Archive for November, 2019

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F12.net Announces First Chief Technology Officer

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

F12.net Inc. (“F12”) is delighted to announce the appointment of Calvin Engen as CTO.

After an introduction to F12 during a student placement, Calvin Engen made it his mission to join the F12 technical services team. In 2006 that day came. He quickly distinguished himself through his impeccable work ethic, relentless drive, and passion for technology. In short order, Calvin earned the confidence of F12’s clients and F12’s leaders.

Calvin demanded evidence-based decisions, calmly challenging his peers, suppliers, and F12 itself with his meticulously researched positions. He was a prescient force behind the launch of F12’s Cloud services.  Consequently, few were surprised when he was promoted to Director of IT in 2012. In that role, Calvin matured F12’s security posture, technology offerings, service delivery, and the F12 Connect platform.

A regular speaker at business leadership forums about data privacy, cybersecurity, and cloud services, Calvin is the only Canadian member of the WatchGuard Advisory Council.

As F12’s CTO, Calvin will ensure F12 continues to reduce risk and complexity for Canadian businesses by crafting technology services that free leaders to focus on what they do best. His responsibilities include platform innovation, solution engineering, and the information security of every employee and client of F12.

About F12.net

F12.net is an award-winning provider of comprehensive IT programs designed to reduce risk and complexity, freeing business leaders to focus and thrive. F12’s suite of IT solutions improves productivity, reduces risk, and rationalizes IT investments.

More information about F12’s solutions can be found on the company website: https://f12.net

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Trend Micro Debuts Security Services Platform For Organizations Building Applications In The Cloud

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

Trend Micro Incorporated today announced the launch of Trend Micro Cloud One™, a security services platform for organizations building applications in the cloud. Cloud One allows developers torapidly build applications using the cloud services they want, while managing their organization’s risk.

Cloud One delivers the industry’s broadest range of security capabilities in a single platform. Designed to help organizations meet their most strategic cloud priorities, it allows customers to migrate existing applications to the cloud, deliver new cloud-native applications and achieve cloud operational excellence. The first-of-its-kind platform has the flexibility to solve immediate customer challenges and the innovation to rapidly evolve with cloud services. At its heart, Cloud One includes the world’s leading workload security service that is already in use by thousands of organizations. It is complemented by enhanced container security and brand-new offerings for application security, network security, file storage security and cloud security posture management to ensure cloud infrastructure is optimally configured.

Many cloud security solutions are often hard to manage and deploy, inflexible and fail to provide the level of visibility IT teams need to manage fast-emerging risks.

Trend Micro’s all-in-one platform approach is designed to deliver simplified, automated and flexible protection, regardless of where an organization is on the journey to the cloud. Customers using the platform will benefit from a single-sign-on to all services, common user and cloud-service enrolment, visibility from a single console and a common pricing and billing model.

Trend Micro’s new cloud security platform supports the leading cloud providers, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

By considering cloud projects and objectives holistically, Trend Micro Cloud One is able to provide enterprise grade security, while leveraging the benefits and efficiencies of the cloud.

The Cloud One platform will be available in Q1 2020 with three services fully integrated: workload security, network security and application security. The other components will be available as stand-alone solutions in Q1 2020 and integrated into Cloud One by the end of 2020.

  • Trend Micro Cloud One – Workload Security
  • Trend Micro Cloud One – Container Image Security
  • Trend Micro Cloud One – File Storage Security
  • Trend Micro Cloud One  – Network Security
  • Trend Micro Cloud One – Cloud Posture Management
  • Trend Micro Cloud One – Application Security

To find out more about Cloud One, please visit https://www.trendmicro.com/cloudone.

 

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New Voice For Turn-By-Turn Navigation Via Waze Aims To Calm Drivers This Season

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

Whether stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic or trying to avoid a roadside accident, some of the most stressful moments while driving can come from drivers’ daily commutes. Add in the hectic holiday season, that stress can multiply! However, with the help of a recently-launched feature in Waze, Canadian drivers can find some zen and a sense of revitalization when navigating to the mall for some holiday shopping, dashing through the snow to a festive party or traveling to visit family or friends this season.

In partnership with Lincoln, Waze has launched a new voice for turn-by-turn navigation, providing the first-ever navigation system that doubles as a calm and mindfulness guide. The new voice is warm, smooth and easy-going, and refreshed prompts include reminders to relax. Sample prompts include: “Ready, set, relax! And start driving,” and “Heavy traffic reported ahead. Deep breaths!”

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Available now until December 29, Waze users can activate the new voice by going to Settings, then Voice Directions, and selecting “Lincoln Canada.”

 

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Pulse Secure Recognized as Great Place to Work Certified Company

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

Pulse Secure, the leading provider of software-defined Secure Access solutions, has been recognized as a Great Place to Work Certified Company.

The company’s employees themselves helped earn the distinction, which is based on an independent survey of the employee experience and an analysis of the culture measured against Great Place to Work’s global benchmark data. Key findings included:

  • 92% said Pulse Secure is a great place to work
  • 97% say people care about each other
  • 98% celebrate special events at the company
  • 95% feel they can “be me”

Other notable findings of the analysis were a successful internship program with a track record of 20% converting to full-time hires.

Great Place to Work conducted an extensive Pulse Secure employee survey and assessed the results against an industry comparative benchmark to achieve “Certified” rated. The Great Place to Work Certification process is based on rigorous benchmarks established by surveys of more than 100 million employees over 30 years. The resulting analytical model is used to evaluate company cultures against the best in the world. Known as the Great Place to Work Trust ModelTM, because trust is the essential element of a great workplace, the same standard process is used to create theFortune 100 “Best Companies to Work For” and other notable lists.

Earlier this year, Pulse Secure was ranked 26th among 2019 Top Workplaces by the Bay Area News Group. That recognition, the second year in a row, was also based on an employee survey conducted externally.

 

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Review: Hiplok Z Lok Combo

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

Something that I regularly do with my cycling club is to go on what is known in cycling circles as “the coffee ride”. That’s a ride where you ride to a coffee shop, have a coffee and come back. In our case, we ride from the west end of Toronto Ontario to Oakville Ontario to a small coffee shop that’s in the town. It’s about an 80KM/50 mile round trip ride. The only problem is where to park your bike so that it won’t get stolen while we enjoy our coffee. After all my bike isn’t exactly cheap and many members of the club ride bikes that are worth well north of $10,000 CDN. To mitigate the risk of having my bike stolen, I carry the Hiplok Z Lok Combo with me:

IMG_1396

This looks like a zip tie, but it isn’t. It’s a super tough combination lock (which you can set your own combination at will) that’s designed to go through your wheel and a section of the frame to make it less attractive for thieves to steal your bike. If you could wrap it around a solid object as well, that would further deter thieves. But that object would have to be thin to make that use case work. It fits easily into a cycling jersey pocket and weighs next to nothing.

To be clear, this isn’t a high security lock. If you leave your bike in downtown Toronto with this lock, it may not be there when you get back. However, in the use case that I described earlier, which is that you use this lock in a small town to stop the “snatch and run” type of bike theft, It’s definitely a good enough deterrent. I also used a pair of these to secure our bikes on our roof rack during our trip to Prince Edward Island this past summer as the roof rack on the car has locks for the bike forks, but not for the rear wheel.

Gripes? It could be just a touch longer to make it a bit more versatile. But the flip side of that is that if it were longer, it might not fit in a jersey pocket which makes it less likely to be taken on a ride. So that’s a trade off that I suppose is fair. One suggestion I have is to take two as they are easy to carry as mentioned previously.

The Hiplok Z Lok Combo goes for about $35 CDN at your local bike shop. If you partake in coffee rides, or just want some security for your bike if you have to park it for a few minutes, this is absolutely worth a look.

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Review: Tile Sticker

Posted in Products with tags on November 14, 2019 by itnerd

Tile has been the leader in item tracking for years now, and recently they have come out with a Tile device that’s in a form factor that will allow you to track almost anything. It’s called the Tile Sticker.

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This Tile is tiny. It’s about the size of a quarter and has the thickness of three quarters. But the real magic is that it can be affixed to anything using the adhesive (which was apparently co-developed with 3M) to anything and is waterproof. That makes the use cases for this particular tile endless. The fact that it is waterproof comes at a cost, which is that the battery unlike some other Tile variants is not replaceable. More on that in a moment.

The Tile Sticker claims to have a 150 foot range. I did real-world testing by going to a storage locker facility and placing it in a closed storage locker at the end of a long hallway that was about 100 feet in length. The iPhone app found it very quickly, and the built-in speaker was loud enough that I could hear the alarm playing.

Downsides? The battery lasts three years and isn’t user replaceable. That basically makes this a subscription service as opposed to be something that you can use long term. The flip side to that is the fact that when your Tile does run out of juice, they do have a program called reTile that allows you to replace your Tile at a discount of up to 50%. The new Tile will come with a prepaid envelope so that you can send back the old one to recycle. But that’s only true for those in the US. For those anywhere else on Earth, you can drop off your old Tile at your local e-recycling center.

The Tile Sticker goes for $39.99 USD for a pair. That makes them $20 USD a copy which is a fair price given the fact that the use cases are pretty much endless. That makes this Tile the best one that the company has come out with yet.

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FlexJobs Identifies the Top 40 Companies to Watch for Flexible Jobs in 2020

Posted in Commentary with tags on November 13, 2019 by itnerd

To help job seekers interested in finding flexible jobs, today FlexJobs named the Top 40 Companies to Watch for Flexible Jobs in 2020. This list is based on an analysis of over 52,000 companies and looks specifically at their flexible job posting histories in the FlexJobs’ database between January 1, 2019, and October 31, 2019.  Given the consistent, high volume flexible job hiring practices by these companies in 2019, FlexJobs believes these companies are likely to be strong recruiters for flexible job positions in 2020 as well.

Computer & IT, sales, medical & health, education,  marketing, and finance are among the top career fields for flexible jobs.  A “flexible job” is defined as any professional-level job that offers flexibility in terms of when, where, and how work gets done. Examples include:

  • Remote jobs (a.k.a. telecommute or work-from-home) that are full-time and part-time
  • Freelance (contract) jobs
  • Jobs with flexible schedules or alternative work hours

Below are the top 10 companies with the highest number of flexible job listings in the FlexJobs database between January 1, 2019, and October 31, 2019.

For the entire list of top 40 companies hiring for flexible jobs, please visit: https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/top-40-companies-hiring-for-flexible-jobs/

1. UnitedHealth Group
2. Kelly Services
3. Kaplan
4. Motion Recruitment Partners
5. SAIC – Science Applications International Corporation
6. Robert Half International
7. Amazon
8. Pearson
9. SAP
10. Parallon

Along with this list of 40 flex-friendly companies, FlexJobs also tracks the growth and evolution of the flexible job market.

Here are recent studies and statistics that show what the market looks like today:

  • Businesses that offer “flextime during core business hours” increased from 52% to 57% between 2015 and 2019, according to SHRM’s 2019 study on work benefits
  • In just two years, there’s been a 78% increase in job posts on LinkedIn that mention work flexibility, according to LinkedIn’s Global Talent Trends 2019
  • 74% believe that flexible working has become the new normal, according to an IWG survey
  • 78% cited flexible schedules and remote work as the most effective non-monetary ways to retain employees in 2019, up from 67% in 2018, according to Crain’s Future of Work Survey
  • To attract and retain employees, 44% of businesses have put in place new strategies to permit a more flexible schedule as their chief way of coping with record unemployment and fewer available workers, according to a 2019 USA Today and LinkedIn survey

To help flexible job seekers in the interview process, FlexJobs has also outlined sample responses to tough interview questions, such as those addressing salary, reasons for looking for a new job, and relationships with former bosses.

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Apple Just Released A New 16″ MacBook Pro… Should You Buy It?

Posted in Commentary with tags on November 13, 2019 by itnerd

Today Apple released a new MacBook Pro. It was the brand new 16″ model that had been rumored for months. And one key feature that will get people’s attention is this from their press release:

The 16-inch MacBook Pro features a new Magic Keyboard with a refined scissor mechanism that delivers 1mm of key travel and a stable key feel, as well as an Apple-designed rubber dome that stores more potential energy for a responsive key press. Incorporating extensive research and user studies focused on human factors and key design, the 16-inch MacBook Pro delivers a keyboard with a comfortable, satisfying and quiet typing experience. The new Magic Keyboard also features a physical Escape key and an inverted-“T” arrangement for the arrow keys, along with Touch Bar and Touch ID, for a keyboard that delivers the best typing experience ever on a Mac notebook.

In short, this new MacBook Pro doesn’t have the infamous butterfly keyboard which has proven to be a massive problem for Apple as they had a tendency to fail at an alarming rate regardless of what Apple admits to. In fact, I personally have delayed purchasing a new MacBook Pro since 2017 because the butterfly keyboard was simply that bad. And I have actively dissuaded my clients from buying it because it was simply that bad.

You’ll also note that in typical Apple fashion that they made this “Magic Keyboard” seem like some sort of innovation when frankly it isn’t. It’s the correction of a mistake that they made four years ago. Which of course they don’t want to admit to because Apple doesn’t make mistakes inside the reality distortion field.

In any case, that leads to this question: Should you buy a new MacBook Pro now that the butterfly keyboard is gone?

The answer is not yet.

The reason being that while this is using a scissor mechanism, Apple included the word “refined” in it. That implies that there’s something different about it. To be clear, that difference isn’t necessarily bad, but it’s enough that I would suggest waiting until two things happen:

  1. Wait until iFixit gets their hands on one and tears it down. They will figure out what the deal is with this “Magic Keyboard” and offer some commentary to allow you to make an informed opinion.
  2. Watch Twitter as well as Mac sites like 9To5Mac, MacRumors, and AppleInsider for the next month to see if any issues arise. I say this because every other time Apple has tried to address a keyboard issue, the success or failure (more of the latter based on the last four years) showed up on those sites very quickly. Thus when it comes to this keyboard, they will act as the canary in the coal mine.

Another thing that I should point out is that this new “Magic Keyboard” is only in the 16″ MacBook Pro. No other model has it. Thus I would strongly suggest steering clear of every other MacBook Pro until they too have the “Magic Keyboard”.

Assuming it is as good as Apple says it is of course.

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Review: Roku Express (2019)

Posted in Products with tags on November 13, 2019 by itnerd

The Roku Express has been around for a while now. But for 2019, it has become a bit like the Six Million Dollar Man. Better. Stronger. Faster.

 

Roku Express Box With ProductIt’s undergone a major makeover when it comes to looks. Before it was a thin box that resembled a compact pencil case. Now it looks a lot more attractive with a rounded more rectangular shape to it. It comes with an HDMI cable which is on the short side. And it comes with an adhesive strip so that you can semi-permanently mount it somewhere that allow you to use the included remote which is a line of sight one. One nice touch is that it can be fully powered by most TVs to reduce clutter around the TV via a USB cable.

The Roku Express is a device that outputs to 1080P and uses 802.11 b/g/n WiFi to do so. That makes it perfect for someone who is starting out in the streaming game. And I had no issues setting it up and getting it going. Nor did I have any issues when I was testing it by streaming the rather large library of content that the Roku platform has to offer. Any sort of navigation was fast and fluid as well. So I think it would be safe to say that you’ll have no issues as well.

Gripes? Admittedly these are first world problems. But besides the rather short HDMI cable which could make positioning it a challenge, the remote control is one of Roku’s line of sight remote controls without voice control functionality. If you want that functionality, you need to download their app to your smartphone which isn’t the biggest deal in the world. Another gripe is that no Roku device supports AirPlay 2 functionality which is weird given that Apple TV+ is available on the platform. And that casting from Windows 10 devices and the like is supported. But none of those gripes should deter you from buying the Roku Express.

The Roku Express goes for $39.99 CDN which is a very low barrier to get into the streaming game. Given what is on offer here, the Roku Express is very much worth a look if you want to add streaming functionality to your TV.

 

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Disney+ Is Now Streaming On The Roku Platform In Canada

Posted in Commentary with tags on November 12, 2019 by itnerd

Starting today, Disney+ is on the Roku platform in Canada. Subscribe and stream movies and TV series from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, and National Geographic directly on supported Roku devices. New users get a 7-day promotional offer. After that, it’s just $8.99/month (plus tax, where applicable).

Disney+ allows you to stream ad-free and on-demand on up to four devices simultaneously and add up to seven individual profiles. The curated experience also offers personalized recommendations based on your viewing history.

From the magic and mystery of Maleficent to the wonder and excitement of Star Wars, you can go the streaming distance with Disney+. The Disney+ library features something for everyone. Highly-anticipated Disney+ Originals include The Mandalorian, High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, The World According to Jeff Goldblum, Lady and the Tramp and more.

To start streaming, simply add the Disney+ channel from the Channel Store, or find it in the “Movies & TV” category of the Streaming Channels section on your Roku home screen.

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