How FC Barcelona leverages technology for athletes’ performance

A little over a year ago, I wrote how FC Barcelona, perhaps the world’s most iconic soccer team, offers very little in the way of technological enhancements to fans at its home pitch, called Camp Nou.+ Also on Network World: FC Barcelona's soccer stadium foregoes technology + Well, it turns out there’s a lot more to the story of how the famed club uses technology. First, Barça is finally adding tech enhancements, including more than 1,000 Wi-Fi access points, as well as video security cameras, touchscreens, contactless ticketing, new mobile apps and much more. The club is also working on a dramatic new stadium at Camp Nou, scheduled to be ready for the 2021-2022 season, designed to further embrace a technologically enhanced fan experience.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The tricky, personal politics of cloud security

Everyone talks about the issue of security in the cloud, but the problem is far more complicated than it first appears. More than just a simple matter of protecting data, it may also be about protecting security jobs.+ Also on Network World: Cloud security: A mismatch for existing security processes and technology +This inherent contradiction was apparent in the results of a recent survey of 140 attendees at the Microsoft Ignite 2016 conference last month. Performed by Lieberman Software Corporation, the survey addressed how IT security professionals felt about the changes in the technology and how it affected their jobs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Galaxy Note 7 flameout: Worst-case scenario

As readers are now no doubt aware, the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phablet has been on fire lately. Literally. To the point where the Korean manufacturer has given up on fixing the design and killed the entire project. Buyers have been told to stop using the phones and return them in, get this, a fireproof box.+ Also on Network World: The Note 7 is dead: What Samsung must do now +Given the Galaxy Note 7’s propensity for spontaneous combustion and Samsung’s inability to definitively fix the problem, the move shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. Still, the fallout from Galaxy Note 7 debacle will be felt far and wide, and not just by Samsung and the users and sellers of this particularly flawed device.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Salesforce Einstein aims to democratize AI

Along with virtual reality, artificial intelligence (AI) is perhaps the hottest buzzword in technology these days. AI is turning up everywhere, from chatbots and smart speakers to driverless cars and autonomous everything. And now it’s coming to CRM, courtesy of Salesforce Einstein, which the company says brings machine learning, predictive analytics and natural language processing to the entire Salesforce platform.At the giant Dreamforce conference in San Francisco this week, Salesforce execs from CEO Marc Benioff on down were predictably enthusiastic about the new features. In a 150-minute keynote address accompanied by Will.i.am and an impressive variety of non-profit and other Salesforce customers, Benioff warned attendees that “you know the world has been changing” and noted that the cloud gives you access to the new world of AI technology.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Amazon Echo and its competitors will be a $2.1 billion market by 2020

The Amazon Echo and newly announced Google Home may seem like toys today, but research firm Gartner believes these kinds of wireless speakers enabled with virtual personal assistant (VPA) technology are poised for significant growth.According to Gartner, natural language chat-bot VPA interfaces (including Amazon’s Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple Siri and Microsoft Cortana) will power the market from just $360 million in 2015 (almost entirely dominated by the Echo) to more than $2 billion in 2020.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

U.S. cellular carriers charge too much, and here’s proof

If you think your mobile phone bill is too damn high, you’re absolutely right. Like many people, I’ve always felt I was overpaying for mobile service. (Talk to IT departments at companies large and small, and many will tell you that despite significant corporate discounts, they also feel they pay too much. )And there’s no doubt we’re all paying a lot. According to a J.D. Power report, the average U.S. monthly cell phone bill was a whopping $73 in 2014. Those are the most recent averages I could find, but if you look at data plans from the big four U.S. carriers, data plans start at around $50 a month, depending on how much data you’re buying, and head straight up from there. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Enterprises hope their mobile users pay attention to security

To ensure mobile security, enterprises need the whole-hearted cooperation of their workforce. But many workers don’t seem to know or care about their company’s mobile security policies.That conundrum fits my experience of how these things work in the real world, and it’s also one of the conclusions of a new survey—Enterprise Mobility Security Goals & Challenges—conducted by Silicon Valley management services provider NetEnrich.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple iPhone 7 vs. Samsung Galaxy Note 7: Troubled smartphone shootout

As you no doubt have already heard, two recent high-profile smartphone introductions have been plagued by controversy. Apple’s iPhone 7 has famously inspired rage and disbelief among observers by omitting a headphone jack. The Samsung Galaxy Note 7, meanwhile, infamously has a problem with its battery spontaneously exploding—or at least catching on fire.Two awesome new smartphones, two very different issues garnering piles of press for the wrong reasons. So, which issue is worse? Let’s take a systematic look and see if we can come to a decision. (Have your own “favorite?” Feel free to share it in the comments.) To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

What Apple really just announced: 4 new things to lose

As expected, the iPhone 7 that Apple announced yesterday will ship without a headphone jack. For many people, possibly including me, that will be a deal killer, but not necessarily for the obvious reasons. See also: When it comes to the iPhone’s headphone jack, I’m with Woz Because while there won’t be a headphone jack in the box, there will be an adapter, so you can still connect all those suddenly obsolescent non-Lightning headphones all us Luddites have been spending big bucks on for the past 10 years.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New Apple Watch strikes fine balance between new features and continuity

Apple yesterday announced a whole raft of useful improvements in the Apple Watch Series 2, but the biggest thing it got right may have been what it didn’t change. And while the company addressed many of the issues surrounding its smartwatch, one key limitation remains. First, let’s look at what Apple did to improve the Apple Watch: Made it water resistant to 50 meters, so you can swim and sweat and shower in it (don’t try this with one of the fancy leather bands) Upgraded the CPU to run 50 percent faster and the GPU to run much 100 percent faster Upgraded the display to be twice as bright, critical for use in direct sunlight Added new Siri integrations so you don’t have to mess with the tiny screen and fussy buttons as much Built in GPS, so runners and hikers can use it without being tethered to an iPhone. Introduced a Nike version that appears designed specifically for runners.  To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Survey says! 3 surprising IT facts

I’m always interested in Spiceworks’ annual State of IT survey of hundreds of IT folks around the world. Last year I wrote about results indicating that PCs continue to top IT hardware investments. Well, the 2017 report isn’t out yet, but the company has release a few teaser findings, which still piqued my interest.1. The cloud is growing—duh First, and least surprising, the results indicate continued cloud computing momentum. According to Spiceworks, “38 percent of IT pros consider cloud very or extremely important in 2016 compared to 29 percent in 2015.” That kind of growth is only to be expected in the current environment.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Survey says! 3 surprising IT facts

I’m always interested in Spiceworks’ annual State of IT survey of hundreds of IT folks around the world. Last year I wrote about results indicating that PCs continue to top IT hardware investments. Well, the 2017 report isn’t out yet, but the company has release a few teaser findings, which still piqued my interest.1. The cloud is growing—duh First, and least surprising, the results indicate continued cloud computing momentum. According to Spiceworks, “38 percent of IT pros consider cloud very or extremely important in 2016 compared to 29 percent in 2015.” That kind of growth is only to be expected in the current environment.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cloud giveth and cloud taketh away: Rackspace edition

Hosting firm Rackspace has been a well-known name in the cloud industry for a long time, but lately the company has been struggling to keep up in the core cloud computing competition.Instead, the firm has concentrated on becoming the “#1 managed cloud company,” mixing its own hosting services and cloud offerings while also cutting deals to provide “fanatical” service and support to users of market leaders like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.It seems that strategy wasn’t enough, at least not by itself.Even as AWS, Azure and Google Cloud Platform have been posting quarter after quarter of amazing growth that help cement their economies of scale, Rackspace’s stock stumbled, (the company had lost half of its market value before talk of a possible sale) which constrained its ability to find a better market position.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

When it comes to the iPhone’s headphone jack: I’m with Woz!

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak may be a beloved figure in Silicon Valley, but he hasn’t had a big voice in Apple product decisions in a long, long time. And right now, that seems like a shame, as Woz is absolutely right to object to Apple’s widely reported plans to eliminate the headphone jack in the next model iPhone.+ Also on Network World: iPhone 7: Why abandoning the headphone jack makes sense +Wozniak told the Australian Financial Review this week, that if the iPhone 7 is “missing the 3.5mm earphone jack, that's going to tick off a lot of people.” And Wozniak doesn’t believe Bluetooth wireless connections—which work with a wide variety of devices—are the answer, claiming Bluetooth doesn’t sound as good as a wired connection.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The cloud just cost 5,500 Cisco workers their jobs

Cisco this week announced it is laying off some 5,500 workers, about 7 percent of its global workforce. The firings fell far short of the 14,000 positions that had been rumored, but they still cut deep.And it can’t help ease the sting that workers getting pink slips had to listen to Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins exult, “We had another strong quarter, wrapping up a great year.” That “we” doesn’t extend to the fired workers, obviously.So, what’s really going on here?Basically, Cisco is trying to keep up with fundamental changes in the world of infrastructure. Those changes take many forms, but the biggest, most obvious development is the incredible rise of cloud computing. Companies are scrambling to run every possible workload into the cloud, which is grabbing an ever-increasing share of new infrastructure investment.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

40+ reasons Silicon Valley’s days may be numbered

In the dog days of summer, tech news seems to slow down, as many companies hold off on big announcements until the world returns from their vacations. That means mid-August is the perfect time for Sunil Rajaraman’s brilliant, scathing and terrifyingly familiar satire of life in the trenches of Silicon Valley.By turns hilarious and discomfiting, This is Your Life in Silicon Valley is the tale of one man’s stupifyingly superficial day in the Valley. It will ring true for anyone who toils in the middle levels of the tech industry here in the Bay Area—and beyond.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

40+ reasons Silicon Valley’s days may be numbered

Apple—and America—have lost the mobile platform wars

It may be about time to finally declare a winner in the long and sometimes bitter battle for mobile dominance between Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android. According to a recent survey of thousands of developers around the world, Android is increasing its lead for developer mindshare, eroding the long-standing maxim of creating apps for “iPhone first.”Android sets a record In Developer Economics: State of the Developer Nation Q3 2016, released last week, VisionMobile reports Android now has a whopping 79 percent "mindshare" among mobile developers, the highest for any platform the company has measured since it began its quarterly surveys back in 2010. The record comes as the mindshare for iOS has consistently tracked at 51 percent to 55 percent since 2013 (although that figure rises to 61 percent for professional developers). To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cloud computing just had another amazing, awesome, over-the-top good week

Cloud computing has been on a roll for a while now, and instead of slowing down, it just keeps speeding up. Last week, for example, the cloud hit the accelerator big time, as demonstrated by a pair of key developments:First, Amazon announced record quarterly results for Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS simply blew through its Q2 numbers, hitting $2.9 billion in revenue, which was up more than $1 billion from the same quarter in 2015. Yes, quarterly revenue increased by a billion dollars in just one year.Second, Oracle announced a $9.3 billion takeover of cloud ERP provider NetSuite. That’s a huge investment in the cloud from a company that not so long ago went out of its way to ridicule the very concept of cloud computing. (Sure, NetSuite had deep Oracle ties, but almost $10 billion to buy into the cloud is serious money.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

JavaScript keeps its spot atop programming language rankings

U.K.-based technology analyst firm RedMonk just released the latest version of its biannual rankings of programming languages, and once again JavaScript tops the list, followed by Java and PHP.Those are same three languages that topped RedMonk’s list in January. In fact, the entire top 10 remains the same as it was it was six months ago. Perhaps the biggest surprise in Redmonk’s list—compiling the “performance of programming languages relative to one another on GitHub and Stack Overflow”—is that there are so few surprises, at least in the top 10. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here