Cyber attacks on the rise

Posted by David Bernstein

If you keep up on your tech news you most likely know how bad cyber crime has gotten recently. It seems like there is always another new story about how some service, operating system or website has gotten hacked and peoples personal information has been stolen.

In fact, in 2011 cyber attacks increased 81% which is a huge jump. Most of these attacks have been on mobile devices such as Android smartphones as well as on social networks such as Facebook. Android devices have increased in popularity which makes them a target for cyber criminals just like malware attacks the Windows operating system because there are so many computers running Windows out there. Actually mobile attacks have increased 93% in 2011.

Security company Symantec has blocked 5.5 billion attacks in 2011 and have also identified over 400 million malware variants. over 230 million identities were stolen or exposed last year through means of data breaches or lost phones and backup drives etc.

And its not just big companies that are being hit. Now it seems that cyber criminals are going after smaller companies with less than 2,500 employees and even some with less than 250 employees most likely because they tend to be less secure than the larger companies. So be sure to be careful when you do anything online from any device, anywhere!

May 17th may be the day Facebook goes public

Posted by Jim Bernstein

 

Facebook has been planning its IPO (Initial Public Offering) for some time now and has been waiting approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission but sources say that the day for this to happen may be May 17^th. Back in November of last year, Facebook executives were discussing when they should file the paperwork for the IPO and apparently they filed paperwork for its IPO on February 2. But it usually takes around 12 weeks for a new company to begin trading on the stock market. The SEC prohibits anyone with knowledge of the filings to report anything to the media so nothing is for sure but there has been some talking going on from people in the know.

Facebook’s IPO is expected to be one of the largest tech offerings ever and they plan to raise $5 billion dollars in doing so. Facebook has recently stopped trading in private markets, so their 2.5 billion outstanding shares don’t have any other way to trade until a public offer happens. This also keeps their implied value from getting too much higher than it was on the last close of their trading.

Intel coming out with 75 new “Ultrabook” models

Post by Jim Bernstein

 

First there were laptops (or notebooks), then there were netbooks and now the latest craze in portable computing besides tables are Ultrabooks. The term Ultrabook was created by Intel to describe their high end super thin and light notebooks. These types of computers tend to be high powered and offer extended battery life.

Since Intel came out with their Ultrabooks, there have been around 21 models that have hit the market. The next line of Ultrabooks will have new features such as touchscreens to support the new Windows 8 operating system. This will allow you to have a PC-tablet hybrid in a sense. As part of their new Ultrabook push, Intel will also place "Ultrabook experience zones" in retail stores to set apart the devices from traditional notebooks.

Ultrabooks tend to be on the pricey side in the range of $800 and up but Intel is planning on coming out with some less expensive versions under the $700 mark.

Google's Project Glass Video - Cool and Scary?

Posted by David Bernstein

Google on Wednesday morning unveiled a YouTube video teasing its augmented reality eyeglasses, a pair of spectacles that interacts with what you're seeing and acts as a smartphone, day planner, turn-by-turn navigation system, camera and more.

Here's the video showing off Google's upcoming futuristic specs:

Internet Explorer usage on the rise

  Post by David Bernstein

Everyone who uses a Windows PC at some point has used Microsoft’s Internet Explorer web browser since it comes built into the Windows operating system. At first it was pretty much the only game in town for Windows users except maybe for Netscape which didn’t really pose too much of a threat to Internet Explorer’s dominance. Nowadays there are many more web browsers to choose from such as Firefox, Chrome and Safari and IE has been slowly slipping from the top over the past few years as these other browsers gain ground.

It seems that lately Internet Explorer has regained some of their losses and is actually up 1.2% over the past five months. As of last month, IE was holding 53.84% of the browser market share. Firefox came in second with 20.55% followed by Google’s Chrome browser at 18.57%. Actually Chrome has been on the decline for third straight month. Back in November of 2010, Internet Explorer had around 60% of market share.

This rise in Internet Explorers usage is most likely thanks to Windows 7 and IE 9 and in fact 35% of Windows 7 users are using IE 9 as their web browser. IE 9 seems to over better performance and stability compared to IE 8 which many people were not happy with even though it’s the most widely used browser at the moment overall. IE 9 is also said to be one of the safest web browsers in use at the moment and is a year old this month and has been gaining ground every month since its release.