Verizon is well known for moving as fast as a snail on a turtles back when it comes to issuing the latest version of Google’s Android operating system found on numerous smart phones.

Recently I stumbled across a source offering a release of the latest version of Android Froyo.   Froyo is the code name assigned to the project.  My patience is very thin with Verizon these days.  So I decided to take it upon myself to install Froyo.

After the installation I immediately installed Adobe’s Flash Player 10.1 located in the Android Market.  This is the first release of Flash on the Android platform.  Flash is the engine behind multimedia found on numerous websites.

Android v2.2 offers improvements, stability, optimization, and subtle new features.  The thing you immediately notice is speed.  Wow it is significantly faster.  The virtual desktop is now five panes versus three offering better navigation.

Perhaps my favorite is Tethering.  This is a new feature that provides you access to the Internet.  You connect your computer to your Android phone and bam you have access to the Internet.

Sorry Verizon, you are just too darned slow.

A recent report measures the usage of mobile phones and claims Apple’s iPhone sales are down as Android based phones blaze past the iPhone sales.  Precisely Apple is in third place and Android phones are now in first.

I could go down the path of harping on Apple and it’s closed and proprietary business practices.  However, that is not too much off my point.  There is no doubt Apple is the leader in niche of market/sector creation, but the company will always position in the down due to the arrogance of one Steve Jobs.

Verizon Wireless continues to aggressively push the Android based line partnering with Motorola by offering a full line of “Droid” phones.*  An internal Verizon Wireless strategy for 2010-2011 that has leaked provides details for an Android 3, Android tablets,  and Android Apps galore.  Apple needs to use its computer and head on over to Verizon Wireless and figure out how to repair it’s problem.

As Bette Davis once said “Fasten your seatbelt, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

Apple’s name needs inserting between the words “your” and “seatbelt.”

*Note the Droid name is licensed from Lucas Arts Ltd.

Intellectual property and other forms of data are subject to more forms of compromise now more than ever.  Unfortunately, protection of your data is nothing software and/or hardware alone will prevent or fix. Computer, networks, and firewalls are just the beginning.  How does a firewall prevent someone from placing a “post-it” on their monitor that has their network password written on it?

Have you performed a security audit for your organization recently?

Security audits are fundamentally very simple.  Of course, if your organization is large with hundreds of workstations and a data center you can expect the audit to take more time.  The protection of your data is proportional to the level of your care and not concern.  Care is performing proactive analysis and concern is reactive.  Reactive protection of your information is initiated due to an emergency.  That is not security protection.  In reality it is security malpractice.  It requires your entire company to protect information.

The United States Secret Service and Verizon released the “2010 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report.”*  The statistics are alarming and the reality is it is all preventable.  Obviously, if you are it is not your fault nor the your organizations necessarily.  However, it is the responsibility of both all employees and management of the organization to protect what is yours.

Here are some points as follows:

The most sobering point in Verizon’s report experts found, “most breaches were considered avoidable if security basics had been followed.  Only four percent of breaches assessed required difficult and expensive protective measures.”

Can you say your network is secure?  Network security and computer services are not complete without an ongoing security policy.   We offer you 24 plus years of information communication security experience.  That does not mean a combination of 24 years.

Together we will assist you and address existing security policies and identify the weaknesses.  Then we will “shore up” the weak areas and secure them.  We will educate your staff through group or individual training to improve your social engineering policies.  We will re-engineer your new secure social network.

You can obtain our security services offerings throughout the St Louis, St Charles, Chesterfield, St Peters, Lake Saint Louis, OFallon, Troy, St Paul, Harvester, Wentzville and Dardenne Prairie areas, MO.

* 2010 Data Breach Report From Verizon Business, U.S. Secret Service Offers New Cybercrime Insights

Apple is in a bind and faces the balancing act of image versus bottom-line.  Steve Jobs insists the phone is okay.  Yet statistically seven to ten percent of paying customers are complaining about the phone dropping.

It seems the left-handed are mostly affected by the debacle.  Weeks have passed and Steve Jobs continues to live in a fantasy world.  This takes me back to the early nineties.  Canon’s mantra was “image is everything.”

Apple should take a bit of advice from Andre and improve its image (excluding the mullet and wig).  The way Apple has managed itself is surprising considering the company has always been an innovator of new segments within technology.  It is as Apple has gone Microsoft’s way putting profit before product.

Apple will take a slight dent from the iPhone 4, but it certainly will prove short lived.  The “death-grip” is fixed by Apple offering a free band-aid antenna guard.  Apple so far is resisting a recall.  This would prove expensive and would certainly not make the stockholders happy.  However, Apple built it’s empire on high-quality products and this seems contrary to the integrity of Apple.

Apple announced at the time of this post insanely large profits for the third fiscal quarter of 2010.  Profits are up 78%.  It doesn’t appear Steve Jobs will lose sleeping over that figure.  That figure should support a recall to repair the iPhone 4.

The University of Missouri life sciences division received a technology grant from IBM that is described as “high performance computing technologies” by IBM.

IBM will indirectly influence it’s “first-of-a-kind” cloud technology environment for the genomics research collaborative.  In simpler terms the scientists can participate, located in different geographical areas, within a network and share data amongst each other.

The genomics cloud will advance the way patients are diagnosed. The cloud will introduce the human genome sequence and analysis within a “clinical setting” for the first time.  The cloud technology will provide more of a team environment that should minimize delays as though each team member were in the clinic together.