Geek Speak

It could include a new Surface Book, a Surface Pro LTE and more.

John Fingas, @jonfingas

Microsoft might not be done introducing new Surface hardware this year just because the Surface Laptop and Surface Pro are on store shelves. The company has confirmed that devices executive Panos Panay will be presenting at the company's two-day Future Decoded event (starting October 31st -- yes, Halloween), hinting that he'll introduce new hardware. A source speaking to The Verge supports this with word that there will be "at least one" new piece of hardware at the event, so it seems like Microsoft's habit of introducing new Surface machines in October will remain intact. As it stands, there are a few systems that could stand to get upgrades.

By Mustaali Marvi

Cybercriminals are always on the hunt for targets to exploit and make an easy buck from them – and small businesses are not immune to this. Here are five types of cybersecurity breaches you need to try to prevent as well as prepare for.

Since cybercrime damages are expected to grow beyond $6 trillion per year by 2021, it is high time for small and midsize businesses to identify the cybersecurity concerns that are a threat to their existence and take the appropriate measures.

Cortana will read your emails aloud during car journeys

By Tom Warren     @tomwarren      Mar 5, 2018, 10:19am EST

                        Cortana in Outlook for iOS Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge

Microsoft has been slowly adding more email intelligence to its Cortana digital assistant, but it has resisted integrating it directly into Outlook mobile. That’s about to change, soon. Sources familiar with Microsoft’s Outlook plans tell The Verge that the company is currently testing Cortana within Outlook on iOS and Android.

When Netscape released the source code for its Netscape Communicator web browser 20 years ago, a discussion was sparked in the developer community. A new term was being sought that could appropriately explain this stuff. A related term, “free software,” existed but its seeming focus on price confused the newcomers.
For the first time, on February 3rd, 1998 in Palo Alto, the term Open Source was coined by Christine Peterson, who was executive director at Foresight Institute.

Google introduced their home-baked machine learning chips at last year’s I/O. Known as Tenor Processing Units, TPUs for short, these chips were later known to be around 15 to 30 times faster than traditional CPUs and GPUs.

TPUs are designed to accelerate machine learning processing on Google Cloud Platform and reduce the time required to train and run TensorFlow-based AI models. Google is already using TPUs in their data centers.

By Paul Simons

Spamming, hacking and the breach of cyber security are an unfortunate reality of the digital world. According to some reports, almost one in three internet users in the United States are a victim of cyber crimes in one way or another. The cyber security attackers are launching more and more harmful malware every day and are evolving their techniques to strike more devices than ever before.

The situation is even more alarming for small businesses and ecommerce stores. Some statistics indicate that almost 64% of online companies have experienced web-based attacks and millions of customers have been affected. This means that online retailers must take necessary safety measures to secure their websites and ensure that customer’s sensitive information is duly protected.

There are a lot of great things to say about the faster release cycles we see with software these days. Bugs are fixed and features become available to us sooner, security issues are resolved quicker too. In a lot of cases, our operating systems and software packages are smart enough to check themselves and let us know updates are available or automatically install themselves.

Wise minds are always innovating. That’s exactly what’s occurred with long-time SMB Nation member Grace Schroeder (remember the Idea2 CRM?) with her new company Slingr. 

Schroder and team have launched a supporting actor application in a category I just made up called SMB channel partner ecosystem extenders. Essentially Slingr found a gap that needed to be filled. In particular this blog concerns Slingr’s integration of Slack to the Autotask professional services automation (PSA) solution.

Look to these excellent tools to improve CLI and web admin, SQL queries, schema migration, and replication and recovery in your MySQL environment

                                                   ThinkStock

For database administrators (DBAs), keeping databases running at peak performance can be a little like spinning plates: It takes agility, concentration, quick reactions, a cool head, and an occasional call out from a helpful onlooker. Databases are central to the successful operation of almost every application. As DBAs are responsible for an organization’s data, finding dependable tools that help them to streamline the database management process and ease day-to-day maintenance tasks is essential. DBAs need good tools to keep their systems spinning smoothly.

SEO Audit Tools make it easy to perform an SEO Audit of Websites & Blogs automatically. Otherwise, doing an SEO Audit can be very time consuming and involve tons of complicated manual checks. Luckily, there are plenty of good website audit tools available online. Here’s a list of Top 10 SEO Audit Tools that you can use for your websites & blogs.

10 Best SEO Audit Tool for Website SEO Audit

It’s important to remember that there is no one-size-fits-all SEO Auditing Tool for Websites. You need to try out each of these good SEO Audit tools to see if they fit your requirements, before picking a website auditing tool to improve your search engine results.

It’s that time of year when pundits are preaching what’s hot and what’s not in the new calendar year. As a fancy pants analyst sitting at his desk on Bainbridge Island typing, I resemble that. Today I want to focus on security. Recently I checked off the box on IoT here. 

Security Supply Chain
For five years, I sat on the program advisory committee for

From VPNs to mesh networks, efforts to find an alternative route to internet access are gaining ground in Silicon Valley

Daniela Perdomo, goTenna’s founder, holding the $90 antenna, with engineer Raphael Abrams. PHOTO: RYAN BOBROWSKI

By Douglas MacMillan

Daniela Perdomo is concerned about the power of U.S. telecom giants that stand to gain from the repeal of “net neutrality” rules. Her company offers a way around them: A $90 antenna that lets users send messages without cellular service or Wi-Fi.