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The NSA has reportedly been spying on North Korean networks since 2010

Jan19
by on January 19, 2015 at 6:04 am
Posted In: Around the Web, FBI, Insider, North Korea

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A recently disclosed NSA document from Edward Snowden revealed that the agency has had an inside view of North Korea’s hacking capabilities since 2010, reports The New York Times. By tunneling into Chinese networks used for wider connectivity by North Korea more than four years ago, the NSA was able to use malware to track the workings of North Korean hackers, who are said to number about 6,000 people in total. NSA investigators recently determined that the North Korean force had gained access to a Sony systems administrator’s credentials, to explore the company’s network over two months before leaking confidential…

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Tough tradeoffs: Removing product features is hard, but often necessary

Jan18
by on January 18, 2015 at 7:00 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Design & Dev, Insider

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Sandi MacPherson is the Editor-in-Chief at Quibb. Product roadmaps typically focus on building up a product, adding features as the product evolves and grows. While that’s great, in my experience building Quibb, I’ve found that removing features is also an important aspect of product design and management. There’s not much guidance on making products more simple, crisp and less bloated. In making decisions to remove various features, I’ve seen how more mature companies do the same — identifying and weighing tradeoffs to make tough decisions, working toward the goal of building a better product. Your users vs. The company In reviewing an existing feature…

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Uber’s Travis Kalanick promises 50,000 European jobs in 2015 if regulators play nice

Jan18
by on January 18, 2015 at 4:14 pm
Posted In: Apps, Around the Web, dld15, Insider, Travis Kalanick, uber

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Speaking at this year’s DLD Conference in Munich, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick struck a conciliatory tone and promised the company would deliver 50,000 European jobs in 2015 if regulators and governments work with it. Uber has just partnered with Boston to share data and technology and Kalanick indicated hew wants to forge similar agreements in Europe. He said: “We want to make 2015 the year we establish a new partnership with EU cities. We want to promote core city functions through partnerships on data and technology.” He continued: “By the end of 2015, if we make these partnerships happen, we’ll…

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How to gather quantitative data on user behaviors and mental models

Jan18
by on January 18, 2015 at 4:00 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Design & Dev, Insider

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Jerry Cao is a content strategist at UXPin — the wireframing and prototyping app — where he develops in-app and online content for the wireframing and prototyping platform. After getting really useful insights from our previous Yelp usability test, we wanted to analyze the information architecture in greater detail. So we ran a first-click test on Yelp’s homepage using Chalkmark, which gave us insights into the aspects of the information architecture that worked, and which aspects confused users. And we ran a closed card sort on Yelp’s feature search filters using OptimalSort to find out which search filters were the…

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