Millward Brown recently released its annual Brand Z study of the most valuable global brands. And, for the third year in a row, Apple has yet again taken the top spot as this year’s World’s Most Valuable Brand.
In Millward Brown’s 2013 Brand Z report, Apple took the top spot with a 1% increase in brand value. However, this is pale in comparison to last year’s 19% increase. Google, on the other hand, was able to jump back into the second spot with a 5% increase in brand value. In 2012, Google dropped one spot, settling for 3rd as IBM took the 2nd spot after incurring a 15%increase.
Other top brands for 2013 are IBM, McDonalds and Coca-Cola. IBM currently holds 3rdplace, dropping one spot as compared to last year’s Brand Z report. Their current value is now at $112 million. McDonalds is 4th despite a 5% decrease in value. And, Coca-Cola was able to enter this year’s Top 5 spot with a 6% increase in brand value.
Some other notable brands in the technology sector are Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo. Facebook decreased by a whopping 36% percent, settling at a value of $21 million. Microsoft decreased by 9% and sits at $69.8 million. Yahoo, which hasn’t been part of the Top 100 Brands for quite some time now, was able to re-enter the Top 100 World’s Most Valued Brands at the 92nd spot.
According to Millward Brown, after 5 years of unstoppable growth, brands in the technology sector have slowly started to decline.
Brand surveys differ significantly from one another, given that they each have different methodologies of analyzing data. Still, they are useful tools to use when studying global branding and marketing trends.
To check out the World’s Most Valuable Brands, visit Millward Brown’s 2013 Brand Z report.
http://millwardbrown.com/brandz/2013/Top100/Docs/2013_BrandZ_Top100_Chart.pdf
Well, i’ve been waiting enthusiastically since the announcement that Microsoft would be releasing their own tablet PC running Windows 8 – so great was my enthusiasm that I decided that rather than pick one up in Australia, I’d visit the Microsoft Store in Orlando, Florida (something we don’t yet have in Australia). Yesterday that goal was achieved, but I didn’t walk out with a Surface as planned and here’s why: [...]
It’s rare that a large vendor can keep a secret from the media but with no real warning and few rumors, Microsoft invited the media to an event and within less than 48 hours of speculation they announced the Surface Tablet last Monday.
I myself cannot wait to get my hands on one. Although I like my iPad I don’t enjoy having to use multiple operating systems and most of the novelty of apps has worn off for me. I want to use my tablet for work and Apple doesn’t really deliver that as neatly for me as Microsoft does – yet.
If Microsoft pull this off, many of us could be seeing Windows 8 at home, on our desk and in our pockets in the near future. [...]
Recently I was fortunate to catch the SonicWall SuperMassive Roadshow as it passed through Sydney and it definitely was a sign of big things, well massive things, to come from the growing firewall vendor.
So what is the SuperMassive? The E10800 is a SonicWall, a network firewall with 64GB ram that can filter data through it’s deep packet inspection firewall, the same one on every SonicWall, at 40 GBPs (yes, that is 40 gigabytes per second, and they will make a bigger one if you want).
Say your business grows.. I mean really grows, well this SonicWall can handle 80,000 site to site VPN tunnels, 16,000 VPN clients and 512 VLANs.
It’s about twice the size of your server.
Why so super massive? The SuperMassive was the culmination of a number of decisions at SonicWall. A change in architecture to a different processor a few years ago, new partnerships and mergers and the ability to build a firewall that could offer deep packet inspection with performance by using cores. These days our phones are dual core, our servers are at least quad core, so it made sense. Add to this an idea to build something huge by adding more cores, partly to prove they could and show off, and secondly to see what it really could do. [...]
This great video shows Corning’s vision of the future based on specialty glass.
Many of these technologies are already available or under development but Corning shows how we can make the most of this in our lives from smartphones, to bus shelters, smart fridges and active benches in “A day made of glass”.
Have you recently been infected by a virus, worm, malware application or spyware application?
Did you wonder how it got there? You do have antivirus software but not web content filtering?
Were you visiting ‘trusted sites’ such as Google Images, Facebook, Spotify, Autotrader, London Stock Exchange, Vue cinemas?
You were most likely hit by Malvertising. A new trend that has seen a rapid rise in the number of malware, spyware and virus infections in 2011. Three months ago we were lucky to see 1 infected machine a month, now it is increasing to 1 a week even with the protection of antivirus applications and network firewalls.
Malvertising is when malicious ads are inserted into a legitimate advertising network exploiting vulnerabilities that leave an opening for attackers to insert malware on vulnerable systems.
The advertisements server on Facebook, as an example, redirected users to a page informing them they need to install Adobe Flash Player and asking them to click and run AdobeFlashPlayer.exe. As soon as you do this, your machine is infected.
This has been a growing concern with computers used by ad firm Unanimis recently compromised to insert malicious advertisements into a number of the sites mentioned above.
Free or ad-sponsored services are great as they cost you nothing but because they cannot control all of the content that appears on their pages, it gives scammers a windows to infect your machine with these malicious applications.
View this presentation by the Online Trust Alliance find out how you can become infected by Malvertising.
The best defense is to use web filtering technology like SpamWOW! Web Protection to ensure that all of the files being sent to your computer are safe. Ask us how.
We have all used tape backups but while they are fantastic with storing archival data for long periods they are terrible at giving you what you want when you want it. This is because it takes just as long to restore data from tape as it does to back it up in the first place. Hours!
Have you suffered a major server failure? How long did it take to rebuild the server? Days!
Today, I had a chance to spend the day with ShadowProtect.
Imagine being able to restore any file in seconds, or boot a copy of your server as a virtual machine within minutes of a failure.
The difference is sector level not file level backup. Backup a typical C drive with 20gb data on a 70gb hard disk in about 2 minutes.
This means you can now do 15 minute incremental backups every 15 minutes, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
So where do I store my data?
* an enterprise onsite storage repository such as an old server, external array or enterprise Nas
* an offsite device like an external hard drive or an online storage repository.
Buy I hav a tape drive?
ShadowProtect does not support tape directly but you could use tape to provide a long term archival backup copy of your data.
How hard is it to configure?
* one backup job per storage volume
* schedule volumes with staggered start time at regular intervals
- It’s that easy
So how does it protect you?
ShadowProtect creates a virtual image at regular rapid intervals (or portion of a virtual image).
This allows us to restore a virtual copy of your server as it was minutes ago to keep you operating while we repair your physical server or we can mount the virtual disk as a drive to restore a file in seconds.
How does this differ to acronis or backup exec as they also do images and virtual machines?
The block level shadow copied backups of your system done by ShadowProtect are smaller, faster and place less load on the system so you can do them more often.
Want to find out more? Ask us how.
It’s not often I get excited about mobile phone apps. Admittedly I was never particularly warm to the iphone but admittedly I do love it’s usability over my Samsung Windows Mobile phone (although I have now tweaked the interface to make it work the same). But the iPhone had apps that were just easier to find and worked unlike the Windows Mobile Marketplace selection.
I have been waiting years to get a single device to replace my pda, gps, bluetooth, mobile phone, usb drive, wireless network drive and usb dongle that would actually work. My wait is over.
I paid for Tom Tom for my Samsung Windows Mobile but I found it ordinary. The app that caught my attention was NavFree for iPhone, iPod and iPad and now I have the final feature, turn by turn gps navigation, on my iPhone and it’s good. Packed with more features than my existing Tom Tom navigation which I paid for and with Google Local, Facebook and Twitter integration how could I not get excited. Navmii also produce software for most other operating systems.
Microsoft are due to release their long awaited Internet Explorer update, IE9. With support for hardware accelaration, a slimmed down user interface, better privacy controls, Web compliant standards including HTML5 and some fantastic functionality for Windows 7 users . Hopefully this will help arrest Internet Explorer’s decline in use from 80% of web users in 2007 to a current 57%. Find out more and try it now.
It could not come soon enough as Google today warned users of it’s services about a known IE vulnerability which could leave them open to attack. Google believes it has seen a large number of politically motivated attacks at it’s servers using this vulnerability. The recent attempts use an MHTML vulnerablity acknowledged by Microsoft in January, but not yet resolved. Users of IE and Google Services are advised to install the following temporary fix.
Apple has today released the iPad 2.
It is thinner, lighter and faster, has two cameras, a compass and gyro and includes the ability to show your screen in HD 1080p on a projector.
The iPad has proven it’s ability as a reviewing, emailing and presentation tool but can you create with it?
There are new video editing tools included and I am sure new apps will follow but it still has the same amount of storage space and it is no easier to get files on or off the device, a common question we hear at the service desk.
What about the competition? Keep your eyes out for some innovative competitors. Motorola has already published details of a powerful new phone which docks into a laptop style body to give you a fully fledged notebook.
It’s all good news for end users though as 2011 looks set to be the year of the tablet.
James Vickery is the Founder and CEO of Australian IT Firm, I Know IT®.
I Know IT® provides IT support, cloud computing, networking, hardware, software and licensing solutions to businesses.
For more information visit I Know IT®.
