Devonian Times Masthead

The DEVONtechnologies Blog

Articles in the category Thoughts

March 25, 2022

To Those Who Suffer

Symbolic picture of a bowl with food.

It’s now one month after the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine. However, what happens in Europe at the moment also affects other parts of our world. The war is making the all-present hunger in East Africa and the Middle East even worse. We are donating 10% of our March revenue to JAM. (more)

March 1, 2022

Standing with Ukraine

Ukrainian national flag.

Last week, the Russian Federation military crossed the border to the free and sovereign nation of Ukraine, starting a full-scale invasion. We are a small team of developers working from the US, the UK, and the EU. The very concept of freedom is essential to everything we are and believe in. This freedom is now at stake. We have today donated 30% of our February revenue to humanitarian organizations helping the people in Ukraine. (more)

December 13, 2021

Manifesto for Ubiquitous Linking

Image of the technical requirements of the Manifesto for Ubiquitous Linking.

The new Manifesto for Ubiquitous Linking calls software designers to ensure that resources inside the software are linkable. DEVONthink and DEVONthink To Go offer platform-independent URLs for documents inside databases already for many years. We are one of the original signers of the manifesto. (more)

October 8, 2018

Chinese Spy Chips? That's Why DEVONthink Uses Strong Encryption

Last week Bloomberg Businessweek published an article named The Big Hack. The authors claim that testers have found a tiny microchip on server mainboards that wasn’t part of the original designs:

During the ensuing top-secret probe, which remains open more than three years later, investigators determined that the chips allowed the attackers to create a stealth doorway into any network that included the altered machines. Multiple people familiar with the matter say investigators found that the chips had been inserted at factories run by manufacturing subcontractors in China. (more)

April 4, 2018

Welcome SSL/TLS and Good-Bye Facebook

We know that you like to keep your private data private. And our software and processes are designed to keep it that way. Here’s what we’ve done recently to protect your privacy and security as well as our own integrity in these matters: … (more)

March 1, 2017

When the Web Breaks

If you weren’t aware of it already, there was a problem on the internet yesterday for a couple of hours. A little problem in terms of describing it: Amazon Web Services (AWS) was “having problems”. However, it was really a big problem for any app or service relying on the S3 services. One of those services was us. Our downloads were unavailable for a period of time. Slack, Trello, Time Inc., and others were affected. Some even experienced some home automation problems because they relied on the IFFFT website. (more)

December 1, 2015

Telecommuting, the DEVONtech Lifestyle

By Jim Neumann. Jim is customer support specialist at DEVONtechnologies and works from home in Michigan, USA, or any other place he likes.

Your alarm clock didn’t go off, your hot shower was lukewarm, traffic was backed up, you spilled coffee when that red coupe cut in front of you, and the boss was eyeing his watch as you limped in to your cubicle. This is a typical morning for a commuter. But there’s an alternative. According to current research, in 2020 almost 54% of US workers telecommuted at least once a month. I am one of them. So what is telecommuting really like? (more)

February 28, 2014

Thank You, Akismet

From our blog dashboard. The spam queue is 14 days which makes 928 intercepted spam comments per day. I am more that happy with the Akismet spam protection service. (more)

February 12, 2014

The Day We Fight Back

We like the Internet and especially its openness. The latter, however, means also that everything that travels through it can be intercepted, stored, and analyzed. And we don’t like to be watched. We clearly support an open Internet free of mass surveillance. (more)

August 27, 2013

We Favor Open Over Closed

Since the very first telephone companies and there is an ongoing struggle between advocates (and adversaries) of open vs. closed systems. Today is the time of the closed systems.

The Apple II was wide open and while the first Mac hardware was the exact opposite you could still do whatever your wanted in software. Even if there were no official hooks for this and that, as long as you knew how to access something there was no one holding you back. (more)