Ken Garen, CPA, Co-Founder and President, UBCC

10/20/2014 @ 12:47PM Caring For Relatives By Robot The days of extended independent living, where a robot could allow you to have a quasi-physical presence with a distant relative, talk to them, perform chores for them and possibly even have physical contact with them, is around the corner. At the Internet of Things (IoT) World Forum last week in Chicago, I caught a glimpse of the future and it isn’t far off. Even though conference sponsor Cisco admits that the IoT is overhyped, the progress is real and the effect on industries and society will be profound. Goldman Sachs is predicting by 2020 there will be 28 billion connected devices. 300,000 devices per hour are being connected to the Internet according to Wim Elfrink, Cisco’s Executive Vice President of the Industry Solutions Group and Chief Globalization Officer—he’s the visionary for IoT. According to Elfrink the IoT is being adopted faster than any technology in history. Essentially what he and everyone else is saying ...

Inbox is Google's new killer email app October 22, 2014 4:58 PM PDT / Updated: October 23, 2014 10:18 AM PDT By Josh Miller/CNET Gmail is getting a major makeover in Google's newest app, Inbox (iOS|Android). Announced today, the app and web service is completely separate from Gmail, and it seeks to change how your emails are organized. So far, I can say it absolutely succeeds. It does this by categorizing every email you receive, as either an important message that deserves space in your inbox, or as less-important update that can be lumped into a label with other message like it. Google introduced this concept in the latest version of Gmail from 2013, with the tabbed inbox, where messages are automatically grouped into labels such as Promotions, Social, and Update. Inbox takes that further with a new approach and more labels, all in the name of helping remove clutter from your email. Though I've only tested Inbox for a short time, I can already see myself ...

Hungary plans new tax on Internet traffic, public calls for rally October 22, 2014 8:47 AM By Marton Dunai BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungary plans to impose a new tax on Internet data transfers, a draft 2015 tax bill submitted to parliament late on Tuesday showed, in a move that could hit Internet and telecoms providers and their customers hard. The draft tax code contains a provision for Internet providers to pay a tax of 150 forints (60 US cents) per gigabyte of data traffic, though it would also let companies offset corporate income tax against the new levy. Within hours of the tax provision being published over 100,000 people joined a Facebook group protesting the levy, which they fear providers will pass on to them. Thousands said they would rally against the tax, which they said was excessive, outside the Economy Ministry on Sunday. Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government has in the last few years imposed special taxes on the banking, retail and energy sect...

Denmark's central bank to stop producing money Published: 21 Oct 2014 09:31 GMT+02:00 Updated: 21 Oct 2014 09:31 GMT+02:00 With more and more people paying with credit cards and their smartphones, Denmark’s central bank Nationalbanken says it no longer pays to print banknotes or mint coins. By the end of 2016, Nationalbanken plans to outsource all of its printing and minting services to an external supplier. “Although the amount of cash circulating in Denmark continues to be high, society’s demand for new banknotes and coins has been falling for years, and Nationalbanken has no expectations that the trend will be reversed,” the bank wrote in a press release. In addition to the rise in alternative paying options, the central bank also said that today’s banknotes and coins are better recirculated into the economy and made of a better quality that ensures a longer shelf life. When viewed as a whole, the bank has determined that note and coin production is no longe...

Microsoft warns of Windows zero-day; hackers serve exploits in PowerPoint files By Gregg Keizer Computerworld | Oct 21, 2014 4:40 PM PT Microsoft on Tuesday warned Windows users that cyber criminals are exploiting a zero-day vulnerability using malicious PowerPoint documents sent as email attachments. In an advisory, Microsoft outlined the bug and provided a one-click tool from its "Fixit" line that customers can use to protect their PCs until a patch is available. Although Microsoft does not label its advisories with the same four-step threat scoring system it uses for security updates, it said that a successful exploit would let hackers hijack the PC so that they could, for example, steal information or plant other malware on the machine. The vulnerability affects all versions of Windows, from the aged Windows Server 2003 to the very newest Windows 8.1, and is within the operating system's code that handles OLE (object linking and embedding) objec...

Officials warn 500 million financial records hacked Erin Kelly, USA TODAY 8:10 p.m. EDT October 20, 2014 WASHINGTON — Federal officials warned companies Monday that hackers have stolen more than 500 million financial records over the past 12 months, essentially breaking into banks without ever entering a building. "We're in a day when a person can commit about 15,000 bank robberies sitting in their basement," said Robert Anderson, executive assistant director of the FBI's Criminal Cyber Response and Services Branch. The U.S. financial sector is one of the most targeted in the world, FBI and Secret Service officials told business leaders at a cybersecurity event organized by the Financial Services Roundtable. The event came in the wake of mass hacking attacks against Target, Home Depot, JPMorgan Chase and other financial institutions. "You're going to be hacked," Joseph Demarest, assistant director of the FBI's cyberdivision, told...

IBM preps for a post-silicon world Big Blue leaves manufacturing to devote more attention to next-generation research By Patrick Thibodeau Computerworld | Oct 20, 2014 12:42 PM PT IBM's decision to get out of the semiconductor manufacturing business may be of little consequence in a post-silicon world. In a deal announced today, GlobalFoundries is getting IBM's semiconductor manufacturing business and IBM is paying the company $1.5 billion to take it. In exchange, IBM gets access to manufacturing scale it does not have. IBM's latest weak quarter, also announced Monday, clouds the manufacturing exit. CEO Ginni Rometty all but apologized for the slack earnings. But that doesn't change the fact that silicon is reaching its performance limits and there's no clear replacement. IBM is one of the few global companies with the resources to figure out what comes next. In announcing the GlobalFoundries deal, IBM said it has no plans to cut its...