Daily Tech Briefing: May 23, 2014

Blackberry has announced a series of initiatives that are currently being developed under the codename “Project Ion.” The goal of these initiatives is to help people leverage the information being made available from the ever-growing number of devices connected to the Internet of things.

The company explained some of the resources currently in development, such as a secure,QNX-powered public application platform that can access data from multiple sources, and an IoT ecosystem of application developers, carriers and other partners committed to connecting devices on a secure and public applications platform.

Salesforce.com has launched its Salesforce1 Mobile App, meant to help businesses run their entire company from smartphones. The app contains 30 features that allow users to sell, service, market and manage their business from mobile devices.

For example, salespeople can use the app to gain direct access to their reports and dashboards. They can also easily navigate their sales information with the account and community switcher and more. It also helps service agents provide real-time customer service with features such as Knowledge, Questions and Answers along with Email and Social Case Actions.

Hewlett-Packard has revealed a new zero-day vulnerability in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer Web browser, which might be putting millions of web users at risk. Microsoft was reportedly made aware of this flaw more than 180 days ago, but it still hasn’t fixed it.

Brian Gorenc, manager of the Zero Day Initiative at HP Security Research, explained to eWEEK that the vulnerability can be triggered in Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP and Windows 7. Microsoft has recommended that users upgrade to Windows 7 or 8.1 and run the latest version of Internet Explorer.

Finally, Verizon has made upgrades to particularly crowded portions of its 4G Long Term Evolution network and improved its spectrum position. To make sure consumers understand the change, Verizon has come up with a new name for the network: XLTE. Officials explained that customers should expect “faster peak data speeds and a minimum of double the bandwidth to 4G LTE customers.”