The Corliss Review Group: IT Leaders' Forum

The risks and rewards of cloud. According to Alan Priestley, director of strategic marketing EMEA at Intel, there is one very big barrier to adoption of cloud marketing: risk aversion.

That risk aversion is no doubt born of fear, if not of the unknown, then certainly of the sheer work required before organizations are able to benefit from the flexibility and, potentially, cost savings of moving applications to the cloud.

It isn’t just about the fact that they have built far-reaching IT infrastructures in-house over the course of many years. It’s also about the changes required in how the IT department is run and in the skills of the people who work in it.

Intel, though, has already shifted some of its IT to the cloud, as appropriate. “Intel uses cloud, both private and public, but we also have a lot of IT that we cannot and will not put into the cloud,” Priestley told attendees at this week’s Computing IT Leaders’ Forum, which focused on the management of hybrid clouds.

Feel the fear

However, when an organisation is already facing acute IT problems, the fear factor comes from not facing up to them. UCAS, the universities’ clearing service, has always faced a particular challenge: for a few days every year in August, demand for its services goes through the roof as students rush to secure a university place.

By 2011, the website through which everything had been automated was struggling to cope: a new approach that could handle the August spike in traffic was needed.

The solution proposed by James Munson, head of IT at UCAS, was radical: it would shift much of its computing services to the cloud. Not only that, but it insisted on a contract that would enable it to ramp up its compute capacity in August when it was all-action, and reduce it (and the price) for the rest of the year when the service is quieter.

“In 2011 and 2012, UCAS had problems being able to deliver the scale that was required for that intense period in the morning when everyone was getting their results at the same time,” said Munson.

“It was all hosted on-premise where we’re based in Cheltenham. We had created quite a complex infrastructure environment – some Microsoft .NET, some database, some Unix, different storage area networks all hosted there, and quite a lot of bandwidth that all needed to go in to that location on that one day, so it was not surprising that we were having ‘issues’.”

Furthermore, the architecture around which UCAS’s services had been built was monolithic, which meant changes required far-reaching testing and the systems lacked comprehensive monitoring. “So when things started to go wrong, we didn’t have great insight into what was going wrong and what was causing the problems. Something had to change.”

In late 2012, that change was decided: a transition to a public cloud infrastructure, with services shifting to a combination of Microsoft Azure, which made sense given UCAS’s existing .NET application investments, Amazon Web Services to host the organisation’s Oracle databases, and Rackspace, with whom UCAS already had a relationship.

The key services for finding and tracking courses were rebuilt in Microsoft Azure, with in-house Oracle databases upgraded, re-engineered and ported across to Amazon. These are load-balanced across two zones and the website is hosted by Rackspace.

Skills challenge

Munson found that the new skills required of an IT department in the era of cloud are very different from those required to run IT in-house – a skills gap also found by Rocco Labellarte, CIO at the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead.

“We are looking at a whole new set of skills,” he said. “There are lots of kids out there with the right qualifications in terms of understanding the environments. But actually getting people with the practical skills who have ‘been there and done that’ is another matter.”

He continued: “We have broken down our skill sets into a three areas: one is to move to a monitoring team, which is effectively just sitting there, watching the large screens all the time and being able to react very quickly because we are maintaining the service integration element internally.

“The second is having commissioned technical architects that understand exactly how everything is put together, both from a hardware perspective, and from a networking, security and applications perspective.”

Finally, although the organisation may be outsourcing to cloud providers, there is still a need for technical architects that can inform the organisation how it should be done, on the one hand, while challenging providers and their recommendations on the other.

Going the extra mile to get appropriately skilled staff in-house can save a fortune, he added. “Having internal skills, if they are significant, provides a cost benefit. We have avoided about £500m in spend by having the right skills from the start,” said Labellarte.

The Corliss Review Group: Five Myths About Cloud Privacy

Cloud Privacy

Last week a new set of privacy principles regarding the handling of personal information came into effect. The changes relate to how businesses handle, use and store personal information. While there are significant changes with a number of benefits for individuals, there have been some misconceptions in the industry with regards to privacy in the cloud that I’d like to address. Here are the top 5 myths that I’ve seen about privacy in the cloud.

1. Use of cloud computing is the biggest privacy risk factor

The notion that the use of cloud computing is the biggest Privacy risk factor that Australian businesses need to worry about is simply untrue. Ponemon Institute’s Survey on Data Security Breaches revealed that 69 per cent of serious data leaks were due to employee activities or errors.

So a lack of internal policies and controls, direct marketing activities, poorly trained staff, stolen laptops and offshore call centres are all bigger risks than cloud computing.

While Australian companies need to be wary of the new legislation and how it affects their IT infrastructure, the direct business benefits of cloud far outweigh these alleged risks.

2. It is unclear which jurisdiction my data is held in

This is a common misunderstanding among businesses. The word “cloud” suggests to some that your data is floating around in some unknown location, implying transborder data risks under the Privacy Act. The reality is your data is still yours, and it’s still on a server in a data centre. The data centre just happens to be owned by someone else. Cloud providers are overwhelmingly transparent about where your data is stored and would never move it across regions without your permission. If you’re unsure, a simple call to your provider will quickly clarify any concerns.

3. I can’t control third party access to my data in the cloud

The suggestion that you can’t control third party access to your data in the cloud is another myth. In most cases, the security services and accreditations that cloud providers offer are significantly better than internal IT can deliver. With the use of data encryption and support from your cloud partner, the technology risks are easily mitigated. And of course, technology and human risks exist whether you are hosting your data internally or externally.

4. Australian privacy law is tougher than elsewhere

Understandably, there are lots of businesses that are concerned about just how tough the new privacy laws are. In particular, they are worried about the cost of compliance and potential for significant fines (up to $1.7 million).

It’s important to remember that most developed economies have had strong privacy laws for some time. The EU established one of the more comprehensive with the 1995 Privacy Directive covering 27 countries, with Spain and Germany having issued many stiff fines. Many South American countries, including Peru, Uruguay, Argentina, Costa Rica and Mexico have issued Privacy laws to open trade with the EU. In Asia, Singapore passed a privacy law last year that protects personal data for ten years after a person’s death, while South Korea’s privacy law even covers a person’s image or voice.

5. I don’t need to worry about it

Despite my other comments, complacency remains the most dangerous myth! Businesses that think they don’t need to worry about security and privacy in their cloud are dead wrong. The risks may be similar to hosting data internally, but they still exist. Larger organizations may struggle to effectively audit their own use of cloud services, particularly when they have been adopted within departments, rather than corporate IT. On the other hand small, companies may struggle to understand the risks or establish privacy statements and policies. That said, simple steps can ensure that a company’s use of cloud is not a high risk factor in terms of its overall privacy compliance, when compared to the alternatives available.

The Corliss Review Group: What are the top security concerns when moving to the cloud?

techradar.com

Cloud computing brings a myriad of benefits for any enterprise, but it is also a cause for concern in a world where, according to InformationWeek, cyber criminals are now targeting "any company where they can find data to resell, disrupt or exploit."

Moving your company's sensitive data into the hands of third party cloud providers expands and complicates the risk landscape in which you operate every day.

In order to understand what concerns should be given emphasis in your cloud security strategy, you need to understand what you can't afford to lose and what can protect you.

Understanding what you can't afford to lose

Data breaches, according to the Cloud Security Alliance, are the top cloud computing security threat for 2013 and beyond. Sensitive data can be of enormous value to a hacker, so you need to consider what sensitive data you are storing in the cloud.

This might be anything a criminal can use to determine or steal someone's identity, such as personally identifiable information (PII) like full names, addresses, birth dates, some IP addresses, and online logins and passwords; and financial information such as bank account numbers and PINs. Furthermore, you should consider any confidential corporate information you might share in the cloud.

Essentially, ask yourself "What do I have that others might want?" and "What do I have that I can't afford to lose?" Data privacy regulations often demand public breach notifications in the event of a malicious data breach or inadvertent data loss – particularly if the information is in the clear.

If your security strategy fails to protect sensitive data, your enterprise could face severe consequences in terms of business and reputation loss as the result of disclosure.

Understand what can protect you if you do lose your data

Businesses migrating to the cloud should lock down any sensitive data before it leaves the premises. As the Snowden leaks indicate, third party cloud surveillance is ubiquitous, so the more open your data and access policies are for harvesting, the greater the risks to your cloud security strategy.

Deploy an encryption scheme that provides limited, controlled, enterprise-exclusive encryption key access. When you retain exclusive control of your encryption keys, you eliminate that concern of a data breach regardless of where your data resides or how many copies of it exist.

In many jurisdictions, a breach of strongly encrypted data to which the enterprise holds the key does not require public notification.

Even the systems you and your CSPs may have in place to prevent accidental erasure of your data can pose dangers to your enterprise's data privacy.

While backups, redundancy and other failover strategies protect against data loss due to deletion or system failures, they also create extra opportunities for the theft of this data that you consider important.

Keep in mind that, if you terminate your services with a particular CSP, you can never be certain the data has been digitally destroyed.

Moving to the cloud need not be complicated. An important element is for businesses to decide what data to put in the cloud – and then to encrypt it and retain the keys.

The Corliss Review Group: When emoji just isn’t enough, ubertxt

Who is not fond of cute little stuff that appears on your text messages, it somewhat adds excitement on the conversation. It feels like your texts lack a little something, maybe twirly bits and spangles and animation. Something more that emoji then welcome to ubertxt.

Youngsters may find the world twisted, it may seem turned upside down for these 12 years olds.

We may not be aware of this but there are some good reasons for why this has been happening, maybe one reason is, adults are constantly proving that adulthood is incompetence basking in the rays of power.

So as a replacement for making mental progress, we disappear into our phones and express ourselves with words and smiley faces.

Now and again, while, plain texts aren’t enough, simple emoji seem not to provide us the excitement that they used to.

So there is a solution for that, presenting the ubertxt. We know you’ve been waiting for something like this for at least 15 days — something that makes your new iPhone 5C an even happier place to live.

Ubertxt present the skill to make your texts seem as warm and sincere as how you would really want the person you sent the message feel like they are close to your soul.

Its creator, Teresa Rucinski, told me that there’s nothing quite like it. Creators tend to believe that.

She said: “The closest competition would be color text messaging apps on App Store such as Color Text, Pimp My Text. However, they only offer standard/generic wallpaper animated backgrounds at best.”

Come to think about it, if you’re going to make your texts exciting, it’s personally shameful to use generic wallpaper, isn’t it? What does that say about you? That you’re sad and that you’re prepared to use an app with “pimp” in its name.

Try to imagine, with ubertxt your “OMG” SMS can seem like it came out of the palette of Picasso or, at least, from the needle of your local tattoo artist.

Rucinski told me: “ubertxt is the only app to offer animated/MOVING text, professionally designed animated templates/backgrounds, and custom photo & GIF functionality.”

Note the caps used for “MOVING.” And you can even insert your emoji into ubertxt.

Ubertxt is already racing up the App Store charts in the appropriate categories.

Rucinski went to Harvard and used to work for Google but you will be wondering whether is 17 years old and this is her high school art project.

Without a doubt, she has a belief in — and an understanding of — your inner child. You know the one that, with the help of technology, has become your outer child.

Corliss Tech Review Group: LG utmanar Samsung med G Flex böjd skärm smartphone

Det ser ut som LG och Samsung är på det igen. Båda företagen tävlar om uppmärksamheten på CES 2013 med samtidig "världens första" böjda OLED TV-meddelanden. LG ledde konsekvent i loppet till konsumenten utrymme, och såg ut att vara första flytta skärmformatet på smartphones med tillkännagivande tidigare denna månad av sina planer på att mass producera flexibel OLED telefonen visar. Samsung hade andra idéer, dock och Galaxy runda lanserades bara några dagar senare. LG har nu ikapp med den kommande lanseringen av sin något större Flex smartphone, med en böjd skärm som följer konturen av ansiktet.

Överslag G Flex Smartphonens skärm vertikalt ger mikrofonen närmare användarens mun när hålls mot örat, som, enligt LG, ökar volymen på mikrofonen med 3 dB (i jämförelse med typiska platt-screening telefoner). Företaget gör även liknande IMAX-liknande uppslukande landskap video visning påståenden som tillsammans frisläppandet av de böjda TV-apparater.

G Flex sport en 6-tum, 1280 x 720 upplösning P-OLED visar, som ser den display och panel byggt på plast substrat i stället för glas. Riktig RGB-teknik har införlivats – där röda, gröna och blå sub-pixlarna är alla inneslutna i en pixel – för en ljusare och mer exakt på skärmen bild.

En 2,26 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 quad-core processor körs showen, med en 450 MHz Adreno 330 GPU, 2 GB LPDDR3 RAM och 32 GB eMMC-lagring (med en micro SD-kortplats för utbyggnad) att göra upp den stöttande gjutna. Enheten tips skalorna på 6,2 oz. (177 g) och dess 3500 mAh böjda batteri, som har utvecklats av syster företag LG Chem, rapporteras att tillhandahålla mer än en hel dags användning.

6.3 x 3,2 x 0,31-0,34 i (160.5 x 81,6 x 7,9 – 8.7 mm) enheten har en 13 megapixelkamera med LED-blixt på baksidan och framsidan 2,1 MP webbkamera. LED pulser att ange ansikte identifiering eller timer nedräkning. Bak-nyckel design i G2 har också inkluderats, med en strömbrytare i en volym rocker, och företaget har tillämpat en speciell reptålig beläggning på baksidan för att hålla enheten ser ut som nya längre.

Den senaste medlemmen i LG: s G smartphone familjen kör Android 4.2.2 och har en fräsch UX som har en funktion som kallas Q teater som ger användare tillgång till innehåll direkt från låsskärmen, och möjliggör visning delas i två separata fönster för multi-tasking.

Smartphone är LTE-kapabel, förpackningar Bluetooth 4.0 och 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi, och använder NFC-tekniken. Det är också skicklig av Hi-Fi-kvalitet 24-bit/192 kHz ljud-uppspelning.

LG G Flex börjar sin resa i rygg fickorna på konsumenterna i Sydkorea nästa månad, innan att rullas ut till andra marknader.

Corliss Tech Review Group: Nokia lanserar första Windows tablet, nya Windows-telefoner

Nokia är att införa ett större sortiment av Windows-telefoner och avtäcka dess första Tablet PC: n, alla idrottsliga kraftfull kamera tekniken finns i dess flaggskepp Lumia 1020 smartphone.

Den under tryck cellphone maker att förlita sig till kameran för att göra en skillnad för andra telefon rivaler. Fyrtio one-megapixel kamera för Lumia 1020 med teknik som utformats för att ha bättre svagt ljus skott och erbjuda större manuella kontroller än de flesta smartphones.

Microsoft Windows system kommer att använda i den senaste enheter och den kommer att lanseras som Microsoft syftar till att slutföra sin 5.44 miljarder euro (7,4 miljarder dollar) affär för att köpa Nokias telefon företag och patenträttigheter. Affären väntas stänga tidigt nästa år.

Nokia är ett finskt företag. Man har sett sin mobiltelefon verksamhet fick i allvarlig nedgång i marknaden sedan Apple helt förändrat hur människor använder telefoner med 2007 införandet av iPhone, vilket gör Microsoft kamp snabb nedgång i försäljningen av traditionella persondatorer för smartphones och tabletter.

Dragen av Nokias nya Lumia 1520 blir en större skärm med 6 inches diagonalt jämfört med 4,5 inches på 1020. Nokia sa nya telefonens kamera kommer att ha endast 20 megapixlar för att hålla kameran sensor mindre och telefonen tunnare. Men det är fortfarande mer upplösning än de flesta andra telefoner.

Vad är mer intressant är 1520 kommer även med nya apps för att ordna foton baserat på var du tar skott och ger dig mer flexibilitet vid fastställandet av i vilka där bilden bör inriktas. Mobiloperatörer förväntas erbjuda det billigare med två-år tjänstekontrakt men telefonen kommer att kosta $740.

Det blir också en billigare version, Nokia Lumia 1320, för ett kontrakt-fri pris på $339. Dess funktioner är 5-megapixel kamera och en långsammare processor än 1520. Men både köra den senaste versionen av Windows Phone 8, som har nya funktioner för att rymma större skärmstorlekar.

Nokias första tabletten kommer att köra Windows 8.1 RT, det kommer Lumia 2520. Detta innebär att den delar kakel-baserade gränssnittet av telefonens programvara, ändå det kan köra olika apps för Windows tabletter. Och det finns även RT, den en lätt version av Windows, så det kommer att köras endast apps särskilt utformad för det. Vanliga versioner av Windows 8.1 kan köra apps för äldre versioner av Windows.

Varje version av 2520 måste funktionen av en inbyggd 4G LTE mobil åtkomst. Tvärtom, gör iPads och de flesta andra tabletter cellulära tillgång bas från vad du önskar, med deras billigaste modeller kan använda Wi-Fi endast för Internet-åtkomst.

Alla tre enheter förväntas vara tillgängliga på marknaden i slutet av året. Alla telefoner kommer i flera färger med en hård, plast tillbaka gjuten till enheten.

Corliss Tech Review Group: Revenue down in Q2 2013 while Worldwide Server Shipments Up

IBM leads the worldwide server market in Q2 2013, claiming a 25.6 percent share with a revenue of $3.156 billion USD, Gartner reports. As per the same quarter in 2012, that number is actually down 9.7 percent from a 27.2 percent market share and revenue of $3.496 billion USD. Both HP and Oracle saw a decline year-over-year while Dell, Cisco, and another of others saw growth.

Whereas the general server market revenue drops to 3.8% in the second quarter, worldwide server shipments actually elevated 4 percent year-over-year. Inspur Electronics saw the most shipments, up 211.8 percent with 20,960 shipments in 2012 and 65,350 shipments in 2013. Only with distant second, Cisco came next with a 58.5 percent increase year-over-year then followed by “others” (14.4 percent) and Dell (1.7 percent). IBM shipments fell 8 percent year-over-year and HP dropped 13.6 percent.

Despite HP’s drop in server shipments, the company remained the worldwide market leader in Q2 2013 with a 23.9 percent market share and 586,857 shipments. Dell with a 22.4 market share came in at a close second followed by IBM (8.5 percent), Cisco (3.2), and Inspur Electronics (2.7 percent). According to Gartner reports that Inspurentered the top five thanks to a significant High-performance Computing (HPC) deal that it won in its native China during the quarter.

“In terms of server form factors, x86 blade servers declined by 3 percent in shipments and 4.5 percent in revenue for the quarter,” the firm said. “The x86 rack-optimized form factor climbed 3.9 percent in shipments and 2.4 percent in revenue for the second quarter.“

Server shipments decline 5.9 percent in Q2 2013 weigh against to Q2 2012, with server shipments reaching 550,537 units particularly in the European, Middle Eastern, and African regions (EMEA). HP led the server market in this region, shipping 222,016 units and owning 40.30 percent of the market. Dell followed with 114,057 shipments as well as IBM (47,550), Fujitsu (24,325) and Cisco (14,484).

Regarding the revenue during the same quarter, HP is still leading the pack with $1.045 billion USD, then IBM with the raking in $834.8 million USD followed by Dell ($434.9 million), Oracle ($193.5 million), and Fujitsu ($175.8 million) — revenue for all others combined was $426.5 million USD. From the top five to show revenue growth, Dell and Fujitsu remained the only two vendors. The EMEA market lacks the hyper scale segment growth that other regions benefit from, Gartner said.

“In the second quarter of 2013, x86 server revenue decreased 4.7 percent in EMEA, while RISC/Itanium UNIX revenue fell 22.6 percent,” the firm said. “Revenue for the ‘other’ CPU segment grew 44.3 percent. The RISC/Itanium UNIX segment continued to suffer from migrations to alternative platforms as users sought lower cost alternatives and more flexibility. The ‘other’ CPU category, which is primarily driven by mainframes, saw a double-digit increase thanks to platform refreshes. “

Adrian O’Connell, research director at Gartner, said that weak enterprise demand, combined with consolidation and platform migration, continued to dampen theEMEA server market during Q2 2013. Recognized vendors like HP, Dell, and IBMwere also gradually more challenged. These challenges are relatively-new vendors such as Cisco and local OEMs like Huawei and the current worldwide PC market leader Lenovo. ODMs selling directly to large end-users also posed as a problem for the larger companies.

Corliss Tech Review Group: Samsung strävar efter 20nm-klass DDR4 på datacentret

Denna månad september, sade Samsung är det nu mass producera DDR4 minne baserat på 20nm-klass förlopp teknologien, detta innebär att noden processen tech är någonstans mellan 20 och 30nm. Syftet med dessa hög densitet moduler är enterprise-servrar i nästa generation, storskaliga datacenter och andra program. Denna enterprise service bygger på högre prestanda och lägre kostnader som härrör från lägre strömförbrukning.

"Antagandet av höghastighetsinternet DDR4 i nästa generations serversystem i år kommer att inleda en push in mot avancerade premium minne hela företaget," sade Young-Hyun Jun, Executive Vice President, minne försäljning & marknadsvaror, Samsung Elektronik.

Samsung sade tidigt marknaden tillgängligheten av 4 GB (512 MB) DDR4 20 nm-klass marker kommer att underlätta efterfrågan på 16 GB och 32 GB memory modules/pinnar. För en ytterligare analys av dess synvinkel, det ska ta 64 av dessa nya 4 Gb marker att producera en 32 GB pinne DDR4 RAM — 32 marker för 16 GB moduler.

Enligt företaget är dess nya 4 GB chip den minsta och högsta utför enhet ännu, ge överföringshastigheter upp till 2.667 Mbps. Det är en ökning med 25% över toppfarten på en motsvarande DDR3 modell för närvarande erbjuds på marknaden.

Företaget sagt, den nya DDR4 enheten också förbrukar 30 procent mindre ström thanDDR3, vilket gör det till den idealiska lösningen för den snabbt växande sektorn data center. Således, genom att anta DDR4 minnesteknik tidigt, OEM-tillverkare kan minimera operativa kostnader och maximera prestanda för att ge mer gynnsam avkastning på investeringar.

2012 Är DDR4 standard från DDR3 som sagt, i stället för att använda en multi drop buss de tillstånd som flera minnen för att sitta i samma minne kanal. Denna nya tech använder en Point-to-Point-buss till den registeransvarige, begränsa en pinne till en RAM-kanal. En dual-channel setup bör därför endast fysiskt tillåta twoDDR4 moduler, en i varje kanal.

"Efter ger topprestanda med våra tidsanpassat tillhandahålla 16 GB DDR3earlier i år, vi fortsätter att utöka premium servermarknaden 2013 och kommer nu att fokusera på högre densitet och mer prestanda med 32 GB DDR4, och bidra till ännu större tillväxt i den gröna IT-marknaden 2014," Jun läggas till.

Corliss Tech Review Group: Samsung Fined for Paying People to Criticize HTC’s Products

 If you are planning to buy a new smartphone or laptop, you look up internet reviews and customer ratings to check out what device is best for you. But remember not to always believe everything you read on the internet. Samsung was fined $340,300 by Taiwan’s Fair Trade Commission for paying people to post messages online those attacked HTC products at the same time as they flattered Samsung’s.

The site lists almost 4,000 examples of these kinds of assaults, with a lot of instigating on the Chinese message forum Mobile 01. People on Mobile 01 are permitted to state their love of Samsung or detest of HTC, but Samsung openly paid them to make these types of posts, in spite of. This approach is also known as astroturfing because it emulates a grass-roots campaign, but is completely fake and unnatural.

Sun Lih-chyun, a spokesman for the Taiwan FTC, said that Samsung’s astroturfing was the first case of its kind in the country. “The deceitful behavior has negative impacts on market order and violated the fair trade law,” he said, as reported by the wire news service AFP.

“We are disappointed that the Taiwan FTC has decided that we have violated the Fair Trade Act based on online marketing activities,” said a spokesman for Samsung. “Samsung Electronics Taiwan is carefully reviewing the decision and will take all necessary steps to protect our reputation as a company which values its customers.”

Astroturfing doesn’t only take place with companies overseas. Lately, the online reviews site Yelpsued the McMillan Law Group in San Diego for astroturfing when it shaped fake positive reviews from nonexistent clients.

Sinan Aral, an associate professor of IT and marketing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the effects of those fake reviews might be felt long after they’re removed. His research found that positive reviews, regardless of whether they’re fake or genuine, snowball into more positive reviews. “It has this kind of insidious effect,” he told ABC News. “Yelp might go and pluck those fake reviews out, but all of the subsequent reviews are influenced to be more positive.”

If a business in the states gets caught astroturfing while Yelp instituted its own policies, customers can also choose to report it to the Better Business Bureau.

“Online reviews may represent a new medium, but the principles of honest advertising are longstanding,” said Katherine Hutt, a spokesperson for the Better Business Bureau. “The Federal Trade Commission has had guidelines in place for nearly 40 years that make it clear that astroturfing is an unacceptable business practice. Ultimately, only businesses that meet our standards can remain accredited by the Better Business Bureau.”

While Aral’s research also says that fake negative reviews don’t spiral into more negative reviews because of an online community’s tendency to neutralize negative feedback, he says that it’s important for all reviewers to be honest. “The bottom line is that ratings and consumer feedback is a centerpiece of e-commerce,” he said. “We have to be really attuned and sensitive to detecting fraud. “

Corliss Tech Review Group: Harmon.ie Intros Secure Android App for Office 365, SharePoint

Harmon.ie has partnered with five leading mobile device management vendors to provide a secure, cross-platform, easy to use, consistent Office 365/SharePoint experience for enterprise IT mobile Android users, they announced this September. For businesses looking to eliminate Drop box, Google Drive and other unsecure document sharing/storing services that employees typically use, and tighten those pesky “leaks” associated with unsecured storage services; this news is kind of a big deal for them.

Currently the company offers a full-featured, enterprise-grade Android app that permits device owners to access SharePoint and Office 365 documents securely on a subscription basis, with pricing starting at $4 per month. A free version for simply reading Office 365 and SharePoint documents and a full-featured Premium version for individuals to read, write, and upload files for a flat $19.99 fee is also being provided by the company.

Aside from Apple’s iOS platform and BlackBerry, the Android client is also part of Harmon.ie’s Mobile Suite. Supporting the suite are Citrix Ready Worx Verification, the Good Dynamics Secure mobility Platform, AirWatch, MobileIron, and Samsung KNOX. The three clients provide apps for editing and sharing Office 365 and SharePoint documents, and for reaching out to colleagues by means of Office 365/SharePoint social capabilities.

“Harmon.ie also provides real-time updates when colleagues edit important documents; colleagues can then be contacted with a single click,” the company said. “Workers can expand their social networks by adding colleagues from the mobile device’s contact list and keep up to date with harmon.ie’s unified activity stream of collaboration updates.“

Harmon.ie backs Office 365 (SharePoint Online) and also hosted solutions for SharePoint 2013, SharePoint 2010, Office SharePoint Server (MOSS 2007), and Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0. Pricing consists of email only for $4 per user per month with a yearly commitment, mobile only for $4 per user per month, and $6 per user per month for both email and mobile access. As you would expect it will be cheaper if you buy more licenses. Orders for more than 200 licenses will necessitate a quote.

“We are extremely proud to round out our mobile offering with today’s Android release, and to add such an illustrious set of leading MDM vendors as trusted partners,” said David Lavenda, VP Product Strategy at harmon.ie. “These new additions insure that customers now have secure and scalable mobile access to the document storage systems in which their organization already has a significant investment; Office 365 and SharePoint, no matter what mobile devices they use.”

Corliss Tech Review Group: Over 10 mn BBM downloads on rival phones in 24 hrs. of launch

According to Canadian handset maker BlackBerry, its popular chat application BBM for rival Android-based handsets and iPhones has witnessed over 10 million downloads in the first 24 hours of its re-launch.

On Tuesday, the under pressure smartphone maker had begun again the rollout of BlackBerry Messenger (BBM).

“It’s been 24 hours since we resumed the launch of BBM for Android and iPhone. And what a day it’s been! We’ve already had more than 10 million downloads of BBM,” BlackBerry EVP (BBM) Andrew Bocking said in a post on the company’s official Blog.

In September, BlackBerry had stopped the global rollout of its instant messaging service BBM on rival phones, holding responsible the delay on issues caused by an unreleased old version of BBM (BlackBerry Messenger).

“When we saw almost one million people install an unreleased version of the Android version, another million use workarounds to download BBM onto their iPhones and another six million people pre-register to know when BBM became available for iPhone and Android, we knew we were on to something huge,” he noted.

The application has also seen ‘overwhelmingly positive reviews’ on Google Play and the App Store. BBM has earned 60,000 five-star reviews on Google Play from about 87,000 reviews, he added.

On Apple’s App Store, BBM rose quickly in the free app rankings in the first 24 hours, taking the number one slot in more than 75 countries, including the US, Canada, the UK, Indonesia and most of the Middle East, Bocking said.

BlackBerry said it will add more new features to BBM to promote it as the private social network.

“While we’re excited to bring BBM to iPhone and Android – we aren’t stopping there. Work isn’t slowing down at all. We committed to delivering a BBM experience on iPhone and Android that was equal to that on BlackBerry 10. That means bringing BBM Video, BBM Voice and BBM Channels…

“My team is still committed to bringing those features to BBM on Android and iPhone in the near future. And we are not stopping there – we have some great new features planned that will build on BBM as the private social network you count on for immediate conversations you can control and trust,” Bocking said.

THE CORLISS REVIEW GROUP: SECURITY

Amazon revealed late September this year, aside from their announcement of the new Kindle Fire HDX tablets, Fire OS 3.0 and a revised 7 inch Kindle Fire HD tablet, they also announced that its new operating system introduces new enterprise and productivity features to the Kindle Fire platform. As a result, the 7 inch Kindle Fire HDX, the 8.9 inch Kindle Fire HDX, and the 7 inch Kindle Fire HD 2013 model will be enterprise-ready when they begin shipping next month.

“Kindle Fire is already the second most popular tablet at work in the U.S.,” said Raghu Murthi, Vice President of Enterprise and Education, Amazon. “As employees increasingly bring their own devices to work, the new Kindle Fire tablets can be easily integrated into the workplace with the new enterprise features, including encryption, secure Wi-Fi, a native VPN client, integration with leading MDMsolutions, and Kerberos support for Intranet access.”

A native VPN client for instant access to corporate networks is being provided by fireOS 3.0 even as you’re on the road or at home, secure hardware data encryption (HDXmodels only), Kerberos verification for single sign-on and the capability to browse secure Intranet websites from the Silk browser on Kindle Fire. A native Simple Certificate Exchange Protocol or SCEP client is used to retrieve digital certificates for secure resources.

To make it more user friendly for IT departments to manage Kindle Fire, this latest platform furthermore provides Kindle-specific device management APls that integrate with existing Mobile Device Management (MDM) systems. According to the company,Kindle Fire supports a wide range of MDM solutions including Amazon’s Whispercast service as well as third-party vendors like AirWatch, Citrix, Fiberlink, Good Technology, and SOTI.

In addition to make it more consumer-friendly, the latest OS supports Wi-Fi networks with the use of WPA2 security, printing documents and emails directly to a wireless printer, and a built-in OfficeSuite solution for reading documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Business customers can make use of Android enterprise and productivity apps available in the Amazon Appstore like GoToMeeting, Evernote,Cisco AnyConnect, and Documents To Go.

The company said, some of these features will be delivered as part of the free, over-the-air Fire OS 3.1 update in mid-November. The Kindle Fire HDX models will also include a “Mayday” button, the company’s on-device tech support that’s available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year. Users simply tap “Mayday” to be connected to an Amazon expert who can co-pilot users through any features. Blind and visually impaired customers can leverage new and improved accessibility tools such as Screen Reader, Explore by Touch, and Screen Magnifier, the company further added.

As of today the 7 inch Kindle Fire HDX can be pre-purchased although not until October 18, the Wi-Fi version doesn’t shipped while startingNovember 14, the 4G LTE models will ship. The customers can pre-purchase Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 tablet here while the Wi-Fi only model ships November 7 and the 4G LTE model ships on December 10.