IT Executive news

• Amazon wants companies to get onto its cloud using new services

  07-10-2015 22:24
  
  Amazon Web Services has been at the forefront of the migration to the public cloud for years now, and is still pushing more businesses to leave on-premises workloads behind. But there's a difficulty in all that: What about all those companies that have massive amounts of data tied up in on-premises servers  and proprietary database formats?The company addressed that Wednesday with a set of new announcements at its AWS Re:Invent conference in Las Vegas that were all aimed at helping companie
  
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• Twitter's 'Moments' miss the mark

  07-10-2015 21:16
  
  After a summer of uncertainty, Twitter this week made two of the most important announcements in its history. On Monday, cofounder and former CEO Jack Dorsey was officially renamed Twitter CEO, following an exhaustive search that ultimately led back to where it started. Dorsey was fired from the company in 2008, but was later named interim CEO in July 2015, before taking the new job.However, Twitter's Tuesday release of a new feature called "Moments" could prove to be more crucial to the company
  
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• Google, WhatsApp integration lets users back up messages on Android

  07-10-2015 20:38
  WhatsApp users on Android will soon be able to rest easy with the knowledge that their messages have been backed up to Google’s cloud, thanks to a new integration between the two companies announced Wednesday. People who use the popular, Facebook-owned messaging app will be able to connect it to their Google Drive accounts and use that to store a backup of all the messages, photos, voice messages and videos that they've sent back and forth with their friends. Users will be able to cho
  
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• Out of focus: The multitasking dilemma

  07-10-2015 20:29
  
  The widespread adoption of digital communication in everyday life has vastly increased the temptation to multitask. Many people, particularly millennials, feel they need to continuously monitor news feeds, social media, text messages and other sources of digital information. Unfortunately, heavy media multitasking reduces personal effectiveness at work. Serious multitaskers may find it hard to believe, but research from Stanford University reports that people don’t multitask well. Consumin
  
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• BrandPost: When It Comes to Digital Transformation, Europe Gets It

  07-10-2015 20:22
  
  While just 18% of European businesses have fully implemented a digital testing strategy, some 79% are working on it or will have their strategy in place in 12 months, according to a new study by market research and strategy firm, Pierre Audoin Consultants (PAC). So it’s still early, but that’s a proof point that digital transformation is well underway in Europe and that companies are taking many of the right steps to make deployments successful. Digital testing is one of them. Only 2
  
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• New service helps pull data into AWS from the Internet of Things

  07-10-2015 20:20
  
  Amazon's new Kinesis Firehose service, announced at its Re:Invent conference in Las Vegas Wednesday, focuses on helping companies pull streams of data in from all sorts of devices. The service, available immediately, connects streaming data sources, including embedded devices that are part of the Internet of Things, to AWS storage.Using a single PUT API call to Firehose, companies can get an entire stream of data from devices into AWS's Redshift database service and/or Simple Storage Service (S3
  
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• Arista stock up on review of Cisco patent claims

  07-10-2015 20:20
  
  The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office this week reportedly agreed to consider the validity of two Cisco patents at issue in litigation with data center switching rival Arista Networks.
  The development boosted Arista stock by over 5% on Tuesday, Oct. 6, according to Bloomberg. Cisco is suing Arista for copyright and patent infringement, and is seeking an injunction on the sale of Arista products that allegedly infringe on the Cisco patents.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, pleas
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: 4 digital strategies that will give CIOs a competitive edge

  07-10-2015 19:34
  
  By now, most readers have seen our 14th Annual State of the CIO report.  One prevalent theme:  CIOs would like to concentrate on business innovation, competitive differentiation, and business strategy, and spend less time on maintenance of legacy systems and internally focused operational excellence of IT organizations.Of course, this is easier said than done.  Three quarters of CIOs say that it is a challenge to balance current operations with innovation.  Worse yet, even wi
  
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• Zendesk tool taps machine learning to nip customer-service problems in the bud

  07-10-2015 19:23
  Machine learning has been making its way into a growing range of enterprise software in recent months, and on Wednesday Zendesk provided a fresh example: Satisfaction Prediction, a new tool designed to help companies catch potential customer-service problems before they happen.Essentially, Satisfaction Prediction learns from historical customer-interaction data and uses that knowledge to predict which current customer-service interactions are likely to run into trouble.The tool's knowledge base
  
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• Amazon launches QuickSight business intelligence service

  07-10-2015 19:19
  
  As companies generate more and more data, one of the key things they need to do is find some way to make it all useful from a business standpoint. Business intelligence software has long been a way to help with that, and Amazon threw its hat into the ring Wednesday with a service called QuickSight, provided through its Amazon Web Services division. It was announced at the company's AWS Re:Invent conference in Las Vegas. Amazon An example of AWS QuickSight's ability to graph data.To rea
  
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• Survey says enterprises are stepping up their security game

  07-10-2015 19:13
  
  If all you read are all of the headlines (and there are too many, to be sure) you’d be convinced enterprises are losing the never-ending battle to secure their networks.Perhaps they are.And to help turn the momentum, more enterprises are doing more to bolster their security defenses. They are increasing their information security spending, collaborating more on threat intelligence efforts, and turning to cybersecurity insurance policies in larger numbers, according to a global security sur
  
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• Google's Accelerated Mobile Pages project aims to speed up the mobile Web

  07-10-2015 18:03
  
  Facing threats from Apple and Facebook, Google is teaming up with web publishers to cut down page load times on smartphones.
  “Accelerated Mobile Pages,” or AMP, is an open framework for building lightweight webpages, optimized for mobile devices. The move is a direct answer to rival initiatives such as Apple News andFacebook Instant Articles, both of which offer fast-loading articles by cutting out cruft.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• Microsoft expands FastTrack service to aid Office 365 migration for businesses

  07-10-2015 18:00
  Microsoft has been making a massive push to get companies onto its Office 365 productivity service offering, including moving functions they've traditionally handled on-premises like Active Directory and email to the cloud. Actually doing the work required to make that happen can be a real pain, especially for IT departments that already have their hands full.That's where Microsoft's FastTrack service comes in. It's a part of Office 365 that's offered to medium and large businesses with more tha
  
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• Attackers target OWA for domain credentials

  07-10-2015 17:43
  
  A targeted attack against Outlook Web Application (OWA) illustrates how far adversaries will go to establish persistent control over the organization's entire network.
  As seen in recent breaches, attackers typically use stolen credentials or malware to get a foothold on the network, and then target the domain controller. Once attackers successfully compromise the domain controller, they can impersonate any user and move freely throughout the enterprise network. Since the OWA server, which provi
  
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• AT&T exclusivity would be a disaster for the Lumia 950, the first Windows 10 Phone

  07-10-2015 17:41
  
  The Lumia 950 is coming to the U.S. in November, but when it lands it looks like it will only be available at AT&T. This isn’t an exclusive deal, but Microsoft has only secured a carrier arrangement with AT&T so far, according to CNET.
  Whether AT&T ends up with exclusivity through direct negotiation or happenstance it’s still not a good sign for Microsoft. AT&T has been an important partner for Microsoft’s mobile ambitions in the past—and it has rarely go
  
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• Non-technical manager’s guide to protecting energy ICS/SCADA

  07-10-2015 17:29
  
  Sophisticated cyber-attacks known as Advanced Persistent Threats (APT) are a growing challenge to the energy sector of our nation’s critical infrastructure. These attacks can largely be attributed to well-funded, dedicated nation-state actors.
  APT attacks against Industrial Control Systems (ICS) and to Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems are increasing; the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT) c
  
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• IoT will become a matter of life or death for security pros

  07-10-2015 17:05
  
  Orlando, Fla. -- Internet of Things means different things to different people; self-driving cars, smart cities, connected homes, health and fitness apps, etc. But for security professionals, IoT will become a safety issue.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: OS X El Capitan: Enable three-finger tap to preview Web pages in Safari

  07-10-2015 16:56
  OS X El Capitan has brought a number of changes and new features to Mac users. But one of the changes might be somewhat confusing to new users of OS X El Capitan. Some folks have wondered if it's still possible to preview links in Safari with a three-finger tap.In this how-to I'll show you how you how to quickly enable this helpful feature.How to enable the three-finger tap to preview Safari links Go to System Preferences, click on Trackpad and then click the "Look up and data detectors" option
  
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• Spec showdown: Surface Book vs. MacBook Pro, from cheapest to priciest

  07-10-2015 16:53
  
  Microsoft wasn’t shy about comparing its newSurface Book laptopto Apple’s MacBook Pro on Tuesday, and for good reason.
  A look at each device’s tech specs reveal plenty of similarities, including price points, screen size, battery life, and storage. It’s almost as if Microsoft designed the Surface Book to match the speeds and feeds of Apple’s pro-grade laptops—and then go just a bit further with a detachable touch screen and stylus support.
  Still, Apple has th
  
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• Microsoft claims 110M devices now run Windows 10

  07-10-2015 16:28
  
  Windows 10 is running on 110 million devices, Microsoft said yesterday as it introduced a new Surface Pro tablet, the Surface Book notebook and several Lumia smartphones, all of which run the OS.
  "There are 110 million users running Windows 10 right now," said Panos Panay, the chief of the Surface team, during a two-hour presentation of the new hardware.
  Panay's data point was the first time since late August that Microsoft has claimed a Windows 10 number. More than a month ago, Microsoft said
  
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• Alan Nance in management van Virtual Clarity

  07-10-2015 16:11
  Alan Nance, voormalig VP van Philips en ING, is als executive vice president toegetreden tot het managementteam van Virtual Clarity. Deze onderneming helpt organisaties hun IT-afdeling te runnen als een business, en de juiste diensten te verlenen tegen de juiste prijs in lijn met het gebruik. Het bedrijf combineert... lees meer
  
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• Existing Windows Phones will start getting Windows 10 in December

  07-10-2015 15:54
  
  Microsoft’s new Lumias 950 and 950 XL packed with Windows 10 will ship in November. If you’ve already got a Windows Phone in need of a Windows 10 update, however, it looks like you’ll be waiting until almost the end of the year.
  Responding to questions on the Lumia Facebook page, Microsoft said broad availability for Windows 10 on mobile phones will start in December. The company did not specify when the updates would roll out that month.To read this article in full or to leav
  
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• How to prep your ecommerce store for holiday shoppers

  07-10-2015 15:31
  
  Even though it’s only early October, if you’re online retail business isn’t already gearing up for the holiday season, you may miss out on revenue. So what should you and your staff be doing now to ensure your ecommerce store is able to handle the extra holiday-related traffic? Following are 16 tips from ecommerce, security and digital marketing pros on how to make sure your online store is prepared for the Hanukkah/Christmas/Kwanzaa shopping season.1.  Don’t make an
  
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• Innovation and digital transformation in federal IT

  07-10-2015 15:19
  
  In this CXO Talk interview, Mark Schwartz, the CIO of U.S. Citizenship and immigration services, discusses what operating federal IT projects involves. One of major IT initiatives they are currently working on is a project to turn all the paper-based processes into electronic processes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• Security system vendor looks to increase employee efficiency

  07-10-2015 15:05
  
  ADT might be known for high-tech security systems, but its customer onboarding process was decidedly far more low tech. Sales teams were stymied by manual, paper-based processes, including cumbersome multi-page contract documents, handling and capturing customer payment, and having no automated way to sort through the patchwork of products and promotions to match an appropriate offering to customers.
  "It's not good to be handling paper when you're selling a technical system," says Kathleen McLe
  
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• BrandPost: Overcoming Life’s Obstacles

  07-10-2015 15:00
  
  The pharmaceutical industry has a solid reputation for its ability to innovate, with new drug releases entering the market on a regular basis. However, some serious obstacles are putting pressure on large and small life sciences organizations alike. In today’s market, the obstacles to innovation fall into three key categories: regulations, competition and the science itself.When considering regulatory challenges, the biggest hurdle centers on drug trials, in which governmental demands cont
  
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• Where to start with containers and microservices

  07-10-2015 14:24
  
  Containers get a lot of headlines and it’s clear why. For the daily lives of developers, containers are revolutionary. Much in the same way that interpreted languages enable greater productivity than compiled ones, containers save developers precious time by allowing them to create a functional environment in seconds instead of tens of minutes with virtual machines. Reducing that cycle time lets developers spend more time coding and less time waiting for something to happen.To read this a
  
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• HP breathes new life into the colorful laptop that kicked off the 'cheap PC' movement

  07-10-2015 14:00
  
  HP’s cobalt-blue Streambook 11 didn’t turn heads because of its color—it turned them because of its price: $200 with Windows.
  This year, the Streambook 11 gets a peppy little update, new colors, and its most welcome fix: a better screen.
  HP says the new Streambook 11 will now come in Ash Silver as well as Violet Purple and the original Cobalt Blue. Inside, the new Streambook 11 uses Intel’s Celeron N3050. That’s an Intel Braswell-based CPU using the company’s
  
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• History of Apple and Microsoft: 4 decades of peaks and valleys

  07-10-2015 14:00
  
  The on-again, off-again relationship between Apple and Microsoft began in earnest in the late 1970s, during the dawn of the PC era. The hot and cold periods were often tied to the personalities of the companies' founders and longtime leaders: Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Today, Apple and Microsoft are much different companies, with new leaders who don't lug along the baggage that comes as a result of nearly 40 years of fierce competition.The following events, from periods of harmony and acrimony a
  
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• 10 key moments in the history of Apple and Microsoft

  07-10-2015 14:00
  
  Apple and Microsoft's history of highs and lowsImage by ThinkstockApple and Microsoft share a common history and bond in the evolution of personal computing. Relations between the two technology pioneers were generally cordial when they were founded in the 1970s, but that sense of mutual respect quickly turned to discord. The founders of both companies were at loggerheads often in the past. Today their new leaders appear determined to bury the hatchet and partner for greater opportunities in the
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Big data that stays big is bad news

  07-10-2015 13:56
  
  Not all data is created equal. One of the first questions faced by enterprises while deciding their big data strategy is how and where will they store this data. The rush to this decision often underscores the need to understand what should be stored or thrown away and how will the data be processed to generate value.There is nothing wrong with casting a big net to instrument as much as you can and capture as much as you can. However, the danger of collecting too much data is that it makes it ha
  
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• 10 keyboard shortcuts to use Windows 10 like a pro

  07-10-2015 13:54
  
  Keep your hands on the keys!For all the disruption caused by the rise of smartphones and tablets with their on-screen keyboards, the humble, physical keyboard has continued as a linchpin when it comes getting things done on the PC.If anything, Microsoft’s popular Surface Pro 3 with its Type Cover keyboard and Apple’s upcoming iPad Pro with its Smart Keyboard prove the veracity of this claim. If tablets were the be-all/end-all, why would there be such a market for the accompanying key
  
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• What will the CISOs of 2020 look like?

  07-10-2015 13:18
  
  Ever since its inception in the late 1990s, the CISO job has tended to be a very technical job. The CISO would likely report to the CIO and have a varied background as a system or network administrator, or perhaps as a security analyst in a security operations center (SOC). Almost all CISOs were male, with either experience in computer science or perhaps as a senior manager in the military.
  However, this traditional view of the job has shifted in more recent years thanks not only to workforce d
  
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• 10 Cool Things About ISE 1.2

  07-10-2015 13:14
  
  Sitting in my hotel room, after an evening of Sake' and war stories with the guys - what better thing to do then write a blog entry for you all to read & hopefully enjoy?  
  At the time of this writing, Cisco's ISE 2.0 has been in BETA is soon to be released to the public.  This may be the single most highly anticipated release ever, so why not go through some of the cool things that are in it.  Here's my top 10 list, some are big items and some are just small little gems that
  
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• 4 traits good data scientists share

  07-10-2015 13:13
  
  Big data has been a common phrase in the tech industry as companies of all types collect staggering amounts of customer. Data is also a high-profile topic as recent security breaches that leaked sensitive personally identifiable information to the public. Aside from the security issues of protecting all that data, companies are quickly finding that, while they can collect massive amounts of information, it's another thing to actually organize and analyze it.
  Data isn't relevant only to IT depart
  
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• Hands on: Microsoft's Surface Pro 4 outdoes itself with more power and refined features

  07-10-2015 13:12
  
  A month back, and we’d likely be trumpeting Microsoft’s new Surface Pro 4 as the next-generation of Surface. And it is. It’s just that, compared to its newly announced, mic-dropping rockstar cousin—the Surface Book—the Surface Pro 4 loses a bit of its luster.
  Shade your eyes from the Surface Book's dazzle, and the Surface Pro 4 has a lot to offer. Bumping up its processor to a sixth-generation Core, or Skylake, has boosted the performance by 30 percent over th
  
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• Hands on: Microsoft's new Band has a cleaner design, but its fate remains murky

  07-10-2015 13:09
  
  Microsoft’s new Band curves like a bracelet, arcing over your wrist in a clean plastic line. How the Band slides from one activity to the next has been smoothed out as well, enough to give the Band a slick sheen the first lacked.
  Microsoft has added a few new capabilities, including a new altitude sensor. Still, the new Band offers feels decidedly iterative, even if the look and feel of Microsoft’s wearable also looks rather futuristic compared to its competition. A few new goo
  
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• Quarter of firms can't tell how hackers get in

  07-10-2015 13:00
  
  The majority of large companies have experienced a breach over the past twelve months, but almost a quarter, 23 percent, of firms do not know how the hackers got in, according to a new survey.
  "That was pretty eye-opening," said Tim Helming, director of product management at DomainTools, the company that sponsored the research. "If you don't know how it got onto your network, you can't protect against it."
  Of the firms who did know how the attackers got in, 67 percent said that malware had infi
  
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• Hacked Opinions: The legalities of hacking – Scot Terban

  07-10-2015 13:00
  
  Researcher Scot Terban, known to many online simply as Dr. Krypt3ia, talks about hacking regulation and legislation with CSO in a series of topical discussions with industry leaders and experts.Thinkstock
  Hacked Opinions is an ongoing series of Q&As with industry leaders and experts on a number of topics that impact the security community. The first set of discussions focused on disclosure and how pending regulation could impact it. Now, this second set of discussions will examine security
  
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• How to configure Wi-Fi channels for top network performance

  07-10-2015 12:30
  
  Nothing is more important to the performance of your company's Wi-Fi network than the channels used by your wireless access points (APs). You can blanket a building with the latest and greatest APs, placed in the most advantageous spots, yet have a failing network if they aren't set to optimal channels on the Wi-Fi frequency bands.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• Verizon will use its mobile supercookie to target customers with AOL ads

  07-10-2015 12:29
  Verizon's acquisition of AOL means that ads for some U.S. mobile users are about to get a whole lot more targeted.The company has updated its privacy policy, saying that it now shares unique identifying information about users of its mobile phone network with the AOL Advertising Network, which claims as customers 74 of the top 100 websites tracked by ComScore.The move will allow AOL to target ads at visitors to its sites and others using information from Verizon's databases as well as its own. A
  
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• Why Microsoft's audacious vision for the future of computing is finally ready for prime time

  07-10-2015 12:00
  
  Microsoft’s audacious vision for Windows devices that seamlessly blend hardware with software in a unified, holistic experience is finally bearing fruit, after being stuck in a morass for years.
  The company’s been inching toward this experience ever since it revealed Windows 8, with its touchscreen support and Metro interface. Just last year, the Surface Pro 3 finally became the first piece of kit thattruly delivered on Surface’s core ideals, one-upping its flaw-ridden predece
  
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• Review: Amazon Aurora rocks MySQL

  07-10-2015 12:00
  
  The 20-year-old MySQL database is the world’s most widely used open source RDBMS, and it’s especially prevalent in Web applications built on the usual Linux stack. The common wisdom is that MySQL will give you good read performance in a multiuser, multithreaded scenario until your application becomes big enough to push the limits of the database.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• Uitzendorganisatie gaat over op nieuw platform met Google Apps

  07-10-2015 11:44
  In 2014 besloot Randstad dat zij van een transactie-georiënteerd intranet naar een digitale werkplek zou gaan migreren. Alle 7.000 medewerkers van Randstad Groep (Randstad, Yacht, Tempo Team en andere ondersteunende onderdelen) werken nu via een nieuw intranet met Google Apps. De uitzendorganisatie wilde... lees meer
  
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• EU Safe Harbor ruling could have bearing on Microsoft email dispute

  07-10-2015 08:24
  
  Microsoft has cited a ruling by an European Court on transatlantic transfers of personal data as having a bearing on its litigation over turning over email held in Ireland to U.S. law enforcement.The ruling Tuesday by the Court of Justice of the European Union declared invalid a “safe harbor” agreement that governs data transfers between the U.S. and the European Union as U.S. law and the actions of the country's government "inadequately respect European 'fundamental rights' of perso
  
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• IPsoft's 'Amelia' virtual assistant just got a whole lot more human

  07-10-2015 07:58
  
  AI enthusiasts are surely familiar with virtual assistants such as Siri and Cortana, but they may not remember Amelia, who made "her" debut just about a year ago.
  Designed to help companies automate customer support, Amelia on Wednesday graduated to version 2.0, bringing the technology another step closer to passing the Turing test, maker IPsoft said.
  The Turing test requires that a human user must be unable to distinguish the machine from another human being.
  Amelia’s physical appearance
  
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• Clothing retailer Uniqlo uses brain waves to match customers with t-shirts

  07-10-2015 03:12
  
  Japanese retailer Uniqlo is using a novel method to match t-shirts with potential buyers by analyzing their brain patterns.It's a marketer's dream to get inside the brain of a consumer, and a growing field -- dubbed neuromarketing -- focuses on using neuroscience to make more appealing products.On Wednesday at its flagship central Sydney store, Uniqlo debuted UMood, a system designed to match the right t-shirt to a person based on a brain-wave analysis.Customers wear a headset designed by Dentsu
  
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• With Safe Harbor gone, the hard work on data transfers starts now

  07-10-2015 03:06
  
  Tuesday's ruling that struck down the most common way to legally transfer data between Europe and the U.S. didn't turn multinational companies into outlaws immediately, but they'd better start working on alternatives now.That's what lawyers steeped in the arcane law of international data handling said in the aftermath of the decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union.The court said the Safe Harbor agreement that thousands of companies have relied on to move personal data across the A
  
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• Microsoft charges into laptop market with Surface Book

  07-10-2015 01:57
  
  Microsoft today introduced its first legitimate laptop, the Surface Book, a keyboard-equipped premium-priced notebook that can gymnastically twist into a slate or snap apart to serve as a tablet.
  "What if you wanted a Surface, but you wanted a laptop Surface? What if we did a laptop?" asked Panos Panay, Microsoft's top executive for its Surface portfolio, during a two-hour presentation in New York that also saw the unveiling of the Surface Pro 4, a pair of flagship Lumia smartphones and device
  
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• Robotics, automation play a big role in Gartner's top 10 predictions

  07-10-2015 01:56
  
  ORLANDO -- Chances are robots aren't mowing your yard, teaching your children, or bossing you around at work – yet.
  But according to Gartner's annual top-10 list of strategic predictions, robots, robotic systems and automation will have an expanding role.
  Sooner or later, there will be robots that train your children and help them with their homework. That "might seem a little strange to us, but is it really stranger than being trained by a purple dinosaur named Barney?" said Daryl Plumme
  
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