BlackBerry 10 has been launched. Being called Blackberry’s “Last Hope”?

BlackBerry 10, the newest operating system from BlackBerry, and both the BlackBerry Z10 and the BlackBerry Q10 have been offically launched in an event in New York City on Wednesday.  This is being dubbed the companies last hope to challenge Apple‘s iOS and Google‘s Android.

During the companies launch event on Wednesday, Thorsten Heins, CEO of BlackBerry said, “BlackBerry 10 builds on 20 years of experience […] and it has a user experience unlike anything you’ve see before.”

The event highlighted how everything just “flows” on BlackBerry 10.  The BlackBerry Hub has integrated social media, BlackBerry Messages (BBM), and email making it more than likely where most users spend a lot of their time.  You will able to respond to all notifications without ever leaving the BlackBerry Hub.

BlackBerry has also came out with a neat thing called BlackBerry Balance.  In BlackBerry Balance, you can set it up where work data and personal data can be stored separately.  This will make it possible for people to block certain aspects of life (such as work on the weekends or annoying status update alerts while at work.)

If you would like to read more about the newest features of BlackBerry 10, Click Here.

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Microsoft Office 2013 Releases Today. They are Offering a New Way to Pay.

After months of testing, Microsoft Office 2013 is being released today.  Microsoft Office 2013 has refreshed its looks and feel to be more visually similar to Windows 8.

Instead of paying for Microsoft Office 2013 all at once, Microsoft has decided to start offering superscription fees annually.  Microsoft Office 2013’s Home Premium, which includes such business basics as Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook will cost $99.99 a year and include automatic software updates, 20GB of extra storage of SkyDrive (Microsoft’s Cloud Storage Service), 60 Skype World minutes, and use of Microsoft Office 2013 on up to five different devices.  This subscription plan would be a wise investment for most small businesses wanting to upgrade to Microsoft Office 2013.

Microsoft Office 2013’s University edition will cost only $79.99 for four years; however, you will only be able to use it on two devices and this software subscription can only be renewed once at this price.

Microsoft Office 2013 will still be available for a one time price of $219.99; however, the whole push that Microsoft is trying to do with these subscriptions is to have their software update constantly, like a website or application.

If you would like more information about training in any of the Microsoft Office 2013 Suite, Please feel free to give us a call at (813) 387-3500.  At the current moment, We are the only New Horizons to offer Microsoft Office 2013 classes.

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Microsoft wants to assist Dell with a public buyout

Raising a lot of brows and a hot topic around a lot of water coolers this week is the news that computer giant Dell wants to privatize the company.  The big question is, “Who will assist them? And for what price?”  Well, the newest angle from this story is that Microsoft may be one of the buyout participants.

Microsoft is in talks of putting one to three billion dollars toward a deal for Dell, in reports from CNBC.  No acquisition has been set in stone yet; however, Michael Dell, Dell founder, reportedly wants to buy out for around $13 to $14 a share.

The major questions now are, “Why would Microsoft do it?” and, “Is this the most sensible undertaking for both Dell and Microsoft?”

Dell and Microsoft have worked together for years and by all means could Microsoft afford this business deal.  Even at a total loss, three billion dollars would not destroy them.

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After failing to buy T-Mobile last year, AT&T to buy Alltel!

Atlantic Tele-Network Inc’s United States wireless brand, better known as Alltel, is being currently in the process of being bought by AT&T for $780 million.  The idea is to help boost signal in rural regions.

Georgia, Illinois, North and South Dakota, Idaho, and Ohio hold 585,000 Alltel customers.  AT&T said what they are buying is complementary to its current network.

After AT&T’s failed attempt to buy out T-Mobile USA for $39 back in late 2011, the company has tried to find other ways to meet data service growth from smartphone users by expanding their network to improve over all capacity.

After being reviewed by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission and the Justice Department, AT&T expects the deal to close the second half of the year.

Atlantic Tele-Network will still have telecom operations in New England, the U.S. Southwest, New York State, Guyana, Bermuda and portions of the Caribbean islands.

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Keep your phone dry and save yourself the headache!

How many old ways have you tried to dry out your smartphone?  Have you put it in the freezer?  Have you tried keeping it in rice?  How about wrapping them in six socks and putting it in the oven at a low heat? ( I personally do not suggest this one; however, I did know someone who did this and it worked.)  As time goes on, people come up with more and more creative ways to drying out their smartphones.  However, the best way to keep your phone dry is to keep it from getting wet in the first place.

P2i, a British based firm, has developed a “liquid repellent nano-coating” technology that can be sprayed onto a solid surfaces and repel nearly all forms of liquid.

This coating lowers the object’s surface energy with a patented chemical, causing liquids to bead up on contact and roll off the coating without ever being absorbed.

The chemical itself is completely naked to the human eye.  This means once any smartphone, or any electronic device for that matter, has been coated.  It will still be physically indistinguishable from before.

The chemical engineer who developed the technology, Stephen Coulson, had this to say, “You look at it and you can’t see any changes, but when you drop water on it, it will just bead up and drop off. Most importantly, the internals will also be protected to prevent corrosion damage.”

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Phone got you bent out of shape? Why not buy to Samsung?

How would you like to be able to roll up your tablet or phone like a map or ancient scroll?  Well, according to Samsung that’s not such a far fetched idea like you would think.

Samsung has given us a sneak peek of this flexible phone at a keynote speech last week during the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Head of Samsung Electronics Co.’s display lab in San Jose, Calif., Brian Berkeley, demonstrated a phone that was the size of a matchbox with a paper-thin, flexible color screen attached to it.  The screen, at this point, can be bent all the way around into a tube.

The screen uses organic light-emitting diodes or OLEDs.  This colorful and bright screen only needs a thin layer of these chemicals to work.  They are actually used in many of Samsung phones already.  For this new phone, Samsung laid the chemicals over a thin plastic instead of glass.

It may not work though.  For one, it would be really rough to use a touch screen when it could bend away from you.  Another key factor to be mentioned is that these OLED’s are extremely sensitive to oxygen, so it is completely necessary for them to be sealed off from air.  Engineers are stumped on have to keep these flexible displays permanently airtight.  Samsung’s screens can just bend, they are not yet flexible enough to fold.

Samsung has not said when the flexible displays would be available to the public.

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U.S. Department of Defense enters agreement with Microsoft

The U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force, and Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) have entered a three-year Joint Enterprise Licensing Agreement with Microsoft for enterprise licenses and software assurance.  This agreement was in effort to modernize technology, reduce cost and increase synergy through the agencies.

Covering nearly 75 percent of all U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), making it the most comprehensive licensing agreement between them and Microsoft.

All three agencies will now be able to begin using the newest Microsoft products.  These would include Microsoft Office 2013, SharePoint 2013 Enterprise and Windows 8.  This means that the different government agencies in a more uniform way then ever before.  The U.S. Army’s Network Enterprise Technology Command and the Air Force Program Executive Office for Business and Enterprise Systems having been working together With Microsoft on creating Army Golden Master and Air Force Standard Desktop Configuration for Windows 8.

General Manager of Microsoft Department of Defense Business, Tim Solms said “Microsoft has longstanding relationships with the U.S. Army, the U.S. Air Force and DISA, and we are honored to expand our support of ongoing technology modernization efforts across all three organizations.  This agreement enables us to provide the best technology tools to an incredibly broad range of servicemen and servicewoman across the DoD, and we are looking forward to implementing to support their mission goals.”

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Samsung increasing lead in smartphone sales over Apple

Samsung Electronics Co Ltd. Is expected to broaden its lead over Apple Inc in their worldwide smartphone sales this year with 35 percent growth, mainly by a broad product line.

Apple, in defense, is talking of releasing a cheaper, smaller “iPhone Mini” next year in attempts to target the lower-end smartphone market.

Executive Director at Strategy Analytics, Neil Mawston said, “We expect Samsung to slightly extend its lead over Apple this year because of its larger multitier product portfolio.”

This year, worldwide smartphone shipments will jump 27 percent to 875 million, slowing from last year’s 41 percent pace as growth is easing in many large markets such as North America, China, Western Europe, and the developed economies of Asia.

Samsung Electronics smartphone sales in South Korea are expected to jump from last years projected 215 million to 290 million this year.   Apple’s smartphone sales are expected to increase 33 percent to 180 million this year, just slightly behind Samsung’s 35 percent increase.  This will give 33 percent of the 2013 smartphone market to Samsung, and increase from last year’s estimate of 31 percent, while Apple will increase from 20 percent to 21 percent.

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Microsoft wants Google to be fair about YouTube

Microsoft is now claiming that Google is not fairly sharing YouTube data to its mobile competitors.  Microsoft has said that Google has released an inferior and more limited YouTube website for Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform then the website offered for the Android Platform and Apple’s iPhone.  Microsoft wants to release its own high-quality YouTube app, but that would require them to have access to YouTube’s metadata which they say Google is refusing to provide to them access to.

Microsoft’s deputy general counsel, Dave Heiner, said in a recent blog post, “You might think that Google would be on its best behavior given it’s under the bright light of regulatory scrutiny on two continents.  However, as we enter 2013, that is not the case.”

Dealing with antitrust scrutiny in its past, Microsoft has been a supporter of federal probes of Google in Europe and the United States.  In March of 2011, the corporate giant complained that Google restricted rival search engines from “properly accessing” YouTube in their results.  Google’s response is the same now as it was then.  They claim they are not doing anything mischievous.

Google spokeswoman Niki Fenwick is quoted as saying, “Contrary to Microsoft’s claims, it’s easy for consumers to view YouTube videos on Windows phones.  Windows phone users can access all the features of YouTube though our HTML5-based mobile website, including viewing high-quality video streams, finding favorite videos, seeing video ratings, and searching for video categories.  In fact, we’ve worked with Microsoft for several years to help build a great YouTube experience on Windows phones.”

According to IDC, Windows phones made up less than 3% of the smartphone sales last year worldwide.  A source with knowledge of Google’s business decisions said that Windows phone are not popular enough for Google to decide to write and support an application for their phones.

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Continual Growth in IT Hiring through 2013

As we continue into the New Year, IT jobs are still on the rise.  Some of the cliches such as, “certifications are valuable difference makers in the IT job market”, “healthcare IT continues to grow and evolve”, and “IT job market remains strong into 2013” have been heard  a lot; however, they still remain true.

In the highly competitive IT job market, everything is taken into consideration.  An executive of Texas-based VAR Staffing said in the latest CRN article on an IT job growth series, “If we have two candidates and one has the experience and one has the certification, generally the VARs will want to speak to the certified candidate first.”

VAR has also found that the top certifications for gripping their attention on your resume is as followed:

• Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP) – considered and industry standard.
• EMC Proven Professional certification and NetApp Certified Data management Administration certification – distinguishes markers in the field for engineers and storage architects.
• CompTIA A+ certification – considered a requirement for service technicians by many large firms and also considered the “gold standard”.
• CompTIA Security + certification – great entry level certification to get job seekers in the door in a rapidly growing sector.
• Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) certification – considered the number one in-demand certificate.

IT professionals wishing to focus their energy and map out a career path would find it very difficult to find a better industry than healthcare IT.

Xconomy Forum: Healthcare in Transition, a Boston-based event, included venture capitalists and entrepreneurs who asked if the healthcare IT is headed in the same “rise and fall” scenario as the dot-com boom of the late 1990’s.

The major difference is, during the dot-com boom there were neat solutions created to non-existent problems.  These healthcare technology start-ups are solving serious technology and business problems in this continually growing field.

Bryan Sivak, CTO of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said in his keynote address, “data is changing the healthcare industry right now.  Healthcare is an opaque market and you need transparency around cost and quality.”

According to an industry staffing firm, nearly two-thirds of recruiters and hiring managers expect to add additional IT professionals in the first half of the year.

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Here at New Horizons we would be glad in educating and assisting you in obtaining your IT certifications.  If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to give us a call at (813) 387-3500 for more information and our upcoming class schedule.