Defense Contractor Makes Leap Investment Into Cybersecurity
April 30, 2015
The expression goes “you should look before you leap,” meaning you should make plans and wise choices before you barrel headfirst into what might be a brick wall. Some might say Raytheon could be heading that way with their recent investment, but The Wall Street Journal says they could be making a wise choice in the article, “Raytheon To Plow $1.7 Billion Into New Cyber Venture.”
Raytheon recently purchased Websense Inc., a cybersecurity company with over 21,000 clients. Websense will form the basis of a new cyber joint venture and it is projected to make $500 million in sales for 2015. Over the next few years, Raytheon predicts the revenue will surge:
“Raytheon, which is based in Waltham, Mass., predicted the joint venture would deliver high-single-digit revenue growth next year and mid-double-digit growth in 2017, and would be profitable from day one. Raytheon will have an 80% stake in the new cyber venture, with Vista Partners LLC holding 20%.”
While Raytheon is a respected name in the defense contracting field, their biggest clients have been with the US military and intelligence agencies. The article mentions how it might be difficult for Raytheon’s sales team and employees to switch to working with non-governmental clients. Raytheon, however, is positioned to use Websense’s experience with commercial clients and its own dealings within the security industry to be successful.
Raytheon definitely has looked before its leapt into this joint venture. Where Raytheon has shortcomings, Websense will be able to compensate and vice versa.
Whitney Grace, April 30, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Altiar Decides to Embed dtSearch Engine
April 30, 2015
PR Newswire has a big announcement for fans of dtSearch Engine: “Announcing The Altiar Cloud-Based (Optimized For Microsoft Azure) ECM Platform Embedding The dtSearch Engine.” Altiar is a leading enterprise collaborative content management platform based in the cloud, developed for prime optimization in Microsoft Azure. To improve the enterprise content system, dtSearch’s search engine (its headlining product) will be integrated into Altiar platform.
Altair wants to improve how users find content on the platform. Users can upload and create brand new content on Altair, but with files from so many different programs it can be confusing to manage and locate them. Altair hopes to remedy any search problems with the integration:
” ‘Utilizing the power of dtSearch Engine at the core, users can search across the entire database of files uploaded by other users as well as manage their own uploads simply and quickly,’ explains Altiar. ‘Search results deliver relevant results from the content within every file as well as any additional data provided at upload.’”
Altair restates what we already know about search: it is one of the most important functions of technology and without out people would not be able to track down their content. Comprehensive search across multiple programs is a standard feature in all computers these days. Is searching the cloud more complex than a regular system? What improvements need to be made to make search handle the extra work?
Whitney Grace, April 30, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Retail Feels Internet Woes
April 29, 2015
Mobile Web sites, mobile apps, mobile search, mobile content, and the list goes on and on for Web-related material to be mobile-friendly. Online retailers are being pressured to make their digital storefronts applicable to the mobile users, because more people are using their smartphones and tablets over standard desktop and laptop computers. It might seem easy to design an app and then people can download it for all of their shopping needs, but according to Easy Ask things are not that simple: “Internet Retailer Reveals Mobile Commerce Conversion Troubles.”
The article reveals that research conducted by Spreadshirt CTO Guido Laures shows that while there is a high demand for mobile friendly commerce applications and Web sites, very few people are actually purchasing products through these conduits. Why? The problem relates to the lack of spontaneous browsing and one the iPhone 6’s main selling features: a big screen.
“While mobile-friendly responsive designs and easier mobile checkouts are cited as inhibitors to mobile commerce conversion, an overlooked and more dangerous problem is earlier in the shopping process. Before they can buy, customers first need to find the product they want. Small screen sizes, clumsy typing and awkward scrolling gestures render traditional search and navigation useless on a smartphone.”
Easy Ask says that these problems can be resolved by using a natural language search application over the standard keyword search tool. It says that:
“A keyword search engine leaves you prone to misunderstanding different words and returning a wide swath of products that will frustrate your shoppers and continue you down the path of poor mobile customer conversion.”
Usually natural language voice search tools misunderstand words and return funny phrases. The article is a marketing tool to highlight the key features of Easy Ask technology, but they do make some key observations about mobile shopping habits.
Whitney Grace, April 29, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
How do You use Your Email?
April 28, 2015
Email is still a relatively new concept in the grander scheme of technology, having only been around since the 1990s. As with any human activity, people want to learn more about the trends and habits people have with email. Popular Science has an article called “Here’s What Scientists Learned In The Largest Systematic Study Of Email Habits” with a self-explanatory title. Even though email has been around for over twenty years, no one is quite sure how people use it.
So someone decided to study email usage:
“…researchers from Yahoo Labs looked at emails of two million participants who sent more than 16 billion messages over the course of several months–by far the largest email study ever conducted. They tracked the identities of the senders and the recipients, the subject lines, when the emails were sent, the lengths of the emails, and the number of attachments. They also looked at the ages of the participants and the devices from which the emails were sent or checked.”
The results were said to be so predictable that an algorithm could have predicted them. Usage has a strong correlation to age groups and gender. The young write short, quick responses, while men are also brief in their emails. People also responded more quickly during work hours and the more emails they receive the less likely they are to write a reply. People might already be familiar with these trends, but the data is brand new to data scientists. The article predicts that developers will take the data and design better email platforms.
How about creating an email platform that merges a to-do list with emails, so people don’t form their schedules and tasks from the inbox.
Whitney Grace, April 28, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Juvenile Journal Behavior
April 28, 2015
Ah, more publisher excitement. Neuroskeptic, a blogger at Discover, weighs in on a spat between scientific journals in, “Academic Journals in Glass Houses….” The write-up begins by printing a charge lobbed at Frontiers in Psychology by the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease (JNMD), in which the latter accuses the former of essentially bribing peer reviewers. It goes on to explain the back story, and why the blogger feels the claim against Frontiers is baseless. See the article for those details, if you’re curious.
Here’s the part that struck me: Neuroskeptic supplies the example hinted at in his or her headline:
“For the JNMD to question the standards of Frontiers peer review process is a bit of a ‘in glass houses / throwing stones’ moment. Neuroskeptic readers may remember that it was JNMD who one year ago published a paper about a mysterious device called the ‘quantum resonance spectrometer’ (QRS). This paper claimed that QRS can detect a ‘special biological wave… released by the brain’ and thus accurately diagnose schizophrenia and other mental disorders – via a sensor held in the patient’s hand. The article provided virtually no details of what the ‘QRS’ device is, or how it works, or what the ‘special wave’ it is supposed to measure is. Since then, I’ve done some more research and as far as I can establish, ‘QRS’ is an entirely bogus technology. If JNMD are going to level accusations at another journal, they ought to make sure that their own house is in order first.”
This is more support for the conclusion that many of today’s “academic” journals cannot be trusted. Perhaps the profit-driven situation will be overhauled someday, but in the meantime, let the reader beware.
Cynthia Murrell, April 28, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Gartner VP Claims Researching “Ethical Programming” Necessary for Future of Smart Machines
April 17, 2015
The article on TweakTown titled Gartner: Smart Machines Must Include Ethical Programming Protocols briefly delves into the necessity of developing ethical programming in order to avoid some sort of Terminator/ I,Robot situation that culminates in the rise of the machines and the end of humanity. Gartner is one of the world’s leading technology research and advisory companies, but it hardly sounds like the company stance. The article quotes Frank Buytendijk, a Gartner research VP,
“Clearly, people must trust smart machines if they are to accept and use them…The ability to earn trust must be part of any plan to implement artificial intelligence (AI) or smart machines, and will be an important selling point when marketing this technology.”
If you’re thinking, sounds like another mid-tier consultant is divining the future, you aren’t wrong. Researching ethical programming for the hypothetical self-aware machines that haven’t been built yet might just be someone’s idea of a good time. The article concludes with the statement that “experts are split on the topic, arguing whether or not humans truly have something to worry about.” While the experts figure out how we humans will cause the end of the human reign over earth, some of us are just waiting for the end of another in a line of increasingly violent winters.
Chelsea Kerwin, April 17, 2014
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
Improving the Preservica Preservation Process
April 17, 2015
Preservica is a leading program for use in digital preservation, consulting, and research, and now it is compatible with Microsoft SharePoint. ECM Connection has the scoop on the “New Version Of Preservica Aligns Records Management And Digital Preservation.” The upgrade to Preservica will allow SharePoint managers to preserve content from SharePoint as well as Microsoft Outlook, a necessary task as most companies these days rely on the Internet for business and need to archive transactions.
Preservica wants to become a bigger part of enterprise system strategies such as enterprise content management and information governance. One of their big selling points is that Preservica will archive information and keep it in a usable format, as obsoleteness becomes a bigger problem as technology advances.
“Jon Tilbury, CEO Preservica adds: ‘The growing volume and diversity of digital content and records along with rapid technology and IT refresh rates is fuelling the need for Records and Compliance managers to properly safe-guard their long-term and permanent digital records by incorporating Digital Preservation into their overall information governance lifecycle. The developing consensus is that organizations should consider digital preservation from the outset – especially if they hold important digital records for more than 10 years or already have records that are older than 10 years. Our vision is to make this a pluggable technology so it can be quickly and seamlessly integrated into the corporate information landscape.’ ”
Digital preservation with a compliant format is one of the most overlooked problems companies deal with. They may have stored their records on a storage device, but if they do not retain the technology to access them, then the records are useless. Keeping files in a readable format not only keeps them useful, but it also makes the employee’s life who has to recall them all the easier.
Whitney Grace, April 17, 2015
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
Mobile Office 365 Usage on the Rise
April 16, 2015
A recent study by harmon.ie has found that Mobile Office 365 is growing quickly among its users. Mobile is a huge consideration for all software companies, and now the data is proving that mobile is the go-to for even heavy-hitting work and enterprise applications. Read more in the AppsTechNews article, “The state of mobile Office 365 usage in the workplace – and what it means for SharePoint.”
The article begins with the research:
“24% of harmon.ie mobile users are now using mobile Office 365 in the cloud, compared to 18% six months ago. Not surprisingly, the most popular activity conducted by business users on mobile devices was online and offline document access, according to 81% of the vote. 7% most frequently use their mobile devices to add a SharePoint site, while 4% prefer to favourite documents for later offline access.”
Retrieval is still proven to be the most common mobile function, as devices are still not designed well for efficient input. To keep up with future developments regarding mobile use in the enterprise, stay tuned to ArnoldIT.com. Stephen E. Arnold has made a career out of following all things search, and his SharePoint feed is an accessible place to stay tuned in to the latest SharePoint developments.
Emily Rae Aldridge, April 16, 2015
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
NSF Makes Plan for Public Access to Scientific Research
April 16, 2015
The press release on the National Science Foundation titled National Science Foundation Announces Plan for Comprehensive Public Access to Research Results speaks to the NSF’s interest in increasing communications on federally funded research. The NSF is an independent federal agency with a 7 billion dollar annual budget that is dispersed around the country in the form of grants to fund research and education in science and engineering. The article states,
“Scientific progress depends on the responsible communication of research findings,” said NSF Director France A. Córdova…Today’s announcement follows a request from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy last year, directing science-funding agencies to develop plans to increase access to the results of federally funded research. NSF submitted its proposal to improve the management of digital data and received approval to implement the plan.”
The plan is called Today’s Data, Tomorrow’s Discoveries and promotes the importance of science without creating an undue burden on scientists. All manuscripts that appear in peer-reviewed scholarly journals and the like will be made available for free download within a year of the initial publication. In a time when scientists are less trusted and science itself is deeply misunderstood, public access may be more important than ever.
Chelsea Kerwin, April 16, 2014
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
Informed Millennials
April 15, 2015
With the fall of traditional newspapers and aging TV News audiences, just where are today’s 20- and young 30- somethings turning for news coverage? Science 2.0 tells us “How Millennials Get News,” reporting on a recent survey from the American Press Institute and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. The joint effort comes from a collaboration arrangement the organizations call the Media Insight Project. Conducted at the beginning of 2015, the survey asked Millennials about their news-consumption habits. The article tells us:
“People ages 18-34 consume news and information in strikingly different ways than did previous generations, they keep up with ‘traditional’ news as well as stories that connect them to hobbies, culture, jobs, and entertainment, they just do it in ways that corporations can’t figure out how to monetize well….
“‘For many Millennials, news is part of their social flow, with most seeing it as an enjoyable or entertaining experience,’ said Trevor Tompson, director of the AP-NORC Center. ‘It is possible that consuming news at specific times of the day for defined periods will soon be a thing of the past given that news is now woven into many Millennials’ connected lives.’”
Soon? Even many of us Gen Xers and (a few intrepid Baby Boomers) now take our news in small doses at varying hours. The survey also found that most respondents look at the news at least once a day, and many several times per day. Also, contrary to warnings from worrywarts (yes, including me), personalized news feeds may not be creating a confirmation-bias crisis, after all. Most of these Millennials insist their social-media feeds are well balanced; the write-up explains:
“70 percent of Millennials say that their social media feeds are comprised of a diverse mix of viewpoints evenly mixed between those similar to and different from their own. An additional 16 percent say their feeds contain mostly viewpoints different from their own. And nearly three-quarters of those exposed to different views (73 percent) report they investigate others’ opinions at least some of the time–with a quarter saying they do it always or often.”
Well, that’s encouraging. Another finding might surprise some of us: Though a vast 90 percent of Millennials have smart phones, only half report being online most of all of the day. See the article for more, or navigate to the report itself; the study’s methodology is detailed at the end of the report.
Cynthia Murrell, April 15, 2015
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
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