IT Executive news

• Renewable energy now supplies a quarter of the world’s power

  01-06-2016 23:26
  
  International investment in renewable energies reached $286 billion last year, double that of fossil fuels even as prices continue to tumble.
  Jobs in the renewable energy sector (not including large-scale hydropower) increased in 2015 to an estimated 8.1 million, according to the 59-page Renewables Global Status Report, generated by the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century (REN21).
  In parallel with growth in markets and investments, 2015 saw continued advances in renewable energ
  
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• 25% off Logitech Wireless Keyboard with Touchpad for Internet-Connected TVs - Deal Alert

  01-06-2016 22:57
  
  Logitech's K400 Wireless Keyboard for internet-enabled TVs is designed to be compact, comfortable, quiet, and easy to use from the comfort of your couch. It features a familiar key layout and a large 3.5-inch touchpad. A 33-foot range makes for a trouble free connection even in large rooms, and its battery is strong, lasting up to a year and a half without needing a charge, even with 2 hours of typing per day. The keyboard averages 4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon from over 860 customers (read revie
  
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• Google's Magenta project just wrote its first piece of music, and thankfully it's not great

  01-06-2016 22:51
  
  Deep in the bowels of Google’s Google Brain, the company is asking the question: can neural networks create music? Google’s Magenta project has an answer: yes.
  Whether that music is good, however... nah. Google may have annihilated its human competition in the ancient game of Go, but human artists don’t have to worry—yet—about losing their livelihoods. Still, it appears that Magenta could at least drop a riff or two that human artists could remix.
  Want to
  
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• The PC upgrade cycle slows to every five to six years, Intel's CEO says

  01-06-2016 22:43
  
  The upgrade cycle for PCs has slowed down drastically, now extending to nearly six years, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said on Wednesday."[The] replacement cycle for the PC has extended," Krzanich said. "Four years was the average, now it has moved to about five to six years."Intel needs to ramp up its efforts and release the right innovations so people are motivated to upgrade PCs quickly and easily, Krzanich said at the Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference in New York."Right now, it's easier t
  
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• Users abandon sinking Microsoft browser ship at record clip

  01-06-2016 22:24
  
  A month after Microsoft ceded the No. 1 browser spot to rival Google, Internet Explorer (IE) and Edge hemorrhaged user share at an astounding rate, data released today showed.
  IE and Edge combined to account for 38.7% of the global user share -- a stand-in for the percentage of all desktop and notebook PCs that ran those browsers -- in May, according to U.S.-based analytics vendor Net Applications. May's number for IE was down 2.7 percentage points from April, the largest one-month decline sinc
  
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• Microsoft rolls out SQL Server 2016 with a special deal to woo Oracle customers

  01-06-2016 22:12
  
  The next version of Microsoft's SQL Server relational database management system is now available, and along with it comes a special offer designed specifically to woo Oracle customers.Until the end of this month, Oracle users can migrate their databases to SQL Server 2016 and receive the necessary licenses for free with a subscription to Microsoft's Software Assurance maintenance program.Microsoft announced the June 1 release date for SQL Server 2016 early last month. Among the more notable enh
  
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• All-female team to lead Association for Computing Machinery

  01-06-2016 22:12
  Rochester Institute of Technology
  Vicki Hanson, a distinguished professor of Computing at RIT, now adds President of ACM to her resume
  Against a backdrop of an IT industry pushing hard to more fairly represent women in leadership positions, the Association for Computing Machinery has announced that an all-female board has been elected to head up the society.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• Google will help people find lost iPhones

  01-06-2016 21:34
  
  Google is giving iPhone users another way to find their misplaced devices -- by searching the Web for it. Soon, when iPhone or Android users enter "I lost my phone" at Google.com, the search engine will respond with options that will allow them to ring the device, or locate it on a map. Right now, users can already get access to that functionality through Google's My Account feature, which serves as the nexus for people to understand and access the information connected to their Google acco
  
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• BrandPost: The Four Stages of the Data Maturity Model

  01-06-2016 21:21
  
  Big Data is not a technology. It’s about answering business questions and delivering value. The penalty for poor decisions is enormous, so resourceful firms are combining new data streams and existing data sets in new ways, and they’re applying analytics to tease out hard-to-find correlations and connections for better, faster decisions. With the emergence of in-memory data structures, file based storage systems, and massively parallel processing, technology is capable of leveraging
  
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• Despite improvement, consumers still say wireless carriers suck

  01-06-2016 21:17
  
  I don't often resort to the journalistic chestnut of "good news, bad news," but when it comes to consumer satisfaction with wireless carriers, this particular cliché is warranted.A new survey of U.S. consumers found that though many people report improvements in overall satisfaction with their wireless carriers, these providers as a group are held in lower esteem than other paragons of customer service such as the U.S. Postal Service, gas stations and airlines. Ouch.The latest edition of
  
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• Startup touts wireless earbud that translates conversations

  01-06-2016 20:23
  
  As crowdfunding campaigns go, you can't do much better than New York-based Waverly Labs, which last week introduced a wireless earbud that acts as a real-time language translator between two people.
  Just five days into the campaign, the Pilot smart earpiece has garnered nearly $1.9 million through more than 8,300 backers on Indiegogo; that's 2,479% more than Waverly Labs' 30-day goal.Waverly LabsThe Pilot earbud as it appears when worn.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Breaking through the uncertainties in a digital transformation

  01-06-2016 19:56
  
  A strategic business change is extremely disruptive, not only to employees but also to partners and customers. It’s even more challenging when the starting point is an underinvested IT environment mostly just surviving in maintenance mode compared to the future-state goal to be a company providing technology-enabled innovative services. That kind of situation has me thinking about what happened at H. D. Smith. Based in Springfield, Ill., the company had been a pharmaceutical distribut
  
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• IBM buys EZSource to help transform your mainframe apps for the digital world

  01-06-2016 19:56
  
  The digital transformation train may have already left the station, but for companies with legacy mainframe applications, it's not always clear how to get on board. On Wednesday, IBM announced an acquisition that could help.The PC giant will acquire Israel-based EZSource, it said, in the hopes of helping developers "quickly and easily understand and change mainframe code."EZSource offers a visual dashboard that's designed to ease the process of modernizing applications. Essentially, it exposes a
  
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• BrandPost: Developing Your Mobile Strategy

  01-06-2016 19:40
  Just as the security ecosystem of an organization is dependent on the sensitive data that they are trying to protect, so too does an enterprise’s mobile strategy depend on the end goals of the business. Each organization will have its own mobile strategy that is a product of thoughtful input from not only IT, LOB managers, and CIOs but also security professionals.A clearly defined enterprise mobile management strategy will outline process and policies that encourage the use of mobile devi
  
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• Intel faces a challenge in the server market with new ARM chips

  01-06-2016 19:39
  
  Intel has doubled down on servers as it looks to shed its reliance on PCs, but the chip maker's ARM competitors are ready to challenge it.New server and appliance chips based on the ARM architecture were announced at Computex in Taipei this week. ARM-based chips dominate smartphone and tablets, but the new chips from Cavium and Marvell show the processors are maturing quickly for use in servers.ARM servers are seen as a power-efficient alternative to Intel's x86-based systems, with companies loo
  
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• BrandPost: Heads Up, Phones Down!

  01-06-2016 19:36
  It’s been a little while since my last article, giving me some time to think about our “constantly connected world” and the interesting changes new technologies have brought to our daily lives (not to mention affecting my own behavior, possibly to my detriment).As an example, I enjoy going to sporting events with my family. But in recent years, they’ve become annoyed at my interest in public space Wi-Fi coverage. They find me evaluating coverage and responsiveness while w
  
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• Lenovo advises users to remove a vulnerable support tool preinstalled on their systems

  01-06-2016 19:31
  
  PC maker Lenovo is recommending that users remove an application preloaded on their computers because it contains a high-severity flaw that could allow attackers to take over their systems.
  The vulnerable tool is called Lenovo Accelerator Application and is designed to speed up the launch of other Lenovo applications. It was preinstalled on more than 100 laptop and desktop models shipped with Windows 10, but not those from the ThinkPad and ThinkStation lines.
  The flaw was discovered by research
  
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• BrandPost: Mobility and Security in Healthcare

  01-06-2016 19:28
  Today, mobility is transforming healthcare. Empowering health organizations with mobile devices and apps significantly enhances the patient/provider relationship and enables providers to deliver better care. The growing use of mobility in healthcare is:Making data more readily available
  Improving workflow and efficiency
  Enhancing the patient experience inside the hospital and beyond
  Optimizing communication and collaboration between patients and providers, and providers and their peers
  The bene
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Open source painting application Krita gets a version bump

  01-06-2016 19:26
  
  Boudewijn Rempt, the maintainer of open source painting software Krita has announced the release of version 3.0.
  3.0 is a major version bump and with this release the project now has its own repository and wiki. The main focus of the developers for this release was code cleaning. With this release Krita has been ported to the latest Qt 5 and KDE Framework 5, thus keeping the codebase modern.
  Thanks to funding from its recent Kickstarter campaign, Krita 3.0 is capable of doing proper frame-by-fr
  
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• Microsoft brings advanced security management to Office 365

  01-06-2016 19:25
  
  Security in the cloud is all about visibility and control, and Microsoft is aiming to give Office 365 customers more of both with Wednesday's introduction of Office 365 Advanced Security Management."This is really tailored to the chief security officer, the IT administrator — in smaller businesses, the IT manager," says Ron Markezich, corporate vice president for Office 365 Commercial Marketing, formerly Microsoft's CIO. "It allows you to see what apps are being used within the environment
  
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• From IT vendor management to strategic partnerships

  01-06-2016 18:51
  
  To IT buyers, strategic partners are vendors that have gone beyond effective delivery of systems and services to become consistently transparent, responsive and trusted collaborators in creating value for the enterprise. Vendors that do not meet this mark face commoditization and, ultimately, become an afterthought at renewal time — while competing primarily on price in a race to the bottom.Buyers need to pick strategic partners and develop them for mutual wins. The risks of not pursuing t
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Good news! A tech role where women are gaining ground

  01-06-2016 18:50
  
  At last we have some good news about the number of women in IT. As someone who is frequently asked about the gender gap in technology, I am eager to see positive results. Now a ray of light is shining through and, what’s more, it’s not shining down at the bottom ranks of the industry. Women are gaining ground at the top of organizations and inside the c-suite as the Chief Digital Officer (CDO) role becomes more common and more central to business strategy and success.The CDO surgeNot
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: 4 areas where IT pros should grow their skills

  01-06-2016 18:50
  
  We are in the midst of an era of major technological change. New technologies – and the end user habits they impact – consistently generate new opportunities and challenges for businesses, governments and everyday consumers. But through these ongoing innovation and adoption cycles, one facet of the IT industry holds steady: the employment skills gap.According to a recent CompTIA analysis, 91 percent of IT hiring managers in the U.S. indicate some degree of gaps between the skills the
  
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• Espionage cited as the US Federal Reserve reports 50-plus breaches from 2011 to 2015

  01-06-2016 18:49
  The U.S. Federal Reserve, the nation's central bank, detected more than 50 cybersecurity breaches between 2011 and 2015, including a handful attributed to espionage.The Fed's Washington-based Board of Governors identified 51 information disclosures during the five-year period, according to information obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by Reuters.The breaches reported include only those at the Fed's Washington location and don't include any at its 12 privately owned
  
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• Hey, Microsoft! Fish or cut bait on enterprise phones

  01-06-2016 18:42
  
  Microsoft has a shot at saving what remains of its smartphone strategy, but the pivot toward the enterprise must be quick, an analyst said today.
  "They're essentially starting over from scratch," John Delaney, an IDC analyst who covers mobility in Europe, said in an interview. "By the end of the year, they must show commitment from major ISVs and some really good mobile apps."
  Last week, Microsoft announced it would take another $950 million charge against earnings for the failure of its smartp
  
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• BrandPost: 5 Takeaways from 2016 SAPPHIRE NOW

  01-06-2016 18:35
  
  This year's SAPPHIRE NOW conference proved to be another record setting performance by SAP and its partners with over 20,000 attendees in Orlando. Here are my observations on the week:
  Last year S/4HANA was on the runway. Now it's taken off. Over the last 2 years, there was a lot of talk from SAP about the new S/4HANA platform, and a lot of watching and waiting on the part of customers.  This year is different. Companies are active with specific projects and plans to move to S/4HANA. 
  
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• Office 365 Advanced Security Management brings powerful protection for a price

  01-06-2016 18:00
  
  Enterprises using Microsoft's Office 365 have a new security product that they can use to better lock down their organizations -- for a price. The company introduced a new Advanced Security Management service on Wednesday that gives companies a trio of tools aimed at helping detect security threats, provide granular controls and let IT administrators track if people in their organization are using unauthorized services.It's another part of Microsoft's push to lure businesses over to its sub
  
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• Windows 10 sees its largest surge ever as Microsoft's forced-upgrade push rolls on

  01-06-2016 17:15
  Putting away the carrots and breaking out the sticks appears to be paying off for Microsoft, at least in raw market share.
  After pushing Windows 10 onto legions of Windows 7 and 8 PCs as a Recommended update, Windows 10 saw its largest-ever surge in month-to-month usage share in May, according to Net Applications. Windows 10’s usage share jumped by 2.09 percent between April and May, to 17.43 percent overall. That may not sound like much, but it’s a huge leap in such a short time. T
  
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• Family-friendly benefits key to attracting top tech talent

  01-06-2016 17:07
  
  Don’t disturb Eric Poirier between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. -- he’s spending time with his family. Poirier, the CEO of Addepar, a Silicon Valley investment management software startup, makes it a point to block out “Eric time” on the firm’s publicly accessible calendar, and encourages the rest of the company to do the same.It’s one example of a growing trend in Silicon Valley; using family-friendly and work-life balance-focused benefits and perks to attract, retain,
  
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• Your open source security problem is worse than you think

  01-06-2016 17:00
  The 200 applications reviewed by Black Duck Software for its "State of Open Source Security in Commercial Applications" report used an average of 105 open source components, comprising 35% of the code. That's twice as much open source as the companies participating in Black Duck's audits were aware they used, according to the report.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• Cost of a Windows zero-day exploit? This one goes for $90,000

  01-06-2016 16:58
  
  Ever wonder how much an exploit for a previously unknown vulnerability that affects all Windows versions costs on the black market? The answer, according to a recent offer seen on a cybercrime forum, is $90,000.The offer was observed by researchers from security firm Trustwave on an underground market for Russian-speaking cybercriminals, where users hire malware coders, lease exploit kits, buy access to compromised websites or rent botnets.Zero-day exploits -- exploits for unpatched vulnerabilit
  
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• Investeringsbereidheid hardware stijgt, die van software daalt

  01-06-2016 16:38
  De bereidheid om in software te investeren is met 5% gedaald ten opzichte van een jaar geleden. Bijna de helft van de Nederlandse bedrijven wil de komende tijd echter blijven investeren in ict en dit is dan vaak in hardware. Daarop duidt de halfjaarlijkse Nederlandse Investeringsmonitor van de Nederlandse Vereniging... lees meer
  
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• Best practices in hardware asset management

  01-06-2016 16:33
  
  That simple question is at the heart of effective hardware asset management. The growing popularity of cloud services obscures the reality that technology is ultimately made up of physical equipment. As Andrew Blum explained in his 2012 book Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet, the Internet depends on physical infrastructure. What does this reality mean for today’s IT managers?Several trends are drawing increasing attention to hardware asset management. Security threats remain a
  
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• 8 tools to run your freelance business in the gig economy

  01-06-2016 15:37
  
  Favorite freelance business toolsImage by ThinkstockFreelancers have more tools than ever to stay connected, engaged and on task, but finding the right app for you is another story. Sifting through all the available tools can be overwhelming, but there are some that are tried and true, and there are plenty of apps that have become favorites among freelancers. Whether you need to video chat, manage your tasks, keep on track, collaborate or manage your social networks, there’s an app for tha
  
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• 7 habits of highly effective developers

  01-06-2016 15:19
  
  Larry Wall, the original author of the Perl programming language, once said that great programmers have three virtues: laziness, impatience and hubris.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• Salesforce to add digital commerce capabilities with $2.8B Demandware acquisition

  01-06-2016 15:15
  
  Salesforce.com is moving beyond CRM and into e-commerce with the acquisition of cloud service provider Demandware.It will use the purchase to kick-start a new field of business, the Salesforce Commerce Cloud, it said Wednesday.The company already has its Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Analytics Cloud.By rebranding Demandware Commerce Cloud as its own, Salesforce will be able to combine e-commerce, order management, point-of-sale, store operations and predictive intelligence into it
  
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• Security concerns rising for Internet of Things devices

  01-06-2016 14:00
  
  The burgeoning market for gadgets that trigger a sprinkler system, help you count the number of times you swing a bat, or dim the lights automatically are rising.That’s a concern for any business due to how these devices are also starting to show up at the corporate office for use in conference rooms, executive suites, and even as a low-cost building security camera system. Experts claim the industry is not doing enough to protect these devices.To read this article in full or to leave a co
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: 5 surprises Chief Digital Officers should prepare for

  01-06-2016 14:00
  
  The job of Chief Digital Officer is transcending its niche. No longer exclusive to big companies with vast technology budgets, the CDO has entered the mainstream. As CEOs re-cast their companies as digital enterprises and Chief Marketing Officers grapple with the new omnichannel reality, digital capabilities are no longer a technology luxury, but a competitive necessity.So-called digital convergence mandates not only new skills but different ways of working. Companies recruiting Chief Digital Of
  
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• LinkedIn’s disturbing breach notice

  01-06-2016 13:51
  
  Late last Wednesday (May 25), LinkedIn casually sent a note to its customers that opened with one of the least-calming phrases possible: “You may have heard reports recently about a security issue involving LinkedIn.” It continued to say, in effect, “Let us now distort and misrepresent those reports to make us sound as good as possible.”  
  The upshot of the notice was that LinkedIn was breached back in 2012 and that much of that stolen information has now resurfaced
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Understanding your culture ROI

  01-06-2016 13:51
  
  Tired of talking about employee engagement, that once-a-year survey where leaders and employees are reminded that no one enjoys coming to work? Or perhaps you have seen reports of high engagement in your teams, yet no one feels their own experience matches the strong scores?The challenge with employee engagement surveys is that they only measure engagement levels at a specific point in time, which can be highly misleading. Leaders need to pay attention to assessing engagement accurately, as scor
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: How business, IT partnerships develop operational analytics

  01-06-2016 13:48
  
  A great example of business and IT working together to innovate is in the development of operational analytics. As data volumes and frequency of data continue to increase, organizations have realized that it’s not enough to analyze their data – they must take action on it. The initial step that most companies have had in place for quite some time, and that most companies still think about when they think of BI, is to build out dashboards and reporting to enable analytics and dec
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: mHealth and telehealth flight for inclusion

  01-06-2016 13:38
  
  The global telemedicine market is projected to grow to $66.6 billion by 2021, at an estimated CAGR of 18.8 percent during the forecast period 2016 to 2021, according to Mordor Intelligence. While this seems significant, it's a fraction of the market, especially considering that U.S. health care expenditures were estimated to be $3.24 trillion in 2015, and forecasted to increase to $3.78 trillion by 2018, reported by Forbes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: 3 unique solutions to take your content strategy from engagement to monetization

  01-06-2016 13:34
  
  Content has always been upheld for its benefits such as reputation building, audience engagement and website ranking. However, one look at the top few media publishers like National Geographic, E! Online, Bleacher Report, and The Dodo and you will see there is more to content than the intangible, non-monetary benefits mentioned above.Successful media companies, like Buzzfeed for instance, know how to create engaging content and monetize it effectively. They have found a way to imbibe native adve
  
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• 93% of phishing emails are now ransomware

  01-06-2016 13:33
  
  As of the end of March, 93 percent of all phishing emails contained encryption ransomware, according to a report released today by PhishMe.
  That was up from 56 percent in December, and less than 10 percent every other month of last year.
  And the number of phishing emails hit 6.3 million in the first quarter of this year, a 789 percent increase over the last quarter of 2015.RELATED: How to respond to ransomware threats
  The anti-phishing vendor also counted the number of different variants of phi
  
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• Microsoft has opened up HoloLens, says partner products are coming soon

  01-06-2016 13:23
  
  Microsoft has opened up the platform behind its HoloLens augmented reality device, inviting partners to build their own products in different form factors and at different price points.
  It means companies such as Asus, HTC and other Windows partner can now build devices for augmented reality and virtual reality using Microsoft’s technology.
  HoloLens smart eyeware can layer virtual objects on top of the real world. Unlike virtual reality devices such as the Oculus Rift, a person wearing Ho
  
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• Plan your summer vacation with Google's suite of travel tools

  01-06-2016 13:00
  
  Google loves to organize information. It’s the company’s mission statement, after all, and there’s no common life task that generates more details than planning a trip.
  Flight itineraries, hotel reservations, car rentals, tour bookings, you name it. There’s a reason that sometimes you need a vacation from your vacation.
  Organizing all of this madness is pretty well done by apps like Tripit, and in some respect, by Google Now. But Google has shown it wants to move beyond
  
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• Oracle’s API stance would be silly if it weren’t so dangerous

  01-06-2016 13:00
  
  The good news is that Google beat Oracle in the latest fight over the right of developers to use application programming interfaces (API). The bad news is that Oracle will appeal the decision.Does Oracle know what it’s really asking for?You’d think that Oracle, which also uses open-source software, wouldn’t want to put barriers in the way of its use, but no! Instead, no sooner had the decision been handed down than Oracle general counsel Dorian Daley announced that the company
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: How Larry Ellison plotted to buy Apple and make Steve Jobs CEO

  01-06-2016 13:00
  Larry Ellison has never been know to be…er…hesitant when it comes to doing what he thinks is right. And never was that more apparent than when he and Steve Jobs discussed how to save Apple during the company’s darkest days.Here's the text of Ellison’s remarks about Jobs and saving Apple from a commencement speech at USC:
  "And now I’d like to tell you one last story about my best friend, a guy who had lots of crazy ideas, and taught me an important lesson.My thirty
  
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• Toyota said to be in talks to acquire two Google robotics companies

  01-06-2016 12:52
  
  Toyota is close to acquiring two robotics companies from Google, according to a report in Wednesday's Nikkei newspaper.The newspaper said the two companies are in final talks, but details are yet to be discussed so the deal could still fall through.The deal would see Boston Dynamics, a developer of advanced two- and four-legged robots for the U.S. military, and Schaft, a Tokyo-based developer of humanoid robots, transferred to the Toyota Research Institute. The unit is a recently launched billio
  
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• Printer security: Is your company's data really safe?

  01-06-2016 12:30
  
  On March 24th of this year, 59 printers at Northeastern University in Boston suddenly output white supremacist hate literature, part of a wave of spammed printer incidents reported at Northeastern and on at least a half dozen other campuses.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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