Daily Tech Digest by Kannan Subbiah: iPhone

Showing posts with label iPhone. Show all posts

December 19, 2012

DeNA first puts out its games on browsers rather than applications, which allows for “tweaking and tuning” in real time, says Mr Moriyasu. A Japanese game may be only 20% completed when it is made available to gamers. Its developers believe this enables them to finesse it, so that it stays popular for longer.

Microsoft plugs Outlook.com, knocks Google after Sync death notice
Last week, Google announced it would phase out synchronization via Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync (EAS), which companies like Apple and Google license from their Redmond, Wash. rival to push email to smartphones and tablets, and sync calendar entries and contacts on multiple devices.

.NET Framework 4.5 Multi-Threaded Globalization
The .NET Framework 4.5 includes a simplified way of setting the default culture and UI culture for an application domain. In .NET Framework 4 and earlier frameworks, if you wanted to set the Culture and UI Culture for an application, you’d typically set the culture settings on the current Thread.

How to trick Siri into using Google Maps
All you do ask for directions like you normally would, but tack on "via transit." So, for example, to find the nearest Starbucks, you'd say, "Take me to the nearest Starbucks via transit." What happens next is that Siri pulls up a list of any installed "routing apps" -- including Google Maps

Instagram says it now has the right to sell your photos
The new intellectual property policy, which takes effect on January 16, comes three months after Facebook completed its acquisition of the popular photo-sharing site. Unless Instagram users delete their accounts before the January deadline, they cannot opt out.
Update: Instagram apologizes to users: We won't sell your photos

The Year Ahead: Disposable Storage Infrastructure
Employees, including upper-level managers, love these devices so much that they won't wait for the enterprise to issue one; they'll bring their own and expect IT to support it (BYOD). These new mobile devices change the relationship between data and devices. The data is virtualized and made available via Web services from giant providers such as Amazon AWS. This is the consumer cloud. Expect a rapid demand for similar corporate data services to support a new breed of mobile applications.

Social Science Pushing Data Frontiers
Addressing the pressing need to recruit suitable university graduates for careers in data science, the Nokia mother-daughter data science team of Amy O’Connor and Danielle Dean made the case at Strata-Hadoop World 2012 for college grads with math/stats, bioengineering and social science educational backgrounds.

Five Qualities of Successful Leaders
In his book, The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEOs on How to Lead and Succeed, Bryant shares what he has learned from Xerox CEO Ursula Burns, Ford CEO Alan R. Mulally, Yum Brands CEO David C. Novak, Teach for America CEO Wendy Kopp, Zynga CEO Mark Pincus, and other leaders.

Ovum: SDN architecture is the way to go for future networks
In a new report, researchers at Ovum have revealed that the three-tier hierarchy (access, aggregation, and core) of network architecture is going away in favour of flatter architectures, virtualized application software is replacing network appliances, and network infrastructure is becoming much more programmable.

But, You Are Infected
Before you write your plan to make next year rock, take a few minutes (or longer, if you’re serious about your goals), and decide what you need to unlearn. Over the course of your life, you’ve been infected by some beliefs that you now hold as truths. You’ve learned to take some actions based on those beliefs, and to avoid other actions—some of which would help you to produce much greater results.

How Do We Read Code?
The goal is to figure out some way of measuring what features in programming systems help programmers understand wht they are doing, and how this can be used to make systems that lead to higher quality software. Mike is currently running an experiment where he shows people several short Python programs and asks them to tell the output of the program.

Derivative-free nonlinear optimization for .NET and Java
There are several more or less time-efficient ways of solving (constrained) non-linear optimization problems, including simulated annealing, genetic algorithms and direct search methods such as the Nelder-Mead method (a good overview of mathematical optimization with several links is provided here.)

Quote for the day:

"If you're never scared or embarrassed or hurt, it means you never take any chances." -- Julia Sorel

August 13, 2012

JackBe’s Mashup Engine Enables True Real-Time Business Intelligence
Being effective and competitive today requires that organizations respond to customers now; and that requires business intelligence (BI) in real time. In this interview, Rick Pitts, CEO at JackBe, discusses the shrinking decision window and how JackBe addresses that challenge with the next-generation Presto real-time operational BI platform.

Government to migrate critical IT infrastructure on cloud computing
Department of information technology, India is planning to set up a national cloud based network that connects all state data centers which would make that the backbone of national e-governance plan, which when completed would deliver many government to citizen and government business services via the internet.

Privacy law may hit cloud adoption: AIIA
One of the proposed Australian Privacy Principles (APPs), outlined in the proposed Privacy Amendment (Enhancing Privacy Protection) Bill 2012, will limit the adoption of the cloud in Australia, according to the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA).

Side-by-side comparisons of IaaS service providers
Thoran Rodrigues compares the major players and some of the newcomers in the increasingly competitive IaaS space, examining both their service offerings and how well they meet user cloud concerns.

Go Daddy angles to become bigger cloud apps provider
Before its CEO resigned in July, Go Daddy snapped up small business accounting software company Outright. Is this its next step to becoming a broader cloud provider?

The iPhone Has Passed a Key Security Threshold
It's still possible for a hacker to take over a phone, but it's increasingly difficult, largely because each app runs in its own isolated "sandbox." The phone even verifies its operating system when it boots.

Indian Outsourcing Firms Hire in U.S.
The recruitment drive comes as Indian outsourcing companies, which have long been accused by critics of stealing jobs from the West, are now encountering intensified scrutiny ahead of the U.S. presidential election.

Improved Server Performance and Reliability
The new Aberdeen Stirling 277, a 2U VMware-Ready server powered by the Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2600 series CPUs and built on the Intel Romley platform, is but one of countless examples of how Aberdeen has solidified its reputation.

Choosing a Version Control System - A Beginners Tour of the Options
If you are beginner to version control, then read on, hopefully this will help you choose a Version Control System for yourself and whilst I can't guarantee it'll make your life better, if you find one that does indeed 'work for you' then it won't make it harder and I'd wager a decent bet that you'll find benefits you weren't even looking for!

Call Me (Or Email Me), Maybe?
Do you prefer to communicate via phone or via email? What makes you decide to get off the computer and make a phone call, instead?

How Hellboy Helped me be an Inspirational Leader & 5 Keys to Inspirational Communication
Let’s face it, work is not always fun. That, compounded with the grim hope that many feel in this economy, i.e. that they might never see a brighter future because of the poor performance of their organization, can cause many employees and even leaders to forget about what they are capable of. They lose sight of their objectives and wallow in the drudgery of daily firefighting.

Quote for the day:

"One of the best ways to persuade others is with your ears-by listening to them." ~ Dean Rusk

August 01, 2012

Kenneth van Wyk: Digital duct tape for SSL
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) just can't catch a break these days. Everywhere we turn, it seems, SSL is being implicated in security problems. We've seen attacks against root certificate authorities (CA). We've seen weaknesses in how SSL certificates are validated. And now, those weaknesses have been used to attack Apple's in-app purchase mechanism.

Michael first lays the foundation characterizing enterprise architecture as exercises that gather dust on the shelves rather than being applied effectively across multiple environments – traditional or cloud-based. He attributes the "siloed" applications as being one of the contributing factors for this syndrome.

Microsoft reboots Hotmail to build consumer destination, says analyst
Microsoft's rebranding of Hotmail as Outlook.com is a move by the company to hold its first-place position in free email while pushing the domain as more of a consumer destination, an analyst said today.

Proteus gains de novo FDA clearance for ingestible biomedical sensor
The IEM sensor, which can be embedded into a pill, is activated by stomach fluid, then transmits a signal through the body to the skin patch, indicating that a patient has ingested medication. The patch also measures patient vitals and body position, and wirelessly sends all of the data to a Proteus smartphone app.

A Database of All Medical Knowledge: Why Not?
Physicians won't become obsolete any time soon, but the comprehensive integration of everything we know about well-being could revolutionize medical care.

Is IT Losing the Battle to Keep Security Devices Safe?
When asked to quantify that cost, “a staggering 12 percent of companies waste ‘months’” every year because of lost security tokens, and 10 percent said such tasks cost them “weeks every year in management time chasing and replacing physical tokens.” Some enterprises are luckier: 13 percent estimate the loss in days, and 16 percent said the cost was just a few hours.

iPhone 5 release date: September 12, reports claim
Apple plans a September 12 special event during which it is expected to at last reveal its new iPhone, also known as the iPhone 5 according to a series of reputable reports with the product set to ship 9 days later.

The rise of the chief culture officer
More companies are looking to have someone around to keep an eye on their culture, but doing it well takes more than just adding an additional office in the C-Suite.

The 5 Traits of High-Potential Employees
Who will be ready to run your company when you can't be everywhere anymore? Here's how to pick your next generation of leaders.

10 Ways Startups Can Track Trends: And Why It’s So Important
Spotting trends early makes it possible tocome up with smart startup ideas - or modify your startup plans to jump on a new trend just as it takes off. Just as most important, you can avoid the risk of starting a business based on a trend that’s just about to fizzle out. Fortunately, tracking trends isn’t as hard as it used to be.

How Big is Big Data?
The hype around big data has grown exponentially in recent times. Although much has been said about big data, it is still a misunderstood topic, with confused definitions. EMC published a hand-drawn animation attempting to explain in a simple way which is Big Data. Worth watching, the result was interesting.

Open WebOS will only run on 'future hardware platforms'
The team behind the open-sourced successor to HP's failed mobile platform has said it will only run on hardware that supports at least the 3.3 release of the Linux kernel

Quote for the day:
"Innovation is often about trying and failing. If failure leads to blame, you'll create an innovation short-circuit." -- Frank Wander, founder and CEO of the IT Excellence Institute

July 07, 2012

Direct Database Updates – A Cause of Concern
Many organizations still have the practice of directly updating the production databases to fix data integrity issues. This shows that the one or more applications deployed on top of the database are not reliable enough to maintain the database integrity.

One day your iPhone and wallet will be one.
For years, there have been whispers that Apple is working on its own approach to reinventing mobile payments, including the possibility of a NFC-equipped iPhone.

Google Compute Engine – Not AWS Killer (yet)
GCE is missing a lot of what larger enterprises will need – monitoring, security certifications, integration with IAM systems, SLAs, etc. GCI also lacks some of the things that really got people excited about EC2 early on – like an AMI community, even the AMI model so I can create one from my own server image.

An inconvenient truth: Respect me
Yet what I am hearing from these key employees, most between the ages of 30 and 40, is that they absolutely demand to be treated with respect, have their opinions listened to, and stand as a peer with their leaders.

Top 5 wireless routers: Home-networking evolved
It was clear from CES that 2012 is going to be a year of many changes in home networking. To help you keep up with these changes, here's our list of the Top 5 networking products currently available.

Cloud Computing in Health Care to Reach $5.4 Billion by 2017: Report
Although regulatory and security concerns have held back the health care industry from widespread adoption of public clouds, the overall cloud computing market in health care will grow to $5.4 billion by 2017, according to a report by research firm MarketsandMarkets.

Avoiding Downtime When Cloud Services Fail
Another AWS outage hit several large websites and their services last week. What can be done to avoid downtime? Architect for failover not just for scale

Best Practices For Managing Big Data
What most people don’t know is that the vast majority of Big Data is either duplicated data or synthesized data. ... Now they must manage a total of over a petabyte of data, of which less than 150 terabytes is unique.

Quote for the day
"If you put off everything till you're sure of it, you'll get nothing done." ~ Norman Vincent Peale

June 30, 2012

Less than 10% Indian SMBs are prepared for disasters
It’s time Indian SMBs start looking seriously at having a sound plan with effective security and data protection solutions that will enable them to better prepare for and quickly recover from potential disasters.

How should one's IT skills be valued?

If the main goal is to ensure gainful employment for the individual, then it may be necessary to consider the total cost a business would have to absorb to hire this special individual, including additional resources needed to mentor him and time he may need to take during normal office hours to chill out so sudden outbursts can be avoided.

Google puts Chrome on iPhone and iPad
Both iPad and iPhone users will get the app, either with incognito browsing, syncing and that unique tabbed browsing interface intact.

How UK banks are flirting with IT disaster
The IT glitch that disrupted banking at NatWest, Ulster Bank and other companies owned by RBSover the past week highlights the risk of systems failure facing British banks in general. These are at risk of systems failure due to a lack of adequate investment in business processes, and the conflicting pressures of modernisation and austerity, analysts said.

JavascriptHelper–Managing JS files for ASP.NET MVC (With Bundling)
JavascriptHelper is a MVC component which allows you to specify that a Javascript file is needed, wherever you need it (view, partial views, layouts, helpers etc.)

Governance gap pushes enterprise to private cloud
“Cloud governance needs are poorly defined and ill served both by governance tools and by providers, many of whom serve a volume market where few customers see governance as an issue.” But it’s not only the supply side that has shortcomings — the enterprise also has to review its governance processes and capabilities.

45 Day Series: Codeproject VC++ Forum Q&A - VII
... a compilation of questions and answers which were asked on the Code Project Visual C++ forum. Also, this is the fourth article of the 45 Days series...