Executive ego and the Sony Pictures network hack
Readers have been asking me to write about the recent network hack at Sony Pictures Entertainment. If you run a company like Sony Pictures it has to be tough to see your company secrets stolen all at once -- salaries, scripts, and Social Security numbers all revealed along with a pre-release HD copy of Annie, not to mention an entire database of unhappy Sony employees who want to work anywhere Adam Sandler doesn’t. But frankly my dear I don’t give a damn about any of that so let’s cut to the heart of this problem which really comes down to executive privilege.
Sony was hacked because some president or vice-president or division head or maybe an honest-to-God movie star didn’t want something stupid like network security to interfere with their Facebook/YouTube/porn/whatever workplace obsession. Security at Sony Pictures wasn’t breached, it was abandoned, and this recent hack is the perfectly logical result.
Nokia brings HERE to Google Play, will launch iOS version early next year
For Nokia to get any real traction with HERE outside of Windows Phone and its former brands, the Finnish company must make its app available to as many potential new users as possible. And that means offering it on the biggest mobile app stores around today -- Apple App Store and Google Play.
Today, Nokia is taking a step in the right direction by making HERE for Android available on Google Play. The app's availability on the largest Android app store comes more than three months after the initial launch, for Galaxy smartphones. HERE still sports the beta label, but continues to offer the same lovely features we have come to expect from it.
LiveSite helps small businesses improve customer interaction on the web
According to a BIA Kelsey report for the Manta small business community, 61 percent of small businesses get the majority of their revenue from repeat clients.
This means that timely interaction and following up with customers is important. Yet many smaller businesses still manage these tasks manually and may be losing sales as a result.
Blackphone launching a privacy-focused app store next year
Blackphone, the handset that claims to be able to protect users against surveillance and other security threats, is set to launch its own app store.
The service will be available from January 2015 and will offer privacy-focused apps and software that have been selected to provide the highest level of security available.
The top threats to your business data in 2015
With OpenSSL problems, ransomware, retail security breaches and the rise of the internet of things, 2014 has been a difficult year for businesses from the security point of view.
Each year brings its own set of challenges of course and Mike Foreman SMB general manager at security company AVG has been looking ahead to the threats companies need to watch for in 2015.
View, save and restore a drive's MBR/ boot sector with HDHacker
Before a PC can access a drive, it must first read various disk structures: the boot sector, master boot record (MBR), partition table, and so on. Normally you don’t have to care about any of that, but if these structures are corrupted, and the drive becomes unreadable, then you might want to know more.
HDHacker is a tiny tool which can read, display, save and restore a drive’s master boot record, boot sector, or just a defined number of continuous sectors. This is potentially very dangerous -- choosing the wrong drive or sectors could trash your system -- but it can sometimes be helpful.
T-Mobile’s Un-carrier effort unnerving wireless competitors
As T-Mobile announces yet another offering aimed at the nation’s top wireless carriers, one thing is clear: AT&T and Verizon feel the pain.
Both companies reported this week that they are finding it more difficult to retain customers as competition heats up in the US wireless market. Verizon says increasing competition is causing churn to trend "higher both sequentially and year over year", and expects these pressures to cut into profits and margins in the fourth quarter.
AIDA64 5 adds wireless monitoring support, certificates information panel
Budapest software firm FinalWire Ltd has released a major new version of its Windows diagnostic and benchmarking tool with the release of AIDA64 Extreme Edition 5.0.
Version 5.0’s major new feature is support for remote monitoring of computer sensors using third-party smartphone and tablet apps.
Fitbit adds Cortana support to its Windows Phone 8.1 app
When Fitbit launched its free, native app for Windows Phone 8.1 four months ago, it was a huge win for Microsoft which has in the past struggled to entice big names to its platform. The Fitbit app includes pretty much everything an owner of one of the firm’s activity trackers could want, including real-time and historical stats, automatic wireless syncing, activity and food logging, and the ability to pin the Fitbit Live Tile to your Start screen.
But where some companies simply port Android or iOS versions of their apps to Windows Phone and then forget about them, Fitbit shows just how committed it is to Microsoft's mobile platform by updating its app to introduce Cortana integration for easy voice-activated food & activity logging, as well as various other features.
Bitrix24 rolls out new business communication and collaboration tools
One of the biggest trends in enterprise systems this year has been the rise of social collaboration tools within the workplace.
Business intranet tools specialist Bitrix24 has been a major player in this field and is releasing a new and enhanced suite of unified communication and collaboration solutions targeted to businesses of all sizes.
Apple releases iOS 8.1.2 -- it's as minor as small updates come
Even though iOS 8.0 has received four updates since launching in mid-September, which have introduced new features, but also squashed quite a few (nasty) bugs, the latest incarnation of the popular mobile operating system still has its fair share of issues. To change that, Apple just introduced iOS 8.1.2.
Maybe fifth time's the charm, right? Well, that depends on what sort of issues you have been having, even while on iOS 8.1.1, because, according to the information provided by Apple, this update only fixes a single noteworthy problem.
Android business users get a virtual desktop in the cloud
One of the key reasons why businesses migrate their systems to the cloud is to make them easier to access from anywhere.
But that can create complications where office systems are Windows based and mobile devices are running a different OS. Cloud services provider dinCloud has an answer in the form of webHVD, its HTML5-based virtual desktop.
Update Scanner alerts you when web pages change (Firefox)
If you’d like to know when your favorite websites are updated then you could monitor their RSS or ATOM feeds, maybe a Twitter account or Facebook page. But if they don’t have any of these -- or checking them all seems like too much effort -- then you’ll probably just keep revisiting the site, again, and again, and again.
Update Scanner is a Firefox addon which saves time by automatically detecting and notifying you about changes to your chosen web pages.
Ad blockers under threat from Google, Microsoft and others
Several internet giants and media publishers, (Google, Microsoft and Le Figaro newspaper included), are threatening legal actions against the developers of software that blocks ads from reaching consumers.
This is, obviously, a problem for websites that rely on advertising as the web becomes more and more popular.
Dropbox 3 brings interface revamp, long path support
Cloud storage provider Dropbox has released a new stable build for desktop in the shape of Dropbox 3.0.3 for Windows, Linux and Mac.
The interface has been rewritten, bringing high DPI support on Windows, a revamped setup wizard for Linux, improved performance, and reportedly fixing "a large number of issues/ glitches" reported over the years.
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