IT Executive news

• Speed to drive CIO agenda in 2017

  03-11-2016 22:38
  
  Think fast, CIOs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: When to outsource, and when to build your internal competencies

  03-11-2016 22:17
  
  At many points in a company's life cycle, leaders must face the issue of whether to build or buy critical business services and tools. How do you know when it is better to keep things in-house, or outsource to a third party?According to Jared Turner, CTO at internet services company Boostability, "Businesses are always asking about whether they should bring expertise inside, or hire it out. The build-versus-buy dilemma is alive and well in the internet marketing space, as in every industry." Tur
  
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• 13% off Garmin Forerunner 920XT White/Red Watch With Heart Rate Monitor Bundle - Deal Alert

  03-11-2016 22:05
  
  Forerunner 920XT packs a fleet of high-end training features into a sleek watch that is wet suit-friendly and about 15 percent lighter than its predecessor, the Forerunner 910XT. It boasts a high-resolution color display; flexible, hinged bands and a watch mode, so you can wear it all day. The activity tracking feature measures your steps, sleep and calories burned all day, giving you a more complete picture of your daily activity. For swimmers, it captures detailed swim metrics, including
  
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• Protection of white-hat hackers slow in coming

  03-11-2016 21:54
  
  In the cybersecurity world, the law doesn’t always treat the good guys like good guys.
  As Harley Geiger put it in a talk titled, “Fighting for Legal Protection for Security Researchers” at UNITED2016, the Rapid7 Security Summit, the vast majority of independent research into the security of consumer and commercial products, “doesn’t seek to undermine IP (intellectual property) or safety of products. It helps us keep ahead of those who do seek to do harm.”
  Yet
  
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• Microsoft will shrink and speed up Windows 10 updates

  03-11-2016 21:22
  
  Microsoft has revealed a Unified Update Platform that's designed to make it easier for devices to upgrade from one version of Windows 10 to another. The UUP encompasses a set of behind-the-scenes changes in Windows 10 that reduce the processing power needed to update, shrink the size of update files, and streamline updates on Windows smartphones.These improvements are designed to help Microsoft address user complaints about the update process. Because the company's vision for Windows 10 inc
  
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• Is the smartwatch market tanking or on a long, slow climb?

  03-11-2016 21:09
  
  Analysts disagree drastically over the health of the smartwatch market. Some say the market is tanking. Others say there are favorable signs and predict healthy smartwatch shipments and sales in coming years.
  In late October, market research firm IDC said smartwatch shipments in the third quarter declined by 51% from the same quarter of 2015.The total shipped in the third quarter was 2.7 million, IDC said.
  By comparison, research firm Canalys on Thursday said smartwatch shipments were up 60% fo
  
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• The Apple Watch is coming soon to a Kohl's department store near you

  03-11-2016 20:50
  
  Apple is hoping to give the Apple Watch a holiday boost by partnering with the country’s biggest department stores to put one of its most giftable products on store shelves before Black Friday. Kohl’s is joining Macy’s in selling the Apple Watch at select locations starting this month, according to Fortune, with one key difference: Kohl’s is positioning the watch as a wellness product, not an electronic one.
  While Apple’s deal with Macy’s will have more than
  
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• Collaborative defense, the shift from ‘what’ to ‘how’

  03-11-2016 20:29
  
  Boston—Cybersecurity experts and those new to the space gathered together at the Federal Reserve Bank to join the Advanced Cyber Security Center (ACSC) for Massachusetts Cybersecurity 2.0: Preparing for the Next Wave of Cyber Challenges.
  Whether it’s securing self-driving cars, cloud computing, or exposing criminals in the Darknet, the industry will face many challenges in the near and distant future. Cybersecurity leaders across all sectors are struggling to understand the most eff
  
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• Your next Ford will be able to back itself into a parking space, steer around traffic

  03-11-2016 20:12
  
  Ford Motor Co. said today that its next-generation advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) will enable vehicles to automatically back into parking spaces, detect objects in the road to avoid collisions and prevent wrong-way driving.
  Ford already offers a plethora of ADAS features, including adaptive cruise control, forward collision warning, lane departure warning with land-keeping assist, rear cross-traffic alert, driver monitoring, adaptive high-beam assist, blind spot alerts and advanced p
  
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• Intel chases sports viewing in VR with acquisition of Voke

  03-11-2016 19:24
  
  How nice would it be to view sports events as if you were right in the middle of the action? Intel is betting consumers will embrace sports as part of its virtual reality future.The chipmaker on Thursday snapped up VR firm Voke, which provides products so users can view live events on VR headsets.Voke's products include a lens that captures stereoscopic 3D video so viewers can feel like they are attending a sporting event.The acquisition fills a big hole in Intel's attempts to deliver live sport
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: How OpenStack may help us find the beginning of the universe

  03-11-2016 19:12
  
  OpenStack was initially created by NASA and RackSpace. Today’s it’s powering modern IT infrastructure in public and private clouds. Giants like AT&T are building their future networks on top of OpenStack. Giants like China Mobile and T-Systems (a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom) are building massive public clouds on top of OpenStack. OpenStack is running the world. I would go so far as to say that OpenStack is the Linux of infrastructure and cloud world.
  It’s not just busin
  
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• Report: Nearly 90 percent of smartphones worldwide run Android

  03-11-2016 19:09
  
  Android just reached a new milestone in its worldwide dominance over iOS.
  According to new research from Strategy Analytics, 87.5 percent of smartphones in the world are now running Android. Shipments hit a total of 328.6 million for 3rd quarter of 2016, which is up 10.3 percent up year-on-year. While Android had always been hanging around the 80 percent mark, this latest number is a new high.
  Comparatively, Apple shipped 45.5 million iPhones, which is down 5.2 percent from the 48 million from
  
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• Mobile subscriber identity numbers can be exposed over Wi-Fi

  03-11-2016 19:01
  
  For a long time, law enforcement agencies and hackers have been able to track the identity and location of mobile users by setting up fake cellular network towers and tricking their devices to connect to them. Researchers have now found that the same thing can be done much more cheaply with a simple Wi-Fi hotspot.The devices that pose as cell towers are known in the industry as IMSI catchers, with the IMSI (international mobile subscriber identity) being a unique number tied to a mobile subscrib
  
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• Simple steps to make your workplace more trans-inclusive

  03-11-2016 18:45
  
  When I was at Grace Hopper a few weeks ago, I managed to catch the end of a terrific session given by software engineer Hazel Havard about the challenges faced by transgender people in the IT industry.But the most moving part of her presentation happened after she'd finished speaking, when I witnessed her colleagues approach her and shower Havard with hugs, kisses and congratulations. There were tears, including my own. It was a beautiful thing to see -- clearly Havard is accepted, supported and
  
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• European antitrust charges ignore online shopping market, Google says

  03-11-2016 18:35
  
  Google has rejected European Commission antitrust charges related to its online shopping search service, saying the online shopping marketplace is "robustly competitive."A revised set of the Commission's antitrust charges, released in July, accused Google of restricting shopping search advertisements from its competitors. But the European case doesn't take the entire online shopping market, including heavyweight Amazon.com, into account, said Kent Walker, Google's general counsel, in a blog
  
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• BrandPost: Identifying Your Company’s Edward Snowden

  03-11-2016 18:04
  
  In 2013, U.S. government contractor Edward Snowden used his privileged access to copy and leak classified information from the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) that revealed the status of numerous global surveillance programs. He was subsequently charged with violating the Espionage Act.In today’s heterogeneous IT environments, the number of administrative identities is growing at an uncontrolled rate as multiple users are assigned this level of privilege to enterprise resources. It&rsq
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Analytics provides the data, leaders negotiate the truth

  03-11-2016 17:38
  
  Enterprising Analytics
  To be "enterprising" is to be eager to undertake or prompt to attempt. To show initiative and be resourceful. These are leadership traits, so to be enterprising is to lead. "Analytics" is how we use data to inform decision-making, in the context of achieving business objectives. These are management practices, so analytics is about management."Enterprising Analytics" is about being creative, resourceful and adventurous with decision-making to achieve business objectives. I
  
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• The future of Drupal could be cooking in this lab

  03-11-2016 16:26
  
  Acquia Labs has no illusions of making self-driving cars or shooting things into space like Google X, but the budding applied research arm of enterprise open-source Drupal provider Acquia does have designs on a slew of new applications for what it anticipates will be an increasingly browserless world. 
  Preston So, development manager at Acquia Labs and a 9-year veteran of the Drupal community, shared his vision for Acquia’s skunkworks-plus outfit at the company’s annual Engage
  
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• Airbnb open sources data-science-sharing platform

  03-11-2016 16:24
  
  Most organizations have well established procedures for vetting and sharing computer code. But what about data analysis?
  Important findings are often held in "a mixed bag of presentations, emails, and Google Docs," two members of Airbnb's engineering and data science team blogged at Medium in February. When someone in the organization wants to locate and use that existing work, they often have to track down updated code and waste time checking and reproducing earlier results. And then they'll t
  
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• Evaluating PaaS? Focus on speed, compliance and cost

  03-11-2016 15:53
  
  For six years, Watchfinder, a U.K.-based global buyer and seller of pre-owned luxury watches, split the role of DevOps between application development and management of a virtual infrastructure environment. But the company's ambitious growth plans, which included expansion to the U.S. earlier this year and an expected doubling of monthly watch sales, required IT director Jonathan Gill to think differently.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• Dell's futuristic Smart Desk PC will challenge Microsoft's Surface Studio

  03-11-2016 14:57
  Dell's getting ready to take on Microsoft's Surface Studio in 2017.
  During a promotional video at Adobe Max, Dell revealed a Surface Studio-like PC aimed at creative professionals—but don't call it copycat device. HP introduced the first creative-oriented PC, the Sprout, two years ago, and Dell says it's been working on what it calls the Dell Smart Desk (working title) for about three years. Shortly after Adobe Max, the company took to Twitter to say the Smart Desk will be formally a
  
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• Today's cable TV may not be better but it sure is more expensive

  03-11-2016 14:21
  
  Cable TV companies are running scared as more and more consumers cut the cord and switch to streaming video. But that hasn't stopped pay TV providers from raising prices at a pace that's nearly four times the annual increase in the cost of living in the United States.A recent study from the U.S. FCC found that the price of basic cable service increased an average 5.8 percent per year between 2010 and 2015. The cost of living, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, increased annually by just 1.
  
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• Kindle Discount Ends Tonight: Up To 36% off Various Models - Deal Alert

  03-11-2016 14:19
  
  Amazon has quietly released another good set of deals on its popular Kindle series of e-readers, but the deal is scheduled to end tonight at 6pm ET.  Kindle's price sinks from $80 to $60, Kindle Paperwhite from $120 down to $100, the Kindle Voyage drops from $200 to just $180, and the worry-free Kindle for Kids Bundle is reduced from $125 to just $80. The Kindle discounts are almost over for now, so if you're in the market for one right now, you may want to consider pulling the trigger soon
  
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• Microsoft Teams targets Slack in crowded collaboration market

  03-11-2016 13:53
  
  Microsoft yesterday entered the bustling enterprise collaboration market with Microsoft Teams. The Slack competitor borrows heavily from that app's design and user experience and is available in beta for Office 365 enterprise and small business customers. Microsoft Teams is expected to become widely available in early 2017. CEO Satya Nadella described Microsoft Teams as a "chat-based workspace" during a press event. "It's where people can come together in a digital forum to have casual conv
  
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• A second Privacy Shield legal challenge increases threat to EU-US data flows

  03-11-2016 13:05
  
  The Privacy Shield transatlantic data transfer deal is now caught in a pincer action: A week after it emerged that Irish digital rights activists had filed suit to annul the deal come reports that a French campaign group has begun its own legal action.French civil liberties campaign group La Quadrature du Net filed suit against the European Commission, the European Union's executive body, on Oct. 25.Although the Court of Justice of the EU has not yet published details of the complaint, Brus
  
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• Flood of threat intelligence overwhelming for many firms

  03-11-2016 13:04
  
  Three years after Target missed alerts warning them about a massive data breach, the amount of threat information coming in from security systems is still overwhelming for many companies, according to new reports, due to a lack of expertise and integration issues.
  Seventy percent of security pros said that their companies have problems taking actions based on threat intelligence because there is too much of it, or it is too complex, according to a report by Ponemon Research released on Monday.
  
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• Twitter's impact on 2016 presidential election is unmistakable

  03-11-2016 13:00
  
  Twitter has played an outsized role in a 2016 presidential election that continues to test the electorate. Despite Twitter's ongoing business problems, the ability of a single tweet to shape political conversation and drive media coverage has never been greater. A marked contrast exists between Twitter's business acumen (or lack thereof) and the sometimes seemingly unintentional influence it wields on the current election.The leading candidates for America's next presidency use Twitter to energi
  
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• 20 things you need to know about video SEO

  03-11-2016 13:00
  
  Video is now the most popular type of online content, according to a June 2016 HubSpot survey. HubSpot's report suggests global internet users consume video "thoroughly," instead of simply skimming it, as they often do with other forms of content. "If you want to make a big impact and keep people's attention," HubSpot said, video is the best form of online content to accomplish that goal.Of course, if no one can find your video, it's not going to make a big impact or keep anyone's attention. And
  
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• How secure are home robots?

  03-11-2016 11:55
  
  They have blinking lights and tend to chirp constantly. One of them can vacuum your living room carpet on a schedule. Another can play games with the kids using artificial intelligence.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• Battling gender bias in IT

  03-11-2016 11:45
  
  Kate Flathers was having a bad day. Between meetings, phone calls and projects going off the rails, the last thing she wanted to do was a candidate interview. So her first thought when she glanced at the résumé and cover letter that crossed her desk was, “Whew — I’m glad I don’t have to get involved in this one.”
  In her role as director of product development at DrugDev, a provider of a clinical trials operations platform, Flathers was pulled into the
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: What animal shelters taught me about digital transformation

  03-11-2016 11:30
  
  I’ve always loved dogs. Some of my first memories are with family pets, and many of them (the memories and the pets) are hilarious.
  Others are sad. Like when my dad, at his wits end, took my dog Beau to the pound. Beau had jumped the fence one too many times. That’s when I learned what animal shelters do to dogs. Throughout my life I’ve adopted, rescued, fostered and advocated on behalf of homeless animals. As my friends and family (and neighbors, and people in line at Starbuc
  
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• DDoS attack on Dyn could have been prevented

  03-11-2016 11:18
  
  It didn’t have to happen.
  Last month’s massive distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack on Domain Name System (DNS) service provider Dyn, which used a botnet of thousands of Internet of Things (IoT) devices to disrupt dozens of major websites including Twitter, Spotify, PayPal, GitHub, CNN.com and the New York Times, could “easily” have been prevented.
  That contention comes from the Online Trust Association (OTA), creator of what it calls the "IoT Trust Framework
  
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• Infosys' U.S. workforce is mostly South Asian and no accident, plaintiffs allege

  03-11-2016 11:00
  
  The composition of Infosys' U.S. workforce is too lopsided -- overwhelmingly South Asian -- to be an accident, allege the plaintiffs in a discrimination lawsuit.
  The plaintiffs, four IT workers from around the U.S., brought their discrimination lawsuit against the India-based IT services giant in 2013. This week, they filed a motion seeking class-action certification from 2009, and say the potential pool of plaintiffs may be as large as 125,000.
  In bringing this motion, the plaintiffs also work
  
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• Ex-Facebook, Dropbox engineers offer debugging as a service

  03-11-2016 11:00
  
  A group of former Facebook and Dropbox engineers is developing a service for debugging complex systems and answering ad hoc questions in real time.
  Honeycomb, currently in an open beta cycle, is a SaaS platform that reduces MTTR (mean time to repair) for outages and degraded services, identifies bugs and performance regressions, isolates contributing factors to failures, and reproduces user bug reports.[ Find out how to get ahead with our career development guide for developers. | The art of pr
  
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• 10 AWS security blunders and how to avoid them

  03-11-2016 11:00
  
  The cloud has made it dead simple to quickly spin up a new server without waiting for IT. But the ease of deploying new servers -- and the democratic nature of cloud management -- can be a security nightmare, as a simple configuration error or administrative mistake can compromise the security of your organization's entire cloud environment.
  With sensitive data increasingly heading to the cloud, how your organization secures its instances and overall cloud infrastructure is of paramount importa
  
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• Uber faces lawsuit from courier claiming employee status

  03-11-2016 08:50
  
  Taking a cue from Uber drivers, a ‘foot and bike’ courier has filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against the ride-hailing company and a subsidiary, demanding minimum wages, and reimbursement of tools-of-the-trade expenses and gratuities as would be typically provided to regular employees.Uber has introduced its delivery services, called UberEats and UberRush, in some cities in the U.S. and other countries.In a proposed class action lawsuit on behalf of himself and other Uber couri
  
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• Samsung Galaxy Note7 fiasco hits Qualcomm's revenue

  03-11-2016 02:08
  
  Samsung's cancellation of the Galaxy Note7 hurt Qualcomm's chip sales, but the company expects other smartphones to fill that void.The impact of the Note7 fiasco on the company's chip revenue is small, but will ride into the first financial quarter next year, Qualcomm executives said during an earnings call on Wednesday.Some models of Note7 used Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 chip. But sales of Note7 aren't as big as that of Samsung's Galaxy S7 or S7 edge, which have sold in large volumes.Other devic
  
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• IBM engineer says AR will trump VR for data visualization

  03-11-2016 01:43
  
  When it comes to enterprise data visualization, IBM Software Engineer Rosstin Murphy thinks augmented reality trumps virtual reality. In his view, VR's "transportational" nature makes it less suited to business applications."It takes you and it sends you to the moon, or to outer space or to or an alien planet," he said. "But augmented reality is transformational. It will transform the world you're already in, and for a business context, that's exactly what you want."Murphy pointed out during a t
  
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