Ryan Faas - page 3

Last week’s announcement that Starbucks is partnering with Square for mobile payments and credit card processing is big news for the nascent U.S. mobile payments market. It was also a warning shot fired by the startup across the bow of traditional payment processing companies, many of which have struggled to bring together an effective and successful digital wallet (or iWallet) solution. The move could also complicate any plans that Apple has to move into that market following the release of iOS 6 and its Passbook feature.

I’ve been a big proponent of the iPad in business since Apple first announced its tablet more than two and a half years ago. In that time, the iPad has more than proved its value in companies of all different sizes and across virtually every industry. That said, the iPad isn’t a fit for every job within every workplace. If a company is considering investing in iPads for its employees, one of the first things that company and its IT leaders need understand is how the iPad will be used.

That seems like a pretty basic step in the procurement process, but it’s one that seems to be getting overlooked by some companies – including one very large enterprise company that should have known better.

When Dropbox acknowledged its recent data breach last week, the company noted that it will be adding a range of security solutions in an effort prevent such a breach from occurring again. One of the technologies that Dropbox plans to implement is two factor authentication, which requires another identifying item beyond your username and password to grant you access to your account.

The second item in two factor authentication can be any one of a range of technologies like a smart card that needs to be swiped, a USB flash drive or other mobile that contains security certifications, a one-time user password token like RSA’s SecurID, or a biometric input like a fingerprint scan.

One company has another interesting option, however, your location.

Earlier this week, I took a look at the ways mobile management has changedsince Apple introduced mobile management features in iOS 4 two years ago. The biggest change has been the evolution of what constitutes effective and secure mobile management, which has shifted from securing the physical and operating system features of iOS, Android, and BlackBerry devices to securing the business data that is stored on those devices. That shift has refocused IT leaders and professionals on the need to secure data by securing mobile apps – a type of solution referred to as mobile app management or MAM.

Our friends over at Apperian, one of the major MAM vendors, decided to share their thoughts with me (and you) in a video. Check it out after the jump.

The summer break is winding up and many teachers are getting ready to head back to work for another school year (and many IT staffers in those schools are trying to make sure everything’s ready when those teachers return). Over the past several months, many schools and their IT departments have been struggling to keep spending down while also delivering a 21st century learning environment. That discussion has largely focused on how to most cost effectively deploy iPads, new MacBooks, and other technology systems.

One approach to that dilemma is moving away from traditional software purchasing and towards enterprise cloud solutions. That approach may give schools more control over expenditures and offer other advantages, but it also has downsides including the potential to raise costs and degrade the education experience.

Site24x7 announced its new iPhone app this week. Site24x7 is a robust enterprise server monitoring solution by the Zoho group, which is best known among iOS users for its Zoho Docs productivity suite.

Site24x7 offers a range of enterprise features for web servers that are hosting critical interactive web apps and cloud services as well as other mission critical services like internal and external DNS service and mail services. In addition to simple reports and alerts about a server issue the Site24x7 can be used to tune servers for optimal performance and uptime.

Stellar, which produces a number of Mac and Windows utilities has launched a new tool designed to offer a quick and painless transition from OS X’s built-in Mail application to Outlook 2011 for Mac. The new Stellar Apple Mail to Outlook 2011 Converter joins Stellar’s collection of prosumer and business email management, transfer, and recovery tools.

The number of personally-owned iPads, iPhones, and other mobile devices that professionals bring into office is expected to more than double between now and 2014. That means the businesses that have so far been lax about considering or planning an official bring your own device (BYOD) program and/or establishing security policies around BYOD are going to need to play catch up – and they’ll need to get started as soon as possible.

Football season is just around the corner and the iPad is set to become a fixture for both college and pro teams. As we noted earlier in the year, a handful of NFL teams made the switch to iPad-based playbooks at the start of last season and more are making the switch this year. In addition to NFL teams, several colleges have announced that they are transitioning to the iPad playbook model as well.

The iPad has become a fixture in health care that simplifies the lives of doctors and nurses. It turns out that the iPad can improve the quality of care patients receive if it is used as a mechanism to record a patient’s medical history and/or as a way of monitoring that patient’s progress on follow-up visits.

Department of Veterans Affairs is no stranger iOS devices or to developing custom apps to help deliver key services to veterans and their families. In fact, the VA’s CIO last year said that the agency needed to become “iPad friendly” in order to effectively support the agency’s physicians, nurse, and other medical staff and an iOS pilot program was launched earlier this year.

More recently, the VA has been looking for ways that mobile technology can help homeless veterans find food, shelter, and other critical resources. To achieve that goal and raise awareness of veteran homelessness across the country (one out of six homeless adults in America is a veteran), the VA has teamed up with JBJ Soul Foundation, the non-profit charity created by music legend Jon Bon Jovi to launch an iOS/Android app contest called Project REACH.

The LTE version of the new iPad may cost $130 more than the Wi-Fi version, but the throughput that LTE delivers makes the iPad into a phenomenal mobile solution. The performance easily tops a large segment of home broadband services, which delivers tremendous value. Add the free personal hotspot feature available to Verizon customers and a MacBook Air (or other notebook) and you get a powerful business solution for professionals on the road.

Right now only 13% of iPad/tablet users worldwide have an active mobile broadband subscription, but that will change significantly over the next five years according a new report by research firm Strategy Analytics. The potential that the new iPad with LTE offers both mobile professionals and consumers will be one the key factors contributing to that change.

There are plenty of stories out there about the explosive growth of mobile technology in the workplace. The trend towards bring your on device (BYOD) models in which employees are allowed or encouraged to bring their own iPhones, iPads, and other devices into the office is driving a massive expansion of the number of mobile devices used for work tasks. At the same time, the annual (or even more frequent) device an OS release cycles that have become common are driving up diversity of devices and resetting the mobile technology playing field every few months.

That constant change is forcing the IT professionals to adapt to new devices, apps, use cases, network models, and security threats faster than anything the IT industry has ever seen.

This is particularly visible in the mobile management space. A year ago, the primary method for handling mobile device and data security was to manage and lock down the device itself using one of dozens of mobile device management (MDM) suites on the market. Over the past six to nine months, however, MDM has been replaced by mobile app management (MAM) as the best way to secure business data. That’s a warp-speed transition in the mindset and goals of IT professionals.

Registration is now open for MacTech Conference 2012. The annual conference, which is a great learning and networking experience for IT professionals and developers, will be held October 17 – 19 in Los Angeles. A pre-registration discount is available for anyone who registers by the end of August.

The conference is sponsored by MacTech magazine and was launched in 2010, the year that Apple chose to focus its annual Worldwide Developers Conference solely on iOS. Since then, the conference has grown into a major event for IT professionals that need to support Macs and/or iOS devices in business, enterprise, and education environments. The conference has also become a serious event for Mac and iOS developers.

An online petition has been created to try to convince Apple to make changes to its Bonjour network discovery service and related technologies including AirPlay and AirPrint. The petition is asking Apple to redesign Bonjour and other services to deliver a better fit with education and enterprise networks. It was started by Lee Badman, wireless network architect for Syracuse University, on behalf of the Higher Ed Wireless Networking Admin Group at Educause, a non-profit resource organization for IT staff working in higher education.

1Password by AgileBits is a an incredible tool for keeping your data safe. More than just a password manager, 1Password allows you to encrypt and organize a wide range of data (website passwords, non-web digital accounts, credit/debit card numbers and financial account details, software licenses, and files containing confidential information.

Those features are all well and good, but the biggest feature is 1Password’s ability to keep all that data secure in the face of brute force attacks – the kind of attacks where a piece of software simply tries combination after combination of possible passwords. Password cracking software that rely on such attacks can easily try thousands of potential passwords each second.

To find out whether or not 1Password can withstand such attacks, AgileBits tested one 1Password against John the Ripper, one of the most well-known password cracking tools.

In the aftermath of a data breach that it announced this week, Dropbox says that it will begin implementing new security measures. Those measures include new automated techniques for spotting suspicious behavior, a page where you can examine all active logins to your account, password update requirements, and two-factor authentication.

All of those are reasonable steps to take. That Dropbox hasn’t implemented most of those items before is a bit surprising. Only one of those items – two factor authentication – really puts a burden onto Dropbox users, but it could put a very big burden on iOS users and app developers.

Apple has launched its first Mountain Lion training guide and certification for IT professionals. The certification is the Mountain Lion edition of the Apple Certified Associate – Mac Integration certification, which can be viewed as the introductory Mac IT certification.

Apple began offering the certification following last year’s launch of Lion. Unlike Apple’s other certification options, Apple provides a free guide to the material on the Mac Integration Basics Exam on its training site. You can also register and take the exam online for $65. Should you fail the exam, Apple will let you retake the exam at no additional charge.

The number of companies investing in mobile management and security solutions related to bring your own device (BYOD) programs is growing, but not nearly as fast as the number of companies that are actually offering BYOD to their employees. The result is that many companies are putting themselves and their data at risk by jumping onto the BYOD bandwagon too quickly and without properly securing employee iPhones, iPads, and other devices or the business data that is stored on them.

Apple kicked off 2012 with its education event in New York. At that event, the company announced its electronic textbooks for iPad initiative, iBooks Author, and the revamped iTunes U. According the Apples latest financial data, the education initiative has paid off with both iPads and Macs being purchased by schools in record numbers.

A 21st century vision of education , however, is about more than getting the iPads and MacBooks into the classroom. It also requires technology goals, professional development for teachers, high-speed access to up-to-date content, education-centric portals for students and teachers, back-end systems, and education apps or software.

The USDA is working its way through an ambitious iPad deployment that may come to serve as a model for a range of government agencies within the U.S. and around the world. The challenge was to develop a simple, intuitive, and effective field survey and data collection system.

The National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) is a division of the USDA that is charged with surveying and reporting agricultural data across the country. NASS operates in all 50 states plus Puerto Rico. With a staff of around 3,000 enumerators NASS conducts thousands of survey each year about agriculture across the country. The service has been operating since the mid-1800s and, until the iPad, it conducted surveys and collected data in pretty much the same way that it had back in the 19th century – with paper forms filled out by hand and mailed to various field offices. Although various technology initiatives have been tried by NASS since the 1980s, none was a successful fit before the iPad.

As the NFL pre-season kicks off, the league has begun reminding fans about the various online programming and mobile apps that it offers. While we still have a month before the season starts, August is the time to check in with how your favorite teams are shaping up for the new season. It’s also the time to begin researching your fantasy football draft options – if you haven’t already.

For the preseason and fantasy prep time, the NFL is offering a  mobile apps – many of which will be familiar to fans with iPhones and iPads. We’ll be taking a look at the various official and third-party fantasy tools for Mac and iOS users as the pre-season rolls on, but here’s a quick look at the official options from the NFL.

The iPad continues to dominate the global tablet market and, according research firm IDC, the iPad is responsible for the strong growth of tablets across the board.

While the numbers announced during Apple’s most recent financials call continued to show strong year-over-year growth for the iPad, they didn’t illustrate how significant the iPad’s growth is compared to the rest of the tablet market.

The member companies that make up the Enterprise Device Alliance announced earlier this week that all of their products have either been updated already with support for Mountain Lion or will be within a few weeks.

The Enterprise Device alliance is a consortium of companies focused on integration Apple technologies in the business and enterprise environments. The solutions offered by those member companies include Active Directory integration, Mac and iOS device management, advanced file and print integration options, mobile backup, Windows virtualization, and help desk operations.

Apple may be the only major company operating the mobile space that hasn’t announced a partnership or trial related to delivering mobile payments and creating an iWallet. While it seems a forgone conclusion that Apple will eventually enter the mobile payment market, a recent statement by James Le Brocq, managing director at O2 Money (a division of the U.K. mobile carrier O2) illustrates why Apple hasn’t yet entered the that market and why that’s a good move for Apple: consumers aren’t that interested in mobile payments.