Month: April 2017

Amazon’s second-generation Echo Dot ($50) is essentially an Echo minus the larger device’s rich-sounding speaker. Now, a company called Ninety7 is giving Echo Dot the speaker that Amazon didn’t provide.

Vaux is an attractive, $50 battery-powered speaker/docking station specifically for Echo Dot. Drop your Alexa-enabled Echo Dot into the top of the speaker, connect the two using Vaux’s built-in microUSB and 3.5mm aux input cables, and away you go.

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Look! A new Amazon Echo!

The Amazon Echo Look is like the original Echo, plus a camera.

The $200 device delivers the Alexa virtual assistant. But the camera is optimized for helping you choose clothing to look your best when you get dressed.

The Echo Look is a camera for your bedroom. As such, it’s being widely slammed as a massive invasion of privacy.

But this view is wrong and based on a provably false assumption.

I’ll tell you exactly how the Echo Look actually improves privacy. But first, let’s take a closer look at the Look.

Alexa as fashion consultant

The Echo Look is shaped like a oversized pill — a cylinder with rounded ends that appears to be about half the size of the original Echo. It sits on a stand or mounts to a wall.

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The U.S. National Security Agency will no longer sift through emails, texts and other internet communications that mention targets of surveillance.

The change, which the NSA announced on Friday, stops a controversial tactic that critics said violated U.S. citizens’ privacy rights.

The practice involved flagging communications where a foreign surveillance target was mentioned, even if that target wasn’t involved in the conversation. Friday’s announcement means the NSA will stop collecting this data.

“Instead, this surveillance will now be limited to only those communications that are directly ‘to’ or ‘from’ a foreign intelligence target,” the NSA said in a statement.

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The release of the latest Galaxy S phone is always a major event, and with good reason. Samsung’s premium flagship practically defines our expectations for high-end, high-price Android phones for the year to come. The Galaxy S8 and S8+ deliver a smorgasbord of features, top-tier hardware, a great camera, and bleeding-edge design. This, together with Samsung’s marketing muscle, make them the most popular premium Android phones.

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Small Steps For Data Analytics

By Sachin Yadav

In the rapidly evolving IT space, the notion of creating and leveraging data analytics is rapidly gathering momentum, for the all right reasons, including the nature of the complex problems we are trying to solve, the volume of data we need to store and the velocity at which we need to process it to be able to create data models swiftly to answer our complex business questions in real time. For Einstein aptly said, “The solution of the problem cannot be the simpler than the problem itself.”

However, for a multitude of reasons, getting started on this journey remains challenging, where and how to undertake this big effort, being one of the biggest impediments toward its adoption. With the underlying technology, hardware and software, for data analytics reaching a new level of maturity, the strategic framework to formulate the journey is not as much a question of technology, or its underpinning elements, but rather of structural and systemic cross-functional elements that need to be aligned to ensure the journey is effective. On the outset, we will define effectiveness as the ability to achieve the intended business results within anticipated costs and timelines.

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Net neutrality is like a public park that anyone can use. ‘Pay-To-Play’ is a private club that only rich members use.

What happens to the internet when access isn’t equal? (Or to paraphrase George Orwell in Animal Farm, “We’re all equal, but some are more equal than others”).

How could this impact consumers, businesses and non-profits?

“Ajit Pai, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission outlined a sweeping plan to loosen the government’s oversight of high-speed internet providers, a rebuke of a landmark policy approved two years ago to ensure that all online content is treated the same by the companies that deliver broadband service to Americans”, reports the NYT.

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Organizations are facing disruption on many fronts. But don’t fret: Disruption can be a good thing, if you use it to redefine your strategies and digitally transform your business to better prepare for the future.

Successful digital transformation requires a foundation of properly managed data. With the right data management and governance systems and processes in place, CIOs can begin to turn information into intelligence to help their businesses make better decisions by leveraging data that is reliable, up-to-date, and trustworthy.

How well do you effectively understand and manage your data?. Proper data management supports data discovery, connectivity, quality, security, and governance across all systems and process. Putting this foundational component in place will build more trust in the data, which will in turn build confidence in any decisions, processes, and outcomes driven through that data.

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Enterprises are quickly discovering that the roads leading to digital transformation are besieged with unforeseen tolls, causing delays and added expenses. While that may oversimplify the challenges associated with a digital transformation project, the metaphor still rings true.

It is the simple realization that making the big pivot toward data-driven digital transformation takes more than CIOs acknowledging that data has become a trusted currency. It also takes knowing how to leverage that currency to enhance growth.

“The information your business generates and accesses is not merely a tool for operational execution. It’s so essential to the success of a modern business that it must be handled as carefully and strategically as currency,” Informatica CEO Anil Chakravarthy wrote in a recent blog post.

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A new malware program that targets macOS users is capable of spying on encrypted browser traffic to steal sensitive information.

The new program, dubbed OSX/Dok by researchers from Check Point Software Technologies, was distributed via email phishing campaigns to users in Europe.

One of the rogue emails was crafted to look as if it was sent by a Swiss government agency warning recipients about apparent errors in their tax returns. The malware was attached to the email as a file called Dokument.zip.

What makes OSX/Dok interesting is that it was digitally signed with a valid Apple developer certificate. These certificates are issued by Apple to members of its developer program and are needed to publish applications in the official Mac App Store.

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Google and Microsoft are both benefiting from solid growth in enterprise cloud services. Both companies released earnings reports this week that highlighted significant momentum in G Suite, Office Suite, respectively, and more sophisticated cloud platforms for business.

“We crossed a major milestone with more than 100 million monthly active users of Office 365 commercial,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said during a conference call. “Office 365 commercial seats grew 35 percent year-over-year and revenue is up 45 percent.” Microsoft also reported a 15 percent year-over-year gain in revenue from Office 365 and other consumer products. The company ended the quarter with 26.2 million Office 365 consumer subscribers.

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A Google effort to push websites to implement encryption is expanding. Starting in October, the company will roll out new warnings to flag HTTP connections as insecure in its Chrome browser.

For users, it means Chrome will display the words “not secure” in the browser’s address bar whenever they type any data into web pages that connect over HTTP.

However, for users who like to browse through Chrome’s privacy-enhancing Incognito mode, the warnings will appear by default on all HTTP pages visited, not only when the user enters information onto the page.

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