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The United Kingdom's plans to launch a smartphone application to track potential COVID-19 infections won't include Apple and Google The country's National Health Service has designed its own mobile software to do contact tracing of people exposed to the coronavirus, the BBC reported Monday.

Oracle and Zoom Video Communications just entered a deal that, for once, is more about technological audacity than about dollars. The companies on Tuesday announced a partnership to host Zoom on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure In just a few months -- basically since the beginning of the novel coronavirus pandemic -- Zoom has seen demand for its service...

With measures to stem the spread of COVID-19 putting a chokehold on their filming capabilities, advertising agencies are enhancing old content with new tech, including deepfakes Deepfakes typically blend one person's likeness, or parts thereof, with the image of another person. For example, a recent commercial for State Farm insurance blended the m...

Consumers and companies worldwide have ramped up online ordering for software products and digital goods as they struggle to improve productivity and security while working remotely and spending more time at home 2Checkout on Monday released a report that indicates a sharp spike in online commerce aligning with the timing of the current global pand...

The enterprise IT environment is complex. Many systems, technologies, and practices that were developed at various times coexist in the same world. With expectations for technological advancements at their peak, we're tasked with enabling these systems to work together harmoniously to support the continuous sharing of information Systems and data m...

Some of the corporate responses to COVID-19 make me incredibly happy I don't work for a large company anymore. Some of the troubling reports from other companies include forced work in unsafe areas, not enough -- or any -- protection gear, massive layoffs and furloughs, and the sense that a critical mass of well-paid CEOs and politicians don't get that many people live paycheck to paycheck...

One of the latest options slated for potential adoption as a sponsored flavor in the Ubuntu family of Linux desktops is UbuntuDDE A beta version, released earlier this month, offers an interesting hands-on experience well outside the norm found with typical Ubuntu platforms. This new Linux distro is based on Ubuntu 20.04 and runs a slightly differe...

The preface to this security guide series, Part 1, outlines the basic elements that comprise a threat model, and offers guidance on creating your own. After evaluating the asset and adversary expressions of the threat model equation, you likely will have determined the danger level of your adversary -- and by extension, the caliber of its tools. T...

Google soon will require all advertisers to prove their legitimacy, regardless of the advertising content All advertisers will have to verify their identity, submit personal IDs and business verification documents, John Canfield, Google's director of product management for ads integrity, announced Thursday....

Canonical, the parent company of Ubuntu, on Thursday announced the general availability of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, codenamed "Focal Fossa." This major upgrade places particular emphasis on security and performance Released once every two years, the new long-term support version provides a platform for enterprise IT infrastructures and workloads across al...

Cuffless blood pressure measuring is coming to the Android world. Samsung on Tuesday announced that South Korean authorities have approved its Health Monitor app for use on the Galaxy Watch Active2. The app will be available in the third quarter of this year High blood pressure has been associated with increased risk of brain, kidney and heart prob...

Bodhi Linux, previously called "Bodhi OS," is a novel desktop computing platform for office or home. It offers a radically different desktop environment with a pleasant user experience well worth trying Bodhi is a lightweight, Ubuntu-based distribution featuring the Moksha desktop. The new version, 5.1.0, was released on March 25 and is the first u...

Merchants will be able to sell products on Google Shopping at no charge, thanks to changes that will take effect soon. Previously, they had to pay per click, but the cost was not fixed. There was no minimum, but they had to set a maximum for ad spend and Google would stop displaying their ads once the maximum was reached....

One of my great CRM research interests has been investigating how things change, and that interest is not limited to CRM. There is similar evolution in fields that seem only remotely related -- like climate change, which I've written about extensively Generally, the change I find most interesting involves how disparate inventions seem to cluster wi...

Facebook on Monday launched a free standalone app for creating and watching live video game play on Android devices Some 700 million users already engage in gaming on the platform, but with its dedicated app Facebook is locking horns with the leaders in the market -- Amazon, Google and Microsoft....

With something like 380 websites being created every minute, building an e-commerce shop can be a daunting task. It's easy to look at all of the success stories out there and think, "How could I possibly be that lucky?" However, the opportunity for growth in e-commerce is not slowing down. E-commerce sales are projected to grow 85 percent from the...

The reason governments had to shut down economies is that in the face of a pandemic, we could not tell who was sick and who was not. While widespread testing followed by a vaccine eventually will curb this virus, what about the next one? As we have seen, it takes months to develop tests and remedies for a new disease and more than a year to develo...

Humans may be wanderers by nature, but in the year 2020, with planet Earth overrun by a pandemic, most human activity has come to a shocking halt. Much of what is going on is related to battling the disease on the front lines -- either by tending to those who are stricken, or by filling basic needs so the rest of the population can shelter in place.

At this point, remarking that people now are more concerned about online privacy than ever before is not a novel observation. What's fascinating, though, is that interest in personal digital security has remained high since the issue exploded about seven years ago. In other words, instead of experiencing a short-lived spike, digital privacy awareness has been sustained...

In this uncertain and increasingly homebound era, customers are turning online for everything from groceries to cat food. It's more important than ever to make sure that websites are optimized for the highest-possible customer engagement and conversion. E-commerce optimization is one game that companies struggling for market share in the midst of a pandemic must play...