Thu. Jan 28th, 2021

Grace

Who, what, where: A look at today’s workforce

By Grace 3 hours ago

Okta’s 7th Business at Work report takes a deep dive into how the enterprise functions, and examines the apps and services they use to be productive.

Image: iStock/Blue Planet Studio

As the pandemic spread and the world dispersed its workforce in 2020, the enterprise’s reliance on tech not only grew but expanded quickly. The latest Business at Work report from Okta stated that “tech solutions once preferred only by ‘early adopters’ became survival tools for companies across all industries and the population as a whole.” What worked for businesses? With whom did they consult or how did they solve their new challenges? Where did they find the sources and how did they fare? The data was derived from “Okta’s more than 9,400 customers and the Okta Integration Network (OIN), which includes more than 6,500 integrations with cloud, mobile and web apps, as well as IT infrastructure providers.” A “shakeup in

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Gardin raises $1.2M pre-seed to use ‘optical phenotyping’ tech to improve food production – TechCrunch

By Grace 1 day ago

Gardin, a ‘deep tech’ hardware and software startup developing optical phenotyping technology and analytics to optimise food production, has raised $1.2 million in pre-seed funding.

Leading the round is LDV Capital, with participation from Seedcamp, and MMC Ventures. A number of angel investors are also investing, including Pratima Aiyagari, Gilad Engel, and Abdulaziz Alrashed.

Founded in late 2019, Gardin’s mission, in the U.K. company’s own words, is to help everyone access high quality, nutritious food that is “good for you and for our planet”.

Specifically, the startup is developing tech for farms based on its own “optical phenotyping” hardware and accompanying analytics software. The idea is to enable food producers to measure and monitor the nutritional value of food, from “seed to plate in a real world environment,” rather than a lab.

“With deployment of Gardin’s OS, insight from our analytics will be delivered to help food producers optimise

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Google releases alarming report about North Korean hackers posing as security analysts

By Grace 2 days ago

Google said the attackers were targeting security researchers by using fake LinkedIn and Twitter profiles and asking to collaborate.

Image: iStock/iBrave

Google unveiled a new report from its Threat Analysis Group on Monday highlighting the work of a group of cyberattackers associated with the government of North Korea that sought to impersonate cybersecurity researchers in an effort to target those “working on vulnerability research and development at different companies and organizations.” Adam Weidemann, a member of the Threat Analysis Group, wrote that the attackers used a variety of fake blogs, Twitter accounts and LinkedIn profiles to make themselves look legitimate and communicate with researchers and analysts they were hoping to go after. 

SEE: Social engineering: A cheat sheet for business professionals (free PDF) (TechRepublic)

ZDNet noted that the malware associated with the attack was tied to a notorious North Korean government-backed organization called the Lazarus Group.

“The actors have been

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Forrester report highlights colocation and data center trends in the remote work era

By Grace 2 days ago

The report focuses on market consolidation, the influence of data gravity, power-saving programs, interconnectivity, and more.

Image: iStock/ty cgi stock

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, organizations around the globe have transitioned to remote work models. To support a remote infrastructure and empower virtual collaboration, many organizations have leveraged cloud-based solutions and colocation capabilities. On Jan. 20, Forrester published a report highlighting trends across the colocation and data centers market including consolidation, the influence of data gravity, power-saving strategies, and more.

Data gravity’s influence on strategy

Since the phrase was first coined more than a decade ago, the term “data gravity” has taken on a trajectory and orbit all its own. Forrester first dives into the effect data gravity has had on an organizational strategy. The report said that data gravity is “more important than ever,” due to the sheer amount of data being created and the proliferation of new ways

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Fleksy adds an art marketplace to spice up its keyboard app – TechCrunch

By Grace 2 days ago

Fleksy, an autocorrecting AI keyboard which competes with big-guns like Google’s Gboard and Microsoft’s Swiftkey, has a new way to catch users’ eyes: Art keyboards.

It’s just launched FleksyArt: A marketplace for artists to sell digital works to its users so they can customize the look of their keyboards.

Fleksy has had keyboard themes before. But the art marketplace aims to go further — opening its platform up to all sorts of artists to digitally distribute work to its “millions” of users for display on a piece of essential smartphone real-estate (it points out the keyboard is the second most used app on phones, after all).

As this is keyboard art, the illustrations and artworks appear with the letters of Fleksy’s keyboard overlaid. So the startup warns legibility is important. Clearly some designs are going to work better than others. But beyond that the creative sky is the

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BlackBerry expands Baidu partnership to take autonomous driving to a higher gear

By Grace 2 days ago

The partnership expansion focuses on automotive safety as autonomous driving capabilities proliferate in the years ahead.

Image: iStock/onlyyouqj

Some of the biggest names in the tech and automotive industries are racing to develop autonomous vehicles and have these systems ready for the open road in the years ahead. As our sister site ZDNet reported in January of 2018, BlackBerry previously announced a partnership with Baidu, which involved incorporating the company’s QNX operating platform with Baidu’s autonomous vehicle platform, Apollo. On Monday, BlackBerry announced an expansion of this partnership to assist with the software side of the burgeoning autonomous vehicles market.

“With BlackBerry QNX’s embedded software as its foundation, Baidu has made significant progress as part of its Apollo platform in establishing a commercial ecosystem for innovative technologies that OEMs can leverage for their next-generation vehicles,” said Dhiraj Handa, VP, channel, partners, and APAC, BlackBerry Technology Solutions in a press release.

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