Daily Tech Digest by Kannan Subbiah

May 09, 2014

Talk of an Internet Fast Lane Is Already Hurting Some Startups
Burnham says his firm will now “stay away from” startups working on video and media businesses. It will also avoid investing in payment systems or in mobile wallets, which require ultrafast transaction times to make sense. “This is a bad scene for innovation in those areas,” Burnham says of the FCC proposal. This will be the third time the FCC has tried to impose regulations on discrimination in data delivery, following two losses on earlier versions in federal court (see “Net Neutrality Quashed: New Pricing, Throttling, and Business Models to Follow”). The latest proposal has been interpreted as a reversal, in that it would allow carriers to charge extra for certain services.

How to banish shadow IT: Deliver enterprise apps and services that users want
"Business users can go out and buy SaaS without involving the sourcing professionals at their organisations - and many of them do because it is quick and easy and meets their needs at a point in time," said analyst group Forrester Research in a January 2014 report, which references a single organisation with "hundreds of instances of self-provisioned SaaS". Where there's a crossover between tools that are useful both inside and outside of work, targeting consumers is sometimes seen as an effective way of getting that service into the workplace, according to Richard Absalom, senior analyst for enterprise mobility at Ovum.

How to Build a Software Developer Talent Pipeline
Building a sales pipeline of potential customers can help ensure greater success in closing deals and driving new business, and the same goes when you're looking to hire elite software developers and programmers, says Vivek Ravisankar, founder and CEO of HackerRank. "Hiring developers is a lot like sales in that you have to build a pipeline to close 'deals,'" Ravisankar says. "Sure, you can go to a recruiter right now and have them do 'cold calls' to developers, but what you don't know is are they decent? Do their values and talent align with your company? Are they invested in your company's success as well as their own? That's hard to discern," he says.

Hyperscale Invades the Enterprise Data Center
Everyone is talking about the software defined data center, but they are ignoring the physical data center itself. Amazon doesn’t even want to build new data centers – as Wikibon CTO David Floyer describes, Mega Data Centers are the Future. Building a data center is typically a 25+ year commitment that typically has inefficiencies in power/cooling, no flexibility in cabling and no mobility within or between data centers. The software of the data center must go beyond the infrastructure stacks and include the surrounding support systems. Through the use of hybrid clouds and PODS, the data center can be managed independent of physical location.

Why Organizations Need to Grow Capacity and Performance Management Skills
"To take advantage of Web-scale IT approaches to capacity and performance management, IT architects need to fully embrace stateless application architectures and horizontally scaling infrastructure architectures," said Ian Head. Adding additional central processing units (CPUs), memory and storage to a monolithic server has been the traditional, vertical way of scaling up applications while capacity planning has traditionally been developed with the goal of forecasting the requirements for this vertical scaling approach. However, vertical architectures and approaches have limited scalability, making vertical architectures unsuitable for hyperscaling. For service capacity to expand seamlessly to extremely large scales, different approaches are required.

AIG's Chief Science Officer: 'It's Not All About the Numbers'
“It isn’t about what you know, it’s about how you learn,” Buluswar said. “The vision behind the creation of the science team was: As the world around us changes exponentially, the winners will win big, but they will be removed from their perches faster. So it requires a fair bit of agility.” Agility, in the context of the discussion relates to not only the creation of new problem solving abilities, but the requirement that those abilities are then brought to bear on the actual problems insurers are confronted with. “The thinking that created the problem can’t be the same as for the solutions, Buluswar said, paraphrasing Albert Einstein. Data driven decision making, he said, can be simultaneously incremental, transformative and disruptive.

Why Some Doctors Like Google Glass So Much
Like people in the wider population, some doctors doubt Glass’s usefulness. Emergency physicians in general are very technology savvy, Horng says, but they vary in their enthusiasm for the pilot project. “You’ve got the really early adopters that will try anything and just like new technology, and then you’ve got the other side that just refuses to get away from their clipboard, and so they are never going to use it,” he says. But plenty of doctors seem excited, and they do not see Glass as a barrier to patient-doctor interaction. “The advent of electronic health records has significantly changed that [doctor-patient] relationship,” he told the audience at Google’s Cambridge event.

Windows 8.1 users face patch ban as Microsoft sets next week's updates
"Microsoft will include the 'out-of-band' from last week in this month's IE update," said Storms, using the term for the emergency patch Microsoft shipped May 1. "But it wouldn't hurt to double-check." The other critical update, named "Bulletin 2" in the advanced notice, will apply to SharePoint Server 2007, 2010 and 2013. SharePoint Server has been patched twice already this year -- in both January and April -- as well as in December 2013. "SharePoint is one of those critical back-end office servers, in the same bucket as Exchange and SQL Server," said Storms. "So it will be important to move gingerly and important to test properly before deploying it."

Testing Ubuntu, Debian and LMDE on my new notebook
There is one thing concerning UEFI boot configuration that I would like to mention. Ubuntu was one of the first Linux distributions that could be installed with UEFI boot, which was commendable — but they accomplished that with a rather complicated procedure after installation which used a "Boot Repair" utility to rewrite parts of the configuration. I have to admit that I have never used that procedure, or that utility — and that is exactly the point I want to make. It is not necessary to follow that procedure any more, the UEFI boot configuration can be set up to dual-boot (or multi-boot) Ubuntu and Windows 8 using nothing more than the system BIOS configuration and the standard Linux efibootmgr utility. I did just that for this installation, and it worked perfectly.

Database Continuous Delivery
Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery and Continuous Deployment are the common principles and practices to structurally handle the process of automation and set ground rules for the many participants in the development, build, test, and release of the software process. These principles are not new, but they are gaining traction and adoption as they prove their benefits, just like Agile development did some years ago. As a set of principles and practices, Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery and Continuous Deployment are not a case of 'one size fits all.' It is important to understand that every company might have its own unique challenges and these practices should be tuned to fit organizational structure and culture processes.

Quote for the day:

"Nothing is so wearing as the possession or abuse of liberty." -- Emile M. Cioran

May 08, 2014

Apple and wearable computing: it's the software, stupid
Apple will play the long game to deliver the right combination. It already is. We know Nike sees it as a partner. We see Apple's recruitment of renowned experts from the medical, fashion and wearables fields. Great so far, but the products will need to have finesse. "These wearable devices will fail to be effective and people will toss them aside if there isn’t a good service layer that goes with them,” Ms. Ask told the NY Times. “The devices have to be able to walk a fine line between being invisible enough that you want to wear them all the time, but also being effective enough that you engage with them.”

SAP Shakeup: McDermott Speaks Out
Does the surprise resignation of SAP Executive Board member and tech leader Vishal Sikka portend a diminished role for the Hana in-memory platform? "Absolutely not," says SAP co-CEO Bill McDermott. Despite the appointment of an applications-development veteran, Bernd Leukert, to the top technology post and a recent change whereby Hana financial figures are no longer reported, McDermott tells us the in-memory platform remains at the heart of the company's long-range plans.

Apple details what can be recovered from locked iPhones
The document, entitled "Legal Process Guidelines for U.S. Law Enforcement," was posted on Apple's website yesterday and acts as a FAQ and instruction manual for law enforcement agencies and other government entities "when seeking information from Apple Inc. about users of Apple's products and services, or from Apple devices." Among other things, Apple details when it requires a subpoena for user information and when it requires a signed search warrant, a higher legal process with a greater burden of proof for law enforcement agencies. The document lays out, in some specificity, what information is available from Apple, including what data the company's technicians can recover from a locked iOS device.

The Biggest Impact on IT Firefighting & Business Agility – Data Centers
It’s well documented that humans are almost always the biggest single risk factor to the availability of systems. The more humans need to be involved, the more likely a mistake will get made and a failure will occur. We all talk about hardware failure and power failures, even viruses and software bugs, but if you want to reduce risk, you reduce the human touch factor. The simple answer is that you need a combination of three things: good leadership, excellent process/automation, and solid training. When it comes to owning and operating a data center as a system, it begins to get a little more complex. Most organizations fail to treat the data center as a system and are constantly dealing with components or services independent of the DCaaP.

Not Another Framework? Part 2
In business architecture the capability model has become ubiquitous. And in thinking organizations I observe delivery of highly independent service and solution components that reduce dependencies and the impact of change, as well as mirroring the IT architecture on the business organization. Why wouldn't we use the same approach in defining a set of activities to deliver services and solutions? If you are uncertain about the capability concept, it’s important to appreciate that the optimum business capability is one that enables: maximum cohesion of internal functional capability, plus consistency of life cycle, strategic class, business partition, standardization, customizability, stability, metrics and drivers; and defined, stable dependencies that are implemented as services

Countering security threats outlined in latest Microsoft report
"The report continues to reinforce that it's critical to deploy advanced tools at the endpoint that can detect anomalies, such as malware that evades signature-based tools like anti-virus," Thompson said. Microsoft also found that criminals were getting better at using "deceptive downloads" to infect computers. Such tactics included bundling malware with free programs and software packages that can be downloaded online. Given criminals' skills in evading malware detection technologies, CSOs should focus "on building cohesive security controls across their complete environment, filling in the gaps between defensive technologies," Conan Dooley, security analyst for consultancy Bishop Fox, said. "This increases the chances of detecting new attacks, as well as those using previous methods," Dooley said.

Warning: Failure to comply with data center maintenance is reckless
Complying with modern data center best practices for design and operations is challenging enough, but facilities must be properly maintained to keep up a reliable level of service. A good program for operational practices and data center maintenance brings out the full value of investments, especially if the data center is certified by organizations such as the Uptime Institute or TIA. The data center is a potentially dangerous place for people and equipment. Good maintenance, written operating practices, regular training and rules enforcement will avoid injuries and outages and prolong equipment service life and reliability.

HP looks to ease enterprise IT cloud fears
HP is targeting Amazon, Google, IBM and Microsoft -- companies that are already strong cloud players. The company says its focus on private clouds, and thus on security for large enterprises that want to take advantage of the cloud's scalability and other features, and be able to touch and look after their own data, will provide a competitive edge. At this point, there are plenty of vendors that can help enterprises build their own cloud systems, but most are small, new businesses. HP believes it has an advantage as a tech industry giant, but it's a big player in a relatively small pond. "Server huggers will be interested in this," said Gartner analyst Lydia Leong, referring to "those organizations that want to build and run things themselves.

How to manage contractual risks in cloud computing
"If it doesn't, it must be challenged and any inadequacies should be dealt with. If this isn't done, the risk is that the service contract for cloud services that may prove to be lacking later down the line. The same goes for pricing, service levels and service credits, rights to exit, rights to change the services, security plans and standards, disaster recovery arrangements and governance arrangements," added Bratby. At this stage, subject matter experts, commercial leaders and lawyers should be roped in to help with the review, he advised. Second, the service contract must enable the business to comply with its own obligations, be they contractual, regulatory and legal, according to the lawyer.

Type Annotations in Java 8: Tools and Opportunities
Annotations have also played a central role in making developers more productive through techniques such as metaprogramming. The idea is that annotations can tell tools how to generate new code, transform code, or behave at run-time. For example, the Java Persistence API (JPA), also introduced in Java 1.5, allows developers to declaratively specify the correspondence between Java objects and database entities using annotations on declarations such as @Entity. Tools such as Hibernate use these annotations to generate mapping files and SQL queries at run-time.

Quote for the day:

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- W. B. Yeats

May 07, 2014

Data Engineering Is The Bottleneck For The Internet Of Things
The numbers thrown out by analysts such as Gartner about savings achieved by the Internet of Things are staggering. Vendors will garner $309 billion by 2020. Positive economic impact is estimated at $1.9 trillion. But the path to creating that value is not what most people think it is. The bounding condition in deploying the Internet of Things (IoT) is not going to be the deployment of devices but rather the management and analysis of the data coming off those devices. If you are interested in making use of the IoT, that’s what you need to be working on: Data Engineering.

We Need New Templates for Cyber Risk Management
Now it is time for CIOs to make sure their role expands, and take with them their board members — many of whom may be as complacent about cyber risk as I once was. Board members need to know what CIOs already do: the finest technical capabilities in the world — the best programmers, the most effective cyber defenses, the most detailed risk management — is not enough to protect against cyber risk. We need to find new tools. Insurance company CIOs are wonderfully positioned to lead this transition. Not only are insurers on the front lines in the cyber risk fight themselves, they can also help clients discover and leverage best practices across industries.

Should CIOs Use a Carrot or a Stick to Rein In BYOD Workers?
At the heart of the partnership, a provision blocks factory reset capabilities and makes stolen devices useless after a certain number of failed password attempts. Many BYOD policies grant CIOs similar powers, such as locking devices and remotely wiping apps and data. BYOD employees often mindlessly hand over these rights. The security policy usually shows up as a wordy single page in small print with a "click to accept terms" button at the bottom, which online employees are accustomed to scroll down and click.

The New Mobile Enterprise: A Smorgasbord Of Choices
Today’s WLAN systems might be cloud-managed with only access points to install, or could be controller-based with a rack full of management servers of various types riding shotgun. 802.11ac is the hot story right now, but even here the nuance of Wave 1 versus Wave 2 creates a need to weigh your options. Then there is small cell technology, with which your WLAN system or dedicated hardware might help spread mobile networks deeper into your corporate premises if you have the demand. Increased mobility means more and newer devices on ceilings, walls, rooftops and poles. We all have common needs, but our final topologies might be quite varied.

Identity-based network services versus mobile device management
In a mobile enterprise, network services should enable a workflow-based approach to providing a user with the required connectivity and resource access. Platforms like Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) and Aruba ClearPass control network access with security features like device profiling, endpoint posture assessment and advanced policy management and enforcement. They also allow users to securely onboard and provision their own devices, while automatically protecting the network through the application of role-based policies.

Internet of Things may make owning less appealing
Peter Coffee, vice president for strategic research at Salesforce, also believes that the IoT will help move businesses away from an equipment ownership model as device vendors develop the means to better monitor and control what they sell. Every business, "wishes it could avoid having things on its balance sheet that aren't generating value all the time," Coffee said. Many businesses rent equipment, but what the IoT may do is expand the idea and provide more reason not to own, he said. Many of the businesses adopting IoT technologies are in the medical device area, where any downtime can translate into a real patient issues.

Big Data, the Future, Definitely
The driving factor is always the bottom-line usage. People are looking at customer retention and increasing profitability. Post GFC (Global Financial Crisis), all the industries are definitely in the innovation cycle irrespective of which industry the CIO belongs to. CIOs also focus on the cost cycle as the there is a massive pressure on CIOs to reduce costs and provide standardized services. The innovation in Big Data deals with all the three Vs – Volume, Velocity and Variety. But Big Data is mostly leveraged in increasing volume and the ones looking at the volume would be the ones that have large customer bases like eCommerce, retail, telecommunications and so on because the specific targeted marketing takes place there.

Data Credibility: A New Dimension of Data Quality?
It might be argued that credibility issues can arise purely from traditional data quality concerns, and thus never get into the realm of misrepresentation. For instance, an insurance company might have really sloppy data management practices and might have assigned junior resources to develop the spreadsheets it used for regulatory submissions. Knowing these facts, the regulators would be quite right to distrust the information they were getting. Confronted with this, the insurance company might respond that there was no deliberate intent to deceive. This argument will not wash. In all aspects of data management, and especially in reporting to outside entities (be they regulators, customers, partners or whatever), there is a duty of care.

Cloud is one of the 'most disruptive forces' in business in past 20 years: KPMG
Disruptive technologies are emerging technologies that unexpectedly displace an established methodology or a traditional IT service model. Social media, the increasing use of mobile devices, the internet of things and cloud computing are all considered disruptive technologies. “Cloud computing continues to change the game,” said the KPMG research. “Banks that continue to use outdated legacy systems will find it increasingly difficult to create and launch new services, to provide access to a mobile workforce and to accommodate geographically dispersed customers and partners as well or as quickly as their competitors who are operating in the cloud,” it warned.

How software-defined IT is answering today’s experience economy
Experience has become monetised and our digital world has transformed into an ‘experience economy’ where every poor-experience second can be metered at a cost to the business. On the flipside, according to NewVoiceMedia, following a positive customer experience, 69% of customers would recommend a company to others and 70% would secure their loyalty to the brand. Managing user experience and expectations with IT is considered one of the greatest challenges for businesses today. However, businesses that are getting it right will be presented with the perfect opportunity to turn customers into brand ambassadors that help generate revenue.

Quote for the day:

"One measure of leadership is the caliber of people who choose to follow you." -- Dennis A. Peer

May 06, 2014

Techies and users are in a vicious circle of mistrust
Our lack of trust arises from the many negative perceptions we have of business people. When I ask technical people how they feel about working with "the business," they use words like "ignorant," "unrealistic," "aggressive" and "unappreciative." They say business people don't know what they want and constantly change their minds. We can recall our own bad experiences that have led us to be skeptical of anything that business people say. We have seen project sponsors shirk responsibility and shift blame, and just like the business people, we have at times been treated poorly and felt bad about it. And we make generalizations about business people based on those experiences.

Sorry State of IT Education: Readers Propose Fixes
One thing readers almost universally acknowledged was that critical thinking skills don't come from core technology curricula, but from liberal arts and humanities courses that traditionally have been required in four-year college programs but aren't a part of most two-year programs and not even mentioned in trade schools. Several people wrote that even four-year technology programs now focus more on job training than education. But it's the educational aspects of a college four-year program that are key to taking skills ostensibly learned in the humanities coursework and applying them to the knowledge obtained in the technology coursework.

Securing Big Data for the Future: Why You Need a Data Rights Management Platform
It's our modern day struggle trying to figure out how to keep our data in our own hands. In truth, it is our generation's battle to fight, not unlike the diversity or democracy battles fought by our forefathers. To give up all control or to maintain some say in the matter -- these are our choices, and in as little time as a few years, the choice will be made for us if we don't do anything about it now. Because big data is only getting bigger, and big names want to make big money in the industry. Soon, you won’t hear about the NSA's improper collection and use of data. Soon, you won't know about Target's massive data breach.

Generating Data on What Customers Really Want
Disruptive innovation practitioners have just such a tool for reliably predicting customers’ behavior. It’s a methodology that uncovers what in disruptive innovation parlance is called a person’s “job to be done.” Briefly, the idea is this: Consumers don’t go to the store to buy products. They go to the store to buy something that will enable them to get some important job done in their lives. The classic example, attributed to HBS professor Ted Levitt, is that people don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill; they want something that will make a quarter-inch hole. Making a quarter-inch hole is the job to be done. The product that does that job most reliably, easily, conveniently, and less expensively is the tool they will be most likely to purchase for that job.

7 Business Dashboards That Offer Striking Data Visualizations
When data gets complex, there's no better way to understand it than a business dashboard. You can cull data from your website analytics engine, an Oracle database, social media campaigns and more, all to see how they interrelate. Unfortunately, some dashboards are overly cluttered and actually make data more complicated to understand. The seven tools featured here use more color, graphs, clear delineations and white space to make data more understandable. The cost for using these dashboards varies depending on the number of sources you use, the amount of data you're analyzing and how many admin users you have involved.

How Anybody Can Measure Your Computer's Wi-Fi Fingerprint
Wireless fingerprinting has other applications too. Not only can this approach identify malicious computers attempting to access your network, it can spot fake wireless access points that are designed to collect MAC addresses to spoof other networks. However, this requires the gathering of ground truth data of the original access point in a secure environment in advance. Wireless fingerprinting is unlikely ever to be entirely foolproof but it does have the potential to be a useful addition to the armory of tools available for online security.

The ABCs of the Internet of Things
In a word: Sensors. Many IoT devices have sensors that can register changes in temperature, light, pressure, sound and motion. They are your eyes and ears to what's going on the world. Before we talk about what they do, let's describe them. These sensors are part of a device category called a microelectromechanical system (MEMS) and are manufactured in much the same way microprocessors are manufactured, through a lithography process. These sensors can be paired with an application-specific integrated circuit or an ASIC. This is a circuit with a limited degree of programming capability and is hardwired to do something specific. It can also be paired with microprocessor and will likely be attached to a wireless radio for communications.

eBook: Modern Web Essentials Using JavaScript and HTML5
Developing single page applications with JavaScript and HTML5 solves an enterprise pain point - how to reach users on various platforms without diminishing user experience. This book provides tools for a thorough understanding of three topics integral to effective enterprise-level, web SPA development: JavaScript language essentials, HTML5 specification features, and responsive design principles.

Stripping down enterprise IT to the naked cloud
Once you're in their tent, it's very hard to leave. However, a case can be made for a minimalist approach to cloud; one that takes advantage of public cloud services that don't have all of the bells and whistles -- just a few simple services, such as storage, compute or databases. In some cases, it has the ability to get down to the primitives of the platforms, without going through layers of application program interfaces (APIs) and management tools. In some circles, this is called a "naked cloud."

Symantec calls antivirus 'doomed' as security giants fight for survival
The antivirus giant said that end-point security technology isn't a "moneymaker" in any way, and highlighted that the company needs to adjust and adapt. Which isn't a surprise for Symantec, whose Norton antivirus products have barely made any new dents in the security market in years — despite it being bundled with almost every new Windows computer as premium bloatware. But what Dye was saying is that the malware market is dwindling and hackers are instead increasingly focusing on cyberattacks, like denial-of-service assaults, spearphishing, and network intrusion, rather than mass-emailing a crafted executable file randomly to millions — including to a burgeoining base of Mac users that are immune to such attacks.

Quote for the day:

"Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work" -- Peter Drucker

May 05, 2014

The stories behind 13 programming language names
Programmers generally agree that one of the hardest tasks in software development is naming things. One of things they have to name, though not very often, are new programming languages. When a new language is designed, the name chosen for it often follows one of several formulas: it's an acronym or abbreviation based on what it is (e.g., BASIC, COBOL, TCL, LISP), the name is derived from an existing language (e.g., C++, C#, CoffeeScript) or it's named after someone famous from math or computer science (e.g., Ada, Pascal, Turing). Sometimes, though, language designers get more creative when choosing a name. Here are the stories behind 13 of the the more unusual programming language names.

Why user experience and ecosystem will rule the cloud
It’s easy enough to start offering a cloud platform, but doing so successfully is a lot more difficult. James Urquhart explains how Amazon Web Services, Cloud Foundry and others are capitalizing on great user experiences and great ecosystems. Over the course of the last year or two, one key, fundamental rule of succeeding in the cloud computing business has become exceedingly clear: If you want to define and control any aspect of the cloud marketplace, you need to succeed at user experience and ecosystem. This is something that Amazon Web Services and Cloud Foundry clearly understand, and they’ve flourished as a result.

Revolutionary computers are on the way. Now we just need to know how to program them
A team of Stanford scientists has created a circuit board, dubbed “NeuroGrid,”consisting of 16 computing cores that simulate more than 1 million neurons and billion of synapses. They think it could be mass produced for about $400 per board, meaning it would be economically feasible to embed the boards into everything from robots to artificial limbs in order to speed up their computing cycles while significantly reducing their power consumption. But even if that’s possible, there would still be one big problem: Right now, NeuroGrid requires, essentially, a neuroscientist in order to program it.

9 Consultant Skills They Don't Teach You in Business School
In my 20 years as an international consultant, I’ve observed my colleagues in action: from the very predictable cohort of gray-suited analysts to the egotistical and colorful “friend” of the CEO. And then, they are those who do great work. These often discreet consultants share nine skills, not taught in business school, that separate the effective from the awesome:

Internet Of Things: What's Holding Us Back
Whirlpool CIO Michael Heim says "our toe is in the water on connected devices," as the company figures out the kind of connections customers really want in their homes, and what they'll pay for. Heim does see huge potential, and not just the cliché scenario of your refrigerator knowing all its contents and emailing you when the milk's running low. If customers let Whirlpool track appliance usage remotely, that would be a boon to product development, providing a window into what features people really use. What if the fridge told you when temperatures are varying, suggesting a pending failure, or your icemaker lost water pressure, suggesting a busted pipe might be spraying water all over your kitchen? What if your washer could be diagnosed remotely, since many appliances already generate electronic error codes?

Data breaches 9% more costly in 2013 than year before
Ponemon points out the 9% increase in breach costs is a big change from the past few years when breach costs either did not drop or rose only a bit. The cost stood at $214 per record lost in 2011. Factors in tallying data-breach costs include everything from forensics experts, outsourcing hotline support and free credit monitoring subscriptions, discounts to customers to make amends, in-house investigations, legal and all the extra work that mounts up after a breach. Heavily regulated industries such as healthcare, transportation, energy, financial services, communications, pharmaceuticals and manufacturing tend to have a higher per capita breach cost, the report says.

11 reasons encryption is (almost) dead
Encryption isn't always perfect, and even when the core algorithms are truly solid, many other links in the chain can go kablooie. There are hundreds of steps and millions of lines of code protecting our secrets. If any one of them fails, the data can be as easy to read as the face of a five-year-old playing Go Fish. ... Encryption is under assault more than ever -- and from more directions than previously thought. This doesn't mean you should forgo securing sensitive data, but forewarned is forearmed. It's impossible to secure the entire stack and chain. Here are 11 reasons encryption is no longer all it's cracked up to be.

3 Dimensions of Purpose
Here’s a test for purpose: Ask a colleague what they “do.” Most likely, they will respond with a short description of their role, and of the company or organization for which they work. Then ask them “why” they work. It’s in this answer that you will find out their purpose, and whether or not they find meaning in the cause or business for which they work. By asking these questions of your team, you will quickly learn how well you have communicated your purpose, and if there is alignment between their personal purposes and that of the company.

The Rising Strategic Risks of Cyberattacks
Organizations large and small lack the facts to make effective decisions, and traditional “protect the perimeter” technology strategies are proving insufficient. Most companies also have difficulty quantifying the impact of risks and mitigation plans. Much of the damage results from an inadequate response to a breach rather than the breach itself. Complicating matters further for executives, mitigating the effect of attacks often requires making complicated trade-offs between reducing risk and keeping pace with business demands (see sidebar “Seizing the initiative on cybersecurity: A top-team checklist”). Only a few CEOs realize that the real cost of cybercrime stems from delayed or lost technological innovation—problems resulting in part from how thoroughly companies are screening technology investments for their potential impact on the cyberrisk profile.

Bankers see a historic moment as mobile services boom
"It's a huge change ... you will come out with a completely new banking sector," said Clausen, head of the biggest bank in the Nordic region, where customers use online or smartphone banking more than anywhere else in the world. The surge in the take-up of mobile banking has taken many banks by surprise, prompting some to accelerate plans to close branches or adapt how their costly bricks-and-mortar branches are used. Granted, some executives said talk of the death of the branch is premature. Banks will push routine transactions on to tablet PCs or other automated platforms, but some branches will stay - albeit with a new look.

Quote for the day:

"No one can possibly achieve any real or lasting success... in business by being a conformist." -- J Paul Getty

May 04, 2014

The technology world's sexism needs to end
How do these locker-room attitudes impact women in IT? Head over to the Everyday Sexism project to read testimony like this example: "Despite the fact that I had, on average, five years more experience and two years more education than any of the men on the team, took only the challenging service calls and those that involved cleaning up messes made by some of the more junior men on the team, and consistently outperformed everyone else on the team by every measure, I was paid $2 less per hour than even the entry-level guys. Management rationalized this to me (and themselves) by claiming that it was simply 'risky' to hire women in IT," a female techie notes.

Where’s the Next Heartbleed Bug Lurking?
“The problem with open source is that you have the ‘free rider’ problem,” says Chris Wysopal, a well-known computer security expert and chief technology officer and cofounder of Veracode, an application-security assessment firm. “People and companies who are using it, and getting huge value out of it, are not giving a lot of money to keep it going.” Even three weeks after the bug was discovered, some laggard businesses are still updating servers, installing new cryptographic certificates, and directing users to reset their passwords. More troubling for experts like Wysopal is that other foundational components of the Internet are, like OpenSSL, small open-source projects.

Digital Influences More than $1 Trillion in Retail Store Sales
"Each interaction is an opportunity for a retailer to enhance the customer experience and tell its brand story," said Jeff Simpson, director, Deloitte Consulting LLP and co-author of the study. "However, retailers often measure success solely on how many widgets they sell through their web or mobile sites. For example, retailers might regard online shopping cart abandonment as a failed conversion when in reality, it may represent a customer who started their wish list in the online basket, but chose to purchase the items in the store. In that case, digital engagement may have led to a sale in the physical store. This impact is much higher when measured holistically across the organization and regardless of channels, rather than force-fitted to a single point of purchase."

Demystifying Design Thinking: Interview with Tamara Christensen
I think the biggest obstacle to understanding Design Thinking is to treat it as a rigid process, a series of steps that must be followed in a particular sequence. I have seen this happen time and again when a team tries to apply Design Thinking with questionable success and then decides “Design Thinking doesn’t work.” In reality, what doesn’t work is treating Design Thinking like a recipe that must be adhered to. It is more like a mindset, multiple modes of thinking and doing that are iteratively utilized as the project requires. Design Thinking is first and foremost about people and keeping them at the center of the process.

Auditing and Assessing IT Governance
In this session, we will hear from three experts on the topic of IT Governance. Steve Romero, who is a renowned evangelist for IT governance, will explain what IT governance is. Then, Brian Barnier, an advisor to finance and IT executives and a member of the COBIT 5 development team, will share his views on the value to the organization of effective IT governance. Finally, Dan Swanson, an experienced practitioner and editor of the EDPACS magazine, will discuss his recommended approach to assessing the effectiveness of IT governance. The session will be moderated by Norman Marks, an evangelist for better run business with over 30 years’ experience in IT auditing and management.

GRC, Security and the Temple of Doom
That thought of “how did I get so old?” happens so quickly. Some reference to something from the past celebrating an anniversary will immediately trigger it. So when I saw the CNN article “Happy 30th, Dr. Jones: 10 Things a Hero Taught Us”, I immediately cringed. ... I am even older than I first thought. But I comforted myself with the “I am not older; I am better” internal speech all of us old timers are so readily able to spin. Then I sighed and clicked on the link to find out what the indomitable hero Dr. Henry Walton “Indiana” Jones Jr. has taught us. Read the article above first and then see what can GRC and Security programs can learn from the legendary Dr. Jones.

Voice phishing scheme lets hackers steal personal data from banks
According to LaCour, attackers install their IVR software on hacked servers and route calls to it from compromised VoIP servers. They use free text-to-speech tools to generate the IVR interactive messages and email-to-SMS gateways to send out text messages to thousands of users. "Targeted companies often encounter difficulties when attempting to mitigate vishing attacks," LaCour said. "It can take weeks for an organization to navigate the structures of telecom providers, carriers, and service providers and effectively shut down the phone numbers used to scam customers."

Startups Experiment with Ads That Know How You Drive
Ads tailored to driving behavior will be possible thanks to a partnership with fellow startup Mojio. It will launch a $149 device in June that plugs into a car’s diagnostic port and streams vehicle data to a smartphone app to help users track their driving, their fuel economy, and their vehicle’s maintenance status. Kiip will use data from that device to target promotions inside the Mojio phone app. Sprague says that getting access to data from a car’s engine and safety systems could unlock some unprecedented approaches to ad targeting. Mojio’s device can tell when a car’s airbags are deployed, or whether crash sensors on the bumpers have been triggered, potentially allowing ads pegged to incidents on the road.

The Elusive Dependency
What materialised during the replacement effort, were design assumptions within the extensions about the old system’s currency rounding strategy (e.g., number of decimals per calculation step). The extension designers had taken great care with the interface specifications, and the new application was both functionally and technically compatible with the extensions . . . except customer invoices now had what looked like elementary rounding errors. The obvious lesson here is to avoid making assumptions about how another system works – a form of defensive design where you aim to minimise external dependencies as much as possible.

Defining Test Automation Metrics
Tom DeMarco wrote “You can’t control what you cannot measure”. If test automation has always been actively discussed, the returns of automated tests were usually described in a very general way. There have been so far very few methodologies that can provide you with unbiased assessment of your software testing automation process. This article proposes some of methods to define test automation key performance indicator (KPI). The emphasis in proposed metrics is made upon two points: cost difference and duration difference

Quote for the day:

"The greatest leaders mobilize others by coalescing people around a shared vision." -- Ken Blanchard

May 03, 2014

Intel searches for the value in open data
Intel is one of several large tech companies seeking economic value in open data. A research network called the Governance Lab, or GovLab, at New York University recently began publishing OpenData500, a list of companies using government data to generate new business, including include Amazon Web Services, Garmin, IBM and Yelp. In exploring open data, Intel’s hypothesis is that “any kind of silo-ed, isolated data set is. . . really limited in its ability to discover insights you didn’t know you were looking for,” said Brandon Barnett, director of business innovation.

Cathy O'Neil talks about trust in data analysis
I guess if I had to pinpoint my single most massive peeve, which really cannot be termed "pet," it would have to be hiding perverse incentives (and almost all incentives are perverse in some way) behind what people present at "objective truth". In my experience, outside of the world of sports where everything is transparent (except steroid use), there is always some opacity and gaming going on and someone's either making money off of it, gaining status from its publication, or wielding power through it. And come to think of it, you've asked me the wrong question altogether. My biggest peeve with data interpretations is how many aren't published at all.

The promise of information
What sets information design apart from other design disciplines, aside from a commitment to what Two Twelve’s David Gibson listed as ‘hierarchy, logic, clarity, context’, is a belief in a kind of metadesigner, an ‘architect’ if you will, who will coordinate and transform information on behalf of the user. The ‘transformer’ was one subject of the first information design conference, so it was nice to hear Sue Walker from the University of Reading looking at how the Isotype folk, who coined the term, developed children’s information books in the 1940s and 50s.

Why the operating system still (kind of) matters
“If you look at the single-node Linux story, there is only one story, which is Red Hat,” Shuttleworth acknowledged. “What is more interesting, though, is if you look at Linux at large, you realize that single-node enterprise Linux story is a decreasing share of Linux in total. There are now vastly more Ubuntu servers running for enterprises than Red Hat servers running for enterprises. If you just look at what people are running on the web, for example, you see that very clearly.” So, he argues, as more companies start looking to build private clouds, they’ll want to keep those applications running on Ubuntu because its truer open source license structure is better suited to the idea of an elastic environment.

The Surprising Secret to Employee Engagement
Too often, Mark says, leaders fail to provide appreciation frequently enough. We often get so caught up in the push for continuous achievement that we forget to take to time to recognize what people have already achieved. Mark recommends that we actually schedule time for recognition each week. If it's on our calendars, we're much more likely to actually take the time to recognize what people have done well. He also recommends that we don't just recognize the top two or three performers. This can create a culture where most people don't feel appreciated.

Why Facial Recognition Isn't the Way of the Future...Yet
Jay Hauhn, CTO and VP of Industry Relations for Tyco Integrated Security, breaks down the use of facial recognition into two categories: cooperative environments and non-cooperative environments. In the former, the person whose face is going to be scanned is aware of it and is opting into a process where it's serving as their credential; they're going to look straight into a camera with no attempt to obscure their face. Non-cooperative environments, however, are when the subject is not necessarily aware that their face is being scanned and is making no attempt to look directly at the camera."In cooperative environments, it works fairly well," says Hauhn.

Microsoft Readies a Virtual Assistant for the Corporate World
“It knows everything I’m doing—what I’m reading, what I’m liking, who I’m following, the people I’m interacting with, who I’m responding to fastest—and serves up a personalized experience about what content is most interesting, what things I should be involved in, what people I should interact with,” says Julia White, general manager of the Microsoft Office suite. “My work is no longer about who sent me e-mail most recently; it’s about what’s most important to me.” Oslo is the first app built on a platform known as the Office Graph, a database developed by the former employees of Fast Search & Transfer in Oslo, Norway, which Microsoft acquired in 2009.

Infor and 'No Fugly Software': Design as a competitive weapon
For Infor, design is therefore a euphemism for the broad collaboration associated with distilling processes and information down to what the user really needs, presenting that information in the most compelling and useful manner, and making it all look and feel good. Empathy for the user is central to this process. Although other large software vendors, like SAP, have embraced this kind of design thinking, the extent to which Infor is retooling both products and corporate culture around design appears unrivaled among companies of its size. As I noted on Twitter, Infor is actively trying to incorporate design as a core strategic theme into its cultural DNA.

Parsing EDI to XML (and vice verse)
Most of the articles related to EDI revolved around business controversies and comparisons between the different formats and dialects. Completely irrelevant to my research. I still don't understand why do so many EDI formats still co-exist nowadays (> 5000). It appeared to me that EDI was veiled in mystery and the lack of information and cooperation was not something to be considered as a simple act of randomness... I will leap over the entertaining side of EDI, like the conspiracy behind the multiple formats, the rebellious movement against VANs, and the ever ongoing discussion on whether XML will eventually bury EDI (with UBL being the latest contender). My goal here is to share my knowledge on the basics of parsing an EDI message, and hope that someone else may find that useful.

Why Is RAID Dying a Slow Death?
First and foremost, one of the more common RAID levels -- RAID 5 -- began to show serious weakness as disk sizes continued to grow ever larger. Today, there are disks on the market that are a whopping 5 TB in size, which is massive by the standards of the era in which RAID was born. Back then, RAID adapters could rebuild the relatively small disks of that era relatively quickly. That is, when a disk in an array failed, it didn't take too long to rebuild the failed disk. However, as disk capacity continued to increase, the amount of time that it took to rebuild failed disks also increased. The problem: During a rebuild, there is additional stress on the whole array as bits are gathered to rebuild the lost disk. As such, the potential for a double-disk fault increases.

Quote for the day:

“A person who cannot handle setbacks will never handle victories either.” -- Orrin Woodward

May 02, 2014

Afraid of the cloud? How to handle your fears
"I don't know if it's a matter of distrust," said Jagdish Rebello, an analyst with IHS. "They are wary of the hype. The enterprise IT folks are being very, very cautious about their migration to the cloud. They see the cost benefits but when they look at reliability and security, there is essentially a fear of going wholeheartedly to the cloud." Enterprises are still fairly new to the cloud computing phenomenon, but have long read headlines about cloud outages and security breaches, which, said Rebello, is enough to make any executive nervous.

Enterprise software: The big trends and why they matter
Cloud technologies can also been seen as the biggest threat to the established order of on-premise software and the vendors that supply it. "It's sort of scary for them because you can see a world in which people say, 'I'm going to buy order management from him, item master management from him, and vendor management from him and I will make it all work together, or the semantic web will'," Forrester Research VP and principal analyst George Lawrie told ZDNet. To counter the growing appetite for cloud services, one of the approaches employed by big enterprise software vendors is to work with firms such as Accenture, Deloitte, Infosys and Wipro, according to Lawrie.

Why authentication, registration are keys to cloud-based file sharing
Security policies should also indicate how to respond to an excessive number of failed login attempts on mobile devices. While locking an account may be sufficient for failed login attempts on an on-premises desktop, excessive login failures on a mobile device may signal that it has been lost or stolen. If the setting is available in your cloud-based file sharing service, configure alerts to notify admins of excessive login failures on mobile devices. Consider setting your file-sharing or device management service to have excessive login failures trigger a remote wipe, if that feature is available.

Everything You Need to Know About Email Infrastructure
Managing a commercial email infrastructure is no easy task - and that's why hundreds of businesses rely on SendGrid's hosted solutions. If you have questions on email infrastructure, this guide has the answers you're looking for. We cover it all from SMTP, MTA's and managing IPs to handling bounces, getting on ISP Feedback loops and understanding whitelists. SendGrid's Email Infrastructure Guide will provide you with: Tips to avoid costly blunders that could get your IPs blacklisted; Solutions for managing your IPs and authentication records so ISPs can easily identify your legitimate, wanted email from spam; and Comprehensive glossary to keep you up to date with email infrastructure terms.

Data Doesn’t Speak for Itself
A senior leader may wish to understand the significance of the story for extending data quality across the organization. While the main story will be the same for each, the emphases should be very different. Be aware that many people are skeptical about analytics, big data, data mining, and statistics (perhaps recalling the famous observation, “There are three kinds of lies. Lies, damned lies, and statistics.”). Whether this skepticism is justified or not, it does enormous damage by slowing, or even stopping, the penetration of good ideas into organizations. As a data presenter, you have a sacred trust to build support for data among your audience.

Data Protection Fears Vs. US Cloud Market
Many European and Canadian companies have avoided hosting data in the US since the USA Patriot Act in the early 2000s, which permitted the government to inspect data on any servers in the US, even if the data was owned by non-US customers. European companies' concerns around the Patriot Act grew so strong by 2011 that it began to hamper the growth of the cloud industry in Europe, as service providers in France, Germany, and elsewhere limited their customer base by "walling off" their clouds from North America. In fact, an Informa report revealed that European providers accounted for just 7% of carrier cloud investments worldwide in 2011.

SanDisk announces 4TB SSD, hopes for 8TB next year
SanDisk's new 4TB Optimus MAX SAS SSD is the highest capacity 2.5-in. SSD drive to date. The SSDs come with a 6Gbps SAS interface. The drive is aimed at read-intensive applications, such as data warehousing, media streaming and web servers. The typical workload envisioned for the 4TB drive is 90% read and 10% write, SanDisk stated. The Optimus MAX SAS SSD is capable of up to 400 MBps sequential reads and writes and up to 75,000 random I/Os per second (IOPS) for both reads and writes, the company said.

Pica8 claims to be first vendor to support OpenFlow 1.4
Pica8 has updated its PicOS operating system to support OpenFlow 1.4, which the Open Networking Foundation standardized late last year. Pica8 packages the software with white box switches and a version of the open source Ryu controller, which also supports OpenFlow 1.4. OpenFlow 1.4 includes several new features that improve the resiliency and scalability of an OpenFlow network. A new bundling feature allows OpenFlow controllers to make modification requests to multiple OpenFlow switches through a single message.

Generation Y demand cloud computing
Generation Y recruits will now ask, "Why use a limited storage corporate Microsoft Outlook email account, when I can use unlimited storage email like Google's Gmail, which also has the familiar interface I use when doing my personal stuff?" This is one reason an increasing number of organisations are adopting cloud-based email and desktop productivity services such as Microsoft Office 365 and Google Apps. Such services offer unlimited storage and access from any device connected to the internet. Generation Y will also ask, "Why carry a bog standard business mobile when I can play around with my own top-of-the-range iPhone or Samsung Galaxy, for instance?"

All Eyes on Digital Marketing Budgets in 2014
"Marketing leaders are securing bigger budgets to define markets, develop offerings, and attract, acquire and retain customers," said Yvonne Genovese, managing vice president at Gartner. "Digital marketing is taking an increasing share of the marketing budget with annual digital marketing operating budgets totaling 3.1 per cent of a company's revenue in 2013, as compared with 2.6 per cent in 2012, representing a 20 per cent increase." Eleven per cent of respondents said they spent more than half of their marketing budgets on digital activities in 2013 compared with only 3.0 per cent in 2012. Digital marketing represented an average of 28.5 per cent of the total marketing budget in 2013, as compared with 25.5 per cent in 2012

Quote for the day:

“It's hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse.” -- Adlai E. Stevenson II

May 01, 2014

First 100 Days As a CIO
“Formation of a proper IT organisational structure was my first challenge and priority... I was aware that without a competent team I would not be able to justify my role in the organisation,” says Jade “So, the first thing I did was to evaluate the existing IT team and according to the assessment, form a new structure by hiring / changing the roles of the existing team and surrendering some IT employees.” At this point, the focus was on the IT Infrastructure which was obsolete and not sufficiently equipped to meet the company’s ambitious growth projections. As a strategy, while deploying new infrastructure, Jade simultaneously began outsourcing activities that were part of the IT strategy.

Keeping the promise of wireless charging
"Without giving any specific names," Lachman said, "we are hearing from the companies whom we work with that on the integration side that the process electronics manufacturers have to go through to integrate wireless charging isn't viable. Their engineering costs have crossed the line of impossibility. ... Humavox is pitching its product on three sides: that it's simple to use, and therefore user friendly; it transfers energy more efficiently than magnetic induction charging; and it's low cost — handy given the electronics manufacturers that include wireless charging in the devices are unlikely to charge extra for the feature.

4 Ways to Overcome Age-Related Tension in the Office
Across all generations, a quarter of people admit to avoiding conflict with colleagues of a different age. If they did speak up, they spoke in generalities and danced around the real issues. We also found that younger generations hesitate to hold older generations accountable. On the other hand, older generations admitted to losing their temper more easily with more than one in four people saying they became frustrated, upset or angry during a difficult conversation. Most alarming, perhaps, is that Millennials -- who make up the majority of working America -- are the least confident in their ability to handle a difficult situation.

Metadata, Connection, and the Big Data Story
According to Marie Wallace, “the biggest piece of missing information isn’t the content itself, but the metadata that connects various pieces of content into a cohesive story.” What sort of metadata? Stephen Pulman refers to properties of the message (for example, whether it’s humorous, sincere, or likely fake) and of the author, such as sex, age, and maybe also influence and ideology, which “tell us how we should treat the content of the message, as well as being interesting in themselves.” As if expanding on Pulman’s thought, Marie Wallace asks, “if I don’t know the individual and the background behind her current communication, how can I really decide what her mood or intent is, and most importantly take effective action?”

Change the Game with APS and PolyBase
What is PolyBase, how does it work, and why is it such an important, innovative technology? Put simply - it’s the bridge to your business data. Why is it important? It is unique, innovative technology and it is available today in APS. PolyBase was created by the team at the Jim Gray Systems Lab, led by Dr David DeWitt. Dr DeWitt is a technical fellow at Microsoft (i.e. he is important) and he’s also been a PASS Summit key-note speaker for several years. If you’ve never seen any of his presentations then you should absolutely address that. They are all free to watch and are available now; including a great session on PolyBase.

MongoDB releases new version, aligns with Cloudera
While not ruling out integration with other prospective partners, it lays down the gauntlet that both popular platforms will commit to joint development. The announcement comes on the heels of MongoDB’s GA release of v2.6, which rewrote the platform’s query engine while delivering incremental enhancements aimed at scalability and security. The takeaway for enterprises is that two leading players in the NoSQL and Hadoop data platform spaces are teaming up, with the likely goal of delivering a de facto NoSQL/Hadoop integrated technology stack that will be equivalent to, and potentially compete with, the traditional database/enterprise data warehouse pairing that is common in large enterprise environments.

Where hybrid excels: Looking beyond scalability and flexibility in the cloud
Hybrid cloud models deliver the simplicity and flexibility companies expect from the cloud, while offering data protection solutions needed to quickly back up data without diminishing network performance. Since hybrid cloud rely upon a combination of on-premise environments and the cloud, and don’t solely depend on the Internet to transport data – like public or private clouds do – large scale backups and restores can be handled without saturating the network. This benefit not only keeps the network clear for business needs, but also leads to a significant cut in backup window time. To wit: Cobalt Iron, an adaptive cloud data protection service provider, helps clients backup resources on both on-premise and public cloud deployments.

Australian govt should harness outsourcing: Commission of Audit
"The Commission considers that the Government should appoint a highly credentialed business technology expert to oversee the new system design, working with experts from the Department of Human Services." The prospect of outsourcing the system was raised in the report, with the touted benefits of such a move being increased effectiveness, efficiency and lower cost. Any move in this direction would be complicated by the need to simplify the system, ensure the protection of citizen rights, and the quality of any requirements scoping, the report said. "Specialist outsourcing providers prefer high volume, low complexity stand-alone activities because they are generally low risk and can be managed relatively easily," it said.

Hackers Lurking in Vents and Soda Machines
Security experts say vendors are tempting targets for hackers because they tend to run older systems, like Microsoft’s Windows XP software. Also, security experts say these seemingly innocuous devices — videoconference equipment, thermostats, vending machines and printers — often are delivered with the security settings switched off by default. Once hackers have found a way in, the devices offer them a place to hide in plain sight. “The beauty is no one is looking there,” said George Kurtz, the chief executive of Crowdstrike, a security firm. “So it’s very easy for the adversary to hide in these places.”

Harnessing the power of the cloud
Cloud computing and mobile devices have untethered CPAs from their desks and desktops, allowing them to do work and access data on a virtually anytime, anywhere basis. ... The internet also brings danger. Security breaches such as those at Target and Nieman Marcus show how cybercriminals are ready to exploit weaknesses to gain access to confidential financial information CPAs leveraging the web for their business efforts need to be aware of the security concerns and protect themselves and their clients’ and companies’ data. To help CPAs navigate the technological seas, the JofA gathered three of the top experts in accounting technology for a round-table discussion of the most crucial tech issues facing the profession.

Quote for the day:

"Leaders keep their eyes on the horizon, not just on the bottom line." -- Warren G. Bennis

April 29, 2014

Dissecting data measurement: Key metrics for assessing data quality
Arkady Maydanchik defines the purpose of data quality assessment: to identify data errors and erroneous data elements and to measure the impact of various data-driven business processes. Both components -- to identify errors and to understand their implications -- are critical. Data quality assessment can be accomplished in different ways, from simple qualitative assessment to detailed quantitative measurement. Assessments can be made based on general knowledge, guiding principles or specific standards. Data can be assessed at the macro level of general content or at the micro level of specific fields or values.

Windows 8.1 tablets with 8-inch screens: Which one is right for you?
There is a specific category of Windows 8.1 tablets with 8-inch screens that share the same minimum specs: Intel Atom Z3740 processors, 2GB RAM, 32GB onboard storage, Bluetooth, front- and rear-facing cameras, micro SD slot, micro USB 2.0 port, and Microsoft Office Home & Student 2013 pre-installed. ... Five major computer makers are selling such Windows 8.1 tablets with 8-inch screens. Because it can be tough to tell them apart, we put together this guide to quickly explain why you may (or may not) want to buy a particular model.

The Secret Path to Innovation
In meetings, the person in control of the conversation is often a leader who is forwarding a well thought-out agenda. But for the employee who is listening to the information, it may be perceived as uninteresting or even threatening. When we are uninterested, the RAS is not activated and what we hear just becomes noise. And when we feel threatened by something because we don't understand it or it seems overly burdensome, many of us shut down. Bolt, the fastest pigeon in the world was sold for £300,000 last year to a Chinese millionaire.

White House report on big data and privacy: Too little, too late
The White House is either late to the game -- or, as with exploit sales, a system with opportunistic holes hasn't been such a bad thing for defense. Stalking victims, civil and privacy rights groups, targeted segments of the population, and even the Federal Trade Commission have been fighting sellers like Spokeo -- and losing the battle -- for years. The FTC recently settled two cases with data brokers Checkmate and InfoTrack for selling consumer data to prospective employers and landlords in violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act. In June 2012, Spokeo paid $800,000 to settle an FTC suit that alleged Spokeo illegally sold personal information.

How Moore’s Law Is Changing Everything
Saying that the pace of change in today’s business world is accelerating has become a leading cliché among executives and business consultants. But most of us leave it there. You can’t prove it, right? Besides, it’s not like we’re the first people to live through a time of aggressive transformation. Consider how British business leaders must have felt during the reign of King George III, as the steam engine, the cotton gin, and the railroad upended the old commercial world order. In their new book, however, MIT professors Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee make the case that the cliché is indeed true, and they do it in a highly persuasive manner.

The state of the Internet: Faster, with more IPv6 -- and more attacks
With the increase in speed has also come an increase in IPv6 connectivity, particularly among educational institutions and a few key ISPs, such as Google Fiber and Verizon Wireless. It makes sense that Google Fiber is IPv6-connected by default, given the sheer newness of the network; ditto Verizon Wireless, which has a relatively rapid turnover in mobile devices and a newly deployed 4G LTE network. But IPv6 connectivity isn't close to what it ought to be, especially considering IPv4 addresses are expected to be entirely allocated by the end of the year.

The First Step Toward Successful Innovation
There are many steps along the path to delivering successful innovation: idea generation, identifying the most worthy ideas and delivering a fully formed product or technology to market. I’ve been thinking lately about the first phase of the innovation journey — creating or finding the right ideas in the sea of concepts competing for our attention. Sometimes I hear concerns that companies are overlooking promising ideas from employees already within the company; other times I hear worries that “not invented here” syndrome is keeping teams overly focused in their existing network echo chamber, unable to see the great ideas just outside their own walls.

Agile doesn't (necessarily) mean fragile
According to Gene Kim, founder of IT security firm Tripwire and DevOps author and speaker says that this highly cooperative and iterative environment doesn't create the shoddy environment (security wise, that is) they fear: in fact it can enhance security. "We've witnessed this downward spiral that happens in almost every IT organization. It became typical that whenever you wanted a new release or deployment, in most enterprises, it would take days or weeks or longer to complete. It involves tons of project sign-offs and hand-offs. This includes developers, DBAs, release teams, security and compliance people, operations teams and so on. This creates delays and is itself very error prone," Kim says.

Perceptive Software's closing the gaps in enterprise content management
Also newsworthy is Perceptive Software's entrance into the Leaders quadrant of Gartner's ECM Magic Quadrant report in September 2013. Gartner cited Perceptive Software's "strong execution and customer focus," adding that "customers are generally highly satisfied" with their product line and its ease of deployment. Since 2010, Perceptive has used acquisitions (with financial and strategic support from Lexmark) to fuel a substantial part of its double-digit growth. In the ECM Magic Quadrant report, Gartner wrote that Perceptive "needs to better articulate its strategy and road map" for its acquisitions, noting that its purchase of Twistage and Acuo Technologies helped to strengthen its solutions in healthcare and higher education.

Being Agile: Eleven Breakthrough Techniques to Keep You from "Waterfalling Backward"
Having teams work closely together on one thing at a time helps eliminate multi-tasking – the each team shares a common goal (i.e., completing a user story) and any interruptions are met with stiff resistance because it impacts what the team is trying to accomplish. What we tend to see when teams don’t get the whole team approach is individual team members off in their cubes, isolated from each other, working for a week or two at a time, and being relatively unaware of what other team members are doing. The results are usually predictable – major problems at the end of an iteration due to a lack of regular interaction.

Quote for the day:

"Success is often the result of taking a misstep in the right direction." -- Al Bernstein