Can smartglasses have a role in the workplace?
Google Glass has caused a bit of a stir, whether it's for the ability to turn us all into government spies or for causing the slightly distracted Google gaze. But there's been relatively little discussion of how smartglasses might be useful for business.
Until now that is, because a new report by Gartner says that smartglasses have the potential to boost worker efficiency in areas like healthcare, manufacturing and field service.
Develop enterprise mobile apps in record time with built.io
With the increasing trend towards using mobile devices in the workplace, IT departments sometimes struggle to keep up with demand from their users. As we've seen elsewhere, this can lead to employees using unauthorized software.
Companies interested in speeding up the build time for mobile apps will want to take a look at San Francisco-based raw engineering’s built.io product which comes out of beta and is generally available from today.
Financial professionals use unauthorized apps to access company data
The increasing popularity of BYOD brings a number of challenges for IT departments, not least of which is ensuring that files are handled in an approved and secure way. The problem is that users don’t often see things the same way. A new survey by Workshare shows that 65 percent of mobile users at financial institutions are using file sharing apps that aren't approved by their IT departments.
Only 55 percent were using unauthorized apps to work on documents outside the office in 2012, but the figures are even more worrying when you take into account that 89 percent of financial professionals are now using their own devices for work -- up a mere 3 percent from last year. The report also shows that 78 percent of these workers are using free file sharing services like Dropbox and SkyDrive to access and store corporate documents.
Scanning emails to target ads is not cricket says UK public
From technology that watches you in the supermarket, to social networking’s attempts to make the ads we see more relevant, the advertising industry is becoming cleverer at getting its message in front of the right people.
But is scanning emails, as Gmail does, a step too far? A survey commissioned by Outlook.com in the UK has found that 84 percent of people disapprove of email service providers scanning messages in order to target online adverts.
New tools from Adaptiva aim to streamline Windows XP migration
Most people should know by now that Microsoft is ending support for Windows XP in April 2014. However, according to NetMarketShare's latest report, 31.24 percent of the PC market is still running the venerable OS.
For enterprises this raises serious security and compatibility issues not to mention the time and effort involved in migrating large numbers of systems. Solutions provider Adaptiva is offering an answer in the form of its OneSite Rapid OSD product to aid operating system deployment and cut the time and cost involved in moving to Windows 7 or 8.
Digital transformation needs a new approach to project management
The increasing use of technology by customers presents many challenges for business. This means that traditional areas like finance and operations may no longer be driving change. According to a new report by research specialists Gartner, meeting the digital era, where change may be motivated by evolving customer expectations, needs a fresh approach if it's to be done successfully.
Unlike other projects which are about delivering on budget and on time, digital transformation schemes can involve taking risks in order to achieve better performance. Gartner calls this "discovery oriented project management" where it's necessary to experiment and continue to learn from projects even after their launch.
Technology companies shouldn't neglect the importance of silver surfers
Silver surfers are a more important market than generations X and Y yet are often ignored by technology companies according to new research by Gartner. With many markets now having an aging population, technology designers and marketers need to refocus on the opportunities offered by older users.
Speaking at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo on Australia's Gold Coast, vice president and Gartner Fellow David Furlonger says, "In recent years, technology decision makers have focused their work largely on the perceived wants and needs of younger demographics. They have created and sold products targeted explicitly at an already-saturated market of financially poor 'digital natives' in Generations X and Y. This emphasis on the young is unsurprising, since many technologists are themselves part of these younger age groups. However, it is a very serious mistake, because it neglects the most promising technology market demographic of all: the affluent, increasingly technologically sophisticated older generation we are calling the 'silver surfers'".
Enterprise storage gets serious with Ceph's scalable software solution
Unless you're heavily into the world of data storage you probably haven't heard of Ceph. It's an open-source distributed storage system for Linux platforms designed to deliver performance, reliability via a software defined system that's also very scalable. It's self-managing and self-healing and can be accessed via big data tools like Hadoop and Samba.
Now that you know what it is you'll be interested to learn that Inktank, the company behind Ceph, has launched Inktank Ceph Enterprise. This is a subscription product that builds on Ceph's open-source roots to provide the most stable version of the product with a new graphical management console and a suite of support services.
Microsoft security report warns of risks from unsupported operating systems
Microsoft has released its latest Security Intelligence Report detailing the threat intelligence gathered from more than a billion systems worldwide.
With Windows XP support due to end in April 2014 the report takes a close look at the risks posed to consumers and businesses of using unsupported operating systems. According to StatCounter, XP and older systems still account for around 21 percent of those in use.
Sophos launches cloud-managed security for business
Organizations face a constant challenge to balance keeping their systems secure against the time taken to maintain that protection. Security specialist Sophos has announced an answer to this problem in the form of a product that can be managed from the cloud, providing a simplified approach combined with protection from the latest threats.
Sophos Cloud provides endpoint protection for all sizes of enterprise but because it's cloud-managed it can protect users regardless of physical location. This makes it attractive for companies that have multiple sites or a home-based workforce.
Identified uses social media to create largest ever recruitment database
Finding the right staff is crucial to the operation of any business. But often the people that are right for a role aren't necessarily looking for a new job. San Francisco-based analytics specialist Identified thinks it has an answer to this with a new product that combines social media and big data techniques to create a massive searchable candidate database.
Identified Recruit claims to have a billion potential candidates available making it the largest source of professional profiles. You may think that this is like LinkedIn, but the difference is that Identified Recruit uses multiple data sources so it isn't limited by its own user base.
Bloomfire streamlines corporate knowledge sharing
We've seen a raft of tools in recent months that seek to combine business intelligence with elements of social networking. Bloomfire's USP in this field is that it seeks to capture the knowledge that already exists within an enterprise and use it to deliver improved employee engagement and ultimately better customer service.
Bloomfire has a clean interface reminiscent of Google+ and it works by dividing content into "feeds". These are designed to deliver content that’s relevant to the individual whilst filtering out noise so that people can find the information they need to do their jobs. Notifications can also be customized so that relevant notifications and tags aren't missed. The result is more time spent on the actual task and less managing the system. In any case it's designed to be used by business people rather than technicians.
Three in four UK homes now has access to superfast broadband
UK telecoms regulator Ofcom's annual Infrastructure Report update published today shows that 73 percent of premises are now able to receive superfast broadband, up from 65 percent last year.
Ofcom defines "superfast" as networks delivering download speeds of at least 30 Mbit/s, typically delivered using fiber optic cabling. Around 22 percent of connections now fall into this category with some 4.8 million consumers now having superfast connections, more than doubling last year's 2.1 million figure.
Mobile strategy becomes a priority for business
Mobile phones are almost as important as PCs for engaging with customers according to the results of a survey released by enterprise mobile specialist OpenMarket.
The study of 167 business leaders in the USA carried out by Forrester Consulting showed that 74 percent now think that mobiles are an important channel for customers, partners and employees, as against 79 percent for PCs.
The real cost of ransomware
Ransomware, software that locks you out of your PC and asks for a fee in order to release it, has been around for quite a while. The first examples date back to the late 1980s but in its most recent form it started to gain popularity with malware writers in 2006, starting in western Europe and rapidly spreading to the rest of the world.
Finnish security specialist F-Secure has been working with the police on a joint investigation and reckons that just one case could be responsible for up to $800 million of damage and losses.
Ian's Bio
Ian spent almost 20 years working with computers before he discovered that writing about them was easier than fixing them. Since then he's written for a number of computer magazines and is a former editor of PC Utilities. Follow him on Mastodon
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