Are you a retailer trying to get ready for the 2018 holiday season? Well, I'm afraid I can't help you. Just kidding. Sort of. I could just sit here and share yet another checklist to remind you of all the standard e-commerce table stakes you need to master. However, what I really want to do is help you get ready for Cyber Monday 2019 -- and beyond.

Independent software vendors, along with Internet of Things and cloud vendors, are involved in a market transformation that is making them look more alike. The similarities are evident in the way they approach software security initiatives, according to a report from Synopsys. Synopsys has released its ninth annual Building Security in Maturity Model, or BSIMM9.

Widespread use of unpatched open source code in the most popular Android apps distributed by Google Play has caused significant security vulnerabilities, suggests an American Consumer Institute report. Thirty-two percent -- or 105 apps out of 330 of the most popular apps in 16 categories sampled -- averaged 19 vulnerabilities per app, according to the report. Researchers found critical vulnerabilities in many common applications.

Getting Sonos' top-shelf speakers to play nice with other connected devices in the home has been challenging in the past, but that's about to change. The company has announced the Sonos Sound Platform, which includes new APIs, developer tools and documentation to make it easier for Sonos products to operate with third-party hardware and software. Sonos also announced integration with IFTTT.

In tech parlance, the emotional result of a person's interaction with a website or digital app is called "user experience" or "UX" -- and the success of a business depends on it. Users who have easy, positive experiences with websites and apps likely will be drawn back to the business. On the contrary, websites and apps with poor navigation and slow loading times likely will turn off consumers.

Braavo Capital announced it has raised $6 million in Series A funding, and converted $2 million in seed capital from investors, bringing the total equity raised to date to nearly $8 million. Braavo, which claims to be the first company to offer Capital as a Service to mobile app entrepreneurs and developers, will use the funds to add personnel to further its mission.

Oracle has open-sourced GraphPipe to enhance machine learning applications. The project's goal is to improve deployment results for machine learning models, noted Project Leader Vish Abrams. That process includes creating an open standard. The company has a questionable relationship with open source developers, so its decision to open-source GraphPipe might not receive a flood of interest.

So you've just migrated your e-commerce platform. A few weeks into the launch, you discover something shocking: Despite performing technical due diligence, hiring the best development agency, and spending a fortune on the migration, your traffic and Google rankings have dropped significantly. If this sounds familiar, you'll want to keep reading for a summary of 12 critical tasks to be implemented.

Google has announced the rebranding and expansion of its Cloud Launcher platform. Going forward, it will be known as the "Google Cloud Platform Marketplace," or "GCP Marketplace." It will offer production-ready commercial Kubernetes apps, promising simplified deployment, billing and third-party licensing. Google's goal is to make containers accessible to everyone, especially the enterprise.

The Linux Foundation's 2018 Open Source Technology Jobs Report shows rapid growth in the demand for open source technical talent, with Linux skills a must-have requirement for entry-level positions. Linux coding is the most sought-after open source skill. Linux-based container technology is a close second. The report provides an overview of open source career trends.

A group of data, technology, digital services and other organizations have launched the AI Global Marketplace, an app store that will host more than 2,000 high-value AI assets focused on customer engagement and process intelligence problems for the banking, insurance, healthcare and digital commerce markets. Software assets will be based on the Cognitive Agent Modeling and Execution Language.

Microsoft made a big splash at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles with its announcement of more than 50 games for its Xbox One gaming console. Among the games unveiled by the company were 18 designed to run exclusively on Xbox, including Forza Horizon 4, Halo Infinite, Gears 5, Session, Below and Ashen.

Microsoft sent tremors through the open source world last week, when it announced that it would acquire the popular developer platform GitHub for $7.5 billion in company stock. The acquisition is expected to close by the end of the calendar year. GitHub, one of the world's largest computer code repositories, is home to more than 28 million developers for collaboration and distribution of projects.

The next version of Apple's mobile operating system, iOS 12, will include a new feature that allows you to customize the way Siri works with applications on phones and tablets. The announcement was one of the highlights at the kickoff of Apple's WWDC on Monday. Called "Siri Shortcuts," the feature lets a user define a phrase that will trigger a set of actions by the apps on a device.

In spite of all the high-profile breaches that seem to sweep the headlines with greater frequency, companies slowly but surely have been getting a handle on internal security practices. At this point, it's hard to imagine any employee, in or out of the tech sector, who hasn't been run through antiphishing training. However, security is only as strong as its weakest link.

Black Duck by Synopsys has released the 2018 Open Source Security and Risk Analysis report, which details new concerns about software vulnerabilities amid a surge in the use of open source components in both proprietary and open source software. The report provides an in-depth look at the state of open source security, license compliance and code-quality risk in commercial software.

Google Assistant, the artificial intelligence software built into Android handsets and the Google Home smart speaker system, now can control more than 5,000 smart devices. That's up from just 1,500 products in January -- and the list of supported products includes everything from cameras and security systems to doorbells, locks and lights, to dryers, dishwashers and refrigerators.

Microsoft has opted to use its own version of a Linux operating system instead of Windows 10 to drive its new Azure Sphere solution for securely connecting Internet of Things devices. Microsoft introduced Azure Sphere last week at the RSA security conference in San Francisco. Azure Sphere is a platform that connects microcontroller units, or MCUs, embedded in cloud-connected devices.

Amazon has introduced Alexa Skill Blueprints, adding personalization capabilities to its smart speaker devices. The new tool provides pre-crafted templates for users to create customized experiences, such as skills for particular users. With Alexa Skill Blueprints, users can build into their devices experiences that are personalized for themselves, their friends and their families.

About 20 percent of the most popular Android Apps available through the Google Play Store contain open source components with known security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers, according to a report Insignary will release next week. The findings are the result of the company's recent comprehensive binary code scan of the 700 most popular Android Apps on the Google Play Store.

Microsoft has rummaged deep into its archive for its latest contribution to the open source community: Windows File Manager. Originally bundled with Windows in 1990, File Manager was a replacement for the command-line interface in MS-DOS. The program was used to search, open, copy and delete files until it was replaced by Windows Explorer, which followed the introduction of Windows 95.

Inbenta has released new APIs and SDKs that let enterprises customize chatbots. The company offers an artificial intelligence-powered natural language search and conversational platform. The new APIs and SDKs facilitate a number of chatbot capabilities: intent detection, decision trees, transactional intelligence, Content Digest and seamless escalation.

Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfesson, who teach at MIT's Sloan School of Management, started writing about the impact of artificial intelligence and machine learning almost a decade ago. Their early books provided deep insights into the way the era we live in would unfold. A lot of their ideas were on display last week at TrailHeaDX: The Salesforce Developer Conference in San Francisco.

Nearly half of all the small businesses that participated in a recent survey said they handled their mobile application development in house, in part to cut costs and speed time to deployment. Forty-six percent used in-house staff to develop critical mobile applications in an effort to drive new business. Forty-one percent used freelancers or consultants to develop mobile apps.

Microsoft has released an open source tool that makes it easier for programmers and developers to run Linux on Windows 10. The new tool also helps Linux distribution maintainers bring their distros to the Windows Store to run on Windows 10's WSL. Microsoft developed the project for distribution maintainers and for developers who want to create custom Linux distributions to run on WSL.

LG has announced a plan to release a new open source version of its webOS platform as part of a deal with South Korea's government to encourage startup initiatives. Working with NIPA, the agency responsible for tech sector development, LG plans to solicit proposals from hundreds of startups, and provide logistical and technical support to the most promising candidates.

Google plans to open its Maps APIs to video game developers, which could result in far more realistic settings in augmented reality games. With access to real-time map updates and rich location data, developers will have many choices of settings for their games. The APIs will provide devs with what Google has described as a "living model of the world" to use as a foundation for game worlds.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation on Wednesday launched the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+. The new release comes two years after the introduction of its predecessor, the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B. The Raspberry Pi computer runs the open source Raspbian operating system. The Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ is an incremental upgrade to a line of predecessors that have become entrenched in education, hobbyist and industry markets.

Microsoft has announced the first major upgrade to its Quantum Development Kit since its introduction last year. It has added several new features designed to open the platform to a wider array of developers, including support for Linux and macOS, as well as additional open source libraries. Further, the kit will be interoperable with the Python computing language.

Google has rolled out a developer preview of its new AMP story format, which is designed to give content publishers an easy way to deliver news and information on mobile devices with visually rich, tap-through stories. "On mobile devices, users browse lots of articles, but engage with few in-depth," noted Rudy Galfi, product manager for AMP at Google.