On Monday Google unveiled a new strategy to gain ground in the mobile marketplace. In their largest purchase to date, Google announced their intention to acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. So what does this mean for the consumers of mobile-phone and tablet computers?
On Tuesday, June 7, Facebook quietly turned on a new feature called Tag Suggestions. This new feature uses proprietary facial recognition software to automatically recognize friends in your uploaded photos and suggest that you tag them. While some people may be a little nervous about privacy concerns related to this new feature, I can’t help but say “Wow, that’s pretty amazing!”
On June 8, 2011, a host of major Internet network providers and websites will be running a twenty-four-hour “Test Flight” of IPv6 on their networks. While this will be transparent to most users of the Internet, it is definitely not an insignificant event. So what is IPv6, and how does it affect you?
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Pentagon has begun to form a policy declaring cyber attacks an act of war if the results of the attack are similar to other acts of war. While U.S. policy on this matter is not completely clear yet, it is clear that criminals have recently ramped up their use of computer hacking to reach their goals, and many organizations large and small do not have adequate defenses against this sort of attack.
Since the beginning of time scammers have been developing new and innovative ways to fool victims into giving away their secrets. In today’s electronically-enabled world those scammers have gone high-tech. One of the more surreptitious ways to electronically capture your private information is a man-in-the-middle attack. A man-in-the-middle attack works a little like a high-tech version of the children’s game telephone, except that it is no game. Your identity and financial information may be at stake.
Google announced today that they are expanding their 1000 megabit fiber Internet service offering to Kansas City, MO. They are partnering with Kansas City Power and Light (KCP&L) to leverage the existing electrical transmission system to bring the service to KCMO. This is fantastic news for the whole Kansas City area.
Update: One of our staff members had to take a half day off of work last week to deal with fraudulent credit-card charges. We have been able to trace this fraud to a set of conditions that indicate with almost complete certainty that this was a direct result of Sony’s hack. Though most of the charges were cancelled prior to any money changing hands, $250 was already gone.
We’ve just opened our newest location in North Kansas City, MO, and we are eager to get to know the businesses in town. In our effort to build relationships with Northtown businesses, we are giving away tech support services in May! Sign up for our All-Inclusive Maintenance (AIM) program, and you’ll get the month of May for free. If you’re not totally impressed with our service, you have fifteen days to back out of the agreement with no obligation whatsoever. For complete rules, click here.
No fooling; on April 1, Internet marketing giant Epsilon announced that its confidential data had been breached. Epsilon sends about 100 million emails every day on behalf of customers like JP Morgan, Target, and Best Buy. The compromised data appears to be limited to names and email addresses of people who do business with Epsilon’s customers. If you have given your email address to any of the following, you may be affected: AbeBooks, Ameriprise Financial, Barclays Bank of Delaware, Best Buy, Brookstone, Capital One, Citi, The College Board, Disney Destinations, Hilton Hotels, Home Shopping Network, JPMorgan Chase, Kroger, LL Bean, Marriott Rewards, McKinsey & Company, New York & Company, Ritz-Carlton Rewards, Target, TiVo, US Bank, Verizon, or Walgreens.
If you live in the Kansas City metro area, you’d have to have been hiding under a rock to have missed Google’s announcement last Wednesday. Google has selected Kansas City, Kansas (KCK) as the location to build a gigabit-fiber-to-the-subscriber network. This is of course a huge boost to KCK, but what does it do for the rest of the Kansas City metro area?
