Wait a sec... they're calling it 'The New iPad'?

Apple's first paragraph describing The New iPad includes these choice statements, "Brilliant. In every sense of the word."  "You're actually playing the piano"  "Nothing comes between you and what you love." .....  creepy.

Quick Run down: The NEW iPad 4G LTE

+ Best display you've ever seen in your entire life, as if that's going to mean anything in 3 months when they start creating the 4K screens.

+ 4G LTE connectivity... finally.

+ There is also AirPlay, which allows you to watch movies on your TV. WHOOOPY


From all acounts, it seems like the only thing that makes The New iPad new is the display. Apple has designed a new way to construct an LED screen that seperates the LEDs from the electrical connections so that no electro-magnetic spill-over affects the wrong LEDs in the areas that are being lit up, which would cause blurrieness and miscoloring.  See pic below.

                                                That's actually it.                                              THAT ^  is what's new.


You may also be hearing the term Retna Display being tossed around like a secret government technology that Apple got it's hands on. But no, it actually just refers to the above display.

Another step-up, but nothing amazing, is the 4gLTE upgrade. But my Sprint phone has had 4g for a little over a year now and why would Apple give The NEW iPad 4G LTE but not give it to the iPhone 4s? It's shockingly rude to their customers.

 

Acronis 2012 Global Disaster Recovery Index.

Yesterday, Acronis released its second annual Global Disaster Recovery Index. This is the industry’s largest survey with more than 6,000 respondents in 18 countries worldwide. Given the dramatic natural disasters that took place in 2011, it was interesting to see how each country has responded and changed their practices in the past year.

Some of the US highlights from the survey:

• On average, U.S. respondents said system downtime costs them $388,426 a year.
• About half of U.S. IT personnel felt they would suffer substantial downtime in the wake of a disaster such as inclement weather, a cyber attack, etc.
• 64 percent of U.S. respondents said that the biggest contributor to downtime is human error.
• Overall, the U.S. had more confidence in its backup and disaster recovery controls and procedures than in its resources or technology

Specifically in the US, the confidence level has increased slightly but remained average compared to the rest of the world. The confidence level of the US in 2012 was very much the same compared to last year’s results. One of the main reasons why the US confidence level remained the same was due to the numerous natural disasters that took place last year; specifically the floods, multiple hurricanes, and winter storms. Due to these natural disasters, many businesses tested their plans last year and discovered that they had relevant procedures but inadequate resources and technology in order to feel confident in the event of a disaster.

As mentioned earlier, with the US businesses surveyed, the estimated cost of downtime is on average $390K per year. And more than half surveyed felt they would suffer substantial downtime if they were to suffer a disaster. We discovered that 88% of those surveyed actually experienced a period of downtime that lasted anywhere between 1 and 10 days. 40% lost between 1-3 days, 15% lost 3-10 days and 7% lost more than 10 days. Not to mention, the disasters we are speaking of here not only include natural disasters but human error as well. The top 3 causes of downtime; 1) Human Error 2) Unexpected updates/patches 3) Server room environment issues. Not only do businesses have to prepare for natural disasters but also daily management challenges.

Businesses worldwide admitted that their greatest challenge for effective backup & recovery measures is that right now they are managing a hybrid mix of physical and virtual servers and also bringing the cloud into their IT strategy. Seventy-six percent of those surveyed would like a single solution to manage all environments. Currently, 35% of US businesses surveyed are using three or more solutions to backup there systems. In order to help improve their current position, the top four requests from US respondents included; comprehensive solution for PVC, more reliable technologies, easier to use technologies, and best practices. Overall this shows that there is a great deal of room for improvement and opportunity for the channel to add value and additional services in order to help US businesses feel more confident. Even though confidence levels remain the same compared to last year’s results, with the adoption of new technologies such as the cloud, US businesses can look at these options with more hope that there data is safe and backed up.

Google's New Security Rules

So Google recently sent The LCO Group their 'Privacy Policy' updates. These updates will take effect on March 1st of 2012. You can view the updated policy here or you can read below for a quick overview.

• For external processing
  Google provides personal information to their affiliates or other businesses or persons to process it for them.

• Log information
  When you use Google services or view content provided by Google, they automatically collect and store certain information in their server logs. This includes:
• details of how you used their service, such as your search queries.
• telephone log information like your phone number, calling-party number, forwarding numbers, time and date of calls, duration of calls, SMS routing information and types of calls.
• IP address.
• cookies that uniquely identify your Google Account.

• Legal
  Google will share personal information with companies, organizations or individuals outside of Google if they have a good-faith belief that access, use, preservation or disclosure of the information is reasonably necessary to:
• meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request.
• enforce applicable Terms of Service, including investigation of potential violations.
• detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues.
• protect against harm to the rights, property or safety of Google, our users or the public as required or permitted by law.

Please refer to Google Dashboard to find out what information Google has about you.