Xpertfeed

Summary: There are no shortage out there of power banks for iPhone and Android devices, but Ugreen introduces a portable charger for GoPro Hero 5/6 owners. GoPro cameras are great fun and capable of capturing some amazing shots, but I do find that they burn through batteries at quite a rate. While you can charge a GoPro direct from a power bank, you can't use the GoPro as a camera while it's charging the internal battery. But accessories maker Ugreen has come out with a power bank that can be used to recharge GoPro batteries directly without going through the camera. The  Ugreen 10,000mAh portable battery charger  not only features the regular USB-A 5.1V/2.4A port, but also has a slot that can take a single GoPro Hero 5/6 battery for recharging. The 10,000mAh battery pack has enough power for the following: iPhone X: 2.7 times iPhone 8: 4 times Samsung Galaxy S8: 2.4 times iPad mini 4/Nintendo Switch: 1.4 times GoPro Hero 5/6battery: 6 times The power ...

Summary: Welcome to the future transparency of today as quantum computers reveal all currently encrypted secrets -- a viable scenario within just a few years. Quantum computers will be able to instantly break the encryption of sensitive data protected by today's strongest security, warns the head of IBM Research. This could happen in a little more than five years because of advances in quantum computer technologies. "Anyone that wants to make sure that their data is protected for longer than 10 years should move to alternate forms of encryption now," said Arvind Krishna, director of  IBM Research . Krishna was speaking at a meeting of The Churchill Club in San Francisco on a panel (above, second from right) discussing quantum computers in business. The panel, which included Kam Moler, a professor of Physics at Stanford University, as well as Bob Stolte, a managing director at JPMorgan, was moderated by journalist Martin Giles (first from left). Quantum compute...

Summary:Microsoft patches two flaws that are already under attack, among the 67 bugs in May's Patch Tuesday update. Microsoft's Patch Tuesday update addresses a critical flaw in the Windows VBScript engine that attackers are using to compromise Windows machines through Internet Explorer. The patch follows an alarm by researchers at Qihoo 360 Core Security in April that well-resourced hackers were using a then suspected IE zero-day flaw to infect Windows PCs on a "global scale". The IE attack, dubbed 'Double Kill', was delivered via Office documents that open a malicious webpage in the background. In  an advisory  crediting Qihoo 360 Core Security researchers and Kaspersky Lab malware analysts for discovering a critical bug tagged as CVE-2018-8174, Microsoft details a remote code execution flaw residing not in Internet Explorer but the Windows VBScript engine. However, it also explains the bug can be exploited through Internet Explorer. Micros...

Summary: Microsoft wants to banish '​inconvenient, insecure, and expensive' passwords. So what's going to replace them? Microsoft wants to banish the use of passwords to log into Windows devices, and has showcased some of the new technologies it wants to use to make this happen. "Nobody likes passwords. They are  inconvenient, insecure, and expensive . In fact, we dislike them so much that we've been busy at work trying to create a world without them -- a world without passwords," said Karanbir Singh, principal program manager for enterprise and security at Microsoft, in a blog post. Singh said the goal was to make it possible for end users to never deal with a password in their day-to-day lives, and to provide instead user credentials that cannot be cracked, breached, or phished. For Microsoft, multi-factor authentication and biometrics is seen as a good replacement for passwords -- using a physical key, and/or your face or fingerprint to log ...

Summary: Windows Phone users will lose support for their native Microsoft Teams, Yammer, and Skype for Business apps as of next month. Late last week, Microsoft quietly acknowledged that it will  drop support for the Windows Phone apps for Teams, Yammer, and Skype for Business . This fact isn't surprising to anyone who has been watching what's been going on with Windows Phone over the past few years, but the suddenness of Microsoft's declaration may catch some by surprise. (And based on tweets and emails I am getting, it did.) As of May 20, 2018, Microsoft will no longer make these apps available for download from the Microsoft Store and will no longer support them. The Skype for Business and Yammer apps "may continue to work, but we can't provide any guarantees," said officials in a Microsoft support article. "These apps will no longer receive updates or support." At the same time, the Microsoft Teams app for Windows Phone "will...

Summary:Prepping for the next wave of automation may be a messy affair, involving tearing up processes and training robots. Lately, I've been hearing some people refer to the incoming wave of labor-replacing, process-enhancing automation as a "digital workforce," which suggests some type of side-by-side pairing with the human workforce, just as contingent workforce gets paired with full-time workforce. Photo: Honda Whether you or not you like these new semantics, the constellation of technologies that are birthing the digital workforce are a force to be harnessed, and if applied with forethought and entrepreneurial spirit, may open up new horizons for companies and their carbon-and-water-based human employees. Such is the perspective taken by Justin Watson, David Wright and Marina Gordeeva, all with Deloitte UK, and authors of a recent  report  based on a survey of 400 executives and finds a majority, 53 percent, have initiated efforts to embed  Robotic Process ...

Summary:Before jumping on the boat with an IoT solution, it is critical for enterprise architects to understand the fundamental principals and concepts The concept of the Internet of Things has revolutionised the opportunities for businesses to take their operational efficiency to a new level. The combination of smart sensors, connected devices, and intelligent operation can unearth new dimensions of opportunities in this digital era. Information Technology giants like Microsoft are investing heavily in software offering around IoT. This includes ready to consume SaaS solutions like Azure IoT Central, IoT components-as-a-service like IoT hub, Stream Analytics, and Events hub, and real-time analytics technologies like IoT Edge. Before jumping on the boat with an IoT solution, it is critical for enterprise architects to understand the architectural layers, design principles, and subsystems involved in a solution. Architecture Principles To start with, let's first expl...

Summary: The tech giant now boasts four Azure regions in Australia, with its latest, Azure Australia Central, allowing organisations to collocate legacy and modern applications. Microsoft has announced the go-live of two new regions in Australia targeted towards government, financial services, and critical national infrastructure clients in Australia and New Zealand that are making the move to multi-cloud. The new offering, Azure Australia Central, has been designed for mission-critical workloads, and comes after Microsoft achieved official accreditation from the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) in June, allowing the company to offer 50 services on the ASD Certified Cloud Services List across Azure and Office 365. Offered out of Canberra Data Centres (CDC), the two new Azure cloud regions will allow for the storing of unclassified and protected-level data. CDC built its facilities in advance as top secret, which allows Microsoft to offer services from within ...

Summary: T he P20 range takes the battle to the big two, but overthrowing Apple will be tough Huawei has launched two new flagship smartphones with a big emphasis on their cameras as the company tries to take the fight to Apple and Samsung. In Paris it unveiled the P20 and P20 Pro which promise to boost the quality of photos taken by using AI and -- in the case of the P20 Pro -- a three-lens camera set up. It's been a tough time in the smartphone market recently, but Huawei has continued to grow, closing the gap on Samsung and Apple during 2017. While both Apple and Samsung saw their market share slide in the last quarter of the year, Huawei managed to grow again thanks to the introduction of new phones including the Mate 10 Lite, Honor 6C Pro, and Enjoy 7S. Separate figures from analyst IDC show that while Huawei dropped market share in the fourth quarter of 2017, it was still up significantly for the year. Huawei shipped 153.1 million units, up 9.9 percent fro...

Summary: Nike has big digital plans as it goes direct to consumer, aims to innovate faster and build relationships. It is also beefing up its analytics team. Nike has acquired Zodiac Inc., a consumer data analytics company, in a sign that its digital transformation plans revolve around customer lifetime value. The athletic shoe and apparel maker, which is in a dogfight with Adidas and Under Armour, has a strategy called Consumer Direct Offense that aims to develop products faster with personalization at scale. Nike also has to focus on selling direct and owning the customer relationship since retail is a messy industry. In 2016, Zodiac raised $3 million in seed funding to launch predictive analytics tools based on forecasting individual customer lifetime value. The models were developed by Wharton School Professor Peter Fader and a team of data scientists at the University of Pennsylvania. Zodiac's mission is to understand the value of an individual customer to boost ...