Archive for November, 2019

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Canadians invited to participate in global UAE Food Security Challenge

Posted in Commentary on November 20, 2019 by itnerd

On the occasion of World Food Day, marked at the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, Her Excellency Mariam bint Mohammed Saeed Hareb Almheiri, UAE Minister for State for Food Security, spoke to the significance of global food security challenges and their impact on future generations.

Appealing to university students, early-stage start-ups and tech incubators in advanced urban farming markets from around the world, the Minister revealed plans by the UAE government to foster international collaboration to find innovative solutions across the food value chain through an open call-for-submissions to the “FoodTech Challenge.”

Open to applicants from around the world, the FoodTech Challenge seeks commercially viable solutions that promote sustainable food practices and stimulate domestic food production in the UAE. At the end of the competition, four teams will be awarded against a $1 million prize pool defined by in-kind support totaling $150k via Catalyst, a Masdar-BP accelerator, and a $100k cash prize.

Reinforcing the UAE’s commitment to enhancing global food security, the FoodTech Challenge launched on September 23rd in support of the country’s aim to encourage the adoption of urban farming solutions at the national, community, and household levels. Launched by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, the FoodTech Challenge is an initiative of the UAE Office of State for Food Security in partnership with Tamkeen, an Abu Dhabi-based company mandated to deliver projects to meet the UAE’s vision of knowledge-based development.

Placing emphasis on the importance of empowering youth and attracting their interest in the food security sector, the Minister underlined the UAE’s commitment to providing opportunities for young people to push the boundaries of innovation in food production by creating sustainable farming systems that can be adopted by future generations.

Applications for the FoodTech Challenge will remain open until February 2020, when submissions will be shortlisted and the top 10 teams will present their business cases at an awards ceremony held at New York University Abu Dhabi in April 2020. A panel of VIP judges including agtech industry experts will select four winners across two categories: household farming and community farming.

Entrants can submit their applications via www.foodtechchallenge.com.

 

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Infographic: A Christmas Carol: Scam Edition

Posted in Commentary with tags on November 20, 2019 by itnerd

‘Tis the season to be scammed: McAfee survey shows cybercriminals target Canadian shoppers in-store, online and through mobile 

A new survey from cybersecurity company McAfee, called A Christmas Carol: Scam Edition, found 40 per cent of Canadians have been a victim of, or know someone who has been a victim of, email phishing in 2019. While email was the most popular vehicle for hackers, robocalling (39 per cent) and text phishing (30 per cent) also ranked highly.

Of those who lost money to a scam, 65 per cent lost more than $100 and 33 per cent lost more than $500. A new trend that may hit unsavvy consumers hard this holiday season is phony gift cards. McAfee’s advanced threats team says phony gift cards are being sold on the cybercriminal underground. The survey found that not even one-third (29 per cent) of respondents are aware of bogus gift cards.

McAfee listed several tips that can help consumers shop safely this holiday season:

  • Stop and pause. Instead of clicking on a link in an email, it is always best to check directly with the source to verify an offer or shipment.
  • Browse with security protection. Use comprehensive security protection, like McAfee Total Protection, which can help protect devices against malware, phishing attacks and other threats. It includes McAfee WebAdvisor, which can help identify malicious websites.
  • Use a tool to help protect your personal information. A solution like McAfee Identity Theft Protection takes a proactive approach to help protect identities with personal and financial monitoring and recovery tools to help keep identities personal and secure.

infographic-mcafee-christmas-carol-scam-edition.jpg

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Another Update About Optimized Battery Charging

Posted in Commentary with tags on November 20, 2019 by itnerd

I’ve been experimenting with optimized battery charging since iOS 13 came out, and I posted an update of my experiences after using it for a while. But I decided to provide another update on the topic as I have now figured out how it works.

In short, if you’re someone who is constantly topping off your iPhone with a charge during the day and the battery never dips below the 50% mark, it is unlikely that optimized battery charging will kick in. But if you run the battery of your iPhone down during the day and end up below the 50% mark, optimized battery charging will kick in. Since it is turned on by default, you don’t have to worry about checking to see if it is on on not. But if you are the paranoid sort, you can check it by doing the following:

  • Go to Settings
  • Go to Battery
  • Go to Battery Health and look for Optimized Battery Charging

And you can confirm that it is actually working by going to Settings and Battery and looking for a graphic like this:

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As you can see, it partially charges and then stops at 80% around midnight. It stays there until roughly 3AM when it charges the rest of the way and is ready to go sometime between 4AM and 5AM. Which is handy as I get up at 6AM and the iPhone knows that.

As for it helping my long term battery health, time will tell on that front. I’ve had my iPhone XS for over a year now and the maximum capacity which is the maximum amount of charge that it can hold relative to when it was new is 96%. Apple says this about what I should expect when it comes to battery health:

A normal battery is designed to retain up to 80% of its original capacity at 500 complete charge cycles when operating under normal conditions.

So based on that, I am way ahead of that figure as it is down 4% over a year which implies that if I do not change my usage patterns, I could be around 8% to 10% at this time next year. But I will point out that this figure was without optimized battery charging seeing as that was only added to iOS a few months ago. So if I am say 8% or below without changing my usage patterns, it implies that optimized battery charging is doing its job in terms of protecting the long term health of my iPhone’s battery. So my next task is to monitor the health of my battery of the next few months to see if it slows down the rate that I lose capacity. If I notice anything positive or negative on that front, I’ll report back via another update.

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Should I Update To Windows 10 Version 1909?

Posted in Commentary with tags on November 20, 2019 by itnerd

Windows 10 feature updates tend to be a bit of a risk to update. The last few feature updates have been gong shows with serious issues that impact users. So it would be understandable if you’re gunshy about upgrading to Windows 10 version 1909. You can read what comes to the table in this feature update here. But I’ll cut right to the chase. Unlike most feature updates which overhaul the operating system, the majority of version 1909’s changes are to how the OS lets users manage their system and app notifications. In other words, these are cosmetic fixes. That means it should be low risk to upgrade.

In my case, I upgraded all my Windows 10 computers to version 1909 quickly and without an issue. And when I say quickly, I mean it updated in under 10 minutes which is unusual for a feature update. That’s a stark change from the last few feature updates which would “brick” at least one of my computers. The other thing that I note is that for the first time in about two years, a Windows 10 feature update hasn’t caused my phone to ring off the hook from clients who had an install of a feature update go south.

That all suggests to me that this feature update is safe to update to. The only thing that I would recommend is what I always recommend. Which is to back up your data before trying to install it. Even though this is a low risk feature update, there’s still risk involved. Which means that it is better to be safe rather than sorry.

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“Hey Einstein”— Salesforce Brings Voice to Every Customer Experience

Posted in Commentary with tags on November 19, 2019 by itnerd

Salesforce is bringing the power of voice to every customer experience spanning the Salesforce Customer 360 Platform and enabling millions of CRM users to talk to Salesforce. With Einstein Voice Assistant guiding every action, insight and prediction, Salesforce users will be more productive—from anywhere. And new Einstein Voice Skills will enable developers and admins to build custom voice-powered apps for employees across every role and industry, in just a matter of clicks. In addition, new solutions for service and sales teams will apply natural language processing to voice conversations, and deliver insights that drive smarter, more personalized customer engagement.

Voice Enters the Workplace

Voice is rapidly emerging as the user interface for our lives. Nearly half of U.S. households are already using a voice-activated device for everyday activities like getting driving directions, dictating text messages, playing their favorite songs and even turning on home appliances – all without lifting a finger or tapping a keyboard. And, just like every other computing revolution that came before it—cloud, social, mobile and AI—Salesforce is helping companies bring voice’s immense potential to CRM to transform the way we work.

Talk to Salesforce Anytime, Anywhere with Einstein Voice

Last year at Dreamforce 2018, Salesforce introduced Einstein Voice Assistant, allowing sales reps to talk to Salesforce. With Einstein Voice Assistant, routine CRM transactions – creating or updating customer records, getting personalized daily briefings and exploring dashboards – can be done conversationally, so sales reps can keep their business moving forward and focus on what matters most, customer success.

But every employee can use a guide to help them be more productive and provide a smarter, more frictionless way to ask questions, get insights and predictions or initiate a task. Today, Salesforce announced it will expand the capabilities of Einstein Voice Assistant for any role or industry, giving every app built on Salesforce a voice. This is powered by new Einstein Voice Skills, which will empower admins and developers to create custom voice apps across the Salesforce Customer 360 Platform in just a few clicks.

Build Custom Voice Apps for Any Business Process

Using Einstein Voice Skills, companies will be able to create custom voice-powered apps to reimagine workflows and processes—replacing any manual data entry or manual Salesforce navigation that may impede productivity. From a simple set-up page, developers and admins will be able to build custom skills for any CRM action—such as updating a field, creating a task or reading out a prediction—and select the Salesforce fields or objects that inform each action.

For example, an admin or developer can build a custom voice-powered assistant for a field technician that enables her to verbally and instantly check on a service history while en route to her next customer, Acme, just by saying “Hey Einstein, what is Acme’s recent service history?” Meanwhile, admins can also build and deploy a separate, custom voice app for service managers that has a seat at the table for weekly leadership meetings, offering insight on open service cases in top regions, guidance on the team’s overall CSAT performance and more. Each app is purpose-built for the specific needs and processes of each role. Plus, admins can also control how information will be read back to the user, including the ability to offer next steps or follow-up tasks within the response, and which channels and devices that the skill is accessible on, such smart speakers or phones.

Voice Intelligence: Smarter and More Productive Service and Sales Experiences

Powered by Einstein, new voice intelligence applies natural language processing to call transcriptions – providing sales and service teams with insights and trends that will drive smarter, more personalized customer engagement:

  • New Service Cloud Voice: Service Cloud Voice integrates telephony inside Service Cloud, unifying phone, digital channels and CRM data in real-time in one centralized console. Service Cloud Voice can also integrate with transcription services  that convert voice to text in real time, enabling Einstein to serve up relevant AI-powered recommended responses, knowledge articles and next best actions as service agents are on voice calls.
  • New Einstein Call Coaching: Now with Einstein Call Coaching, our newest Sales Cloud capability, managers are able to see insights and trends within conversational data. Natural language processing identifies keywords in sales call transcripts, alerting managers to trends like a spike in competitor mentions, or best practices on topics like objection handling or pricing discussions. Those insights can then be used to provide sales reps with personalized coaching on how to improve the customer buying experience.

Voice Interoperability: Einstein Voice for Any Device 

In September, Salesforce joined Amazon and leading technology companies to announce the Voice Interoperability Initiative, a new program to ensure voice-enabled products provide customers with choice and flexibility through multiple, interoperable voice services. As part of this, Einstein Voice Assistant and Einstein Voice Skills will be compatible with a variety of devices, from smart speakers to smartphones–whether it’s the Einstein Smart Speaker that will be unveiled at Dreamforce 2019 (not for sale), the new Salesforce Mobile App, or customers’ preferred devices.

Einstein at Dreamforce 

Check out the latest innovations from Einstein at Dreamforce, November 19-22, 2019. Chief Scientist Richard Socher will host a visionary keyote (Tuesday, November 19, 4:30 PM PT in Moscone West) on the future of AI and a first look at the new era of customer experiences that Voice will enable. Join us for the Einstein keynote (Wednesday, November 20, 9:00 AM PT in Moscone North) to learn more about Einstein Voice, and visit us at the Einstein Summit on the third floor of Moscone West.

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Keyfactor Brings Enhanced Security for Cloud, DevOps and IoT

Posted in Commentary with tags on November 19, 2019 by itnerd

Keyfactor, the leader in securing digital identities, today announced the latest update to its award-winning PKI (public key infrastructure) as-a-service and certificate lifecycle automation solution, Keyfactor Command. The offering supports information security, IT and DevOps teams juggling security priorities, regulatory demands and digital transformation.

In a recent survey, 44 percent of security and IT professionals indicated that lack of skills and expertise is the greatest challenge they face in managing their organization’s PKI, with 37 percent of respondents citing the secure adoption of DevOps, cloud and IoT as a primary concern.

According to Gartner Inc., the world’s leading research and advisory company, “technical professionals tasked with delivering effective identity and access management (IAM) capabilities should: establish a PKI management regime and leverage certificate management tools to manage and monitor SSL/TLS certificates, and focus on enabling automatic outage detection and mitigation, compliance and policy requirements and crypto-agility.”

We believe Keyfactor provides the most complete PKI operations solution delivered from the cloud, enabling both enterprise security teams and IoT device manufacturers to operate end-to-end agile digital identity management. This release includes improvements to discovery and auditing across the entire digital certificate landscape – critical capabilities required to meet regulatory and security mandates.

Key advancements include:

  • Secure Automation – Integrates with CyberArk to enable secure access to privileged accounts required for certificate and key lifecycle automation.
  • Improved Tracking and Auditing – Enables auditors to retrieve a complete audit log of every user activity and configuration change within the platform.
  • Extended Discovery – Expands certificate discovery capabilities with support for Server Name Indication (SNI).
  • Enhanced Reporting – Includes a new, expanded library of pre-packaged and customizable reports.

For more information about Keyfactor Command 7, please visit: https://blog.keyfactor.com/introducing-new-integrations-and-more-in-keyfactor-7.

For more information about Keyfactor and its services, please visit: www.keyfactor.com.

 

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Securing 5G Through Cyber-Telecom Identity Federation

Posted in Commentary with tags on November 19, 2019 by itnerd

Today, more than ever before, organizations are keen on taking advantage of the speed, automation, and global reach of 5G technology. The challenge is that the majority have little to no direct experience in telecommunication technology.

Trend Micro has released a report, Securing 5G Through Cyber-Telecom Identity Federation highlighting the major gaps in handling identities in IT and Telecommunications along with solutions to better equip businesses as they transition to using new technology to carry out various functions.

The report forces businesses to reconsider their approach to cybersecurity by listing out the security strategies, technical skills, and additional technologies needed to successfully adopt 5G and fully reap its benefits.

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Guest Post: Hisense Tells You How To Check That Gamer Off Your List

Posted in Commentary with tags on November 19, 2019 by itnerd

It’s the time of year to make that list and check it twice.

Of course checking it is the easy part. The real challenge is making the list in the first place. Even if you know what you want to get people, there is always the risk they won’t like it, it’s the wrong size or not the right kind of item. That is particularly true if you have a video gamer in your life, and you would like to get them the right set up so they can fully enjoy their hobby.

“While it is the thought that counts, you are best to do a bit of research to make sure you are getting the right item,” says Travis Thompson, a product training expert with Hisense Canada. “Not just any TV will do for today’s video game consoles. You need a high resolution, stark contrasts and a quick-moving screen to keep up with action without any lag time.”

When shopping for a TV for the gamer on your list, Travis recommends looking for the following:

  • Resolution — 4K is pretty much a given on any new TV nowadays, but all of the modern game consoles are now in 4K resolution. To get the most out of the gaming system, it is best to have a TV that matches what the console supports.
  • HDR — The short form of high-dynamic range, it means the TV has a massive range of colours, which appear brighter and in greater contrast. It is great for dark scenes in games.
  • Low Input Lag — Video games move fast, and if your refresh or motion rate is low the images on the screen will blur. Look for a refresh rate of 120Hz for crisp, clear action the screen at all times.
  • MEMC — A chip (Motion Estimation / Motion Compensation) that is used to interpolate extra images on your TV, which is a fancy way of saying it works with the refresh or motion rate to smooth out the picture.
  • Local Dimming — By automatically dimming the backlight on black parts of the image on the screen, local dimming gives deeper and darker blacks and better contrast and colour accuracy.

“Some TVs are ideally for watching movies, others for sports and some for video games,” says Travis. “The Hisense H8 family of 4K ULED TVs is perfectly suited for that escape into the alternate reality of video games.”

For more information, please visit hisense-canada.com

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MuleSoft Announces Low-code “Citizen” Integrator Tools

Posted in Commentary with tags on November 18, 2019 by itnerd

​MuleSoft today announced that ​HSBC​ is leveragingMuleSoft’s Anypoint Platform to build a ​digital banking platform​ to power the bank of the future.As one of the largest banking and financial services organizations in the world, HSBC is taking advantage of open banking to drive new, connected experiences for its more than 38 million customers worldwide. With MuleSoft and its Anypoint API Community Manager, HSBC is building APIs that securely unlock access to core banking products to enable collaboration withpartners, accelerate innovation and open new revenue channels.

The rise of ​PSD2​ requirements and open banking are requiring financial institutions to share customer data with third party developers via APIs. Connected customer experiences havebecome the new battleground. Banks are going through a revolution where they must movefrom transactions to personalized interactions and digital services for customers. HSBC is leveraging an API strategy to develop a digital platform and co-create new experiences with a broader ecosystem of developers and partners.

Building a digital banking platform

HSBC realized that the bank of the future will be a digital platform, powered by a collection ofAPIs that enable truly connected, multi-channel experiences. The bank chose MuleSoft and itsAPI-led approach to connectivity to develop a shared services platform for secure asset reuse and business self-service. HSBC was able to turn its core banking products, including creditcards, mortgages, and payments, into APIs in an application network that can be easily andquickly assembled to create new experiences.

For example, HSBC can draw data from legacy systems using APIs to enable new features,such as showing customers an overview of their spending across all their bank accounts.Building APIs with MuleSoft, HSBC can unlock its backend systems and connect them withtrusted third-parties to develop a range of other new customer-facing services. By enabling anAPI ecosystem to innovate on top of its core bank platform, HSBC can drive speed, agility and innovation at scale to deliver more value for its customers.

Tapping into the API economy

In the same way that APIs have accelerated internal innovation, external APIs present the opportunity for HSBC to collaborate with partners and create new revenue channels. In this newAPI economy​, developers are HSBC’s new customers and developer portals are the newcustomer storefront. To engage and evangelize its APIs to developers, HSBC is leveraging APICommunity Manager built on Salesforce Community Cloud and Salesforce Service Cloud to deliver an internal and external developer portal that will span more than 30 markets and three global businesses.

API Community Manager uniquely combines a full-featured API portal and industry-leadingdigital experience capabilities, transforming how teams collaborate across the entire lifecycle ofan API program. With API Community Manager, HSBC can easily build and engage APIecosystems, so it can foster new partnerships to deliver joint business value and innovatefaster. For example, HSBC’s Mortgage API could be applied to home buying websites so that consumers can filter houses for which they are pre-approved.

HSBC at Dreamforce 2019

HSBC will be featured in the ​Integration Keynote​ on Wednesday, November 20 at 5 p.m. PT inMoscone North, Hall F. To tune into the keynote live stream, please visit: https://www.salesforce.com/video/7488080/​. In addition, HSBC will be leading a session withMuleSoft titled, “​Transform Customer Relationships with Open Banking and MuleSoft​,” onTuesday, November 19 at 12:30 p.m. PT on the Dreamforce campus.

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Apple and Salesforce Make A Joint Announcement At Dreamforce 2019

Posted in Commentary with tags on November 18, 2019 by itnerd

Apple and Salesforce today announced the launch of two flagship apps from the world’s #1 CRM: the redesigned Salesforce Mobile App and new Trailhead GO learning app, delivering rich customer experiences with features exclusive to iOS and iPadOS. The companies also announced the next-generation Salesforce Mobile SDK, empowering developers to easily build and deploy native apps for iPhone and iPad on the Salesforce Platform. Apple and Salesforce announced a strategic partnership at Dreamforce 2018.

At Dreamforce 2019, Apple and Salesforce are delivering:

  • The Salesforce Mobile App, powered by AI and reimagined on iOS. Salesforce completely redesigned its flagship mobile CRM app to deliver a powerful new user experience enabled by Einstein, with advanced analytics and features exclusive to iOS, including Siri shortcuts and Face ID. Now anyone can run their business on mobile in a way that’s conversational and smart — leveraging the power of Siri and Einstein Voice Assistant to quickly add tasks, take notes and update their CRM.
  • Trailhead GO, the first-ever mobile app for Trailhead, exclusive to iOS and iPadOS. Trailhead is Salesforce’s free online learning platform used by millions of Trailblazers to skill up for the jobs of today and tomorrow. With Trailhead GO, learners now have access anywhere and at anytime to more than 700 modules covering in-demand business and tech skills — including trails like Get Started with iOS App Development, which teaches developers at any level how to build native apps. Built on Swift using Salesforce’s Mobile SDK, Trailhead GO supports Handoff in addition to Accessibility features like VoiceOver and Magnifier; iPadOS features include Split View for multi-tasking and Picture-in-Picture for video courses.
  • The new Salesforce Mobile SDK, optimized for Swift and iOS 13. The next generation of Salesforce’s Mobile SDK adds support for the latest advancements in iOS 13, iPadOS and Swift, including Swift UI and Package Manager, for easier compiling and distribution of code. The new SDK will empower more than six million Salesforce developers to quickly build and deploy native Salesforce apps for iPhone and iPad. The SDK has already been used by hundreds of businesses to focus on what they do best: provide a superior customer experience.

Apple CEO Tim Cook will join Salesforce co-CEO Marc Benioff for a fireside chat at Dreamforce 2019 on Tuesday, November 19, 1:30 p.m. PT at Yerba Buena Theater. The talk is open to all conference attendees and a livestream will be available at https://www.salesforce.com/video/.

Attendees of Dreamforce 2019 can get a hands-on look at the new Salesforce products in the Moscone South Campground. Learn more about the Apple and Salesforce partnership: www.salesforce.com/apple.

Pricing & Availability 

  • The Salesforce Mobile App is now generally available for free on the App Store. The new user experience and features require Salesforce admin opt-in.
  • Trailhead GO is now generally available for free on the App Store. Additional features including support for iOS Dark Mode and Sign in with Apple across Trailhead are expected to be available later this year.
  • The new Salesforce Mobile SDK 8.0 with support for Dark Mode and Swift UI is expected to be available later this year, with additional features optimized for iPadOS expected to arrive in a 2020 release.

 

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