When we think of disasters, we think of typhoons sweeping small islands off the map and earthquakes devastating entire towns.  We think of droughts and epidemics, planes coming down and bombs going off—things worthy of the term ‘disaster’.

But these are hardly the disasters we are referring to when we talk about the hot topics of business continuity and disaster recovery. These disasters are much smaller events—and include circumstances that could happen to any business virtually any day of the week, with no warning.  These are the things that are actually likely to happen at some point over the course of the year, and in fact did happen in London last week. A fire in the underground Victorian tunnels in Holborn caused nearly 5000 people to be evacuated.  Businesses stopped, people walked out mid-email, halfway through phone conversations not even able to grab their jacket in some instances.  It took the London Fire Brigade 36 hours to put out the flames.

We know you are planning a trip. How? We just do. We also know the 4 latest apps that will make sure you see, do, play and live your trip to the fullest. After all what can be done without an app these days? Nothing! So check out these great new apps and take Easter or your May bank holiday trips to the next level. 

1. Seasonal Cities

Seasonal Cities is a unique travel app offering seasonal city guides, updated every three months with brand new content. These insider guides to 11 of the world’s top cities are also written by leading travel journalists who actually live there. This means that you get the very best out of your destination or home city as the seasons and weather change throughout the year.

The worst thing about winter for many of us isn’t the low temperatures or the ice on our cars, nor is it the dark mornings and early sunsets—it is getting ill. Getting ill is annoying, slows us down and has a knock on effect to colleagues and family members who have to pick up the slack, or just deal with us being miserable. Our work suffers, meetings are delayed, and everyone resents us when we show up with the hacking cough or runny nose. Plus who wants to feel terrible and miss weekend plans, or get our kids sick?

I have always been a fan of people who challenge conventional notions with a big idea based in fact or research. By big ideas I mean ones that affect all of us, from CEOs to artists living out of garages. And by challenging conventional notions I mean things like redefining the way we believe ideas are spread or what makes a successful person.

Remember Malcom Gladwell’s concept of sneezers? Those people who could single-handedly take a product from relative obscurity to mainstream popularity? The people who purely through their innate personality and communication abilities, could put a brand no one had heard of before on the map?

Back in the day, the advice given regarding meeting etiquette included things such as: make sure you have clean nails, dress appropriately, don’t have spinach in your teeth, shake hands firmly, make eye contact, speak distinctly and don’t interrupt. But in this day and age, meetings are less formal affairs. People have several meetings a day, in many instances just with colleagues, and there is no need for hand shaking or dressing in a particular way.

With cyber warfare on the rise, identity theft rampant and hackers more capable than ever—you would think we would be more creative with our passwords than 123456 or ‘password’.  But according to SplashData’s annual Most Popular Password list, we aren’t.
 
Below is a list of 2014’s most popular passwords as compiled from the millions of stolen ones over the year. Some are utterly obvious, although monkey is slightly perplexing, as is Michael.  I mean really Michaels.

Since the 1990’s, we have known that the Internet will eventually run out of IPv4 addresses (Internet Protocol Version 4). As such, the Internet Engineering Task Force, an organisation that develops Internet technologies, developed IPv6 to accommodate the growing number of users and devices accessing the Internet.

If you haven’t heard of the Internet of Things yet, you will.  And as you can probably tell from its name, the Internet of Things (IoT) is not the normal internet.

Each January there is always much speculation as to what new technologies we can expect to see in the coming year.  Usually this speculation comes from the annual CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas, where companies from around the world go to show the hot, new boundary-pushing products they have in store for us.  Technologies we are now very familiar with have all made their early appearances here—everything from smartphones to social media platforms to contactless payment.

Here we have compiled a list of what we see as the most interesting products shown at the CES this year.

Tis that time of year again and you may be fully embracing it with Gingerbread latte in hand and Christmas jumper donned… or you may barely be noticing the jingling of bells, or your compatriots festive cheer.  No matter which camp you are in however, we can all have a better holiday season, and perhaps, one of the best holiday seasons ever. Here are a few tips Santa sent us himself.