Tunga taps African IT talent to meet growing demand for developers
The impact sourcing startup, set to open a new African office in Lagos, offers lessons for managing virtual developer teams. Tunga Plunging into the outsourcing market and facing much larger competition, impact sourcing startup Tunga has grown by determining the right skills, management techniques and tools best-suited for distributed developer teams, and is set to open a second African office in mid-October. Impact sourcing is the term used for what can be considered socially-conscious outsourcing: placing people from…
20 Slack tips, tricks and hacks for power users
Slack is a powerful collaboration tool in its own right, which means it also has a lot of hidden ways of doing things. Here’s how to get the most from it from users who know it best. Slack / Mudassir Ali (CC0) Slack users tend to be passionate about the popular collaboration tool. “Slack has changed the way we communicate internally,” says Rob Shapiro, senior director of product strategy for Muck Rack, a digital PR and journalism platform. Slack’s easier access to shared…
Google launches leaked-password checker, will bake it into Chrome in December
The company plans to add a hacked-password alert system into its browser by the end of year; Firefox aims to do much the same thing this month. Google / Gerd Altmann (CC0) Google has launched a web-based hacked-password checker, part of its efforts to bake an alert system into Chrome. Called “Password Checker,” the service examines the username-password combinations stored in Chrome’s own password manager and reports back on those authentication pairings that have been exposed in publicly-known data breaches.The web…
Facebook’s Libra crypto backers step back amid regulatory pressure
Concerns over possible nefarious use of the cryptocurrency may be causing Visa, MasterCard and others to tap the brakes on the project. Facebook Multi-national regulatory pushback against Facebook’s effort to create a cryptocurrency payment network is slowing the project and causing supporters such as Visa and Mastercard to back away, according to sources familiar with the situation and a published report. Along with the initial announcement of its Libra digital currency and Calibra online digital wallet to store it, Facebook earlier…
Time to install Microsoft’s mainstream September patches – and avoid the dregs
This month’s lightning rod patch — the fix for the peek-a-boo Internet Explorer zero-day CVE-2019-1367 — still isn’t in any of the pushed updates. Unless you’re a Chicken Little acolyte, avoid it, but get the rest of the September patches installed now. Here’s how. Thinkstock It’s a smelter-weight slapdown. In one corner you have the Chicken Little contingent, which insists that September’s IE zero-day patch must be important because Microsoft marked it as “Exploited: Yes” and memorialized it with an extremely odd…
Can an Apple Watch prevent fatal car accidents? It just might.
A new study questions the efficacy of car accident-avoidance systems, but it’s possible that a simple smartwatch might be part of the solution. Volvo Today’s connected cars try to deliver a lot of safety features, such as using radar and video cameras to detect an imminent accident and sometimes take over braking and steering control in an effort to avert that accident. At the very least, the cars will issue increasingly loud and bright visual and audio alerts to get…
6 strategies for avoiding cloud vendor lock-in
A credible threat of defection can help you leverage competitive pricing opportunities and escape long-term relationships gone bad. natasaadzic / Getty Images In an ideal business world, enterprises would forge strategic partnerships with their cloud services providers that lead to prosperity for all involved. It doesn’t always work out that way, however. Things change over time, and in many cases the relationship between the customer and its cloud provider does not evolve to account for that change. Or maybe costs…
Strategic partnership: A magic bullet for enterprise innovation
Strategic partnerships have emerged as an opportunity to help enterprise businesses scale. Make sure your organization doesn’t get stuck on the sidelines! Charles Deluvio (CC0) Consumer demand is becoming increasingly more complex, and businesses must scale while remaining nimble. But companies can’t “be everything” to their customers. In an effort to cover customer needs, enterprises employ creative innovation strategies, new product development, imaginative digital marketing and even costly qualitative acquisitions. As the need to provide a greater array of services becomes…
