Monthly Archives: October 2014

Facebook, Skype, Twitter

10 Tools That Will Make You a Social Media Guru

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These 10 tools will help you manage your individual or business social media accounts without breaking the bank.

10 Tools That Will Make You a Social Media Guru
Do you aspire to be a social media guru but find yourself befuddled by the large number of social media tools available? Here we help you narrow the options for managing your social media accounts by identifying 10 of the best online tools. All are either free or available for a reasonable subscription fee that any individual or a small business can afford.

Bitly
Bitly, probably the best-known UR- shortening service around, helps keep the links that you post on your social media accounts neat and tidy. Under the hood, the service features real-time analytics so you can track actual clicks. More importantly, the service supports the use of one custom domain name for free and implements all the necessary logic. You can brand your shortened URL the same way the big-time players do, like nyti.ms (The New York Times) and econ.st (The Economist).

Buffer
Buffer ranks among the most popular social media message scheduling service available. You can share content and schedule posts across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ pages with a single click. The service makes it possible to stagger content throughout the day, constantly populating your social media feeds with new updates. Buffer also offers analytics about the reach of your posts and makes it easy to re-post popular content.

Hootsuite
Hootsuite is an advanced social media management dashboard designed to help organizations or power users manage multiple social media accounts. The online service works with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ pages and other popular social networks. It offers a comprehensive range of reports that let you gain greater insights into ongoing social campaigns. Hootsuite starts off as a free service for individuals; various subscription tiers are available for power or business users.

Pagemodo
The Pagemodo social marketing suite can help small businesses quickly create engaging visuals for Facebook. Its features include tools to manage Facebook pages and to create customized, eye-catching cover photos, visual posts and even custom tabs for contests. New posts go live immediately or according to a schedule, and they can be shared on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other platforms.

Social Mention
The Social Mention real-time social media search and analysis tool scrapes user-generated content across more than 100 social media sites for mentions of a given company name, brand, product or search term. Considered among the best free listening tools on the market, Social Mention’s analyses delivers relevant results, with metrics that includes unique authors, reach, frequency of mentions and top keywords.

SocialBro
SocialBro helps businesses better target and engage with their Twitter audience. It can analyze followers’ timelines of followers to generate reports (such as the optimal time to tweet for reach and engagements), to identify key influencers and competitors, and to gain general analytics insights. SocialBro works best when coupled with a scheduling tool such as Buffer or Hootsuite. It’s free with basic features for accounts with less than 5,000 Twitter followers.

SocialOomph
The SocialOomph Web service offers a long list of productivity enhancements across supported services. That list includes Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Plurk, as well as blogs built with WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr and Moveable Type. Available for free with some basic features, the paid version of SocialOomph can schedule Facebook updates and LinkedIn shares, automatically follow back followers, search for worthwhile Twitter friends to follow and even tweet via email.

Sprout Social
The Sprout Social management and engagement tool can post, monitor and analyze multiple social media accounts from one location. The service offers the ability to monitor messages across Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn personal profiles, all through a single inbox. A paid service that comes with a free 30-day trial, Sprout Social also offers real-time brand monitoring and comprehensive reporting tools to help users understand important metrics.

Tweepi
The Twitter-only management tool Tweepi makes it easy to identify (and get rid of) followers who unfollow and inactive users, as well as to find interesting new users by scraping the followers of specified Twitter accounts. The paid version offers smart shortcuts that let users quickly follow or unfollow large number of users at a time. It ranks among the more powerful tool for managing Twitter accounts with thousands of followers.

TweetDeck
As its name suggests, the free TweetDeck (now owned by Twitter) is a Web and desktop solution for monitoring and managing Twitter feeds on a single screen. TweetDeck incorporates powerful filters based on specific keywords or conditions. It also offers the flexibility to customize the display to show or hide columns to better focus on what matters. TweetDeck is available for the Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari browsers, as well as Windows and Mac computers.

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Tech

Internet of Things roundtable: Experts discuss what to look for in IoT platforms

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Networking is at the heart of every Internet of Things deployment, connecting sensors and other “Things” to the apps that interpret the data or take action.

But these are still early days. Assembling an IoT network from commercial off-the-shelf components is still, let’s just say, a work in progress. This will change over time, but for now the technical immaturity is being addressed by System Integrators building custom code to connect disparate parts and by a new class of network meta-product known as the IoT Platform.

IoT Platform products are still in their infancy, but there are already more than 20 on the market today. Approaches vary, so when making a build or buy decision, consider these critical areas of IoT Platform tech: security, sensor compatibility, analytics compatibility, APIs and standards.

iot platform diagram Iot-Inc.
To see where we stand on developments in these areas, I emailed experts from seven IoT Platform companies, big and small, asking for input: Roberto De La Mora, Sr. Director at Cisco, Steve Jennis, SVP at PrismTech, Bryan Kester, CEO at SeeControl, Lothar Schubert, Platform Marketing leader, GE Software, Niall Murphy, Founder & CEO at EVRYTHNG, Alan Tait, Technical Manager at Stream Technologies and Raj Vaswani, CTO and Co-Founder, Silver Spring Networks. Here’s what they had to say:

* Security
De La Mora: Security technologies and solutions that are omnipresent in IT networks can be adapted (carefully) to serve Operational Technology in IoT environments. But security is not about adding firewalls or IPS/IDS systems here and there. Cyber Security for IoT should follow a model applied at every layer of the architecture, and be combined with physical security to add intelligence to the operation via data correlation and analytics.

Jennis: Without a standards-based security framework it is very difficult to create communication channels that are both secure and interoperable. An interoperable security solution is very important in order to prevent vendor lock-in and to enable the system to be extended if required.

Kester: Sophisticated customers are encrypting traffic between the sensor board and the cloud. However most deployments are using private VPNs which don’t require a lot precious CPU or RAM from the remote device/system.

Murphy: Crypto-secure digital identities for physical things enable authenticated identities online by applying token-based security methods through Web standards to manage application access to these digital identities.

Vaswani: Embed security at each layer of the network, including sophisticated authentication and authorization techniques for all intelligent endpoints, require digital signatures and private keys to prevent any unauthorized access or activity on the system, and end-to-end encryption for all communications across the network. Incorporating physical tamper detection and resistance technologies further reduces the risk of unauthorized access and monitoring.

* Sensor Compatibility
Jennis: The following Platform considerations should be taken into account:

· Memory footprint – how much memory does the Platform require to function? Some simple sensors have only 128KB of memory to work with.

· Operating system support – does the Platform require a full POSIX-like OS or can it accept something simpler?

· Network stack support, e.g. IPv4, IPv6, 6LoWPAN, other – simple sensors used in Low Power Wireless Area Networks (LoWPAN) may require a cut down IP stack.

· Programming language support – a Platform may provide APIs for only specific programming languages (e.g. C or C++).

· Java dependence – does the Platform require a JVM to function, limiting sensor choices?

Murphy: The most important consideration is recognizing the risks inherent in vertically integrated solution architectures. By definition, the Internet of Things is heterogeneous in the types of things it is connecting. A horizontal architecture, to manage the information from and about the things they are connecting, can abstract the transport layer from the application layer. This allows applications to be developed independently of specific sensor devices, and sensor devices to be changed and network connectivity methods changed without breaking the application dependencies.

Schubert: A Software-Defined Machine (SDM) decouples software from the underlying hardware, making machines directly programmable through machine apps and allows connecting with virtually “any” machine and edge device, including retrofitting machines and connections to legacy systems.

* Analytics Compatibility
De La Mora: Support for structured and non-structured data, ease of integration with existing operation, automation and control systems, and the ability to operate in a distributed computing environment are all important factors for analytic compatibility.

Kester: To do advanced long-term business intelligence, machine learning or Hadoop-type of parallel processing, your Platform choice should have a well-documented and Web accessible API to interface with your analytic product of choice. It should also be easy for any IT employee, or even savvy business analysts, to use without training.

Murphy: The network platform has to enable multiple disparate audiences within a company access to benefit from data collection and perform meaningful analysis. Analytics is often thought of in a reporting sense only, but increasingly analytics is being applied in conjunction with machine learning algorithms and rules logic to drive applications and actuate devices.

Tait: You need to be sure the information you are collecting is stored well (backed up, secure, etc.) and that you have the ability to export your data and you maintain ownership.

Schubert: The tremendous data growth in industrial IoT demands massively scalable, low-cost infrastructure, such as that based on Apache Hadoop v2 and COTS (commercial off-the shelf) hardware. It has to support the various security, compliance and data privacy mandates. Predictive Analytics is how value is delivered to customers. It provides timely foresight into asset and operations, and provides actionable recommendations (when paired with rule engines). Perhaps most important, analytics need to be integrated into the operational processes, rather than be a stand-alone IT solution.

* APIs
De La Mora: RESTful API’s are becoming standard. The abstraction capabilities they provide, along with the architectural model based on the Web, are key. SDK’s that provide API’s that are not compatible with the W3C TAG group are a nonstarter for applications that should be in the end, connected to the Internet.

Jennis: First and foremost, APIs should be clean, type-safe and idiomatic. In addition, APIs should favor non-blocking/asynchronous interaction models to make it easier to build responsive systems. Where possible APIs should be standardized to ease component integration and prevent lock-in.

Murphy: APIs should use Web standards and blueprints (e.g. REST and no WSDL/SOAP), and state-of-art Web security systems. They should also offer ways of extracting the data, not just feeding it in.

Tait: Keep it simple, truly good APIs are clear, concise and have a purpose. They should also do the common things easily.

Schubert: Service-oriented architectures (SOA) and related application development paradigms rely on APIs for integration of services, processes and systems. APIs must be open, accessible and upgrade-compatible.

* Standards
De La Mora: We are calling this the Internet of Things because it will be part of the next generation of the Internet, so the only key standard protocol, that I see in the future, is IPv6.

Kester: Any Platform that is in communication with devices should support the major communication protocols in use today, which are UDP, MQTT, XMPP, CoAP, Modbus/TCP and https:.

Murphy: RESTful application programming interfaces, JSON and similar Web-centric formats for data exchange should be used. The Platform that an enterprise uses to manage its physical products and assets as digital assets, needs to be able to integrate smoothly with both the enterprise’s other systems and third party applications. Integration means both the technical protocols of system-to-system interaction (e.g. REST, OAuth) but also critically, the semantics of the information itself.

Vaswani: The use of universal standards such as IP ensures that products can be easily mixed and matched from different vendors to ensure full interoperability and to deliver on other applications supported by an even broader ecosystem of hardware and software players.

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Tech

Workers use their own devices at work, without boss’s knowledge

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Line between work and play is getting more blurred, Gartner survey indicates

Many workers use their personally owned smartphones and other computers for job tasks, but a new survey shows a big percentage are doing so without their employer’s knowledge.

Market research firm Gartner surveyed 4,300 U.S. consumers in June who work at large companies (with more than 1,000 employees) and found 40% used personally owned smartphones, tablets, laptops or desktops as a primary or supplemental business device.

That 40% might not be unusual, but more surprisingly, Gartner found that 45% of workers not required to use a personal device for work were doing so without their employer’s knowledge.

“Almost half [are using their device] without their employer’s awareness,” said Gartner analyst Amanda Sabia in an interview.

“Are those without employer’s awareness violating a rule? That would depend on the employer,” Sabia added. “The point is that some CIOs are underestimating [the number of] employees using their devices and should be prepared for this.”

The Gartner survey found the most popular personally owned device used for work was a desktop computer, at 42%, closely followed by a smartphone, at 40%, a laptop, at 36%, and a tablet, at 26%.

“The lines between work and play are becoming more and more blurred as employees choose to use their own device for work purposes whether sanctioned by an employer or not,” Sabia said. “Devices once bought for personal use are increasingly used for work.”

Technology manufacturers and wireless service providers could do more to respond to the bring-your-own-device trend, Sabia said. The survey found that the primary use of a smartphone, after making calls and texting, was to get maps and directions.

“Smartphone vendors should focus on ensuring ease of integration of a smartphone with in-car sound and media systems for hands-free and real-time operation of these [mapping and directions] functions,” Sabia added.

The survey asked a wide range of questions beyond BYOD concerns. Another finding was that 32% of respondents plan to buy a smartphone in the next 12 months, while 23% want to buy a laptop or notebook, 20% plan to buy a tablet and 14% a desktop PC.

Also, about 80% of respondents said they had downloaded a mobile app. Of that number, three-fourths of the apps were free, and one-fourth were paid.

Nick Ingelbrect, a Gartner analyst, noted that the app industry has struggled to make money on its products, but the survey results should provide encouragement. The app market is maturing, and consumers are more discerning, but will pay for apps that they find valuable, he said.

 

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Tech

9 employee insiders who breached security

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These disgruntled employees show what can happen when an employer wrongs them.

Security admins used to have to worry about keeping the bad guys out of the network, but there have been many documented cases where the devil you know is sitting right next to you. A review of recent FBI cyber investigations revealed victim businesses incur significant costs ranging from $5,000 to $3 million due to cyber incidents involving disgruntled or former employees, according to AlgoSec. Here are just a few over the years of insiders trying to take down their employer’s network.

Terry Childs, the former network administrator for the City of San Francisco, held the city’s systems hostage for a time. He refused to surrender passwords because he felt his supervisors were incompetent. Childs was convicted of violating California’s computer crime laws in April 2010.

In June 2012, Ricky Joe Mitchell of Charleston, W.Va., a former network engineer for oil and gas company EnerVest, was sentenced to prison for sabotaging the company’s systems. He found out he was going to be fired and decided to reset the company’s servers to their original factory settings.

It was discovered in 2007 that database administrator William Sullivan had stolen 3.2 million customer records including credit card, banking and personal information from Fidelity National Information Services. Sullivan agreed to plead guilty to federal fraud charges and was sentenced to four years and nine months in prison and ordered to pay a $3.2 million fine.

Flowers Hospital had an insider data breach that occurred from June 2013 to February 2014 when one of its employees stole forms containing patient information and possibly used the stolen information to file fraudulent income tax returns.

According to Techworld.com, 34-year-old Sam Chihlung Yin created a fake VPN token in the name of a non-existent employee which he tricked Gucci IT staff into activating after he was fired in May 2010.

Army Private First Class Bradley Manning released sensitive military documents to WikiLeaks in 2009. Manning, now known as Chelsea Manning, was given a sentence of 35 years in prison.

Back in 2002, Timothy Lloyd was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison for planting a software time bomb after he became disgruntled with his employer Omega. The result of the software sabotage was the loss of millions of dollars to the company and the loss of 80 jobs.

Earlier this year, NRAD Medical Associates discovered that an employee radiologist had accessed and acquired protected health information from NRAD’s billing systems without authorization. The breach was estimated to be 97,000 records of patient names and addresses, dates of birth, Social Security information, health insurance, and diagnosis information.

And of course there is the most famous whistleblower of all time: Edward Snowden. Before fleeing the country, he released sensitive NSA documents that became a blowup about government surveillance.

 

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Tech

8 cutting-edge technologies aimed at eliminating passwords

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In the beginning was the password, and we lived with it as best we could. Now, the rise of cyber crime and the proliferation of systems and services requiring authentication have us coming up with yet another not-so-easy-to-remember phrase on a near daily basis. And is any of it making those systems and services truly secure?

One day, passwords will be a thing of the past, and a slew of technologies are being posited as possibilities for a post-password world. Some are upon us, some are on the threshold of usefulness, and some are likely little more than a wild idea, but within each of them is some hint of how we’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s possible with security and identity technology.

The smartphone
The idea: Use your smartphone to log into websites and supply credentials via NFC or SMS.

Examples: Google’s NFC-based tap-to-unlock concept employs this. Instead of typing passwords, PCs authenticate against the users phones via NFC.

The good: It should be as easy as it sounds. No interaction from the user is needed, except any PIN they might use to secure the phone itself.

The bad: Getting websites to play along is the hard part, since password-based logins have to be scrapped entirely for the system to be as secure as it can be. Existing credentialing systems (e.g., Facebook or Google login) could be used as a bridge: Log in with one of those services on your phone, then use the service itself to log into the site.

The smartphone, continued
The idea: Use your smartphone, in conjunction with third-party software, to log into websites or even your PC.

Examples: Ping Identity. When a user wants to log in somewhere, a one-time token is sent to their smartphone; all they need to do is tap or swipe the token to authenticate.

The good: Insanely simple in practice, and it can be combined with other smartphone-centric methods (a PIN, for instance) for added security.

The bad: Having enterprises adopt such schemes may be tough if they’re offered only as third-party products. Apple could offer such a service on iPhones if it cared enough about enterprise use; Microsoft might if its smartphone offerings had any traction. Any other takers?

Biometrics
The idea: Use a fingerprint or an iris scan — or even a scan of the vein patterns in your hand — to authenticate.

Examples: They’re all but legion. Fingerprint readers are ubiquitous on business-class notebooks, and while iris scanners are less common, they’re enjoying broader deployment than they used to.

The good: Fingerprint recognition technology is widely available, cheap, well-understood, and easy for nontechnical users.

The bad: Despite all its advantages, fingerprint reading hasn’t done much to displace the use of passwords in places apart from where it’s mandated. Iris scanners aren’t foolproof, either. And privacy worries abound, something not likely to be abated once fingerprint readers become ubiquitous on phones.

The biometric smartphone
The idea: Use your smartphone, in conjunction with built-in biometric sensors, to perform authentication.

Examples: The Samsung Galaxy S5 and HTC One Max (pictured) both sport fingerprint sensors, as do models of the iPhone from the 5S onwards.

The good: Multiple boons in one: smartphones and fingerprint readers are both ubiquitous and easy to leverage, and they require no end user training to be useful, save for registering one’s fingerprint.

The bad: It’s not as hard as it might seem to hack a fingerprint scanner (although it isn’t trivial). Worst of all, once a fingerprint is stolen, it’s, um, pretty hard to change it.

The digital tattoo
The idea: A flexible electronic device worn directly on the skin, like a fake tattoo, and used to perform authentication via NFC.

Examples: Motorola has released such a thing for the Moto X (pictured), at a cost of $10 for a pack of 10 tattoo stickers, with each sticker lasting around five days.

The good: In theory, it sounds great. Nothing to type, nothing to touch, (almost) nothing to carry around. The person is the password.

The bad: So far it’s a relatively costly technology ($1 a week), and it’s a toss-up as to whether people will trade typing passwords for slapping a wafer of plastic somewhere on their bodies. I don’t know about you, but even a Band-Aid starts bothering me after a few hours.

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Tech

Gartner: IT careers – what’s hot?

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Do you know smart machines, robotics and risk analysis? Gartner says you should

ORLANDO— If you are to believe the experts here a the Gartner IT Symposium IT workers and managers will need to undergo wide-spread change if they are to effectively compete for jobs in the next few years.

Gartner 2014
Gartner: Top 10 Technology Trends for 2015 IT can’t ignore
Gartner: Top 10 strategic predictions for businesses to watch out for
Gartner: IT careers – what’s hot?
Gartner: Make way for digital business, risks or die?

How much change? Well Gartner says by 2018, digital business requires 50% less business process workers and 500% more key digital business jobs, compared to traditional models. IT leaders will need to develop new hiring practices to recruit for the new nontraditional IT roles.

“Our recommendation is that IT leaders have to develop new practices to recruit for non-traditional IT roles…otherwise we are going to keep designing things that will offend people,” said Daryl Plummer, managing vice president, chief of Research and chief Gartner Fellow. “We need more skills on how to relate to humans – the people who think people first are rare.”

Gartner intimated within large companies there are smaller ones, like startups that need new skills.

“The new digital startups in your business units are thirsting for data analysts, software developers and cloud vendor management staff, and they are often hiring them fast than IT,” said Peter Sondergaard, senior vice president and global head of Research. “They may be experimenting with smart machines, seeking technology expertise IT often doesn’t have.”

So what are the hottest skills? Gartner says right now, the hottest skills CIOs must hire or outsource for are:
Mobile
User Experience
Data sciences

Three years from now, the hottest skills will be:
Smart Machines (including the Internet of Things)
Robotics
Automated Judgment
Ethics

Over the next seven years, there will be a surge in new specialized jobs. The top jobs for digital will be:
Integration Specialists
Digital Business Architects
Regulatory Analysts
Risk Professionals

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Windows 10

Windows 10 revealed: Microsoft’s next OS fuses Windows 7 and 8

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At a press event on Tuesday, Microsoft launched the next version of Windows: Not Windows One, not Windows 9, but Windows 10, which combines the reborn Start menu with Windows 8’s colorful live tiles and adjusts its behavior depending on how you’re using your device.

Windows 10 will officially launch in the middle of next year, but you’ll have a chance to try it out before that via a new Windows Insider program, launching Wednesday. The platform’s most vocal fans will have a chance to download the technical preview before it launches next year.

Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore showing off Windows 10’s reborn, revamped Start Menu.

Microsoft executives unveiled the new OS at a small press event in San Francisco, where the company tried to position the Windows 10 OS as a “natural step forward” for both Windows and Windows Phone, which will also be renamed Windows 10.

Windows 10 will be designed for the enterprise, Terry Myerson executive vice president of Microsoft’s OS group, said. It will have a “familiar” interface, whether it be for Windows 7 or Windows 8. “They will find all the tools they’re used to finding, with all the apps and tools they’re used to today,” he said.

Windows 10 will be compatible with all the familiar management systems, including mobile device management. MDM tools will manage not just mobile devices, but PCs, phones, tablets, and even embedded devices inpart of the Internet of Things, Myerson said. Enterprise customers will be able to manage their own app stores, so that ther employees get the right apps for them. As Windows 8 did, data security will be a priority, he said.

“Windows 10 will be our greatest enterprise platform ever,” Myerson said.
Windows 10 revealed

Joe Belfiore, who runs part of the OS team focused on the PC experience, showed off the new OS, which he called a “very early build.” Yes, the new build has the Stat menu, combining the icon-driven menu from Windows 7, plus the added Live Tiles to the right.

Belfiore used the analogy of a Tesla to describe how Windows 7 users would feel when they upgraded—something that Microsoft desperately wants them to do: a supercharged OS, but one that will feel familiar.

One of the things that Microsoft wants to ensure is that Windows 10 is personalized results, including search results, Belfiore said.

Windows 8 had a universal app platform, with a common Windows Store that handle updates independently. Belfiore said that Microsoft wanted all those Windows 7 uses to get all the benefits of Windows 8 apps. Apps will be shown in the Live Tiles, with no real indication whether they are “classic” apps or modern, Windows 8 apps. Apps can be “snapped,” like Windows 8. Users will also not have to leave the Windows desktop to use modern apps, as expected.

Multitasking will also be a priority, with a stated goal being able to “empower” novice users, Belfiore said. On the taskbar there will be a “task view” where users can switch back and forth between different environments—whether it be 32-bit Windows 7 apps or modern apps. And yes, they will include virtual desktops, with the ability to switch back and forth between virtual environments. A “snap assist” feature will allow users to select similar windows to snap alongside other apps. And up to four apps or windows can be snapped to the four corners of the desktop, Belfiore said.

Even more advanced uses will be able to take advantage of new keyboard shortcuts, with the ability to ALT-TAB between desktops. “It’s a nice forward enhancement to make those people more productive,” Belfiore said.

Microsoft even improved the command line interface, with an improved keyboard interface. (You can use Crtl+V to paste now!)
Touch when you need it

Belfiore wrapped up by talking about touch: “We’re not giving up on touch,” he said. But he did say that that massive numbers of users were familiar with the touchless Windows 7 interface, while supporting those who have jumped to Windows 8.

So that means that the Charms experience will be revamped. When you swipe right on Windows 10, the Charms bar is still there. But Belfiore said that the Charms experience would change. When people swipe in from the left, Windows 10, you’ll get a task view. “I’m using touch in a way that accelerates my use of a PC,” Belfiore said.
windows10 continuum start screen

Microsoft is also working on a revamped UI that isn’t is in Windows 10, yet. For two-in-on devices, a “Continuum” mode will adjust the UI depending on whether or not the mouse and keyboard is present. When a keyboard is disconnected, the Windows 8-style Start menu appears and a back button is available so that users can easily back out to a prior command. Menus grow larger. Bu when a mouse and keyboard is connected, the desktop mode reappears, Windows apps return to desktop windows, and the Start page disappears.

Now, Microsoft needs to take the next step: pitching enterprise customers, Myerson said. And that’s critical for Windows’ future, analysts said. Expect more details on the consumer flavors of Windows 10 early next year, more application details at BUILD, and then a launch of Windows 10 near the middle of next year.

“For businesses, I think there are some businesses who have picked it up and they are really early adopters, but in general, the sense—when we engage with customers, we’re not hearing a lot of reception out there,” Wes Miller, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, said in advance of the briefing. “We’re hearing a lot of businesses even before whatever that thing comes out tomorrow, before that came out, businesses were saying, we’re going to hang out on Windows 7, it’s stable, it does what we need to do.”

Starting Wednesday, Microsoft will launch a Windows Insider program, distributing the technical preview of Windows 10, Myerson said. Through Window Insiders we’re inviting our more vocal Windows fans” to help refine the Windows experience, executives said. Users wil be able to sign up at preview.windows.com, he said, where they will be able to hold private discussions with Windows engineers and give feedback.

“Windows 10 will be our most open, collaborative OS project ever,” Myerson said.

 

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