Bridging Research and Organizational Practices on Continuous Innovation

This article was originally posted in Stanford Social Innovation Review Blog by Maria May

Recently BRAC was invited to a meeting convened by the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society at the Rockefeller Foundation around the question “What determines the capacity for continuous innovation in social sector organizations?” We used findings from scholarly and practitioner literature on the topic as a foundation for our discussion, which was intended to inform the design of a research program that generates “actionable insights” into these issues.

How to Hack an iPad?

Most iPad and iPhone owners rely on their Apple ID password to prevent access to their account details. This won’t stop a hacker gaining access to your personal account and log in details. Here’s how to hack an iPad.

Whenever you want to change a setting on an iPad or iPhone, aside from non-critical items such as the alarm clock time or the volume, Apple prompts you to enter your Apple ID. Ideally, there will be a four-digit PIN code preventing anyone who isn’t you being able to get as far as the settings menu, but not all of us are that careful.

Facebook Scammers Redirect Victims Through Amazon’s Cloud

The scammers use links to Amazon’s S3 service in their campaigns to trick URL filters.

Facebook scammers have started redirecting victims through Amazon’s cloud in order to bypass malicious URL filters, according to security researchers from antivirus vendor F-Secure.

One Facebook survey scam recently analyzed by F-Secure uses malicious browser extensions to hijack Facebook accounts and post spam messages on their walls.

Scientists Build The World's Most Powerful Laser

There are some days, I wake up in the morning and find that scientists have done something that makes my inner 12-year-old absolutely giddy. This is one of those days. Scientists working at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have built the world’s most powerful X-ray laser, and used it to simulate the matter inside of stars.

X-ray lasers, as you might imagine, work much the same as the visible light lasers we’re all familiar with. Only instead of amplifying visible light, it amplifies photons in the X-ray spectrum. Because of the different wavelengths, this requires some different engineering to accomplish. The end result is pretty much the same though – except, of course, X-rays are more dangerous to people than visible light.

Twitter Restricts Some Countries User Content

(Reuters) - Twitter announced Thursday that it would begin restricting Tweets in specific countries, renewing questions about how the social media platform will handle issues of free speech as it rapidly expands its global user base.

Until now, Twitter had to remove a Tweet from its global network if it received a takedown request from a government. But the company said in a blog post published Thursday that it now has the ability to selectively block a Tweet from appearing to users in one country.

Gates Defends Focus on High-Tech Agriculture

Bill Gates has a terse response to criticism that the high-tech solutions he advocates for world hunger are too expensive or bad for the environment: Countries can embrace modern seed technology and genetic modification or their citizens will starve.

When he was in high school in the 1960s, people worried there wouldn't be enough food to feed the world, Gates recalled in his fourth annual letter, which was published online Tuesday. But the "green revolution," which transformed agriculture with high-yield crop varieties and other innovations, warded off famine.

Top Five Cloud Computing Security Issues

In the last few years, cloud computing has grown from being a promising business concept to one of the fastest growing segments of the IT industry. Now, recession-hit companies are increasingly realising that simply by tapping into the cloud they can gain fast access to best-of-breed business applications or drastically boost their infrastructure resources, all at negligible cost. But as more and more information on individuals and companies is placed in the cloud, concerns are beginning to grow about just how safe an environment it is.