Worldwide IT spending is expected to decline by 5.5 percent this year, with enterprises benefitting from lower prices on communications and IT services but also having to pay higher hardware prices in some parts of the world. Market research company Gartner revised its spending forecast downward on Tuesday: In April, …
Government agencies seeking the lowest bidders typically overlook cybersecurity when awarding contracts, and data breaches are the result, says a security rating expert. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here (Insider Story) …
Microsoft will be handing over its display advertising business to AOL in nine markets as part of a new partnership between the two companies that was announced Monday. Under the deal, AOL will use Bing to power search through its website, and will operate display advertising, including mobile and video …
Policy I’ve written quite a lot about enterprise wearables, and recognise the need for security and device control, this problem has now been solved for Apple Watch, thanks to Good Technology. IDC estimates 111.9 million wearable devices will be in use by 2018, so its inevitable employees will drive enterprises …
In the ongoing battle to clean up Japan’s crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, Toshiba is deploying a novel robot that’s a bit like a scorpion. Developed with the International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning (IRID), the cylindrical machine is designed to enter the primary containment vessel (PCV) of the …
Just before the stroke of midnight Tuesday Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), computerized clocks around the world will pause for a moment to squeeze in an extra second. The leap second, as it’s called, is needed to keep UTC in line with solar time. The two get out of whack due …
A federal employees union has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, its leadership and a contractor, alleging that their negligence led to a data breach that compromised the personal information of millions of current, former and prospective government employees and contractors. Since at least 2007, the …
Shazam is releasing a new version of its music recognition app that lets users connect with artists they like and see what songs they’ve searched for using its service. Shazam lets people identify songs, TV shows and movies by capturing a brief snippet onto their phone, which gets matched against …
Apple iPhone 6S specs rumors are a-swirlin’. (But don’t call it the iPhone 7 OK?) Will the shiny force touch you? Super-secret-squirrel leakers are leaking secrets about Force Touch. Apparently, after its (ahem) rapturous reception in the Apple Watch, the finger-pressure-sensing feature will next be forced down iPhone users’ throats, too. …
There was some interesting chatter on Twitter today before the annual international useR! conference kicks off tomorrow in Denmark: One tweet about an R Consortium that will include heavy hitters like Google, Microsoft and Oracle working together on R infrastructure. The tweet came from a data scientist in Qatar. When …
Computers are getting smaller and smaller, but what I really want them to do is disappear entirely. I’d be happy if the “computer” as we know it was just a voice command away, something so ubiquitous and useful, we never had to think about charge cables, processor speeds or upgrading …
Despite slow market uptake, Hyundai Motor Co. said today that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles represent the future of eco-friendly cars more than all-electric vehicles. Hyundai, the largest carmaker in South Korea, began selling its Tuscon Fuel Cell SUV last year, but only 273 out of a target 1,000 vehicles were purchased …
The availability of really fast broadband in your neighborhood could increase your home’s value by more than 3 percent. High-speed fiber broadband service, with 1 Gbps download speeds, can add more than $5,400 to the value of an average U.S. home, according to a study commissioned by the Fiber to …
The Internet of Things System that Cisco Systems introduced on Monday at long last ties together a broad range of IoT parts from the company, but users may want to take a close look at what this really gives them. Cisco formed an IoT division two years ago out of …
Does the Apple Watch spell the end for passwords? The answer may be “yes.” The Cupertino, Calif., company’s latest “it” device is blowing up the “wearable technology” category, just as its iPhone did to the smart phone market more than seven years ago. It’s a short leap from there to …
Mobile payments — using your phone instead of a credit card to make purchases at retail locations — has not taken off. Yet. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here (Insider Story) …
Continuing its effort to catch up in the cloud, Oracle unveiled a new software-as-a-service product aimed at e-commerce providers. Oracle’s new Commerce Cloud is designed to help online businesses launch feature-rich storefronts across desktop and mobile devices in a matter of weeks. Offered as part of the database giant’s Customer …
Everyone I spoke to at the Informatica World 2015 last month wants to build a Data Lake, but are afraid that the Lake will end up as a Swamp. Based on where we are heading, I don’t think using words like Lakes, Swamps, Reservoirs, or names of other large data …
Predictions that the Internet of Things (IoT) will usher in a new era of prosperity get some backing in a new study by consulting firm McKinsey & Company. The study estimates that the annual value of IoT applications may be equivalent — in the best case — to about 11% …
The hack of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management didn’t surprise me. All significant organizations are regularly attacked, and every major federal agency is a big target. The outrage that followed this potentially preventable attack didn’t surprise me either. But the most likely reason it wasn’t prevented is that few …
The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced fraud charges against a Wisconsin-based investment advisory firm and its owner accused of improperly allocating to his personal and business accounts certain options trades that appreciated in value during the course of a trading day while allocating to his clients other trades that …
Hi, my name is Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols and I had a security clearance in the 1980s. Because of that, my personal records are likely to have been revealed by the Office of Personnel Management hack. Big deal, right? What could be so important about my 30-year-old records that it would …
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court denied a request from Google to hear a case in which it was accused of infringing Oracle copyrights by using Java in its Android mobile operating system. In a huge victory for Oracle, the Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear Google’s appeal of …
The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR) with misallocating more than $17 million in so-called “broken deal” expenses to its flagship private equity funds in breach of its fiduciary duty. KKR agreed to pay nearly $30 million to settle the charges, including a $10 …
Just four days after Adobe Systems patched a vulnerability in Flash Player, the exploit was adopted by cybercriminals for use in large-scale attacks. This highlights the increasingly small time frame users have to deploy patches. On Saturday, a malware researcher known online as Kafeine spotted a drive-by download attack done …
Apple will make iOS 8.4, the upgrade necessary to try out the Cupertino, Calif. company’s new streaming music service, available early Tuesday for downloading to iPhones and iPads. Ian Rogers, director of Apple Music, mentioned an 8 a.m. PT (11 a.m. ET) kick-off for iOS 8.4 in a since-revised blog …