ServerMonkey Blog

It’s not even Halloween, much less Thanksgiving, but you may have noticed Christmas decorations already going up around your town. With the gift giving season just around the corner, you may be wondering what gifts to get that will have your friends and family proclaiming you the “Best Gift Giver Ever.”

Well, no worries, we’ve got you covered! In the weeks leading up to Black Friday, we’ll be listing 25 of the most talked about tech gifts and gadgets to get for the special people in your life, or you can just treat yourself.

Nearly a year after the release of 4.4 KitKat, Google has announced the official name of its newest Android platform. Just in time for Halloween and sticking with its candy-theme, Google unveiled Android 5.0 Lollipop.

According to Google, Lollipop is their largest and most ambitious release on Android with over 5,000 new API’s for developers. With the tagline “Be together. Not the same,” Google reiterates their main focus on an open platform “for everyone to imagine, invent, make, or buy whatever they wanted.”

We have a brief rundown of a few new key Lollipop features:

ServerMonkey, a top supplier of new and used IT networking hardware, will travel to Dallas, TX to exhibit at the IT Roadmap Conference and Expo. The one day, traveling event makes its stop at the Fort Worth Convention Center on November 18^th. 

During their fall event, Apple introduced their newest generations of iPad Air, iPad mini, iMac and iMac mini. The light-hearted keynote featured cameos from Stephen Colbert, secret security handshake rituals, and not one sign of a free U2 album. Check out our recap of the event below.

Another day, another security vulnerability, and another cloud hack.Stop me if you’ve heard this before: “A newly discovered internet security vulnerability allows hackers to steal private account information from users.” Or how about, “Cloud storage service hacked. Millions of users affected.”

The newly discovered vulnerability, called “POODLE”, is neither cute nor furry and it affects SSLv3. SSLv3, or version 3 of the Secure Sockets Layer protocol, is used to encrypt traffic between a browser and a web site or between a user’s email client and mail server.

This October ServerMonkey will partner with Church IT Network to help sponsor the 2014 Church IT Network National Roundtable. Church IT Network is a peer group of IT individuals dedicated to assisting and supporting churches and their efforts to spread worship through various methods information technology.

The annual roundtable consists of sessions, workshops, and keynotes focused on providing the best solutions to many issues faced by church organizations and their IT efforts, including; mobile, social media, and user interface design.

It’s that time of year again and things are getting pretty spooky. We’re getting in the Halloween spirit around ServerMonkey headquarters and have dressed up The Monkey in some traditional costumes. That inspired us to think about what tech inspired costumes The Monkey would like to wear and thus began Tech-O-Ween. We’ve compiled a few costume options and ideas below that we think anyone would look great in and possibly win the best costume contest.

Hewlett-Packard announced their plans to split the 75 year old company in half Monday morning. One half of the company will be comprised of Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, selling computer servers, data-storage, software, and other services. The other half, HP Inc., will consist of the PC and printer business side of things.

The split seems to be a strategic move by HP to reverse a downturn in sales. The move also comes in the fourth year of a five year recovery plan implemented when Meg Whitman took the position of CEO in 2011. The plan was created to restore HP’s position as king in the PC Market.

Tuesday Microsoft unveiled the newest iteration of its operating system, Windows 10.

First things first though, the game-changing name change. Most people assumed that the newest release of Windows would appropriately be named Windows 9. But Microsoft pulled a fast one on us and skipped right over 9 and went for 10. Maybe the perfect 10? Maybe Microsoft wanted to get as far away from Windows 8 they jumped a whole number? Whatever the case, those obsessed with perfect sequential order are surely in distress.

This fall ServerMonkey will sponsor The Fanatical Change Foundation’s “Hollywood Halloween”, an event benefiting local Houston residents in need. The Fanatical Change Foundation is a 501(c) (3) organization that focuses on charitable giving to recent victims of life altering tragedy and letting the power behind their individual stories of suffering inspire donors to be the change they wish to see in the world.

The cocktails and costumes event will take place Thursday, October 30, 2014 at The Diamond Club at Minute Maid Field. Guests will be treated to a silent auction, cocktails, live music, and amazing Halloween flair.