It is always surprising to ear someone that has just discover a thing that we knew all our lives (and took it for granted) that is the pleasure of living in this city. Even the current difficulties seem less serious when thinking on what we have for free. Congrats to Invest Lisboa for this video and lets celebrate the end of the 1st Lisbon Entrepreneurship Week in Meninos do Rio from 9pm. Support a startup company and book it on Table and Friends.
Activating the two step verification in the google account set-up is an easy way to make google login much more secure. When the two step verification is active, google sends an SMS with a verification code when you log in. Some computers can be trusted so that it does not ask for the verification code on those machines.
If you use gmail exchange server to synchronize your mobile phone contacts, agenda or email you will need to generate app-specific passwords and configure your phone with it. This is a one-time process.
There are several horror stories about hacked gmail accounts like this one: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/11/hacked/8673/
Here is a nice tutorial on how to activate the two step verification: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/04/make-your-email-hacker-proof.html
A year ago Cristina Fonseca attended the first entrepreneurship talks organized by Beta-i. She and Tiago Paiva had concluded their MSc Degrees in Communication Networks Engineering at IST, tried and failed 3 projects, another one was mildly successful, before creating Talkdesk. By using TalkDesk services, a business can set up a customer support center in minutes with a simple internet browser. When a call is received, the customer information is automatically pulled up in a browser window along with call history. The power of TalkDesk is its interoperability with popular CRM (Customer Relationship Management) services like Salesforce, Olark and Zendesk. They were selected to be one of the nine companies to compete at the first annual Twilio Conference in 2011 for a chance to win one of two final investments from the first Twilio Fund. They won the first prize: a $50,000 investment from the Twilio Fund, a micro-fund that was started by 500 Startups and SV Angel. After that, they were selected for the new class of 34 companies, Batch 002, of the 500 Startups accelerator in Silicon Valley. This Friday was Cristina’s turn to talk about her success story.
After her talk she reminded me that she attended one of my seminars on effective study methods, that I regularly teach at IST. She told me that it was the first time she realized that she could be a good student and still have time for other projects.
Although the European tech job market is different from the American, this infographic gives a good overview of the needs of 3 big tech companies. Important recomendation: pick the right area of study.
Created by: Masters Degree
A recent Schumpeter column in “The Economist” referred the report “Opportunities for Efficiency and Innovation: A Primer on How to Cut College Costs,” by Vance Fried of Oklahoma State University. Is it possible to provide a first-class undergraduate education for $6,700 a year rather than the $25,900 charged by public research universities or the $51,500 charged by their private peers?
At IST we receive around €3,800 ($5,320) from the government for each student per year and we charge €1,000 ($1,600) for tuition. I believe we provide first-class undergraduate education and research.
The article: http://www.economist.com/node/18926009?frsc=dg|a
The report: http://www.aei.org/docLib/Opportunities-for-Efficiency-and-Innovation-Fried-FINAL.pdf
Google transferred to HTC a collection of patents originally from Palm and Motorola. The patents were added to a suit that HTC filed against Apple.
http://paidcontent.org/article/419-htc-sues-apple-using-mobile-patents-obtained-from-google/
I am not so sure about getting way from the computer and about singing in the shower, but I am certain about making lists and breaking rules. And, of course, *always* carry a notebook…
Amazing article by Kim Zetter in wired magazine, with a detailed report on the discovery of the world’s first real cyberweapon. A computer in a boot loop due to a virus led to the explanation of why a previously secret Iranian nuclear enrichment plant needed to replace between 1,000 and 2,000 centrifuges over a few months. A John Le Carré style narrative with software engineers in the role of spies. The virus was first detected on June 27, 2010 and the story includes the assassination of Majid Shahriari, a quantum physicist who worked with the Iranian Atomic Energy Commission, on November 29, 2010, when motorcycle riders attached a bomb to his car.
The full article here:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/07/how-digital-detectives-deciphered-stuxnet/all/
The Stuxnet virus timeline:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/07/stuxnet-timeline/