IT Executive news

• Renewables fastest-growing energy source, feds say

  11-05-2016 23:21
  
  By 2040, coal, natural gas and renewable energy sources will provide roughly equal shares (28%-29%) of world electricity generation -- a tremendous change from 2012, when coal provided 40% of all power generation, according to a new report.
  The report, International Energy Outlook 2016, was released today by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
  Renewables are now the world's fastest-growing energy source and are expected to increase by 2.6% per year through 2040.
  Hydropower and win
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: 7 ways to integrate an email newsletter into your online marketing campaign

  11-05-2016 21:30
  
  Email marketing is one of the most beneficial marketing strategies you can employ. Why? Partially because it’s capable of generating the highest ROI (return on investment), at least compared to SEO, content marketing, paid search advertising and other conventional online channels. This, in turn, is due to the low amount of monetary investment that email marketing demands compared to other channels.But this high ROI is also due to the malleability inherent in email marketing, especially wit
  
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• Android users can now quickly translate text in any app

  11-05-2016 20:54
  
  Android users can now get text translated in any app on their phone thanks to an update to Google Translate released Wednesday.The app now has a new Tap to Translate feature that lets people select text in one language, copy it, and with the tap of a button, see it in another language. It's designed to make it easier for folks to quickly get translations without having to go through a whole process of switching apps and pasting the text into Google Translate. To read this article in full or to l
  
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• Mozilla rehashes Firefox feature-testing program

  11-05-2016 20:38
  
  Mozilla yesterday cranked up Test Pilot -- restoring a 2015 project with a name from 2009 -- to collect feedback on proposed new features for its flagship Firefox browser.
  Test Pilot, which Mozilla dabbled with six years ago, was then aimed at gathering data on how people were using the web in general, Firefox in particular. In its original format, Test Pilot used a Firefox add-on to collect browsing and usage data, and provide tools to answer feedback questions.
  Mozilla's goal this time around
  
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• The US Defense Department is expanding its efforts with tech startups

  11-05-2016 20:31
  
  The U.S. Department of Defense is expanding its work with tech startups, bringing tech executives to work at its Silicon Valley lab and planning a new office in Boston to tap into research happening in that area.The expansion follows the early success of the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx) office, an 8-month old Silicon Valley incubator that is a key part of Secretary of Defense Ash Carter's push to rebuild ties between the military and tech industry.Those ties weakened in
  
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• Old SAP vulnerability scares Homeland Security

  11-05-2016 20:20
  
  The Department of Homeland Security has issued an alert about a 6-year-old SAP vulnerability that’s still being exploited enough that DHS deems it worthy of special note.
  But the responsibility for being vulnerable lies with SAP users. “This is a responsibility that falls on SAP customers' information security teams, service providers and external audit firms,” according to an FAQ about the vulnerability that was put out by Onapsis, an SAP-security vendor.
  And the company is r
  
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• BrandPost: CIO Interview with Paul Timmerman, CTO and SVP of Technology for Rolta AdvizeX

  11-05-2016 20:06
  
  Rolta AdvizeX is a global IT solutions provider focused on providing services and technology in the areas of applications, data, cybersecurity, and cloud and infrastructure.  CTO and Senior Vice President of Technology Paul Timmerman gives his take on why the IT role has to evolve now.What is your focus as CIO? My main focus is on tech enabling three things: Becoming more efficient, competing more effectively and gaining more insights. When I look at the CIO role, efficiency and optimizatio
  
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• Nissan charges after Tesla with home battery system

  11-05-2016 20:05
  
  Japanese carmaker Nissan and power management company Eaton have unveileda joint venture to provide wall-mountable lithium-ion batteries to power homes.
  The new home battery system, called xStorage, will be in direct competition with Tesla's Powerwall lithium-ion wall-mounted battery, which the company announced last year.
  Tesla's Powerwall will come in 6.4 kilowatt hour (kWh) and 10kWh capacities. The 6.4kWh battery retails for $3,000.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, pl
  
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• Adobe adds data-science muscle to its cloud services

  11-05-2016 19:43
  
  Finding insights in an ocean of data has become one of today's most pressing business challenges, and software vendors are rushing to help. The latest is Adobe, which has added a host of algorithms in its cloud services to help brands uncover patterns and put them to work.Adobe's Creative, Document and Marketing Cloud services already use data science to help brands hone their message to customers, and the algorithms announced Wednesday add more capabilities.To read this article in full or
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Having created the LAWS, you have to uphold them!

  11-05-2016 18:05
  
  Following my last post, I had a lot of feedback about creating bespoke hybrid project management methodologies like the one I invented that I called LAWS, an acronym of Lean, Agile, Waterfall and Six Sigma.Also, after I balked at the acronym that would come from an Agile/Six Sigma hybrid, you've been suggesting lots of your own. Most are too rude to share — but thanks!One great question came out of your feedback: having created your own hybrid, how can you make sure it has the same governa
  
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• Pebble is quietly becoming a much better smartwatch

  11-05-2016 17:59
  
  If you previously wrote off Pebble smartwatches for their limited functionality, you might want to start paying attention again. The latest Pebble firmware adds new fitness- and sleep-tracking features, while also making it easier to send text messages from a paired iPhone.
  On the fitness side, Pebble Time smartwatches can now automatically detect long walks and runs. From the Pebble Timeline, users can see how long the exercise lasted, how far they travelled, and how many calories they burned.
  
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• BrandPost: IT Talent Gap an ‘Existential Threat’ in Need of New Tactics

  11-05-2016 17:38
  
  According to the Wall Street Journal, the war for high-tech talent, particularly in disruptive technologies such as robotics, is growing fiercer than ever: Last June, Uber reportedly poached 40 researchers and scientists from the robotics department at Carnegie Mellon University, as the company works to create driverless cars. The story claimed techies were offered bonuses of hundreds of thousands of dollars and a doubling of salaries to staff Uber’s new Pittsburgh-based tech center.This m
  
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• U.S. sounds alarm after SAP bug found affecting multinationals

  11-05-2016 17:29
  
  The U.S. government is warning major corporations to check the configuration of their SAP software systems after a computer security company discovered at least 36 global enterprises were still vulnerable to a significant bug patched more than five years ago.
  The bug allows hackers to remotely gain full administrative access to SAP systems and affects at least 18 of the company's software systems, according to security vendor Onapsis.
  Using it, attackers can gain "complete control of the b
  
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• Catch up on Interop 2016 with these videos

  11-05-2016 17:22
  
  Last week, the Network World and IDG.TV video crew was out in Las Vegas gathering interviews at the Interop 2016 event. We tallied up 10 interviews at the show, ranging in topics from networking to security to Wi-Fi. If you missed the show and want to get a sense of some of the companies and issues discussed, take a look below:
  Cisco: How the Digital Network Architecture can help the networkCisco had a big presence at Interop (it was the first booth you saw when you entered the expo hall). We g
  
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• 11 ergonomic gadgets your body will love

  11-05-2016 17:14
  
  Ergonomics – they do a body goodImage by ThinkstockDo you work long hours on your computer? If so, we know the feeling and have identified a list of gadgets that you can use at your workstation, and which offer the necessary support and comfort as you work. While some may require making some adjustments or take some getting used to, your body will grow to love any of these devices -- in the form of reduced aches and pain.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• Networks need automation -- just ask the U.S. military

  11-05-2016 16:52
  
  IT professionals are looking to software-defined networking to automate what are still complex and vulnerable systems controlled by human engineers. Major General Sarah Zabel knows where they’re coming from.Zabel is the vice director of the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), which provides IT support for all U.S. combat operations. Soldiers, officers, drones, and the president all rely on DISA to stay connected. Its network is the epitome of a system that’s both a headache to
  
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• FBI/Apple privacy fight left out a major player: The data carriers

  11-05-2016 16:40
  
  The recent standoff between Apple and the FBI over the agency’s demand that the company provide a way to unlock the iPhone of a dead terrorist, was "resolved" when the FBI “bought a tool,” according to Director James Comey.
  But that, of course, didn’t resolve the fundamental, ongoing conflict between the government's need for digital surveillance capabilities to assist with law enforcement and national security on one side, and the American commitment to personal pr
  
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• Latest Windows 10 preview gets loose early

  11-05-2016 15:56
  
  Microsoft had planned to release a Windows 10 update to the company's beta testers today, but the build got loose prematurely, ending up on some users' PCs late Tuesday.
  After Microsoft realized that build 14342 had escaped its confines, it continued to push it to customers.
  "Some #WindowsInsiders have reported getting PC build 14342. We were staging this for tomorrow and looks like it published too far," tweeted Gabriel Aul, engineering general manager for Microsoft's operating systems group l
  
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• It’s 10 p.m. — do you know what your APIs are doing?

  11-05-2016 15:38
  
  Almost every company is using at least some cloud services today, and they’re not just using packaged SaaS apps, PaaS services and IaaS virtual machines. Websites and custom apps are built using application programming interfaces (API) for everything from mapping and messaging, to analytics, fraud detection and speech recognition.Software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings often offer APIs that let you work with them through third-party apps and services, or even build your own. For example, mo
  
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• Over 90% off Project Management Professional Certification Training - Deal Alert

  11-05-2016 15:26
  
  A collection of over 76 premium courses to help you ace the PMP and CAPM exams. While this training bundle is normally valued at $1,495, it’s currently available for $49.99 for a limited time only.
  
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• Amazon takes aim at YouTube, Netflix via new video offerings

  11-05-2016 15:02
  
  If you have an itch to share your video creations with the masses, but YouTube just isn't your cup of chai, a new alternative now exists: Amazon Video Direct.The service, which launched this week, lets amateur and professional videographers alike upload video content for free, and it offers a slew of distribution options. Video creators can choose to make their content available for free to anyone, offer video downloads for a fee, sell content via subscriptions, or place video behind Amazon's Pr
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: To get digital, be the dog

  11-05-2016 15:00
  
  Is my prescription ready?Has my insurance claim been approved?Has my gate changed?These are questions industry analysts at Forrester use to illustrate what they call the “mobile mind shift,” which they define as an expectation that “I can get what I want, in my immediate context and moments of need” on my smartphone.The reflexive way people reach for their smartphones nearly anywhere, anytime, may even call to mind Pavlov’s dogs.Ivan Pavlov won a Nobel Prize fo
  
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• The CIO's guide to smarter vendor negotiation

  11-05-2016 14:28
  
  The basic tenets of successful vendor negotiation have changed little over the years. Yet the process remains difficult to master and, for CIOs in particular, is getting more complex.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• Amazon Prime and the racist algorithms

  11-05-2016 14:17
  
  The revelation in late April that Amazon has excluded minority neighborhoods in Boston, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, New York City, and Washington, D.C., from its Prime Free Same-Day Delivery service while extending the service to white neighborhoods probably shocked few minorities. They likely saw it as part of the same pattern of racism that has left many minority neighborhoods with crumbling infrastructure and housing, poor public transportation, little or no access to healthy food, and few pla
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: How to do influencer marketing like a pro

  11-05-2016 14:11
  
  When Unbox Therapy, one of the top YouTube channels, hosted an exclusive unboxing of the Samsung Galaxy S6, four million subscribers paid attention. The reason – Lewis’ influence on the channel subscribers. Influencer marketing has been quick to emerge as a key promotion tactic, and given the way it amplifies the volume of any content strategy, marketers are not shying away from adapting it as a key portion of their marketing cocktail. As Proopinion puts it – today businesses a
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Are you paying too much for outsourced resources?

  11-05-2016 14:08
  
  Many companies in mature, offshore, FTE-based outsourcing environments experience substantial bloat. From our knowledge of our clients’ situations and our research for companies seeking objective data to help them determine the return on investment in outsourcing, it’s clear that many companies today are paying too much for the resources. And they’re blissfully unaware of the outsourcing bloat — which means that they are paying for 30 percent or more of FTEs than they nee
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: 4 ways to better manage your project resources

  11-05-2016 14:04
  
  Your project resources are always going to be critical to the success of each project you manage. So it makes sense that how you manage them and get the best cooperation and performance from them individually and as a team is key to project success, right?What I'd like to do here is discuss four tips you can use on each project going forward to help get the most out of the team and therefore also realize the best success and performance on each project you manage. Consider the following:1. Engag
  
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• iDrive One review: The faster, more affordable, nearly portable personal cloud

  11-05-2016 14:00
  Cloud-based storage is great—until your preferred service goes out of business or changes the deal after you’ve spent years uploading gigabytes worth of precious data. Instead of relying on someone else’s cloud, it might be time to find a more personal solution.Little blue box
  The no-frills iDrive One app is fast at streaming videos over Wi-Fi, sorted from newest to oldest complete with thumbnails.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• Microsoft fixes actively attacked IE flaw and 50 other vulnerabilities

  11-05-2016 13:48
  
  Microsoft released patches for 51 vulnerabilities Tuesday, including one affecting Internet Explorer that hackers have exploited in targeted attacks against organizations in South Korea.The Microsoft patches were covered in 16 security bulletins, eight rated critical and eight important. The affected products include Windows, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, Office and Microsoft .NET Framework.The patches included in the IE and Edge security bulletins, MS16-051 and MS16-052, are among the most
  
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• More than half of IT projects still failing

  11-05-2016 13:16
  
  In 2013, a survey from cloud portfolio management provider Innotas revealed that 50 percent of businesses surveyed had experienced an IT project failure within the previous 12 months. Now, three years later, not much has changed. According to the most recent Innotas annual Project and Portfolio Management Survey, in fact, the numbers have increased: 55 percent of the 126 IT professionals surveyed between January and March 2015 reported they had a project fail, up from 32 percent in 2014.
  The pro
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Stick it to the man: Disable Touch ID on your iPhone or iPad

  11-05-2016 13:00
  
  Newer technologies can sometimes race far ahead of laws and law enforcement officials, but eventually the government catches up. So it has proven to be true with Touch ID, one of Apple’s best features on the iPhone and iPad.A court recently ruled that a convicted felon had to unlock her iPhone with her fingerprint. A fingerprint, unlike a passcode, is currently not considered to be protected under the Fifth Amendment.So if you are worried about being forced to unlock your iPhone with Touch
  
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• Big data essential to cancer 'moonshot'

  11-05-2016 12:49
  
  WASHINGTON -- Joe Biden has worn many hats in the Obama administration, and he believes that technology will be crucial for the success of his latest endeavor: leading the effort to make a great leap forward in preventing, detecting and treating cancer.In remarks here at the annual Health Datapalooza conference, Biden said that it is essential for the various organizations focused on cancer research and patient advocacy to work more closely together, pooling data and resources to advance what th
  
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• Making healthcare bills easier to understand

  11-05-2016 12:35
  
  WASHINGTON -- Obama administration officials like to tout the progress they have made in opening up health information to increase transparency in a notoriously opaque industry, but they are also quick to acknowledge that reform is at best a gradual process.On Monday, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) took aim at what can be one of the more frustrating parts of the system for healthcare consumers: billing.[ Related: Why health data is a big data challenge ]HHS Secretary Sylvia Ma
  
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• How to use an Android Wear watch with an iPhone—and why you might want to

  11-05-2016 12:30
  
  The Apple Watch recently celebrated its first birthday, and although a second version is widely rumored to debut later this year, the original is still hanging tough. Apple’s smartwatch reportedly commands just over half of the global market at this point, and this spring’s price drop potentially makes it even more attractive to new buyers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• 11 ways to get the most out of Google Keep on Android

  11-05-2016 12:30
  
  I really need to upgrade my brain's internal storage.
  I'm only partially kidding: Just like a hard drive, I'm pretty sure my mind reached maximum capacity at some point in the past decade. The only way I can remember anything these days is by making and maintaining a million notes, both physical and digital. (My wife can confirm this. "I told you that a week ago" is an all-too-common phrase around these parts.)
  I'm still waiting for Western Digital to start selling SSD implants for the noggin,
  
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• Review: 6 machine learning clouds

  11-05-2016 12:00
  
  What we call machine learning can take many forms. The purest form offers the analyst a set of data exploration tools, a choice of ML models, robust solution algorithms, and a way to use the solutions for predictions. The Amazon, Microsoft, Databricks, Google, and IBM clouds all offer prediction APIs that give the analyst various amounts of control. HPE Haven OnDemand offers a limited prediction API for binary classification problems.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please cl
  
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• Attack of the bots! 10 AI helpers you can try today

  11-05-2016 12:00
  The bots have landedSeemingly overnight, web robots, programed to parse data and automate simple tasks in response to natural language, have started to infiltrate our digital lives. Once a curiosity on AIM and MSN Messenger, bots have progressed in the last decade from simply playing us in games and answering our silly questions to now being big business. Indeed, bots are jockeying to fulfill our every whim, from offering help with purchasing decisions, to providing transit directions and airlin
  
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• Cyber Roadmap Consulting moet zwaktes in beveiliging opsporen

  11-05-2016 11:18
  BT heeft een nieuwe dienst aangekondigd, ontworpen om grote organisaties te helpen bij het in kaart brengen van hun beveiligingsrisico’s en het nemen van maatregelen. BT’s wereldwijde security consulting team, dat uit pakweg 500 medewerkers bestaat, ondersteunt de nieuwe dienstverlening, die Cyber Roadmap... lees meer
  
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• Alleged Syrian hacker is extradited to the US on extortion charges

  11-05-2016 08:52
  
  A hacker with alleged connections to members of the  Syrian Electronic Army appeared in a Virginia court Tuesday to face charges of participating in an extortion scheme that threatened victims to delete or sell data from compromised computers.  Peter Romar, who was detained by German authorities on a provisional arrest warrant on behalf of the U.S., had been earlier charged by a criminal complaint unsealed on March 22. The Syrian national, also known as Pierre Romar, was residing in Wa
  
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• Salesforce outage continues in some parts of the US

  11-05-2016 06:15
  
  Salesforce.com was having an outage in some locations on Tuesday, prompting the company’s CEO to apologize to users on Twitter.The cloud applications company said on its website that the over 12 hours disruption was the result of a database failure on the NA14 instance, which introduced a file integrity issue in the NA14 database.The outage had not been apparently resolved by late evening.Salesforce customers are grouped together in instances, which typically consist of servers and other i
  
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• Facebook fires back at political allegations

  11-05-2016 03:10
  
  With allegations escalating that Facebook actively suppresses politically conservative news stories, the company has denied it's taking a political bend.
  "We take these reports extremely seriously, and have found no evidence that the anonymous allegations are true," wrote Tom Stocky, a member of Facebook's Trending Topics team, in a post . "Facebook is a platform for people and perspectives from across the political spectrum."
  Stocky's comment came after allegations surfaced in Gizmodo, a tech
  
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• WhatsApp expands to the desktop

  11-05-2016 02:23
  
  WhatsApp is taking its popular messaging service to the desktop with a new Mac and Windows app released Tuesday. 
  It's a pretty straightforward app: the millions of WhatsApp users can now continue conversations from their phone on a computer, and vice versa. That's a boon for people who want to chat with friends on WhatsApp without having to use their phones. 
  The move should help WhatsApp better compete with other messaging services like Line, WeChat and Telegram, which already have
  
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• Slack is letting its users take their chat credentials to other apps

  11-05-2016 00:48
  
  Slack is offering its users a new way to sign into other applications. The company announced Tuesday that it has launched a new "Sign in with Slack" feature that lets people use their login for the chat app to sign in to participating applications. Developers of applications like Quip can now enable their users to sign in with Slack credentials, which can make it easier for people to get started with applications -- and therefore more likely to try them out. The new feature makes it possibl
  
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• Chicago bank finds public cloud ready for prime time

  11-05-2016 00:38
  
  In the early 1930s Congress chartered a dozen federal loan banks across the country to help smaller banks provide liquidity for home loans. Today, the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago holds $70.7 billion in assets. And Eric Gieger, vice president of IT operations for the bank runs this financial institution from the cloud.
  Just a few years ago it would have been rare to see financial institutions operating in the public IaaS cloud, but recently there have been more examples. Last year at Amazo
  
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