A €2000 coffee machine that once connected to the Internet lets you set the strength of your coffee and get remote support help over the Internet without having to send the appliance in for service is in a bit of trouble.
Hackers , according to Cnet, can use the coffee machine to take over your pc but much more importantly make your coffee weak.
A great term to describe what people look like when they are typing furiously into their Blackberry with both hands and head bowed.
Read it on Pinstack.com a fervert and pretty cool BB community.
I got a call from one of our investors today - not with a typically what is the CAGR ( google it I dare you) or such hard maths questions. It was with a cool tit bit on Ray Darcys show on Today FM . They do a piece called Fix It Friday - and the constant No 1 problem they get calls about is lost items.
Frank , our CEO and all round media darling was on Ray’s show telling all and sundry about our cool service last year. We will be calling Ray et al to remind them of where to send unhappy listeners.
RTE have just reported that banking files from AIB Bank ( Ireland’s larges Bank , the last time I checked)
were found in a dump. There is no further details on what exactly has been lost.
Those nice people at Dell have released an interesting piece of research by Ponemon - 12,000 laptops lost in USA airports every week, and only 65% are recovered. At a $1000 price that is a pure device cost of over $200 million annually.
Computerworld reports that smartphones are a bigger threat to security than laptops.
The key issue is that users and IT managers dont seem to be worried about the data carried around on a smartphone and are not taking any steps to solve the perceived problem.
“A key danger with PDAs was that over half of IT executives surveyed were “not bothering” to enter a password when they used their phone.
Nine in 10 of the smart phones were being given access to company networks without extra security, even though the phones were individually owned by users. There were no access restrictions being applied to 81% of the phones.”
The tidal wave of data breaches on laptops will be replicated around the corner with smartphones.
An interesting study by JD Power has identified a trend away from taking free basic phones towards paying extra for smartphone functionality. Style was the most important factor (41%) , followed by free (25%) and ease of use (23%).
In a seperate survey by Rubicon Consulting 24% of iPhone buyers upgraded from a basic Motorola Razr. The Razr was see as a very stylish phone and this style conscious purchasers are moving in droves to the iPhone.
Getting phones for free is still a major part of the mobile landscape but consumers are prepared to pay for devices and applications and functionality that they desire.
Interesting article about the potential impact of Rogue Devices in an enterprise. Most of the rogue devices are bought by employees on their own , as they want to get better functionality from their device.
Here is the to do list:
1. VPNs
2. Block public wifi access
3. Strong passwords
4. Block removable storage
5. Educate Employees
6. Educate IT
7. Device Encryption
An interesting piece of mobility research reported in The Register - they tracked 100,000 mobile phone users to see how far people moved over a period of time. Most people dont stray further than a few miles from home for most of the time( 67%). 2-3% people travel further than 100 miles every week. The research was done outside the USA but is has caused a bit of a kafuffle re privacy issues.
To stop Crackberry addicts runing a good family day out , Alton Towers have banned PDAS. They have new PDA police roaming the Uk based Disneyland type theme park looking for edgy types sneaking a look at their smartphone while encouraging little Timmy to risk his life on the Antigravitator or the Vomitorium ( I am a girls blouse with these type of rides).
How busy are we all that we have to be forced to ditch the PDA for a few hours - there are only so many brain surgeons that need to be 100% contactable.
