The Wounded Warrior Cyber Combat Academy

News reports abound on the shortage of skilled cybersecurity professionals and the potential consequences this can have for the security of the US and our way of life.

The Wounded Warrior Cyber Combat Academy is a unique approach to addressing this issue.  This effort recruits returning war-injured veterans and trains them on IT security skills so they can join the workforce and help defend the US from cyber-attack. 

Join us on Tuesday, October 8th at 6:00pm EST as we welcome Mr. Jim Wiggins, Executive Director of the Federal IT Security Institute and leader of the Wounded Warrior Cyber Combat Academy (W2CCA) to learn about this effort and how it benefits our returning soldiers by providing them employable skills, our economy by creating a pool of a skilled workers to fill US-based jobs, and our nation by increasing the ranks of cyber defenders. 

Join us! This Tuesday at 6pm EST on Technology Today. Listeners are invited to send in their thoughts by email, texts to 240-731-0756, facebook, our blog, our show page and on Twitter. You can also call us Live on Air at 646-652-4385.

Technology Today airs on Live on the BlogTalkRadio network – the Online home for Internet Radio!. Join us Live Here.

Apple bringing Biometrics to the Masses!

Apple has received a lot of attention and press recently for their new OS, iOS 7, and their two new iPhones – the 5c and the 5s. And they are saying they’ve sold over 9 million of the new phones on the first weekend of sales.

One feature of the new phone that hasn’t received as much discussion as may be deserved is the fingerprint biometric feature. That’s the kind of tech we like to discuss at Technology Today and we’ll do that this Wednesday at 6pm EST.

Security is an ever-growing concern and the 4-digit passcode approach to unlocking a phone often is more of an annoyance than a deterrent. Perhaps a finger tap approach, which we are used to anyway from opening apps, will do better?

Some say that this is a potential slippery slope, that once we become accustomed to using our fingers, retina scanners, face scanners, voice print security measure and other, possibly more intrusive biometric approaches will become the norm.

We’ll discuss the pros and cons and take a deeper look at biometric tech. Gino Pereira, CEO of NXT-ID, is a recognized expert in the technology space building start-ups across the world. His current business, NXT-ID, is active in fingerprint biometrics with special application in mobile payment security.

Join us! This Wednesday at 6pm on Technology Today.

The show airs Live on Wednesday, September 25th at 6pm EST. Listeners are invited to send in their thoughts by email, texts to 240-731-0756, facebook, our blog, our show page and on Twitter. You can also call us Live on Air at 646-652-4385.

Technology Today airs on Live on the BlogTalkRadio network – the Online home for Internet Radio!. Join us Live Here.

RFID – Tracking the Supply Chain

This Tuesday on Technology Today, we discuss RFID and how this tech is changing the way supply chains are managed.

RFIDs are ID tags that emit signals over radio frequency and can be embedded onto physical items and/or shipping containers to track items as they move through a supply chain from their source as a raw material through production and, often, all the way to the end consumer. Supply Chains are big business. Every product that is made and consumed anywhere in the world is, essentially, the product of and the final result of a supply chain. Without a supply chain, we couldn’t eat a burger at McDonalds, buy a car, watch an NFL football game or ride a roller coaster at the amusement park.

Join us as we Welcome Jay Steinmetz, CEO of Barcoding, Inc into this discussion.

The show airs Live on Tuesday, September 10th at 6pm EST. Listeners are invited to send in their thoughts – You can also reach us by email, texts to 240-731-0756, facebook, our blog, our show page and on Twitter. You can also call us Live on Air at 646-652-4385.

Technology Today airs on Live on the BlogTalkRadio network – the Online home for Internet Radio!. Join us Live Here.

Reality Video Games

Can a video game merge with elements of our real world surroundings through a smart phone app?  Is this the birth of Reality Video Games? And the next frontier for mobile gaming and our mobile devices?

Join us at a special Day and Time – Wednesday, February 6th at 4:00pm EST as we discuss this and preview the new Star Trek Into Darkness mobile App that is in fact claiming to blurr the line between fantasy and reality.  

With the release of its first Starfleet mission during the 2nd quarter of the Superbowl – the Star Trek Into Darkness video game mobile app will pull information from your real world into the mission itself.  

How do they do it?  What does this mean?  Tune in and Find Out.  This is something we have to see. 

We will be joined on air by Amy Powell, Executive Vice President, Interactive Marketing at Paramount Pictures, and President of Paramount’s Digital Entertainment and Insurge Pictures. Amy oversees digital strategy and interactive marketing campaigns for numerous films – partially including Paranormal Activity, Transformers, G.I. Joe, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Indiana Jones, Mission Impossible and, of course Star Trek.

Also joining us will be Peter Marx, Vice President, Business Development of Qualcomm Labs who handles the commercialization for emerging technologies for the Labs and has vast experience with online and digital gaming & the user experience.

Listeners are invited to send in their thoughts – You can also reach us by email, texts to 240-731-0756, facebook, our blog, our show page and on Twitter. You can also call us Live on Air at 323-410-0032.

Technology Today airs on Live on the BlogTalkRadio network – the Online home for Internet Radio!. Join us Live Here.

2013CES – First Thoughts

This year’s CES did not disappoint. There was more to see than could be seen, even by an army of radio hosts! I spent much of my time in the digital health area looking at new technologies aimed to empower us to manage and guide our own health. I also caught a glimpses of what may be the next generation of mobile app capabilities. I’ll share my thought more on what I say on our next show – Tuesday, January 29th at 6PM EST.

Did you go to CES? Share your thoughts on Live on Air by calling the show at (323) 410-0032. You can also reach us by email, texts to 240-731-0756, facebook, our blog, our show page and on Twitter.

Technology Today airs on Live on the BlogTalkRadio network – the Online home for Internet Radio!. Join us Live Here.

It is almost time for CES 2013 – January 8-11 in Las Vegas.

This year, we’re asking our audience what new consumer electronics are of greatest interest to them. Let us know the new devices and technologies you want to add to your wish lists for next year? We’ll scope it out in the desert.

Areas of interest from past CES events include:

• Televisions & Home Theater Systems – a mainstay
• Tablets
• Digital Health
• Smart devices of all kinds

Listeners are invited to send in their thoughts – You can also reach us by email, texts to 240-731-0756, facebook, our blog, our show page and on Twitter.

Technology Today airs on Live on the BlogTalkRadio network – the Online home for Internet Radio!. Join us Live Here.

Business Intelligence – Exactly How Smart Is It?

Business Intelligence has long been considered an innovative approach to increasing the effectiveness of operational management and business decision making. But its remained an elusive, and all to often, unrealized goal.

Now with the very real prospect of Big Data, the challenges for a successful data mining and business intelligence tool are only growing.

Our guest today is Sundeep Sanghavi, CEO of DataRMP, a cloud-based data analytic solution provider. Join us today at 6PM EST to discuss this topic – and see if there really is a possible solution to the BI delimma.

Listeners are invited to call in with their questions and concerns – Live during the show at 6pm EST at 323-410-0032. You can also reach us by email, texts to 240-731-0756, facebook, our blog, our show page and on Twitter.

Technology Today airs on Live on the BlogTalkRadio network – the Online home for Internet Radio!. Join us Live Here.

When your Web Site Betrays You & Your Client (guest blog)

Property sellers expect that, when they give you listing information, it will only be used to market and sell their property. While that means that you need to give the listing information exposure on the Internet, it is your responsibility to take reasonable steps that the data is not ‘scraped’ off of your web site and used for illicit purposes, such as direct-marketing the seller or display on unapproved places on the Internet. When the consumer gives you their information and receives calls that evening or print ads for move-related property and settlement services soon after, they know their information is being used for undesired purposes, and that either you have intentionally or otherwise betrayed their expectations for the limited use of their information.

Most real estate professionals don’t realize how easy it is for people to send out a web-crawling program to collect the listing information for illicit use or what the information can be used for. If someone can ‘scrape’ the property address from your site, they can send mail to the owner – or by having their computer use a reverse telephone directory, create a list of phone numbers to call. Sometimes the address is listed in your list of listings, search results or on property detail pages, and sometimes a poorly integrated mapping solution will include a link with the address embedded in it. Price and MLS number are other pieces of information that data pirates especially desire. Email addresses are harvested for spam which, given how much spam is used for phishing and to send viruses and spyware, increases your own risk as your email address is spread around the Internet. While no method of preventing scraping is foolproof, here are some reasonable steps you can take to cut down on the problem:

First, make it hard for the web-crawling robot to go from listing to listing:

• Require that some search criteria are filled in and only return a reasonable, limited number of search results for any search
• Do not allow a search by numeric MLS number – it’s too easy for a scraping program to search for #111123, #111124, #111125, etc. That’s called ‘incrementing’.
• Programmers shouldn’t use numbers to identify listings – e.g. http://yourdomain.com/ListingDetail?id=1234. That number can be used for ‘incrementing’ – whether in the web site address or sent via a web form. Then, make it hard to collect specific information off of the page:
• ‘Render’ information such as address and price as a graphic or using Flash. If the information is not text on the web page, it’s difficult to scrape. Note that while this is one of the most important steps to take to stop scraping, it makes your site not useful by those with limited vision!
• Make it difficult to scrape email addresses (and possibly other information on the page) using “JavaScript”. It’s a relatively easy process. 

There are certainly additional steps needed to stop the more persistent and sophisticated data scrapers – rate limiting, CAPTCHA testing, pattern monitoring and so forth. Clareity helps companies address those through its security assessment service – but if you have taken the steps above you at least have taken reasonable steps to protect the seller.

Whether you maintain your own web site, have a webmaster, or send your listings to various other sites for display, you may want to make sure that they are taking appropriate steps to stop ‘scraping’, so that when a property seller gives you information needed to market and sell their property, you’ve taken reasonable steps to ensure it is only used for that purpose, protecting the seller’s privacy.

About the Guest Blog Author: Matt Cohen is Clareity Consulting’s Chief Technologist and leads its security assessment practice. Matt has spoken at many conferences, workshops and leadership retreats around the country on security related topics, and is a well-regarded real estate industry expert on software design, product management, project management, data center reliability, scalability, and security. Clareity Consulting was founded in 1996 to provide information technology consulting to the real estate industry and its related businesses. 

Bots & Hackers Scraping Away your IP & Profits

Screen Scraping is quietly becoming a scourge of the Internet. Quietly because many have not heard of this threat or that hackers – often using automated programs or bots – are using this technique to steal intellectual property as well as real competitive advantage – and profits – from online and mobile websites. And often without a trace.

If Screen Scraping is a new topic for you, tune into Technology Today on Wednesday, May 23rd at 6pm EST to learn all about it – and how to stop this growing threat to Internet & mobile commerce.

We will be joined by Matt Cohen, Clareity Consulting’s Chief Technologist and will take your calls as well.

Listeners are invited to call in with their questions and concerns on Screen Scraping – Call in Live during the show at 323-410-0032. You can also reach us by email, texts to 240-731-0756, facebook, our blog, our show page and on Twitter.

Technology Today airs on Live on the BlogTalkRadio network – the Online home for Internet Radio!. Join us Live Here.

Is Your Brand Still Wearing Bell Bottoms?

Wasn’t it mere minutes ago that we marketing types were gathered in the creative department staring wide-eyed at a teeny computer screen that not only smiled at us when booted up but also promised to usher us into a whole new era of possibilities?

Wasn’t it just yesterday that our entire office shared a single 14K modem?

Boy, do things change. And fast. The question is, have we changed?

Rapidly evolving digital technologies have given us a monumental opportunity for supercharging brands and staying engaged with customers 24/7. Social media, especially, has created the true two-way conversation that we’ve always dreamed of. And yet, most marketers continue to be stuck in the past, desperately trying to make their offline mindset work in today’s online world.

Rather than trying to cram in the proverbial square peg, progressive brand leaders understand that technology HAS fundamentally changed the branding discipline – and for the better. They also recognize that social media is not only about engaging the customer with the brand itself – it’s also about facilitating the customer’s engagement with others in the brand’s community through thoughtful conversations, meaningful content sharing and real-time interaction.

As a strategic brand communications firm that helps clients stay ahead of the curve by effectively leveraging new technologies and communication channels, we offer a few suggestions for snapping out of the old-school marketing trance:

• Brand Your Business: Remember, your brand is much more than your logo, tagline or marketing materials. Developing a comprehensive brand platform will facilitate deeper understanding and thinking about your brand and will help to strategically evolve it across an ever-growing multitude of traditional and digital channels.
• Don’t Get Lost in Translation: Once you develop a unique, multidimensional brand platform, think about how your brand needs to act in each of the digital channels you employ. Your brand will always stake the same overarching position, but different aspects of its personality will emerge depending on which party it’s attending.
• Stop Selling and Start Socializing: Each new digital channel and social media tool brings another opportunity to engage with your audiences on a more intimate, authentic level. It’s high time we all become more engaged and social with our stakeholders. Whether B2B or B2C, we need to offer creative ways to bring the customer into the brand story – and let them drive it, too.

Ida Cheinman
Principal / Creative Director
Substance151

Substance151 is a strategic brand communications firm for organizations on the edge of evolution – whether that evolution is inspired by the desire to leverage new technologies and social media channels or the knowledge that it’s simply time for a stronger, more compelling brand across all media. Our expertise includes every step of the branding process – from strategy through design, across print and digital media, and covering all aspects of marketing communications. For more information, visit http://www.substance151.com.

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