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One of the sure signs of a maturing company, or even an entire industry, is the ability to offer free services to nonprofit organizations in order to demonstrate benevolence. However, such charitable acts aren't just about being altruistic. As a growing number of cloud providers are discovering, there are plenty of new revenue and profit opportunities in the nonprofit sector...

Google this week released the alpha version of source code for End-to-End, a Chrome browser extension that encrypts email End-to-End uses the OpenPGP standard to encrypt, decrypt, digitally sign and verify signed messages within the browser....

RoboLinux is an impressive traditional Linux desktop distro. It could be an ideal vehicle for both enterprises and SOHOs to make the migration to Linux. RoboLinux comes with a few extra features that solve some of the potential problems of leaving other desktop platforms. One of its more enticing migration tools is a preconfigured virtual machine add-on that greatly reduces the IT burden of setting up Windows XP or Windows 7 to run in a VM environment within the Linux distro...

The idea of the subscription economy is not new -- at least not to anyone who's familiar with the idea of software as a service -- but it's an idea that can sneak up on businesses. Many in the SaaS space started as more traditional vendors that saw subscriptions as simply a different delivery mechanism and a way to reach customers who couldn't afford massive upfront cash layouts.

Apple this week updated its App Store Review Guidelines with a change that signals a loosening of its restrictive policies against bitcoin and other digital currencies. The update can be found in the purchasing and currencies section of the guideline. The change now allows apps to "facilitate transmission of approved virtual currencies provided th...

One quick and easy way to refresh an aging Android smartphone phone is to replace the home screen with a Launcher. Launchers are skins with themes and unique behaviors, like transparency and scrolling styles. Here's a look at the top five, best-performing free launchers for the Android operating system.

I think the European Union often goes overboard, and I typically don't agree with its rulings. However, when the EU declared Google invaded privacy, it seemed to have struck a nerve. Countless users worldwide agreed. So, what impact will the EU have on Google with respect to a citizen's right to be forgotten? This struggle is all about protecting ...

The Obama administration once again has trained its spotlight on climate change. The Environmental Protection Agency this week announced a plan to cut carbon pollution, a leading cause of climate change, by an average of 30 percent nationwide by 2030, compared with 2005 levels. Power plants account for 40 percent of carbon pollution, the biggest driver of climate change...

I think about the future -- perhaps too much. I recently read Jeremy Rifkin's new book, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism, and it made me think about the future of work. Rifkin's thesis, encompassed by this rather cheery title, is that automation is taking on more and more jobs that once were thought to be the province of skilled labor. ...

The U.S. Defense Department last month adopted a set of final rules covering the detection and avoidance of counterfeit electronic parts in the federal supply chain. The rules affect a wide swath of information technology firms that supply electronic components to the department, including software in some cases In general, the final rules require ...

A small team in France has created what it calls the world's firstfull HD 360-degree camera -- the 360cam by Giroptic. The 360cam iscurrently one of the hottest Kickstarter projects, blastingpast its modest US$150,000 goal to rack up nearly $800,000 incrowd-based funding with 29 days to go ...

A worldwide operation led by the United States involving law enforcement, private sector cybersecurity firms and software vendors has disrupted the GameOver Zeus botnet for now The U.S. also has filed criminal charges in Pittsburgh, Penn., and Omaha, Neb., against Russian national Evgeniy Mikhailovich Bogachev, and has charged a number of other sus...

Among the highlights of Apple's WWDC announcements this week is iCloud Drive, a major update to its cloud storage system. iCloud Drive is a file-sharing and storage product optimized to sync across several platforms iCloud Drive is designed to be a central platform for users to share or access files across Apple devices, but it's also now compatibl...

Sectors of society ranging from public interest groups to Google and Facebook oppose the United States Federal Communications Commissions' mid-May passage of new Net neutrality rules However, they're going about the issue all wrong, comedian John Oliver said in a rant on Net neutrality....

Microsoft on Monday announced global availability of the latest feature set in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, which was introduced earlier this year. It offers new marketing functionality, enhanced customer service features, a Unified Service Desk for call centers, and additional social listening features. The marketing functionality in this version of M...

Samsung this week officially launched its long-anticipated Tizen phone, at the Tizen Developer Conference being held in San Francisco through Wednesday One description of Tizen is that it's an open source Linux-based operating system from Samsung -- but that might be open to debate....

If you're a spammer, big news like the recent breach of eBay's computers is like striking oil in your back yard Perpetrators of unwanted email live for headline-grabbing events that they can use to separate gullible Web wanderers from their money, so the eBay breach is a perfect vehicle for the scammers, Cloudmark reported last week....

PCI 3.0, Part 3: Validating Your Cardholder Data Environment Summer is almost here, and that means many of you probably have made significant headway laying the groundwork for your 2015 PCI audit. However, one important aspect of 3.0 preparations that doesn't always get the attention it should is documentation....

Apple managed to pull off a mean feat on Monday at itsWorldWide Developers Conference. Without announcing a singlehardware device, it teased consumers with dozens of updatedfeatures in iOS 8 and the next version of Mac OS X -- dubbed "Yosemite" -- then doubled-down with app developers by offering tons ofnew APIs, along with elements of deep integration between apps and devices. The company capped it all off with the announcement of Swift, a brand new Xcode programming language for developers...

Hachette -- whose stable of best-selling authors includes J.K. Rowling and James Patterson -- remains at loggerheads with Amazon over renewal of a book distribution deal between the two. The stalemate has slowed the flow of books from the publisher to the online retailer to a crawl Negotiations have been going on for more than a month, but it's onl...