Articles by Jack M.Germain

MakuluLinux is an unusually creative operating system that developer Jacque Montague Raymer is constantly changing with each major upgrade. Some of these changes are radical and innovative This distro has long been one of my favorite Linux offerings. Many of its features do not merely mimic those in other Linux distributions; they combine and impro...

Cloud cybersecurity -- or a lack of it -- is feeding a frenzy of companies out of the public cloud. A similar concern about managing compliance obligations is keeping organizations from moving to the cloud in general However, much of the growing concerns over cloud cybersecurity result from experiences with public and private cloud platforms. A tre...

Sourcegraph on Wednesday launched Batch Changes, an automated internal coding tool that allows enterprises to automate and track large-scale code changes across all repositories and code hosts. For software developers, this is game-changing This new tool also provides developers and enterprises with an easy way to manage the resulting change sets t...

Consumer shopping patterns continue to settle into new options after holiday digital and e-gift card sales soared at the close of last year A Blackhawk Network BrandedPay Post-Holiday Report on consumer spending showed a more than 80 percent increase in digital gift card sales. That research also showed a nearly 40 percent increase in overall e-com...

Personalization and automation, two of the hottest buzzwords in the lexicon of CRM practitioners, are all the rage for marketers these days. But only 14 percent of organizations are using artificial intelligence and/or machine learning to automate their marketing campaigns A global survey Rackspace Technology conducted in January reveals that the m...

The most vulnerable cybercrime victims are young adults and adults over 75, according to the latest research revealed in the LexisNexis Risk Solutions biannual Cybercrime Report Released on Feb. 23, the report tracks global cybercrime activity from July 2020 through December 2020. The report reveals how unprecedented global change in 2020 created n...

Those familiar with open source know that it works and comes with many benefits. A testament to the rising adoption of open source is the recent moves by software giants such as Microsoft, IBM, and Oracle into the open-source community This corporate migration to open source is continuing as many organizations, both large and small, turn to open so...

One of the big marketing decisions confronting e-commerce vendors today is whether current performance is good enough. Online vendors need to consider their customers' shopping experience in order to assess existing barriers to stronger shopper responsiveness to digital storefronts According to Adobe, the 2020 year-end holiday shopping season saw a...

Trisquel Linux is one of those computing staples you wished you knew about much sooner. This Linux distribution has been around literally for years and is extremely polished Trisquel GNU/Linux is based on Ubuntu 18.04.5 LTS (Bionic Beaver) but comes with the Linux-Libre kernel using Ubuntu's 4.15 kernel. That should not matter to newcomers or seaso...

A Shopper Experience Index report by Bazaarvoice, a provider of product reviews and user-generated content (UGC) solutions, shows shopping trends are expanding as the pandemic's impact on e-commerce continues, forcing retailers to adapt their marketing strategies to meet new consumer expectations and demands Consumer adoption of digital shopping is...

As consumers get comfortable with their newfound digital wallets and gift cards, marketers must continue to adapt their strategies to changes in shopping behavior to better finesse the customer experience Both consumers and vendors have had non-stop adjustments. Lockdowns and social distancing requirements accelerated the adoption of new technologi...

In a recent Linux Foundation blog post titled "Preventing Supply Chain Attacks like SolarWinds," the foundation's Director of Open Source Supply Chain Security, David A. Wheeler, adamantly pushed the need for software developers to embrace the LF's security recommendations to prevent even worse assaults on government and corporate data security in the wake of the rampant data breach.

Looking for a little something nefarious in your online shopping? Perhaps you need to spark some fresh finger traffic to your e-commerce store on Amazon. Neither of those forays is a good choice Trading in phony reviews may or not be legal, but such practices are clearly unethical and will have repercussions if underhanded activities are discovered...

Secure contactless transactions will be essential to keep employees and customers safe in the post-pandemic shopping and workplace era. COVID-19 has sped up much of the digital transformation already under development for commerce, online, in brick-and-mortar stores, and within corporate workplaces Some of these contactless procedures are already b...

Desktop as a Service provider Shells offers a new component to virtual cloud computing. It brings Linux distros and Windows 10 to any computer, mobile device, and some game consoles, via any Web browser The U.S.-based startup went online in the first quarter of last year. Since then, CEO and founder Alex Lee has been drumming up favorable responses...

Some cybersecurity experts agree with a report by Cybersecurity Ventures and expect financial damages from cybercrime to reach $6 trillion by the end of this year. Industry studies show that cyberattacks are among the fastest-growing crimes in the United States Cyberattacks are absolutely on the rise. Based on everything we know and every single an...

If you are a vendor and sell your wares online -- how could you not be tapping into e-commerce today? It's time to take a fresh look at your search engine optimization strategy. You might need to tweak your SEO process to drive more customer traffic to your website Once you broaden your understanding of SEO, you will be able to improve your search ...

Foci is a "Focus Wearable" device by U.K.-based company Tinylogics that combines cognitive biometrics with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to help you focus better. That combination of technologies presents an eerie yet intriguing approach to help people easily bothered by mental distractions a way to clear out their brain clutter...

Is your list of new business customers falling short due to issues with their rejected credit approvals? New User Missed Opportunity or "NUMO" is a growing problem for e-commerce vendors. It is caused by false payment declines based on a lack of access to current consumer data by the rating agencies. But you can fix this problem False declines and ...

Cyberattacks are increasing in frequency, ramping up the data privacy threats they pose to government agencies and businesses alike. Governments, both domestic and foreign, need to step up efforts to pass legislation that bolsters technological defenses this year, warn privacy groups Stiffer privacy laws are gradually being reviewed and signed into...