This page is to fulfill my EMBA course at UiTM Shah Alam
By Azza Jay
10 Reasons Why iPhone 5 will be Beaten by Samsung Galaxy S2
From Wikipedia, the Samsung Galaxy S II (GT-I9100) is a smartphone running under the Android operating system which was developed by Open Handset Alliance led by Google. The Galaxy S II was one of the slimmest smartphones of the time, mostly 8.49 mm thick.
How dangerous is online banking?
Based on the International Business Times article, there are 10 reasons why the Galaxy S2 will score over the iPhone 5.
1. Operating System: Apple's iPhone 5 is expected to come equipped with the recently announced iOS 5. The important features of iOS 5 are actually having found in Android, except iMessage that is mostly copied from RIM's BlackBerry. Furthermore, the iOS 5 important features include the notification bar, cloud synchronization, wireless syncing, Twitter integration and Widgets.
However, Google finally unveiled the new version of Android in HongKong on 18th October during the press release. The new 4.0 version Ice cream Sandwich powers myriads of new features which will definitely give a new experience to the Android users. The new OS was launched with Samsung Galaxy Nexus. Android 4.0 collaborates several of the features already available in the tablet-focused Android 3.x (Honeycomb) OS with the Smartphone features available in Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). This 4.0 version will be available for both Smartphones and Tablets. (source: http://www.techhew.com/android/android-4-0-ice-cream-sandwich/).
Video by android developers
Thus, Android is more customizable, has more widgets, less restrictions, is more functional and will feature a more fluid interface. The iPhone 5 is going to have to top this in order to do better.
2. Processing Power: Galaxy S2 is equipped with dual-core 1.2 GHz ARM Cortex-A9 Mali-400MP GPU Orion chipset. It is backed by 1 GB of RAM. This is almost equal to the processing power of a desktop machine. Meanwhile, the iPhone 5 is expected to come with the iPad 2's processor but it is doubtful if it would exceed the 1.2 GHz barrier. With improved versions of Galaxy S2 about to feature 1.5 GHz processor with 3D graphics support, iPhone 5 needs more to match up to Samsung’s flagship phone.
3. Display: Super AMOLED Plus display is considered to be the best available technology for mobile displays. Samsung is the only manufacturer of Super AMOLED Plus displays that helped Samsung Droid Charge to become one of the best selling devices on Verizon, overtaking HTC Thunderbolt. The iPhone 5 will just be an improved version but still will not be able to match Super AMOLED Plus.
4. Design: Apple's iPhone 5 will be just an upgrade of its previous versions.
5. Security: The approaches for Android and iOS security are different. Apple verifies all the apps before allowing it onto App Store to prevent a virus, but the rest of the phone is semi-vulnerable. Although Android does not check the apps, the apps are run in an isolated way so as not to affect the system in the event of a virus attack.According to a recent Symantec report, even though iOS and Android both have their weaknesses, the mobile platforms are still much more secure than their PC counterparts.
Both the operating systems are vulnerable to viruses, but the Android has an antivirus app which iOS does not have. Hence Samsung Galaxy S2 holds an advantage over the iPhone 5.
6. Flash: Flash is a major drawback in the iPhone. The Samsung Galaxy S2 supports Flash. The Galaxy S2 supports full HD video playback inside Adobe Flash player. There is no other device at present which allows full HD video playback even inside Adobe Flash player.
According to Apple, Adobe Flash is a big security risk, not to mention it crashes lots and kills your battery life. Rather than using Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript – all open standards. Apple’s mobile devices all ship with high performance, low power implementations of these open standards.
7. Near Field Communication (NFC): Samsung Galaxy S2 supports the NFC chip that allows for simplified transactions, data exchange and connections with a touch. As of now, NFC is just a rumor for iPhone 5 and most probably Apple won’t be embracing the technology, since Near Field Communication has no industry standards. Given that its main smartphone rival is offering the mobile payment service, Apple may have harbored thoughts of integrating the new technology in the soon-to-come iPhone 5 in order to remain competitive in the market.
8. Connectivity: Galaxy S2 already supports 3G data speeds up to 21 Mbps (HSPA + networks), but with the Galaxy S2 LTE version poised to feature HSPA up to 42 Mbps, the iPhone 5 doesn’t stand a chance in terms of speed.
Also, the Galaxy S2 offers Bluetooth 3.0+HS transfer, Wifi Direct, Allshare (DLNA) and HDMI through MHL. Unlike Apple iOS, where you can’t even transfer the pictures taken with the camera through bluetooth, there is no restriction here. You can transfer files through high-speed Bluetooth (it is the only device at present that supports true 3.0+HS standard), or Wifi Direct.
9. Battery and Memory: Galaxy S2 has the privilege of expandable memory and a removable battery. Apple's iPhone versions differ from other smartphones in the market in terms of removable storage as none of them have featured one.
In terms of RAM memory, Apple never reveals its capacity and it always turns out to be less than other phones. Hence, the Galaxy S2 holds the advantage of 1 GB RAM to match the dual core processor.
10. Apps and open source: The Android market has improved in quality and quantity over the past few years and is expected to surpass the App store. The biggest plus point about Android apps is that majority of the quality apps are free. Android Market is an online software store developed by Google for Android OS devices. Its gateway is an app called "Market", preinstalled on most Android devices, allows users to browse and download apps published by third-party developers.
Sources: http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/213838/20110914/apple-inc-iphone-iphone-5-samsung-galaxy-s2-epic-4g-touch-t-mobile-at-t-sprint-verizon-a5-processor.htm
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From the article quoted that, “the Web makes it simple to manage your money. It also makes your account easier to hack into.” It focused on the risks and realities, as well as 9 smart tips that can help us protect ourselves.
Online banking has become one of the fastest-growing Internet activities. Based on the article, roughly 43% of people, who use the Internet, or about 63 million do some banking and according to a 2006 survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project - even more than make travel reservations online.
This growing popularity has also brought increasing worries over whether something as private and personal as a bank account can be fully protected.
Why? Do you feel safe banking online? Let’s look at how the scams work.
According to the author, since the birth of electronic commerce, financial institutions have stepped up online security measures to try to make the process less vulnerable to attacks. Some have spent millions adding more layers of authentication, toughening encryption schemes and going after and shutting down bogus bank sites.
But that hasn't stopped hackers, who continue to look for ways to exploit security gaps.
Among the most popular attacks are phishing schemes that duplicate bank Web sites and ask customers to log on to their accounts. Others send e-mails, purportedly from bank employees, asking for sensitive financial information. For example, with an e-mail containing a link that directs recipients to a bogus bank site. Both scams are designed to steal user IDs and passwords as a customer types them in, giving a cyberthief access to the person's financial accounts.
Is online banking really safe?
Other cyberthieves embed viruses, spyware or "Trojan horses", a programs that can give thieves unauthorized access to a computer by recording and sending out a user’s keystrokes. These programs allow thieves to look over your virtual shoulder as you type in sensitive financial information. Within seconds, your savings and checking accounts, even your investments, could disappear.
How big a problem are we talking about? The numbers are tough to pin down: Furthermore, an experts say there are no reliable studies showing how much money is lost through online banking alone, primarily because banks themselves can't always pinpoint the source of how a crime occurred, whether on the Web or through an ATM.
Here are the steps that has been suggested by the experts, according to the article:
1. When logging on to a bank Web site, a user should look closely at the site's URL to make sure it matches the bank's name. A more secure URL will begin with "https://" and be followed by the bank name. Make sure the bank's padlock is displayed in a corner of the site before you log on.
2. Log on to banks only from a secure computer. Never log on from a public computer in a hotel or cafe, and be careful when logging on to unknown networks with a laptop.
3. If you get a warning e-mail, call your bank -- don't click on any provided links.
4. If your computer is acting strangely -- for instance, reacting slowly or getting pop-ups -- avoid using it for online banking until you can get it checked out.
5. Keep anti-virus and anti-spyware software up to date.
6. Install and maintain a firewall.
7. Never respond to any e-mail that requests personal information.
8. Be leery of fly-by-night, Internet-only banks with high interest rates on savings or checking accounts.
9. And, most importantly, use a different user name and password for each financial account. The password should be complex, with numbers and symbols, and changed regularly.
But still, there are no guarantees. Just think about it or just use it…..
Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2011
As referred to Gartner’s press release from http://www.gartner.com, it has highlighted the top 10 technologies and trends that will be strategic for most organizations in 2011. This findings analysis has been presented during Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, which being held on October 21.
Gartner defines a strategic technology as one with the potential for significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years. Factors that denote significant impact include a high potential for disruption to IT or the business, the need for a major dollar investment, or the risk of being late to adopt.
According to the author, a strategic technology may be an existing technology that has matured and/or become suitable for a wider range of uses. It may also be an emerging technology that offers an opportunity for strategic business advantage for early adopters or with potential for significant market disruption in the next five years. As such, these technologies impact the organization's long-term plans, programs and initiatives.
What has attracted me to read and highlight this article is because according to David Cearley vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner, “Companies should factor these top 10 technologies in their strategic planning process by asking key questions and making deliberate decisions about them during the next two years,”.
The top 10 strategic technologies for 2011 include:
Cloud Computing. Cloud computing services exist along a spectrum from open public to closed private. The next three years will see the delivery of a range of cloud service approaches that fall between these two extremes. Vendors will offer packaged private cloud implementations that deliver the vendor's public cloud service technologies (software and/or hardware) and methodologies (i.e., best practices to build and run the service) in a form that can be implemented inside the consumer's enterprise. Many will also offer management services to remotely manage the cloud service implementation. Gartner expects large enterprises to have a dynamic sourcing team in place by 2012 that is responsible for ongoing cloudsourcing decisions and management.
Mobile Applications and Media Tablets. Gartner estimates that by the end of 2010, 1.2 billion people will carry handsets capable of rich, mobile commerce providing an ideal environment for the convergence of mobility and the Web. Mobile devices are becoming computers in their own right, with an astounding amount of processing ability and bandwidth. There are already hundreds of thousands of applications for platforms like the Apple iPhone, in spite of the limited market (only for the one platform) and need for unique coding.
The quality of the experience of applications on these devices, which can apply location, motion and other context in their behavior, is leading customers to interact with companies preferentially through mobile devices. This has lead to a race to push out applications as a competitive tool to improve relationships and gain advantage over competitors whose interfaces are purely browser-based.
Social Communications and Collaboration. Social media can be divided into:
(1) Social networking —social profile management products, such as MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn and Friendster as well as social networking analysis (SNA) technologies that employ algorithms to understand and utilize human relationships for the discovery of people and expertise.
(2) Social collaboration —technologies, such as wikis, blogs, instant messaging, collaborative office, and crowdsourcing.
(3)Social publishing —technologies that assist communities in pooling individual content into a usable and community accessible content repository such as YouTube and flickr.
(4) Social feedback - gaining feedback and opinion from the community on specific items as witnessed on YouTube, flickr, Digg, Del.icio.us, and Amazon. Gartner predicts that by 2016, social technologies will be integrated with most business applications. Companies should bring together their social CRM, internal communications and collaboration, and public social site initiatives into a coordinated strategy.
Video. Video is not a new media form, but its use as a standard media type used in non-media companies is expanding rapidly. Technology trends in digital photography, consumer electronics, the web, social software, unified communications, digital and Internet-based television and mobile computing are all reaching critical tipping points that bring video into the mainstream. Over the next three years Gartner believes that video will become a commonplace content type and interaction model for most users, and by 2013, more than 25 percent of the content that workers see in a day will be dominated by pictures, video or audio.
Next Generation Analytics. Increasing compute capabilities of computers including mobile devices along with improving connectivity are enabling a shift in how businesses support operational decisions. It is becoming possible to run simulations or models to predict the future outcome, rather than to simply provide backward looking data about past interactions, and to do these predictions in real-time to support each individual business action. While this may require significant changes to existing operational and business intelligence infrastructure, the potential exists to unlock significant improvements in business results and other success rates.
Social Analytics. Social analytics describes the process of measuring, analyzing and interpreting the results of interactions and associations among people, topics and ideas. These interactions may occur on social software applications used in the workplace, in internally or externally facing communities or on the social web. Social analytics is an umbrella term that includes a number of specialized analysis techniques such as social filtering, social-network analysis, sentiment analysis and social-media analytics. Social network analysis tools are useful for examining social structure and interdependencies as well as the work patterns of individuals, groups or organizations. Social network analysis involves collecting data from multiple sources, identifying relationships, and evaluating the impact, quality or effectiveness of a relationship.
Context-Aware Computing. Context-aware computing centers on the concept of using information about an end user or object’s environment, activities connections and preferences to improve the quality of interaction with that end user. The end user may be a customer, business partner or employee. A contextually aware system anticipates the user's needs and proactively serves up the most appropriate and customized content, product or service. Gartner predicts that by 2013, more than half of Fortune 500 companies will have context-aware computing initiatives and by 2016, one-third of worldwide mobile consumer marketing will be context-awareness-based.
Storage Class Memory. Gartner sees huge use of flash memory in consumer devices, entertainment equipment and other embedded IT systems. It also offers a new layer of the storage hierarchy in servers and client computers that has key advantages — space, heat, performance and ruggedness among them. Unlike RAM, the main memory in servers and PCs, flash memory is persistent even when power is removed. In that way, it looks more like disk drives where information is placed and must survive power-downs and reboots. Given the cost premium, simply building solid state disk drives from flash will tie up that valuable space on all the data in a file or entire volume, while a new explicitly addressed layer, not part of the file system, permits targeted placement of only the high-leverage items of information that need to experience the mix of performance and persistence available with flash memory.
Ubiquitous Computing. The work of Mark Weiser and other researchers at Xerox's PARC paints a picture of the coming third wave of computing where computers are invisibly embedded into the world. As computers proliferate and as everyday objects are given the ability to communicate with RFID tags and their successors, networks will approach and surpass the scale that can be managed in traditional centralized ways. This leads to the important trend of imbuing computing systems into operational technology, whether done as calming technology or explicitly managed and integrated with IT. In addition, it gives us important guidance on what to expect with proliferating personal devices, the effect of consumerization on IT decisions, and the necessary capabilities that will be driven by the pressure of rapid inflation in the number of computers for each person.
Fabric-Based Infrastructure and Computers. A fabric-based computer is a modular form of computing where a system can be aggregated from separate building-block modules connected over a fabric or switched backplane. In its basic form, a fabric-based computer comprises a separate processor, memory, I/O, and offload modules (GPU, NPU, etc.) that are connected to a switched interconnect and, importantly, the software required to configure and manage the resulting system(s). The fabric-based infrastructure (FBI) model abstracts physical resources — processor cores, network bandwidth and links and storage — into pools of resources that are managed by the Fabric Resource Pool Manager (FRPM), software functionality. The FRPM in turn is driven by the Real Time Infrastructure (RTI) Service Governor software component. An FBI can be supplied by a single vendor or by a group of vendors working closely together, or by an integrator — internal or external.
Look out: The 10 rising tech trends of 2012
As Gartner unveiled its list of the 10 most strategic tech trends of 2012, lets us look at what Jason Hiner [Editor in Chief of TechRepublic] commented. He has breakout these top 10 strategic technologies based on How Do Technology Trends Impact the Human, Business and IT experiences.:-
1. Human Experience
2. Business experience
3. IT department experience
Furthermore, Jason wrote that David Cearly (Gartner analyst) also stress on how IT leaders should think about the “strategic technologies”.
“A strategic technology is one with the potential for significant impact on the enterprise during the next three years. Factors that denote significant impact include a high potential for disruption to IT or the business, the need for a major dollar investment or the risk of being late to adopt… Companies should use the list as a starting point and adjust based on their industry, unique business needs, technology adoption model, and other factors.”
Jason commented that, it won’t surprise anyone that tablets are at the top of the list, and rightfully so. From both an employee and customer standpoint, tablets have been driving a huge change in the way people interact with information over the past two years and the process is likely to accelerate in 2012 as the price of tablets drop, Android’s tablet software improves, and Microsoft gets into the game with a legitimate play in Windows 8.
The biggest surprise was the demotion of cloud computing from number one to number 10. He thought that this was a bit of grandstanding on Gartner’s part because they know that journalists and the tech world would react strongly to it and write about it. But, they’re generally correct that a lot of enterprises are still balking at the cloud, or at least not jumping in with both feet. The cloud is being driven heavily by SMB and in order to fully come of age it will need convince bigger players to get on board for more than just a few fringe applications.
Other than that, Jason commented that “big data, analytics, and apps should have all been a lot higher up on the list, while the Internet of Things is still a couple of years away from having a widespread impact — it’s going to require better, cheaper, and more ubiquitous mobile broadband.”
Source:http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/hiner/look-out-the-10-rising-tech-trends-of-2012/9470?tag=nl.e101
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Issues of cloud computing
This is part of my topic discussed in Group assignment [MIS750], whereby we need to summarize the journal that we have read.
Cloud computing is a huge topic. It encompasses diverse models and technologies. One of the important issues that we will discuss in this paper beside the journal that we have chosen is on the Cloud Computing Security (sometimes it may referred to "cloud security). This cloud security involve sub-domain of computer security, network security as well as information security. Cloud security also refers to a set of policies, technologies and controls deployed to protect data, applications and the associated infrastructure of cloud computing.
According to TechTarget' Site Editor- Marcia Savage, organizations eager to move their in-house developed applications to the cloud to save money and increase efficiency need to carefully consider how application security changes in a cloud environment. There are a number of security issues or concerns associated with cloud computing. However based on our reading, these issues are divided into 2 categories:-
1) Security issues faced by cloud providers (company providing Software, Platform or Infrastructure as a service via the cloud). They have to ensure that their infrastructure is secure and their client's data and applications are protected.
2) Security issues faced by the customers in order to ensure that the provider has taken a proper security measures to protect their information.
As referred to Wikipedia, there are a number of dimensions in cloud security. Gartner has named seven while Cloud Security Alliance identifies thirteen areas of concern. Here are seven of the specific securities issued by Gartner whereby it mentioned that customers should raise with providers before selecting a cloud provider (Jon Brodkin, InforWorld, July 2008).
1. Privileged user access.
2. Regulatory compliance.
3. Data location.
4. Data segregation.
5. Recovery.
6. Investigative support.
7. Long-term viability.
Pete Malcolm (Cloud Computing Journal, Nov 2011) has commented that cloud computing has a huge potential and the information security will no longer be an issue. IT is justifiably concerned with the operational success. However, the result is often cloud applications with no flexibility, tools without autonomy and functionality without ease of use. He added that, the end-users are looking for empowerment. One of the examples is the self-service cloud model typified by the Amazon Web Services API which is solely base on consumer control.
In Malaysia for example, SKALI Cloud Services had offered ultra flexible, scalable cloud servers via their infrastructure on-demand. This will be simply configured by their sophisticated infrastructure with any web browser to match the customer’s needs and it offer a self-managed cloud hosting service. SKALI virtual servers offer all the power and control of a traditional hosted server whilst giving the client benefit of:
1. Instant flexibility [scale the machine up or down using any web browser]
2. Peace of mind [managed infrastructure with automatic failover]
3. Cost efficiency [built to scale and grow only when needed]
Through Skalicloud the customers have fully administrator access to their virtual servers and are responsible for the configuration and management of the operating system and applications that they wish to run. This infrastructure is very easy-to-use and can be easily installed and administered like physical hardware.
Furthermore, there are a growing number of enterprise in Malaysia are looking to move their applications and infrastructure into the cloud. According to CFO InnovationAsia, (Feb,2011), this is primarily being driven by the increasing in awareness of the advantages of using ‘IT as a Service’ rather than a traditional product. It will lower the total cost of ownership, predictable costs and the ability to scale up or down depending on the business needs. In addition, some of the up-front benefits of cloud computing are cost-savings, on-demand usage, ubiquitous access and resource pooling along with as well as pay-per use [like the utility based consumption model].
From here we can concluded that, with the buzz surrounding cloud computing, the adoption of this cloud computing especially in Malaysia has improved from previous years even though there are still many businesses that are concerned about the technological investment. This is proven through the Frost & Sulivan survey conducted in Malaysia (with senior IT decision maker) indicates that close to 30% of enterprises use some form of cloud computing. More than 64% percent of the respondents believe that cloud computing technology in any delivery form can help business reduce their infrastructure cost and lower capital expenditure investment compared to traditional IT Management.
Nevertheless, there will be an issues and challenges that the businesses should look in order to adopt the cloud computing such as regulatory compliance, invisibility over data storage and access, SLAs, reliability of clouds and ownership of legal liability. Even though there is no such thing as ‘zero risk’, businesses need to realize that with proper planning, risk can be mitigated.
Source:
- http://searchcloudsecurity.techtarget.com/news/2240034925/Cloud-application-security-issues-and-considerations
- http://cloudcomputing.sys-con.com/node/1516437
- http://www.infoworld.com/d/security-central/gartner-seven-cloud-computing-security-risks-853?page=0,1
- http://cloudcomputing.sys-con.com/node/2042784
- http://www.skalicloud.com/
- http://www.cfoinnovation.com/content/malaysian-firms-increase-cloud-computing-budget
An MBA degree is an effectual tool which helps you in developing business knowledge, gives you a competitive advantage, helps in developing overall personality, and also helps in enjoying enhanced job security.
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