enews – Page 94 – *IT Exclusive News

Data: The new currency for business

March 23, 2014March 24, 2014 enews

If you’re not exploiting data to its full potential you’ll soon find yourself broke, down and out in the corporate world. Revenue has always been an accurate measure of business success. The number of pounds, Euros, dollars – or your currency of choice – added to the bottom line denoted your exact status in business terms. Those with big bank balances had more money to invest and spend on attracting and retaining customers. Special offers could be marketed and customer loyalty gained as a result. Those that struggled financially could…

10 reasons why Chromebooks make good sense for business

March 23, 2014March 24, 2014 enews

Chromebooks may have gotten off to a slow start, but they’re gaining ground fast. See what benefits they might offer your business. The Chromebook was initially met with scorn and mockery. That has changed. Running on a foundation of Linux and selling at a price point nearly anyone can afford, the Chromebook has finally hit its stride. As of this writing, the top two best-selling laptops on Amazon are: Acer C720 Chromebook Samsung 11.6 Chromebook In fact, six of the top 20 best-selling laptops are Chromebooks. There’s a reason for…

Facebook CEO phoned Obama to complain about spying

March 23, 2014March 24, 2014 enews

Zuckerberg claims companies expect to be fighting criminals “not our own government”. Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg blasted the US government’s electronic surveillance practices on Thursday, saying he’d personally called President Barack Obama to voice his displeasure. “When our engineers work tirelessly to improve security, we imagine we’re protecting you against criminals, not our own government,” Zuckerberg said in a post on his personal Facebook page. “I’ve called President Obama to express my frustration over the damage the government is creating for all of our future. Unfortunately, it seems like it will take a very long time for true…

Individual users can get more and spend less for Office 365 Personal

March 23, 2014March 24, 2014 enews

Tony Bradley takes a look at Microsoft’s new low-cost option for Office 365, which is aimed at individual users. Microsoft is shaking things up a bit in the Office 365 lineup. Office 365 Home Premium is a tremendous value, but it’s designed and priced for a family to use. Starting April 1, Microsoft isintroducing Office 365 Personal for individual users who don’t need Office on five different PCs. For $70 per year (or $7 per month), Office 365 Personal will allow a customer to install and use Microsoft Office on one…

How to Work Seamlessly Across Multiple Devices

March 21, 2014 enews

Employees who used to burn the midnight oil at the office now get to do so from the comforts of home, thanks to the proliferation of personal laptops, tablets and smartphones. Getting files to appear on and sync with multiple devices can be challenging, but a little bit of advanced planning can go a long way. Working late into the night in your cubicle to meet a deadline is an uncommon scenario these days. Most employees can use a business-issued laptop or a home PC to complete work assignments from…

Re-Define Software-Defined

March 21, 2014 enews

I don’t think it comes as any shock that Federal IT is at a crossroads – straining to keep up with budget cuts, substantial data growth, and user demands. With high expectations for application development and deployment, users are forced to go outside of traditional IT versus working with their centralized IT function – causing significant inefficiencies government-wide. It’s time for an IT shift – away from a manual IT-centric delivery model (fitting services into a one-size-fits-all box), to an IT-as-a-Service model (identifying enterprise needs and modeling IT to meet…

How a 3-D printed arm gave hope to boy maimed in bomb blast

March 21, 2014March 21, 2014 enews

It’s a good thing I didn’t know exactly how dangerous a trip I was embarking on, because when I left home in October 2013 to fly to Sudan, I was scared enough. What I had committed to was, quite frankly, the most “impossible” thing I’d ever tried to accomplish. Three months earlier, over dinner, I’d learned about a doctor in Sudan’s Nuba mountains, Dr. Tom Catena, who was treating thousands of people — many of them children — who’d had limbs blown off in the Sudanese government’s bombing raids. By coincidence,…

ICANN sends registrars and domain owners into panic with 2013 RAA

March 21, 2014 enews

The 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement includes new requirements for preserving the accuracy of WHOIS records that run afoul of EU privacy protections, and introduce potential security vulnerabilities. At the beginning of 2014, the terms of the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement went into effect, bringing with it a flurry of unintended consequences. With an increased focus on keeping WHOIS records up to date, registrars are now being held to higher standards in verifying the information supplied by registrants. The proscribed way in which verification occurs is ham-fisted,…

The Social Media Pulse: Cracking the Mobile Code

March 21, 2014 enews

For one week in February, 25,000 plugged-in people around the world paused from their tweeting, posting and pinning to rub elbows in the real world. The venue: Social Media Week, a sprawling twice-yearly conference that takes place in multiple cities simultaneously. Then again, ‘pause’ may be a strong word: conference attendees generated thousands of tweets, instagrams and vines, and tens of thousands of people who could not attend physically tuned into the conference online. If you’re looking to take the ever-quickening pulse of social media, this is the place to…

Windows Server 2003 on the March to Retirement

March 20, 2014March 20, 2014 enews

When we look back on 2014 in IT, there are going to be a couple of things that dominate our thinking and my guess is it won’t be BYOD or Big Data. In reality, a much more mundane yet critical event will be at the forefront. That is the end of extended support status for key workhorse applications Windows XP, Exchange 2003 and Windows Server 2003. I’ve written before about the level of effort needed to migrate from Windows XP and the bottom line is, if you haven’t started that data migration,…