IT Executive news

• Microsoft's killing Skylake support early for Windows 7 PCs, but not Windows Server

  19-02-2016 23:37
  
  Microsoft disappointed many Windows users when it announced in January that it was yanking support early for Skylake PCs running older versions of Windows, including Windows 7. But recent news might give those users some hope: Microsoft’s not applying those rules to Windows Server—meaning frustrated consumers might have some common ground with server admins.
  Microsoft issued its updated guidance for older versions of Windows Embedded and Windows Server on Friday. Neither operating s
  
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• Donald Trump says you should boycott Apple: 'I just thought of it!'

  19-02-2016 22:52
  
  Donald Trump has called for a boycott of Apple products over the company's refusal to help the FBI break into an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino mass shooters."What I think you ought to do is boycott Apple until such time as they give that security number," the Republican presidential candidate said Friday during a campaign rally in South Carolina."How do you like that? I just thought of it. Boycott Apple!"It's not the first time he's waded into the debate. "To think that Apple won't al
  
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• DOJ slams Apple for refusing to help unlock San Bernardino shooter's iPhone

  19-02-2016 22:26
  The U.S. Department of Justice is wading into Apple’s battle with the FBI, slamming the company for refusing to comply with a court order to unlock an iPhone 5c used by the shooter in the San Bernardino terrorist attack.[ Related: Why Apple is right to fight FBI over iPhone access ]U.S. Attorney Ellen Decker wrote in a Friday court filing in Riverside, Calif. that Apple “has the technical ability to comply” with the court order and is refusing to assist because of “concer
  
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• Ads in Messenger could be Facebook's next big thing

  19-02-2016 21:41
  
  Facebook is reportedly planning a massive new business initiative that could eventually drive billions of dollars in advertising revenue. During the first half of this year, the company plans to sell ads within its Messenger application, which has 800 million monthly active users (MAU), according to TechCrunch. Such a move wouldn't be the first time Facebook sold ads outside of its core social networking app, but it would represent the largest audience (outside of the Facebook app's user ba
  
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• Apple's fight with the FBI could trigger a password arms race

  19-02-2016 21:06
  
  Apple’s dispute with the FBI over providing access to a mass shooter's smartphone could lead device makers to require stronger passwords in future.Much of the debate around the issue has suggested that the FBI is asking Apple to break its encryption in order to gain access to the contents of a smartphone used by one of the perpetrators of the December shootings in San Bernardino.But the case is as much about passwords as it is about encryption. The FBI wants Apple to override a mechan
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: openSUSE announces two new, always-updated KDE distributions

  19-02-2016 20:48
  
  As an openSUSE user I admire the work openSUSE teams do to integrate KDE’s Plasma desktop environment (DE ) with the rest of the system. And they never stop. Last year they created waves by launching a rolling release of openSUSE called Tumbleweed, along with super stable openSUSE Leap that is bringing openSUSE closer to Suse Linux Enterprise.
  And today the openSUSE community has announced two more projects: Argon and Krypton. But before we talk about these projects, let’s me offer
  
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• That Linux flaw may be fixed, but what about your containers?

  19-02-2016 20:15
  
  Countless patching efforts are now under way for the years-old bug discovered in the GNU C Library this week, but organizations that use container technology shouldn't relax just yet."As patches are being delivered by Linux vendors and community distributions, there’s one glaring issue at play: Who’s fixing containers?" wrote Red Hat's Gunnar Hellekson, director of product management, and Josh Bressers, security strategist, in a blog post Friday.To read this article in full or to lea
  
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• BrandPost: One Business, Many Systems? Time to Consolidate!

  19-02-2016 19:52
  
  Looking at a merger? Consolidating SAP instances? Streamlining your data center operations? Spinning off a business unit? In each of these scenarios, it comes down to the same question. How can your team ensure a smooth transition – and make sure that every business process works during and after re-structuring?
  For some companies, the acquisitions happened years ago and the enterprise has been living with the pain and expense of a tangle of diverse systems for a long time. Maybe it&rsquo
  
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• Apple's showdown with the FBI was a long time coming

  19-02-2016 19:24
  
  Apple now has three extra days to fight the court order that would force the company to help the FBI get into the iPhone 5c at the heart of the San Bernardino terrorism case. According to Bloomberg, Apple must respond by February 26. That might not seem like a whole lot of time, but Apple has been preparing for this fight for years.[ Related: Why Apple is right to fight FBI over iPhone access ]To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• Why Apple is right to fight FBI over iPhone access

  19-02-2016 19:21
  
  I’m not exactly known as a huge fan of Apple. In fact, for nearly a decade and half I’ve refused to use their products and I’m supposedly banned for life from Apple’s properties. It’s definitely personal between me and that company, so for me to come to Apple’s defense takes some kind of cataclysmic event.The fight between Apple and the FBI absolutely qualifies as such an event for me. Regardless of how you feel about Tim Cook and Apple, you should be behind C
  
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• Another IoT group? OCF may really be the one to make it all work

  19-02-2016 18:01
  Major companies in the Internet of Things set aside their differences on Friday to work together toward a single standard for all IoT gear.
  The group they formed, the Open Connectivity Foundation, could have the critical mass to make all embedded devices in homes and enterprises talk to each other. It includes vendors that have belonged to different, and in some cases competing, IoT organizations. Intel, Microsoft, Samsung, Qualcomm, GE Digital and Cisco Systems are among the founders of OCF.
  T
  
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• Move over, Amazon: The US military is also developing a delivery drone

  19-02-2016 17:56
  
  The U.S. Army is exploring the use of drones to deliver supplies to soldiers on the battlefield, a potentially game-changing use for an emerging technology that until now has been mostly identified with the future delivery of household items.Currently, supplies are mostly transported in road convoys that are vulnerable to attack because they travel along known supply routes. Drones would take supply into the air, make it possible to modify supply routes and, perhaps most importantly, take soldie
  
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• Business leaders still in denial about cybersecurity threats

  19-02-2016 17:25
  
  Much of the corporate sector remains in denial about the allure their information hold for hackers, nation-state spies and other malcontents, says Matt Comyns, the global cybersecurity practice leader for executive recruiter Russell Reynolds Associates. Despite the fallout at Target that saw the CEO and CIO lose their jobs and the catastrophic revelations of embarrassing emails at Sony Pictures in 2014, companies question whether their assets court the same risk as those brands.Matt Comyns, glob
  
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• Red Hat’s Ansible brings networking to devops

  19-02-2016 16:27
  
  A new release issued this week from Red Hat Ansible – an open source project and commercial product for creating a devops environment – is enabling developers to control network infrastructure.
  The devops movement is focused on how to create a better IT environment for developers to provision their own infrastructure in order to create applications faster. Much of that work has focused on provisioning compute and storage resources. But now networking has officially been invited to t
  
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• Smartwatches out-shipped Swiss watches last quarter

  19-02-2016 16:19
  
  Swiss watch makers are feeling the effects as more people choose to strap smartwatches to their wrists.
  Last quarter, smartwatch shipments overtook Swiss watches for the first time, according to new research from Strategy Analytics. Smartwatches saw a 315.6 percent shipment increase from Q4 2014, reaching 8.1 million units. Meanwhile, Swiss watch shipments fell to 7.9 million units, a 4.8 percent year-over-year decrease.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• Essential CRM software features: A savvy buyer's guide

  19-02-2016 15:36
  
  IT buyers might be tempted by the proliferation of niche software products that handle various parts of the sales and marketing process. But trying to make those pieces work together will be an integration nightmare, according a report by Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• Read CIO's February 2016 Digital Magazine: Tech's New Odd Couple

  19-02-2016 15:31
  
  Download the CIO February 2016 Digital Magazine.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• Opera founder talks up new Vivaldi browser

  19-02-2016 15:19
  
  Since the days of Mosaic in the early 1990s, Jon von Tetzchner has been working on web browsers. He’s one of the creators of Opera, the alternative browser that’s been a power-user favorite since 1995, and his new project, Vivaldi, is heading for its first stable release.
  Born in Iceland, von Tetzchner went to college in Norway, and stayed on to work at Telenor, the country’s national telecom company. While there, he invented the Opera browser with co-workers, who eventually c
  
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• These European mobile networks will block 'irrelevant' ads on customers’ phones

  19-02-2016 14:37
  Two European mobile network operators are hoping to profit from mobile advertising -- by allowing customers to block irrelevant or excessive ads. But buyer beware: Blocking irrelevant advertising is just another way of saying advertising should be more targeted.The operators, Three UK and Three Italy, hope to win more customers by stopping the ads they consider excessive or irrelevant from crossing their networks. Other networks in the Three group could follow suit.Mobile ads suck up bandwidth,
  
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• VTech not backing down on terms change after data breach

  19-02-2016 14:13
  
  Despite widespread public condemnation, Hong Kong toy maker VTech is not backing down from a change in its Terms and Conditions ducking its responsibilities in the event of a breach.European customers now have to agree to a Terms of Service that includes the following sentence: “You acknowledge and agree that any information you send or receive during your use of the site may not be secure and may be intercepted or later acquired by unauthorized parties."This was in response to a data brea
  
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• 10 best U.S. regions for social media jobs

  19-02-2016 14:00
  
  Social media salaries by region in 2016Image by ThinkstockThe average compensation for social media focused jobs declined in 2015, according to exclusive data from PayScale, a company that performs corporate compensation analysis. All of the leading metropolitan areas for social media jobs saw salary decreases, and the drop coincides with a national decline in the value of social media skills overall, according to PayScale, which tapped 54 million salary profiles to collect it data.To read this
  
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• Facebook, Google, Twitter, Woz, Trump, McAfee, Snowden, and more take sides on Apple vs. the FBI

  19-02-2016 13:23
  
  Apple is challenging a federal court order to help access an iPhone used by one of the shooters in the San Bernardino terrorist attack, claiming that doing so would create a “dangerous precedent.”
  Now, other tech companies and politicians are publicly debating whether Apple’s dead-set protection of user privacy is justified and whether the FBI has a right to enter people’s iPhones via a “backdoor” to ensure national security. Shortly after Apple CEO Tim Cook
  
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• 5 ways to keep employees in the loop

  19-02-2016 13:14
  
  Today, organizations have dozens of options when it comes to employee communication. To find out which communication solution work best, and when, we queried dozens of executives and communication experts. Here are their top five picks for how to keep workers up to date on what’s going on within their team, department or the company as a whole.1. In-person weekly (or daily) meetings. Despite the proliferation of communication tools, sometimes you just need to meet with your team or departm
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Day One 2 journal developers beg for five star reviews on Twitter

  19-02-2016 13:10
  
  So far Day One 2, the latest version of Bloom Built's popular journaling app for the Mac and iOS, has been mostly a disaster for the company. The original Day One (now dubbed Day One Classic and no longer available for purchase) had a consistent user rating of nearly five stars and was passionately loved by many customers.
  But the new release is plagued by one star reviews from users who want DropBox and iCloud syncing added back to the app. Many users feel betrayed when they realize that Day O
  
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• Video profile: Behind the scenes at Akamai

  19-02-2016 12:30
  
  When it comes to corporate practices at Akamai, the Cambridge, Mass., content deliveryand cloud services provider, CIO Kumud Kalia has just one complaint: "We should tell people how cool it is to work here," he says. "I don't think we say it enough."
  Technology is central to operations at Akamai, which on any given day streams between a quarter and a third of global Internet traffic; in turn, the company is heavily investedin its 144 IT staffers, says Kalia.
  Kumud Kalia, CIO, AkamaiTo read this
  
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• Cybersecurity whistleblowers: Get ready for more

  19-02-2016 12:28
  
  It is not a public problem yet. But according to multiple experts, it will be.
  “It” is the cybersecurity whistleblower – an employee who sees a flaw, or flaws, in his or her company’s network security, brings the problem to management but gets ignored or punished – marginalized, harassed, demoted or even fired.
  And then the worker either goes public or files a complaint with a federal regulatory agency like the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
  Such a scena
  
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• Npm Inc. explores foundation for JavaScript installer

  19-02-2016 12:00
  
  Npm, the command-line interface that developers run when using the popular Npm package manager for Node.js and JavaScript, will be moved to the jurisdiction of an independent foundation.
  A governance model for the technology is under exploration, said Npm founder Isaac Schlueter, CEO of Npm Inc., which currently oversees the project. He hopes the move will expand participation in Npm's development, as participating today could be awkward because the program is owned and maintained by a sin
  
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• Countdown to MWC 2016: Looking back at last year's best products and biggest letdowns

  19-02-2016 12:00
  
  Mobile World Congress is the world’s biggest mobile-centric trade show. Major manufacturers from around the globe come together to announce all their new stuff at the Fira Gran Via in Barcelona, Spain. Typically, we expect to see new devices from Samsung, LG, Sony, and the like, but sometimes a dark horse company has a trick or two up its sleeve.
  So, to get you revved and ready for what’s to come, here’s a look back at some of the most memorable moments from MWC 2015.Samsung G
  
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• A new Android banking trojan is also ransomware

  19-02-2016 03:48
  
  A new kind of Android malware steals online banking credentials and can hold a device's files hostage in exchange for a ransom, delivering a particularly nasty one-two punch.The malware, called Xbot, is not widespread yet and appears to be just targeting devices in Australia and Russia, wrote researchers with Palo Alto Networks in a blog post on Thursday.But they believe whomever is behind Xbot may try to expand its target base."As the author appears to be putting considerable time and effort in
  
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• Google gets patents for advanced Glass and a driverless delivery truck

  19-02-2016 02:45
  
  Google is working on advancing its Google Glass technology, while also working on the concept of a driverless delivery truck.
  Google, which holds a myriad of patents, was recently granted two U.S. patents, one for a more rugged and flexible version of its computerized eyewear, and another for an autonomous delivery truck.
  The company received a patent for a hinged display device for its Google Glass smart eyeglasses on Feb. 9.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• Android leads, Windows phones fade further in Gartner's smartphone sales report

  19-02-2016 02:45
  
  Once predicted to challenge Apple in the smartphone market, Windows phones have sunk to barely 1 percent of the world's smartphones, according to new data released by Gartner. Meanwhile, Android's market share now tops 80 percent.
  If you're a Windows Phone or Windows 10 Mobile owner, the news is grim: Microsoft and its partners sold 4.3 million phones worldwide during the fourth quarter, good for a 1.1 percent market share. That's less than half of what the platform sold a year ago, when Window
  
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• Coolest and most unusual NYC Toy Fair 2016 techie playthings

  19-02-2016 01:10
  
  Techie toysThe 113th North American International Toy Fair in NYC this past week boasted some 1,200 companies showing off the latest items to keep kids of all ages amused. Not surprisingly, the U.S. Toy Industry Association recognized tech-related products (drones, robots and “toys-to-life”) as being among the hottest, not to mention closely related STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts & Math) and “ultimate creator” (from cooking to designing to growing) offe
  
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• ARM will skip modems for now, despite being a huge force in mobile

  19-02-2016 01:05
  
  ARM has added a wealth of wireless technologies to its arsenal, but has no immediate plans to design a modem for mobile or Internet of Things devices.
  The company offers CPU and GPU designs that are widely used in smartphones and tablets. A missing piece is a cellular modem that ARM customers could license and put in mobile devices.
  ARM once considered developing a modem, but the design is complex and there are different protocols, technologies and customer requirements, said Ian Smythe, direct
  
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• Bing picks Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant to win Oscars

  19-02-2016 00:14
  
  Microsoft’s Bing has weighed in on the Academy Awards, applying its predictive powers to pick the big winners. And if the search engine is right, this is the year of The Revenant and its lead actor, Leonardo DiCaprio.
  Microsoft has already set up a site to cover the 2016 U.S. presidential primaries, which includes a list of candidates, where they stand on the issues, and which candidate is expected to win each primary. Now, the Bing Academy Awards site does the same, complete with th
  
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