Datamation Staff

Washington Post: On Tuesday, a hacker who claims to be part of the Anonymous group briefly took down the Mastercard Web site. He launched a denial of service attack against the company in retaliation for Mastercard’s refusal to process donations to WikiLeaks. The new attack came just one day after another hacktivist group, LulzSec, disbanded […]

MobileCrunch: In a Tuesday morning Tweet, Google’s Andy Rubin announced, “There are now 500,000 Android devices activated every day, and it’s growing at 4.4% w/w.” The last time Google announced daily activation data was during May’s I/O Event when activations topped 400,000 per day. By comparison, users activated 5.8 million iPhones between January and March, […]

BBC News: At a conference in Ireland, Google chairman Eric Schmidt expressed his belief that dictatorial governments will begin restricting free expression on the Web following the democratic uprisings in Arab countries that occurred this spring. Many of these movements used Web-based technologies to organize protests and communicate with others. Schmidt says that as a […]

Wall Street Journal: As expected, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer unveiled Office 365 today at a New York event. The cloud-based version of the company’s office productivity suite moves the company into direct competition with Google for business software customers. But some say the offering could also cut into sales of desktop versions of Office. Office […]

The Register: A new variant of the Popureb Trojan is proving so difficult to remove that Windows users who get infected must restore their systems to original factory condition in order to get rid of it. That means losing any installed applications and files that have not been backed up. In a blog, a Microsoft […]

PCWorld: LulzSec, the group of hackers behind the attacks at Sony, Nintendo, and PBS announced over the weekend that they would be retiring after 50 days of causing mayhem. But that doesn’t mean an end to high-profile cyberattacks, as the group is encouraging its 281,870 Twitter followers to begin following the Anonymous group instead. On […]

Computerworld: On Tuesday, Microsoft releases Office 365, and that means that current Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) customers have one year to upgrade to the new product. According to Nucleus Research analyst Rebecca Wettemann, the fact that Microsoft has posted a lot of information about how to upgrade from BPOS to Office 365 could actually […]

NY Times: A growing number of companies are deploying their own social networks, but the tone and behavior on these networks is much different than what you might see on Facebook. The rule is “if you don’t want your company president to see it, don’t post it,” said John G. Bivona of Nikon Instruments, which […]

InformationWeek: Deutsche Bank analyst Chris Whitmore has sent a note to investors that’s stoking rumors that Apple will release two versions of the iPhone this fall. According to Whitmore, the high-end iPhone will be called the iPhone 5, and the second, mid-range iPhone will be called the iPhone 4S. “With Nokia and RIM struggling,” wrote […]

eWeek: Two new surveys reveal that users don’t really understand online risks all that well. The first survey, by G Data Software found that 40 percent of users believed adult content sites were riskier than hobby-related sites, when the reverse is actually true. In addition, most users did not realize that not all malware causes […]

Scott Alan Miller, IT professional: Scott Alan Miller Current IT position: Practice Lead for Niagara Technology Group  Prior IT positions: Software Development Manager and Architect, Sector IT Manager, UNIX System Administrator, IT Director for companies like IBM, CitiGroup and Nicklin Associates. Career highlights — accomplishments you’re proud of: Did my first real development work for […]

Tech Comics: “How Do You When It’s Really, Really, Really Over?” Next Cartoon: “CAPTCHA on Mensa” Next Cartoon: “CAPTCHA on Mensa” The creator of the Geek and Poke cartoon series is Oliver Widder. Previous tech cartoons by the talented Oliver Widder: • Tech Comics: “Ode to Joy” • Tech Comics: “Your Facebook Friends” • Tech […]