David Bolton
Andrei C.
Vincent Chow
Mark Feffer
Alice Hill
Scot Herrick
C.S. Magor
Cat Miller
M Noivad
First Exploit Lessons Learned
Think back to your first encounter with an exploit. Did you gain a valuable lesson learned? My buddy Keith Dawson did. And so did I from his malware encounter. I’ve known and worked with Keith for many years. He is a fellow tech writer, who has worked for some of the same IT pubs that I have. In his blog post this week, aptly called Pwned, he writes about discovering his first exploit. It was a piece of malware that… continue…
Cool Tools: Linux On A USB Stick
My presentation was due and my computer choked. Ever have your settings get so far off, it’s hard to know if it’s a problem with your configuration or a bad hardware component? In my case, my dual-screen mode was acting up during my Xubuntu notebook installation, preventing me from using the presenter’s console for an upcoming LibreOffice slide show. My quick fix was to run a diagnostic test using a stock Linux installation from a USB stick. No Compiz, no… continue…
Zynga Fights ‘Ville’ Competitors
Zynga threw a one-two-punch at its competitors recently over the use of a “Ville” suffix, potentially casting a chill over any game developer who dares to add a “Ville” at the end of their game name. Consider these recent events: March – A European trade market office registers Zynga’s “Ville” suffix, despite initial opposition from a community called Deauville that later withdrew its opposition. May – Zynga sues Kobojo, the French developer of PyramidVille, a Facebook game. May – U.S.… continue…
Present Your Transferable IT Skills
As a hiring manager, the odds that you’ll find someone with experience in everything you do is very low. And as a candidate, the odds that you’ll find an employer where you match every item on the skill set is low too. Chances are that some part of the job, such as the industry, language, framework or some aspect of the technology, will be something you’ve never worked with before. How do you translate your past experience to employers? Share… continue…
iOS Salvation: How to Rescue Old Devices
How many iPhones or iPod Touches do you have gathering dust? I have a few. Fortunately, I’ve come across some products that can give new life to them, sometimes by doing things they may never have been intended for. Such as? For the ubergeek there is the Arduino, which has a variety of sensors to monitor the external environment and feed the information into an iOS device. You could, for example, make your own weather station or robot. For those… continue…
Fewer Women Occupy CIO’s Office
Here’s a few interesting data points: The percentage of CIOs who are women dropped from 11 percent in 2011 to 9 percent this year. Thirty percent of 450 companies polled said their IT departments have no women in management positions at all. Only half of the survey’s respondents think women are under-represented in IT. Kind of a disconnect. Women still have to overcome preconceived notions, such as their desire to start a family gets in the way of their work.… continue…
Our Mobile Game Hackathon Wrapup
Got your Red Bull? Good! Let’s power through the Chartboost Hackathon held over this past weekend but do it in less than 30 hours. Strap in and here we go for a recap: What’s a hackathon without a meetup? How else do solo hackers find potential team members? And, hey, how do you become a hackathon rockstar? Check out the Friday night hackathon party piece. So, you say it’s a 30-hour hackathon, eh? How are these folks going to last?… continue…
Companies Beef Up Cross-Training
IT workers often face employer expectations of managing multiple skills as the workforce shrinks. Kimberly-Clark, for example, has reduced the number of IT job descriptions from more than 350 titles to about 40 — many of which now require multiple skills, according to a Computerworld report. While many IT workers might be able to meet the company’s old job requirements, they probably couldn’t meet the new ones. To deal with this conundrum, companies are providing education and cross-training to help… continue…
Africa Offers Great Mobile Opportunities
Developers build mobile apps for people first. Profits come later, depending on quality, usefulness, fun, and popularity of the apps. With that in mind, Molly Holzschlag, a senior Web access strategist for Knowbility and author of 35 books, touted Africa as particularly fertile ground for mobile apps developers. Holzschlag, speaking at the Future Insights Live conference in Las Vegas on “Learning from Mobile Gone Global: Mobile apps development in the real, real world,” made several notable observations. “African economies are amongst the fastest… continue…
Software Engineer Career Fork? Check Out These Ideas
Software engineers may eventually find themselves facing a fork in the road, with their career. It’s not hard to imagine, given the way most people take only a few conscious steps toward becoming a software engineer. Here’s some of the typical steps people take when first starting out: Casual coding. Many of us started off coding for fun (before we started coding for profit!). Not everyone starts here, however. Some people start writing code in a college program or on the… continue…
