IT Executive news

• SAP: Don't blame us for DHL's ailing logistics system

  30-11-2015 23:54
  
  A languishing software upgrade project at Deutsche Post DHL Group has forced the German mail and courier company to take a write-off of €345 million, but software provider SAP is taking pains to make it clear that it's not to blame."Recent media reports suggest there is a connection between SAP and problems with the implementation of a new logistics system at DHL," the company said on Friday. "These statements regarding SAP are incorrect."Just over a week ago, a story in the German online p
  
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• Watch out, bosses. Cyber Monday sales distractions hit

  30-11-2015 22:15
  
  While many bosses may be worrying (rightfully so) that Cyber Monday is slowing down employee productivity, their concerns should extend beyond today.
  Online shoppers this holiday season were expected to do some significant buying on the Monday after Thanksgiving, which is generally one of the biggest shopping days of the year. About 121 million Americans are expected to shop online today, also known as Cyber Monday, according to a surveyby Prosper Insights & Analytics.
  While that's a signif
  
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• Autodesk will bring digital designs into the real world with Microsoft's HoloLens

  30-11-2015 22:15
  
  Autodesk and Microsoft have teamed up to bring virtual product designs into the real world using augmented reality. The two companies announced on Monday that Autodesk Fusion 360 -- software that lets users design, test, and ultimately manufacture physical objects -- will connect with Microsoft’s HoloLens headset.
  Right now, details about the final product are scarce, but the two companies have spent time working together over the past year on bringing 3D models from a screen to the real
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Who decides your project management best pratices?

  30-11-2015 22:00
  
  Imagine, if you will, that you are a clean slate – at least your project manager mind is a clean slate in terms of project management best practices. Best practices could be anything you want them to be.This article isn't going to be so much about what your best practices are as it is more about who should decide what those best practices are. Should an organization like the Project Management Institute (PMI) decide project management best practices? Should your senior management decide wh
  
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• VTech hack exposes personal data of 4.8M customers — and their kids

  30-11-2015 21:37
  
  VTech, a maker of electronic toys for children, was recently hit with a major hack that exposed account information on 4.8 million customers.
  The information includes parent names, home addresses, email addresses and passwords. The theft also included 200,000 records related to the customers' children, including their "first names, genders and birthdays," according to Motherboard, the website that first reported the data breach.Stolen info used to create profiles of victimsThe stolen recor
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Talent opportunities in a multi-speed IT world

  30-11-2015 19:37
  
  Technology organizations across many industries are choosing to leverage multi-speed IT operating models in order to continue to support critical IT investments while driving business innovation. This new multi-speed world certainly presents strategic opportunities particularly in enterprises which are dependent on existing ecosystems but want to shape the future at the same time. There are significant talent implications for CIOs in this new world and a thoughtful approach to shaping talent str
  
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• Obama and Bill Gates tout plans to double clean energy research spending

  30-11-2015 19:07
  
  President Barack Obama today announced that the U.S. is joining 19 other countries and 28 leading technology innovators to double funding and other resources for clean energy research and development.
  The multinational program, known as "Mission Innovation," was announced at the United Nations Climate Summit in Paris.
  Along with public funding, the high-profile investors -- known as the Breakthrough Energy Coalition -- also plan to provide money for the development of zero-emission en
  
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• Imagination hopes Creator board will woo IoT developers to its MIPS platform

  30-11-2015 18:37
  
  Chip maker Imagination Technologies is readying a new development board to help hardware designers connect smart devices to the Internet.The Creator Ci40 is intended for use in smart home hubs, robots and other connected devices and its main advantage for Internet-of-Things applications, according to Imagination, is how connected it is.Its array of network interfaces include Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Bluetooth LE (also known as Bluetooth Smart), IEEE 802.15.4 (the physical layer underlying
  
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• Light-based 'Li-Fi' beams data 100 times faster than Wi-Fi

  30-11-2015 17:34
  Do you find those blazing-fast MU-MIMO 802.11ac routers still too darn pokey? One start-up hopes to turn your light bulb into a data transfer connection capable of speeds 100 times faster than current Wi-Fi by 2020.
  The company, called Velmenni, is already working on several pilot projects, including a wireless network in an office space that uses LED lights instead of radio waves to transmit data. Velmenni CEO Deepak Solanki recently told International Business Times UK that the company h
  
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• Hottest Cyber Monday 2015 tech deals on Apple, Android, Windows and other products

  30-11-2015 17:26
  
  Cyber MondayIf you’re one of those people who devoted your time over the holiday weekend to friends and family, and put shopping on hold, then perhaps this Cyber Monday is your day to catch up and snap up deals on everything from Apple iPads and Apple Watches to Windows 10 tablets and Android smartphones.Here’s a look at some of the best deals. (Websites such as BFads.net, BlackFriday.com and BestBlackFriday.com have all been helpful in collecting this inform
  
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• Feds look to breathe new life into legacy IT

  30-11-2015 17:23
  
  The federal government often gets maligned for its continued use of decades-old IT systems.Hostile lawmakers might use words like "outdated" and "obsolete" to characterize the reliance on legacy IT, complaining that those systems carry heavy maintenance costs, invite security risks and make agencies less efficient.That is certainly true to an extent, but it's not that simple.Rip and replace isn't the only solution for legacy IT
  In a new survey of federal technology managers, the government IT gr
  
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• Navistar CIO looks to big data analytics to fuel turnaround

  30-11-2015 15:44
  
  Navistar is determined to use big data analytics to help its trucks run like well-oiled machines. The move comes at a time when the company’s core business has hit the skids.The company is using software to gain insights about anything from how trucks perform under a variety of weather conditions, to spotting engine troubles well before the vehicles break down – ideally all aimed to curb costly downtime. Eventually, the company hopes to sell its diagnostic analytics as a service to s
  
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• Microsoft's new service makes app developers out of everyday employees

  30-11-2015 15:30
  
  Work is growing increasingly mobile thanks to smartphones, but companies can have a hard time coping with demand for apps that let their workers take corporate data on the go. Mobile developers are expensive, and getting new applications tested and then pushed out to users can be a time-consuming process. 
  Microsoft just unveiled a new beta service on Monday that's supposed to help ease that tension by allowing anyone to build an app -- no software development experience required. PowerApp
  
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• Microsoft's new premium Office 365 subscription for businesses is here

  30-11-2015 15:30
  
  Companies that want almost all of the new features Microsoft is cramming into its Office 365 productivity service can now get them via a new subscription the company will launch on Tuesday.
  Office 365 E5 costs $35 per user per month, and includes a smorgasbord of new features. Chief among them are new capabilities in Skype for Business, including the ability to broadcast teleconference meetings to thousands of employees and allow people to call into a group teleconference managed by Microsoft's
  
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• Digital transformation will shape 2016

  30-11-2015 14:32
  
  IDC predicts digital transformation will shape 2016Image by ThinkstockWhat will IT leaders focus on in 2016? The recently released "IDC FutureScape: Worldside CIO Agenda 2016 Predictions" report outlines what the research firms sees as the most significant predictions for the coming years.According to IDC, the biggest issues in IT leadership will center on business needs, capabilities and availability related to digital transformation. The data shows that two-thirds of CEOs plan to focus on digi
  
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• Considering a hardware RAID? Here’s what you need to know

  30-11-2015 14:00
  
  It’s quiz time: what’s the single most important thing in your Mac computing environment? Is it the actual Mac model you use? Is it the size of the display attached to the Mac? The speed of the CPU? The amount of memory? The size of the hard drive? The speed of and memory on the graphics card? The network connectivity?
  While all of those may seem important, I would argue that the most important thing in your Mac computing environment isn’t any of those things. In fact, it&rsqu
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: 20 project management best practices for your PMO

  30-11-2015 13:30
  
  This is it. This is my personal, and somewhat comprehensive, list of project management best practices. I look at this as sort of a “good PM checklist.” If I make sure that I'm doing these things when they should occur and - for those that are ongoing - throughout the project, then I usually have a fighting chance to drive home a successful project, save for those things that simply are out of my control. But, by sticking to this list, there are fewer and fewer of those “beyond
  
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• Visa will help Swatch's not-so-smart watch make payments in U.S.

  30-11-2015 13:24
  
  Swatch is linking its Bellamy watch with VISA to enable contactless payments in the U.S., but too late for you to go Christmas shopping with -- or for -- one.
  Swatch is hoping that the addition of an NFC payment chip to its iconic plastic watches will help it fight off the threat from smarter wristwear with even more silicon, such as the Apple Watch or Android Wear devices.
  Last month, Swatch said it will work with Chinese network Unionpay to add some payment smarts to its watches there, hintin
  
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• Are fake online reviews crushing consumer confidence?

  30-11-2015 13:18
  
  Sure, a five-star review seems like a very good thing to be attached to a product. Batches of them may sway a consumer to buy that countertop microwave, adjustable baseball hat or 100-percent-pure-certified organic maple syrup. But what if those items had only five star reviews, and not one bad thing said about them? Can that content really be trusted? In October, Amazon sued more than 1,000 sellers of phony product reviews, a follow up to its first batch of such lawsuits that went out
  
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• Most hackable devices

  30-11-2015 13:15
  
  Consumer devices vulnerableThere are now more than 3 billion connected devices in use by consumers, according to Gartner, and this number will increase to 4 billion next year.A big chunk of that increase will come as a result of the holiday season, when 65 percent of Americans say they plan to buy consumer electronics gifts, according to an October report by the Consumer Electronics Association. The amount of spending on tech will reach $34.2 billion, making the the biggest tech shopping season
  
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• Is Connectifier the next LinkedIn for recruiters?

  30-11-2015 12:41
  
  Using powerful search algorithms, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, Connectifier claims it is proving to be an effective tool for recruiters and hiring managers.
  Connectifier was founded by two ex-Google engineers, and is a recruiter-side tool that's designed to combine advanced search capabilities, AI, big data analytics and machine learning to better assist recruiters looking for IT talent.
  "The problem we saw with sites like LinkedIn and Monster.com and others is
  
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• Is Microsoft making Windows worse to make it better?

  30-11-2015 12:30
  
  Windows 10 isn't just a new operating system; it's also a new way of delivering an operating system. In theory, Windows as a Service (as Microsoft calls it) promises a continuous stream of new features alongside the familiar security updates, instead of saving up new features for three years and then trying to persuade users those features are worth the cost of an upgrade. (And no, Windows as a Service is not a paid subscription service, unless you're a business paying for upgrade rights with S
  
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• 6 nerd words everybody gets wrong

  30-11-2015 12:15
  
  The language of technology is a moving target. As the technology changes, so do the usage models, business models and behaviors associated with it. So do the words.
  There are words people often use incorrectly. You don’t have to be a linguist to do your tech talk right. Here are the most commonly used words and phrases everyone should know and how to use them.
  Virtual reality
  When you put goggles or special glasses over your eyes, such as Samsung's Gear VR, next year's Oculus Rift or devi
  
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• Windows 10's usage share lead over Windows 7 evaporates

  30-11-2015 12:04
  
  Windows 10's uptake pace has lost its lead over the adoption rate of Windows 7 six years ago, even though the former has been offered free of charge to hundreds of millions of customers, according to data from a Web analytics firm.
  As of Nov. 28, Windows 10's usage share -- a proxy for online activity because it's based on website page views tracked by Irish measurement vendor StatCounter -- had shrunk to the levels posted by Windows 7 at the same post-launch point in its lifecycle. Computerwor
  
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• Resume makeover: How to add multimedia

  30-11-2015 12:03
  
  In today’s multimedia world, some job seekers are creating elaborate video game resumes, or adding infographics, video, audio or design-intensive documents to their traditional resumes. So, is your old-fashioned text-based document passé?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• The hidden pitfalls of going freelance in IT

  30-11-2015 12:00
  
  The life of an independent IT contractor sounds attractive enough: the freedom to choose clients, the freedom to set your schedule, and the freedom to set your pay rate while banging out code on the beach.
  But all of this freedom comes at a cost. Sure, heady times for some skill sets may make IT freelancing a seller’s market, but striking out on your own comes with hurdles. The more you’re aware of the challenges and what you need to do to address them, the better your chance of suc
  
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• What’s behind Europe’s love affair with open source?

  30-11-2015 11:34
  
  Government IT departments in Europe, over the past several years, have been eager to trumpet their interest in open-source software – and have been backing their interest up with action. Open-source has become a matter of national policy in the U.K., a critical part of the infrastructure at the European Commission, and the standard for the city of Munich.
  Despite the fact that government agencies on this side of the Atlantic are also quietly using more and more open-source software, howev
  
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• BlackBerry quits Pakistan over government surveillance demands

  30-11-2015 08:38
  BlackBerry has decided not operate in Pakistan after Nov. 30, rather than let the local government intercept communications on its enterprise services, the company said Monday.The Pakistani government wanted the ability to monitor all BlackBerry Enterprise Service traffic in the country, including every BES e-mail and BES BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) message, BlackBerry's Chief Operating Officer Marty Beard wrote in a blog post on Monday. BlackBerry has been under pressure in many countries includ
  
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• Amazon shows off new delivery drone

  30-11-2015 03:01
  
  Amazon.com has teased a new drone design that takes off and lands vertically like a helicopter but flies like an airplane.The video of the delivery drone is being released nearly two years after Amazon released a video to announce that it intended to use drones to deliver parcels through a new service called Prime Air.But the drone showcased in the video posted on Sunday is quite different from the one it showed off previously. The new drone, for example, carries the parcel in its fuselage rathe
  
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