Articles by Jack M. Germain

The escalating use of e-commerce creates a feeding frenzy for fraudsters. As online shoppers make convenient summertime purchases and start to focus on their upcoming holiday buying lists, they need to know how to avoid getting ripped off In what may be a lapse of logic -- and contrary to stereotypes about which age groups are the most internet sav...

Sometimes the world of smart technology innovations collides with the planet of dumb customer service provisions. That collision usually does not bode well for the customer In my case, that scenario is particularly true. I bought Lenovo's Chromebook Duet 5 for an attractive price from a major national electronics store. In hindsight, that was a pur...

As IT workers continue their daunting job of protecting network users from bad guys, a few new tools might help stem the tide of vulnerabilities that continue to link open-source and proprietary software Canonical and Microsoft reached a new agreement to make their two cloud platforms work better together. Meanwhile, Microsoft apologized to open-so...

The art of automating business communication extends to resurrecting handwritten letters to customers and maximizing the appearance with a robot labor force to produce the correspondence The Handwrytten app is part of an automated CRM tool that lets businesses -- and individuals with an entrepreneurial passion -- integrate computerized automation w...

Shop owners and internet merchants need to turn shopping into game-playing experiences to meet ongoing changes in e-commerce. They also need to forget the industry hype about the marvels of personalization as a marketing strategy The supply chain debacle and the rising costs of everything have forced consumers to make critical choices in how they s...

Cybersecurity pros want the computer industry to push for vendor consolidation and open standards This major change in how IT pros safeguard networks is long overdue, according to new research by the Information Systems Security Association (ISSA) International and independent industry analyst firm Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), a division of Tec...

Navigating the internet can be a trouble-filled journey. Bad actors intent on exploiting uninformed users are constantly lurking behind emails, websites, and social media invites. Even your Wi-Fi router and those now-ubiquitous QR codes can be danger points. Add to that the never-ending virus and malware threats Computer and mobile device users are...

MakuluLinux Shift is one solution to standardizing the Linux desktop From a marketing standpoint, two big impediments block a more widespread adoption of the Linux operating system for business and consumer desktop use. One is easily selecting a desktop environment from among varied options. The second is wading through the myriad of independently ...

An unusual STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) concept combined with some fashion know-how sewn in is creating a unique brand of tech-based fashion entrepreneurship Svaha USA is a STEAM-themed clothing and accessories brand whose online store is changing the face of women's and children's apparel. Svaha celebrates women ...

Monday.com, a developer of work OS management tools, on Tuesday released the first of five new standalone products aimed at professionals with targeted use cases This new customer relationship management tool set is a substantial shift from the all-in-one product strategy the company employed until now. The new platform, Monday Sales CRM, is built ...

Embedded finance is on the rise in both the business and consumer payments markets. Analysts project its revenue will reach $1.91 trillion as adoption expands by 2028 This steady acceptance is opening fintech operations to a wide range of marketplace opportunities. At the same time, it is forcing banks to morph their traditional catbird seat domain...

Part of the worsening customer experience the retail industry faces today comes from a lack of adequate voice automation to streamline interaction with customer service calls. Wait times are skyrocketing, and it is much more difficult to reach a human agent than it was before the pandemic Traditional taped voice answering systems leave callers conf...

GitHub gets the heave-ho by a software developer group. Meanwhile, a 12-year-old developer takes on the maintainer role of the near-abandoned Unity desktop The start of the summer season brought new and old Linux developments to the forefront. Long-time portable Porteus is freshly released after four years. It offers eight choices. Windows-like Lin...

A new report by a privileged access management firm (PAM) warns that IT security is worsening as corporations remain bogged down in deciding what to do and what it will cost Delinea, formerly Thycotic and Centrify, on Tuesday, released the research based on 2,100 security decision-makers internationally, revealing that 84% of organizations experien...

Retailers, take heed of Generation Z's desire for convenience in processing payments Without offering frictionless payments and a comprehensive set of system tools to meet the demands of this up-and-coming generation born between 1997 and 2012, retailers can say goodbye to Gen Z as customers....

Companies like Wayfair, Etsy, eBay, and many others in this troublesome inflationary era, struggle with an e-commerce reset as more consumers return to in-person shopping MasterCard has said that in-store shopping increased 10% in April, while e-commerce sales slipped almost 2% from a year ago. Even Amazon seems bruised with a 3% decline in online ...

A recent gathering of global cybersecurity pros explored the latest attack scenarios hackers use to infiltrate corporate networks. But unlike the hopes of misguided potential victims, no silver bullet or software guarantee will fully protect them The RSA Conference (RSAC) presenters focused on the surge in demand for implementing a Zero-Trust philo...

Using no-code technology instead of dedicated code programmers could become the future of software development in retail marketing and related software-building industries. But it is not a one-size-fits-all solution for all use cases No-code, an approach to creating software applications that require little in the way of programming skills, lets wo...

Unless you are one of those rare folks who shuns the use of cell phones, you are walking around with a ticking cyber bomb in your pocket Smartphone malware is an ever-growing threat. More than 5 billion people use mobile phones worldwide. More than 90% of those individuals rely on smart- or internet-enabled phones with an average of 40 installed ap...

Emerging fintech company Evvio wants marketplace operators to move beyond legacy e-commerce barriers in favor of new technology that eliminates outdated banking and payment processing Evvio in April announced the launch of Fluid Commerce, an e-commerce transactions platform that eliminates the need for credit cards, bank accounts, and third-party p...