IT Executive news

• Up To $65 In Digital Content When You Purchase Fire TV Stick With Alexa Control - Deal Alert

  28-09-2016 23:09
  
  The next generation of the bestselling Fire TV Stick. The most powerful with the fastest Wi-Fi and most accurate voice search of any streaming media stick–now with the Alexa Voice Remote. Enjoy over 7,000 apps, games, and Alexa skills including Netflix, Hulu, HBO NOW, YouTube, Amazon Video, NBC, WatchESPN, Disney, and more. Launch and control content with the included Alexa Voice Remote. Simply say, “Play Game of Thrones” or “Launch Netflix” and Alexa will respond i
  
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• 26% off American Red Cross Blackout Buddy, The Emergency Nightlight - Deal Alert

  28-09-2016 22:51
  
  Just leave the slim and trim Blackout Buddy in your wall socket and you’ll never be in the dark. It automatically turns on when the power goes out so that you can easily locate it. Then, fold away the prongs and you've got yourself a flashlight. A very bright idea from the American Red Cross. Flip a switch and the Blackout Buddy also doubles as an LED nightlight, so you can keep your kids' rooms, hallways, or kitchen always illuminated. The Blackout Buddy keeps itself charged and provides
  
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• Quiet rumblings but few fireworks at LTE-U gathering

  28-09-2016 22:38
  
  A Washington, D.C. think tank on Wednesday hosted the first event to feature representatives from both sides of the LTE-U debate since a contentious agreed testing framework was created several weeks ago.
  The panelists included representatives from Broadcom, Verizon, Comcast, T-Mobile and consumer advocate Public Knowledge. The event was moderated by the director of the wireless future project at New America’s Open Technology Institute, Michael Calabrese, and kicked off with presentations
  
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• Want to live on Mars with 1M of your closest friends?

  28-09-2016 22:11
  
  You might think Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, might dream of putting an astronaut on Mars.But the high tech entrepreneur envisions the day when there is a working, thriving, self-sustaining civilization of a million people or more on Mars.
  Musk has faith his dream will turn into reality, maybe in 100 years orless.
  He's already started figuring out and building the technology that would be needed to transport hundreds of people and the equipment required to build habitats, greenhouses, iron foun
  
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• Mozilla tests ad-blocking feature in Firefox

  28-09-2016 21:59
  
  Mozilla today introduced three new test features for Firefox, including one that separates YouTube videos from the browser and another that may foreshadow a more aggressive ad-blocking strategy by the open-source developer.
  "We're excited to announce the release of three new Test Pilot experiments," said Nick Nguyen, the vice president of Firefox, in a post to a company blog. "These features will help you share and manage screenshots; keep streaming video front and center; and protect your onli
  
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• AMD has its eyes on Las Vegas with Polaris GPUs

  28-09-2016 21:18
  
  AMD wants its new Polaris GPUs to dazzle gamblers in Las Vegas using electronic devices.Qualcomm, meanwhile, wants its embedded Snapdragon chips to be installed in robots, drones, and smart devices used in homes and for commercial applications.For both chipmakers, the internet of things market is becoming too big to ignore. The companies this week announced CPUs and GPUs adapted from PCs and mobile devices for use in IoT devices.AMD adapted its Polaris GPU architecture, which is used in discrete
  
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• Why bots are poised to disrupt the enterprise

  28-09-2016 20:48
  
  The proliferation of robots completing manual tasks traditionally done by humans suggests we have entered the machine automation age. And while nothing captures the imagination like self-directing machines shuttling merchandise around warehouses, most automation today comes courtesy of software bots that perform clerical tasks such as data entry.Here’s the good news: Far from a frontal assault on cubicle inhabitants, these software agents may eventually net more jobs than they consume, as
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Using Technology to Educate our Minds

  28-09-2016 20:42
  
   A recent study found that on average we check our phones 85 times a day, and most of us don’t even realise we’re doing it. Researchers at Nottingham Trent University asked participants aged between 18 and 33 to estimate how often they checked their devices, then compared it with the data gathered through a monitoring app installed on the phones. The results, published in in the journal PLOS ONE, show that most people checked twice as often as they thought.The addictiveness of d
  
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• 25% off Fizzics Revolutionary Beer System - Deal Alert

  28-09-2016 20:36
  
  Crowdfunded on Indiegogo, the revolutionary Fizzics System improves the flavor and taste of ordinary canned, bottled and growler beer (accommodates up to a full 64oz growler). Fizzics technology enhances the carbonation and aroma of beer while providing a smooth, creamy, full-body flavor and taste without the use of additives or chemicals. The device enhances the flavor and taste of all beer styles, including IPAs, Pilsners, Brown Ales, Stouts, Porters, Lagers, and more. It promises to deliver f
  
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• Microsoft morphs Office 365 UI into Windows 10 Start menu look-a-like

  28-09-2016 20:08
  
  Microsoft today outlined a new Windows 10-like interface for corporate users of Office 365, the software-by-subscription program.
  The new look will reach employees of firms that have registered with the Office 365 First Release track later this month. Others will begin to get the changed user interface (UI) in October as Microsoft rolls it out in stages.
  "We're announcing a new version of the Office 365 App Launcher, which will provide improved discoverability to new and recently-used apps, add
  
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• Most dangerous cyber celebrities of 2016

  28-09-2016 19:40
  
  Dangerous celebritiesIntel has reeled off the 10th annual McAfee Most Dangerous Celebrities list based on likelihood of getting hit with a virus or malware when searching on the celebs’ names. “Consumers today remain fascinated with celebrity culture and go online to find the latest pop culture news,” said Gary Davis, chief consumer security evangelist at Intel Security. “With this craving for real-time information, many search and click without considering potential secu
  
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• Nvidia teases Volta GPU in next-gen Xavier self-driving car computer

  28-09-2016 19:17
  
  Nvidia's current Pascal GPUs are generating a lot of enthusiasm, but their successor, the Volta GPU architecture, is on its way next year, and there's a lot to be excited about.Nvidia unveiled Volta in a new Xavier supercomputer chip designed for self-driving cars, with the small surprising coming Wednesday at the company's GPU Technology Conference in Amsterdam.Xavier provides unprecedented computing horsepower, allowing cars to recognize images, analyze on-road situations, and take action
  
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• Meet Apache Spot, a new open source project for cybersecurity

  28-09-2016 18:41
  
  Hard on the heels of the discovery of the largest known data breach in history, Cloudera and Intel on Wednesday announced that they've donated a new open source project to the Apache Software Foundation with a focus on using big data analytics and machine learning for cybersecurity.Originally created by Intel and launched as the Open Network Insight (ONI) project in February, the effort is now called Apache Spot and has been accepted into the ASF Incubator."The idea is, let's create a common dat
  
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• Wat heb je nodig om digitale transformatie te versnellen?

  28-09-2016 18:18
  Door Albert Lentink – Bij twee derde van de G2000-bedrijven zal digitale transformatie eind 2017 centraal staan in hun strategie, zo voorspelt IDC. Op de G2000-lijst staan in totaal 25 Nederlandse bedrijven. Ondertussen zijn er al veel meer bedrijven in Nederland bezig met hun digitale transformatie. De... lees meer
  
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• Save 30% on Bowers & Wilkins P5 Mobile Headphones By Going Recertified - Deal Alert

  28-09-2016 17:56
  
  In leading recording studios around the world, music that will soon be heard everywhere is first heard through Bowers & Wilkins loudspeakers. With these P5 mobile hi-fi headphones, the sound you hear is completely natural – as close to the sound of the original recording as they can possibly take you. There are no gimmicky effects like exaggerated bass or artificially enhanced treble, which become tiring with extended listening. A closed-back design with rigid metal face
  
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• BrandPost: Azure Only Server and Cloud Enrollment (SCE) Changes

  28-09-2016 17:08
  Server and Cloud Enrollment (SCE) is a licensing vehicle under the Enterprise Agreement that enables organizations to standardize on one or more Microsoft server and cloud technologies. To enroll in SCE, you will make an installed base commitment to one or more components. This means committing to full Software Assurance coverage across the installed base of an SCE component. Products available under SCE include Windows Server and System Center, SQL Server, SharePoint Server and BizTalk Server,
  
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• BlackBerry (finally) says it's done making smartphones

  28-09-2016 17:07
  
  BlackBerry today filed its fiscal second quarter 2017 financials, and with the earnings came definitive news that the Canadian company, which very much sparked the modern smartphone market, will cease developing and making its own smartphone hardware.The news feels like it has been a long time coming, but is still momentous given the role BlackBerry once played in the mobile device world — and the long, slow fall from its heyday in the late 2000s. To read this article in full or to le
  
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• BrandPost: Holistic Security: Don't Converge Your Infrastructure Without It

  28-09-2016 16:56
  As organizations manage data from a growing variety of sources, many are shifting to a converged infrastructure for their data centers. A converged infrastructure combines computing, storage, networking, and virtualization into an integrated system provided by a single vendor, giving a company access to all of its resources from one centrally-managed location. It provides transparency, makes management easier and cheaper, and ends IT sprawl.Gartner predicts that by 2019 hyper converged infrastr
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: macOS Safari: Change the style of web pages with FreeStyler plugin

  28-09-2016 16:39
  Sometimes when I visit my favorite web sites I can’t help but dislike how they look in Safari. Some sites have great information but I loathe the fonts, background colors and other elements of their pages.
  So imagine my delight when I discovered a free plugin for Safari in macOS called FreeStyler. FreeStyler lets you change the fonts, backgrounds and other web page elements with just a click or two.
  Here’s the official description of FreeStyler from its site:FreeStyler has everythin
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: 6 ways to use freelancers in your online marketing campaign

  28-09-2016 16:30
  
  Each time you launch a new marketing campaign, it should be your goal to improve upon the last. This means attempting to lower expenses, while growing the return on your investment. It’s trying to reach more people, without spending as much time on manual tasks. It’s taking an effort to paint a more accurate picture of what your brand stands for, while simultaneously relinquishing some control.While there are thousands of different ways in which you can improve your next marketing ca
  
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• PSA: Windows 10's Anniversary Update reactivates ads you've already disabled

  28-09-2016 16:21
  
  Last night, I finally upgraded my main PC to Windows 10’s major Anniversary Update. I’d been putting it off because of the devastating webcam bug introduced in the Anniversary Update—a deal-breaker for me—but now that a registry hack remedy’s surfaced ahead of an official fix, the allure of Forza Horizon 3 proved too great. So I finally forced the update. Sure, having to practically reinstall your entire OS is a headache, and it rendered my file-packed PC unusable
  
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• Boost your website’s loading speed

  28-09-2016 16:09
  
  Boost your website’s loading speedImage by Computerworld / ThinkstockMost people probably think that the only factor affecting a website’s speed is the internet signal or strength. The truth is that many factors can affect a website’s ability to load quickly — and many of them can be adjusted to improve users’ experience when visiting your site.This is important because even a hint of hesitation can cause people to abandon your site. A 2008 study by the Aberdeen Gro
  
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• Aetna to give away 50K Apple Watches to its employees, subsidize others for customers

  28-09-2016 16:07
  
  Health insurer Aetna announced today it will provide Apple Watches at no cost to its nearly 50,000 employees, who will participate in the company's wellness reimbursement program.
  The initiative is aimed at encouraging employees "to live more productive, healthy lives" by being able to monitor vital signs and track their exercise progress.AppleApple's iOS HealthKit which enabled the Apple Watch to monitor and record exercise by counting steps, and vital signs such as your pulse. The app also au
  
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• Customers have a love/hate relationship with IT outsourcing providers

  28-09-2016 15:37
  
  HPE Outsourcing once again garnered the highest Net Promoter (NPS) score among IT service providers according to a 2016 analysis of NPS scores among corporate technology vendors recently published by the Temkin Group. However, its merger with CSC could shakes its customer experience standing.A company’s NPS is considered a measure of customer loyalty and has been proven by some to be a leading indicator of corporate growth. Customers are asked to rank the likelihood they would recommend a
  
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• How UPS delivers predictive analytics

  28-09-2016 15:33
  
  UPS operates in more than 220 countries and territories with more than 1,800 facilities, with a delivery fleet of over 100,000 ground vehicles and over 500 aircraft (both owned and charter). So when the company’s vice president of IT Kim Felix talks about the challenge of building a business intelligence system to manage UPS’s transportation network, you can imagine the size and scale of data she’s dealing with — 8,700 events per second, every second of the day, Felix say
  
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• BlackBerry stops making hardware, but BlackBerry phones live on

  28-09-2016 15:23
  
  BlackBerry is getting out of the hardware business, but this isn’t the end of BlackBerry phones—or at least not yet.
  As part of its quarterly earnings report on Tuesday, the company announced that it would soon end all hardware development. Instead, BlackBerry phone production and design will be outsourced to third parties.
  “We are focusing on software development, including security and applications. The company plans to end all internal hardware development and will outsourc
  
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• How to choose the right project management methodology

  28-09-2016 14:19
  
  In "How to pick a project management methodology (PMM)," I covered the some of the most recognized methodologies, as well as a few high-level factors, that may impact selection decisions. These methodologies are repeatable, effective and efficient processes that help organizations streamline project activities. Because these processes, once developed, can be documented and repeated, they help organizations to spend less time focusing on how to execute the project itself, and more time on the pro
  
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• 5 ways to get more out of meetings

  28-09-2016 14:11
  
  The modern workforce is growing resentful of meetings. In fact, a recent survey from Atlassian found that, on average, employees attend 62 meetings per month and at least half of those meetings are considered "time wasted." Of the respondents, 91 percent admitted they daydreamed during meetings, 39 percent owned up to falling asleep during a meeting and 45 percent said they felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of meetings they needed to attend.In fact, a whopping 96 percent said they often miss
  
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• 73% of companies using vulnerable end-of-life networking devices

  28-09-2016 14:07
  
  Seventy-three percent of companies are using vulnerable, end-of-life networking equipment, up from 60 percent last year, according to a new analysis of more than 212,000 Cisco networking devices at 350 organizations across North America.
  "It's amazing how many folks have this issue in their environment," said David Vigna, Cisco practice director at Softchoice, the company that conducted the analysis.
  Meanwhile, the share of devices that are end-of-life rose from 4 percent in 2015 to 6 percent t
  
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• watchOS 3 guide: 15 essential tips to transform your Apple Watch

  28-09-2016 13:31
  A whole new Apple Watch experienceImage by AppleApple made the Apple Watch faster with the September release of two new models, the Series 1 and Series 2, which both have powerful dual-core processors. But if you bought an Apple Watch when it launched last year and don’t feel like buying a new one, installing watchOS 3 will go a long way toward making your old device feel new.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• How New York’s Stylin’ Seniors became a golden social media campaign

  28-09-2016 12:35
  
  The New York City Department for the Aging (DFTA) had just hired a new director of public affairs, social media expert Jon Minners, and was seeking to expand its visibility in the community. The department thought it would be hard to develop social media channels for its target market, because "no one finds seniors sexy."Minners thought differently. Coming from a newspaper background, he knew three things on the front page sold community papers: babies, puppies and older people. With that in min
  
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• HackerOne CEO: 'We’re building the world’s biggest security talent agency'

  28-09-2016 12:16
  
  Marten Mickos, a veteran executive with companies from MySQL to Sun, Nokia and HP, was not particularly excited about his meeting to explore a leadership role with HackerOne, a fledgling security company. Security is hard, it’s unpleasant, it doesn’t work very well. But he perked up fast after learning about HackerOne’s crowdsourced model of finding and fixing security flaws – a model in which HackerOne plays a key matchmaking role between companies and ethical hackers i
  
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• Plat.One acquisition marks start of $2B IoT investment plan for SAP

  28-09-2016 12:10
  
  SAP has bought IoT software developer Plat.One, marking the start of a plan to invest US$2 billion in the internet of things over the next five years.Some of those billions will be spent on the creation of IoT development labs around the world, SAP said Wednesday. It already has plans for such labs in Berlin, Johannesburg, Munich, Palo Alto, Shanghai and São Leopoldo in Brazil. The company is also rolling out a series of "jump-start" and "accelerator" IoT software packages
  
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• The power of lazy programming

  28-09-2016 12:00
  
  Whoever said working hard is a virtue never met a programmer. Yes, ditch diggers who work hard generate longer ditches than those who daydream, and farmers who lean into the plough plant more food than those who stare off into the sky. But programming isn’t the same. There is no linear relationship between sweat on the brow and satisfied users.
  Sometimes it helps if programmers pull all-nighters, but more often than not it’s better for programmers to be smart -- and lazy. Coders who
  
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• Simple, JVM-friendly Golo may aid IoT developers

  28-09-2016 12:00
  
  Developers of the Eclipse Foundation's Golo language for the JVM are exploring improvements like concurrency models and improved runtime performance to boost the language's internet of things (IoT) development capability.
  Golo, a simple, dynamic, weakly typed language favoring explicit over implicit, was born out of experiments by the Dynamid research team at the Center for Innovation in Telecommunications and Integration (CITI) Labs in France, project leader Julien Ponge said this week. The la
  
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• Enterprise repo wars: GitHub vs. GitLab vs. Bitbucket

  28-09-2016 12:00
  
  GitHub may be the first name in open source repository hosting, but when it comes to private repo hosting services with additional bells and whistles aimed at enterprises, the game is not so cut and dry.
  GitHub’s rivals -- including GitLab and Atlassian Bitbucket -- have been targeting the needs of enterprises in an effort to one-up their better-known competitor among organizations seeking restricted access to their repos. All three vendors base their platforms on the Git distributed vers
  
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• Financial sector expands use of blockchain databases

  28-09-2016 11:33
  
  Banks and financial markets are adopting blockchain distributed database software for their payments and lending services at a pace faster than once expected, according to a survey of 400 such businesses globally.
  Blockchain software is the basis of bitcoin, first developed in 2009, and acts as an automatic public ledger for transactions, primarily financial transactions.
  The survey, conducted by a research division of IBM, found that 15% of the banks and 14% of financial market institutions in
  
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• Mastercard launches dev platform for building payment, security apps

  28-09-2016 11:01
  
  Mastercard launched an ambitious open Mastercard Developers platform today to help third-party developers easily create commerce-related apps and services.
  Developers will be able to use six different coding languages to work with 25 different Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) in payment, data, security and experimental areas. The experimental category includes APIs for bot commerce such as chatbots and virtual reality and augmented reality devices.
  In one example of how a bot commerce
  
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• 10 tips for a successful cloud plan

  28-09-2016 10:59
  
  How do you get started using the cloud?
  For some organizations, cloud usage has already begun by someone in the company - whether they know it or not. But to have a successful cloud deployment, it’s helpful to have a plan.
  Consultancy Cloud Technology Partners is one of many companies that help customers adopt public IaaS cloud computing resources. CloudTP says the following 10 tips are key for a successful cloud rollout.
  1. Alignment workshops
  After a company has made a decision to use I
  
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• How connected and self-driving car development has transformed Volvo’s IT strategy

  28-09-2016 08:42
  
  It has been claimed that all companies are becoming technology companies. And for car manufacturer Volvo there is certainly some truth in the idea, with demand for connected and autonomous vehicles having a huge impact on the role of IT within its organisation.
  "Suddenly we are starting to build services not only for our twenty thousand-plus employees but for millions of users," said Jonas Rnnkvist, director of business development and strategy for Volvo's Consumer IT division, speaking at a re
  
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• Oracle denied new trial in copyright dispute with Google over Java

  28-09-2016 07:46
  
  A federal court in California has denied Oracle another trial in its long-standing copyright infringement dispute with Google over the use of Java code in the Android operating system.A jury had cleared Google of copyright infringement in May this year, upholding the company’s stand that its use of 37 Java APIs (application programming interfaces) in its Android mobile operating system was fair use, thus denying Oracle up to US$9 billion in damages that it was seeking.A number of developer
  
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• BrandPost: Paving a Clear Road to Highly Automated Vehicles

  28-09-2016 00:58
  
  Today, driving can be frustrating if you’re stuck in traffic—which tends to be a regular experience for many commuters. In the United States alone, 5.5 billion hours of productivity are lost from waiting in traffic each year. 
  [1]Driving today is also dangerous. More than 30,000 people die each year from preventable auto accidents on U.S. roadways, and 93 percent of those accidents are caused by human error.[2] The annual worldwide cost of those vehicle accidents is a staggerin
  
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