Last month, law enforcement officers showed up at the lab of Anil Jain, a professor at Michigan State University. Jain wasn’t in trouble; the officers wanted his help. Jain is a computer science professor who works on biometric identifiers such as facial recognition programs, fingerprint scanners and tattoo matching; he wants to make them as difficult to hack as possible. But the police were interested in the opposite of this: they wanted his help to unlock a dead man’s phone. Jain and his PhD student Sunpreet Arora couldn’t share details…

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Research has shown that 70 percent of organizational change efforts fail. Lack of support from across the organization is a major cause for this daunting statistic. Without support, big ideas don’t take hold — or have the desired impact. You need buy-in to make organizational change happen, especially when building support for a new technology initiative. This is a timely challenge as the internet, big data and other tools have made markets increasingly competitive, pushing many organizations to adopt new technology to remain relevant. These initiatives can seem like obvious solutions…

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I have the privilege of occasionally meeting with folks from our sales and marketing teams along with solutions engineers to discuss the sales cycle, past deals, or deals that are in the offing. As is often the case, there are many opinions on how deals should be examined, deconstructed and the opportunity positioned. You could think of it as a calculated gamble that you will do business but it can be a little less scientific and a little less of a matter of luck and more of a carefully constructed…

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Technically Incorrect: A new study suggests that holiday gatherings mean that millennials will use their phones strategically to avoid Uncle Bilbo. Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that’s taken over our lives. This is the time we declare our independence. We proclaim our individualism. We rail against those who would subjugate us. And we certainly aren’t going to talk to Uncle Bilbo and that peculiarly coiffed lover of his at a 4th of July party. In order to help us, we have our phones. I know…

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There is much friction on whether phones are easy to use (which they are) and being easy to configure (which they are not). The gap between perception and reality within voice services is driven by the amazing advances in digital technology. End-users, particularly those within enterprise environments, are witness to an astonishing array of configurability when it comes to interfaces. And almost any interface—or reporting system for that matter—that reaches back to touch a database can be adapted to the roles and responsibilities of those users. But most enterprise users…

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Travis Kalanick believes that great entrepreneurs all share one common trait: an ability to spot the difference between perception and reality. Kalanick, the CEO of ridesharing giant Uber, said people perceived that the taxi industry was the only way to quickly get a ride. He saw it differently.  “That distance between perception and reality is the innovator’s playground,” he said to an audience of some 700 entrepreneurs at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit at Stanford University on Thursday. “You have to get used to people telling you are crazy and things are…

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A look at how air quality tech is helping people lead healthier lives. We breathe in, we breathe out. It’s as certain as the sun rising and setting. The question is, what is it we’re breathing? Suffice it to say, it’s not all good. According to the World Health Organization, indoor and outdoor pollution caused seven million deaths in 2012. The EPA has discovered that some of the most common air pollutants found in the US are particulate matter, photochemical oxidants and ground-level ozone, carbon monoxide, sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, and…

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More businesses are accepting mobile payments, and as a CIO you should be thinking about how to streamline these digital transactions. A byproduct of digital business is that transactions require more advanced and streamlined payment options. PayPal was one of the first to recognize this. Square took the concept to an even higher level with its Cash app. Now Apple Pay, Android Pay and others are advancing the concept. I love pulling out my iPhone and using my thumbprint to pay securely for a Groupon purchase, retail transaction or vending…

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