Archive for March 5, 2019

Salesforce Delivers myTrailhead

Posted in Commentary with tags on March 5, 2019 by itnerd

Salesforce has announced the general availability of myTrailhead, a learning experience platform that empowers organizations to create a culture of learning to continuously re-skill and skill up their employees. As the Fourth Industrial Revolution reshapes how we live and work, 33% of all in-demand skills will be new by 2020. With myTrailhead, organizations can skill up employees at scale with a reinvented and fun approach to learning that is customizable to their brand and personalized for every employee.

Shifting to a Continuous Learning Model in the Fourth Industrial Revolution
The Fourth Industrial Revolution brings an incredible wave of new innovations from artificial intelligence to robotics. With technology changing so rapidly, companies need to look beyond traditional, one-size-fits-all education platforms and seek out new approaches to learning. In fact, workplace learning is a proven driver of success—employees who spend more than five hours a week learning are 39% more productive, 47% less stressed and 21% happier on the job. Yet, a majority of companies lack a culture of learning, creating a gap between the organization’s need to rapidly embrace new technologies and their employees’ existing skill sets. Companies need to close this gap to succeed and put a focus on learning at every stage of their employees’ career.

Introducing myTrailhead: Create a Culture of Continuous Learning
With myTrailhead, companies can combine the power of Trailhead, Salesforce’s personal learning cloud, with their own brand, voice and tone in just a few clicks. Using the guided set-up, companies can easily pull in their existing content (including videos or presentations), create custom new content or use the existing free, public Trailhead content to create their own culture of learning. Using myTrailhead, employees can learn what they want, when they want, and managers have visibility into their organization’s existing skill sets and areas for improvement. Now, organizations can:

  • Scale Onboarding — Help employees skill up at any level or stage in their career with custom learning paths called Trailmixes. For example, when an employee is being onboarded, their learning journey starts with an automated custom Trailmix assigned to them and built specifically for their role. Assignments could include a welcome video from a company’s CEO, a trail on navigating the first few months on the job, or even an overview of a company’s history and core values. Once an employee reviews the content and takes a short quiz, they’ll earn points and badges, which can be shared on their profile to showcase the new skill.
  • Empower Employees to Re-skill and Upskill — Employees can learn what they want, when they want with bite-sized content that’s available on desktop or on the go with mobile. The free, public Trailhead library includes more than 500 modules spanning tech skills (like Blockchain Basics) to soft skills (like Cultivating Equality at Work), with new content added every six weeks. For example, a service agent can learn how to better leverage AI-powered insights within their console or take a module to learn how to build an Einstein bot.
  • Track and Measure Learning — Leaders have a complete view of their employees’ skills and expertise with Trail Tracker, an app available on Salesforce AppExchange, which assigns, tracks and reports on badges earned by their team with pre-built reports and dashboards. Managers can also use Trail Tracker to drive and incentivize performance by giving employees real-time feedback and recognition for demonstrating new skills and inspire them to reach goals with assignments, ranks and leaderboards.
  • Create Integrated Learning Across Salesforce — Built on the Salesforce Platform, myTrailhead integrates with Salesforce applications like Sales Cloud, Service Cloud and Marketing Cloud. In-app recommendations surface relevant learning with automated assignments, recommendations and notifications triggered by events. For example, if a sales rep is having trouble figuring out when to convert a lead to contact in Sales Cloud, a trail would appear that would help them learn the process.

Availability and Pricing

  • myTrailhead is generally available. myTrailhead is priced at $25 per user per month as an add-on to any Sales Cloud, Service Cloud or Platform license in Enterprise Edition or above.

Additional Information 

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An App From TELUS Health & Babylon Enables Canadians To Visit A Doctor Through Their Smartphone

Posted in Commentary with tags on March 5, 2019 by itnerd

Following a recent announcement, TELUS Health and Babylon are together launching Babylon by TELUS Health, a future-forward virtual healthcare solution that promises to revolutionize how Canadians take control of their own health from the convenience of a smartphone. Babylon by TELUS Health will empower Canadians with access to healthcare support and information day and night – a huge step forward in the evolution of Canada’s healthcare system and how patients currently access care. The app also improves the efficiency of communication with doctors to help drive better health outcomes for all Canadians.

At launch, British Columbians will be the first to get access to the app’s one-on-one video consultation feature, allowing them to speak directly and privately with a BC-licensed family doctor. This video consultation will be covered by the patient’s BC provincial MSP.

Canadians across the country who download the Babylon by TELUS Health app on iTunes or Google Play can immediately use the app’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbot Symptom Checker. Developed by a team of dedicated doctors and scientists, the Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered Symptom Checker draws on more than 500 million streams of medical knowledge and asks patients questions about their symptoms providing information on possible causes or courses of action.The smartphone app is available in English immediately, with a French version to follow later in the year.

Canadians can use Babylon by TELUS Health (BC-only at launch) to:

  • Book an appointment with a doctor through the app in seconds;
  • Access doctor consultation notes and video consults for quick reference and/or sharing;
  • Manage prescription details and preferred pharmacy for easy prescription pick up; and get referrals for diagnostic tests or specialists when needed.

Babylon’s suite of digital solutions is currently being used by approximately three million registered users outside of Canada and is accessible to tens of millions more through Babylon’s worldwide partnerships.

Plans are also currently underway to integrate Babylon’s virtual care platform into TELUS Health electronic medical records systems (EMRs) to enable physicians across the country to also easily conduct virtual sessions with their own patients. TELUS Health is committed to ensuring that patient privacy is respected and Babylon by TELUS Health meets or exceeds legal and industry standards for privacy. Patient records are retained in accordance with national best practice guidelines and all data is securely transmitted using industry-recognized encryption methods.

About Babylon

Babylon’s Mission is to put an accessible and affordable health service in the hands of every person on Earth. Babylon uses a combination of cutting-edge technology and the best available medical expertise to deliver 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week access to digital health tools (including health assessment, Symptom Checker and medical information tools), to people across Europe, North America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa, as well as video doctor consultations.

For more information, please visit: www.babylonhealth.com.

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Has Apple Quietly Fixed #Flexgate Related Issues In The 2018 MacBook Pros?

Posted in Commentary with tags on March 5, 2019 by itnerd

iFixit seems to think that Apple has quietly addressed the issues surrounding flex cable failures in the MacBook Pros that have led to a “stage light” effect on the screen, failure of the screen, or both. Something that has become known as #Flexgate. How did they do that? They made the flex cable longer:

However, when MacRumors user Olivia88 noticed their 2018 13” MacBook Pro seemed to have a longer cable than previous models, we were intrigued. Since we were just wrapping up writing the repair manual for the 2018 model anyway, we checked inside our 2018 15” MacBook Pro again to measure its cable against its 2016 predecessor—and found the 2018 cable was, in fact, a full 2mm longer. Since this change appears in both our 15” model and Olivia88’s 13” model, it’s plausible this change is present in multiple, if not all, 2018 MacBook Pros.

Assuming that this does address the issues, that’s great for owners of those MacBooks Pros. But it does nothing for the owners of older MacBook Pros with #Flexgate related issues that Apple will not do anything for despite the fact that it’s a clear design defect. Apple truly has to step up and do something for those MacBook Pro owners as making this design change isn’t good enough. Maybe they need to pay attention to this petition  that has 13000 signatures on it as clearly Apple users feel that this is an issue that Apple must address.

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Guest Post: NordVPN Explains How to Secure All Smart Home Devices Instantly

Posted in Commentary with tags on March 5, 2019 by itnerd

According to Statista, there are approximately 26.66 billion connected devices today, and this number is growing every day. However, almost all smart home appliances, such as a smart TV, fridge, or thermostat, can become an easy target for cybercriminals. Internet Security Threat Report showed a 600% increase in the number of IoT (internet of things) attacks between 2016 and 2017.

“Smart devices are becoming more and more common in many homes. Technically, it can be any device that has a sensor and can transmit data through the internet,” explains Daniel Markuson, digital privacy expert at NordVPN. “Smart home devices include light bulbs, thermostats (like Nest), door locks, refrigerators, ovens, baby monitors, and other.”

However, according to NordVPN’s Daniel Markuson, IT professionals know very well that anything connected to the internet can be hacked. Sadly, the rush to get smart home appliances into the market makes security one of the weakest parts of this technology. There are a few examples already of internet-enabled TVs and even baby monitors being hacked.

“The good news is that you can use encryption to better protect all connected devices you have at home,” says Daniel Markuson, digital privacy expert at NordVPN. “Setting up a virtual private network on your router will secure all network traffic, including IoT devices.”

A VPN connection on your router means protection against man-in-the-middle attacks and hackers trying to compromise your Wi-Fi network. VPN can also prevent home devices from participating in botnet attacks.

The downside is that setting up a VPN service on a router manually may be complicated and confusing. However, you can get a special app for that, like FlashRouters Privacy App, which works with NordVPN – one of the most advanced VPN services in the world.

With the FlashRouters Privacy App, a user can easily manage the VPN connection on their router remotely from desktop or mobile phone. “That means you can forget manual switching and worries about security once and for all. The Kill Switch technology will disconnect all your devices in case the VPN connection drops. This way, you can be sure that your sensitive data will not be exposed, not even for a brief moment,” says NordVPN’s digital privacy expert.

The application can be installed on any router running the latest DD-WRT firmware.

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