Thought Leadership

Facebook is on its way to dominate the world

Facebook is now ready to dominate the online world of business with the latest announcement from its F8 conference. The company made it very clear that having 1.35 billion active users and allowing them to share bad selfies and cat videos is not their end game. I’m shocked. Really. True, Facebook is making some good money from advertising but hey – that’s just for the cash flow. Their strategy is to dominate businesses within the social networking site as well…

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Even Jack Sparrow can have a copy of Windows

How do you combat software theft? Give it away for free. Microsoft recently announced that anyone in China who has a copy of the Windows 7 Operating System (and up), legitimate or illegitimate, will be able to upgrade for free to the new Windows 10 version. The estimated number of users, who would be able to take the advantage of this offer, would be in the hundreds of millions! Why would Microsoft do such a crazy thing as giving their…

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The distance between your wrist and pocket is exactly $300

What just happened? Did we suddenly move to a new universe where spending minimum $300 on a gimmicky technology gadget is normal? Actually that isn’t new at all – the gadgets seem to change with the season. It seems as though the latest “it” gadget with a $300 price tag can easily go to $15,000 for the fancy version – and this device likely won’t last for more than 3 years!! Even if it does, it will have become obsolete.…

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Amazon, is it science fiction or reality? Turns out, it’s both.

Amazon, the global warehouse for universe of goods, is promised us next-day delivery – hey wait, that’s yesteryear’s news. Although many current online retailers still struggle with this, with Amazon that chestnut of a promise is from so many years ago now. Not to be discouraged, Amazon has upped the ante several times. First, the internet giant started with same day delivery – and just how did they do that? Amazon created distribution centres where the highest volumes of purchases…

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Lenovo climbs mount stupid, plants a flag and takes a selfie.

This is a lesson about greed, bad communications and stupidity. Somewhere deep inside the executive offices of computer giant Lenovo, somebody had an ingenious plan: Let’s extract more money from our customers. To refresh your memory, Lenovo has long been a manufacturer of desktop computers, laptops and other electronics. The company first came to the spotlight when it purchased the laptop (remember ThinkPads? Yes they are still around) division from IBM, phones from Motorola/Google and the latest, the Intel-based server…

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Forget the measles. There’s no vaccination for this problem.

Back from an evening out you open your front door to discover that your house has been broken into, many valuables are stolen. You take out your phone and dial the police. To prevent this startling scenario, most people protect their homes with deadbolt locks, alarms, angry German Shepherds, and perhaps cameras. What most people don’t understand is that all of those things do precious little to secure their computers and their information on the Internet. Most people have likely…

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50 Shades of Samsung – Privacy, Security or Convenience?

Samsung has been very naughty. And not the 50 shades of Grey kind. Over the last weekend we discovered that Samsung has been playing “peeping Tom” in our homes. Through privacy disclosure, Samsung revealed that its TV sets might listen to our conversations and even share them with third parties (http://g3t.ca/Fii9y2). All the pundits and defenders of privacy are now racing to find the right adjectives to properly scold Samsung and demand higher levels transparency from the company. The Samsung…

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How much debt does your IT department owe?

The future is here…. Accumulating IT Debt This is a story about IT debt, and it begins with the recent request by the Chinese government asking all foreign companies to disclose the source code for their software (http://g3t.ca/tCIB7P http://g3t.ca/740LW7) According to the Chinese, these rules should ‘only’ affect software and hardware meant for the financial sector. Their given reasons are that the financial sector is so very important for China and they wish to: a) make sure there is no…

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Is your business prepared for On-Demand delivery?

It’s January again, so everyone is revealing their 2015 predictions on what’s going to be the hottest technology and which company will suddenly take off and go through stellar IPO. Let’s keep it simple and predictable, shall we? The internet is here to stay, the world of mobile and the internet of things (IoT) will grow, companies will be hacked and our privacy will be compromised. There you have it: your 100% guaranteed accurate predictions for 2015. The much bigger…

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DropBox goes to the office

DrobBox the cloud-based hard drive service with unlimited storage (for a price) offering convenient synchronization between all your devices. You get started with few free gigabytes to get you going and few extra gigabytes when you sign up a friend. It has quickly become the nightmare of IT departments around the world. The zero-barriers entry, ease of use, and ease of sharing files with colleagues, customers and friends makes DropBox the new Trojan horse of IT. Once again, IT managers…

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