July 02, 2016

How the internet of things is revolutionizing retail

Not only will IoT technology allow for better visibility, such as identifying within a 10-minute timeframe when goods will be delivered, it can also aid in loss prevention and be used to measure the impact of environmental factors, such as heat, on goods moving through the supply chain, he explains. Damages to goods can be recorded with the exact time and location of the damage, providing an audit trail to identify the responsible party, he says. Automating and optimizing the supply chain is one of the key uses of IoT among retailers, adds Nayyar. “Everyone knows in advance not to run out of chocolate before Valentine’s Day or beer around the Super Bowl, but the real question is how to handle an unexpected surge in demand due to an unscheduled event,” she says.


OnePlus 3 review: The best smartphone in its price range

Looks matter, and the OnePlus 3's design is a big advance. But there's more to the aluminium unibody than just looks. It's a tough material that's reasonably grippy, although downside is that it lacks individuality -- it most resembles the HTC 10 at first glance. The OnePlus 3 fits a 5.5-inch screen into a chassis that's 152.7mm tall and 74.7mm wide. There's almost no bezel at all on the screen's long edges. The handset is just 7.35mm thick and weighs 158g. These are pared-down dimensions, and it's no wonder that the camera lens protrudes a couple of millimetres from the back of the chassis as a result. The high build quality carries over into the side buttons: the power button is on the right edge and the volume rocker on the left, and both are firm and responsive. Above the volume rocker is a welcome feature carried over from the OnePlus 2 -- the Alert Slider.


What is disruptive innovation?

The theory goes that a smaller company with fewer resources can unseat an established, successful business by targeting segments of the market that have been neglected by the incumbent, typically because it is focusing on more profitable areas. As the larger business concentrates on improving products and services for its most demanding customers, the small company is gaining a foothold at the bottom end of the market, or tapping a new market the incumbent had failed to notice. This type of start-up usually enters the market with new or innovative technologies that it uses to deliver products or services better suited to the incumbent’s overlooked customers – at a lower price. Then it moves steadily upmarket until it is delivering the performance that the established business’s mainstream customers expect, while keeping intact the advantages that drove its early success.


3 Steps to Profit With Shared Data Experiences

The cloud is more than just a server; it offers the promise of a deep connection of shared data points centered on individuals and generated by multiple devices, services and platforms. By implementing deep data integration, businesses can see what these users purchased at the grocery store, what movie they saw over the weekend and how willing they were to be interrupted during certain activities. This information requires more than a cursory collection of data points from within a specific application; it demands data sharing between software and devices. Apple is leading the way. Many users don’t realize how immersive iCloud can be, but when it's working correctly, its users can sync bookmarks, notes, to-do lists and even files across their Apple devices. Set a reminder on an iPhone, and it can pop up on your iPad.


When Globalization Goes Digital

Economists and policymakers alike are guilty of glossing over these distributional consequences. Countries that engage in free trade will find new channels for growth in the long run, the thinking goes, and workers who lose their jobs in one industry will find employment in another.  In the real world, however, this process is messy and protracted. Workers in a shrinking industry may need entirely new skills to find jobs in other sectors, and they may have to pack up their families and pull up deep roots to pursue these opportunities. It has taken a popular backlash against free trade for policymakers and the media to acknowledge the extent of this disruption.


What CISOs Need to Tell The Board About Cyber Risk

A quantitative approach to measuring and reporting cybersecurity risks can empower the board and top management to make well-informed cyber risk decisions. By relying on cyber risk data in financial terms, boards can ensure that they are properly informed and understand cyber risks, and thus ensure that the organization is making cost-effective decisions regarding its handling of cyber risks. In other words, board directors, armed with quantified cyber risk data, can make a strong statement about their oversight of this critical domain. While this concept is relatively new in the cyber area, financial institutions and insurers have relied on risk quantification for decades. Using “Value at Risk” (VaR) to measure cyber risks is a concept whose time has come. In 2015, the World Economic Forum (WEF) released a special report entitled “Partnering for Cyber Resilience — Towards the Quantification of Cyber Threats.


Dangerous keyboard app has more than 50 million downloads

"In particular, it was found to be opening up a net connection, and sending some data it was collecting from the phone to a server somewhere else," he said. "The data was the device, manufacturer, model number, the Android version, the owner's email address, all of the Wifi addresses that it could see, the cell network it was on, the GPS coordinates of where the phone was, information about any of the Bluetooth devices it could see, and information about any web proxies it could see." Once the data is collected, it could also be used to create a very deep personal profile of users, shared with third parties, and vulnerable to state-sponsored hackers and criminals. None of this is information that a keyboard app needs to have, he added.


Security researcher gets threats over Amazon review

Getting your internet-connected socket taken over by an intruder isn’t exactly a cybersecurity nightmare — at worst, you might end up with a hacker treating you to a strobe light party as they switch all your lights on and off. There’s also a slight possibility that repeatedly cutting the power to one of your devices might damage it. But this isn’t the end of the world; it’s just a sort of dumb security flaw. This makes the manufacturer’s outsized reaction all the more unusual. Garrett sent me a few of the emails he received from the company. “Just now my boss has blamed me, and he said if I do not remove this bad review, he will quit me. Please help me,” the representative wrote. “Could you please change your bad review into good?” Garrett responded that he would update the review if the manufacturer fixed the flaw. The AuYou representative insisted she would be fired if the review was not updated.


Approaching Lock-In from a Consultant’s Perspective: An Interview with Nicki Watt

At the end of the day, not all cloud providers are created equal! If you only opt for supporting the lowest common denominator, sometimes you can miss out on many other value add features offered by cloud providers. So completely trying to eliminate custom configurations and options is not necessarily feasible. That said, my approach to minimise coupling is more geared around designing solutions and approaches which try to take advantage of a set of modular, API driven tools and offerings, rather than a single one size fits all type solution. I feel that this approach, coupled with sticking to principles such as always separating your config data from code, and looking to automate everything, gives you a fighting chance of being able to swap out different parts of your solution as required, and adapting to changes in the ever evolving cloud space.


How To Contract For Outsourcing Agile

After all, ASD requires a leap of faith — specifications are not clearly defined and there is a pricing model that motivates the developer to charge as many hours as possible. There are variations of the T&M model that can help control costs, such as capped T&M on an iteration or project basis, a ‘holdback’ for each iteration that accrues but is not paid to the developer until the entire project is complete, and a pool or bucket of development hours paid on a fixed basis that the client can spend as it desires. The T&M model is more palatable due to its more client-friendly termination rights. However, there is a huge risk here: once the project is sufficiently far along, the client’s desire to complete the project outweighs the flexibility to easily exit the project. This could create a situation for the developer to gouge the client towards the end of an agile software development project unless there is a cap on fees.



Quote for the day:


"Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings." -- Salvador Dali


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