Archive for July, 2012

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Review: OS X Mountian Lion – Part 3: My Impressions

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , on July 30, 2012 by itnerd

So I’ve used OS X Mountain Lion for almost a week now and my impressions of it are very good. It’s not any faster, but Apple didn’t say it would be. So that’s fine. Having said that it feels like Apple spent a lot more time and effort than they did with Lion to make it feel polished. And to boot, it’s fixed a couple of annoying bugs that I had with Lion. For example, VNC connectivity under Lion quite frankly sucked. It had some serious problems in terms of VNC clients connecting to a computer that have been well documented. Those have thankfully been fixed. Finally, Mountain Lion hasn’t broken any of my apps. Thus this is a no brainier upgrade. If you’re running Lion, upgrade today. That’s right, don’t bother waiting for the bug fixes to appear. Don’t bother being conservative. Join the three million or so people who have already upgraded. You’ll be glad you did.

Microsoft, the bar has been set pretty high. Let’s see if your Windows 8 OS is up to the challenge.

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Surprise! If Your Employer Gave You A Smartphone, You Work More

Posted in Commentary with tags on July 30, 2012 by itnerd

Good Technology who makes security products and push e-mail services for smartphones did a study that I just tripped over today. The study states that if your employer supplied you with a smartphone, you fully expect to be working more:

In a survey of US working adults sponsored by Good Technology, more than 80 percent of people continue working when they have left the office – for an average of seven extra hours each week – almost another full day of work. That’s a total of close to 30 hours a month or 365 extra hours every year. They’re also using their cell phones to mix work and their personal life in ways never seen before.

Here are the key stats:

  • 68 percent of people check their work emails before 8 a.m.
  • The average American first checks their phone around 7:09 a.m.
  • 50 percent check their work email while still in bed
  • The work day is growing – 40 percent still do work email after 10 p.m.
  • 69 percent will not go to sleep without checking their work email
  • 57 percent check work emails on family outings
  • 38 percent routinely check work emails while at the dinner table

Here’s the problem that I see with this trend. First, you’re not being paid for this extra work. Second, there’s no line between work and life. Both of which are problematic. Sure these devices can help you to be more productive, but at the same time there have to be limits. Employers need to set limits to the use of these devices. They cannot expect workers to be available simply because they hand out these devices.

What do you think? Are employers taking advantage of their workforce by giving them smartphones? Do workers have to better manage their work life balance? Does something extreme like changes to the laws that govern labor have to be done? Post a comment and share your thoughts.

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Review: OS X Mountian Lion – Part 2: The New Features

Posted in Commentary with tags , , on July 28, 2012 by itnerd

I’ve used OS X Mountain Lion for almost two days now. There’s over 200 new features in this release of OS X. There’s no way I can cover them all. But here’s the key ones that you should care about:

  • If you have an Apple TV on your HDTV, then you can mirror the display of your Macbook to the TV over WiFi. The iPad has had this feature for some time so why not every other Apple product? There’s a problem though, you have to have the hardware to run it. Here’s the list of hardware that works with this feature:
    • iMac (mid-2011 or newer
    • Mac mini (mid-2011 or newer)
    • MacBook Air (mid-2011 or newer)
    • MacBook Pro (Early 2011 or newer)
  • Notification Center makes an appearance in Mountain Lion. A rather plain graphic added to the upper-right corner of your desktop’s toolbar: three parallel lines, the one in the center slightly shorter than the other ones. Click it and a panel opens up on the right. You can see everything from Tweet replies to e-mails. Facebook will be added later this year. Any notifications that you see are subtle and they can be tweaked in the control panel.
  • iChat is dead. Long live Messages. If you’re used to it on your iPhone, it works the same way in Mountain Lion. Text, video, it’s all there.
  • Game Center that has been in iOS for some time is now in Mountain Lion. There’s only a handful of games in there at the moment and currently there’s nothing that will make me want to dump my copy of Steam.
  • There’s more integration between the App Store and the OS. Click on Software Update and the App Store opens up for example. Clearly Apple wants you to use the App Store for your software needs.
  • There’s a bit more security in Mountain Lion. Gatekeeper is a new feature that keeps you safe by letting you know when apps do something that you may not like. It will even step in and stop an app from running if your security preferences are set to keep it from running. That may be good, that may be a sign of increasing control from Apple. Maybe both. We’ll see how that works.

In the next part of my review, I’ll give you my impressions of the OS and wrap things up.

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Earnings, Earnings, And More Earnings

Posted in Commentary with tags , , on July 26, 2012 by itnerd

Tis the season for earnings and there’s a lot to choose from. Let’s start with today’s big news. Facebook had it’s first report since their rather craptastic IPO. The results were less than stunning:

Facebook posted a net loss of $157-million, or 8 cents a share in the second quarter, due to hefty stock compensation charges related to its IPO, compared to net income of $240-million, or 11 cents, in the year-ago quarter.

Excluding the charges, Facebook said it earned 12 cents a share.

In its first report to Wall Street since the IPO, the world’s No.1 social networking company said that revenue in the three months ended June 30 was $1.18-billion, compared to $895-million in the year-ago quarter.

This was enough to send the stock sharply downwards in after hours trading. Not good if you’ve invested in the social networking giant.

Next was Apple earlier this week. The good news is that they beat their guidance and made an obscene amount of money:

The Company posted quarterly revenue of $35.0 billion and quarterly net profit of $8.8 billion, or $9.32 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $28.6 billion and net profit of $7.3 billion, or $7.79 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 42.8 percent compared to 41.7 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 62 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

Here’s the bad news. The street expected more:

But analysts had expected profits of $9.8 billion, or $10.38 a share, on $37.35 billion in revenues.

After the announcement, Apple’s shares were trading down more than $29 at under $572.

It’s a weird world when you make money and still get punished for it.

Finally, there’s Symantec. First they announced their earnings:

GAAP operating margin for the first quarter of fiscal year 2013 was 16.1 percent compared with 18.3 percent for the same quarter last year. GAAP net income for the fiscal first quarter was $172 million compared with net income of $191 million for the year-ago period. GAAP diluted earnings per share were $0.24 compared with $0.25 for the year ago quarter. Variation in year-over-year GAAP results were as expected due to increases in restructuring costs and IT infrastructure investments.

GAAP deferred revenue as of June 29, 2012, was $3.745 billion compared with $3.689 billion as of July 1, 2011, up 2 percent year-over-year and up 5 percent after adjusting for currency. Cash flow from operating activities for the first quarter of fiscal year 2013 was $340 million compared with $503 million for the year ago period.

Those are solid numbers. But the news doesn’t end there:

Symantec today announced that Enrique Salem, president and chief executive officer (CEO), has stepped down effective immediately and Symantec’s board of directors has appointed Steve Bennett president and chief executive officer, in addition to his continued role as chairman of the board.

Unlike the first two tech companies, this news didn’t affect the stock. That’s great for them.

Expect more releases to come next week.

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Fido Rolling Out LTE In Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and St. John’s

Posted in Commentary with tags , on July 26, 2012 by itnerd

For the last year or so, Rogers customers have been getting all the LTE lover. But now Fido customers can get some of that love too:

“We are thrilled to offer the benefits of LTE network technology to Fido customers this year,” said Steven Sarfin, senior director of marketing, Fido Solutions. “Our focus at Fido has always been on providing the best value to our customers. With data plans starting from $10/month, affordable LTE service is a perfect complement to the exclusive FidoADVANTAGE programs like FidoTRADE™, Fido LiveANSWERS™ and FidoDOLLARS™ our customers already enjoy.” Sarfin added.

But having LTE requires having devices that leverage that as well. Fido has that covered:

Coming this summer, the Fido Mobile Hotspot will be the first LTE-enabled device available from Fido. This device creates a Wi-Fi hotspot wherever, and whenever customers need it, and wirelessly connects up to 10 Wi-Fi capable devices simultaneously. LTE-enabled smartphones will be available at Fido later this year, and all of the Fido LTE-enabled devices are capable of running across Fido’s 4G HSPA+ network which covers 96 per cent of the population of Canada.

So. if you’re a Fido user it sounds like you’re going to get all the LTE love that you can handle this summer.

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Review: OS X Mountian Lion – Part 1: The Install

Posted in Commentary with tags , , on July 26, 2012 by itnerd

Normally, I don’t install any new OS the second it comes out. I usually wait until the first few bug fixes or service pack in the case of Windows comes out before diving in. That changed last night when I dropped $19.99 to get OS X Mountain Lion onto my MacBook Pro. It’s only available from the App Store and once you pay your money it starts a download of 4.3 GB. Make sure you’ve got a fast connection or that will take a while. Once that’s done it will start an installer that will do three minutes or work and then reboots your computer. The install then continues for the next 40 minutes or so and then there’s another reboot. At that point you’ve got Mountain Lion. Sound familiar? It’s basically the way you got OS X Lion last year. It’s clean and and simple. Anyone can do it.

Now, having had the OS installed for 24 hours I can say that I have not had any problems thus far. All my apps work and I haven’t had to re-learn anything the way I did with Lion. That’s a good thing. I can also say that it fixed a few annoyances that I had with Lion. More on that later.

The next part of this review will cover the new features that are part of this OS.

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Hey IT Nerd! What Do You Think Of The Privacy Issues That Elections Ontario Have?

Posted in Commentary with tags , on July 23, 2012 by itnerd

For those of you who don’t live in the Province of Ontario, there was a major privacy breach reported last week. Two USB drives with roughly 2.4 million voters names, birth dates, addresses, genders, and even if they voted or not disappeared without a trace. Here’s something that blows me away. This happened in April. We’re only finding out about it now. The risks for identity theft are through the roof.

So what do I think of this?  First of all, why would such sensitive data be on USB drives that anyone could access? That’s a huge problem in itself because data that sensitive should be someplace that is hard to get to. Second, if you must have this stuff on some sort of removable media, it should be encrypted. That way if it fall into the wrong hands, it’s useless. That brings me to my third point. Elections Ontario had policies to stop this from happening:

Elections Ontario stressed that protocol was not followed in this instance.

Its policies dictate that USB keys must be password protected and encrypted if they carry personal information, and that the keys must be in the custody of staff at all times.

In this particular case, two staff members, who were working in a warehouse in late April updating the permanent register of electors for Ontario, did not follow the the rules.

The two were supposed to secure the USB keys at the end of the work day, but failed to do so.

The next morning when they returned to work, the keys were gone.

Well, if you don’t follow your own rules, that’s a #epicfail. That has to change.

Here’s the bottom line. This data is likely being used for evil purposes as you read this. That is something that you can take to the bank. And that should scare voters in Ontario. It should also lead to laws that hold people and organizations accountable for stuff like this. By accountable, I mean fines and jail time. Make it hurt and stupidity such as this will stop.

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Third Largest Botnet Taken Down… Less Spam For You… For Now….

Posted in Commentary with tags , on July 22, 2012 by itnerd

Last week a group of researchers announced that Grum which was the third largest botnet on the planet had been taken down by blocking the botnet’s command and control servers in both the Netherlands and Panama. What does this mean for you? It means that 18% – as much as 50% of the world’s spam volume has just disappeared.

Excellent!

However the people who run this botnet were able to briefly bring it back up before it was shut down again. It’s likely not to stay down, though bringing it back may be a problem:

“It’s not about creating a new server. They’d have to start an entirely new campaign and infect hundreds of thousands of new machines to get something like Grum started again,” said Atif Mushtaq, a computer security specialist at FireEye.”They’d have to build from scratch. Because of how the malware was written for Grum, when the master server is dead, the infected machines can no longer send spam or communicate with a new server.”

So this is a win. But it may only be a short lived one before the mayhem starts again. So enjoy the reprieve from spam while it lasts.

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Have A Sonos HiFi System? Have A Tablet Or Smart Phone? Have They Got An App For You!

Posted in Commentary with tags on July 22, 2012 by itnerd

Sonos who makes some killer HiFi gear have announced updates for the smartphone and tablet apps. Sonos has made to its interface for Android and iOS devices. The key changes include:

  • Support for Retina screens on iOS devices.
  • Landscape format for Android devices.
  • Use of the physical volume rocker to control the Sonos system volume from iOS devices.
  • Support for 7 inch and 10 inch Android tablets.

Need more info? Check out this blog post for more. It’s great that Sonos is keen to update these apps as it really helps to leverage their impressive gear.

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Peer 1 Succeeds At Home And Abroad

Posted in Commentary with tags on July 22, 2012 by itnerd

Being Canadian I like to write about Canadian companies that are succeeding in the marketplace. Case in point is Peer 1 who are a hosting company out of Vancouver that I’ve written about on several occasions. They announced recently that they have had a record year, and is poised for continued growth as a key player in the international web hosting market. From the press release:

“We have seen significant growth in North America and overseas in the past twelve months,” said Fabio Banducci, President and CEO, PEER 1 Hosting. “That success couldn’t have been achieved without our people. Our people and their tireless dedication to superior customer service is the reason why companies around the globe are turning to PEER 1 to realize the potential of the internet.”

Now you can read the press release for all the details of all the things they did in the last twelve months (and all of them are very significant), but I’ll say this. Anytime a Canadian company can succeed at home and overseas, that’s a good thing. Success stories like Peer 1 should be applauded. I look forward to seeing more from them in the near future.

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