IT Executive news

• If Citrix is for sale, who will buy it?

  23-09-2015 23:41
  
  If Citrix Systems is for sale, there is a short list of companies that would have reason to buy it.
  Citrix's products are widely used in corporate environments. Its revenue reached $3.4 billion last year, an 8% increase over the prior year.
  Founded in 1989, the company has successfully fought off numerous competitive challenges along the way, and it maintains a strong user base.But investors are now pressuring Citrix, according to Reuters, to consider selling or unloading assets. These investor
  
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• Hey Apple, were you hosting hacked copies of Xcode?

  23-09-2015 22:43
  
  Yesterday morning, Apple sent out an email to developers advising them that Apple had “removed apps from the App Store that were built with a counterfeit version of Xcode, which had the potential to cause harm to customers.”
  Apple also suggested, as Fahmida Rashid reported Monday, that counterfeit copies of Xcode downloaded from third-party servers, not Apple’s, were responsible for creating the malware-infected apps. Concurrent with the email, a post on the Apple develop
  
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• HP’s struggles reflected in CIOs IT purchasing plans

  23-09-2015 22:21
  
  HP's plan to lay off 33,000 workers over the next three years -- the latest step in its massive restructuring -- underscores the challenges the tech giant faces as it seeks to adapt to changing demands in corporate computing.CIOs, many of whom are under pressure to inject digital capabilities into their businesses and support increasingly mobile workforces, are shifting spending away from enterprise hardware and services to cloud, mobile and analytics software. Incumbent vendors are scrambling t
  
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• How to find your Uber rating

  23-09-2015 22:20
  
  Every time you hop out of an Uber and rate your driver, your driver is rating you. It's easy to find out your rating. 
  Open the Uber app and click the option button in the top left of the menu. Select "help" then "account." At the bottom of the list you'll see "I'd like to know my rating." Select that and then on the following screen hit submit.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• Apple ships iOS 9.0.1 to fix bug that paralyzed some iPhones

  23-09-2015 22:12
  
  Apple today shipped the first update for iOS 9 to fix several bugs, including one that prevented some from installing the new OS.
  iOS 9.0.1, issued earlier today, addressed multiple problems, but the one at the top of the chart was a fix for the stuck-on-slide-to-upgrade bug that Apple acknowledged on its support site this week.AppleApple today issued iOS 9.0.1 to fix some of the most pressing bugs encountered by customers since last week's launch of the OS upgrade. To read this article in
  
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• Instagram surges past Twitter to become 2nd biggest social network

  23-09-2015 21:23
  
  Instagram hit a milestone this week, logging more than 400 million monthly users, solidly surpassing rival Twitter.
  Instagram, a five-year-old site for posting and photos and video online, has solidly surpassed rival Twitter to claim the No. 2 spot in the social networking world -behind parent company Facebook.
  "Given that Facebook owns Instagram, that certainly makes them the king of the social networking mountain," said Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group. "Instagram is aim
  
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• Cook, Bezos, Nadella to meet Chinese President Xi on Wednesday

  23-09-2015 20:29
  
  The top executives of five of the biggest tech companies in the U.S. will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Seattle on Wednesday.Xi arrived in Seattle on Tuesday at the start of his first official visit to the U.S. and is scheduled to tour a Boeing plant in the city. Before a Wednesday evening dinner at the house of Bill Gates, he will speak at a business forum at which major U.S. and Chinese executives will be present.Among those in attendance will be Apple CEO Tim Cook, Microsoft CEO S
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: iPhone 6s battery reviews

  23-09-2015 20:05
  Reviews of the iPhone 6s have been hitting all of the usual technology sites in the last couple of days. And one of the things that many users are wondering about is the battery life of the iPhone 6s. Is the battery in the iPhone 6s better or worse than the iPhone 6?I scoured the Web to find out what reviewers thought of the battery performance of the iPhone 6s, and I've included their thoughts below to make it easy for you to skim through the sections of reviews that just cover the battery.You
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Don’t rely on reviews when purchasing enterprise software

  23-09-2015 19:59
  
  Reviews are often used when selecting enterprise software, but not many people consider their limitations. Let’s start by looking at two definitions:Dictionary.com defines a review (noun) as:A general survey of something, especially in words; a report or account of something
  A critical article or report, as in a periodical, on a book, play, recital, or the like; critique; evaluation
  An evaluation (noun) is defined as:An act or instance of evaluating or appraising
  Notice that the definition
  
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• Hybrid array helps cosmetics company address its storage performance and scale problems

  23-09-2015 19:45
  
  LUSH Fresh Handmade Cosmetics of North America is growing like a weed and its storage infrastructure wasn’t keeping up, so network and security team manager Dale Hobbs went looking for an answer. He shared the story with Network World Editor in Chief John Dix.
  Dale Hobbs, network and security team manager at LUSH Fresh Handmade Cosmetics of North America
  Let’s start with a thumbnail description of your company?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please clic
  
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• T-Mobile undercuts competition with $5-per-month iPhone upgrade plan

  23-09-2015 19:43
  Desperate for a new iPhone but have no money to spare? T-Mobile’s got you covered with an iPhone 6s plan that will only cost you $5 a month, or $9 for the larger 6s Plus, if you trade in your current phone.T-Mobile’s Jump On Demand plan lets you upgrade your phone three times per year for a monthly hardware fee on top of your regular cell phone plan. The carrier had a similar promotion for the last-generation iPhones, but prices started at $15 a month. Sprint’s iPhone upgrade p
  
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• OPM underestimated the number of stolen fingerprints by 4.5 million

  23-09-2015 19:29
  The number of people whose fingerprints have been stolen as a result of the high-profile hack into the computer systems of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management earlier this year is now 5.6 million.The agency revised its original estimate of 1.1 million Wednesday after finding fingerprint data in archived records that had previously not been taken into account.This does not change the overall number of 21.5 million former, current and prospective federal employees and contractors whose Social
  
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• OPM breach: 4.5 million more individuals open to future fingerprint abuse

  23-09-2015 19:08
  
  Now the federal Office of Personnel Management says the number of individuals whose fingerprints were stolen is 5.6 million – up from 1.1 million – and that they can look forward to having those prints misused as criminals get better at exploiting them.
  OPM says, “an interagency working group with expertise in this area … will review the potential ways adversaries could misuse fingerprint data now and in the future. This group will also seek to develop potential ways to
  
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• Pebble Time Round is a simple, circular smartwatch for smaller wrists

  23-09-2015 19:00
  
  Pebble has announced its third smartwatch this year, and this time it’s aimed squarely at smaller wrists. The Pebble Time Round is the company’s first smartwatch with a circular display, joiningSamsung’s Gear S2and severalAndroid Wear watches in the round-screen party.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• Firefox's VoIP service, Firefox Hello, adds instant-messaging capabilities

  23-09-2015 18:34
  
  If you suffered through the Skype outage earlier this week, Mozilla would like you to know that you have another option: Firefox Hello.
  The latest update of the Firefox browser (version 41.0) adds instant-message capabilities to Firefox Hello, the integrated VoIP client that Mozilla has put in the browser with assistance from Telefonica. It’s not perfect, but it doesn’t need a dedicated client—or even a Mozilla browser—to work.
  To access Firefox Hello’s new capabil
  
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• Health IT glossary

  23-09-2015 18:24
  
  Each industry has its own type of information technology and a particular group of terms that goes along with it. Healthcare is no exception in this regard. In fact, healthcare has even more industry-specific terms than most other business sectors do. That's partly because of its complexity and also because it's going through a radical change in how products are delivered and paid for.
  Healthcare has a large number of moving parts that include many kinds of care providers, each of which has its
  
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• Google promises a Hadoop or Spark cluster in 90 seconds with Cloud Dataproc

  23-09-2015 18:00
  Getting insights out of big data is typically neither quick nor easy, but Google is aiming to change all that with a new, managed service for Hadoop and Spark.Cloud Dataproc, which the search giant launched into open beta on Wednesday, is a new piece of its big data portfolio that's designed to help companies create clusters quickly, manage them easily and turn them off when they're not needed.Enterprises often struggle with getting the most out of rapidly evolving big data technology, said Holg
  
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• Microsoft shortchanges Office for Mac customers on support

  23-09-2015 17:59
  
  Although Microsoft crafted Office 2016 for Mac to be much more like its bigger sibling on Windows, one thing has not changed: Mac Office 2016 users continue to get the short end of the support stick.
  Microsoft will support all Windows versions of Office 2016, even those that explicitly target consumers, for 10 years, or twice as long as it will Office 2016 for Mac. Office Home & Student 2016, the entry-level Windows stand-alone edition -- dubbed a "one-time" license by Microsoft -- will be
  
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• More users, more ads: Instagram hits 400 million milestone

  23-09-2015 17:25
  
  In just nine months, Instagram wooed 100 million new amateur photographers, bringing its total user base to 400 million. Sure, parent company Facebook still slays with almost 1.5 billion monthly active users, but for a social network, Instagram’s announcement is nothing to sneeze at.Instagram
  Even more impressive than its swift growth is how international Instagram’s reach is. The network said that 75 percent of its community lives outside the U.S., with more than 50 percent of the
  
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• 5 essential tools for the telecommuters

  23-09-2015 17:21
  
  Essential tools for the telecommutersImage by ThinkstockWith the ubiquity of tablets, smartphones, Wi-Fi and notebooks, it's easier than ever to cut your commute to work down to as little as the walk from your kitchen to your home office. But before you jump in to working from home full-time, you'll want to ensure you have some basic essentials to make the transition as smooth as possible.Here are five essential tools you'll need to consider if you plan on telecommuting full time.HotspotImage by
  
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• Here's why you might not have been able to connect to Skype this week

  23-09-2015 17:04
  
  Microsoft has apologized for a lengthy Skype outage on Monday, blaming the issue on a configuration change which apparently disconnected many consumer versions of Skype from the network.
  On Monday, Skype was reportedly down or suffered service trouble for about 15 hours, according to reports.
  Microsoft acknowledged the problem on Monday on its Heartbeat blog, finally claiming at around 5 PM Pacific time that the problem had been resolved. That was about ten hours or so before Microsoft began ro
  
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• Thousands of iOS apps infected by XcodeGhost

  23-09-2015 16:12
  The impact of iOS app developers unknowingly using a rogue version of the Xcode development tool is turning out to be greater than initially thought: early reports listed just 39 apps that had been trojanized with the tool, but security researchers have since identified thousands more.On Friday, security research firm Palo Alto Networks reported that 39 apps found in the App Store had been compromised after their developers -- most of them located in China -- used a rogue version of Xcode that h
  
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• iOS 9 tips and tricks you need to know

  23-09-2015 16:09
  
  Getting the most out of iOSImage by AppleiOS 9 is finally here, and more than 50% of iPhone and iPad users have already downloaded it, a figure which represents the fastest iOS adoption rate ever. Though one of Apple’s primary goals with iOS 9 was to improve overall stability and enhance system performance, Apple still managed to infuse a number of new and interesting software features that help make the overall user experience that much more efficient and intuitive.To read this article in
  
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• Cybersecurity legislation still draws intense opposition

  23-09-2015 16:08
  
  Five bills aimed at governing the sharing of cyberthreat information have been proposed in the current session of Congress. Technically, only two are now pending, but that’s because two in the House and two in the Senate were combined. The House bills – originally labeled H.R. 1560, Protecting Cyber Networks Act (PCNA); and H.R. 1731, the National Cybersecurity Protection Advancement Act of 2015 (NCPAA) – both passed the House during the week of April 20 and were then comb
  
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• Where Jeb Bush stands on cybersecurity

  23-09-2015 15:44
  
  After watching the recent televised Republican Presidential candidate debate, you may be wondering where the candidates stand on cybersecurity - which ties in to our nation's defense.
  The topic of cybersecurity may be too technical and thus too risky for the candidates to speak out on TV, or the moderators don't want to devote time to it in place of what they consider to be more important issues.
  To fill the void, we bring you a look at what the candidates are saying about cybersecurity.
  We'll
  
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• Starbucks mobile ordering gets you caffeine quicker

  23-09-2015 15:03
  
  This week, Starbucks took another savvy move toward completely hooking me — and countless others caffeine fiends.On Tuesday, the coffee giant rolled out the new Mobile Order & Pay feature nationwide in its iOS and Android apps. As the name implies, the feature lets you order a beverage or food item using your iPhone or Android device. Within a few minutes of ordering, you can swing by your nearby Starbucks and pick up your coffee or pastry. And the credit or debit card associated with
  
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• Verizon launches wireless private network traffic management

  23-09-2015 15:00
  
  Verizon today introduced an LTE wireless traffic management service to give business and government customers the ability to prioritize critical network-based applications.
  Verizon will offer different service levels, including a "mission critical" class, that a customer could use for video or voice over IP traffic. In that scenario, a customer could decide to prioritize video communications above emails or even lower-priority communications in a machine-to-machine network.
  Verizon said it is t
  
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• Sprint sells Apple Watch, but beware fine print in 'iPhone Forever' deal

  23-09-2015 14:34
  
  Apple recently muscled into carriers' territory by selling iPhones directly to consumers through its new upgrade program, so it's only fair that carriers start offering the Apple Watch. On Monday, Sprint announced that it will sell the pricey bauble starting Friday, and T-Mobile won't be far behind.Friday, Sept. 25, is probably not a randomly chosen day; it happens to be Apple's new iPhone 6s and 6s Plus launch day. Sprint announced its Watch news on a product page consumers can use to orde
  
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• Splunk updates platform, adds monitoring and analytics services

  23-09-2015 14:16
  
  At its .conf2015 users conference in Las Vegas yesterday, operational intelligence specialist Splunk took the wraps off a new version of its Splunk Enterprise platform and a new premium offering, Splunk IT Service Intelligence.Splunk Enterprise 6.3 — designed for on-premises, cloud or hybrid deployment — is focused on enhancements to performance and total cost of ownership as well as high-volume event collection for DevOps and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. In many cases, says Cli
  
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• Is a lack of enterprise apps killing BYOD?

  23-09-2015 14:14
  
  As BYOD hangs on as an acceptable way to arm your employees with their own technology, companies need to make sure that employees can work seamlessly on those devices. One way to do that – and give employers some control of where their data goes – is through enterprise apps. 
  Getting those apps right can be tricky, but are crucial in putting a good – and legally sound – BYOD policy in place, even as employees still bristle at their bosses being able to perhaps peer
  
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• Healthcare firms three times more likely to see data breaches

  23-09-2015 14:00
  
  Companies in the healthcare sector are three times more likely to encounter data theft than the average firm, according to a report released this morning.
  The industry also sees 340 percent more security incidents and attacks than usual, said Carl Leonard, principal security analyst at Raytheon|Websense, which produced the report based on analysis of real-time security telemetry feeds from global healthcare organizations.
  Healthcare is also 400 percent more likely to be hit by advanced malware,
  
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• BrandPost: Ushering in Mobile 3.0

  23-09-2015 14:00
  
  Although mobility has been around for roughly a decade, it’s time for organizations to embrace Mobile 3.0. Mobile 1.0 was all about mobilizing traditional websites, and Mobile 2.0 focused on building native apps to simplify mobile use. The latest evolution introduces a convergence with big data analytics and social to create a much larger, seamless network of systems.To make the most of Mobile 3.0, IT leaders need to focus on fostering seamless interactions between commonly used applicatio
  
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• How Motorola Solutions (and its 22,000 workers) ditched Microsoft for Google

  23-09-2015 13:57
  
  When Greg Meyers joined Motorola Solutions in 2014 he found himself facing some rather lackluster and underperforming technology; a 15-year-old phone with about 50 buttons sat on his desk, and the company's fragmented solution set included InterCall for voice conferences, Microsoft Lync for screen sharing and Office 2007 for everything else.
  "It was kind of hard to believe, having just become the CIO of a Fortune 500 technology company, the fragmentation and the antiquation of a lot of the tool
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: 3 essential communications principles for project managers

  23-09-2015 13:54
  
  My son turns 20 this month. He’s part of the millennial generation, and I’m sure most of you have read multiple articles, blog posts, and journals about “what” this generation is doing and “why” they do it. I actually felt like I had a good handle on their motivations, focus, etc. and recently was getting ready to work with a group of new CAPM students who are preparing for the exam.“What’s that, Mr. Ward?” asked one of my son’s friends
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: The 5 'rights' of clinical decision support

  23-09-2015 13:46
  
  Screen pop-ups that alert, notify and suggest are a big part of clinical decision support (CDS).  But they are not the only ways to provide support.  They may not even be the best. The reason is simple. Alerts must “fire,” which means they need a trigger.Sometimes those triggers are events that pose a threat to the welfare of the patient, put reimbursement at risk, or slow workflow.  Triggers, therefore, mean the risk has appeared.Proactive tools put the clinician ahea
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: How NOT to use benchmark data in vendor negotiations

  23-09-2015 13:42
  
  Benchmarks drive our purchasing decisions, personal and business. We look at recent home sales when we’re trying to see if we're paying too much for a house; we use pricing data to figure out if we’re getting a good deal on a used car; and, many companies leverage benchmark data in vendor negotiations, including data on software license fees, discounts on hardware and usage rates for telecommunication services.The data is helpful in vendor negotiations.  It begins to level
  
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• Cisco said to plan China partnership to boost market access

  23-09-2015 13:30
  Following in the footsteps of some other U.S. companies like Hewlett-Packard and Intel, Cisco Systems is planning to tie up with a Chinese partner for joint development and better access to the local market, according to a newspaper report.
  The networking equipment company is planning to announce a partnership with server maker Inspur Group during Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Seattle on Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.
  Cisco said Tuesday it declined to comment
  
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• GitLab one-ups GitHub with open source enterprise code hosting

  23-09-2015 13:29
  With a new version of its product in the offing and $4 million in Series A funding in its pocket, GitLab -- creator of an open source alternative to code-hosting nexus GitHub -- is setting out to expand its reach with enterprise customers.
  While it seems nearly impossible for a third party to displace GitHub as a public code-sharing resource, on the enterprise side and behind the firewall GitLab may have a fighting chance -- provided a generation of developers already c
  
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• Crowdsource your way to a better IT team

  23-09-2015 13:22
  
  It's a familiar story: The IT industry's in the midst of a brutal war for talent, and the IT skills gap is hampering organizations' capability to adapt to the digital transformation taking place and deliver on IT projects.
  Recruiting, hiring and retaining skilled IT talent is a major business concern, with more than 33 percent of HR spending allocated toward hiring and retaining IT talent, according to the IT Talent Wars and the Gig Economy Report, just released by Wakefield Research and IT cons
  
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• US protection of Europeans' personal data is inadequate, says EU court official

  23-09-2015 13:19
  Rules for how U.S. companies handle Europeans' personal information under the Safe Harbor agreement do not ensure adequate protection of the data, the Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the European Union has advised in an opinion that threatens the operations of thousands of companies exchanging data between the European Union and the U.S.Advocate General Yves Bot's opinion could open the way for national governments across the EU to set their own standards for the protection of export
  
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• 6 things all good software code has in common

  23-09-2015 12:42
  
  There’s lots and lots of software code in the world these days; heck, Google alone has more than 2 billion lines of code in its repository. But not all source code is created equal. Software developers usually have strong preferences as to what makes some raw code “good.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• Congress set to make the H-1B visa less costly for India

  23-09-2015 12:18
  
  Congress is set to drop a $2,000 H-1B visa fee mostly paid by India-based IT services providers. It's a move being met with incredulity by H-1B critics, but relief by the Indian offshore industry.
  The fee, adopted in 2010, was sought by U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who chaired the Senate immigration subcommittee when Democrats were in power. Schumer described the overseas firms as "multinational temp agencies" that undercut U.S. wages.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, ple
  
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• Review: Ford's SYNC 3 is more like a smartphone, but there's still room for improvement

  23-09-2015 12:15
  
  After spending a week with a 2016 Ford Escape with the new Blackberry QNX-based SYNC 3 in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) system, I can say two things: One, the system is definitely better than the previous Windows-based SYNC 2 system; two, it still has a long way to go.Overall, SYNC 3 has a cleaner, more intuitive feel and far better voice recognition capability with its upgraded Nuance software that enables a more conversational-style human-machine interface (HMI). Ford The home screen of the SYNC
  
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• Review: RethinkDB rethinks real-time Web apps

  23-09-2015 12:00
  
  Like MongoDB or Couchbase, RethinkDB is a clustered, document-oriented database that delivers the benefits of flexible schema, easy development, and high scalability. Unlike those other document databases, RethinkDB supports “real time” applications with the ability to continuously push updated query results to applications that subscribe to changes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• Infrastructuur Actief Interim vervangen door Solipsis Managed Services

  23-09-2015 10:58
  De ICT-infrastructuur van uitzendorganisatie Actief Interim, dat tot dit voorjaar TiP Personeelsdiensten heette en onderdeel was van de Humares groep, is volledig ontvlochten van de voormalige moedermaatschappij.Solipsis Managed Services heeft voor alle kantoren de ICT-omgeving opnieuw gerealiseerd: nieuwe... lees meer
  
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• Open self-service data stuwt verkopen

  23-09-2015 09:56
  Een betere toegang tot sales data, veelvuldig gebruik van analytics en omarming van deze data door het management leiden tot een betere sales performance. Onderzoek van de Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), gesponsord door Qlik, leverancier van oplossingen voor visual analytics, duidt hierop.Bijna acht op de tien... lees meer
  
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• Uber tests new carpooling service in China

  23-09-2015 08:32
  
  Riders in Chengdu, China will be able to cut travel costs by using a new carpooling service that Uber Technologies is testing in the country for the global market.Using UberCommute, drivers sign into the app and tell Uber where they are going, the ride-hailing app company announced in a blog post Tuesday. The app then shows the driver requests from riders traveling in the same direction as well as the payment they will receive for the trip. The driver then decides whether to accept the request o
  
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• iPad Pro users will need to pony up for an Office 365 subscription

  23-09-2015 02:47
  
  Microsoft surprised the tech world two weeks ago when one of its executives appeared on Apple's stage to demonstrate new features for the company's Office apps on the new iPad Pro. While that moment in the spotlight showed off Microsoft's commitment to Apple's platform, there's an important catch that wasn't mentioned on stage.As it turns out, iPad Pro users will have to pay for an Office 365 subscription if they want to edit documents on Apple's new tablet. That's a big difference than the curr
  
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• With Looker's Lego-style analytics, companies 'snap' together the components they need

  23-09-2015 02:13
  Making analytics simpler has been an ongoing trend in the world of enterprise software, and on Tuesday data platform provider Looker unveiled a new, modular approach that could go a long way toward that goal.The company's new Looker Blocks are essentially reusable and customizable apps that each represent a different component of business logic that a user might be interested in: churn prediction or lifetime value metrics, for example. Those "blocks," in turn, can be put together and customized
  
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• Microsoft offers half-price Office to entice users of older versions

  23-09-2015 02:10
  
  One of the challenges Microsoft faces is that some people haven't upgraded their Office suite for several years, despite the company releasing new versions.People pay a relatively large sum for access to apps like Word and Excel, and once they have the functionality they need, there's little incentive to upgrade. It makes sense from a consumer standpoint, but it means Microsoft isn't making as much money as it could from the widespread use of Office. That could be the impetus behind a promo
  
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