Ex-Opera CEO reveals new Vivaldi browser
Ex-Opera CEO Jon S. von Tetzchner has revealed a technical preview of Vivaldi, a new Chromium-based browser for Windows, Mac and Linux.
As this is a first release, the big features are mostly "coming soon". There will be extensions support, a built-in mail client, syncing across your devices, but they’re not here yet.
What Back to the Future II's vision of 2015 got wrong
To celebrate the fact we are now in the year Marty McFly was teleported to, yesterday we had a look back at what Back to the Future II creator Robert Zemeckis got right in his look forward to the year 2015 where he envisaged everything from smart homes and wearables to hoverboards.
There was, of course, also a whole lot he got wrong about the future, and here’s a rundown of the things that didn’t go according to his vision.
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How many iPhones did Apple REALLY sell?
The official number for calendar Q4 2014 (fiscal Q1 2015), ending December 27, is 74.688 million. Got to admit, that sure looks like a rather large number of iPhones. But how big is it? Really? Apple sold in the one quarter more iPhones than during fiscal years 2007-10 (73.946 million) combined, or twice as many as sold (37.044 million) during the same three months in 2012.
On its own, iPhone generated more revenue, $51.182 billion, than all of Apple in any quarter in fiscal 2012 and, singly, three of the four quarters in each of FY 2013 and 2014. The amount also exceeds every fiscal year through 2009, which revenue was $42.905 billion.
Warning! Linux is being haunted by a G-G-G-GHOST vulnerability -- are you at risk?
Recently, I declared that the Linux Desktop was dead, something that I stand by. However, Linux still dominates in the mobile device and server categories. And yes, a relatively minuscule number of people -- including myself -- will still continue to use Linux on the desktop. Why? People trust Linux-based operating systems to be safe and secure.
Because of Linux's popularity for servers and smart phones, it is imperative that it remains safe, and free from malware and vulnerabilities. Sadly, we learn today that Linux is being haunted by a g-g-g-ghost -- a ghost vulnerability, that is. Qualys explains that it is calling the vulnerability a "GHOST" because "it can be triggered by the GetHOST functions". In other words, Linux isn't as safe as we thought.
Dell Precision M3800 Mobile Workstation gains 4K, Thunderbolt 2 and Ubuntu Linux options
Dell makes damn good consumer computers, but the company really shines in the enterprise. Along with HP and Lenovo, the firm makes very solidly built and dependable workstations. Of all my years working in the corporate world, Dell has often been the brand of computers offered by the companies for which I have worked. Having dropped and abused many business-issued Dell laptops during travel, I have yet to have any issues beyond scuffs and dents -- impressive.
One of Dell's sexiest business machines is the Precision M3800 Mobile Workstation. Today, the company announces that the "thinnest and Lightest 15-Inch True Mobile Workstation" is getting some great new options that will make many professionals happy. You can now get a 4K display, Thunderbolt 2 and Ubuntu Linux to go with the Haswell Core i7 and NVIDIA Quadro K1100M.
Stop jumping to conclusions! Lizard Squad didn't take down Facebook
Despite many reports to the contrary, there is nothing to suggest that downtime experienced by Facebook, Instagram and Tinder was anything to do with Lizard Squad. Earlier today, the three services were inaccessible for a short while and Lizard Squad took to Twitter to announce the outages.
The tweet, which read "Facebook, Instagram, Tinder, AIM, Hipchat #offline #LizardSquad" was taken as an admission of guilt and reported as such by many, many websites. Even when Facebook announced that the downtime came as a result of a system change by Facebook, site after site continued to report that Lizard Squad was to blame.
New ransomware is making the rounds via email
The "pay or lose your files" concept of ransomware seems to have taken off with hackers and crime syndicates, becoming the modern cyber equivalent of the mob shakedown. Sort of like paying "protection money".
Now a new ransomware variant has been spotted in the wild, spreading via email, just as previous ones had. The latest is being referred to by the catchy name of Trojan.DownLoad3.35539, and appears in a message as a ZIP file with hopes that unsuspecting recipients will launch it.
Delivering enterprise solutions faster via the cloud
Shifting to mobile and cloud solutions has led to expectations that software projects should be delivered faster and more efficiently.
However, according to a recent Mendix survey 71 percent of development teams are unable to keep up with demand.
Enterprise app store streamlines BYOD adoption
Businesses are turning increasingly to mobile devices as means of boosting productivity, but if employees are allowed to use their own devices for work it can be difficult to ensure they use approved apps.
Licensing and compliance specialist Flexera Software has a solution in the form of its App Portal. This is a universal enterprise app store which allows self-service delivery across platforms.
5 reasons your company won't incorporate BYOD
The debate on both sides continues: the pros and cons of incorporating the BYOD concept into the workplace. BYOD has, indeed, become a hot topic where debates on both ends of the discussion-spectrum range from 'lower business costs and happier employees' to 'security hazards and added burdens on IT departments'. Even though proponents would argue that the benefits of incorporating BYOD into business environments outweigh any risks, one only has to examine those very risks to realize their potential for harm is too concerning and cannot just be swept under the proverbial rug.
Here are five reasons your company would want to think twice before adopting a BYOD strategy:
Let's talk about SaaS
It's hard to track down the exact origins of the phrase "Software as a Service" (SaaS), although it seems that it dates as far back as 2001.
When most people think of SaaS, they think of web-enabled applications like Gmail and Salesforce, which is not surprising. The public cloud and advancing web technologies created a popular trend of building web-apps hosted by a particular vendor and delivered (streamed?) over the Internet. Subscriptions make logical sense since you never really download the software, and instead access it on demand. So instead of buying a perpetual license to *Version X* of the software, you buy a monthly/yearly/etc subscription and in exchange get an always up to date version of the software and support.
Opera 27 restores tab preview, fine-tunes navigation bar
Norwegian browser developer Opera has released Opera FINAL 27 for Windows, Mac and Linux. It’s a relatively minor first release for 2015, with just two notable new features to excite users.
These see the navigation bar tweaked for make it easier to switch between major sections of the browser, while the tab preview feature has been restored alongside a new tab-expansion button.
Facebook is the world’s favorite identity
With more and more websites requiring passwords to access them, people are looking for ways to manage their surfing that don't require multiple IDs.
Increasingly the answer they're turning to is social media and in particular Facebook. A new infographic from identity management specialist Gigya shows that the social network accounted for over 60 percent of logins in the fourth quarter of last year.
IBM is right, I am a gadfly
gad·fly (ˈɡadˌflī/) noun. 1. a fly that bites livestock, especially a horsefly, warble fly, or botfly. 2. an annoying person, especially one who provokes others into action by criticism.
Sometimes being a gadfly is exactly what’s required. That’s certainly the case with IBM and has been for the almost eight years I’ve been following this depressing story. Gadflies came up because IBM finally reacted today to my last column predicting a massive force reduction this week. They denied it, of course -- not the workforce reduction but its size, saying there won’t be even close to 110,000 workers laid off -- and they called me a gadfly, which was apparently intended as criticism, but I’m rather proud of it.
What Back to the Future II's vision of 2015 got right
Marty McFly visits the year 2015 in Back to the Future Part II, the sequel to Robert Zemeckis’ 1985 masterpiece "Back to the Future".
Now that we’ve finally hit the year portrayed in the film it’s time to give them a report card on the things they got right.