The OFFICIAL version of BBM™ from BlackBerry is now here for Android. Get the free BBM app for the best way to stay connected with friends and family. Download it now.
Chat with friends on Android, BlackBerry and iPhone:
• BBM is always on and always connected – no app to open
• Know when messages have been delivered (D’s) and read (R’s)
• Share photos, files, documents, voice notes and more
• See when contacts are responding to your message
• Emoticons for every mood and emotion let you express yourself
BBM lets you protect your privacy. You control it:
• You chose how to share your information - BBM uses PINs instead of phone numbers or email addresses so that it's more private, and you always control who can contact you
• You chose your contacts – 2-way opt-in means you have control over who is able to message you
Chat and Share with many at once:
• Groups – BBM groups help you share pictures, lists, and appointments with group members. You can even be in a group with people who aren't part of your own BBM contact list.
• Multi-person chats – Invite multiple contacts to have a chat together.
• Broadcast messages – Send a message to multiple BBM contacts at one time.
Create your own BBM profile:
• Post a profile picture using images, pictures or even animated pictures (GIFs).
• Update your status to let people know what you’re up to or how you feel
Some ancient technology is still useful -- and some just won't die
Consider the abacus, evolved
possibly as long as 4,500 years ago, this handy gadget served the mathematical
desires of merchants and accountants until the development of mechanical
assessing appliances in the 19th years. But the abacus hasn't been disregarded.
Instead it still inhabits on in niches -- for example teaching preschoolers the
basics of counting.
There
are a number of obsolete technologies and gadgets that have persevered from
somewhat less ancient times right down to the present day, though
afresh in substantially weakened figures and scope. A brief trip through these
technological fossils serves as a message on the durability of pieces we
sometimes think of as ephemeral.
Rather than set a bright-line policy on violent images, Facebook must now decide what is the right context for clips of people being decapitated.
Facebook (FB, Fortune 500)temporarily banned graphic, violent content from its site back in May,
when clips including a particular video of a woman being beheaded were
spreading across the site. That video resurfaced recently after Facebook
quietly lifted the ban on graphic
videos, and it once again caused a stir.
Facebook
defended its decision on Monday after a BBC article publicized the lifting of
the ban, but just 24 hours later, Facebook once again decided to take the video
down.
But
rather than set a bright-line policy on violent images, Facebook instead backed
itself into a gray area. The site removed the specific beheading video that
caused the flap -- but going forward, the site said it will make a
determination about each post individually.
Facebook
said it will allow the videos to stay up as long as posters "condemn"
the violence and warn viewers of the graphic nature of the content. But the
content will be removed if it is deemed to be shared for "sadistic
pleasure or to celebrate violence."
In doing
so, Facebook has created yet another murky policy -- and thrust itself into
making difficult decisions around controversial content on a case-by-case
basis.
Amazing!!! Find out 7 old-fashion IT principles that still rule today.
The more things stay the same, the more they change.
That's not exactly how the saying goes, but it's the phrase that should be engraved over every door leading to IT. It's certainly better than "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."
Not a lot has changed since our early days, when IT was EDP and programmers were the high priests of the glass house -- except for everything.
Luckily, much of the fundamental wisdom of the early days of IT still applies, though in a different, modernized guise. Here are 10 old-school principles that will guide you through next-generation IT and the fundamental differences in the ways you should apply them.
PRINCIPLE 1. It's never just about how good the technology is
The technology you buy is a long-term commitment on your part. You need it to be a long-term commitment on the supplier's part, too.
To play it safe, IT used to buy from big vendors. Now? Not only can open source be just as safe, sometimes you can get it from IBM or other big vendors.
Not every open source technology has a broad enough base of support, but many do. If PHP, for example, will do the job, would you look at Java twice given its awful security track record? And yet Java is supported (perhaps "provided" would be more accurate) by Oracle, one of the biggest software companies in the world.
This isn't entirely new, either. The open-source-like SHARE library dates to the 1970s, after all.
PRINCIPLE 2. Good information security starts with good physical security
We've always kept the hardware locked away, limiting data center access to a small number of employee badges and keeping automated logs of who enters and when. It's just that now, not every locked room is our own.For small and midsized businesses especially, there are alternatives, ranging from colo facilities to full cloud.But don't pocket all the savings from not building out your own data center. Invest some of it in a low-latency, high-bandwidth network connection to your offsite provider. Even better: Apply another old-time principle -- never have just one of anything. Make that two connections, with points of presence on opposite sides of your building, so a back hoe can't take your business down by digging a hole in an inopportune spot.
PRINCIPLE 3. Know the threats
Back in the day, thwarting security threats mostly meant timing out CICS sessions so that hackers couldn't dial in and inherit them. Then came PCs, distributed systems, the Internet, and lots more threats. We responded by locking down desktops and guarding the perimeter with increasingly sophisticated firewalls.
Many still think the best countermeasure is to lock everything down and not let anyone be creative. But businesses live and die on innovation, and innovation means more than new products to sell. It means creative thinking and the implementation of that thinking, everywhere in the business.
These days we should spend more time hardening the assets than the perimeter and even more time actively supporting users, all because the biggest threat is a workforce that isn't allowed to innovate.
PRINCIPLE 4. Testing software means more than putting code into production and seeing what happens
Regression and stress testing separate the pros from the amateurs. They always have, and they still do. Regression testing makes sure new stuff doesn't break old stuff. Stress testing makes sure everything will perform well enough when everyone starts banging away at it.
IT, being professional, maintained at least three environments: development, test, and production. That meant buying three of everything -- maintaining them, too. Ouch!
Now, even when you maintain your own data center, spinning up a test environment in the cloud often makes more sense because you only have to pay for it while you need it. Depending on your production environment, it can work quite well for regression testing, too.
Stress testing? Not yet. Too many variables, at least for the time being
PRINCIPLE 5. Control changes to the production environment
We're long past the days when developers could slam their new code into production. There's a process to go through. Nobody actually likes the process, but it isn't about liking the process. It's about making sure the change doesn't disrupt production, and if it does disrupt production, it's about making sure there's a backout plan.
Think the cloud changes things? It does. It makes change control harder because now, if you aren't careful about how you manage your cloud providers, they might slam their changes into production without going through your process.
It is, after all, their infrastructure.
PRINCIPLE 6. Integrate, because interconnecting 'islands of automation' takes a lot of stupid out of business processes
When humans rekeyed information from computer-generated reports into data-entry screens, IT realized one of its most important responsibilities was integrating disparate systems to keep data synchronized.
So it built interfaces -- lots of them, all custom-batch ETL.
Now there are so many it's a hard-to-maintain mess. So smart IT invests in a service bus or something similar, and engineers its interfaces too, because just piling one on top of the other means the shiny new tech re-creates the same old tangle.
Today, lots of IT is happening outside the IT department, mostly in the form of SaaS brought in by business managers as islands of automation. Eventually they'll get tired of having their staff rekey data into it. Be ready for them.
PRINCIPLE 7. It's about business change, or else what's the point?
When computers were new and shiny, business executives counted on them to drive change everywhere by making business processes quicker and cheaper while cutting way down on manual errors.
That lasted until IT had to support so many interconnected systems that doing anything new was time-consuming, expensive, and risky. Its reliance on waterfall methodologies didn't help either.
We're finally breaking loose again. Between agile, better integration tools, and non-IT IT, information technology is starting to drive change again instead of following along after it. <<<< More>>>>
A day after relaunching its BBM app for Android and
iOS on 22nd Oct. 2013, BlackBerry says its cross-platform BBM app has been
downloaded over 10 million times within 24 hours.
BBM head Andrew Bocking, in a blog post, said
that BBM topped the Apple App Store free app rankings chart in the first 24
hours - taking the number one slot in more than 75 countries, including the US,
Canada, the UK, Indonesia and most of the Middle East. In the Google Play
Store, BBM has earned 60,000 five-star reviews from about 87,000 reviews. BBM for Android, BBM for iPhone finally here, but not for all
#BBMforAll - the hashtag
BlackBerry had been actively using before the initial BlackBerry Messenger
(BBM) launch got botched. Now that BlackBerry has after a month-long wait
announced that BBM for Android and BBM for iPhone are ready to download and
install,not all users will be able to start messaging right away.
BBM is available as a free download for Android smartphones running Ice Cream Sandwich(Android 4.0)and Jelly Bean (Android 4.2) and for iPhones running iOS 6 and iOS 7. At launch, the BBM Video calling and BBM Voice calling features are not available on BBM's Android and iPhone apps but BlackBerry says these are are planned for availability in a future version.
"We committed to delivering a BBM experience on
iPhone and Android that was equal to that on BlackBerry 10. That means bringing
BBM Video, BBM Voice and BBM Channels to Android and iPhone customers too. My
team is still committed to bringing those features to BBM on Android and iPhone
in the near future," said Bocking.
BlackBerry is yet to announce plans to bring BBM to
Windows Phone devices.
INSTALL
To
install BBM for Android or iPhone visitBBM.comfrom your mobile phone browser orclick herefor the Android version, iPhone usersclick here. If unsuccessful click here to install in three(3) steps only....
All eyes are actually on the brand-new Apple
launch event, which should glimpse the last goods that are going to be issued
this year. While the iPhone 6 isn't going to be among the register of goods, by
glimpsing the iPad 5 and iPad Mini 2 we'll get a better concept of what Apple's
been working on for its iOS apparatus.
Combined with the data we have from the lately
launched iPhone 5s and iOS 7, we should get a better concept of what Apple is
planning for its next smartphone, the iPhone 6.
Of everything that we understand now, the biggest
bit of data is that the iPhone 6 is going to have a bigger computer display that the iPhone 5S. Although sales of the iPhone are
high, the Android competition has all moved to large-screen Full HD forms, with
the HTC One, Sony Xperia Z and Samsung GalaxyS4, so it makes sense for apple fruit to contend on
screen size.
In this item we're rounding up all of the iPhone 6
rumors. We'll give you all the present information on the release designated
day, cost and specs, filtering the data to help work out which gossip sound
most likely.
iPHONE 6 ISSUE DESIGNATED DATE Estimating Apple's issue designated days is an
entire and utter nightmare, with practically every proposition incorrect. It's
clear, granted that the iPhone 5S was only released in September, that we're
not going to glimpse the iPhone 6 until 2014 now.
Apple generally hasproducts
on sale for a year, but the iPhone 6
feels like a different proposition to us. Rather than a replacement for a
living iPhone, it's more of a supplement to the line-up. We kind of glimpse it
replication what Samsung has with the full-size Galaxy S4 and the Samsung
Galaxy S4 Mini, with the exclusion that Apple's small phone, the 5S, is still
actually mighty.
Tim Cook has hinted at new goods approaching
shortly after summer launch in a call with investors. "Our groups are hard
at work on some astonishing new hardware, programs, and services that we can’t
delay to introduce this drop and all through 2014," prepare food said. As
we know now, the goods prepare food was conversing about are being released on
the 22nd October and encompass the iPad 5 and iPad Mini 2.
That would seem to be it for 2013, so we're going
to have to delay until 2014 for the iPhone 6. Although, relatively talking, it
seems equitable that we can anticipate the handset shortly, especially as
Apple's Canadian arm has apparently currently leaked the iPhone 6. If we had to
be shoved on a designated day, we'd say that early next year, between stride
and May would make sense. This would give apple fruit sufficient expanse from
the iPhone 5S, and give it a possibility to take the limelight away from
Samsung, which will be looking to issue its Galaxy S5 handset round the
identical time.
iPHONE 6 COMPUTER DISPLAY It's attractive safe to suppose that the iPhone 6
is going to have a larger computer display dimensions than the living iPhone 6.
Most of the gossip are that the iPhone 6 will have a 4.8in computer display
(4.5in and 5in computer display dimensions have also been put forwards), which
would make the phone alike in dimensions to the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the HTC
One. At this computer display size, Apple could then move to a Full HD
(1,920x1,080) resolution or even proceed after.
While apple fruit has not before made a large-screen
telephone, upping the screen size for the iPhone 6 makes a lot of sense. It
means it can contend with the large-screen phones from other manufacturers and
hold the iPhone 5S as a smaller alternative, giving iPhone users more choice.
Tim prepare food has said, "Some customers
valuelarge screen dimensions, other ones value other components such as
tenacity, color value, white balance, brightness, reflectivity, computer
display longevity, power utilization, portability, compatibility with apps and
numerous things. Our competitors had made some significant trade-offs in
numerous of these areas in order to boat a bigger brandish. We would not boat a
bigger brandish iPhone while these trade-offs exist."
What that declaration states, to us, is that apple
fruit won't ship a large-screen iPhone until it's managed to metal out all of
the trade-offs. A thinner computer display, to make a lighter phone, could well
be the right way to proceed, then.
It's no marvel, then, that apple fruit may also be
contemplating the screen expertise that it uses, with a Sharp IGZO (Indium
Gallium Zinc Oxide) computer display peak of the list. This new technology
permits for partitions that use less power and are considerably narrower. Rumors
absolutely selected up when the Sharp IGZO technology was illustrated at CES
2013.
iPHONE 6 LOOK DETECTION A larger screen needs more power, so any expertise
that can increase battery life has to be good. For the iPhone 6 Apple could be
about to revisit look detection expertise, where the phone can tell if you're
looking at the computer display or not. If you were to gaze away, the phone
could hesitate a video playing and turn the computer display off. Patently
Apple has cut into up the full information on how the technology is expected to
work.
Given that Samsung has alike expertise in its
Galaxy S4 smartphone, we'd say there's a high chance that apple fruit will
follow match and apply its own version.
iPHONE 6 iOS 7 We currently have iOS 7, so it makes sense that
this operating scheme will be utilized for the iPhone 6. It's likely, granted
that the iPhone 5S has characteristics exact to it, that the OS will be updated
to insert new characteristics with the new handset. For example, it could endow
NFC is apple fruit decides that it wants the technology to use for wireless
payments; we wouldn't bet on it, though, as it appears steadfastly against it.
iOS 7 was released with the iPhone 5S, but a tweaked type could arrive to the iPhone 6
iPHONE 6 CAMERA For the iPhone 5S apple fruit upped the physical
dimensions of its 8-megapixel sensor, significance that each pixel gets more
lightweight. In addition, it upgraded the lens from an f/2.4 form to an f/2.2
form, expanding low-light performance again. Blended with the A7 SoC, the
camera have a couple of tidy modes, encompassing a 10fps blew mode that goes on
until the phone's recollection is full, and a 120fps slow-motion mode. It would make sense if Apple was to use this
sensor in the iPhone 6, whereas, granted it's a larger telephone, with more
room interiorfor constituents, it could well up the pixel enumerate,
with a 12- or 13-megapixel on the cards.
iPHONE 6 STORAGE In periods of storage, 64GB has been the peak form
for a twosome of years, and extends to be so for the iPhone 5S. We're not
anticipating this to change for the iPhone 6, whereas we know that the apple
fruit can make a 128GB form, thanks to the latest launch of a 128GB iPad 4. The new form increase two-fold the greatest
capability of the preceding high-end iPad (64GB). This update was said to be
about increasing the kind of uses for the tablet, with apple fruit asserting
that more storage was good for large filesfor use
in submissions such as CAD and melodies output. It's furthermore a more helpful
allowance of storage for photographs and videos.
iPHONE 6 FEEL ID Touch ID, the fingerprint, was the one of the
large-scale conversing points for the iPhone 5S. Recent rumors propose that
feel ID will furthermore come to the iPad 5 and iPad Mini 2, so we'd actually
anticipate it on the iPhone 6. Touch ID works bright and boosts people to be more
protected, as using it needs a passcode to be set. At the instant, Touch ID can
only be used tounlock the iPhone and to authorize iTunes and App Store payments, but it
would make sense for apple fruit to be conceiving about new submissions for the
technology. We can effortlessly glimpse a future where banking apps, for
example, are authenticated through the phone. For the expertise actually to be taken seriously,
we'd anticipate to see it in as numerous wireless devices as possible, which
conspicuously include the iPhone 6. The only real inquiry is, will we see Touch
ID open up any new characteristics? If apple fruit was to encompass a NFC
portion, then feel ID could be used to authenticate payments. We're not
inevitably anticipating NFC, though, as Apple has so far been dead set against
encompassing it.
iPHONE 6 A7 SoC Apple fruit has just issued the A7 SoC chip for
its iPhone 5S, which is verifying to be very very quick. It's got some great
made-to-order characteristics, too, including the Image pointer Processor for
the camera, which permits the iPhone 5S fire fast bursts and slow shift video.
Granted that this 64-bit portion is brand-new, we can't see Apple completely
changing it for the iPhone 6. Rather than, we may get an upgraded type for the
iPhone 6. This could encompass more cores, possibly moving from dual-core to
quad-core, and possibly a faster graphics centre, alike to how the current iPad
has an A6X processor, which is the iPhone version with quad-core graphics. Leaked shots, before it was issued, of the iPhone
5S rightly showed that it had a brand-new processor, the A7.
PHONE 6 PRICING
Apple normally issues its new models at the same price as the
vintage ones. If that holds out, then, and presuming that the 16GB form is
dropped, we'd anticipate the 32GB form to cost £529, the 64GB form £599 and the
128GB form £699. However, if the company continues to deal the iPhone 5S, we
could be in for some new pricing, with the iPhone 6 a premium form that sits
overhead it, in which case all bets are off and we have no concept how much it
will be.
