sholto - Slashdot User

Submission + - Cloud receipt-scanning service finds cash, meds an (boxfreeit.com.au)

Submitted by

sholto

on Monday November 28, 2011 @06:48PM

sholto writes: "Users of cloud receipt-scanning service Shoeboxed.com tend to empty their wallets straight into the envelope. As a result the company finds some surprises such as condoms (unused), $50 and $20 bills, meds and "someone's weed stash", says CEO Taylor Mingos. "We put a sticker on it saying 'item could not be scanned'."
Mingos also argues that services targeting specific use cases like his are finally bringing about the paperless office."

Submission + - Putting emails in folders is a waste of time, says (boxfreeit.com.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09, 2011 @08:27PM

An anonymous reader writes: There are two types of office workers in the world — those who file their emails in folders, and those who use search. Well, it looks like the searchers are smarter. A 354-user study by IBM research found that users who just searched their inbox found emails slightly faster than users who had filed them by folder. Add the time spent filing and the searchers easily come out on top.
Apparently the filers are using their inbox as a to-do list rather than wanting to categorize information to find it more easily.

Submission + - Microsoft's cloud strategy shafts small business (boxfreeit.com.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 25, 2011 @12:45AM

An anonymous reader writes: You can use Small Business Server with up to 75 users before you have to upgrade to the enterprise software. But with Microsoft Office 365 the small business version is limited to 50 users and adding a 51st user means going from $400 a month to $1280 a month for a similar license.
And the small business license comes with no phone support, just forums and blogs. Then there's the pricing. Canadians and Australians, you're paying through the nose.
I used to think clouds were soft and fluffy.

Submission + - Microsoft cloud prices vary wildly by country (boxfreeit.com.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 22, 2011 @02:02AM

An anonymous reader writes: A global price review of Microsoft's cloud productivity suite Office 365 shows that Australians pay a massive 70% more than US businesses. That's despite using the same data center in Singapore as Singaporean businesses, which pay US prices. And Canadians — you're using the same data center as the US but paying 26% more for the pleasure.

Submission + - Microsoft launches Office 365 cloud suite

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 28, 2011 @03:23PM

An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft took its cloud suite Office 365 out of beta today and the opinion mongers are in overdrive. Is Office 365 missing features, is it too complex, or should it be taken seriously?
And how does it stack up against Google Apps? Wade through the 5-page comparison or just skip to the scenario table.

Submission + - Point-of-sale finally moves to cloud with HTML5 (boxfreeit.com.au)

Submitted by

sholto

on Thursday May 19, 2011 @10:38AM

sholto writes: "Retailers rely on point-of-sale software to handle high numbers of transactions without failing, making it one of the last holdouts for cloud computing. In this article VendHQ describes how a combination of HTML5’s offline manifest, webSQL database and websockets helped it shift the cash register to the cloud and why HTML5 proved to be a better choice than iOS, Android or Adobe Air."

Submission + - Uniloc founder in bid to 'save music industry' (securecomputing.net.au)

Submitted by natecochrane on Friday March 11, 2011 @12:31AM

natecochrane writes: Serial inventor Ric Richardson is heading to Utah to "save the music industry" with a new security technology. The Australian founder of software company Uniloc that won on appeal a $US388 million patent infringement case against Microsoft — the largest of its type in US history — and starred in a 308-page Federal Trade Commission review of the "troubled" US patent system this week, said his aim was to "save the music industry" from piracy. Years ago, Richardson shopped his patented software activation system to Microsoft but they declined only to release one that was remarkably similar. Uniloc now heads back to court to seek a higher damages amount than that overturned recently.

Submission + - If Patriot Act fails, local IaaS might too (crn.com.au)

Submitted by sholto on Wednesday February 09, 2011 @02:01AM

sholto writes: The failure to extend key parts of the Patriot Act must worry IaaS cloud providers in Australia and elsewhere. The Act is held up as the main reason for keeping data in-country and secure from government interference — and customers pay extra for the privilege. If the Act disappears, so does the (already shaky) argument for data jurisdiction.

Submission + - Smartphone Shipments Surpass PCs (ft.com)

Submitted by PatPending on Wednesday February 09, 2011 @01:55AM

PatPending writes: Manufacturers of smart phones shipped more devices than manufacturers of personal computers (sans tablet PCs) in the fourth quarter of 2010, according to research, making mobile devices as the computing platform of choice earlier than many industry-watchers had expected.

The growth in smart phones will continue to surge, analysts said, as the high-end models improve and the middle tier gets more affordable.

Submission + - 4G Broadband May Jam GPS (avweb.com)

Submitted by mferrare on Wednesday February 09, 2011 @01:54AM

mferrare writes: Avweb is reporting that "[t]he GPS industry is warning that a proposed broadband Internet network could effectively jam GPS signals". The 4G broadband frequencies (1525-1559MHz) live right next to the GPS frequencies (1559-1610MHz) and this could be problematic. Testing is still under way with results expected in June

Submission + - Egyptians turn to Tor to organise dissent online (securecomputing.net.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 01, 2011 @02:04AM

An anonymous reader writes: Even as President Obama prepares to follow Mubarak with his own 'internet kill switch', Egyptians were turning to the Tor anonymiser to organise their protests online. The number of Egyptians connecting to the internet over Tor rose more than five-fold after protests broke out last week before crashing when the Government severed links to the global internet. Information security researcher, Tor coder and writer of the bridge that allowed Egypt's citizens to short-circuit government filters, Jacob Appelbaum, told SC Magazine Egyptians were "concerned and some understand the risk of network traffic analysis". Appelbaum has himself been the subject of attention from US security services who routinely snatch his electronics and search his belongings when he re-enters the country and who subpoenaed his private Twitter account last December.

Submission + - Pirate Party rally draws 500 to support Wikileaks (itnews.com.au) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 16, 2011 @10:46PM

An anonymous reader writes: A Pirate Party Australia public demonstration at the weekend drew 500 protesters on a march through the city calling for a social media uprising and chanting for Bradley Manning's release outside the US Consulate General [photos] offices in the city. Speakers included the party's president Rodney Serkowski, journalists and activists calling for Manning and Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange to be freed. Serkowski said plans to censor the net underscored the need for such sites. US soldier Manning, suspected of leaking the diplomatic cables to Assange's whistleblowers' website last year, is in US military custody while Assange is facing extradition to Sweden and a possible US grand jury investigation for alleged espionage.

Submission + - Aussie spies spooked by cyberwar (securecomputing.net.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 15, 2010 @11:07PM

An anonymous reader writes: Wikileaks cables released overnight revealed that Australia's top cyber spy agency (akin to the NSA) was unprepared for cyberwar in the view of other intelligence agencies in 2008. Australian agencies were so concerned they asked US intelligence to provide the framework to defend the country's critical information infrastructure, modelling on the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative. Spooks also discussed how Israel was preparing to take down Iran's nuclear program and how to stay relevant when so much information that was classified was now open source and available to anyone.

Submission + - Scammers turn to Freelancer.com for botnets, IDs (securecomputing.net.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 15, 2010 @02:35AM

An anonymous reader writes: Freelancer.com is being used to recruit malware writers and for identity fraud, recent posts to the global crowdsourcing website have revealed. A British user identified as Novak1 has asked malware writers to craft Zeus-like botnet software and for graphic designers to forge British driver's licence blanks as Photoshop templates. The alarm was raised by Finnish anti-malware researcher Mikko Hypponen in a tweet earlier today. Freelancer.com says the posts violate their terms and conditions and will delete similar posts in future.

Submission + - Cablegate: German criticisms of US data protection (itnews.com.au)

Submitted by natecochrane on Monday November 29, 2010 @12:43AM

natecochrane writes: The US Ambassador to Germany scoffed at German criticisms of US data protection inadequacies, secret diplomatic despatches published to the internet on the weekend revealed. It was a case of German privacy adovcates' worst fears coming true. German politicians from the FDP centre-right faction of the ruling coalition were concerned last year that US safeguards were too lax and that information gathered on its nationals travelling to the US was "pointless" and compromised German interests. But the US ambassador to Germany told the US Secretary of State that the FDP had it wrong because it "has been out of power for over 10 years and lack experience tackling security issues in the internet age". Ambassador Murphy wrote that the "FDP appears not to fully grasp the transnational character of terrorism today and terrorists' increasing use of the Internet". But it appears the FDP understood more about data-leak prevention because it urged the US to appoint a data protection commissioner like the one Germany had.

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