of $1.7 billion from investors such as Credit Suisse Securities, Jefferies, and UBS Investment Bank. According to OPSWAT data from January 2015, Avast is leading the antivirus market with a market share of 21.4 percent while AVG is ranked third with 8.6 percent. After the acquisition, Avast will have a total share of 30 percent. 2016-07-07 09:05 Catalin Cimpanu
4 Acer Launches New TravelMate X3 Laptop with Windows 10 (1.02/2) The TravelMate X349 features a 14-inch IPS display with a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels and includes a LED backlit keyboard that makes the laptop super easy to use during the night. In terms of power, the laptop features the sixth-generation Intel Core processors (up to i7) and a maximum of 8GB DDR4 memory while for storage the top-of-the- range configuration comes with a 512GB SSD. Microsoft hasn’t provided the exact specs of the battery, but it claims it provides up to 10 hours of autonomy per full charge. Other than that, the laptop comes with a USB Type-C port that can be used with Acer’s own dock for connecting two separate 4K displays, but also with a 720p HD webcam, and a wide Precision Touchpad. The laptop weighs in only 1.53 kg (3.3 pounds) and is super thin at just 18 mm (0.7 inches). And just as expected since it ships with Windows 10 Pro out of the box, it also features an integrated touch fingerprint sensor that supports Windows Hello. “This series lights up great Windows 10 features, including your personal digital assistant Cortana, convenient and secure login with Windows Hello using the integrated touch fingerprint sensor and access to great apps, games, movies and TV shows through the Windows Store,” Microsoft explained today, obviously pleased to see another laptop running Windows 10 that reaches the market. The TravelMate X349 will go on sale in the fall in all big markets. North Americans will receive it in October for the price of $649.99 while EMEA markets will get the laptop in September, with the entry-level configuration to cost €480. Chinese buyers will also find the laptop in stores beginning this September from ¥5,999. 2016-07-07 08:29 Bogdan Popa
5 Microsoft's new Dynamics 365 will bundle ERP and CRM in the cloud (1.02/2) Microsoft is working on a new offering called Dynamics 365 that will combine its current ERP and CRM cloud services into a single bundle and include applications purpose-built for specific business functions. Due to be available this fall, Dynamics 365 will feature apps for functions including financials, field service, sales, operations, marketing, project service automation, and customer service. The apps can be independently deployed, allowing users to buy only what they need. Microsoft's Power BI and Cortana Intelligence tools will be natively embedded for predictive capabilities. With Cortana Intelligence, for instance, sales reps will be able to predict which products and services a customer will need next, thereby helping to focus their cross-selling efforts. Dynamics 365 will also be tightly integrated with Office 365. Apps will use a common data model that's shared with Office 365, and they'll also come with connectors that let you integrate with applications and services from Microsoft and its partners, including custom APIs and on-premises systems. Customers will be able license Dynamics 365 by application, but they'll also be able to license users based on their professional role. "Our new role- based approach will give customers the flexibility they need to support modern, more agile, more diverse employee roles -– enabling them to access functionality across all applications within Dynamics 365," explained Jujhar Singh, corporate vice president for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, in a blog post. Microsoft will offer more details as the product's launch gets closer, he said. Customers already using Dynamics CRM online or Dynamics AX online will enjoy a "seamless transition," Singh added. Much of what Microsoft has announced this week echoes things it said about Project Madeira, the cloud ERP system for SMBs that it announced earlier this year, said Frank Scavo, president of management consulting firm Strativa. "This makes me think that the Madeira announcement was just the first shoe to drop on a larger push to offer more of the Dynamics line of products as cloud services," Scavo said. "I think this is just another sign of Dynamics being mainlined into the larger Cloud + Enterprise group, which Microsoft announced last year. " There's been considerable momentum around Office 365, Scavo added, so "by tightly integrating Dynamics with Office 365, Microsoft is hoping that it can pull Dynamics along for the ride. " Microsoft’s announcement is "long on features and benefits and short on technical details," however. "If I’m a Microsoft partner, I’d be very interested, or perhaps very concerned, about what this means for my existing customers," Scavo said. "I suppose that’s why Microsoft waited until just before its Worldwide Partner Conference to make this announcement. " Also on Wednesday Microsoft announced AppSource , a new place for business users to find and try out line-of-business SaaS apps from Microsoft and its partners. More than 200 business apps, add-ins and content packs are now available there, Microsoft said. 2016-07-07 03:58 Katherine Noyes
6 Mozilla Won’t Launch Firefox on Windows Phones (0.01/2) UC Browser, for example, has already confirmed that it’s working on a universal app, and Opera Mini is already a browser that’s worth a chance, but there’s at least one big name that doesn’t seem to be interested in bringing its browser on Windows 10 Mobile. Mozilla, the maker of Firefox, which is currently one of the top desktop browsers and one very popular choice on Android and iOS, says it’s not currently looking at Windows 10 Mobile as the next target for its app. In a statement received by NPU , Mozilla shot down any possibility of seeing Firefox on Windows 10 Mobile anytime soon. “Mozilla has no current plans to developer Firefox for Windows 10 Mobile,” the statement reads, and while this could change in the future, it’s very unlikely to happen. In most of the cases, developers refuse to invest in apps for Windows phones because of the small market of Microsoft’s mobile platform, as the limited number of users doesn’t help them monetize apps. The most recent statistics have shown that Windows Phone declined to no less than 0.7 percent market share, which is the lowest point in the last couple of years, and with more and more developers leaving the platform, these figures could drop even more in the coming months. Microsoft itself, on the other hand, is willing to support Windows 10 Mobile and plans to launch its own flagship phone next year while working with partners to support the ecosystem with a wider array of devices too. 2016-07-07 09:39 Bogdan Popa
7 FFmpeg 3.1 "Laplace" Open-Source Multimedia Framework Gets First Point Release (0.01/2) FFmpeg 3.1 "Laplace" was introduced more than a week ago, and it is now the latest stable and most advanced FFmpeg branch, already available in the main software repositories of various GNU/Linux operating systems, including the popular Arch Linux and Solus. There were major improvements and new features introduced in FFmpeg 3.1 "Laplace," but bugs and annoying issues are always present even in a new major stable release of an open-source software project. Therefore, FFmpeg 3.1.1 has come out to fix some of these bugs reported by users, as well as to update core components. Looking at the release notes , we can notice that FFmpeg 3.1.1 "Laplace" brings updates for numerous libraries. For example, it now includes libavutil 55.28.100, libavcodec 57.48.101, libavformat 57.41.100, libavdevice 57.0.101, libavfilter 6.47.100, libavresample 3.0.0, libswscale 4.1.100, libswresample 2.1.100, and libpostproc 54.0.100. As usual, the FFmpeg developers note that FFmpeg 3.1.1 is now the latest stable FFmpeg release from the 3.1 series, which was cut from the Git master repository on June 26, 2016, and they recommend GNU/Linux OS maintainers to update their repositories with this new version. To avoid system issues and crashes, you are advised to update your FFmpeg installation to the latest version available. To do that, you can either wait for the new version to arrive in the main software repos of your distro and update, or download the FFmpeg 3.1.1 sources right now via our website and compile the software yourself. 2016-07-07 08:55 Marius Nestor
8 Ice sheet modeling of Greenland, Antarctica helps predict sea-level rise -- ScienceDaily To better understand this loss, a team of Sandia National Laboratories researchers has been improving the reliability and efficiency of computational models that describe ice sheet behavior and dynamics. The team includes researchers Irina Demeshko, Mike Eldred, John Jakeman, Mauro Perego, Andy Salinger, Irina Tezaur and Ray Tuminaro. This research is part of a five-year project called Predicting Ice Sheet and Climate Evolution at Extreme Scales (PISCEES), funded by the U. S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC) program. PISCEES is a multi-lab, multi-university endeavor that includes researchers from Sandia, Los Alamos, Lawrence Berkeley and Oak Ridge national laboratories, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Florida State University, the University of Bristol, the University of Texas Austin, the University of South Carolina and New York University. Sandia's biggest contribution to PISCEES has been an analysis tool, a land-ice solver called Albany/FELIX (Finite Elements for Land Ice eXperiments). The tool is based on equations that simulate ice flow over the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets and is being coupled to Earth models through the Accelerated Climate for Energy (ACME) project. "One of the goals of PISCEES is to create a land-ice solver that is scalable, fast and robust on continental scales," said computational scientist Irina Tezaur, a lead developer of Albany/FELIX. Not only did the new solver need to be reliable and efficient, but it was critical that the team develop a solver equipped with next-generation and advanced analysis capabilities. Tezaur said the team next needs to run the solver on new and emerging computers. They also need to be able to calibrate models and quantify uncertainties in expected sea-level rise. "The data we get from climate scientists are usually measurements from the top surface of the ice," she said. "To initialize an ice sheet simulation, we need information about what is happening inside and at the bottom of the ice. Determining interior and bedrock ice properties is what we call model calibration, and requires the solution of an inverse problem. A lot of our work has been in developing and implementing optimization algorithms that are able to solve these inverse problems robustly and efficiently. " Tezaur stresses that the success of PISCEES is due in large part to strong collaborations between glaciologists, climate modelers, computational scientists and mathematicians. "Glaciologists and climate scientist collaborators on PISCEES provide us with data sets to go into our model, while computational scientists come up with the right algorithms to use and implement them efficiently," she explains. Improving computational modeling The PISCEES project began in 2012 because there was no robust land-ice model as a building block for earth system models that calculate sea-level rise predictions to support the DOE's climate missions. Sandia's Albany/FELIX solver includes advanced capabilities and provides increased robustness, scalability and speed, Tezaur said. "In just three years of work, we have created a next-generation land-ice model that is verified, scalable and robust and portable to new and emerging architecture machines," Tezaur said. "These models are equipped with advanced analysis capabilities. " The Albany/FELIX solver was written using the so-called "component- based" software development strategy, an approach devised by Sandia computational scientists in which new application codes are written using mature modular libraries. New solvers created using this approach are "born" scalable: fast, robust and capable of advanced analysis since they are based on a collection of algorithms developed and tested by domain experts. The components comprising Albany/FELIX are the Trilinos libraries, a collection of open-source packages developed by Sandia. In addition to recommending and executing the component-based code development strategy, Sandia researchers have developed approaches for improving the robustness of the nonlinear solver. The Albany/FELIX code has demonstrated scalability up to 1 billion unknowns and tens of thousands of cores thanks to parallel scalable iterative linear solvers and newly developed preconditioning methods by Tuminaro. Adjoint-based deterministic inversion algorithms and software developed and implemented by Perego have enabled rigorous model calibration. In collaboration with experts from the QUEST SciDAC institute, Eldred and Jakeman, a framework for forward and inverse uncertainty quantification (UQ) has been developed. Finally, Albany/FELIX has been made portable to new architecture machines thanks in large part to the efforts of computer scientist, Irina Demeshko. Verification and validation are important While code performance is critical to the success of Albany/FELIX, equally important are verification and validation, two procedures for evaluating a model and its code. Verification ascertains that a code is bug-free. In contrast, validation seeks to check that the physical process described by a model is consistent with what is seen in the real world. Sandia has done a thorough verification of the Albany/FELIX solver using the method of manufactured solutions, code-to-code comparisons on canonical land-ice benchmarks and by performing convergence studies on realistic Greenland and Antarctica landscapes with real data, Tezaur said. Tezaur explains that, in general, validation is much harder to do than verification. The degree to which ice sheet models have been validated by observations is fairly limited, due in part to the limited duration of the satellite observation era and the long adjustment time scales of ice sheets. The PISCEES team has checked that its solver predicts ice sheet quantities such as surface velocities, surface mass balance and that these quantities are consistent with past and recent observations. "We are in the process of doing a validation study for the Greenland Ice Sheet for the period 1991-2012," Tezaur said. "The ice sheet model output will be compared to ice surface elevation and ice sheet mass change observations from ICESat and IceSat 2, the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite. " Early results show promise for assessing the performance of different model configurations. A verification and validation test suite, known as the Land Ice Validation and Verification Kit, is being developed by PISCEES collaborators at Oak Ridge, and goes hand-in-hand with the efforts at Sandia. 2016-07-07 18:00 feeds.sciencedaily
9 Lightbend Helps Developers Build Fast Data, Microservices Apps Lightbend, a pioneer in Reactive Systems, is building out its tools to support enterprises with cloud-first business models built on microservices. Lightbend , the creator and steward of the Scala programming language, is investing in delivering the tools and frameworks that developers need to create reactive, fast data and microservices-based applications. The company, formerly known as Typesafe, offers its Scala-based Lightbend Reactive Platform that enables developers to build message- driven applications that scale on multicore and cloud computing architectures by using technologies like Lagom, Play Framework, Akka, Apache Spark, Scala and Java. Lightbend recently closed a $20 million Series C funding round led by Intel Capital. Blue Cloud Ventures also joined Intel Capital as a new investor, with participation from previous investors Bain Capital Ventures, Polytech Ecosystem Ventures and Shasta Ventures. "Our plan is to continue to invest in delivering the tools and frameworks as well as adding to our complementary suite of management products that enable large enterprises to successfully run these reactive applications in production," Mark Brewer, CEO of Lightbend, told eWEEK. "We will be investing in our go-to-market and partnership efforts as well. " Brewer said the Lightbend Reactive Platform is adopted wherever enterprises need to build scalable, distributed applications that don't fail. The company has use cases that include improving customer engagement via mobile devices, integration of Internet of things (IoT) data into real-time business decisions, content delivery to hundreds of millions of devices, auto-scaling resources to support massive spikes of Website activity and more. "Most importantly, we also see a general trend in adoption of our technology to allow enterprises to unlock the potential of hybrid cloud architectures by having highly efficient, highly performant and highly responsive applications that can scale up and scale down based on demand," he said. Moreover, big data has become the killer app for functional programming and functional languages like Scala, Brewer said. More specifically, what Lightbend refers to as fast data is the killer app. Rather than acting on data at rest, modern software increasingly operates on data in near real time—fast data, said Jamie Allen, senior director of global services at Lightbend. This is especially true with IoT and mobile apps. Consequently, big data is becoming less important than fast data for many companies, he noted. "After all, fast data is critical to fast knowledge, and businesses want knowledge as quickly as possible," Allen said. Enterprises including Walmart, Verizon, iHeartRadio, William Hill and Samsung have adopted the Lightbend Reactive Platform to build low- latency, fast data applications based on modern microservice architectures. Lightbend's platform and professional services have become a popular option for enterprises that use the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and JVM languages and that seek the characteristics of application resiliency and scale defined by the Reactive Manifesto , Brewer said. According to the manifesto, Reactive systems are responsive, resilient, elastic and message-driven. "Mobile and IoT use cases are driving enterprises to modernize how they process large volumes of data," said Doug Fisher, senior vice president and general manager of the Software and Services Group at Intel, in a statement. "Lightbend provides the fundamental building blocks for developing, deploying and managing today's large-scale, distributed applications. " Meanwhile, Brewer said many of the use cases Lightbend sees require tight integration with other key components of a modern application architecture, particularly for fast data applications where the so-called " SMACK Stack "—Spark, Mesos, Akka, Cassandra, Kafka—is the default reference architecture. Consequently, as the company behind Akka, Lightbend partners with the commercial companies behind the other open- source projects in that stack—Databricks, Mesosphere, DataStax and Confluent—as well as other key players such as IBM. "We are also seeing terrific opportunities in working with some of the global systems integrators such as Accenture who have practices dedicated to helping their clients move to modern, reactive architectures," he said. Brewer noted that one of the most exciting areas of investment for Lightbend right now is the fact that most major enterprises are looking to modernize their legacy architectures and Lightbend's Lagom microservices framework makes this transformation much easier. "Application requirements have changed dramatically in recent years," said Jonas Boner, founder and CTO at Lightbend, and creator of Akka . Only a few years ago, a large application had tens of servers, seconds of response time, hours of offline maintenance and gigabytes of data, Boner said. Today, applications are deployed on everything from mobile devices to cloud-based clusters running thousands of multicore processors. "Users expect millisecond response times and 100 percent uptime," he said. "Today's demands are simply not met by yesterday's software architectures. " 2016-07-07 15:00 Darryl K
10 IT professionals: volunteer your skills to help a charity There are more than 160,000 charities in England and Wales with an income of less than £5m a year, and 120,000 with an annual income under £50,000. Most inevitably concentrate their scarce resources primarily on meeting their charitable objectives and do not place a high priority on having efficient administrative processes. Typically they have no IT professionals available to them on either a pro bono or paid-for basis, so their use of IT is usually neither cost-effective nor in line with their strategic aims. While this is not really a problem when a charity is first launched, it will inevitably act as a significant inhibitor to successful expansion beyond the initial client base. To support any expansion, the charity’s business processes need to be effectively supported by its IT systems. If this is not the case, there will be an increase in cost to the charity and service delivery will be degraded. This is not a new problem, and various attempts have been made to find a solution. For example, corporate social responsibility (CSR) schemes attempt to provide appropriately skilled professionals to help charities. However, there is no suitable process for identifying charities with a need, defining that need and then matching appropriately skilled professionals to those needs. The longstanding IT4Communities programme has been successful, but only where the charity has sufficient IT skills to successfully define its project and then manage the resulting business process change. This has resulted in a significant underutilisation of the IT4Communities volunteer base. A new organisation, the Charity IT Association (CITA), is being launched to address these issues by providing a range of pro bono services to support individual charities throughout the whole project lifecycle. 2016-07-07 14:01 David Rippon
11 Passenger Carries Gun-Shaped iPhone Case in Airport, Police Trolls Him Online This is what probably happened to this man in Essex who walked into an airport carrying a gun-shaped iPhone case in his pocket in a day when the whole world’s fighting against terrorism, and pretty much anything that looks like a gun or explosive causes extreme fear. And yet, the Essex police have spotted a man with what seemed to be a gun walking into the Stansted Airport at a really busy moment during the day, so it’s not really difficult to guess what happened next. The man was arrested and is now facing charges that could in the end bring him a hefty fine or even some quality time in prison. The Essex police have then moved to Twitter to troll the man and warn anyone else who might want to walk into an airport carrying a gun-shaped anything that this “makes it much less likely you’ll catch your plan.” Authorities explained that airport police have “a split second decision to make” when seeing someone carrying an object that looks like a gun, so such a prank can have more serious consequences. “Someone decided to put themselves in such a situation today,” they said. According to a tweet from the police, the man could be charged with “possession of imitation firearm in a public place,” and given the current terrorist fight across the world, it’s very clear that the judge would treat this seriously and used this case as an example for any other pranksters out there. Now the next time you’re searching online for an iPhone case, just be smart and don’t go for a gun-shaped cover. If you really want to stand out from the crowd, here ’s something that might work. 2016-07-07 11:54 Bogdan Popa
12 Google Now on Tap Features Instant Translations Google Now on Tap will allow Android Marshmallow users to translate text on any screen, regardless of whether it's an app or a webpage. Google has pointed out that Chrome already has a translation feature, but the company wanted to provide the same functionality inside applications. Users simply need to long-press the home button in order to activate Now on Tap and then tap the “Translate this screen” card. Translations are displayed instantly, and the default language is the one on the smartphone. The new translation feature can be used even with Google Maps, especially when users are searching for a particular restaurant and wish to read a review that might be in a different language than the one they know. The feature is currently available for phones set in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian. This is not the only option that Google has introduced in the application, as the new Discover mode enables users to get access to things that interest them the most. The mode displays a list of links to videos, articles, and resources connected to the content that users are currently reading. Last month , Google announced that it was introducing the search by image feature that allows users to find pictures based on a certain picture. Now, it seems that the company is expanding the feature to barcodes and QR codes. This basically means that users will be able to search for scan barcodes and QR codes in order to get more information. The feature is especially useful when shopping, as additional details and user reviews can be found more easily. 2016-07-07 11:19 Alexandra Vaidos
13 Lenovo is considering UK price rises, job cuts and other options, to deal with Brexit The UK's decision to leave the European Union has prompted tech companies to review their operations there, in the midst of economic uncertainty that pushed the pound sterling to a 31-year low against the US dollar this week. Microsoft said that it would continue to invest in the UK as one of its strongest international markets, but for others, the situation has forced them to consider making tough choices. OnePlus announced that it is increasing the price of its new flagship phone by 6.5% next week, while Dell also revealed that its UK prices will rise by 10% due to the economic conditions caused by the Brexit referendum result. Lenovo - which makes around a fifth of its earnings from Europe - is also reviewing the situation. But as Bloomberg reports, the Chinese tech giant is considering a range of options, and it seems keen to avoid making any hasty decisions. Lenovo's Chief Financial Officer, Wai Ming Wong, said that the company must do what is necessary to ensure that it remains profitable. Options being considered include price increases and job cuts, but he said: "I wouldn't exactly want to nail down to something. If you were to cut costs, is it really headcount that's the only area? " He added: So price rises and job cuts - or some combination of these, and other options - may be on the cards for Lenovo in the UK, but it seems that nothing has yet been decided. Indeed, Lenovo appears unflustered by the uncertainties of the current economic climate. Its chairman and CEO, Yang Yuanqing, said that the company has weathered similar storms caused by currency fluctuations in Latin America and Europe, and that he doesn't expect any major impact from Brexit for Lenovo in the longer term. Source: Bloomberg 2016-07-07 11:12 Andy Weir
14 14 Snap Launchers Promise to Better Integrate Desktop Applications with Snaps If you've tried installing various desktop apps - and we're talking about those that have a graphical user interface (GUI) as Snaps on your Ubuntu machine, or any other GNU/Linux operating system that supports the Snappy universal binary format - you might have noticed that some of them don't follow the general desktop theming or menu integration. Making applications packaged as Snaps look and feel like the real desktop apps was always a little bit challenging for the Snappy developers over at Canonical. Therefore, they are announcing today their new goal of streamlining the overall Snap experience on the desktop, ensuring that all the user-visible features are working as expected. "Integrating desktop applications with snaps has been a little bit challenging in terms of getting them looking and behaving as part of the system," said Didier Roche, Ubuntu Desktop Technical Leader at Canonical. "This is the reason why we are announcing new desktop launchers! " With the new Snap desktop launchers initiative, Canonical hopes to bind applications installed via Snaps with the current desktop theme, be it written in GTK+ or Qt, as well as the system icon theme, integrate them with the Unity application menu, as well as to generate icon cache and images on first launch after a new upgrade. Additionally, they are hoping to keep existing xdg-based data after each successful upgrade of a Snap, make the GSettings keys available for reading and writing by Snaps, share most of the code between multiple launchers so that when one fix is applied the rest would benefit too, and bypass any unusual behavior that some launchers were exhibited. For detailed examples of how Snap launchers actually work (with screenshots), please take a look at the official announcement. Currently, Canonical offers five launchers, for applications written in GTK2, GTK3, Qt4, and Qt5 GUI toolkit. There's also a glib-only launcher for lightweight, non-graphical apps. 2016-07-07 11:01 Marius Nestor
15 15 Woman live-streams the police shooting of her boyfriend on Facebook We've had quite a few shooting deaths lately, some of them caught on video. Just yesterday we saw the cell phone video that was captured of an incident in Baton Rouge. That incident resulted in widespread protests, though all peaceful so far. Now, just a day later, yet another video surfaces from Minnesota depicting a man shot during a traffic stop. The gentleman died of his wounds. We have no real idea yet what may have occurred before the woman began live- streaming the incident on Facebook. At the moment, we only have what is shown in the video, which has gone viral. The girlfriend claims he was pulled over for a broken taillight and he was asked for his license and registration, but when he reached for it the gun was exposed, though he had a license to carry. The officer can be heard saying, "I told him not to reach for it. I told him to get his hand out". While the video doesn't show the officer directly, it does depict his arm holding the gun and it's clearly shaking. Likely a jarring experience. For now, we have to wait for a full investigation. We do know that a license to carry requires a person to inform the officer of that so he or she can disarm them. In the meantime, another victim is being forgotten. The couple's four-year-old daughter was in the backseat, unharmed, but no doubt scared. The video can be viewed below, but be warned it is graphic. Photo Credit: mashe / Shutterstock 2016-07-07 10:51 By Alan
16 Bulgaria passes law requiring all government- developed software to be open source Bulgaria has signed into law a new rule that will require all software developed for, and used by, the government to be open source. Bozhidar Bozhanov , a software engineer who has been advising the deputy prime minister, blogged that the Electronic Governance Act has been amended to state that "all software written for the government [is] to be open source and developed as such in a public repository". Bozhanov continued: "That does not mean that the whole country is moving to Linux and LibreOffice, neither does it mean the government demands that Microsoft and Oracle give the source to their products. "Existing solutions are purchased on licensing terms and they remain unaffected (although we strongly encourage the use of open source solutions for that as well). "It means that whatever custom software the government procures will be visible and accessible to everyone. After all, it is paid by taxpayers' money and they should be able to see it and benefit from it. " Problems had occurred in the past, he added, because websites and portals had been left unpatched as the contracts to maintain them had expired and the sites – and the code behind them – had been effectively abandoned. "As for security, in the past 'security through obscurity' was the main approach, and it didn't quite work: numerous vulnerabilities were found in government websites that went unpatched for years, simply because a contract had expired," Bozhanov added. "By opening the source we hope to reduce those incidents, and to detect bad information security practices in the development process, rather than when it is too late. " A new government agency will be set up to manage a repository, probably on GitHub, and will ensure that the law is enforced. Although Bulgaria is the first country to mandate open-source governance by law, the UK has looked at the idea for some time. Francis Maude MP, formerly of the Cabinet Office, first revealed plans to encourage the use of open source as a cost-saving exercise in 2014. Since then, it has been confirmed that government departments will, in time, switch to Libre Office, much to Microsoft's annoyance . 2016-07-07 18:00 Chris Merriman
17 17 Samba Patched Against Important SMB2/3 Client Security Issue, Update Now According to the release notes , these are security releases that have been pushed to address an issue where the client side SMB2/3 required signing can be downgraded, which has been fully documented at CVE-2016-2119. "It's possible for an attacker to downgrade the required signing for an SMB2/3 client connection, by injecting the SMB2_SESSION_FLAG_IS_GUEST or SMB2_SESSION_FLAG_IS_NULL flags," reads today's security advisory. In layman's terms, this means that an attacker can impersonate a server that users can connect to using Samba, an open-source re-implementation of the SMB/CIFS networking protocol, and then deliver malicious results. The issue affects components like winbindd, which uses DCE/RPC (Distributed Computing Environment / Remote Procedure Calls) over SMB2 when communicating with trusted domains as a domain controller, or with domain controllers as a member server. The DCE/RPC connections were designed from the ground up to be secure, protected by the combination of "client ipc max protocol" and "client ipc signing" parameters. Moreover, it appears that Samba management tools like samba-tool and rpcclient are also affected by this security issues where the SMB2/3 required signing can be downgraded, as they also use DCE/RPC over SMB2/3 connections. And, according to the security advisory, several other Samba tools remain unprotected, but they don't use SMB2/3 signing through the "client signing" parameter. Among these, we can mention smbclient, smbget, smbcacls, and smbcquota. Any other applications using the libsmbclient library and meeting the conditions mentioned above could also be unprotected, so it is recommended that you update Samba to the new versions released today. 2016-07-07 10:08 Marius Nestor
18 18 ASUS launches ZenBook Flip UX360CA, a Windows 10 notebook with 'Cortana with Voice-Premium' ASUS has launched a new thin and light Windows 10 convertible notebook with an affordable price tag for budget-conscious buyers. The UX360CA has a metal body, and like many other Windows 10 notebooks these days, it sports a convertible form factor with a 360-degree hinge, allowing its display to fold all the way back, effectively turning the device into a very large tablet. Its key specs include: The device weighs 2.9 pounds (around 1.3kg) and is 13.9mm thick - not the lightest or thinnest notebook out there, but still a pretty lean device in its price range. ASUS also says that this is its first device to be "certified with Microsoft Cortana with Voice-Premium, that means that UX360 will work well at a distance and in more challenging conditions, such as increased noise levels. A Cortana with Voice-Premium certified laptop is expected to work from 4m away in challenging environments like a busy kitchen or a family room. " The ZenBook Flip UX360CA is available to buy now , priced at $699 with a 256GB SSD, and $799 with 512GB. Source: Amazon via Windows Central 2016-07-07 10:04 Andy Weir
19 'Megaupload is coming back' Going by the “third time’s the charm” mantra, Kim Dotcom seems to be getting ready to unveil a new file sharing service. The well-known internet millionaire previously launched Megaupload and Mega. Kim Dotcom is currently living in New Zealand, fighting extradition and still facing legal troubles from piracy and copyright infringement cases brought against his previous companies. But the notorious internet mogul seems ready to unveil a new file-sharing service, his “best creation yet”. Recently, Doctom was warning users off of Mega , his second file- sharing service that he eventually left years ago. Talking to TorrentFreak, Dotcom mentioned that the new site would heavily feature encryption, offer users 100 GB of free storage, and come without transfer limits. In a tweet mentioning the new service, Dotcom hints that it might go live in January 2017, on the anniversary of the Megaupload FBI raids. So what will the new service be called? No word on that just yet, though Dotcom tweeted that “Megaupload is coming back”. He also mentioned that the name of the new service would “make people happy”. Source: Kim Dotcom Via: TorrentFreak 2016-07-07 09:48 Vlad Dudau
20 Microsoft’s Surface Phone Won’t Be a Rival to Apple’s iPhone A report from ZDNet and citing sources familiar with the matter indicate that the Surface Phone is still being worked on behind closed doors at Microsoft, but its release date continues to be uncertain. The same team that designed the Surface tablet and led by Panos Panay is believed to be in charge of building the Surface Phone, with Microsoft planning to go for a similar strategy for its mobile efforts. Just like for the tablet, Microsoft will build one premium device and let partners take care of the rest of the ecosystem with more affordable models. The Surface Phone will be ARM-based, and it seems that there are big chances for the device to be powered by the yet-to-be-released Snapdragon 830, although this depends on the moment when the phone actually sees daylight. Microsoft wants it to come with the latest in terms of hardware, so the newest Qualcomm processor is very likely to be offered on the Surface Phone when it sees daylight. But what’s more important is that Microsoft will specifically target businesses with the Surface Phone, so it won’t compete against phones from Apple or Samsung. Although both the iPhone and some Android models are also used in the enterprise, Microsoft wants the Surface Phone to be a device primarily aimed at this market, so it’s preparing several features in this regard. For instance, the focus will be on Continuum, the company’s Windows 10 Mobile feature that allows a phone to become a portable PC with the help of an adapter and an external screen. Continuum will get major updates when the Surface Phone hits the market, but details in this regard are still inexistent. The good thing is that Microsoft is still working on the Surface Phone, so although no other Lumia devices are prepared, it’s living proof that there’s no plan to leave the mobile market, as some have suggested. Redmond has said on several occasions that it’s still supporting Windows 10 Mobile, and launching a flagship model such as the Surface Phone is the best way to do that. 2016-07-07 08:51 Bogdan Popa
21 With Thinga.me from Microsoft you can collect and share 'things, not photos' Microsoft Garage is a place where the company’s developers can experiment and try out new ideas or showcase technologies that they’re working on. Over the years, MS Garage has given us such apps as the Word Flow keyboard , the Arrow launcher , the Next Lock Screen and so on. And now, a new Garage project is seeing the light of day, called Thinga.me. Thinga.me allows users to collect “things, not photos” and share them in collections with friends or family. The app is based on Microsoft’s imaging services, that can automatically crop out objects and save them independently. Thinga.me is a bit similar to Pinterest, in that you collect cutouts and pin them on a board, or display. But that’s where the similarities end as Thinga.me doesn’t seem to go for the whole social network aspect. Instead, the developers explain the app's focus: Thinga.me is currently in closed beta, and it’s only available on iOS right now, though you can browse a number of collections and get an idea of what the app is all about on its webpage. If you want to join the beta you can apply here. Via: SlashGear 2016-07-07 08:42 Vlad Dudau
22 NVIDIA SHIELD Android TV Firmware 3.2.0 Is Up for Grabs In addition to that, the present firmware adds support for VUDU in 4K and allows streaming personal media to mobile devices through the built-in PLEX media server. Also, users can accelerate transfer via SHIELD’s HD transcode, even from a NAS unit. If applied, the SHIELD units will benefit from Dolby Atmos support, YouTube 4K 60fps playback capabilities, improved RGB TVs picture quality, a better TV compatibility, monthly Android security updates, as well as enhanced video playback for 23.976 Hz refresh rate. Moreover, the console will automatically turn off the TV when SHIELD sleeps, users will be able to access SHIELD folders from a network computer, and NAS devices will be attachable to SHIELD Android TV devices. Last but not least, NVIDIA has managed to optimize Apps & Games such as Vudu, Watch Espn, Spotify, Starz, Curiosity Stream, Mad Max, Dead or Alive 5 Last Round, Dead Island Riptide Def Ed, Resident Evil 5, and several other titles as highlighted in the Release Notes below. 2016-07-07 08:18 Iulian Pascal
23 Samsung predicting increased profits thanks to healthy Galaxy S7 sales Samsung has had a troubling couple of years – with profits down in 2014 , more drops predicted for 2015 , and losing its top five status in China to manufacturers such as Xiaomi, Huawei and Oppo. However, backed by substantial Galaxy S7 sales, Samsung predicted its largest operating profit in more than two years. As the world’s number one smartphone manufacturer, Samsung is predicting an operating profit of 8.1 trillion won ($7 billion) for April to June. This is up 17 percent from the 6.9 trillion won figure it posted for the same period last year. Analysts have stated the well-received Galaxy S7 , with its high volume of sales, and Samsung’s aggressive cost-cutting measures have contributed to the latest financial announcement. NH Investment & Securities analyst, Peter Lee, has said: Samsung’s stock also rose 1.8 percent in the early afternoon trading period, to around 1.45 million won, following the announcement. However with Samsung set to release new products in the second half of this year, including the Galaxy Note 7 , earnings are predicted to drop. Source: Phys.org 2016-07-07 07:58 Andrew Stevenson
24 Windows Phone 8.1 Loses Top Mobile Banking App While CNN decided to pull its app completely from Windows Phone, Wells Fargo is concentrating its efforts on Windows 10, so it’s now retiring support for its app aimed at version 8.1 of the operating system. There are reports that Wells Fargo app no longer works on Windows Phone 8.1 devices, and whenever users launch it on their devices still running this version, they are provided with a prompt that tells them to upgrade to Windows 10 Mobile. Indeed, Wells Fargo already has a Windows 10 Mobile app, and it’s working pretty smoothly, so the company no longer wants to invest in keeping the Windows Phone 8.1 version alive. And while this does make sense at some level, a simple look at Windows phones OS versions share proves that Wells Fargo should keep the Windows Phone 8.1 app constantly updated because this is where the majority of users actually are right now. According to June 2016 data provided by AdDuplex, Windows Phone 8.1 still has a share of 78.8 percent in the world of Windows phones while Windows 10 Mobile is second with 10.9 percent. Windows Phone 8.0 is third with 7.4 percent. Furthermore, AdDuplex estimated that Windows 10 Mobile will experience only small increases in the coming months because “everyone who actively wanted to upgrade their older phone already did so.” With all those mentioned, it appears that Wells Fargo is leaving behind a large number of users, although for the company this is probably a mandatory decision, given the security improvements that are part of Windows 10 Mobile. Security is an essential part of a mobile banking app, so Windows Phone is losing the battle with Windows 10 Mobile when it comes to this, so if your phone does support Microsoft’s new operating system, you’d better upgrade as soon as possible. 2016-07-07 07:36 Bogdan Popa
25 First Windows 10 Universal app shows up on Xbox One, as Blu-ray player app gets updated Xbox Insiders are finally getting to try out the first Universal Windows Application built for Microsoft’s console. Only available for select users right now, the first UWP app on Xbox is a new Blu-ray player app. Ever since Microsoft first announced that Windows 10 would be arriving on its consoles, users expected universal apps to follow soon after. Unfortunately, UWP apps haven’t shown up yet, and will only start doing so for everyone after the Anniversary Update. That’s unless you’re an Insider and running the latest Xbox One build. If you are, then you might be in luck, as the first Xbox UWP app is rolling out as an update. Limited to 20,000 users for now, the new Blu-ray player app is built on the same runtime as Windows 10 apps and can run on any Windows 10 device. Before you get too excited though, you should note that the new app looks and behaves almost identically to the old one, so all the changes are under the hood right now. Still, this bodes well for those who are anxiously awaiting more apps on their Xbox consoles. Hulu, Nascar and Nickelodeon have already confirmed they’re building UWP apps for Xbox, and there are bound to be numerous other companies looking to do the same. The Windows 10 and Xbox stores have also been unified recently , and with the Anniversary Update coming this summer, the wait for universal apps is almost over. Source: Xbox Preview Forums (Restricted) via: WinBeta 2016-07-07 07:20 Vlad Dudau
26 Evolve set to become a free-to-play game on PC, beta starts today When a timer appeared on the website of asymmetrical multiplayer shooter Evolve this week, many thought the game's sequel would be announced once it reached zero. But when the title was removed from Steam yesterday, another theory was put forward: it was going free-to-play. Developer Turtle Rock Studio has now announced that the speculation was accurate; Evolve’s free-to-play PC build goes into Beta later today. The team hopes to use this testing phase to fix bugs and make the game more stable “over a period of weeks and months.” Evolve isn’t just becoming free-to-play, it’s also getting a major overhaul. Some of the changes include a reworking of the Hunter class so teams are less reliant on having experienced Trappers and Medics, and a redesigned progression system and tutorials. There will also be more customization options, as well as improvements to the maps, UI, load times, and overall performance. There was a lot of hype in the run-up to Evolve’s release back in 2015, and while it was quite well-received by many critics, the lack of lasting appeal was pointed out as one of its major failing. The pre-release announcement of Evolve’s DLC, some costing as much as $100, didn’t help things. “[...] when Evolve launched, the reception wasn’t what we expected. Sure, there were some good reviews. There were also bad reviews. Yes, there was excitement. There was also disappointment – for players and for us. The DLC shitstorm hit full force and washed away people’s enthusiasm, dragging us further and further from that first magical pick-up-and-play experience,” wrote Turtle Rock founders Chris Ashton & Phil Robb. Anyone who has already bought Evolve will be given “Founder” status in the new FTP model, allowing access to all in-game content already owned. They will also receive “gifts, rewards, and special access.” 2016-07-07 07:00 Rob Thubron
27 Microsoft Launches Exclusive iPhone App That Crops Objects from Your Photos The application is not currently listed in the App Store, and users need to sign up for the download link on the official page. It is built by the Human Experience & Design team in Microsoft’s Cambridge Research lab and is only part of a closed trial, with no plan to make it available for everyone just yet. “Thinga. Me offers the best and most compelling way of digitally capturing the physical things that matter in your life. Archive your kids artwork, show off your cool set of collectibles, keep track of the stuff in your basement. The choice is yours,” the team at Microsoft says. Microsoft Garage explains that, in order to achieve the best results with this app, iPhone users need to take clear photos that can allow the cropping of objects showing up in pictures. The clearer the photo, the bigger the chances to perform an accurate crop, so always look for clean backgrounds with good lightning. There is also a Painting Mode that allows you to manually add or remove certain parts from the photo in order to improve the accurate of the app. The UI is pretty intuitive, and you shouldn’t experience any difficulties using it, with all items grouped into collections that you can manually create, name, and organize. You can also set theme properties, change the layout and effects, with Microsoft promising more such customization options in the next versions. In case you were wondering, no, Thinga. Me is not available on Windows Phone, and not even on Android, and since this is just a Microsoft Garage project, there’s still no sign that anything can change in the coming future. Microsoft Garage is a special project lab that allows employees of the company to work on their very own projects without necessarily linking their apps with the software giant. 2016-07-07 06:53 Bogdan Popa
28 Facebook to Test Video Downloads for Offline Viewing in India Facebook intends to allow users to download videos that they come across on the platform and view them offline. Everyone will be able to sync videos to their smartphones and watch them in the Facebook app while they're on WiFi so that mobile data is spared. This move is clearly aimed at video publishers, who have been affected by the fact that the company has recently decided to change the feed ranking algorithm and prioritize the user's friends over professional content providers. According to TechCrunch , Facebook has even thought about video downloads turning into piracy, and that's why it has decided to securely lock videos within its application so that they wouldn't be seen in the device's local memory. The feature isn't automatically enabled, and publishers who don't want their content to be downloaded can opt out from the feature. The setting is available under the Page Content Distribution menu. The move allows users to only download original videos featured on personal accounts or Pages. Facebook will be rolling out the option for a small group of users based in India, starting July 11, 2016. It's unclear if the option will be made available worldwide, but the chances are that, if the feature is well-received, it will be expanded to users from other countries as well. Just recently, Facebook incorporated SMS in its Messenger application for Android smartphones, thus providing a major feature to the app, in an attempt to keep users inside Facebook applications and prevent them from launching other services for messaging friends. 2016-07-07 06:47 Alexandra Vaidos
29 ) Microsoft tries to attract interns with 'dranks' and 'hella noms' NeoBytes :) is an occasional feature that takes a step back from the big headlines, to take a look at what else is happening in the vast, scary expanse of the tech world - often with a cynical eye, always with a dose of humor. Let's face it, the older and the younger generations speak different languages. We've all experienced that awkward moment - whether you're part of that younger generation or you have a memory of it - when the older generation tries to speak your language, and it just doesn't work. That happened to Microsoft today. Twitter user Patrick Burtchaell says that his roommate received the following email from the company today: Clearly, the level of cringe is pretty high here. For the oldies out there, here's what you missed: "bae" is a term of affection, like baby, but shortened, and an 'e' added, for some reason. "Hella noms" means lots of food, "dranks" means drinks, and "getting lit" means getting drunk, or drank, or whatever the kids are calling it these days. For the youngsters out there, here's what you missed: Yammer is like a social network for businesses. Let's put that in perspective: Presumably, Microsoft will issue a statement within the next few days that this email does not reflect its values as a company. It could be a similar situation to when the firm had an Xbox party with all female dancers, and later apologized. 2016-07-07 06:30 Rich Woods
30 Mozilla wants to help you get around the web in a better way Mozilla wants to make getting around the web better. To do so it plans to build a context graph which will learn to understand browsing activity, at scale. It will suggest new sites to users, which are relevant to their activity – put differently, Mozilla is going to build a “new meadow and open up many new paths for light between the trees, to illuminate all the hidden trails that people would love to find.” Nick Nguyen, vice president of Firefox product at Mozilla, gives the following example: While the context graph will immediately spark worries about privacy, Nguyen is promising that user control will not be sacrificed. Mozilla is working on how it can collect data with a group of volunteer users so that work can begin on building experimental systems for making contextual recommendations. Nguyen explains that Mozilla will work to make sure users understand what information they're sharing and what they're getting in return, he says “true to our open heritage, our methods will be open for scrutiny by anyone.” Work on the context graph has actually already started and its progress can be tested out by any Firefox users now. Mozilla's Test Pilot extension, which allows users to test new Firefox features and helps Mozilla push them out the door quicker, actually has three on-going programmes, one of which is Activity Stream. Activity Stream alters the new tab page and keeps your top sites, highlights, and recent history near. The recent history is displayed as a timeline to help understand what you did and when. This big feature is just one of many that Mozilla is currently working on. In the next few releases, the browser maker will rollout Electrolysis that allows Firefox to handle multiple process in an improved way. Source: Medium 2016-07-07 05:48 Paul Hill
31 Satya Nadella email to employees: Senior leadership team update From: Satya Nadella To: Microsoft All Employees Date: Thursday, July 7, 5:00 a.m. PT Subject: Senior Leadership Team Update I want to share with you that Kevin Turner has been offered the opportunity to become chief executive officer at Citadel Securities and as a result will leave Microsoft. Kevin has made a tremendous impact at Microsoft over the past 11 years. He built the sales force into the strategic asset it is today with incredible talent while at the same time more than doubling our revenue and driving customer satisfaction scores to the highest in company history. I have learned a lot from Kevin over these past few years and wish him all the best as he takes on this broader CEO role. For the past year, Kevin and I have spoken a great deal about the transformation we are enabling our customers to drive. We have come a great distance, and we need to continue to reach for the next level of customer centricity and obsession in everything we do — sales, marketing, services and product development. It’s very important to have “one feedback loop” across all parts of the company with customer value and satisfaction at the center. This means we must operate, learn and continuously improve collectively. To this end, with Kevin’s departure, I have made the decision to more deeply integrate the current SMSG organization into the rest of Microsoft and form one unified senior leadership team. As a result, I am pleased to announce the following changes are effective immediately, and I appreciate that Kevin will stay with Microsoft through the end of July to help with the transition. Jean-Philippe and Judson will report directly to me and join the senior leadership team starting today. Jean-Philippe will take full accountability for the Microsoft North America business also starting today, and Judson will remain as acting lead for day-to-day operations until a replacement for him is announced. Together they are working on a plan for the functions comprised in today’s Worldwide Marketing and Operations team, given it will span both of their organizations in the future. This year, I had the opportunity to visit more than 20 subsidiaries across five continents where I saw firsthand how each subsidiary team drives business in the context of Microsoft’s mission, ambitions and culture as well as our core ethos of adding economic value and opportunity in every country and society we operate in. These teams are doing great work, and I think we can position them even better for the future. There is no doubt the world is changing — and Microsoft must evolve with it and ahead of it. Microsoft’s mission is universal, and I believe our values and high ethical standards are timeless. But we must apply them in a world that demands more solutions that are local in nature. Growing globally requires local capability to leverage all of Microsoft’s innovation, marketing and operations in the context of local opportunities and partnerships while overcoming constraints. This means we must do better at surfacing and trusting the insight from local teams on what it takes to drive our customers’ success. At the same time, we must empower the local teams with world- class global support. When it comes to our Worldwide Commercial Business we have an unparalleled opportunity to translate our products into customer solutions, drive new partner momentum and help businesses of all sizes in every country not just use digital technologies but become digital companies themselves. The senior leadership team and I all agree that each subsidiary needs to maintain the financial accountability to deliver on today’s commitments while gaining new capability and flexibility for local innovation and optimization to drive long-term growth. I’m thrilled to have two talented leaders, promoted from our field organization, step forward to join the senior leadership team with their depth of experience in our current business and shared passion to drive transformation. Please join me and the senior leadership team for a special All Employee Q&A today at 8:30 a.m. PT. We look forward to sharing more and taking all of your questions. Satya 2016-07-07 05:00 By Microsoft
32 Bain Capital & friends pour $11M into BevSpot to stop bars from running dry BevSpot has found a problem worth solving: preventing your local bar from running out of your favorite tipple. Raising an $11 million Series B round from Bain Capital Ventures and other select drinking buddies, the company will be upping its product development and global market expansion in the web-based beverage management space. The company creates a series of web and app-based tools to facilitate alcohol inventory and invoice management. It also ties in to point of sales systems, enabling BevSpot to offer powerful business metrics to an industry that’s traditionally been lagging behind a bit. BevSpot has more than 400 customers from a range of different hospitality categories, including restaurants, bars, nightclubs and hotels. The majority of its business is in the U. S., but the money raised will facilitate further international expansion. 2016-07-07 00:00 Haje Jan
33 Pressed by falling numbers, Apple adds iPhone and iPad Pro to back-to-school promotion Apple is including the iPhone and iPad Pro in this year's back-to-school promotion because the company must manage a slumping smartphone as well as a stuck-in-decline tablet market, an analyst said today. Apple kicked off its annual back-to-school sales campaign last month, handing over Beats headphones to buyers of most Macs, all models in the 2015-2016 iPhone 6 and 6S series, and any iPad Pro. The inclusion of the iPhone (6, 6 Plus, 6S and 6S Plus) and the iPad Pro (9.7-in. and 12.9-in.) was notable because Apple's smartphones and tablets were not eligible purchases for 2015's back-to-school promotion. That, said Carolina Milanesi, an analyst with Creative Strategies, was easy to explain: In 2015, iPhone sales were up dramatically in the June quarter. Apple hadn't yet come to grips with the fact that the iPad, already in decline for five quarters, was not going to bounce back. A year later, things are different. "The reality of iPad sales really had not sunk in [then] as much as it has now," Milanesi said in an interview, referring to Apple's insistence in 2015 that iPad sales would return to growth. "Apple thought that the iPad's lifecycle was a bit longer than the iPhone, and that eventually customers would upgrade," she added. "That hasn't happened. " The tablet replacement cycle simply doesn't resemble the smartphone cycle, with either very long intervals between upgrades, or in some cases, buyers who have no intention of upgrading from their first purchase. More recently, iPhone sales also turned down. During the quarter that ended in March, Apple sold 51.2 million iPhones, a 16 percent reduction from the same period in 2015. iPhone revenue was off 18 percent, or $7.4 billion, year over year. To drive sales of the iPhone and iPad Pro, Apple put them in the promotional bucket. "Apple enters Back to School 2016 in a very different market dynamic and the promotions reflect that," Milanesi wrote in an analysis published Wednesday on Tech.pinions . Customers who purchase an eligible iPhone or iPad Pro through Sept. 2 will receive either a pair of Powerbeats2 wireless headphones -- Apple applies an $199.95 credit to the order for a zero balance -- or a pair of Beats Solo2 wireless headphones. The Solo2 lists for $299.95, so the buyer pays $100 out of pocket for that option. Consumers who buy an iMac, MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air or Mac Pro receive a pair of Beats Solo2 wireless headphones and are credited the full price of $299.95 on their order. Educational discounts also apply to the iPad Pro and Mac lines, ranging from $20 on an iPad Pro, to $50 on a MacBook and MacBook Air, to $100 on a MacBook Pro. The discounts top out at $300 on the most expensive Mac Pro. Back-to-school sales are important for technology vendors, including Apple, Milanesi said. Most experts consider the summer promotions as the second-most important season after the end-of-year holidays. "It does matter for PC vendors [in general], but it is also a big deal for Apple," she said. "This is also a difficult [period] for Apple -- June, July and August -- because everyone is waiting for the new iPhone. " Milanesi also implied that the inclusion of the iPad Pro in this year's back- to-school deal fit with Apple's recent arguments that the tablet, when paired with a keyboard, was appropriate to replace a traditional laptop. While parents may view the laptop as the productivity answer for their children, students are much more likely to lean toward the tablet, Milanesi said. But the generational differences may be moot at this point. "In the past, you couldn't get an iPad [for school and schoolwork] because you needed Office and a keyboard," she said. "That doesn't hold anymore. " Office 365, Microsoft's subscription service, is key to that scenario, for it gives customers the right to run the iOS Office apps on an iPad Pro. Students can piggyback on their parents' subscription -- $100 annually for five users -- purchase the college-specific Office 365 University, a four-year subscription for $80, or in many cases, acquire the apps free of charge through their school's over-arching Office 365 Education plan. A tablet-keyboard combination is also less expensive than a traditional laptop. A 9.7-in. iPad Pro equipped with Apple's Smart Keyboard costs $728 with the educational discount, or 81 percent of the lowest-priced 11-in. MacBook Air. "I'm not saying that the iPad Pro is the solution for everybody," Milanesi said. "Things are so much cheaper on the Windows side," she continued, referring to notebooks powered by Windows 10. "But if you look at the 9.7- in. iPad Pro, it's a very powerful machine. If you are OK with a smaller screen, you're golden. There are no issues from a performance point of view, and in Office, you won't notice a difference. " Apple's promotion covers devices purchased between June 2 and Sept. 5. The deal's terms and conditions can be found on Apple's website. 2016-07-07 04:06 Gregg Keizer
34 Google fixes over 100 flaws in Android, many in chipset drivers Google released a new batch of Android patches on Wednesday, fixing over 100 flaws in Android's own components and in chipset- specific drivers from different manufacturers. Android's mediaserver component, which handles the processing of video and audio streams and has been a source of many vulnerabilities in the past, is at the forefront of this security update. It accounts for 16 Android vulnerabilities, including 7 critical flaws that can allow an attacker to execute code with higher privileges. The bugs can be exploited by sending specifically crafted audio or video files to users' devices via the browser, email, or messaging apps. Because of the repeated mediaserver flaws, Google Hangouts and the default Android Messenger applications no longer pass media to this component automatically. Another critical vulnerability was fixed in the OpenSSL and BoringSSL crypto libraries that are bundled with the Android OS. This flaw can also be exploited through a specially crafted file to execute code within the context of the affected processes. Phone manufacturers will have the option to upgrade their phones to one of two patch levels: 2016-07-01, which includes device-agnostic fixes, and 2016-07-05, which includes the 2016-07-01 fixes plus the device-specific ones. The patch level, expressed as a date string, is displayed in Android's settings under "About phone" and indicates that the firmware contains all Android security patches up to that date. It only exists in newer versions of Android. The 2016-07-01 patch level includes fixes for 32 vulnerabilities: 8 rated critical, 15 of high severity and 9 moderate. The 2016-07-05 security patch level includes additional fixes for a whooping 75 vulnerabilities that are marked as device-specific. Twelve of these vulnerabilities are rated critical and are located in highly privileged components such as the Qualcomm GPU driver, the MediaTek Wi-Fi driver, the Qualcomm performance component, the NVIDIA video driver, the kernel file system, the USB driver and other unspecified MediaTek drivers. Because these drivers are loaded inside the kernel, the most privileged area of the operating system, the vulnerabilities can lead to a permanent device compromise that can only be fixed by reflashing the firmware. Most of the other 54 high-severity flaws were also in various chipset drivers and can also lead to a complete device compromise. The difference is that the attacker needs to already have access to a privileged process in order to exploit them. As usual, Google released firmware updates for all of its supported Nexus devices and will release the patches to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) over the next 48 hours. Manufacturers and carriers that are Google's partners were notified about the patches included in this bulletin on June 6 or earlier. 2016-07-07 03:55 Lucian Constantin
35 Samsung just had its most profitable quarter for more than two years Samsung has reported its most profitable quarter of business for over two years thanks to its resurgent smartphone business. The Korean firm’s earnings guidance today estimated profit for the second quarter of 2016 at 8.1 trillion KRW ($7 billion) on revenue of 50 trillion KRW, around $43 billion. That’s above the 7.8 trillion KRW predicted by analysts polled by Reuters , and that makes it the firm’s most lucrative period since Q1 2014. Samsung posted a solid 6.7 trillion KRW profit on revenue of 49.8 trillion KRW in the previous quarter thanks to encouraging sales of its flagship Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge smartphones. The Korean company has not announced any official figures yet, but the devices have reportedly out- sold its top-of-the-range line-up from the previous year thanks to a combination of better timing — launching a month earlier than usual — improved supply chain management, and the fairly incremental updates that Apple put into its latest iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus. (That lack of iPhone halo features made Samsung’s phones all the more compelling, so the theory goes.) After one month of sales, analyst firm Counterpoint Research estimated that Samsung had shipped 10 million Galaxy S7 devices worldwide thus far, some 25 percent more than the Galaxy S6 did at the same point. Apple’s new iPhones are due later this year so it remains to be seen if Samsung’s mobile division, and thus the company’s overall finances, can continue in this positive vein amid increased competition. 2016-07-07 00:00 Jon Russell
36 Post-quantum crypto startup PQ bags $10.3M Series A Being first to market with complex technology doesn’t usually make for a simple sales proposition. Nor does trying to pioneer an alternative approach as a small security startup vs established industry practices. UK-based Post-Quantum , aka PQ, which was founded all the way back in 2009, has been bootstrapping and toiling up this hill for years, having developed an encryption system designed to be proofed against cracking by quantum computers. Thing is, there aren’t yet any quantum computers in the wild. So while PQ’s co-founders are no longer being laughed out of pitch meetings on account of their NP- hard, semantically secure McEliese cryptosystem , they are still finding it hard to convince investors to bite. A spot of good news for them today, though: they’ve closed an £8 million Series A (~$10.3M at current exchange rates, but closer to $11.2M when they closed the round — owing to Brexit ‘s impact on the value of the pound), topping up the £800,000 in seed funding they had previously raised, including funding taken in via the Techstars/Barclays Accelerator program which they went through last year. The new funding comes from Hong Kong based VMS Investment Group and AM Partners. “We spent a lot of time trying to raise money. We spoke to many VCs and investors in Europe but eventually we found that it was quite difficult for us to explain what we were doing. Because what we do is rather complicated,” says co-founder Andersen Cheng. “[Our new investors] are more later stage private equity people — but they were the ones who got it within five minutes.” Cheng concedes it’s still too early for PQ’s post-quantum encryption to blaze a broad adoption trail on its own merits. So the team has been concentrating efforts on lowering the sales ramp to what it dubs its “defence-grade level of protection” by offering a suite of security products (it calls them “modules”) that aim to fix a range of nearer term pain-points for the target customers. It’s this modular approach which he says the new investors got right away. The modules are designed to work together, although customers can also cherry pick only the ones they need. One is a secure messaging app which Cheng says would be compliant with regulations requiring archiving, for example. Another is a key-splitting technology that requires consensus approval to grant access. A third is a biometric authentication tech that uses video selfies to create an audit trail for authentication and fraud deterrence purposes. Video selfies? Who knew post-quantum security could be so down with the kids… The overarching theme to what is undoubtedly a complex security proposition — a post-quantum encryption startup bearing a toolkit of compliance-focused security fixes — is prevention, says Cheng. “Our mission is to protect the world’s information through prevention,” is his on-the-spot elevator pitch. “We did meet a lot of resistance in the last few years when we were selling protection technology because a lot of the CISOs were saying we need to understand what’s wrong before we can address it. Now they understand what’s wrong, and it’s like a tidal wave — there’s no point in investing further in just detection without being able to prevent it from happening. So the mindset has changed completely in the last 12 months,” he adds. “I think we’ll see a lot of the CISOs, CIOs moving away from just buying detection technologies.” So while post-quantum encryption per se evidently remains a tough sell, PQ has further honed its proposition to help its customers with a range of compliance requirements — with Cheng noting its products can, for instance, address MiFID 2 requirements. Target industries and sectors for its modules include financial services, legal services, healthcare, government and utilities. So, in other words, all areas likely to be dealing with lots of regulatory issues, as well as handling highly sensitive data. Here’s the full list of modules in the current PQ toolkit: Not all of these modules are based on PQ’s post-quantum encryption technology, though Cheng claims they would all be secure against being compromised by any future quantum computers because that’s how they have been architected. The startup has around 20 patents granted and pending at this point. Giving an example of how its key-splitting consensus approval technology could be deployed in the real world, Cheng sketches the scenario of a nursing home worried about the risk of insurance claims against its staff being able to use PQ technology to enable an after-the-fact video evidence system, where video cameras are deployed in all its rooms but with the proviso that footage is only accessible (and thus viewable) via consensus agreement and solely for the purpose of proving out any future insurance claims. The encrypted video stream would be continually archived, unwatched, in a datacenter and could only be accessed if multiple parties holding pieces of the split key agreed to approve a request for access. “For example the nursing home director, the local authority, the insurer or maybe even the patient’s relative — a minimum of three out of four would need to get together digitally in order to open that clip just to see what happened in that last two minutes,” says Cheng. “That’s [one potential] use of quorum.” For now PQ has three customers, and Cheng is not yet disclosing names — saying only that it’s one banking customer, one government customer and a major global provider of trading floor technology to banks. But growing that number is a key focus for the new funding. The business model it’s intending at this point is a licensing one, along the lines of ARM Holdings. So creating architecture/modules that customers pay to use and integrate into their own infrastructures as they see fit. Cheng says it will also need to provide an API as a service “for certain implementations”, but that’s as close to a SaaS model as it’s planning to get. “It’s highly unlikely we’ll go into the b2c world, selling to individual customers one by one, or even SMEs,” he adds, although he also suggests PQ could end up as a technology and background hosting provider for other b2c players to package up modules into different sales propositions. Whatever gets its core IP out into the world and generating revenue most successfully. Most of the Series A will be going towards new hires and specifically on more biz dev employees to turn more leads into fully fledged customers, according to Cheng. “We’re mostly development heavy and we do not need to create a large sales team. Right now we’ve got more enquiries than we can cope with so it will be mostly spent on business development to follow up all the enquiries and to come up with the final solutions per customer. Because we have built all the modules now — it’s now the Lego block play depending on the requirements,” he adds. It’s worth noting that, unlike many security firms, PQ is not open sourcing its technology. So it’s not inviting a community of interested outsiders to verify the robustness of its security claims. But Cheng says this is because it’s not a b2c business and will therefore be working closely with only “major” customers who will be performing their own audits of its source code — meaning a wider open sourcing process is not necessary to win trust in its technology. Its customers will do their own due diligence on its claims. Cheng does add that PQ has worked with an independent crypto expert — professor Fred Piper, of Royal Holloway College — to verify all its patents and algorithms to ensure it is “cryptographically robust”. Getting crypto experts on board is one thing, but PQ’s most pressing challenge lies in convincing industries and governments they need to buy in to its post-quantum security vision right now. And while building post-quantum encryption is undoubtedly an impressive feat, convincing CISOs to open the purse strings to a different kind of security thinking is a whole other type of sweating toil. At least PQ now has a larger cash pile under its boots to help it up the hill. 2016-07-07 00:00 Natasha Lomas
37 SendGrid Launches New Endpoint to Complete API Email Management SendGrid recently announced a new endpoint, v3/mail/send, for its SendGrid Web API which marks a " new era " for the API. SendGrid believes the new endpoint rounds out the v3 offering which enables developers to completely manage email through an API. SendGrid built the endpoint in direct response to customer feedback, support ticket analysis, and open source issues. The new endpoint allows the same functionality as v2, with some noted additions. The most notable additions is the personalizations feature. Personalizations bundle customizable parameters for a single email into one block. Developers set default parameters for the email and then override such parameters with the preferred personalizations. SendGrid expects the feature to reduce development time significantly. In the blog post announcement , SendGrid illustrates the new personalizations feature with an example of how an email is sent in v2 versus a v3 send. Additional v3 improvements include With the new release, SendGrid recommends the v3 endpoint for all current and future customers. SendGrid will keep the v2 endpoint in its docs for the time being; however, SendGrid will no longer support new features within v2. To help developers with the transition, SendGrid has published a migration guide. Further, check out the video overview and the v2/v3 comparison graphic. 2016-07-07 00:00 By
38 Research: Exploring the connection between DevOps and digital The road to digital transformation is a well- trodden one, and it’s pretty unusual these days to come across an organisation that is not marching down it. From government departments to golf clubs, from... 2016-07-07 18:01 John Leonard
39 John Lewis CIO Paul Coby promoted to uber- CIO of John Lewis Partnership John Lewis CIO Paul Coby has been promoted to CIO of the entire John Lewis Partnership, a role that will put him in overall charge of the IT at supermarket chain Waitrose, as well as the John Lewis department... 2016-07-07 18:01 Graeme Burton
40 Oracle must pay $3bn compensation to HPE over Itanium support Oracle has, once again, been ordered to pay $3bn in compensation to HPE over its 2011 decision to discontinue software support for Itanium-based servers, just a year after it acquired HPE's rival, Sun... 2016-07-07 18:01 Graeme Burton
41 41 Engineer models heart valves, wind turbines for better designs, performance -- ScienceDaily And then Ming-Chen Hsu, an Iowa State University assistant professor of mechanical engineering, searched his computer for another video and clicked play. This time the tip of a wind turbine blade appeared on his monitor, constantly moving, flexing and vibrating as the blade rotated around the rotor hub. Red indicated air moving at a relative speed of 52 meters per second over the top of the blade; blue and green marked the slower air around the blade. These are computer models featuring technologies called computational mechanics, fluid-structure interaction and isogeometric analysis. They show the flow fields and stresses that mechanical systems have to withstand. And they're part of a toolkit Hsu and his research group are developing to improve the design, engineering and operation of all kinds of machines. "If we are able to use computers to model and simulate these engineering designs, we can save a lot of time and money," Hsu said. "We don't have to build and test every prototype anymore. " Hsu said it would be impractical, for example, for the wind energy industry to build and test full-scale prototypes of each and every idea for improving the performance of wind turbines. Instead, the wind energy industry can opt for computational models. Hsu said they're based on complex mathematical equations. They're full of data. And studies show they're accurate. Using the models, "We can predict the real physics of the problems we are looking at," he said. And so those videos showing blood flowing through an artificial heart valve or the vibrations of a wind turbine blade are a lot more than colorful graphics. To engineers, they can be as good as full-scale prototypes for studying durability and performance. Hsu has a background in computational mechanics and started modeling wind turbines during his doctoral studies at the University of California, San Diego. He started modeling heart valves as a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Texas at Austin. He's been at Iowa State since the fall of 2013 and has built a research group that currently includes doctoral students Austin Herrema, Chenglong Wang, Michael Wu and Fei Xu plus undergraduate student Carolyn Darling. The group is now working on two wind turbine studies and an engine project: • They're modeling the performance of the "Hexcrete" concrete wind turbine towers being developed by Sri Sritharan, Iowa State's Wilson Engineering Professor in Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering. The goal is to use prefabricated concrete to build taller wind turbine towers that can access the steadier winds at 120 meters and higher. The project is primarily supported by the U. S. Department of Energy. • They're also developing software to help engineers design wind turbine blades. The software will bridge a wide gap between blade design tools and performance simulations. The project is supported by a National Science Foundation grant that established Iowa State's graduate program in wind energy science, engineering and policy. • And Hsu's research group is modeling the performance of the rotors inside gas turbines. The models will help engineers design the next generation of turbine engines. The project is supported by a grant from the U. S. Army Research Office. Hsu, who teaches courses in fluid mechanics, said the modeling can be applied to all sorts of questions about a machine. In wind turbines, for example, the models can provide answers about material stress and fatigue, rotor aerodynamics, blade design, the wake behind turbines and power efficiency. "Ten to 15 years ago, computational fluid-structure interaction was new to everyone," Hsu said. "But with the success of this field, more and more methods are being picked up by industry. Our computational methods are improving engineering designs. " 2016-07-07 14:59 feeds.sciencedaily
42 How to tame your robot -- ScienceDaily Now programming robots is not just for those with years of coding knowledge, it's for anyone who wants to experience what it's like to simply wave at a robot and have it wave back. Gannon designed Quipt, open-source software that turns a human's motions into instructions a robot can understand. She designed it while in residence at Autodesk Pier 9 in San Francisco. When she left for her residency, she had been working with industrial robots at Carnegie Mellon University for a few years. She was close to making a big change. "I wanted to invent better ways to talk with machines who can make things. Industrial robots are some of the most adaptable and useful to do that," she said. But they are also some of the most dangerous. The U. S. Department of Labor has a special website devoted to "Industrial Robots and Robot System Safety. " These robots are big, and they have to be programmed by people with years of training. That programming takes place "basically with a joystick," according to Gannon. Programmers move the robot to a place, record a point and iteratively build up a motion path for the robots to remember. "Then the robot will repeat that task 24/7. That is their world," Gannon said. But not anymore. Quipt replaces the joystick technique. Its software stitches together the robot with a motion capture system, which are cameras that look into a space and let the robot see where it is. "I gave this robot -- this big, powerful dumb robot -- eyes into the environment," Gannon said. When the robot looks with its motion-capture eyes, it sees tracking markers on a person's hand or clothes. Now it can track a person while remaining a certain distance away, it can mirror a movement, or it can be told to avoid markers. Which means that potentially these robots are a lot safer -- and a lot smarter. Gannon imagines a world where they aren't just welding parts on an assembly line. "I think what's really exciting is taking these machines off of control settings and taking them into live environments, like classrooms or construction sites," Gannon said. Gannon collaborated with visiting artist Addie Wagenknecht and the Frank- Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry to develop a robot that could rock a baby's cradle according to the sound of the baby's cry. This software is a cousin to another of Gannon's projects that makes technology more hands-on -- last year Gannon released Tactum, which takes the software guesswork out of 3-D printing. In fact, Tactum projects an image directly on your body, and with your own hands you can manipulate the image to make it fit or look exactly how you like. Together with a projector, which produces the image on your skin, and a sensor, which can detect your skin and how you're touching it, the software updates the 3-D model that you're creating. When you're ready to print, you just simply close your hand and your design goes to the 3-D printer. Gannon was drawn to CMU's College of Fine Arts when the School of Architecture added new fabrication equipment. "I felt like I had the keys to the candy shop," she said. "My research is really playing in the field of computer science and robotics, but the questions I'm able to ask those specific domains is conditioned by my architectural background. It's really a spatial answer, how to control or interact with a robot. That, in my mind, is an architectural answer to this problem," she said. Golan Levin, director of the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at CMU, is one of Gannon's doctoral thesis advisors. He thinks her work could change how people design architecture, clothing and furniture, as well as influence industrial design and the arts. "Madeline is remarkable for the way in which she brings together an acutely sensitive design intuition with a muscular ability to develop high- performance software," Levin said. "The kind of work she is doing could not be achieved by a collaboration between a designer and engineer; it takes a single person with a unified understanding of both. " Stephen Lee, head of CMU's School of Architecture, has a philosophy that students learn best when they learn by making. He has attended Gannon's presentations and hired her to teach undergraduate architecture courses. "I think project-based learning and the maker culture are revolutionizing both the academy [K-12 & university] and practice [more slowly]. She is front and center in these new ways of learning and doing," Lee said. 2016-07-07 14:59 feeds.sciencedaily
43 Bioinformatics software developed to predict effect of cancer-associated mutations: Software analyzes 40,000 proteins per minute - - ScienceDaily That is why the three researchers began to work on the bioinformatics tool. So José Antonio Rodríguez had the biological question; Asier Fullaondo, the knowledge of bioinformatics tools and databases; and Gorka Prieto, the programming skills. Initially, these PhD holders developed a piece of software (WREGEX, available for the scientific community on the UPV/EHU's server) that can be used to predict and automatically seek out 'functional motifs' (the small groups of amino acids that develop specific tasks in a protein). They tested the programme to predict 'motifs' that move a protein from the nucleus to the cytoplasm of a cell, the so-called 'nuclear exportation signals'. At the end of this research phase in 2014, a paper was published in the journal Bioinformatics. But, as José Antonio Rodríguez pointed out, "in research the answer to one question opens the door to more questions. " The question on that occasion was: Which proteins in a sequence of amino acids could have a functional cancer-mutant 'motif'? The team took another step and combined the information on the sequences of all known human proteins with the COSMIC catalogue that gathers the mutations linked to cancer. Thus appeared a new version (WREGEX 2.0) that allows a normal protein to be compared with the same mutant one so as to be able to predict 'functional motifs' that have been modified and which could be linked to cancer. "You may also have experience in how a motif functions and you want to find out which proteins it could appear in and whether it appears modified into cancer. With this software you can obtain candidates to start to study," explained Gorka Prieto. Once the bioinformatics programme had been developed, it had to be tested and to do this they carried out a "cell exportation trial'. They again chose various candidates that could constitute a motif responsible for moving the protein outside the cell nucleus. They checked their functioning and, after modifying them according to the tumour mutations described in the COSMIC catalogue, they ran the trial again. That way, they certified that the candidates acted as an 'exportation signal', that the mutation affected the way they worked, and that the software was therefore valid. So this tool combines three types of information: the protein sequences, the functional motifs and the cancer mutations. "One of the main features of WREGEX 2.0 is that it can simultaneously study highly complex proteomes with masses of proteins and combine information, in the case of the trial, with cancer mutations; but the door is open for using other databases containing information about other types of mutations. The advantage, moreover, is that 40,000 proteins a minute can be analysed, while with other programs the analysis of a single protein took several minutes," explained Asier Fullaondo. So with this software it is possible to predict that the alteration in a protein may influence the development of disease, not just cancer. So far, thirteen pieces of research have already used this computing tool. Researchers in China, Japan, Korea, Germany and the United States have accessed the server. In the meantime, the multidisciplinary tandem formed by the three PhD holders is already thinking about continuing with the work to improve the tool. 2016-07-07 14:59 feeds.sciencedaily
44 Computing a secret, unbreakable key: Researchers develop the first available software to evaluate the security of any protocol for Quantum Key Distribution -- ScienceDaily Researchers at the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) at the University of Waterloo developed the first available software to evaluate the security of any protocol for Quantum Key Distribution (QKD). QKD allows two parties, Alice and Bob, to establish a shared secret key by exchanging photons. Photons behave according to the laws of quantum mechanics, and the laws state that you cannot measure a quantum object without disturbing it. So if an eavesdropper, Eve, intercepts and measures the photons, she will cause a disturbance that is detectable by Alice and Bob. On the other hand, if there is no disturbance, Alice and Bob can guarantee the security of their shared key. In practice, loss and noise in an implementation always leads to some disturbance, but a small amount of disturbance implies a small amount of information about the key is available to Eve. Characterizing this amount of information allows Alice and Bob to remove it from Eve at the cost of the length of the resulting final key. The main theoretical problem in QKD is how to calculate the allowed length of this final secret key for any given protocol and the experimentally observed disturbance. A mathematical approach was still needed to perform this difficult calculation. The researchers opted to take a numerical approach, and for practical reasons they transformed the key rate calculation to the dual optimization problem. "We wanted to develop a program that would be fast and user-friendly. It also needs to work for any protocol," said Patrick Coles, an IQC postdoctoral fellow. "The dual optimization problem dramatically reduced the number of parameters and the computer does all the work. " The paper, Numerical approach for unstructured quantum key distribution, published in Nature Communications presented three findings. First, the researchers tested the software against previous results for known studied protocols. Their results were in perfect agreement. They then studied protocols that had never been studied before. Finally, they developed a framework to inform users how to enter the data using a new protocol into the software. "The exploration of QKD protocols so far concentrated on protocols that allowed tricks to perform the security analysis. The work by our group now frees us to explore protocols that are adapted to the technological capabilities" noted Norbert Lütkenhaus, a professor with IQC and the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Waterloo. 2016-07-07 14:59 feeds.sciencedaily
45 Computer security: With Boxmate malicious programs have no place left to hide -- ScienceDaily No matter how well-tested our software may be, hackers keep on finding vulnerabilities to exploit or control systems at will. "The attackers are always one step ahead," says Andreas Zeller, professor of computer science at Saarland University and researcher at the Center for IT Security, Privacy and Accountability (CISPA). "The core problem of existing security systems is that the attack needs to have been observed at least once to be able to recognize it the next time -- and then, you have to update everything again and again. " This threat is particularly prominent in the upcoming "Internet of Things," where hundreds and thousands of devices can become potential targets. A new approach called "Boxmate" is now set to prevent other programs from surreptitiously changing their behavior, as this would be part of or a result of a hidden attack, or a backdoor exploit. Developed by Zeller together with graduate students Konrad Jamrozik and Philipp von Styp- Rekowsky, Boxmate systematically generates program inputs in order to investigate the program's regular behavior. "During this automatic testing, we log which critical data -- say locations or contacts -- and which critical resources -- microphone or Internet access -- the program is accessing to perform these tasks," Zeller explains, "and the test generator ensures that all visible features actually are exercised. " During production, the program then gets placed into a "sandbox," an automated watchdog which oversees the operation of the program in question -- and which raises an alarm whenever some data is being accessed that was not already accessed during testing. If the program is compromised or exhibits previously unseen malicious behavior, the sandbox will catch and prevent the attack. The nicest feature of Boxmate, says Zeller, "is that malicious programs no longer have a place to hide. " Indeed, if a program wants to use certain kinds of data later on, it will already have to access it while being tested by Boxmate -- and thereby expose what it is doing. "Any hidden functionality will be disabled by the sandbox," says Zeller, "and this will make it hard for attackers. " But wouldn't the sandbox also raise alarms during normal usage? "Our test generator explores behavior so well that during regular usage, we normally have no alarms at all," says Zeller, who has already tested Boxmate on more than a hundred different apps with his team. Modern mobile systems request authorizations for every access to sensitive data like the camera, contacts, and the microphone. "With Boxmate, we already know from testing that these are being used, and how," says Zeller. The current implementation of Boxmate protects apps on Android smartphones. However, the concept can equally be applied on the desktop, servers, or embedded systems, and it requires no changes to existing programs. Zeller has already applied for a worldwide patent for the technology underlying Boxmate, so licensing is already possible. To permanently establish Boxmate as a comprehensive security tool for industry and commerce, Zeller's research group has now joined forces with industry partner Backes SRT. This Saarland University spin-off has developed, for instance, the "SRT AppGuard" app, a security program available as a free app and already downloaded more than one million times. "Boxify," the extended, commercial version of AppGuard, works together with Boxmate and will also be presented at Cebit. Zeller financed the research on Boxmate with funds from an ERC Advanced Grant. He had received the highest award of the ERC in 2011, with his proposal for "SPECMATE -- Specification Mining and Testing. " 2016-07-07 14:59 feeds.sciencedaily
46 How to Study and Apply Ideas from Successful Organisations Studying successful organisations can inspire you and provide ideas to improve your own organisation. Helena Moore, director of people experience at Bromford, spoke about her experiences in adopting ideas and practices from successful organisations at Spark the Change London 2016. Reading about case studies of high performance leadership and culture from organisations like Netflix, Zappos, and Virgin, and visiting organisations like Timpson, has helped her to understand what makes these organisations successful and to find ways to apply them in her own organisation. It’s not what you do, but the way you do things that can make the difference, says Helena Moore. In preparing yourself for the future, the trick is to pick through material and find out if and what will work in your own organisation. She gives examples in her talk regarding recruiting, onboarding new people, involving customers, leadership, using social media, establishing values, and developing people. InfoQ interviewed Helena Moore to get more details on how she adopted ideas and practices: InfoQ: What are the "tricks" that you use to apply ideas from companies like Zappos, Netflix, and Virgin in your company? Helena Moore : Maybe "tricks" isn’t quite the right word. Although I’d have to agree sometimes you feel you need a wand to make things happen! It’s a good question as, yes, ideas and inspirations are great brain food but leveraging the value from the ideas to make a difference is the magic. So my list of "tricks" would be: Be curious - I know it’s an overdone word right now but curiosity is essential. Don’t just look for great ideas in the sector you work in or related sectors. Our open approach to engaging with customers over social media came from looking at examples like Innocent Drinks rather than anyone in the housing sector Suspend your judgement - nothing makes me more frustrated than an immediate "that’s great but it would never work here". Even if something seems ridiculous, with some suspended judgement and time and space to incubate, an idea can evolve into something that is different from the original version but that can really add value. Our new onboarding online module New. Be was inspired by an eclectic range of influences including Sainsbury’s and Arsenal Football Club but it doesn’t mirror any of them - they just wouldn’t suit if lifted straight. The idea of our pre social media rant line came from Virgin Mobile. Be prepared to contribute - don’t just take, take, take - add value to others. Whether it’s joining networks, forums or hosting someone who wants to come and have a mooch, this investment of time is worth it. Payback may not be immediate and may not come directly from the person who takes from you but it will happen. I joined an organisation called Culturevist a few years ago; a bunch of people interested in improving culture and engagement in organisations. Culturevist at the time was a free to join network - I chatted and shared with people from Starbucks, Paperchase, Innocent Drinks, Yammer etc. It was there that I first heard about Holacracy (now well-known and adopted by the guru of culture organisation Zappos) and whilst we don’t apply Holacracy in a pure form it has inspired us to flatten structures for instance. InfoQ: Can you give some examples of the ideas that you applied at Bromford? Helena Moore : I’ve mentioned a few above, and when I reflect on these they seem individually small but it’s the sum total that has impact, so to add to the list… Ahead of some of the widely heralded approaches adopted by the likes of Virgin and Gore around taking leave without rules, back in 2002 we decided to introduce trust-based flexible working. We decided that hour- counting, spreadsheets and rigidity wasn’t for us – and we still have this today. People work out flexible working with their manager. Another blast from the past that has had longevity was taken from men’s body product Lynx. They referred to a scene from the film The Matrix where Neo the main character was offered a red or blue pill. The red pill being the one that allowed Neo to experience reality. We use "taking the red pill" as a standard language when facing up to reality when we haven’t always done things as well as we should. Who’d have thought that we would have had this in common with men’s cosmetics brand that "over 8 million blokes across the UK & Ireland use Lynx every day". InfoQ: What was it that made Bromford decide to become an employer of choice? Helena Moore : Who wants to work somewhere miserable! That’s a key reason in itself. but we have always believed in the impact on the bottom line of a really highly engaged organisation and there are some specific inspirations behind this. At the start of the millennium we began to look at what made great organisations tick. We were inspired by Timpson’s, known to many as the shoe repair people. Timpson’s colleague engagement was (and still is) exceptional. When we visited them we started to see that they empowered their frontline people to do the right thing for customers and have genuine control of local service delivery. We have also loved the approach of First Direct Bank. Originally a telephone banking service they clearly understood that they offered the same services as any bank but the difference and secret to their growing success was in the interactions their colleagues had with customers. Clearly not scripted, their people were empowered to have great conversations appropriate to the client. Adding humour, empathy and general chat made the bank human - and very successful. InfoQ: How do you make new people feel welcome? How do newcomers feel about that? Helena Moore : It all feels a bit in reverse that we make a fuss of people when they leave - there are collections, cards, flowers, gifts and maybe a drink or two. We loved the way that Rackspace Hosting celebrated new starters so we decided to adopt our own approach. We just ask teams to do something to celebrate new starters, it might be a team breakfast, a helium balloon or a bunting line of welcome messages - but starting a new opportunity is definitely cause for celebration. As well as this less formal approach we have our great online onboarding platform - New. Be - which holds a plethora of information, my favourite being "Mr Benny Fitz's sweet shop" the place where people can select their favourite benefits and pop them in their basket to check out! Our CEO Philippa also meets every new starter as she runs a session at all our induction days which we call the Bigger Picture. InfoQ: You've tried several ideas for recruiting people. What has worked and what hasn't? Helena Moore : We started using assessment centres to test for attitude in the early noughties. We liked what ASDA had done at the time with their recruitment process so we created something similar. We called it "recruitment in a box" as it was styled around a boxed board game. It worked brilliantly especially for frontline and administrative roles and we started to pull in people with great attitudes - we could teach them the rest. Over time this stopped being as successful for some roles and we recognised that one size did not fit all and we had negative feedback from some of our internal colleague customers. We evolved the concept by flexing and designing the process to combine testing technical capability alongside attitude and added in a realistic situational element too. For example, for a gas engineer we use a real home with a real boiler repair and we simultaneously assess how the candidate treats the customer with how they complete the task. For a landscape team assessment we even run assessment in a field! InfoQ: What are the kind of things that Bromford does to connect with their customers? Helena Moore : Some examples from pre social media days have been a "rant line". The inspiration came from Virgin Mobile and the sentiment was to make it easy and quick for customers to let us know when they weren’t happy with something 24/7 with no paper work. We got some amazing feedback and some "interesting" messages too! Social media has of course overtaken this now and we have taken inspiration from the likes of Innocent, O2 and John Lewis and try hard to add a real human element to our communications. We have asked customers to investigate our services especially when they had made complaints. These Customer Service Investigators -our own CIA - had some amazing results. More recently we have made a shift in our relationship with our customers – we are developing coaching capability in our neighbourhood coaches to work closely with our customers to unlock their potential and achieve their aspirations. InfoQ: Can you give some suggestions to organizations as to what they can do to revitalize their purpose, vision and mission? Helena Moore : We don’t have a vision mission and value set anymore. We have a single set of Bromford DNA - Be Good, Be Brave, Be Different and Be Commercial. We recognised that lots of colleagues either couldn’t recall the vision, mission, or values, or got them mixed up, recalled them but trotted them out without really thinking about what they were saying and even a touch of cynicism and a sarcastic voice! Having the single DNA alongside our really strong social purpose of inspiring people to be their best works well for us. We use Yammer as the vehicle for our big all organisation conversations. We get lots of colleagues posting stories about what they have been up to on a daily basis with an attached hashtag. Spark the Change London 2016 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 films sessions at Spark the Change London and is covering the conference with Q&As, summaries, and articles. 2016-07-07 15:05 Ben Linders
47 Overcoming Paradigms to Become Truly Agile Truly agile is what you are, and to become agile you need to overcome paradigms, argues Arie van Bennekum, co-author of the agile manifesto and thoughtleader at Wemanity Group. At Spark the Change London 2016 he talked about agile as a metabolism. Van Bennekum stated that it takes "being agile" and not "doing agile" to achieve success. Overcoming paradigms is essential; people need the right mindset to become agile. Agile is an interaction concept based on the values and principles of the agile manifesto. Technology facilitates agile working, but tools don’t make you agile, van Bennekum claims. Agile is not something that you just implement; it’s a change to increase the adaptability of the organization. Several people have shared their views on becoming and being agile. In her article on an organization development approach to agile adoption ,Vijaya Devi states: One of the myths about Agile is that people and organizations tend to believe that by practicing a set of activities, such as Daily scrum, sprint cycles, and retrospectives, they become Agile. On the contrary, organizations which want to become truly Agile need to change their mindset. In the article Ten Ways to Successfully Fail Your Agility , Oren Kdoshim and Ilan Kirschenbaum explain what it takes to become agile: Becoming agile is hard work. It requires continuous practice, breaking old habits, and adopting a new mindset, to name a few challenges. It means tweaking the culture, and that requires investing a lot of energy in the organisation. In an interview with Mario E. Moreira , InfoQ asked him about the business benefits of being agile: The primary business benefit of being Agile is that you begin to truly understand what customer value looks like. You will become hyper-focused on understanding what is of value to the customer and using smaller increments to build, validate, and improve the product so that what you delivery will be directly aligned with what the customer finds as valuable. If you achieve this (directly aligning what you build with what the customer finds as valuable), the company will ultimately make more money. This may be Agile’s dirty little secret. Belinda Waldock explains during the InfoQ interview on her book "Being Agile in Business" how being agile helps people anticipate change and navigate uncertainty: Agile helps to see trends and patterns in our work and our environment so we can begin to understand the rhythm and flow and be able to anticipate what may happen in the future. A lot of the pain that goes with change and uncertainty can be addressed in a team using agile by helping to communicate and share information and insights. There are some things we cannot anticipate but using agile we can build in slack to plan for these uncertainties. InfoQ spoke with Arie van Bennekum about the main changes he has seen in the software industry related to agile, why people find it difficult to accept shifted paradigms, successful implementation of the agile values and principles and adoption of servant leadership, increasing organizational wide collaboration, and what organizations can do to foster an agile mindset. InfoQ: You are one of the signatories of the manifesto for agile software development. What are the main changes that you have seen in the software industry related to agile? Arie van Bennekum : First of all there is the eagerness of taking responsibility. At the moment, wherever I go, every organization has somewhere Agile initiatives. We all know the big stories and often forget about the spark. This spark is often initiated by people at the operational level in projects. It is awesome to see that bit by bit more people in the teams are eager to take responsibility. Second, there is the general awareness that we need a shorter time to market. More and more organizations change to shorter delivery cycles. After all, in the time before writing the Agile Manifesto most of us were trying to solve that problem. Running over time and budget is unfortunately still the case but the awareness is one step in the right direction. InfoQ: Why do people find it difficult to accept the shifted paradigms in the way they work as teams or manage teams? Van Bennekum : To be honest, I am not a therapist but you can see patterns. We have been too long in situations with individual silo work. The funny thing is, during a football game we can all see people are multidisciplined and they can step in for each other working towards one shared team objective. The moment we are at work we hide into silos. The silos are, as far as I can see, a result of traditional management which started over a century ago based on the idea that the manager knows and decides all. The silo is safe (it's clear what you have to do), can bring you status and work has clear process (paper and signatures) to either enter the silo or to leave the silo. Teamwork- where we act as a team having a set of things to do serving one shared objective, in which we decide on the spot who in the team will take on what- has simply not been the way we work. Crossing that bridge and starting to work like that is something we sometimes try, but at the moment something goes wrong and in a standard reflex we will hide again in our silo, old patterns, documents, handovers, etc. This is why I used the word "metabolism"... InfoQ: Can you give examples from organizations that succeeded in implementing the agile values and principles? What did they do to make it work for them? Van Bennekum : I can give you examples but I do not know if they are all ok with having this revealed in public so I wont give specific names. But let me say it by using three case studies from Agile Transformations at various organizations such as a large retailer, a mid size energy provider and a large technology company. Overcoming the paradigms is essential. Management paradigms, development paradigms, paradigms in responsibilities, etc. In order to be able to do it, you need to have three things in place. First of all, for Agile working vertical commitment is crucial. Aspects like transparency, discipline in the rituals, visualization, prioritization, etc., not only need support from the management; management has to role model this as well. Especially coming from old hierarchy cultures, people tend to copy management behavior. This is why we (in combination with other activities of course) have to pay special attention to management at all levels during our transformations when we coach teams and individuals. Second is the safety of the environment; people have to feel safe enough to make mistakes. Learning means trying, developing, mistakes, etc. and that takes time. The standard reflex is to fall into old patterns. The moment you don’t have time to make mistakes and management does not support you, this reflex will be supported and change becomes impossible. The third one we like to apply, unless the organization is in a heavy crisis, is the fact that we start with the company as it is. We keep people in their own safe environment and start changing during the development waves. Lessons learned especially help to change- just pushing change into teams and the organization does not really make it sustainable. InfoQ: What makes the adoption of servant leadership successful? Van Bennekum : Proof.... Managers need proof (most of the time). Case studies, references, visits, especially in similar processional domains help to overcome things like "not invented here" and "good idea but this does not work for us". By the way, this not just for managers. Most people want proof in their own professional domain and even then you will hear quite a few "yes but" quotes... InfoQ: Breaking down walls between parts of an organization can be challenging. Any tips on how this can be done to increase organizational wide collaboration? Van Bennekum : Heartbeats are essential. Any stakeholder who has a say somewhere in the traditional sequence of the development process (whatever you develop) needs to be involved. In combination with my answer to the previous question, I can sketch it like this. As mentioned we will keep the organization as is. We change the interaction during projects or other forms of the development. We will take out the sequence and work in multi disciplined teams with all stakeholders. Stakeholders are still positioned in some department but assigned to a team with the mandate to decide, accept or change when needed with regards to their domain. Think about developers but also architects, legal departments, corporate marketing communication or anything else as long as they are stakeholders somewhere in the development process. The moment to bring all mandated stakeholders together (so that they get information at the source) is the heartbeat. From early moments where we create the product backlog and design principles all the way to final delivery heartbeats (preferably on a weekly basis) are the success factor. InfoQ: Any final advice on what organizations can do to foster an agile mindset? Van Bennekum : Too often I hear people say things like "that does not work for us". The thing is, Agile working makes you responsive. You need responsiveness in the dynamics of today’s and tomorrow's world; it is inevitable. Never accept "that does not work for us" regarding Agile. Always work together to find a way how you can make it work. 2016-07-07 15:04 Ben Linders
48 Professor studies how apps can affect productivity The internet is full of distractions, and app creators have designed a myriad of tools to help people stay on task, from timers that let you know when it's time to take a break to programs that will block certain sites from your web browser. Eun Kyoung Choe, an assistant professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State, was curious about how effective some of these tools are. So she collaborated with researchers from Microsoft Research and Seoul National University to create a web application called TimeAware, which logs the websites and applications a person uses during the day while calculating a productivity score. The team used the web app in a study to see if the way data was presented to users affected whether or not user productivity improved. "With TimeAware, we could decide whether the data would be shown in a positive way by highlighting productivity, or in a negative way by highlighting unproductive time," said Choe. "I was curious which version might be more helpful in encouraging people to be more productive. " Quantifying the self Choe has long been interested in "self-monitoring"—when a person collects personal data to learn more about themselves and make positive changes. After using an activity tracker like a FitBit, for example, a person might see they're not walking as much as they'd like and then make an effort to fit in more exercise. But with so many options for gadgets and apps that promise to help improve sleep, encourage exercise and increase productivity, Choe wanted to learn more about what makes them effective or not. "I like to look at lots of different types of data—such as sleep and exercise data—and create tools for people to collect this information and then make sense of it," said Choe. "The data isn't helpful unless you do something with it. " Choe was inspired to create TimeAware after she started using an app called RescueTime, a free program that TimeAware was based on. She found that even though she kept RescueTime running while she was on her computer, the data wasn't as detailed as she'd like and logging in to the website to see her score was cumbersome. "Because the feedback wasn't great, what often happened was I didn't look at my data and I wasn't able to learn anything from it. I wanted to design a system that had better and more helpful feedback," said Choe. "I'm also very interested in this notion of framing—taking the same information and presenting it in different ways, like looking at a glass as half empty or half full. I want to see how looking at data in different ways can influence people. " Looking at your day half empty or full The team used RescueTime's API (or application program interface ) to create two versions of TimeAware that were identical except for the way they displayed data: the positive version displayed the percentage of time the user was productive along with a list of their most productive websites and apps. The negative version emphasized the percentage of time the user was unproductive along with their most unproductive sites and apps. In the study, Choe and her team assigned an equal number of participants to the positive and negative versions of TimeAware. Then, they looked at their behavior before, during and after using the app. Choe discovered that only the participants using the negatively focused version increased their productivity, and those using the positive version stayed the same. Choe said that while she had expected there to be a difference between the two user groups, she hadn't foreseen that the positive group wouldn't improve their productivity at all. "I was really surprised that there was no effect on the positive condition, because that's the way most of the apps similar to TimeAware are designed," said Choe. "The study suggests that just looking at and being aware of your current state doesn't really help. " Choe also asked the participants about their experiences using TimeAware and found that while those who used the negatively focused version increased their productivity, they were also much more stressed than those who used the positive version. "The negative version was effective but it was stressing people out, which is probably why it worked," said Choe. "In the future, we might look at ways to lower that stress, like only showing feedback at certain times of the day, perhaps at lunch and then before you leave work. Or, having a user be able to set an alarm that would sound when their productivity dips below 70 percent. " The team had their research published in a paper in May at the Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI) Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Take breaks and explore motivation Even though striving for more productivity is a good thing, Choe said it's also important for people to realize that no one can work 100 percent of the time and that breaks are important to avoid burning out. She said a productivity level of 90 percent within apps like RescueTime is considered very high, and around 80 percent is considered very good. So, no one is perfect. And while Choe hopes to learn more about how apps like RescueTime and TimeAware can be most effective, she said the tools can still be helpful as a starting point for people wanting to be more productive. "Once you get an idea of your productivity levels, then there's the next questions. Are you happy? Are you not happy? Or if you have a specific goal, are you working toward it? What are the ways to achieve that goal? " Choe said. "Those are all follow-up questions that you have to explore. And then reflect on your daily behavior and see where you can make positive changes. " So while productivity tools might not help you slay internet distractions once and for all, they might be a good place to start. You'll have to do the rest. Explore further: Android widgets may boost effectiveness of sleep- monitoring apps More information: Leveraging Framing Effects to Enhance Personal Productivity: hcil.snu.ac.kr/research/timeaware 2016-07-07 15:04 phys.org
49 Ruby On Rails Reaches 5.0 The latest version of Ruby on Rails has a new framework and API mode. Rails 5.0 is being described by the developers as: "without a doubt the best, most complete version of Rails yet. " The two headline improvements are a new framework for handling WebSockets, and support for API mode. The new framework, Action Cable, provides an integrated way to manage connections, a channels layer for server-side processing, and a JavaScript layer for client-side interaction. The developers say it makes designing live features like chat, notifications, and presence a lot easier, adding that it's what’s powering the features of Basecamp 3, if you want to see it in action. Action Cable provides access to your entire Active Record and PORO domain model in your WebSockets work. The developers have added a new ActionController::Renderer system that you can use to render your templates outside of controllers, so you can reuse server-side templates for WebSocket responses. In development, Action Cable runs in-process with the rest of your app. Doing this has meant the default development server has been switched from Webrick to Puma. The developers say that in production, you may well want to run Action Cable servers in their own processes, whcih is how it is used at Basecamp at scale. The API mode is designed to give you a slimmed down version of Rails for client-side JavaScript or native applications that just need the backend to speak JSON. The developers say that while there’s still more work to be done on this feature, they feel they're off to a great start. 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. 2016-07-07 14:59 Written by
50 DevOps causing headaches? Tackle the issues head-on, advise experts Shifting to a DevOps culture and style of development will cause problems, especially in terms of culture and employee acceptance, but organisations should deal with them head-on, according to experts speaking at the Computing DevOps Summit in London this week. Sarah Wells, principal engineer at The Financial Times , explained that one problem the company did not deal with straight away was simply asking staff to work out of hours to deal with the extra work. “We backed off dealing with the out of office [hours] issue when we should have just been agile about it and tried it and seen how it worked and gone from there," she said. Once the firm did address this, the problem was not as difficult as they feared. “We put a rota in place and people were fine with it. It really was not as hard as we thought,” said Wells. David Stanley, head of IS operations at Trainline, explained that this was also a problem that the firm had “not thought about upfront” and had to address down the line, and that it would have been better to just tackle it from the off. “If we could go back and do it again that would be something we would have looked at and asked how we needed to deal with it,” he said. Paul Houghton, technical delivery manager at NHS Choices, added that he wished the organisation had been more blunt about the adoption of DevOps. “We’re not in a position where we have a mature, agile development environment, and figuring out how to integrate operations into that is quite a struggle,” he said. “If we could start from scratch I would bang the two things together and just figure out how it works from there.” Cultural changes Wells also emphasised a point that was raised throughout the day regarding selling DevOps to those in the business who will be most affected. “DevOps is all about culture change, and that is a challenge when you have lots of teams in specialised silos with people very invested in their roles," she said. "You’ve got to convince them that it’s not a risk to their job, even though it’s a new and scary thing. It's really a chance to become more integral to the future of the business. " However, the panellists poured scorn on the notion of adopting a 'bi-modal' approach to IT, whereby the more traditional IT functions sit next to the DevOps teams. Stanley called it a "terrible idea". "With DevOps there's lots of talk about getting good people in the door and creating the right culture to work in an agile way, to feel more empowered and so on, and bi-modal IT just goes against all that," he said. "You’re going to have half the people getting glory, and half being ignored. With a two-tier system you’re going to make people unhappy, and it just slows things down. " 2016-07-07 11:28 www.v3
51 Data Generation Gap: Younger IT Workers Believe The Hype IT has been experiencing a bit of a generation gap between so-called digital natives, who grew up with iPhones and cloud computing, and older workers who didn't. Now, a new study from IDG Enterprise says younger workers see a lot more opportunity in big data than their older counterparts do. Specifically, workers aged 18 to 34 are "vastly more likely" than other age groups to strongly agree on the transformative potential of big data and their companies' readiness to take advantage of it, according to the IDG Enterprise Data & Analytics Survey 2016 . [Your job is probably secure. For now. Read Robots, AI Won't Destroy Jobs Yet.] IDG Enterprise surveyed 724 IT decision-makers of all ages involved in big data initiatives. The report does not reveal the numbers of respondents per age group. The report said respondents aged 55 and older are significantly more likely than those in other age groups to disagree that big data will open up new revenue opportunities and/or lines of business in the near future. These respondents are also more uncertain than other age groups about whether their big data ecosystem will change in the next 12 months, and how it will change. In its report, IDG Enterprise said aged-based differences about the value of data-driven projects may be attributable to "younger employees being more comfortable with the latest technologies and more inured to the inevitability of technology-driven disruption. On the other hand, older respondents have seen many supposedly transformational technologies come and go throughout their careers. " In other words, perhaps older respondents are more seasoned and cynical, having already been through multiple cycles of tech hype. Yet, technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and big data analytics are driving big investments by enterprises, according to the report. More than half of respondents (53%) said their companies are currently implementing, or planning to implement, data-driven projects within the next 12 months. The report defines data-driven projects as those undertaken with the goal of generating greater value from existing data. Of the projects underway or in the planning stages, 26% of respondents said they are already implemented, 14% said they are in the process of implementation or testing, 13% said they're in planning implementation in the next 12 months, 8% said they are considering a data-driven project, and 8% said they're likely to pursue one but are still struggling to find the right strategy or solutions. How does your company stack up compared with these results? Do you believe there is an age gap when it comes to understanding the value of data-driven implementations? Tell us all what you think in the comments section below. 2016-07-07 11:06 Jessica Davis
52 Google reportedly working on two Android Wear 2.0 Nexus smartwatches Google might release a pair of new, round-faced smartwatches, possibly under the Nexus brand. Both of them would showcase Android Wear 2.0 , that Google recently unveiled at I/O. The two watches, possibly codenamed Angelfish and Swordfish, might be released sometime after the current batch of Nexus phones sees the light of day. Both smartwatches are expected to showcase new experiences on Android Wear, while also providing Google assistant integration. All of this information comes from Android Police , who are quoting unnamed sources. The publication has recently leaked the detailed descriptions and specifications of the upcoming, HTC-made, Nexus devices: Marlin and Sailfish. According to this report, Angelfish is likely the larger of the two watches, coming with extra bells and whistles. Somewhat similar in design to the Motorola 360 and the LG Urbane LTE, Angelfish offers users a hefty 43.5mm diameter screen, with a thick body. That heft comes from the massive battery needed to power the watch’s LTE and GPS capabilities. The watch is also expected to feature a heart-rate monitor and be a true standalone Android Wear device, without needing a paired phone. Going back to the watch’s design the report describes it as such: Moving on, we have a second watch, codenamed Swordfish. This is reportedly the smaller of the two, looking somewhat similar to the Pebble Time Round, albeit with a much smaller bezel. Swordfish will lack many of the capabilities of its larger sibliing. As such you’d need to keep the Swordfish constantly paired with your smartphone, seeing as there’s no LTE nor any GPS present on the device. It might not even feature a heart-rate monitor, which would be a bizarre omission in this day and age. Perhaps Google is looking to position this at the very low-end of the smartwatch market, but that’s pure speculation on our part. Talking about the design of Swordfish, Android Police characterized it as such: Finally, there’s talk of support for Google’s interchangeable MODE bands , with the smaller Swordfish definitely being designed with MODE bands in mind. Unfortunately, the larger Angelfish watch might not support MODE due to its special lugs and band clasping mechanism. There is no no extra information on any specs, or launch date, or even retail prices for these rumored watches right now. Of course, before you start throwing out your watch collection, you should remember that this is just a rumor at this point, albeit a credible one. If Google is planning on launching these smartwatches later this year, we’ll likely learn more as we get closer to the fall. Source: Android Police 2016-07-07 10:52 Vlad Dudau
53 Create and edit animated GIFs with SoftDigi Easy GIF SoftDigi Easy GIF is a $20.95 suite of tools for creating and editing animated GIFs. The program doesn’t require any artistic or design ability. Open an existing animation and you can resize it, remove frames, change colors, set transparency and more, all in a few clicks. A comprehensive editor allows drawing lines and shapes, adding text, spraying or filling areas with color, applying special effects, and more. These tools have far more power than you might expect. "Line" isn’t just "click > drag > release > line appears": there are line, polyline and pencil tools, with control over thickness, line and brush styles, line and fill colors, transparency, optional arrowheads, a shadow effect and more. It’s a similar story with the Text tool. As well as the usual horizontal captions, you’re able to display text in a circle, arc, angled or vertically, with rotated characters, in a custom size and color, with your preferred transparency and shadow settings. We should probably mention that these are vector objects, too, making them very easy to revisit and edit later. Whatever you’re doing may be previewed at any time, either internally or in a browser. An excellent "Save As" dialog gives control over the number of colors and dithering method, as well as various optimization tricks (crop transparent areas, merge identical frames, rework color maps). This could be a handy way to optimize existing animated GIFs, even if you’re not editing them. There are options to export your animation as SWF, AVI, or individual or selected frames. SoftDigi Easy GIF also provides a capable wizard for creating animated banners. You’re able to set a banner size, define a background picture, set colors, enter up to 5 text messages, and animate each one with your choice of more than 100 effects. The program also has a separate module for creating animated GIFs from videos. At least, that’s the theory: not only did this not work in our tests, it locked the program up entirely. It’s not the biggest of deals because there’s capable freeware to do this already, but if Video > GIF is an important feature for you, be sure to test it carefully. SoftDigi Easy GIF has some issues, and its interface isn’t always easy or intuitive to use. The main editor and sheer depth of functionality won us over, though, and if you need an industrial-strength GIF builder then it’s worth a look. SoftDigi Easy GIF ($20.95) is available in a 14-day trial build for Windows Vista and later. 2016-07-07 10:24 By Mike
54 Windows 10 Anniversary Update, Salesforce On Outlook: Microsoft Roundup Mark your calendars, Windows 10 users: Microsoft is releasing its Windows 10 Anniversary Update on Aug. 2, 2016. This is one of the biggest updates to arrive on Windows 10 since it was released to the general public on July 29, 2015. Since then, Microsoft reports its newest OS is running on 350 million devices and that users have spent more than 135 billion hours on it. New features arriving in the Anniversary Update are designed to improve security, digital inking capabilities, Cortana, and the Edge browser. Microsoft's personal digital assistant will now be available above the lock screen. New Edge extensions will include AdBlock and LastPass. The Anniversary Update is arriving a few days after the official one-year mark for Windows 10, but Microsoft still plans to terminate its free upgrade offer on July 29. If you haven't downloaded Windows 10, you have a few weeks to upgrade and get the Anniversary Update features for free. [Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella: 6 must-have principles for AI design .] Of course, not everyone wants to upgrade to Windows 10. Microsoft this week paid out $10,000 to a customer after an unauthorized upgrade caused her business computer to slow down, crash, and become unusable for days at a time. The customer, Teri Goldstein, owns a travel agency business in Sausalito, Calif. When attempts to contact Microsoft support proved unsuccessful, she sued the company for the cost of wages lost and a new computer. She won her case. This occurrence exemplifies the aggressive upgrade strategy Microsoft has adopted to increase the Windows 10 user base. Following user complaints, Microsoft changed its upgrade prompt for Windows 10 to be less aggressive, reported The Verge. In order to drive more upgrades, Microsoft recently changed its upgrade prompt so that if users tried to dismiss it by clicking the red X, the update would be scheduled anyway. The UI change was confusing, so Microsoft is now giving users the option to "decline free offer," and if they click the X, the upgrade won't download. Microsoft this week confirmed plans to kill the Surface 3 in December 2016. The news was originally reported by Thurrott.com , which noticed multiple editions of the budget hybrid were missing from Microsoft's online store. The Surface 3 was introduced in March 2015 as a more affordable version of the Surface Pro 3; given its age, a spike in popularity was unlikely. Microsoft later confirmed inventory is limited and production will end by December. While a Surface 4 would seem a natural next step for Redmond's hardware portfolio, neither officials nor Microsoft's rumor mill have discussed plans to launch an upgraded model. There's a chance Microsoft will exit the budget device space altogether, given its recent efforts to bring its premium Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book to enterprise customers. Salesforce launched a new integration with Microsoft Outlook to accelerate productivity for business users, specifically sales reps. A new add-in called Lightning for Outlook enables users to access Salesforce data from the Outlook inbox without the need to go back and forth between apps. Microsoft and Salesforce have a strategic partnership that has resulted in integrations throughout the Office suite. However, this latest announcement marks the first time Lightning components are available in another app, said Salesforce Sales Cloud director Greg Gsell. Office updates include new functionality for Sway in Office 365. Subscribers now have access to three new features, including the abilities to add passwords, add more content (like text, photos, and videos), and remove the informational footer for a more polished appearance. Windows Insiders in the Fast ring received Windows 10 preview build 14376 for PC and mobile. This build does not include any major new features, but it packs several improvements for both types of devices. As with all early builds, there are issues to be aware of before downloading. Dona Sarkar, software engineer and new head of the Windows Insider program, announced the "Messaging everywhere" feature will not be arriving as part of the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. This feature would allow users to send and receive texts from a Windows 10 phone to a Windows 10 PC. It was well-received by Insiders during testing, but Microsoft believes it can create a better experience through the Skype app and has decided to withhold it from launch. 2016-07-07 10:05 Kelly Sheridan
55 Predictive Analytics, Wearables Data Driving EHR Growth Healthcare providers have been investing in electronic health record (EHR) technology over the past several years, and the trend shows no sign of letting up. That's according to a new report from market research firm Technavio that looked at the size of the market, its expected growth, and the trends that will impact it over the next several years. The research firm is forecasting the global EHR market to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 5%, exceeding $28 billion by 2020. "There is greater adoption of EHR in developed economies as compared to developing economies owing to the IT budget constraints in developing countries," lead analyst Amit Sharma, wrote in a July 4 statement. "The adoption of EHR systems in the European healthcare IT market is increasing at an exponential rate so as to increase the quality of patient care. " Technavio identified three big trends that are impacting the market and driving the growth of EHR. The first is the increased adoption of predictive analytics. The research firm noted that predictive analytics integrated with EHR technology has led to emerging research opportunities. [How is Penn Medicine using EHR data with analytics? Read Penn Medicine Using Data to Save Patient Lives .] For instance, one use-case is for medical teams to use predictive modeling technology integrated with cloud-based EHR solutions to monitor the spread of the flu in real-time and predict where the virus will spread next. In another implementation, the University of Colorado Health has implemented predictive analytics in EHR systems to increase the efficiency of operating rooms. Wearables and other health and fitness devices used by patients represent another area of growth for EHR and healthcare applications. Indeed, healthcare CIOs interviewed by InformationWeek have also said that data collection by fitness and other healthcare devices is a significant emerging trend for IT healthcare. Connecting these devices with patient electronic health records could allow doctors and other medical providers to access health data including heart rate, glucose level, and cholesterol levels. Using the information gathered, doctors will have the most recent and relevant information about the patient in order to prepare electronic prescriptions based on the information gathered. Technavio noted that Apple, Google, and Samsung have all created their own health and fitness applications and devices. Apple, working as a third-party app developer in partnership with Nike, has developed the cloud-based platform called HealthKit to store an individual's health information metrics such as blood pressure, heart rate, and weight. Apple has also partnered with the Mayo Clinic and other hospitals to access patient health information. Microsoft offers HealthVault , which can serve as a repository for consumers to store their downloaded medical records and data uploads from their wearable fitness devices. (Google shut down its consumer health record effort in June 2011, but has since launched its own fitness app.) Another big trend driving continued investment in EHR is the integration of these health records with telemedicine efforts. Technavio said that telemedicine-based technologies provide a framework for performing remote monitoring, again via sensors for detection of blood glucose, blood pressure, heart rates, and other data. "The major challenge for vendors in the market will be to integrate EHR, telemedicine, and other IT systems of hospitals seamlessly and to make devices interoperable," Sharma noted. 2016-07-07 10:05 Jessica Davis
56 Microsoft Updates Office Preview for Android Version 16.0.7127.1002 is exclusively available for members of the Office Insider for Android program, but as it usually happens, it’s just a matter of weeks until retail users get these updates too. Microsoft Word now comes with tables built for touch, and users are now provided with options to drag tables around, with text automatically wrapping around. Excel can now open files that contain ActiveX controls, according to the official change log (which you can find in full in the box after the jump). All three apps included in the Office suite, namely Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, come with support for SD cards, so users can now save documents anywhere on an SD card if they are running Android 5.0 and newer. And the same time, Microsoft is also offering options to discover more Office apps, with all three apps now making it “easy for you to discover and quickly install all the Office apps available for your Android phone and tablet.” If you’re an insider, the new Office apps can be downloaded from the store while everyone else needs to wait a little bit longer until Microsoft makes this version publicly available for Android devices. 2016-07-07 09:57 Bogdan Popa
57 90 percent of security events are caused by bots Bots account for 49 percent of all internet traffic, most of which is from malicious 'bad bots' according to website security company Incapsula. Of course there are good bots too, such as the crawlers used by major search engines, but according to Incapsula’s figures 90 percent of all security events are caused by bots, and 66 percent of all bot activity is malicious. It splits bad bots into four categories, The Impersonator -- which poses as a regular visitor to spy on, steal from or bring down a website. The Hacker -- which seeks to steal valuable data (such as credit card or customer information) from a site, infect it with malware or even hijack the site or server. The Thief -- is a scraper bot that harvests content and reposts it on other websites, reverse-engineers pricing or business models, or steals email addresses for spam email lists. And finally The Lure -- a spam bot posting phishing links that lure visitors away from a site, and uses malware or black hat SEO techniques that lead search engines to blacklist a legitimate site. Bot attacks mainly come from China, with one in three originating there, but the United States is the main target, with 50 percent attacking organizations in the US. More details of the findings can be found on the Incapsula blog and in the infographic below. 2016-07-07 09:18 By Ian
58 Facebook malware infects 10,000 users in two days A new malware was spotted by security researchers at Kaspersky Lab , targeting Facebook users. According to the researchers’ new report, there have been 10,000 victims in two days. The malware has two stages: firstly, an unsuspecting victim gets a message from a Facebook friend, saying they had mentioned them in a comment. But when the victim clicks to see the comment, they instead download a bunch of malware, including a Chrome add-on which can take over the victim’s Facebook account, once they log back in. After that, anything is possible, including privacy settings changes, data extraction, and so on. The victim’s account is also used to keep spreading the message, as well as gather fraudulent likes and shares. The malware is protecting itself by trying to blacklist antivirus sites. Between June 24 and June 27, 10,000 people were infected. Brazil was hit hardest, with 37 percent of cases. The country is followed by Poland, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Ecuador, Greece, Portugal, Tunisia, Venezuela, Germany and Israel. "Two aspects of this attack stand out. Firstly, the delivery of the malware was extremely efficient, reaching thousands of users in only 48 hours. Secondly, the response from consumers and the media was almost as fast. Their reaction raised awareness of the campaign and drove prompt action and investigation by the providers concerned", says Ido Naor, senior security researcher, Global Research and Analysis Team, Kaspersky Lab. Kaspersky Lab urges all Facebook users to stay safe, by keeping an antivirus software and think twice before opening any links or attachments, even if they are from a friend. Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Net Communities Ltd Publication. All rights reserved. Photo credit: nevodka / Shutterstock 2016-07-07 08:37 By Sead
59 Starship Technologies To Test Robot Delivery Service People on the streets of London, Düsseldorf, Bern, and other European cities will soon see robots rolling along the sidewalk to deliver prepared food, parcels, and retail goods to nearby customers. Starship Technologies , a robotics company launched two years ago by Skype cofounders Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis, says it plans to announce on Wednesday four industry partners that will be testing its delivery robots: Just Eat, a European food delivery company; Hermes, a German parcel delivery company (not to be confused with the similarly named French luxury goods maker); Metro Group, a major German retailer; and Pronto.co.uk, a food delivery service based in London. The four companies later this month will begin tests with real customers to assess the viability of automated product deliveries. A similar program is being developed for cities in the US. Starship has been conducting proof- of-concept tests without real customers for the past nine months. The Starship robot doesn't look much like a starship or the sort of anthropomorphic robot depicted in classic science fiction. It resembles a cooler with a sunroof, six wheels, and an antenna. In a phone interview, Starship Technologies' COO Allan Martinson mentioned hearing the robot compared to a cooler and said the similarity wasn't obvious to research and development personnel based in the often chilly northern city of Tallin, Estonia, where coolers don't have quite the cultural relevance as they do in more southern climes. The robot, which for better or worse has no name, is mostly autonomous , relying on on-board cameras and GPS for obstacle-avoidance and navigation. But it is overseen by a human controller at a remote facility when performing its duties. Martinson said during internal testing, one person has overseen as many as four robots at once. The robot was designed for making deliveries to customers within two or three miles of local stores, at a cost that's 10 to 15 times less than existing local delivery options. Eventually, the service is expected to cost about $1.50 per delivery, though Martinson said that the robots could become even more cost effective over time as the technology becomes more widespread. The robot can accommodate about 20 to 25 pounds of goods. Frank Rausch, CEO of Hermes Germany, said in a statement that the goal of employing robots is to provide better customer service. "At Hermes we believe that parcel delivery's main goal is to fully satisfy the customers' needs in receiving their online shopping orders as fast and convenient as possible," he said. "Nobody likes to spend hours waiting for the courier just to have a parcel delivered. " Martinson said the proof-of-concept testing has provided the company with a lot of insight into the social aspects of human-robot interaction, a particularly important issue because Starship's robots will be travelling on public sidewalks and crossing public roads. Presently, most interaction with mobile robots occurs on private property, in controlled settings like a hospitals, hotels, or theme parks, excluding encounters with Tesla cars operating under autopilot. During proof-of-concept testing, Martinson said, Starship's robots have operated in 39 cities and 12 countries. In more than 5,000 miles travelled, the robots met about 400,000 people. One of the most interesting findings, Martinson said, was that people's reactions have been fairly uniform. Between 60% and 80% of people don't pay attention to the robot, he said, and the rest are almost all positive interactions. He said that people may show more interest when they have time to spare, as they tend to have on weekends. "There have been only a few incidents with people under the influence of something or trying to show off," Martinson said, adding that none of the incidents resulted in personal injury, property loss, or damage to the robot. [See IBM Watson: Machine-of-All-Trades .] The robot requires customers to meet it at their doors or at the bottom of stairs, since it can't climb. "We notify the consumer that food or groceries have arrived," Martinson said. "As part of our initial testing, we have seen that people really don't mind [coming out to meet the robot]. " Martinson expects robotic delivery will exist alongside more traditional delivery systems for some time, depending on how businesses and customers respond. He sees it as an economic enabler. "It's something that local restaurants never dreamed they'd have," he said. Politicians and regulators, said Martinson, have been supportive because the robots align with common civic priorities, like reducing damage to the environment, reducing road congestion , helping people with disabilities and the elderly, and promoting economic development and employment. The company recently received approval from Washington, DC to test its robots on city streets, through the city's Personal Delivery Device Pilot Act of 2016. 2016-07-07 08:06 Thomas Claburn
60 How much storage does your laptop need? The question nags as I prepare to review TarDisk Pear flash memory expansion. The doohickey is available in 128 or 256 gig capacities for either MacBook Air or Pro. It fits neatly and snuggly into the SDXC card slot, which is required; color and finish match, too. Windows users must look elsewhere, though, and many may be glad to. The tech lists for $149 and $399, respectively. But, hey, the Apple fan club is accustomed to paying more for everything. I will test TarDisk Pear on my 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display, 3.1GHz Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB RAM, and 256GB SSD. I recently, and unexpectedly, filled up the hard disk with photos and podcast raw recordings. (Hehe, using Chromebooks for so long spoiled me and my awareness of such things.) Doubling storage, particularly with San Diego Comic-Con coming in 14 days, could prove useful for editing audio, pics, and video on the laptop. But is it necessary or contrivance? Consider Chromebook Pixel LS , which my wife adores. The laptop also packs i7 processor and 16GB RAM but only 64 gig SSD. But with Google cloud services—Drive top of list—tightly tied to the operating system, the capacity is more than enough. Files are stored on remote servers, from where most apps run in Chrome. Recently, I primarily use the 12.9-inch iPad Pro , with Apple A9x processor, one-quarter the memory of my MBP, and half the SSD capacity. The tablet feels as fast as the laptop, and storage so far is more than sufficient; mobile apps consume less space than their OS X counterparts and many connect to cloud services. Do I need another 256GB, or do you? There's a strong case for anyone using MacBook Air or Pro with 128 gigs. TarDisk Pear could double capacity for $149, provided you absolutely need what the flash memory card promises: Seamless, contiguous storage, That's right. The add-on doesn't mount as a separate disk but presents with Mac HD as a single volume. That's slick, if my testing supports the claim. Here's the thing: You can store content in the cloud, but OS X (soon to become macOS) apps primarily run locally. Monsters like Adobe Photoshop, Apple Final Cut Pro, or Microsoft Office fill up a 128GB SSD damn fast—much more so when editing and processing digital content. Working with an external drive is much cheaper but means carrying something more. I use the LaCie 4TB Rugged Mini USB external hard drive. Amazon sells for $219.99, which works out to less than a penny per megabyte. The larger of the TarDisk Pear pair is $1.56/MB and the smaller $1.16/MB. The cheapest choice for integrated, easily-installed storage is point of sale. Apples sells the configuration of Mac I have for $1,999 new. The kit is $200 more for 512GB, which is final capacity that TarDisk Pear promises for $399. I never had the option for more, because I bought my Mac used from an Apple reseller specializing in refurbished corporate computers (meaning no build to order). I spent about $600 less than new, including three-year AppleCare warranty that expires in 2018. Would I spend $400 more to double memory now? My review will answer. All the while, I will reassess my needs and try to come up with a manageable matrix for conceptualizing storage options. Consider the honking LaCie drive, which is plug-and-play. That's easy enough but also acts as an anchor. TarDisk Pear slips in the card slot and disappears, but installation requires that I disable file encryption beforehand. FileVault can come back, but not Boot Camp—so dual-booting Windows 10 is out. Once installed, the storage add-on can't be removed without corrupting the OS X volume, which means I can no longer use the SDXC slot for my camera's SD disk. I'll give you the lowdown on how well this process goes and my impressions of performance and other matters. Hey, that's what reviews are for. All the while, I will ask myself the storage capacity question, which I encourage you to answer in comments. Other readers can benefit from your personal solutions. So, please, let's have `em. Photo Credit: Joe Wilcox 2016-07-07 07:08 By Joe
61 12 Ways To Cultivate A Data-Savvy Workforce Cultivating a data-savvy workforce can be a challenging proposition if your company is not among the rarefied ranks of data-first organizations such as Facebook, Google, and Amazon. For starters, attracting top talent is a competitive sport and becoming more data-driven over time. For example, HR departments are able to track and analyze more types of data than ever. Using sophisticated software tools, they're gaining deeper insight into job candidates, employee performance, and the overall effectiveness of their HR practice. Yet, even as data-driven human capital management is becoming a core element of the hiring and retention process in HR departments, many companies don't seem to really understand what it means to build a data-savvy workforce. That's partly because doing so can involve complete organizational transformation. "Data-savvy workers think differently, ask questions, challenge the establishment, and demand improvements," said Kathy Marshall, director of recruitment quality and client engagement at Decision Toolbox , a recruitment products and services company, in an interview. "If a data- driven employee isn't challenged, can't affect change, or isn't able to access the information they need to drive results, [they] will quickly move on to other opportunities. " [How can you help build the next generation of techies? Read 9 Fun Tools For Teaching Kids To Code.] To serve the company's best interests, HR departments should understand their company's data strategy and how becoming a data-driven organization affects everything from organizational structure and corporate culture to roles, skills, cross-functional collaboration, recruitment, and retention. Meanwhile, some businesses are fine-tuning their structures, cultures, and operations to improve their ability to compete using data. One such example is GE , which is becoming a digital industry company. Its leaders understand how technologies, including data analytics, are fundamentally changing the way the company operates. And they are making sure the workforce understands how each aspect of the business is touched by digital transformation. "Every employee needs [to understand] what it means to be part of a digital, datacentric organization," said Susan Peters, senior vice president of Human Resources at GE, in an interview. "Whether you're on the shop floor of a manufacturing plant, in a research lab, or at the corporate headquarters, everyone is responsible for a company's shift to becoming data-savvy. " Of course, not all companies have GE's vast resources. The company spends $1 billion a year worldwide on employee learning and development alone. Even without such resources, here are 12 things your company can do to effectively attract, build, and retain a data-savvy workforce. Once you've reviewed our tips, tell us what you think in the comments section below. Is your corporate culture ready for a data-driven workforce? 2016-07-07 07:06 Lisa Morgan
62 Startups take note: Disruptive apps stand every chance of success Consumers aren't loyal to established brands in the main, and are more than happy to use so-called 'disruptive' technologies from new startups if they're convenient and save them time – and indeed plenty of time is being saved by these sort of apps and tools according to a new study. The research, commissioned by Rackspace, found that UK consumers are using disruptive apps (on phones and computers) or online services to make an average of 2.2 hours' worth of time-savings per month. Across the whole country, that amounts to over 51 million hours saved every month (given that 46% of respondents said they'd saved time, and applying that percentage to the total adult population). The survey found that the main advantage of these disruptive apps and services was cited as convenience (which 51% of respondents said), and also time-savings (45%), with these concerns being way ahead of saving money (25%). Those questioned were also asked what their priorities were when it came to choosing which apps or online tools to employ, and 66% of respondents said that ease-of-use was their top priority. 54% plumped for time-savings, and slightly more this time – 47% – went for monetary savings. What were the biggest turn-offs putting folks off adopting freshly unleashed disruptive apps? The top bugbear here was security on 36%, closely followed by data privacy worries on 33%, and then the simple lack of storage space to be installing software was the third biggest concern affecting 24% of those surveyed. So the smaller your app, and the tighter your privacy and security controls, the better. And as for brand loyalty, 68% of respondents said they felt no loyalty to the big-name established players, when it came to switching to other more convenient apps or online services. Darren Norfolk, UK Managing Director of Rackspace, commented: "Thanks to the sharing economy and a boom in machine learning and cloud capabilities, many industries have seen disruption in recent years – with more expected in the near future. "With brand loyalty a thing of the past, legacy brands are even more ripe for disruption than they might believe. This means that they must build in some of the same convenience and time saving factors that startups are creating, or risk being disrupted – or even put out of business entirely. " Article continues below 2016-07-07 06:30 By Darren
63 HTC selects Lifeliqe as educational VR content partner This morning, visual learning platform Lifeliqe announced a strategic partnership with HTC to become their provider of educational virtual reality (VR) content for the Vive. Lifeliqe already has many other interesting, non-VR learning products and concepts in market with over 15,000 schools worldwide. I recently had a chance to try out some of the company’s VR demos through an HTC Vive at AWE 2016 and I have to say the content was exceptional. The experiences ranged from examining the Hubble telescope (in space) to interacting with dinosaurs to viewing the body of a shark from the inside out while deep in the ocean. Joel Breton, HTC’s Vice President of VR content, said as much when announcing that “We’re pleased to have Lifeliqe as an education content partner, developing high quality room-scale educational experiences on the HTC Vive. From walking among dinosaurs to exploring the internal organs of a shark, Lifeliqe offers truly innovative premier content for immersive discovery and learning on Vive.” As virtual reality content continues to increase in scale and complexity, it’s great to see education as a strategic focus for some startups rather than purely gaming or entertainment plays. 2016-07-07 00:00 Jay Donovan
64 Hillary Clinton and the Blockchain While her continued support of computer science and STEM education, increasing open data or fighting for net neutrality wasn’t a surprise, a more unexpected announcement sits halfway through the document: “public service blockchain applications.” The other important thing to note is she said “application,” not “regulation.” Governments and elected officials around the world, regardless of politics, must understand the potential impact of blockchain-based applications. They must understand how the technology might be used to increase trust and decrease bureaucracy in the delivery of government services. Additionally, how might citizens use this technology to regain control over their personal data, such as their health care records? Lastly, what can the Federal government do to accelerate the development of this critical technology? To be sure, public blockchains are a nascent technology, and they require significant research and development to realize their full potential. But it’s also fundamentally important to the future governance of our society and economy. It’s critical that governments start engaging with it today to address both its challenges and its great potential tomorrow. So, what exactly are public service blockchain applications and why should voters care about this issue? An important role of government is to guarantee the integrity of public registries. Government registries tell us who owns what land or automobile, a vital source of proof if citizens are to get loans from banks or obtain other services in relation to those assets such as insurance. The government records your birth, which helps you prove your identity and verify whether you can legally vote, have a drink or be on that little league team. Governments also keep a registry of passports issued, verifying citizenship and enabling you to travel abroad. Importantly, they also maintain registries of companies and occupational licenses, ensuring certain professionals have taken the proper steps, had the proper training or have insurance to work on the plumbing in your house or pilot an international flight. Most public registries are maintained in government databases, creating giant, siloes of information. As we saw with the hack of of the Office of Personnel Management when 21.5 million people’s personal information was compromised — including mine — government databases have become appealing targets for foreign governments and nefarious actors, are also vulnerable to internal manipulation, and are rarely compatible with other government or private databases. It should be possible to use a trusted, secure public blockchain to keep track of and maintain an audit trail of this information in a way that should give citizens peace of mind. They would know their government is storing critical records in a trusted, transparent and accountable way where anyone can verify both the ledger and any copies of the data that are stored on non- government computers. The Republic of Georgia and the Bitfury Group announced it would test land titling on the blockchain in an effort to “show the world that we are a modern, transparent and corruption-free country that can lead the world in changing the way land titling is done.” Not to be outdone, the Swedish government announced with partners ChromaWay, Kairos Future and Telia, its proof of concept for land title on the blockchain. And here in the U. S., the Governor of Delaware announced that his administration would test out registering companies, tracking share movements and managing shareholder communications into a blockchain- based environment. This momentum will create a competitive environment for other governments to follow suit. In the wake of the healthcare.gov disaster, the White House quickly replicated the UK government’s Government Digital Service and most modern governments look to Estonia as the model digital government. Blockchain implementations are the next step. Once this kind of transparency becomes the bar that all must strive for, it could become a decider for businesses looking to invest in one region over another. So, it’s encouraging that Secretary Clinton embraced the technology’s potential when looking at it in the context of her call to open more data. Unlike today’s open data, responsive open data responds to the commands of citizens — what they want, when they want it, where they want it. By registering business licenses, property titles or birth certificates on the blockchain, governments might enable citizens to more efficiently conduct transactions with each other, minimizing the dependence on lawyers, notaries and other middlemen. It is expected that with blockchain registries, it will be possible for one person to verifiably transfer ownership of a car, a home or some other asset to another person without having to visit a government office or other third- party validator to confirm the transaction. The same public validation would take place; but via the blockchain’s open, distributed ledger. An incredible amount of work has been put into defending net neutrality, ensuring Internet Service Providers deliver equal access to content distributed on the internet, so that it remains open and free for everyone. I would say, the next phase will require us to redefine what we mean by this concept, to extend it to the right to control our own data. Companies such as Google and Facebook have a tremendous amount of personal information about you — it’s what makes their tools and apps so valuable. But it also makes it increasingly harder for you to leave those platforms for competitors. You should be able to control access to your data on a neutral platform, like a public blockchain, and share it with any company, person or organization you choose. This may seem trivial for your photos or comments, but it can become a matter of life and death with your healthcare records. On average, Americans visit 18 different doctors in their lifetime. While both the HITECH and the Affordable Care Acts now enable and, in some cases, mandate that data from your doctors visits be stored digitally, medical records and results from different facilities and physicians are often stored in incompatible databases. Today, you have more access to information about your health than ever before. From the personal tracking offered by Fitbit and Apple Watch to the at-home genetic testing through 23andMe, new services make it possible to access and store rich medical information in real time. Yet the most basic and traditional of our medical information — the records generated by your doctors — remains trapped in a lockbox to which you have only very limited access. Let’s start with medical records, the blockchain can finally give every American a personal digital medical record that is accessible everywhere, portable anywhere, and secure in its privacy. Sound futuristic? MIT Graduate student researchers Ariel Ekblaw, Asaf Azaria and Thiago Vieira, along with Senior Research Scientist Andrew Lippman, are developing a cryptocurrency-backed technology to address these issues. They are developing a system, called MedRec , for managing medical records that depends on the Ethereum blockchain. MedRec restores patients’ control over their medical data. It enables patients to personally take charge of the distribution of their personal medical records, breaking down the information silos and enabling your doctors to all be on the same page. MedRec also has the potential to include personal sources of data like your FitBit or 23andMe. Importantly, MedRec allows patients to securely grant other doctors access to their personal information, as well as healthcare providers, researchers, and even their children and grandchildren. It could, for example, help future generations more accurately answer questions about illnesses in the family, an increasingly important piece of data as precision medicine efforts scale up. By putting your health records into a blockchain-managed system, you and your doctor should not only be able to update and review your medical information in real time, but also know it has been held securely. The move from a centralized to a decentralized data infrastructure moves us from trust in institutions and companies to trust in technology. We’ve done it before with the internet — so much so that, over time, it has become an essential part of many people’s lives and is now responsible for $944 billion in global gross domestic product (GDP), according to the Internet Association. But as with the internet, there is a great deal of development work to be done if the blockchain is to have the same level of influence on our lives. People who played significant roles in building layers and pieces of the Internet believe such a move is possible, though they also warn of how far we have yet to travel. “Today’s blockchain is (not) the Internet in 1996 — it’s probably more like the Internet in 1990 or the late 80’s,” says, MIT Media Lab Director Joi Ito . While the bitcoin blockchain is the most secure and battle-tested public blockchain, it can only process 5–7 transactions per second. And many of the ideas proposed, including those in this post, would run up against serious bandwidth limitations if implemented solely on the public blockchain. An example of the dangers and thus the need for research: the Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), a futuristic autonomous entity that is part crowdfunding and part venture capital. It raised more than $150 million in a matter weeks and promptly lost $60 million due to a bug in the code that was exploited by one smart coder. Today, most cryptocurrency development is led by a handful of dedicated developers, funded by either venture-backed startups, large companies or academia. MIT has raised $900,000 to support three developers of the bitcoin protocol. But if governments and their citizens want to benefit from public blockchains, there needs to be more engagement from the public sector. National Science Foundation , DoD’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Department of Homeland Security have awarded a little over $6 million over the last two years to small businesses and universities for blockchain-based research. However, the UK, with a national budget that’s little more than a tenth of that of the U. S., has already launched a fund with almost $15 million for universities . I’ve heard both optimistic and skeptical commentary in reaction to Secretary Clinton’s call for public service blockchain applications. I also remember the skepticism many of my friends in the tech community expressed when I joined The White House after having founded a start-up. Since then, more than 300 technologists from around the country have joined the Federal government, developing open source tools to achieve challenging policy goals. So, when people like DJ Patil, who worked closely with prominent bitcoin- supporter Reid Hoffman at LinkedIn, and Ed Felten, who wrote the text book on bitcoin with leaders in the community such as Arvind Narayanan, Joseph Bonneau, Andrew Miller, Steven Goldfeder, are now both Deputy CTOs at The White House — the positive technology examples they can enable start to outpace the negative ones. Having voices like theirs at the table is powerful and having a call for public service blockchain applications opens the dialogue between policymakers in a new Administration and the cryptocurrency community. Ultimately, by supporting the development of public blockchain-based government applications and funding critical research of this promising technology — the next president will have the power to significantly increase trust in government, decrease bureaucracy and protect consumer data based on the feedback from the cryptocurrency community. I believe Secretary Clinton’s call for public blockchain-based government applications is positive step forward in achieving those goals. 2016-07-07 00:00 Brian Forde
65 Facebook blames ‘technical glitch’ for temporary removal of Falcon Heights shooting video Facebook has denied censoring a viral video taken after a police officer fatally shot a man in his car in Minnesota. Lavish Reynolds pulled out her phone and began a Facebook Live stream after her boyfriend, Philando Castile, was shot by a police officer who, Reynolds said, had pulled their car over for a broken taillight in Minnesota’s Falcon Heights district. Media reported that Castile later died from his injuries. Reynolds’ video quickly went viral on social media and news websites, reaching 1 million views. But it soon disappeared from the social network, which led some to question whether the company had made the decision to remove the video and accuse it of censorship. However, Facebook, which has been under pressure for reportedly altering what stories feature as trending news topics on the social network, denied that it had purposely taken down the video. “We’re very sorry that the video was temporarily inaccessible. It was down due to a technical glitch and restored as soon as we were able to investigate,” a Facebook spokesperson told TechCrunch. The video returned to the site after about an hour. It now includes a warning for anyone who tries to view it and is labeled “disturbing.” (We have decided against including a link to the video because of the distressing nature of its content.) The video has prompted widespread outcry coming less than one day after the death of Alton Sterling , another black man who was shot by police for a seemingly indiscriminate reasoning. Like Castile’s shooting, Sterling’s death was recorded via a smartphone video captured by a bystander, although it wasn’t streamed to Facebook. Facebook launched live video streaming last August , and, to date, its most notable broadcast has come from American woman Candace Payne, who filmed herself playing with a newly bought Chewbacca mask in a department store carpark. The video, which currently has over 158 million views , turned the Texas mom into a viral sensation overnight, with brands and companies flocking to give her gifts and gain her endorsement. If Payne’s video is frivolous and fun, then Reynolds’ sits at the opposite end of the spectrum — chilling yet hugely important. It’s proof that live-streaming, social networks and the internet play a significant role in society beyond just entertainment. They are tools to help document injustices that, in past eras, went unnoticed and unaccounted for. 2016-07-07 00:00 Jon Russell
66 Black Swan Data scores £6.2M to help companies make better use of consumer and public data Data science and tech startup Black Swan Data , which has built a platform to let companies improve their business/marketing intelligence by mining and crunching both public and internal consumer data, has closed £6.2 million in Series B funding. The round sees Albion Ventures back the company, along with investors Blackstone and Mitsui. I’m told the new capital will be used to further accelerate Black Swan’s international growth and expansion of its product platform, ‘The Nest’. Founded in 2011 by Steve King and Hugo Amos, Black Swan describes its proposition as applying big data and predictive data science techniques to consumer marketing. It works with large consumer-focused brands such as PepsiCo, Vodafone, Samsung, Disney and Panasonic, to enable them to combine the data they already hold on customers with public data, through various online data, to help give them a further marketing advantage and make more informed business decisions. So, for example, a pharma company might use the platform to predict the spread of flu, to make sure marketing campaigns for vitamins would be targeting those in the predicted pathway. Or Black Swan could be employed to look at things like weather data, and social data to help a grocery sore predict when the first big BBQ weekend of the summer might be to ensure the right amount of stock is ordered and related marketing campaigns are run. “We create algorithms that help brands better predict consumer behaviour, to change the way marketing is done,” explains King. “We do this by harnessing data from the world’s biggest focus group; listening to the internet at scale and combine it with our clients’ own data sets to pinpoint and understand patterns and trends”. Another of the startup’s software, DragonFly, claims to analyse visuals in the same way as the human brain does, helping map out in real time, exactly what’s likely to grab people’s attention. “The app does in real-time what would take weeks of focus group sessions to achieve,” adds King. However, the Black Swan CEO also says it’s not just about helping brands. Other customers include A&E departments, airlines, and roadside assistance companies. “We keep ourselves fairly diverse, building internet enabled software portals for airlines, customer engagement apps for utility companies; and using data science to predict events and behaviours for global B2C brands. We can help our clients forecast operational load along with demand and supply requirements,” he says. 2016-07-07 00:00 Steve O
67 Microsoft to introduce more flexible Enterprise Advantage licensing in 2017 Microsoft has detailed changes to its volume licensing that aims to let organisations mix perpetual and subscription-based software with cloud services in a way that best makes sense to the customer. ... 2016-07-07 18:01 Daniel Robinson
68 Cisco and IBM to partner on collaboration tools and analytics Cisco and IBM have announced plans for a partnership that will combine their collaboration and analytics technologies in a bid to fight back against a new breed of collaboration companies. IBM’s Watson... 2016-07-07 18:01 Dan Worth
Total 68 articles. Created at 2016-07-07 18:01