Software : Salesforce agrees to acquire RelateIQ to bolster intelligence automation |
- Salesforce agrees to acquire RelateIQ to bolster intelligence automation
- Windows Phone users admitted to BBM as beta version goes live
- Exclusive: Village X seeks to revolutionize online deals and charitable giving
- Amazon launches Zocalo to compete with Box and Dropbox
- Get your Google searches back on track with 'No, I said' command
- Microsoft to replace Office 365 for SMBs, launches Microsoft Azure StorSimple
- Google's got a solution for its Android Wear paid app problem
- Verizon launches a firewall solution with more rule sets and 'quicker deployments'
- Network downtime is incredibly costly for SMBs
- Industry voice: Three easy steps to protecting your data
- Industry voice: Why startups need an emerging markets distribution strategy
- EMC buys TwinStrata, upgrades XtremIO software to 3.0
- Massive Flash flaw affects Google, YouTube, Twitter
- Apple swapping out Google with its Maps in at least one web app
- Barracuda launches virtual license portability
- iOS 8 Health app will track your steps and your caffeine intake
| Salesforce agrees to acquire RelateIQ to bolster intelligence automation Posted:  Salesforce.com has agreed to acquire CRM startup RelateIQ for $390 million (around £228 million, AU$415 million). RelateIQ pulls data from email, smartphones, social media and calendar entries to provide sales teams with customer information. The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company was founded in July 2011. Unlike other CRM companies, which require users to manually input today for later use, RelateIQ automatically culls information and inserts it into the CRM database. This is intended to allow sales teams to focus less on data entry and more on using the information to perform sales-related tasks. Salesforce continues to dominate an industry that continues to show impressive growth. The global CRM software market grew by almost 14% last year, according to Gartner Research. Revenue reached $20.4 billion (around £12 billion, AU$22 billion )in 2013. Salesforce strengthened its position as market leader, with an increase in revenue of 30.3% year-on-year. Integration and acquisitionPart of the reason for its success is the company's willingness and ability to engage and innovate to form data-enabling partnerships. In April, Salesforce and LiveHive integrated systems in order to provide engagement analytics and sales insights for Salesforce users "to share, track and monitor," Salesforce said at the time. Last year, Salesforce and Evernote collaborated on a tool that allows users to add sales information, customer research, contacts, meeting notes and email exchanges stored in Evernote Business directly to customer records in a single click. The same month, Workday announced it would work Salesforce.com's Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications into its Human Capital Management (HCM), Financial Management and Big Data Analytics services. If the RelateIQ acquisition is approved, it would be Salesforce's largest acquisition since it acquired ExactTarget for $2.5 billion (around £1.5 billion, AU$2.7) in June of last year. |
| Windows Phone users admitted to BBM as beta version goes live Posted:  Windows Phone users can now access the popular BlackBerry Messenger app following the launch of a beta version for Microsoft's mobile operating system. In an announcement on the BlackBerry blog, the firm said it was answering 'demand' from Windows Phone users for the same privileges afforded to Android and iOS users late last year. "We've gotten an incredible number of requests for BBM to come to Windows Phone," the blog read. "In the coming weeks we'll be ready to welcome millions of Windows Phone users to the growing BBM community." A full app launch is coming soon, but Windows Phone fans can sign up for the limited beta today, where they'll get the usual access to chats, group chats, feeds and BBM contacts integration, all packaged in a Windows Phone interface. |
| Exclusive: Village X seeks to revolutionize online deals and charitable giving Posted:  We've all spent money on a daily deal site. We see something we like. We see that it's significantly cheaper than it would be in-store. We click purchase. We feel good about ourselves. But what if there was a way to extend these positive vibes beyond just cost-savings? What if daily and online deals could go beyond providing consumers with less expensive products and businesses with inexpensive promotion? Michael Buckler, a former Peace Corps volunteer, engineer and intellectual property and trade attorney, has found a way to make this possible. By 2016, US consumers will spend $5.5 billion (around £3.2 billion, AU$5.9 billion) on online deal sites like Groupon or LivingSocial, according to BIA/Kelsey research. This figure represents $167 (around £97, AU$178) per US citizen, or roughly $1.3 billion (around £760 million, AU$1.38 billion) more than the gross domestic product of Malawi. Putting that money to useAlong with partners Lauren Corke, Ryan Dunn, and David Fields (all former Peace Corp volunteers), Buckler is in the process of creating an app, Village X, that provides consumers with discounts and deals, as well as an opportunity to donate to good causes. Buckler says he was inspired to create Village X after living in Malawi from 2006-2008 as a Peace Corps volunteer. There, he met locals living on less than $2 (around £1.17, AU$2.13) a day, constantly striving to develop their villages, but without the resources and institutional support to make their dreams a reality. He wanted to find a way to help these villagers, and others like them, but he was frustrated by the existing support systems in place. City-based international organizations attempt to help underdeveloped villages, Buckler acknowledges, but he says these organizations too often dictate the priorities of their work rather than catering to the needs of the village. The organizations, he contends, irresponsibly spend the money allotted to helping the villages on salaries and per diems given to those brought in to help. Buckler also scoffs at the amount of money wasted flying in volunteers and driving back and forth in gas-guzzling SUVs between tasks. How Village X worksVillage X isn't the first online deal site with a charitable arm. Groupon, LivingSocial, DealGooder and SharingSpree are just a few of the organizations engaged in the space. However, Buckler says his team has developed a system that would enable donations made during online deal redemptions to be funneled directly to villages in need. His system matches socially conscious consumers and socially conscious businesses by promoting partner businesses and discounts every day, year-round within the Village X app. Promotions are redeemed by consumers through the app with the click of a button. As shoppers redeem their promotions, the app encourages them to donate to an identified grassroots project that is planned, implemented, documented and partially financed by an underserved community. Once consumers donate to a specific cause Village X's Store to Village System provides the giver with live mobile updates in the form of pictures and texts showing exactly how the money has assisted others. Good 'business karma'The app, Buckler says, benefits partner businesses by providing them with year-round promotion, stimulated business volume, goodwill or "business karma." Village X has five partners (mostly in the DC area, where Buckler's team is based). His goal is to have at least ten partners for the six-to-nine-month pilot phase of the app's rollout, which he hopes to begin in November. Village X partners include a wine bar, a home accessories store, a fair trade company, a downtown DC restaurant, and a neighborhood bar. Seed funding"When I returned from Malawi, I scoured international development literature, trying to reconcile my experience on the front lines with the operations of the multi-billion dollar international development industry," Buckler says. "At Village X, we've flipped the concept [of charitable giving] on its head. We use our Peace Corps expertise to handle the development side, and, instead of aggregating and passing money, we assign money to specific projects, putting donors directly in contact with recipients. We call this approach 'people-to-people.'" Buckler hopes a similar people-to-people approach will provide Village X with the resources he needs to get the technology up and running. At time of publication, Village X had raised more than a third of what Buckler hopes to in order to launch the system in November. |
| Amazon launches Zocalo to compete with Box and Dropbox Posted:  Amazon has unveiled an enterprise storage and collaboration service designed to compete with Box, Dropbox, Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive. The service, Amazon Zocalo, allows users to save, send, and collaborate on documents stored in the cloud. Zocalo users will be able to access the platform via PCs, Macs and most tablet devices, including iPad, Kindle Fire, and Android tablets. Amazon has given IT administrators the ability to integrate the platform with their corporate directories, so that they can monitor how, where and with whom files are shared and stored. Amazon Zocalo is available with a 30-day free trial that offers 200 GB of storage per user for up to 50 users. After the trial, Zocalo will be priced at $5 per user per month (around £2.92, AU$5.33), for 200 GB. CompetitionAmazon's main competition in the field is Dropbox, which has been a step ahead of everyone in the enterprise cloud storage space. In April, Dropbox made its storage offering more attractive by providing users with a means of working together on Office documents including Word, Excel and Powerpoint. Earlier in the month, Dropbox made Dropbox for Business available to all users, and it also enabled users to access two different online storage compartments: one for personal use, and one for professional. BoxBox is on the verge of an initial public offering. The company just announced an additional $150 million (around £87.6 million, AU$160 million) in funding, a revenue increase of 94% in the first quarter for 2014 from the same period in 2013. However, it also reported having lost $38 million (around £22.2 million, AU$40.5 million) for the quarter an increase of $4 million (around £2.3 million, AU$4.26 million) compared with the same quarter the year before.
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| Get your Google searches back on track with 'No, I said' command Posted:  "OK Google" voice search is great - that is, until the device fails to understand you. Thankfully, the search giant has built a failsafe into its mobile apps for just such occasions. Google has announced the latest Android and iOS versions of the official Google Search app are hiding a secret superpower allowing users to correct erroneous search queries. Announced with a brief video demo posted to Google+, the trick uses the voice command "No, I said," uttered right after a misheard verbal search. This will force the results to correct themselves, just like magic. For example, a search for "baroque artists" could easily be misinterpreted as "broke artists" with plenty of humorous results; immediately using the voice command "No, I said baroque" will theoretically clear up the misunderstanding and produce the desired search results. Just say no"If it ain't baroque, don't fix it. But if it is, you can tell Google … and it'll correct itself. Works on the Google app for iOS and Android," the cheeky Google+ post from July 8 read. Curiously, Google makes no mention of such a unique feature being added in the latest releases notes for the Google Search apps, beyond the usual "bug fixes and performance improvements" on Google Play. Making a voice-activated correction is certainly a better option than having to start over again with a new search query, and should lower the blood pressure of smartphone users too lazy to type out their missives via Google Search. The addition of "No, I said" also makes the voice-activated, Google Now-powered assistant that much more powerful - especially compared to Apple's Siri, which currently isn't very good at recovering when she doesn't understand what you're saying.
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| Microsoft to replace Office 365 for SMBs, launches Microsoft Azure StorSimple Posted:  Microsoft will release three new Office 365 licenses for small and mid-size businesses (SMBs). The new plans will replace Microsoft's existing Office products for SMBs. Changes include price reductions, increased seat caps and more flexibility to upgrade to Office 365 Enterprise. The new plans, which will go into effect on October 1, include Office 365 Business, which contains a full suite of Office applications and 1TB of storage; Office 365 Business Essentials, which includes business email and calendar, Office Online, online meetings, IM, video conferencing, and cloud storage; and Office 365 Business Premium, which includes everything from the aforementioned plans. The new plans will replace current plans, Small Business, Small Business Premium and Midsize Business. Office 365 Business will cost roughly $8.25 a month (about £4.80, AU$8.80). Business Essentials will cost $5 a month (about £2.90, AU$5.30). Business Premium will cost $12.50 a month (about £7.30, AU$13.30). Beginning October 1, 2015 existing Microsoft Office SMB customers will need to select one of the plans in order to keep their Office licenses. StorSimpleMicrosoft also released the StorSimple 8000 series hybrid storage arrays, which include two new Azure-based capabilities to centralize data management. The new StorSimple 8000 series features the StorSimple 8100 and the StorSimple 8600. Both platforms leverage Azure Storage as a hybrid cloud tier for automatic capacity expansion and off-site data protection. They each also come with the Microsoft Azure StorSimple Virtual Appliance, which enables StorSimple technology to run as an Azure virtual machine. The Virtual Appliance enables disaster recovery by enabling virtual applications that store data on the 8100 or 8600 to access previously uploaded data. The 8100 and 8600 also come with Microsoft Azure's StorSimple Manager, which consolidates management of all Azure and StorSimple platforms and appliances. Administrators can now centrally control all aspects of StorSimple storage and data management from the cloud. |
| Google's got a solution for its Android Wear paid app problem Posted:  Google has moved quickly to issue a workaround for a serious issue preventing early Android Wear adopters from using paid apps on their device. It emerged earlier this week that paid Android apps leave the DRM encryption element behind when transferred to an Android Wear device via Bluetooth. Translate: paid content didn't work. As a result, Google is promising a fix, but in the meantime has advised app developers to move the encryption files to a different portion of the app in order for the transfer to be successful. In a post on the Android Developers' blog Google advised users to move the APK from the "assets" directory folder into the "res/raw" directory in order for paid apps to work. Big fix on the wayFor those users who've snapped up a Samsung Gear Live or an LG G Watch, you should be able to access those paid-for apps sooner rather than later as developers make the adjustments. Google has yet to release details of when it'll bring the full fix into place, but has promised it in a future update. The blog post read: "We will be updating the 'wearApp' Gradle rule in a future update to the Android SDK build tools ... We're working to make this easier for you in the future, and we apologize for the inconvenience." |
| Verizon launches a firewall solution with more rule sets and 'quicker deployments' Posted:  Verizon Digital Media Services has launched a cloud-based firewall application that can be integrated with content delivery networks to provide attack defense in less than five minutes, the company said. The Verizon Web Application Firewall (WAF) provides users with "more rule sets deployed to the cloud than other cloud alternatives," according to a Verizon statement. The rules enable web users to determine if an attack has occurred so that immediate actions can be taken. The more rules a user can rely on, the quicker he or she will be able to thwart attacks. The WAF combines the ModSecurity Core Rule Set and the commercial Trustwave rule set with the WAF's own technology to provide users with a comprehensive overview of web functionality and defense. What is Verizon Digital Media Services?Verizon Digital Media Services provides web platforms, security services, and video technology to enterprises. It is a part of Verizon Communications, which recently released a report that revealed nine basic "patterns" make up 92% of Internet security threats. The report analyzed 100,000 security incidents that took place over the past 10 years. The data revealed that the use of stolen or misused credentials is the top way to gain access to information. Two-thirds of breaches exploit weak or stolen passwords and distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS) have grown stronger year-over-year for the past three years. |
| Network downtime is incredibly costly for SMBs Posted:  Network downtime costs 80% of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) at least $20,000 (about £11,500, AU$21,300) per hour, according to a report conducted by IDC for Acronis. For 20% of SMBs one hour of downtime can cost at least $100,000 (about £58,400, AU$107,000). Despite the costs involved with data downtime, the report, which examined data protection and disaster recovery across eight countries, revealed that global businesses are less likely than US businesses to back up data to the cloud. Ninety-three percent of US SMBs back up at least some of their data to the cloud, whereas only 65% of their international counterparts claim to do so as well. Thirty-seven percent of respondents back up servers across virtual, physical and cloud-based environments. Only 13% of organizations rely on cloud storage alone to house all of their data. SMBs and the need for advanced techBecause of resource and talent limitations, SMBs must make informed technology decisions in order to stay ahead of the competition. A Symantec study conducted last year revealed 83% of SMBs that are confident in IT operations use technology as a strategic business driver. The most confident organizations listed information security as a business priority, with 78% stating that they are somewhat or extremely secure. Organizations that were less confident in IT's ability to drive business growth were also less likely to list information security as a business priority (39%). SMB cost-savingsIn addition to new revenue sources, SMBs also leverage technology to save money. The time saved by small businesses that use mobile devices in their day-to-day activities is equivalent to $67.5 billion (about £40.2bn or au$71.8bn) a year, according to a study conducted by AT&T and the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council. Despite the inherent cost-savings involved with enhanced mobility, 70% of IT decision-makers at small-to-mid-size businesses do not believe the C-Suite will increase IT spending to provide them with the resources necessary to tackle additional security problems created by the Internet of Things, according to a survey conducted by Opinion Matters for GFI Software. The same survey also revealed small business IT decision-makers do not think existing anti-spam, anti-virus and anti-malware infrastructures will protect their organizations from the new endpoints created by the Internet of Things. Almost half of those surveyed said firewalls would be their top priority in an Internet of Things era, while 35.7% cited mobile device management. Solutions among usBecause of data concerns among SMBs, companies like HP and Acronis have launched solutions designed to provide added security at lower cost, to ensure that organizations with fewer resources can avoid the potential revenue losses reported in the IDC study. To conduct this research, IDC surveyed IT professionals at organizations with fewer than 1000 employees. Survey respondents were based in France, Germany, Russia, the UK, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and the US. |
| Industry voice: Three easy steps to protecting your data Posted:  The amount of data in existence is literally growing by the second. In fact, 90% of the world's data was created in just the last two years. It's not just the amount that's increasing, but the value too. Businesses of all sizes have found data to be amongst their most important assets, which is why a loss event can be a truly frightening proposition. For a company like Amazon, data loss and its associated downtime can be especially pricey (a 2013 estimate put the cost at more than $65M per minute), but you don't have to be the biggest retailer in the world to feel the pain. A recent study conducted by my company, in conjunction with research firm IDC, found that downtime can be a killer for SMBs as well. Of the 400 companies surveyed, nearly 80% estimated that downtime costs them at least $20,000 per hour or more, and more than 20% estimate it costs them at least $100,000. Recent examplesLoss events can be felt by all areas of the business —from sales and marketing to HR and R&D —and can have long-term negative consequences on productivity, revenues and even public perception in some instances. A few recent high-profile incidents have made the potential impacts of data loss abundantly clear. A computer crash caused the loss of thousands of emails sent by former IRS official Lois Lerner, who is currently the target of a congressional probe, resulting in a serious setback for investigators. Similarly, code hosting company CodeSpaces recently fell victim to an attack and extortion attempt, resulting in partial or complete deletion of most of their data and forcing the company to shut down. The reason? All of its data and backups were stored on Amazon Web Services, which were completely wiped out by the attack. The 3-2-1 ruleThese incidents prove that today, more than ever, all companies need a comprehensive data protection plan, so that at least one copy of data will always survive. A tried and true method to follow is the 3-2-1 rule: Make three copies of every piece of important data, store that data in two different formats and keep one copy offsite. This ensures complete protection in the event of a data disaster or breach. The 3-2-1 rule guarantees that no matter what— whether it's human error, hardware failure or natural disaster — your company is protected and able to focus on the bottom line. So how exactly does the 3-2-1 rule work? 3 copiesIn addition to the original copy, you should always have two additional copies of your data, whether it's on a server, network attached storage, hard drive, the cloud or somewhere else. This ensures that no single event will wipe out all of your important data. 2 formatsThe second law of the 3-2-1 rule states that you should keep copies of your data on at least two different media or storage types. This likely includes an internal drive as well as an external media such as a disk, tape, flash, and network or cloud storage. Ideally, one of your local backups should be created using image technology, which backs up the entire operating system, applications and files, so you don't have to reinstall or reconfigure your systems and preferences again. In essence, image backup enables you to restore an entire system to how it was a specific point in time. Each medium has different failure modes and this ensures that there is no common failure mode. 1 copy offsiteStoring at least one copy off premise is essential to ensure protection against physical disasters like fire, flood or theft. When creating multiple copies, preserving the integrity of the initial copy becomes of paramount importance, otherwise every replica built off of that copy will have the same flaws. If you're storing to multiple locations, all files must be checked for consistency. From there, deduplication techniques will ensure that you can eliminate redundant data blocks, while encryption will add security and cataloging and indexing will allow for quick retrieval. Today's IT managers face a significant challenge. The amount of data each company generates grows every second, and with it, the need for a solid back up strategy. Finding such a strategy requires research and careful consideration. Managers should be on the lookout for solutions that can adapt to rapidly changing and high-velocity data, and that they meet a company's needs for security, deduplication, replication, speed and efficiency. And while it's tempting to put these tasks off until tomorrow, planning is essential to preventing a disaster. For every company, data loss is just a question of when, not if.
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| Industry voice: Why startups need an emerging markets distribution strategy Posted:  All too often, startups try to execute on go to market strategies strictly focused on finding traction in the United States or EU and then hoping that success in these markets translates into direct success globally. While some companies do achieve success in both developed and developing markets this is the exception: not the rule. For every Facebook and Twitter to hit the market, thousands of startups hang their 'open for business' shingle in N. America and hear nothing but crickets. Effectively, startups following that strategy are making success in the hardest markets a prerequisite for rolling out into more accessible markets. Following the "if you make it here, you can make it anywhere" mantra isolates the company from the majority of its user base, which ever more everyday resides globally. Analyst Mary Meeker's most recent "State of the Internet: 2014" report points out that 9 out of 10 internet properties are made in the United States but 79% of their users are outside the U.S. That data point says it all. Global markets matterStart-ups need to bake this into their go to market strategy from day one. And conditions have never been more favorable for small startups to do so for 3 reasons:
Most immediately, the cost to localize an app or web product has dropped at least tenfold in the past four years. Companies like CrowdIn and freelance markets like Elance now mean you can access quality translators and add a new language for an app for less than $1000. International social mediaSocial media penetration –particularly Twitter – is saturated enough to make viral discovery and distribution a reality when it wasn't four years ago. Meaning, you can build your brand without having to navigate less accessible in-country advertising scenes. And finally, forging partnerships with consumer cellular telcos and OEMs for device preloading are more accessible than in North America and Europe. Simply put, it's easier to get a meeting with Brazil's 'Oi' (formerly Telemar) than Verizon. If you can't staff to do direct deals with carriers and OEMs, companies like App Attach can give you direct access to carriers and OEMs through their closed app market. This approach works. Examples are out there. Quixey, which has built a ground-breaking way of marrying deep search around apps and app data, saw the opportunity of prioritizing expansion at a pretty early point developmentally, partnering with one of Singapore's main info-communication companies, StarHub. Zomato – a restaurant discovery platform, owns its space in 12 and counting countries. This list is growing by the minute. To put it another way, if you're launched a startup and aren't happy with your growth in the US market, stop waiting for the hockey stick and go global.
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| EMC buys TwinStrata, upgrades XtremIO software to 3.0 Posted:  Shares of EMC fell heavily yesterday as the company made a slew of announcements including the acquisition of cloud storage startup, TwinStrata. EMC stock fell by 1.6% on the day that saw the value of the infrastructure giant fall to just over $54 billion (around £31.6 billion, AU$58 billion). TwinStrata is platform-agnostic, supporting Amazon S3, Rackspace Cloud, Google, HP and many other cloud storage providers and its CloudArray technology is probably what sealed the deal. The purchase of TwinStrata will allow EMC to bundle services such as disaster recovery, offline backup, tape replacement and multi-site file storage to its VMAX^3 enterprise clients in a transparent manner to cloud repositories. Speaking of the VMAX^3, three new models (100K, 200K and 400K) will replace the existing tiered models (10K, 20K and 40K) with its Dynamic Virtual Matrix architecture supporting up to 384 Intel Xeon, Ivy Bridge-based CPUs. It's all about flash storages and lakesIn other news, EMC upgraded the software for its all-flash array, XtremIO. Version 3.0 - which will be available as a software update later this quarter - allows bigger, faster clusters (up to 120TB X-Bricks with 12 active controllers, 50% higher IOPS performance) and offers inline compression and deduplication which offers up to 6X storage capacity boost (although your mileage will vary depending on the data). EMC has also unveiled a cheaper X-Brick, aptly named the Starter X-Brick that offers the same features as its bigger brother but with half the capacity (5TB). It also added an "Xpect More" programme for its customers with 7-year maintenance price protection, 3-year money back warranty and flash endurance protection. Last on the list is a major upgrade to EMC's Isilon OneFS (including native support for Hadoop Distributed File System) plus new Isilon products (S210 and X410) as well as solutions that target Big Data analytics clients and improve their capacities to handle mammoth amounts of unstructured data (i.e. data lake). |
| Massive Flash flaw affects Google, YouTube, Twitter Posted:  A Swiss Google engineer, Michele Spagnuolo, has managed to come up with a tool that exploits three characteristics of Adobe's Flash and JSONP (JavaScript Onject Notation with padding). In a blog post, he wrote: "I present Rosetta Flash, a tool for converting any SWF file to one composed of only alphanumeric characters in order to abuse JSONP endpoints, making a victim perform arbitrary requests to the domain with the vulnerable endpoint and exfiltrate potentially sensitive data, not limited to JSONP responses, to an attacker-controlled site". Sites affected by the flaw that have been known to be impacted by the flaw include Google itself, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr and Ebay. It is likely that they will have all, by now, fixed the flaw and everyone is urged to download updates for their respective browsers. Spagnuolo has uploaded Rosetta Flash to Gitbub while Adobe has issued an official statement saying that "These [...] vulnerabilities [...] could potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system" |
| Apple swapping out Google with its Maps in at least one web app Posted:  Two years ago Apple began replacing Google Maps with its own ill-received Apple Maps. It's been a rough ride, but Apple's nav offering now spans many of the company's devices and services. Today, you can add one more to the list as Cupertino begins to implement Apple Maps into its Find My iPhone web app. Find My iPhone lets users pinpoint their iPhones on a map using an iPad or other device, including web browsers (at iCloud.com) on desktop and laptop computers. The iOS app already used Apple Maps, and now, at least on the iCloud beta site and for some users, the web app does as well. A not-so-clean breakApple still uses Google Maps for its website's retail store listings, though not much else. Apple no doubt intended to eradicate Google Maps from its services and devices all along, but the many problems that have plagued its offering have slowed that process. By now, though, Apple Maps has improved, and it's about time Apple started putting more faith in its own service by implementing it everywhere possible. This development may also tie in to Apple's Maps team's September 2013 job listing seeking developers to "design, develop and maintain complex front-end code for a new secret project" including "an advanced web platform." Thanks in part to that job listing it's been speculated that Apple plans to launch a standalone Apple Maps web app much like Google's maps.google.com, but so far no real evidence of that has come to light. Meanwhile we've asked Apple to confirm that it's replacing Google Maps with Apple Maps in Find My iPhone across the board, and we'll update this story if we receive any information. |
| Barracuda launches virtual license portability Posted:  Security and storage company Barracuda Networks will launch virtual license portability that will enable clients to migrate some Barracuda products between public and private cloud environments at no additional cost. Barracuda clients that have purchased subscription solutions for on-premise, cloud or hybrid environments will be able to migrate the services between any kind of cloud environment. This will guarantee that organizations working on a hybrid-based model don't have to relinquish Barracuda licenses (or pay for an upgrade) if they diversify the cloud model off of which they will work. Portability will be available on Barracuda's Spam Firewall Vx and Web Application Firewall Vx products on August 3. Additionally, Barracuda will add portability to Load Balancer ADC Vx, Web Filter Vx, and SSL VPN Vx, in the future. It is immediately unclear when portability will be available for these additional products. Barracuda provides storage and security tools to more than 150,000 organizations, including AOL, CBS and Con Edison. |
| iOS 8 Health app will track your steps and your caffeine intake Posted:  While most mobile fitness apps are focused on wrist-friendly wearables, Apple could be planning to tap into the smartphone that is already in your pocket to record footsteps and other data. 9to5Mac has done some digging into Apple's latest iOS 8 beta 3, released July 7, and found it includes several improvements to the built-in Health app that made its debut during WWDC 2014. Starting with the latest beta, the Health app now appears to tap directly into the M7 motion tracking hardware included in the iPhone 5S to source fitness data. There's no need for the fabled iWatch or other fitness devices worn by the user. Using nothing but the handset, the Health app is now capable of reporting the user's motion in a Steps counter tab. The tab includes a full week's worth of data that can be sorted by Day, Week, Month or Year, similar to other health-centric apps. Watch that caffeineAccording to the report, the Health app works quite well using nothing more than the new on-device support, adding that tracking works for both steps and distance. In addition to tapping into the M7 sensor, Apple's Health app has also added caffeine intake to a long list of nutritional categories the software can track, a welcome addition for frequent java or tea junkies. Last but certainly not least, the Medical ID section of Health has been tweaked with a red navigation bar that makes the emergency card feature of the app a bit easier on the eyes. iOS 8 beta 3 was released to developers along with a third release of OS X Yosemite 10.10 for the Mac, which delivers iCloud Drive signup, Wi-Fi calling for T-Mobile iPhones and improvements to QuickType, Photos and FaceTime.
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