It’s odd weather when the Northeast really hopes their heat index temperatures of 105-109 degrees come down thanks to a tropical storm hitting Florida (go, Fred, go!). When people in Toronto win the heat contest with people in Dallas, things are upside down. To get rightside up, enjoy these cool, dry newstips.
Big boy news. Samsung’s new models, the Galaxy Z Fold3 5G (pictured) and Galaxy Z Flip3 5G, unfold two different ways and arrive with lower price points for premium phones able to evoke envy. The tall and thin Fold3 opens to a tall and wide 7.6-inch display, while the Flip3 opens from a pocket-friendly small square to a high-end 2460×1080 display.
After you show everyone your new Flip or Fold Galaxy, you might need to do some work. Good thing Microsoft Office, Teams, and Outlook have been tailored for the new phones. The Galaxy Z Fold3 5G runs different apps on each side.
Upgrade your wrist as well as your pocket with the new Samsung Galaxy Watch4 and Galaxy Watch4 Classic. A Samsung-Google teamup underpins One UI Watch, Samsung’s new and intuitive interface. A host of wellness tools are powered by the new BioActive Sensor, so you can measure how much a friend’s jealousy lowers your blood pressure.
Time for school means time for new Chromebooks, such as the new HP Chromebook x2 11 and HP Chromebase 21.5 Inch All-in-One with rotating touch display. Need a second monitor for your Chromebook? Try the new HP M24fd USB-C model.
Enterprise SaaS player Workday and Google do the tighten up dance with a strategic partnership that makes Google Cloud the preferred cloud partner across Workday’s core industries of finance, healthcare, and retail.
Other product news. No matter how many people come back to the office, some of them will need things on paper. Canon has three new compact A3 color models in its MFP lineup with the imageRUNNER ADVANCE DX C3800 Series (pictured). Choose your workload from 26 ppm BW/Color to 35 ppm.
Avoid those face-palm, “”I forgot to order more ink,”” moments with the new Brother Refresh EZ Print Subscription service. The monthly plan delivers ink or toner cartridges before you run out and includes plans for those who print 100 pages per month to 700, with easy adjustments as workloads change.
Sales and marketing software maker Keap says text messages have an open rate of 94% versus 21% for email. Get in on that with Keap’s automated text messaging and broadcast texting with built-in compliance.
Secure IoT devices are a minimum requirement, but key management for big projects becomes, ah, painful. Hello to the new Sectigo Secure key Storage SDK (DKS-SDK) for IoT devices.
Just because virtual desktops became crucial doesn’t mean they’re easy. The new Titanium HCI from Whitehat Virtual can help, with hyperconverged virtual desktops on both Citrix and VMware Horizon environments.
Non-product vendor news. Order some new business cards for Hatem Naguib (pictured), who moves up to become CEO and board of directors member over at Barracuda. Previous CEO BJ Jenkins will remain on the board too.
Speaking of BJ Jenkins, he’s now president of Palo Alto Networks, moving Amit Singh to the new role of chief business officer.
Over at Intel, Christy Pambianchi joined as executive vice president and chief people officer.
The welcome mat is out for Bill Robinson, now the chief revenue officer at LogMeIn.
Ditto for Michelle Tamras, who joins TBI as director of partner success.
Reinvent Telecom has a handful of newsbits. New team members include Partner Success Specialist Amanda Newkirk, Billing Analyst Kathie Sletton, Accounting Clerk Tommy Bigthumb, and Network Engineer II Shabbir Mandviwala. John Reynolds moves up to senior network engineer.
NortonLifeLock and Avast will merge. NortonLifeLock CEO Vincent Pillette will remain CEO. Dual headquarters will be retained.
AT&T Cybersecurity announced an enhanced MSSP partner program. The simplified plan clarifies pricing and has more opportunities for profit and growth.
LTE and 5G users may enjoy the new Cradlepoint Cascade, an engagement partner program portal. Get customer insights and management, sales support, training, and 5G specialized help.
Extreme Networks will acquire the SD-WAN division of Infovista to expand its ExtremeCloud portfolio.
Jenne will act as a value-added distributor for SIPPIO’s Azure-native cloud platform for Microsoft Teams.
This week’s stats ticker:
CompTIA published its 2021 Emerging Technology Top 10 List focused on biz applications related to artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things. A total of 400 U.S.-based businesses responded to the survey discussing the top use cases for both technologies.
Top artificial intelligence use cases:
- Predictive sales/lead scoring
- CRM/service delivery optimization
- Chatbots/digital assistants
- Asset tracking
- Industrial monitoring
Top Internet of Things use cases:
- Cybersecurity Threat Detection
- Marketing Automation
- Smart Badges
- Fleet Management
- Smart Buildings
The pandemic exposed traditional tech infrastructure’s limited agility, scalability, and resilience, according to study organizers, and organizations will invest in digital work, automation, and human-machine collaboration in the future.
Barracuda examined 121 ransomware incidents between August 2020 and July 2021 for its third-annual threat research report on ransomware. They reported a 64% increase in attacks year-over-year, with 57% of all ransomware attacks on corporations and businesses. The targets may explain why 30% of incidents had a ransom ask greater than $30 million. Attacks on infrastructure, travel, financial services, and other businesses made up 57% of all attacks during the period surveyed, from 18% in the 2020 study. Attackers are going global, with just 44% of attacks in the past 12 months aimed at U.S. organizations.
Hornetsecurity Group conducted a survey of over 420 businesses on email security and Microsoft 365. About one in four, 23%, reported an email-related security breach. 36% were caused by phishing attacks against the weakest point of any security system, the end users. 54% report they have yet to implement conditional access rules along with multifactor authentication. A full third has yet to implement MFA across all users. 68% report they expect Microsoft 365 to keep them safe from email threats (really?), yet 50% use third-party solutions. 82% of those users with third-party solutions report no breaches. Hmm. Companies with 201-1000+ employees were most vulnerable to email security breaches, with 74% of all security breaches reported.
Pickleball FTW. Some residents in Iron Mountain, Mich., near a park are complaining about noise from going on until all hours. One woman, in fact, says she and her husband just want to move because the noise and aggravation has gotten so bad.
Who’s causing all this trouble? Those dang teenagers up all night running wild and planning horrible things like, you know, having fun? Nope.
The complaints are about four courts of … pickleball players.
The paddles and plastic balls create noise, “”hour after hour,”” said some grumpy old people. If they were smart, they’d join the fun, because pickleball was created for grumpy old people. It hits the athletic sweet spot for folks who are too unphysical to play tennis (pickleball lines are often painted on about two-thirds of a tennis court), but too poor to play golf.
