Новости за 04.05.2016

When Steve Jobs first introduced the iPhone in 2007, he boldly exclaimed that it was a leapfrog product that was five years ahead of anything else on the market. And though Jobs was sometimes prone to hyperbole, his remarks about the iPhone were spot-on.

The Star Wars Day (May the forth...) pitches this week have been mercifully few, but one that did catch my eye was job site Indeed's revelation that the word "Jedi" has increasingly been showing up in job descriptions since the movie Star Wars: The Force Awakens debuted in December.

You thought it was buried. You forgot. Someone didn’t document it. A ping sweep didn’t find it. It lay there, dead. No one found it. But there was a pulse:It’s still running, and it’s alive. And it’s probably unpatched.

Star Wars video games

Star Wars, as an enormous building block of nerd culture, and one that got popular right when home computing was really taking off, has an unsurprisingly huge number of video games set in its universe. Some of them are very good, and some are the opposite of very good. Here’s a look at four of the former, and four of the latter.

Google is trying to save presentation audiences from having to sit through long rambling questions with a new feature it added to its Slides software on Wednesday. 

As Director of Program Management for Azure at Microsoft, Corey Sanders heads the compute team which is responsible for the VM-based offerings on Windows and Linux, the new microservices platform, and container services, among other things. Sanders joined the Azure team about six years ago, before which he was a developer in the Windows Serviceability team.  Network World Editor in Chief John Dix recently visited Sanders in his Redmond, WA, office to get a better sense of how Microsoft’s cloud business is taking shape. Читать дальше...

Famous people have app ideas, too...

Image by Gotta Go!

...and sometimes they happen to be pretty freakin’ brilliant.

From Tom Hanks to Snoop Dogg, here’s what happens when famous people make an iOS app we can’t help but love.

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Over the past seven years, the federal government has established a set of incentives and fines — carrots and sticks — to promote and expand the use of healthcare information technology, particularly the meaningful use of electronic health record (EHR) systems.

It looks as though Cisco Executive Chairman John Chambers is really getting into this commercial drone stuff.

NASA said that for the first time it has demonstrated that a wireless  system can communicate – sending route options and weather information for example -- with a jet on the ground.

May the Fourth be with you

Image by Flickr/Josh Hallett

May 4 is International Star Wars Day, the unofficial holiday where we celebrate the Force, X-wings, Ewoks and women wearing their hair in the shape of their favorite breakfast pastries.  But how do you give your week that particular galaxy-far-far-away flavor? Some suggestions follow.

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For most retailers, the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas is the holiday rush. For 1800Flowers, it’s Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day.

All blogs hosted on Google's blogspot.com domain can now be accessed over an encrypted HTTPS connection. This puts more control into the hands of blog readers who value privacy.

LAS VEGAS -- Visibility is key to troubleshooting network woes, but getting such access can be expensive. To help out, a veteran networking pro shared with attendees of the Interop conference in Las Vegas his list of a dozen mostly free “killer” tools.

Currently averaging 5 out of 5 stars on Amazon (read reviews), Robin has been discounted through May 10th by 25%. With a list price of $399, this item is discounted by $100 and can be purchased via Amazon right now for $299. 

A quantum computer for the people isn't just a theoretical dream; IBM is trying to make it a reality.

Developers longing to build more intelligent, more proactive, more personalized apps seem to gain more options with every passing day. With Haven OnDemand, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) has joined the applied machine learning fray, competing directly with IBM Watson Services, Microsoft Cortana Analytics Suite, and several Google ML-based APIs.

We know how it goes: You mean to practice safe computing habits, really you do. But when you fire up your computer, you just want to get stuff done -- and that's when even savvy users begin to cut security corners.

Pricing in ads for broadband Internet access is too often misleading and needs tighter regulation.

More than half (54 percent) of employees regularly take part in work-related videoconferences, but not all of them are eager participants, according to a recent report. 

Technology, social media and transactions over the Internet play key roles in how most organizations conduct business and reach out to prospective customers today. Those vehicles also serve as gateways to cyberattacks. Whether launched by run-of-the-mill hackers, criminals, insiders or even nation states, cyberattacks are likely to occur and can cause moderate to severe losses for organizations large and small. As part of a risk management plan, organizations routinely must decide which risks to avoid, accept, control or transfer. Читать дальше...

While many organizations are experimenting with the notion of eliminating traditional performance reviews, most companies are still doing annual or semi-annual reviews. The process can be nerve-wracking and cause anxiety if employees don't know what to expect or aren't prepared, but it doesn't have to be like this.

Enterprises should have an easier time migrating from Windows 7 to Windows 10 than they did the last go-round when they left behind Windows XP, an analyst said, citing lessons both Microsoft and corporations learned.

A 2013 study from Gallup found that as much as 70 percent of U.S. workers aren't actively engaged in their jobs. Engagement hasn't gotten much better since then, with Gallup's 2015 report showing nearly identical numbers and stagnant growth from 2014, as well as mostly flat growth since 2000. And for new hires, there's an "engagement honeymoon" period, according to another recent report from Gallup -- it found that employees perform the best and are the most engaged within the first six months of starting a new job... Читать дальше...

Thursday, May 5, is World Password Day 2016. For the fourth year, you’ll surely see plenty of articles reminding you why you should change all your passwords, a strong and unique password for every site where you login, and to start using a password manager if you don’t do so yet. I still highly encourage you to get 2FA for Mother’s Day.