Archive for March 10, 2017

BREAKING: Rogers Ignite Internet Customers Continue To Have Issues After Last Night’s Outage

Posted in Commentary with tags on March 10, 2017 by itnerd

Last night Rogers had a major outage that affected all of Southern Ontario and some points beyond where users could not surf the Internet Intermittently and there were significant ping times and a large amount of packet loss. The issue was thought to have been fixed this morning:

Apparently it isn’t fixed. Reports are once again coming in of people complaining of the same issues that they were complaining about last night. DSLReports and Canadianoutages.com are tracking an uptick in reports of issues. For example, the latter not only has a graph of the volume of issues:

Capture

But their live outage map looks similar to the one from last night:

Capture

While the volume of complaints isn’t nearly as high as last night, there clearly is still an issue that has enough scale to it that it is difficult to miss. So Rogers declaring the issue as fixed is clearly premature. I will be tracking this story and provide updates as I get them. In the meantime, I hope Rogers has a plan to bring back full functionality for their Internet users quickly and completely as I can say that based on the feedback that I am getting directly and what I am seeing online, there are a lot of very unhappy campers out there right now.

UPDATE: The latest issue appears to be resolved as of 2:30PM. I seem to have no issues at present. But there are still scattered reports of issues.

2 Comments »

PC Plus App Update Forces You To Delete And Re-Add Membership Cards

Posted in Commentary with tags on March 10, 2017 by itnerd

Hot off a incident where a security issue led to points being stolen, though it’s apparently the users fault for having weak passwords, Loblaw has pushed out updates for the PC Points app for Android and iOS. Now, what’s interesting is this statement in the release notes for the app. A screen shot from the Android version of the app is below:

Capture

You’ll note that the very last line requires you to delete and replace any PC Plus card in your digital wallet. My guess is that they are trying to invalidate any cards that were created from accounts that were pwned. But you have to wonder if this is also connected with an attempt to quietly beef up their security so that Loblaw does not get pwned again. Whatever the reason, if you’re a PC Plus user, you should likely get the update and remove and replace your cards ASAP.

Leave a comment »

Concur Expands Into Brazil

Posted in Commentary with tags on March 10, 2017 by itnerd

Cloud-based travel and expense management company Concur yesterday announced it is entering Brazil. If you’re not familiar with Concur, the platform offers a fully connected travel and expense platform ecosystem that integrates its products, suppliers and partners.

Brazil is the 9th largest market globally for business travel with $30.5B in spend and a key market in Concur’s global growth strategy. With the launch, Concur will have a lock on the top 10 global markets for business travel according to GBTA.

The opportunity in Brazil has connections to the recent recession. Despite no local market investment or presence to date, Concur is the leading travel and expense provider in Brazil with more than 160 local customers using Concur solutions – and demand is quickly growing. During a recession, companies tend to evaluate and review costs more closely. Concur helps companies bring greater transparency and control to their travel and expenses which builds trust with stakeholders.

If you want to learn more about Concur surf over to concur.com or the Concur blog.

 

Leave a comment »