October 18, 2013

Using NFC, IBM brings dual-factor authentication to mobile
Here's how IBM's approach works, using an app for using your bank as an example: First, you load up the bank's app. It sends a special challenge number to your phone. Next, the app asks you for your password. But here's the catch: after you enter it, you tap your phone against the NFC-enabled card your bank gave you. Third, the phone transfers the challenge number to the card using NFC, the card transforms it through a calculation based on its own key, then sends it back to the phone, which sends it to the bank.

More about Microsoft’s plans to consolidate around ODBC and deprecate OLE DB
Though this is an older post, thought that these facts might be useful to read again. Microsoft's recent announcement that they would focus more on ODBC and deprecate OLE DB has raised a lot of questions. Amina Saify at Microsoft recently posted some questions and answers. Some interesting points were:


Is application virtualization the answer for users of XP?
Suppliers of application virtualization technology, such as AppZero, Citrix, Moka5, Spoon, VMware, and even Microsoft, have long been talking about the day that Windows XP would die and suggesting that their application virtualization products could make the transition easier. To a company, they suggest that Windows XP applications can be easily and smoothly moved over to a new operating environment without requiring changes to the applications themselves.


How the Walking Dead Uses Big Data to Make Life-Or-Death Decisions
The game operates as a type of choose-your-own-adventure story, asking the player to make quick decisions about what to say from the provided dialogue options. One of The Walking Dead’s greatest successes is that every choice is a new dilemma, eschewing “good” and “bad” options in favor of choices that are all a matter of perspective. Early on in the game, you have to choose between saving one character over another, and there’s no right answer.


15 Inspiring Videos for Web Designers
We believe it is absolutely fundamental to dedicate time to listening to the great visionaries of your chosen field who can help you see things from a different, innovative, and enriching viewpoint. These forward thinkers can help you attack projects with a renewed determination and encourage you to step out of your comfort zone - dive in head first to an unfamiliar sector, or experiment with the latest technology or programing language!


The 5 Common Characteristics of Ideas That Spread
Your success as a creative depends not only on coming up with great ideas and making them happen, but also with getting those ideas adopted by your target audience. Whether it’s the buying public, an art dealer, or just your direct supervisor, getting your work off of your hard drive and into the world is perhaps the most important (and scariest) part of creative work.


NuoDB Takes the Wraps Off Blackbirds Database
If version 1.0 was about getting the database off the ground, version 2.0 is about making it fly farther and faster. NuoDB CTO Seth Proctor recently explained the significance of Blackbirds in a telephone interview with Datanami. “We've worked very hard in this release to make it be something that feel like something very familiar, that has increased number of data types, functions, language features, and management capabilities… to really get the type of maturity that people want from a relational database,” he says.


Jokes aside, some IT managers say there's no option other than BlackBerry for security
"As for alternatives to BlackBerry, there aren't any," wrote Sandra Smith, an enterprise IT manager, in an email to Computerworld, although she didn't identify her organization. "Due to the Snowden revelations, we now realize that if you are running Microsoft/Google/Apple, you need to protect yourself from your OS and not use your OS to protect you." IT managers and analysts note that the strength of BlackBerry's security comes from the BlackBerry Enterprise Service (BES) server software that is still used by thousands of government and enterprise customers globally.


Security: The genesis of SDN
The problem with all this rampant implicit trusting now is that "hackers take advantage of it routinely. SDN allows you to do trust consolidation and have a few trusted entities; everything else is untrusted," said Casado. SDN provides more control of the architecture and the distribution model of the control plane, which makes it possible to consolidate trust into fewer elements.


An Innovation Disconnect
So when a senior leader proudly proclaims, “We will achieve high performance through innovation … ” most of us, at least momentarily, suspend our disbelief. We let our enthusiasm for change overpower any cynicism left over from previous efforts to change the world. (“Reengineering,” anyone?) With our platitude filters temporarily disabled, we follow leadership’s directives down a path that is likely to fail.



Quote for the day:

"If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude." -- M. Angelou

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