New Species of River Dolphin Surfaces in the Amazon

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This article was written by Phin Upham,

For the first time in 100 years, scientists have uncovered a new species of river dolphin from the Amazon. The dolphin was discovered in the Araguaia River, deep within the Brazilian rainforest. A recent announcement in the Plos One scientific journal made the discovery official.

The lead author of the study, biologist Tomas Hrbek operating out of the city of Manaus, claims that the new species is only the third ever to be found in the region.

Researchers estimate there may be approximately 1,000 of the Araguia River dolphins still in the wild. The group further suggests the dolphins be placed on the endangered species list, so that resources can be devoted to protecting their development. Current construction projects on hydro-electric dams threaten the habitats of these dolphins through fragmentation.

Hrbek said that river dolphins are extremely rare, and one of the Earth’s most endangered vertebrates. This discovery represents a new hope for the dolphin. Apparently the animal was commonly recognized, but never studied in detail. It was only after Hrbek’s team used DNA samples to determine that the dolphin was genetically different from other species already present in the Amazon.

The previous river dolphin discovery occurred in 1918, when scientists identified the Chinese baiji dolphin, which went into extinction in 2006. All river dolphins are threatened by extinction, so efforts must be taken to protect these creatures and their habitats.

About the Author: Phin Upham is an investor at a family office/hedgefund, where he focuses on special situation illiquid investing. Before this position, Phin Upham was working at Morgan Stanley in the Media & Technology group. You may contact Phin on his LinkedIn page.

What Every Employer Needs to Know about Bring Your Own Device

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The newest trends hitting the Silicon Valley is the BYOD initiative. It stands for “Bring Your Own Device” and it’s a theory on productivity that leverages an employee’s existing equipment for business purposes. Done properly, BYOD can greatly increase your output and keep your employees happy while they work. Done wrong and you can expect catastrophic consequences for your network. Before you let employees bring their own devices, be sure you have assessed the risks. Make proper allowances like a terminal server monitor to check traffic on the network. Protecting the data hosted by your corporation is a serious responsibility, and customers will react negatively to a breach of trust.

Effects on Productivity

The theory of BYOD states that employees are happier using devices they are already familiar with. Logic dictates that a person would want to separate work from home computers, but that is not actually the case in practice. BYOD offices do find that employees are more familiar with their own setups, and may be more likely to take care of a computer because it is their own. Employers also benefit from reduced costs of staffing an office. But be wary, not all the grass is greener.

Viral Protection

Employees who do protect their devices adequately are the exception, not the rule. As a result, employers must deal with intrusions on their networks that may come from off-site or from a device not on the corporate network. This sounds ok at first, it should be relatively simple to remove most infections, but your IT department is seriously unprepared for major issues on the network. If IT is an investigator, BYOD removes all evidence of the source of the attack and makes it difficult to prevent future intrusions.

Accessibility

Remote employees need access to their files, and BYOD encourages more employees to work remotely. When everything is saved to a home computer, employees are likely to work at home. This also means that IT departments need to make files accessible from remote locations, which requires server infrastructure. That kind of work requires a lot of resources that small and mid-sized businesses don’t have. Outsourcing cloud computing is a popular choice for these fledgling businesses.

Monitoring Productivity

Remote workers are expected to hand in deliverables, and should be held to deadlines. Some companies use remote desktop monitoring to make this process easier. Checking network traffic helps you see what employees are doing with their time, and pinpoint errors. Most companies use a VPN or a remote server to accomplish this task, which is perfect for BYOD offices.

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RDPSoft Company offers solutions to log remote desktop interactions for businesses with employees who work off-site.

How to Preview PDF Documents in a 64-bit version of Windows 7

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It’s common knowledge that the 32-bit version of Windows 7 was able to preview PDFs effortlessly.

The same cannot be said with newer computers which run the 64-bit version of Windows 7 albeit with a powerful processor. And it’s not very different with Windows 8 either.

If one would ask “Why?”, you’d be hard pressed to find the logic behind Microsoft’s decisions.

That said, there are solutions for the 64-bit version of Windows 7 and in particular, we’re talking about Vivid Document Imaging’s “PDF Preview for Windows 7”.

Once you install it, you’ll find that previews of your PDF documents are immediately available. You can also preview the PDF in the Windows Explorer Preview pane…

Of course, there are issues that crop up during its installation since it asks you if you want to place a shortcut on your desktop. Even if you decline, it will place not one but three shortcuts which you can easily delete, of course.

But that’s not all, the program will add its own PDF Viewer which is simply called PDF Viewer but will also tell Windows to make it the default program for .pdfs files. You can change the default viewer back to the one you want.

However, if you choose Adobe Reader, PDF Preview will not show thumbnails of the PDF documents but you will still be able to preview the documents using the Windows Explorer preview pane.

Of course, if Foxit is your preferred viewer, then you won’t have any problems. Yet it must be said that this program still does not work with Windows 8.

How You Can Speed Up Your Browsing Using Vimium

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Trackpads or mice aren’t very helpful when it comes to browsing the Web with speed, and which is why keyboard shortcuts will come in handy.

Of course, it isn’t easy to memorize all the keyboard shortcuts. It’s just as painful as moving your hands from the keyboard to the mouse and back again.

This is where Vimium comes in – a browser extension for Chrome which will help you control all your browsing from your keyboard.

The first thing that you will have to do is download and install this extension from the Chrome Web Store. You can find a similar version from Firefox’s add-on repository.

Now all you have to open a website, and check if a couple of shortcuts work. For example, type ‘G’ and watch to see if you drop to the bottom of the site. Alternatively, if you type ‘gg’, you should you go back to the top of the page.

There are a number of shortcuts that you can use when you install Vimium that could be anything from switching between tabs to even opening links.

While the majority of sites will work perfectly with Vimium, a number of Google properties such as Gmail, Chrome new tab page as well as the Chrome Web Store don’t. There are other websites that won’t because they have their own shortcuts.

After you’ve tried the first two commands, type ‘?’ in any website where Vimium works, and you should get a complete list of commands.

What You Need to Know About “Should I Remove it?”

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Most people will agree that trying out new apps might be fun. However, the consequences of using one that clogs your PC quickly can hardly be considered as fun as well.

And which is why a number of people have no other option but to go through one’s list of apps so as to remove them and therefore free your computer up.

Yet there’s a caveat: the Windows built-in application, known as Control Panel, does not give you enough information that can tell you what a program does.

Thankfully, there’s also another option known as “Should I Remove it?” (which we will SIRT henceforth) that does provide you a bit more information but will not overwhelm the user much like PC utilities do.

When you run it, it will not only display a simple list of every application run on your PC but will give you a rating of 5 stars or less that will indicate whether other users liked the program or not. It will also give you the percentage of users that uninstalled the program as well.

As for an app’s installation, you can do it directly from SIRT with the extra feature of scheduling SIRT to review your list of apps regularly.

However, there is one issue with this application: it directs you to ShouldIRemoveIt.com to display detailed information about an app instead of doing this from the desktop program.

If you don’t mind that, you’ll find that SIRT is definitely a user-friendly program to use.

Use Technology to Improve Attendance

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A company is full of moving parts and it’s important to stay on top of all of them if you want to experience nay degree of success. Most people would agree on many factors that are important to a company’s health. Things like their market share, research and development status, the economy, etc. But I’d offer up that time and attendance are as important as these things if not more so.

If a company can’t count on its own staff to show up to work, they won’t get very far. And while most employees do just that, far too many cut corners by showing up a couple minutes late, taking off a few minutes early, etc. That time adds up and can have real effects on the company employing these people.

Fortunately, this need not be an issue thanks to modern technology. Whether we’re talking soft or hardware, there are countless options for asserting the important of being punctual without needing extra staff to commit themselves.

For example, there are plenty of timeclock options available these days for you to choose from. You can even sync them up to all kinds of software, so everyone’s punches are kept in the same database. This makes it incredibly easy to look for patterns.

Those of you who have resolved to make this the best year of your company’s journey, think about starting with attendance.

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Article submitted by Allied Time. They sell all the time keeping options a company needs to stay up and running including fingerprint time clock options.

4 Smart Tech Resolutions to Make it a Happy 2014

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Giving your tech habits a makeover as you ring in the New Year is hardly as difficult as your other New Year’s resolutions.

Most if not all of them require only a few moments of your attention after which it can be forgotten. But attend to them you must…

So, here are 4 smart resolutions that can make it a happy 2014:

#1: Make security a priority

Since there cannot be any compromises with security, make sure that you either choose a strong password or a password manager such as 1Password or even LastPass. That said, try and use the password reset feature as often as possible on websites that you visit regularly.

#2: Two-factor authentication is a must

This is the year for two-factor authentication. All your accounts such as Dropbox, Twitter, Facebook, Paypal, Google and Microsoft all offer this feature for added protection. Simply put, not only will you have to enter your username and password but a security code which will be sent to your phone too.

#3: Find storage for your photos

Most people keep photos on their since it is their main camera. However, it takes up valuable space when you have a number of options such as Dropbox, Facebook and Google+ to save them to. This is advised since if something happens to your phone, you’ll lose all your photos.

#4: Maintain backups and get rid of clutter

Among the types of data that should be kept safe at all times, photos are the most precious. However, don’t forget the other types on your phone, tablet and PC and so on and so forth. Make sure you also remove applications that you really don’t use very often too.

How IT Companies in Los Angeles Can Help Solve Crimes

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It was finals week, December of 2013. Students at Harvard were just getting started with their exams when something quite unexpected happened. Meanwhile, student Eldo Kim was logging into the school network via a browser he thought was obscuring his location. It was campus IT, in cooperation with police, who ultimately compared time stamps of the emails to police with time stamps of anonymous browsers.

IT infrastructure is increasingly becoming an integral part of solving crime. How companies deal with cyber security will only improve as more industries enter the digital age.

Network Monitoring

Hospitals in Irvine are adapting to changes in the health care laws. That means more patient information is going to the cloud, and these medical facilities are not equipped to deal with data breaches. There are also problems with staff training. Part of the solution is computer support in Irvine to help deal with the flood of new issues. That support also includes network monitoring that will help these businesses detect and react to data leaks faster.

The reality is that security comes down to how quickly you can detect someone is trying to breach your system. Antivirus programs attempt to shield us from these attacks, but sustained attacks will collapse most systems. Monitoring helps detect these breaches as they happen, and emergency response teams can assess the risk and deal with the problem.

Risk Management

Risk management means assessing a company’s likelihood of being attacked, and knowing what the business stands to lose. IT companies in Los Angeles that offer hardware and software consulting base their careers off of making recommendations on the best solutions. These businesses look at the size of the customer base, analyze the access points needed, and craft a system that caters to different “levels” of user.

Emergency Support

Emergency support comes into play when there is a breach in the early hours of the morning, or late in the evening. Companies can maintain staff in-house, and many do. Paying that staff overtime to remain on-call is expensive, so around the clock response is usually outsourced to a firm better equipped to deal with it.

Data Management

In-house teams tend to work with a business’ data sets and create the applications needed to work with that data. They manage the customer and business side of the application, and are better equipped to respond to technical issues that may occur on-site. A combination of these services helps relegate the cost of IT, and keep data manageable as the business scales.

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This guest post is brought to you by Cal Net Technology Group, a firm of Los Angeles computer consultants specializing in data management and emergency response. Cal Net offers on-site training for employees, as well as a risk assessment for businesses concerned with digital security.

What You Need to Know About Backing Your Computer Up

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Without a doubt, backup is the most important thing to keep in mind when using a PC. However, even though most people consider this task to be difficult to carry out, nothing can be further from the truth.

Since there are a number of ways by which you can back your computer up, there’s only one thing that you should keep in mind when doing so.

Ensure that you have three copies of your files in three different locations. In other words, the original, a backup of the original and a backup of the backup.

That said, here are 2 simple methods (which can be used as a combination as well) to back your computer up:

#1: An online storage service

There are a number of services that one can use namely Carbonite, iDrive, Google Drive, SkyDrive, Mozy and iCloud. Pick a service (which would cost anywhere between $50 to $100) that can sync with most if not all of your devices. Also, use the downloadable app provided by the service you pick and which will create a mirror of all your files online.

#2: Two external hard drives should do

Buy the largest external hard drive that you can possibly afford – in fact, two would be better than one. Now use the Windows built-in app so as to create a system image and a recovery CD or USB drive. Now, Windows Backup to backup your files to the hard drive, be it daily, weekly or monthly.

One advantage of using local backups is that it can be restored as quickly as possible even if using a combination of both methods is successful 99% of the time.

Facebook on the verge of acquiring Little Eye Labs, its focus on mobile devices clear

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A little company called Little Eye Labs, based in Bangalore, and which analyzes the performance of Android apps will be acquired by Facebook with a deal ranging between $10-15 million.

It’s isn’t surprising that this acquisition came about considering how Facebook has been lagging behind when it comes to its focus on mobiles, and with almost 874 million of its users now accessing Facebook through these devices.

Of course, Facebook has been on the lookout for startups such as Little Eye Labs and before which, it had already acquired Parse in April this year, which is a mobile-backend-as-a-service startup.

This comes as good news not only to Little Eye Labs but also to a number of Indian startups for whom, progress in the form of acquisitions have been difficult to come by.

In fact, Little Eye Labs had already pitched to Twitter but then agreed to a deal with Facebook since the offer was much better.

According to certain sources, the team that formed this startup will move to Facebook’s headquarters in the United States and will continue to work as part of the company’s mobile engineering team.

The startup first gained visibility in Seedcamp, London where it was refining its product along with 20 other companies. What was notable was the way the tool created by this startup fixed a bug in Google I/Q app, and was the reason why Gaurav Lochan, who worked with Flipkart earlier, moved on to work with Little Eye Labs.

All the startup’s founders worked at IBM together, starting Little Eye Labs in August 2012.