News - page 1857

BYOD may be the poster child for the consumerization of IT (CoIT) movement, but employee-owned mobile devices are just one of the consumer technologies that are steadily making their way into the workplace. Consumer cloud services are another big headache for IT.

Consumer clouds represent a way for data to easily leave office and the office network. Files can be placed in a consumer cloud very easily and often without IT even knowing about it. Despite that big security concern, cloud services like Box and Dropbox are popular with workers because they’re an easy way to ensure access to files and documents while out of the office and/or while working on a mobile device.

While blocking specific cloud services is a possibility, it’s little more than a stop-gap measure. Truly solving the problem means addressing the underlying need – users needing mobile access to data – in a secure way, which enterprise file management company Accellion aims to solve with a new Secure Mobile File Sharing service and sync capabilty dubbed kitedrive.

The immensely popular MMO Pocket Legends is turning two and Spacetime Studios is throwing a celebration to honor all of its milestones and devoted fan base. The now cross-platform global hit, Pocket Legends, was originally launched on iOS April 3rd, 2010. Since then, Pocket Legends has been played in every country on the planet (with the exceptions of Cuba and North Korea) by over five million people. That’s an impressive feat for a mobile MMO! Spacetime Studios thinks so too, that’s why players will now have access to all Pocket Legends premium content areas for free!

You know what? You could probably do a blog about only iPhone cases and you’d still have something worth reading. Provided that the world keeps coming up with cases like this super-specialized iPhone Scuba Case, an underwater shell which gives you access to the camera app as you dive, that is.

Having been fined $1.2 million by Italian regulators late last year over its marketing for AppleCare products, Apple has been forced to clarify its warranty coverage for customers in the European Union, and compare its extended warranty products against statutory EU warranty coverage.

Earlier this Box launched its new OneCloud feature, the goal of which is to integrate a range of iOS business and productivity apps around Box’s cloud storage. The biggest advantage to OneCloud is that it neatly sidesteps the lack of file management in iOS, essentially functioning almost like cloud-centric iOS version of the Finder.

Box isn’t the only company looking to get around the iOS file limitations while also connecting users to the cloud. Quickoffice this week announced its new Connect solution, a dedicated app and cloud service combination that aims to make it easy for users to access, edit, share, and sync files and documents across all their devices as well as across a range of third-party cloud services.

Just six months after announcing that developers must stop accessing a device’s unique device identifier (UDID) within their iOS apps, Apple put its rule into practice last week amid increasing privacy concerns surrounding mobile apps. Any app submitted for App Store approval will soon be rejected if its attempts to access a UDID, and developers need an alternative.

That alternative could come from AppRedeem, a mobile advertising platform for app discovery, branding and monetization, which has developed a system called Organizational Specific Device Identifier, or “ODID,” already being used by Groupon.

Ever since the first iPod, Apple has had problems with squatters sitting on top of Apple-related domains, trying to scam people. Here’s another one. It is now seeking to take ownership of the Applecom.com and ApplePrinters.com domains and protect its trademark after filing a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) on March 29.

Just hours after its release on March 16, Apple’s new iPad was jailbroken by the iPhone Dev-Team. Their announcement gave us hope that an exploit for A5 and A5X devices running iOS 5.1 would be available within weeks, but it now seems like we’ll be waiting a whole lot longer than that.

Research in Motion may be watching its mobile business crumble away at its feet, but that’s not the Canadian company’s only concern. It has sided with Nokia and spoken out against Apple’s nano-SIM proposal, accusing its employees of vote rigging by registering themselves under a different affiliation.

Apple has released iPhoto 9.2.3 today, a minor update which adds no new features, but promises to improve stability and address an issue that could cause the application to quit unexpectedly on machines with multiple user accounts.

The employees and customers of Apple might be pleased with the groundbreaking steps Foxconn and Cupertino have undertaken to guarantee the health, safety and mental well-being of their workers today… but Apple’s competition are probably not.

Apple’s move to help improve working conditions in its factories by putting its weight behind an independent Fair Labor Association audit of Foxconn’s facilities could indirectly raise costs (and lower margins) of products from Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Amazon, Motorola, Nokia, Sony and more.

The first reactions by human rights groups to the Fair Labor Association’s independent audit of Foxconn factory working conditions are in, and there is cautious optimism that the widescale abuse of Chinese factory workers may be on the cusp of coming to an end. But that’s only if the rest of the tech industry follows Apple’s lead.

We’ve read through the Fair Labor Association’s report on Foxconn’s facilities, and while the picture it paints of conditions is bleak, they’re not insurmountably awful, or even particularly Dickensian. Rather, these are issues that can be fixed… many through simple communication.

Here’s all the bad in the FLA’s report, and what Foxconn can do to fix things.

After being invited by Apple to perform an audit at Foxconn, the Fair Labor Association released its findings today in a report. The findings were a bit mixed, saying they found wide scale issues primarily around amount of overtime worked, compensation, and safety. Apple and Foxconn agreed to improve on the FLA’s findings by 2013.

Labor group Human Rights First has reacted this evening, saying that Apple and Foxconn’s changes will help reform supply chains as a whole and will be a turning point for the industry. But primarily, the changes will be “life-changing” for the workers.

After months of denying and downplaying its problems, RIM seems to finally be waking up from its delusional fantasy world and accepting that it’s in extremely dire straights. That was the big take away from the company’s quarterly financial call Thursday evening.

The call was the first headed by the company’s new CEO Thorsten Heins, who took over earlier this year after the resignation of co-CEOS Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis. Heins made it clear that he understands the challenges facing RIM (as well as the delusional thinking that created many of them) and that he cannot guarantee the company’s success as it struggles realign itself to the current mobile market.

IBM, once known as on of the most straight-laced companies in the world, has jumped on the BYOD bandwagon with a level of enthusiasm rarely seen in such large and established enterprises. The company has big plans for BYOD – rolling out a program out that covers all 440,000 employees worldwide.

That’s a big challenge and one that Big Blue has yet achieve. However, the company currently has mobility solutions deployed to about a quarter of its workforce (120,000 users) two thirds of whom (80,000)  are supplying their own devices and service plans. The company, which had been a predominantly BlackBerry shop, began to shift gears as iPhones and other devices began showing up in its offices.

While not a model for every company, IBM’s BYOD policies can serve as a great starting point.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has long said that “no one in our industry is driving improvements for workers the way Apple is today,” and to put the company’s money where its mouth was, Cupertino invited the Fair Labor Association to do a thorough audit of working conditions at Foxconn.

Now the results are in, and there’s good news and bad news.

The bad news is that the Fair Labor Association found wide scale violations of Chinese labor laws, including the amount of overtime worked, the compensation received for overtime, and numerous health and safety risks, as well as “crucial communication gaps that have led to a widespread sense of unsafe working conditions among workers.”

The good news? Apple and Foxconn are fully on board fixing the issues. That’s why they agreed to the audit, and that’s why they’re committing to being compliant with all of the FLA’s guidelines by 2013. Oh, and they’re going to hire a lot more staff and workers to help even the load.

A mall war has broken out in China, as one mall is upset at another for working to open the world’s largest Apple Store. Yesterday, Apple put up posters advertising its new Store in the massive Parkland Mall in Dailan China. Neighboring mall Dalian Department Store quickly became concerned and sent its security team to knock the signs over. As you can see in the video below, havoc quickly ensued.

Have you ever wished that there was an easier way to check your data usage on the iPhone? For those of us that aren’t lucky enough to have a grandfathered unlimited plan, bits are precious. It can be too easy to blow through a 1GB data plan in a month’s time.

If your iPhone is jailbroken, you have access to a great tweak called Data Usage Monitor. Once installed, your usage will be shown unobtrusively in your iPhone’s status bar. The beauty is that it will only appear whenever you are using data.

If you like keeping your Apple TV jailbroken, bad news. While it’s not outright impossible that a jailbreak will be found for the third-generation, 1080p Apple TV, it’s going to be a lot more complicated than the one that was exploited for the second-gen version.

Earlier today, we reported on the variability in how companies can define BYOD programs. For some companies BYOD can mean access to just email while in others it can include a range of customer internal apps along with company-purchased selections for the App Store. The exact mix of allowed or supported functionality reflects the IT and management culture of an organization but it can be guided by what users feel they need most.

Email may be the lowest common denominator when it comes to BYOD because it is the most common use of mobile devices in the workplace. That statistic stands out in a new report on how businesses and employees are using mobile technology and how businesses are addressing BYOD as a trend.

Looking for a great deal on the tablet that proved to manufacturers that price matters? Amazon is offering up certified refurbished Kindle Fires at a ridiculous price of $139. It’s a limited time, limited quantity deal, so you’ll want to act fast. The Amazon Kindle Fire blazed into the tablet market with its perfect price and treasure trove of content. It was the first tablet to successfully steal a sliver of the market away from tablet titan Apple. At $199 it opened the door for budget conscious consumers to experience digital content in a new and exciting way. It was a good deal then and at $139, it’s a great deal now!

The era of the big box retailer is kaput. One the one hand, you’ve got online colossi like Amazon crushing brick-and-mortar retailers; on the other, you’ve got the juggernaut of Apple’s Retail Stores, showing everyone else how selling things in meatspace is done.

A couple years ago, the writing was on the wall when Circuit City went out of business. Now, it looks like it’s Best Buy’s turn. After posting a $1.7 billion quarterly loss last quarter, Best Buy is closing 50 stores and $800 million in costs.

2012 Mobile Game of the Year, The Dark Meadow, received a pretty major update on iOS today. Aside from all of the new features, the game has also gone freemium. The freemium version, entitled Dark Meadow: The Pact is a separate download on the App Store and as far as I can tell is exactly the same as the original paid version. The decision to go freemium may benefit the developers over the long term and is the reasoning for the jump. Although it is only available on iOS at the moment, it is scheduled to hit Android next month.

This iPhone 4 money clip is either the best or the stupidest solution to the wallet/iPhone carrying problem that I have ever seen. The trouble is, I can’t quite work out which it is.