Blog
February 27, 2016 by Vertical Axion
If you use Microsoft products, you’ve no doubt made at least some use of Cortana, the company’s digital assistant function. If you’re in the Apple camp, then Siri has become an increasingly important part of your life. These digital assistants …
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February 26, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Smartphones rule the world. Even a few years ago, a statement like that would seem silly, but today, silly has become fact. There are more smartphones in active service today than there are human beings living on planet earth, and …
February 25, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Have you been hacked? Has your personal information been compromised? If so, what are you worth? What’s your information selling for? If you’re curious, take a trip to the Dark Web to find out. The Dark Web is the “underground” …
February 24, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Have you heard of Hot Potato? It’s the latest security exploit that Windows-based machines are vulnerable to. Note that this doesn’t target a particular version of Windows, but rather, spans everything from Windows 7, forward to Windows Server 2012. The …
February 23, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Ransomware is shaping up to be the most significant threat from the hacker community in 2016. Over the last few days, Locky, a new piece of malware has been spreading like a wildfire across the Internet. The problem began February …
February 22, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Do you own a Surface Pro, Surface Pro 2, or Surface Pro 3? If so, and if you made your purchase before March, 2015, you should know that Microsoft has just issued a recall for the AC power cords for …
February 20, 2016 by Vertical Axion
A health insurer based in St. Louis, called Centene, has “misplaced” six hard drives. Normally that would not be a big deal, but these particular hard drives happened to contain the personal data of around a million patients. The missing …
February 19, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Since 2011, a company called SplashDash has posted a “Worst Password List” based on data mined from hacks and data breaches. What’s remarkable about the annual list is how little it changes from one year to the next. In the …
February 18, 2016 by Vertical Axion
For many months, Amazon has been planning to take the retail game to the next level. Their ambitious plan first became visible with the inclusion of mysterious “Dash Buttons” on various classes of products. Mysterious, because at least until now, …
February 17, 2016 by Vertical Axion
As almost everyone is aware, Email was the first “killer app.” It very quickly went from being an expensive, idle curiosity, where users had to buy digital stamps in order to send each and every email, to something so ubiquitous …
February 16, 2016 by Vertical Axion
As the economy continues to improve, and labor gets tighter, wages start to rise. It’s inevitable, and that reality sends shock waves of fear through the small business community. After all, they can’t hope to compete with the big players …
February 15, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Back in September, not long after Apple started selling the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus, users began complaining of a strange problem with their batteries. You may have experienced this yourself. One minute, you’ll be using your phone, and the …
February 13, 2016 by Vertical Axion
When Google Chrome was first released, it was hands down the fastest browser on the web. Nothing else even came close. Over time, other, competing browsers began to catch up, speed-wise. In fact, recently, when Microsoft released Edge, their new …
February 12, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Is your company considering “going wireless?” If you haven’t taken the plunge yet, then it’s something you should strongly consider. It’s not as simple as just buying something off the shelf and plugging it in though. There are a number …
February 11, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Most businessmen and women have an email signature, but have you given much thought to how effective it is? If it’s been a while since you’ve given any thought to the email signature you’re using, now might be a good …
February 10, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Security firm Fire Eye has reported on a new and disturbing Trojan making the rounds, called SlemBunk. Unlike so many of the other Trojans we’ve heard about, this one specifically targets handheld devices, and Android devices in particular. Most often, …
February 9, 2016 by Vertical Axion
A few cities across America are currently offering ultra-high-speed broadband connectivity. Many more cities have plans to do so in the near future. Here, we’re talking about speeds of up to 10-gigabits, which is nearly a thousand times faster than …
February 8, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Most credit card companies are hastening to replace their old style magnetic stripe cards with the new EMV chip-embedded ones. The new embedded chips are designed with one purpose in mind: to add an extra layer of security to credit …
February 6, 2016 by Vertical Axion
2016 is off to a rough start in the world of internet security. Just seven days into the new year, and Time Warner has reported that a small subset of its customer data was hacked. Unfortunately, since Time Warner has …
February 5, 2016 by Vertical Axion
This year for Christmas, many children around the country, and indeed, the world, got a shiny new smartphone under the tree. It’s not hard to see why; they have become, in a relatively short span of time, one of the …
February 4, 2016 by Vertical Axion
You’ve probably never even heard of the “Real ID Act of 2005.” Most people haven’t. It was one of a number of pieces of legislation that passed without grabbing any headlines or attention, but it’s about to have very real …
February 3, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Odds are good that you have a wireless router, either in your office, or at home. If you do, then you’ve probably noticed that some days, your connection just isn’t so great. The reason? More likely than not, it’s interference.…
February 2, 2016 by Vertical Axion
“Don’t go anywhere near Bob’s office today, he’s on a rampage.” You’ve no doubt heard that, or something very like it. The phrase comes up most often when someone is having a tough time keeping their personal life separate from …
February 1, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Microsoft has put a lot of muscle behind its Surface Pro product. Designed to be the iPad killer, it’s both a tablet and a fully functional laptop, capable of running more than just Apps, which tend to be scaled down …
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