The consequences are dramatic for everyone: the smartphone is now the main engagement device for many people, especially in developing countries, but by 2016 it will replace the laptop as the main connecting system for most of the population. This makes mobile Internet a top priority for any entity that wants to stay connected with its Web users.

It is also interesting to note that in the report, the number of estimated tablet users will be just half of smartphone users in the US — 126 million to 257 million, respectively. And 90 percent of those users will use mobile platforms designed by Apple, Google, and Microsoft.

It is now especially important to recognize the reality of the mobile Web; no longer can we look at the proliferation of tablets and smartphones as potential information security risks or IT nightmares. Mobile devices are here to stay and become the standard device for corporate users to access information on the Web.

“Mobile is the new face of engagement,” said Ted Schadler, a principal analyst at Forrester. “Businesses should stop thinking about it as a small Website on a tiny computer, and start thinking about mobile as being deeply embedded systems of engagement. That turns out to have huge implications.”

That means having special teams dedicated to mobile applications and cyber security. “CIOs Need a Formal Mobile Strategy to Build New Systems of Engagement” is one of the main topics on the report. Of the billion users, 350 million will be using a smartphone for work, and 200 million of them will bring it to the office. A previous report claims that half of the workers pay for their devices and wireless plans, and they choose the mobile platform they want to use.

Also it is important to consider the budget implications: apart of the cost of devices and service plans, the cost of developing mobile applications will double in 2016, making mobile IT one of the key cost factors in the organization.

Another issue is users’ online privacy. Not only will regulations in some countries be strict, but it is likely that most workers will use the same smartphone for private browsing. Companies will have to respect the limits of private and business use and refrain from collecting information that is not specifically business data from the devices.

Walgreens is listed as an example on the report. According to the drugstore chain, 40 percent of online transactions last year came from the store’s mobile app, where customers can order refills on prescriptions, check for nearby stores, and shop for other products.

I don’t know whether the next generation of Internet users will know how to use a keyboard. But I know that children know how to use a tablet. In a few years, they will go to college, and their Internet experience will be completely mobile. Will you be the one that delivers that experience, or the one that misses the boat?

On May 6, 2010, The Dow Jones industrial average inexplicably plummeted almost 1,000 points in minutes, only to mysteriously rise before the day ended. had the “flash crash” not reversed itself, a global financial meltdown would have ensued.

We humans have linked our destinies with our machines. Our technology has gotten so complex that we no longer can understand it or fully control it. We have entered the Age of Entanglement.

When humans lived in the jungle, they thought that nature’s displays arouse from mystical qualities. In the Dark Ages humans blamed the gods for causing unforeseen events that altered people’s lives. But the Enlightenment brought reason to bear; scientific analysis made sense of more and more of the world. We began to feel in control, and our understanding gave us the power to construct our complex environment of technology.

The Internet is a case in point. Most people may nit realize that they depend on the Internet when they place a telephone call or fly an airplane. In our intertwined world, it is increasingly difficult to understand the very systems we have built or how to repair them. Weeks after the financial crush, regulators installed new trading circuit breakers they hoped would prevent another collapse, but they can’t be certain the fixes will actually work.

Back in 20th century, programmers could tell a computer exactly what to do. They exercised absolute control in a system they completely understood. Today programmers link complicated modules developed by others, without fully knowing how the pieces function. A program, that, say, directs trucks to restock stores needs to find the locations of the trucks and warehouses, maps of the streets and the inventories of stores. The program follows this information by connecting to other programs via Internet. It might also support systems that truck packages, pay drivers and track truck maintenance.

Expand the picture to include factories and power plants, as well as salespeople, advertisers, insurers, regulators, and stock traders, and you begin to see the entangled system behind so many daily decisions.Although we created it, we did not exactly design it. It evolved. We are now dependent on it and not entirely in command.Each expert knows a piece of the puzzle, but the big picture is too big to comprehend.

To combat the cyber threat at workplace, start by identifying your company’s vital information and the possible internal weaknesses.

Assigning access levels to current and former employees is a great first line of defense in dealing with cyber security challenges. Managing the access of individuals within a network can be a daunting task, even with a secure server. Cyber security education and information security training have become more important than ever before.

Many companies require their employees to take security awareness training and get cyber security certification. It is critical to decide the rights of each user in public and private sectors, allowing more access with each level of supervision. For example, new employees must be afforded access based on what sensitive information they are entitled to, as it fits their job description. Upon termination, disgruntled employees must be stripped of access to both the network and the physical property to prevent malicious activity. If this is not done immediately after termination, former employees could access and manipulate company files, causing a great deal of damage, if not financial loss.

Wireless internet connections in an organization should always require an encryption key or password to access the network at any level. Otherwise, anyone with a laptop or smartphone could access the network from the comfort and security of their own vehicle while in range of the server’s signal. In today’s workplace, digitally stored information is just as much of an asset to a company as their bank account, and the two should be guarded with comparable levels of cyber security.

As we know, a financial audit is directed toward enabling the CPA to render an opinion on the accuracy of your financial statements. If your use of IT is limited to purely financial transactions like accounts receivable, and general ledger reporting, the complexity of IT component of a regular audit can be relatively limited. However, if your IT systems are critical to the core mission of your business, the IT audit will be more complicated, and possibly mandatory.

If you rely on automated systems for such functions as sales order management, purchasing, shop floor control, inventory control, or the handling of patient health care information, and IT audit definitely deserves your attention and consideration.

There are several reasons why IT audit should be important to the business owner of chief executive.

Some of the most important ones may include the following:

1) Without an appropriate IT audit, important IT controls within an organization may not be fully tested. This can lead to higher levels of risks, including regulatory compliance risks and real financial risks.

2) An IT audit is a measurement of IT risk management, which translates into business risk management.

3) Improper management of IT risks carries severe business impacts if regulatory non-compliance is revealed.

4) Against a landscape of increasing cybersecurity threats, vulnerabilities and regulatory compliance demands, information security, the need for evidence than adequate governance of information security has been implemented and operates effectively across the scope of organization and its IT infrastructure will increase.

According to security researchers and “white hat hackers” Nick DePetrillo and Don Bailey, that simple, harmless seeming string of digits can unlock a world of your personal data. With your 10 digits in tow, a hacker could use software to ferret out your full name and even track your location via GPS over a mobile network — more than enough information for a deft identity thief to wreak havoc on your accounts.

If you use your phone number to double as a memorable password for anything else in your life — your email, your home security system code, or your ATM pin number, for example — you’ll be in big trouble if that number falls into the wrong hands. Knowing full well how most people settle on insecure (but easy to remember) passwords, it’s best to keep your phone number as private as possible. It only takes a few scraps of personal identifying information for a successful identity swipe, and staying as private as possible with personal data can mean the difference between getting hacked and staying secure. If you know someone has accessed any of your personal accounts without your authorization, act fast to assess the damage, and lock down your accounts.

How to stop unwanted phone calls
If you are receiving annoying, persistent calls from companies with your number, you have a few options:
* Simply call and ask to be removed from the calling list. Sometimes this is an automated process and you can easily opt out with a few button presses.
* Register for the National Do Not Call Registry. Implemented in 2004, getting your name on this list can cut down on the amount of calls you receive from telemarketers who have your number on file.
* If all else fails, report the phone offender to the Better Business Bureau. By filing an official complaint with the BBB, you can expect to resolve the issue within 30 days, if not sooner.

In the past couple of decades, families have been afforded the option of watching movies from the comfort of their own home. First VHS, then DVD & Blu-Ray formats, and now On-Demand and streaming programs like Netflix make it easy to bring the whole family together, order pizza delivery, and spend quality time together. There are no local movie times to research, making it perfect to fit a feature-length film into anyone’s busy schedule.  Without the formality of being in a dark public movie theater, a family feels freer to discuss the movie as it goes, and react in more genuine ways.

With America’s adoption of VHS, DVD, & streaming technology, there is waning need to research local movie times. The entire family can sit in the living room, watch their favorite movies time and time again, and take advantage of some quality local food delivery. Some hybrid theaters, however, provide a public living room for this sort of viewing pleasure. Not only do these theaters play the hottest new and pre-home release movies, they have a relatively extensive menu, when compared with generic movie theaters, taking away the need for home pizza delivery!  These theaters also have lower ticket prices, as they encourage the family to have dinner while they watch, which is quite helpful for family outings. Though you’re not technically in your own home, you’re still around a table with those closest to you, having fresh, local food delivered right to your table during the movie! When choosing the course of events for your evening, be sure to keep an eye out for listings of movie times in these smaller, usually locally owned theaters, and support them with your business.

In the latest example, John Swain of Northeastern University suggests that it might be possible to build a gravitational transformer that transfers kinetic energy just as an electrical transformer transfers electrical energy.

The idea is based on the uncanny resemblance between the equations of general relativity and those of electricity and magnetism. The gravitational attraction that makes apples fall is analogous to an electric field, with mass playing the role of electric charge.

And just as the motion of electric charges gives rise to a magnetic field, so the motion of mass gives rise to a “gravitomagnetic” field. Earth’s spin, for instance, tugs on satellites in an effect known as frame dragging.

A steady flow of mass is analogous to DC electric power; an unsteady flow, to AC power. If you juxtapose 2 wires carrying AC power, the current in one creates an oscillating magnetic field that in turn generates, or “induces”, current in the other wire, thereby transferring power – voila, a transformer. So why shouldn’t the same work for mass flows? Gravitomagnetism could then convey power from one flow to a nearby one.

Physicist and futurist Robert L. Forward made an offhand remark about this possibility in a 1961 paper, and Swain proposes that the process occurs naturally during, for example, the formation of black holes. “There are lots of situations where one would expect these transfomerlike effects,” Swain says.

Any time someone talks about manipulating gravity in the lab, though, it blows some physicists’ fuses. Claims even by the most reputable of researchers have fizzled. Swain’s idea strikes relativity experts as vague and probably unobservable. “I notice that Swain never puts in actual numbers to calculate the size of anything,” says Clifford M. Will of Washington University in St. Louis.

The analogy between gravitation and electromagnetism is only appropriate, adds Giovanni Modanese of the University of Bolzano in Italy. Theorists have yet to prove that gravitomagnetism can induce currents; if anything, he suspects, it can’t. But it is remarkable that a century-old theory remains the topic of such lively debate.

Google plans to introduce a smartphone app that will enable users to pay for purchases by waving their devices over a near-field communication terminal.

Google Wallet featuring mobile payment is to be launched this summer. Google Wallet has already signed up Citibank, MasterCard and a number of stores.

The value of Google Wallet is expected to tightly integrate Google Offers, the company’s daily deals service launched in April.  On Thursday, Google wrote on its blog, “When you tap to pay, your phone will also automatically redeem offers and earn loyalty points for you.”

Does this bookmark a new era in finance industry? Would you feel secure using cell phone for mobile payment?

We want your input. Share your opinion in blog comments below.

2) Always come in at the end of the month when we are scrambling to make our quotes.

3) Don’t let us gouge you with our ridiculous 411 fees. Use a free service like  or 1-800-FREE411 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 1-800-FREE411 end_of_the_skype_highlightingor 800-CALL411 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 800-CALL411 end_of_the_skype_highlighting

4) That phone advertised for $29? You will have to pay $129 for it, we will then fill out a bunch of paperwork to get a $100 rebate mailed to you. We make money because many of you won’t go through the hassle.

5) Leaving your phone in the bathroom while you take steamy shower is almost as bad as dropping the phone into the bathtub.

6) Are you way over on minutes or text messages? If the billing cycle hasn’t closed yet, call us and upgrade to the next plan. It can mean the difference between paying a whopping $.35 to $.45 for each extra minute or $5 to $10 for the higher plan.

7) We’ve got all sorts of discounts – some as big as 28% off your monthly bills – that we can offer to employees of large companies and government agencies, credit unions and more.

Trust me: you DO want all the accessories and the unlimited text package. I make a lot of money off those, so I will be much more likely to give you a discount on your phone or service plan if you get them.

9) Want out of your contract? Tell us you are moving somewhere we don’t have service. Most of us don’t require proof.

10) Another way out: watch your bill. If we raise your non-regulatory taxes and fees without notifying you, we have to let you out. Maybe we sent you a notification by mail but you didn’t open it, or there was a text message that you didn’t read. Raise enough stink, and we will let you out.

11) Thanks for buying our pink rhinestone case for $25. You can get the same one at a flea market for $5.

12) When you see those commercials on TV urging you to “text now!” to get a free ring tone or your daily horoscope, don’t do it. You are almost always subscribing to a service with monthly fees ranging from $2,99 to $29.99. And we can’t get you out of it.

13) If your phone gets static-y and seems to drop the call, don’t hang up. We track all dropped calls to identify and fix dead spots. If you hang up, we won’t know there was a problem.

Continuing innovations in web analytics and web performance can provide companies with an intelligence windfall that benefits all areas of the business. But when people need critical information urgently, the platform that delivers it should handle almost incomprehensible workloads without the complexity that gets in the way. It must also be built for longevity, with a technology foundation able to sustain performance as more users run increasingly complex workloads and data volumes continue to grow relentlessly, while offering the lowest total costs of ownership.