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Mac apps will soon be available through the Volume Purchase Program, allowing businesses and educational institutions to purchase multiple copies of your apps at once. To make your apps available through the Volume Purchase Program, simply agree to the latest Mac Developer Program License Agreement and all attached Schedules, and make sure your tax and banking information is set up in iTunes Connect. You can also offer a discount for educational institutions by marking the "Discount for Educational Institutions" box. Learn more.
When OS X Mavericks becomes available later this fall, apps running on OS X Mountain Lion or later can no longer use temporary sandboxing entitlements for composing email with Apple Mail. Please update your apps to use Scripting Targets instead. To learn more, read Adopting Scripting Targets for Composing Mail.
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American Studies Assistant Professor Nicole King is leading a talk on a case study from her book Sombreros and Motorcycles in a Newer South: The Politics of Aesthetics in South Carolina’s Tourism Industry.
The event is part of the museum’s late nights for young adults series. King will discuss Alan Schafer and the significance of his legacy, including how he created South of the Border.
The talk is scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. at The Jewish Museum of Maryland on Wednesday, October 23rd.
For more information, click here.
]]>Childhood obesity has doubled in children and tripled in adolescents in the past 30 years, and according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 17% of children and adolescents age 2-19 are obese.
The Department of Public Policy, Hilltop Institute, Maryland Institute for Policy Analysis and Research, and The Annie E. Casey Foundation sponsored “The Public Policy Implications of Reducing Childhood Obesity”, a conference that was held in downtown Baltimore Friday morning.
Several panelists took part in a discussion about the growing epidemic of childhood obesity and possible solutions for the problem.
Public Policy Professor Adele Kirk laid out statistics that showed nearly 1 in 6 children are obese, and although there have been recent signs of progress, she said there is still plenty of work to be done.
“These levels remain extremely high and they don’t appear to be going down rapidly, if at all,” Kirk said. “The stakes are high.”
The panelists, which included Public Policy Professor Adele Kirk, University of Iowa Economics Professor David Frisvold, Maryland Deputy Secretary for Public Health Laura Herrera, and Baltimore City Commissioner of Health Oxiris Barbot, all provided insight on childhood obesity and the challenges that lie ahead in confronting the problem.
The Department of Public Policy Forum was held in downtown Baltimore at the World Trade Center building.
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Mike Geppi saw firsthand how banks couldn’t give in to the flexibility of wireless networks for fear of cyber attacks.
The former banker turned techpreneur joined with his fellow MBA students at University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business to create Integrata, a company that focuses on securing wireless networks. In just one year since launching Integrata — Italian for integrated — Geppi and his colleagues have signed an exclusive license agreement with the National Security Agency to commercialize its patented Wireless Intrusion Detection System (WIDS) technology.
Geppi expects testing for the product to begin soon and that it will likely go to market in the next year.
The startup is one of numerous emerging in Maryland’s fast-growing cyber security industry. But many of those companies focus on cyber security services rather than products, so Integrata has turned some heads.
At the CyberMaryland 2013 conference last week investors talked about how Maryland needed to boost the product side of its commercial cyber sector. Integrata, now a resident in University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s tech incubator is just the type of company that was touted at the forum.
It’s connections to NSA are especially appealing to those looking for the next big thing.
Geppi said his eight-member team worked closely with NSA in developing the WIDS system. The startup will focus on selling its product to government agencies, the financial services and health care industries.
“There’s a tremendous amount of trepidation in the banking industry about using wireless,” said Geppi, a former banker at BB&T Corp. and M&T Bank. “The only thing that keeps them from taking advantage of wireless is that security problem.”
So far, Integrata has received $100,000 from Maryland’s Tedco commercialization fund and money from private investors. Geppi is seeking more capital from investors as Integrata prepares for the market.
The eight-person company is also in search of new employees, including software developers, engineers and marketing and business development staff.
Geppi, a Bel Air resident, looks forward to growing the company in both employees and eventually revenue. He’s especially excited about being in Maryland’s cyber security scene.
He said that’s why he decided to leave banking to pursue his own business.
“I saw this exciting entrepreneurial ecosystem that was almost under the radar but very robust,” he said.
At least that's what several tech start-ups are anticipating. On Monday,
Wickr, a free app that encrypts text, voice and video messages, became
available on the Android 
platform.
Wickr leaves no trace of your cybermusings on servers or on the device. It was introduced in June 2012 for Apple iOS. Company co-founder Nico Sell champions a return to traditional notions of privacy, and she advocates boycotting Facebook.
Sell wants her daughters, ages 4 and 12, to be able to freely express themselves online without fear of being exploited or put in harm's way. "Private correspondence is a fundamental human right that's extremely important to a free society," says Sell. Facebook and other big Internet companies are ostensibly advertising platforms designed to monetize personal information, she says.
In a similar vein, start-ups Silent Circle, Koolspan and Seecrypt offer systems that use encryption to lock down cellphone calls and e-mails. These services are aimed at corporate executives and employees who routinely work on sensitive projects.
"Various groups are spying, stealing information and organizing fraud against individuals and organizations around the world," says Jon Callas, co-founder and chief technology officer of Silent Circle. "People see the need for defense against these threats."
These new personalized encryption services enable individuals to wrest back ownership of their online behaviors. That's a potential challenge to tech giants and media companies whose business models revolve around tracking what you say, where you navigate and, with GPS, where you are physically located. This is driven primarily to better sell advertising.
Wider use of locked-down phone calls, e-mails and messaging could slow the current iterations of Internet commerce. But by the same token, individualized encryption would hinder government snooping. Data thieves and hacktivists would have a harder time disrupting Western financial and media interests, as hacking groups from Iran and Syria have been doing.
"It is not just the NSA with their hand in the cookie jar; the British, French, Germans are all doing the same thing," says Harvey Boulter, chairman of Seecrypt, a South African company. "Then you have rogue states that are hugely active."
Corporations bear a big burden to protect
proprietary assets in an environment where privacy often is up for
grabs. Individual consumers should start to think more deeply about all
the information they divulge simply by surfing the Internet or clicking a
Facebook 'Like' button.
"Every single person has private information that they most likely wish to keep private -- be it a health issue or financial data ,"
says Boulter. "Like a neighborhood watch, at some point, people will
take action themselves as opposed to relying on others to keep them
safe."
Meanwhile, the soaring use of mobile
devices as work tools, along with the rising use of Internet-connected
devices in everything from television sets and refrigerators to baby
monitors, add to the pressure cooker, says Gregg Smith, chief executive
of Koolspan.