Investors made a crowd around the cloud this week, investing $175 million in companies focused on everything from storage to the WAN to the supply chain.Sure, “the cloud” is a broad term and in reality, what new tech company doesn’t have some cloud angle? But 5 companies that announced funding this week, some familiar to us and some not, all have legit claims on being cloud computing businesses.The big winner of the bunch this week was FinancialForce.com, a San Francisco cloud ERP provider based on the Salesforce1 Platform that touted $110 million in fresh funding led by Technology Crossover Ventures. Existing investor Salesforce Ventures also chipped in. The $110 million, which will go toward product development, sales, marketing and more, adds to $50 million committed about a year ago by Advent International.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
News watchers might have noticed a bunch of hot air and chest pounding emanating from media nuts a few days ago.The reason: the end of civilization was nigh for traditionalists, because Facebook and the New York Times had made a deal for Times content to be wrapped into Facebook pages, rather than simply linked to.Big deal, you might say. Makes sense. Add venerable 1851-launched newspaper content to a 1.3 billion-user social network, and stir thoroughly.Well, it does make sense. However, intriguingly, there's more to it than a simple you-scratch-my-back media deal. What's most interesting about this move is the technical reason prompting it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Twitter answers Meerkat with its own video streaming appTwo weeks after confirming it had acquired Periscope, Twitter has launched the live video streaming app to compete with buzzed-about Meerkat. Both apps post live-streamed video to your Twitter feed, but Twitter has now blocked the competitor from accessing follower/followed lists.UN to appoint privacy watchdogThe United Nations’ Human Rights Council has voted to appoint a watchdog—“special rapporteur” in UN-speak—to monitor privacy in the digital world. The post comes with mostly advisory powers, but the move, backed by Germany and Brazil, is seen as important amid concerns about surveillance by the U.S. and other countries.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Human Rights Council of the United Nations has voted in favor of a resolution backed by Germany and Brazil to appoint an independent watchdog or ‘special rapporteur’ to monitor privacy rights in the digital age.The council said Thursday that the same rights that people have offline must also be protected online, including the right to privacy.The proposed appointment of the rapporteur is likely to be mainly symbolic as the official’s functions will be mainly advisory. But it reflects continuing concerns around the world about privacy in the wake of disclosures of U.S. surveillance by former National Security Agency contractor, Edward Snowden.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Corporate travelers should be warned that a Wi-Fi router commonly used in hotels is easily compromised, putting guests passwords at risk and opening up their computers to malware infections and direct attacks.The good news is that there is a patch for the flaw, but there is no guarantee affected hotels will install it right away.+ More on Network World: 10 young security companies to watch in 2015 +Cylance, a security vendor whose research team found the problem, says 277 InnGate routers in 29 countries are affected. The routers are made by ANTLabs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Consumers seem to be coming out on top as a growing number of European telecom and cable operators offer discounted mobile subscriptions as a bonus for choosing other services.Bundles with broadband, telephony and TV across fixed and mobile networks are becoming increasingly important for operators across the continent. The latest example is British operator BT, which on Wednesday announced its return to the consumer mobile market.The expressed goal is to offer the best-value, 4G SIM-only mobile deals as a reward for its broadband customers. The cheapest plan costs £5 (US$7.40) per month and includes 500MB of data, unlimited texts and 200 voice minutes. BT’s broadband subscribers can also choose a plan with 2GB of data, unlimited texts and 500 voice minutes for £12 per month, the operator said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Nigeria, Africa’s largest telecom market, has joined the list of countries on the continent that will impose prison sentences on officials at mobile operators that continually fail to deliver quality services to customers.Tanzania and Zambia are among African countries imposing prison sentences on mobile operators who do not provide quality telecom services.The Nigeria Consumer Protection Council (CPC) has warned mobile phone operators that it would soon start filing criminal charges against them as a way of whipping them to order. The consumer watchdog, supervised by the Nigerian government under the Federal Ministry of Trade and Investment, said lack of strict punishment for erring companies had led to a situation where consumers no longer get value for their money in the West African country.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Facebook lawsuit says it stole data center designFacebook is being sued by a British engineering company that claims the social network stole its technique for building data centers and is encouraging others to do the same through the Open Compute Project. BladeRoom Group says it contacted Facebook in 2011 about using its method for constructing data centers in a modular fashion from pre-fabricated parts. It claims Facebook stole its ideas and used them to build part of a data center in Sweden, and is also sharing them via its OCP initiative.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission said its decision not to prosecute Google over its search practices was in line with the recommendations of its staff.The statement issued Wednesday by FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez and Commissioners Julie Brill and Maureen Ohlhausen was in response to the leak of an internal document, which suggested that the agency’s staff had concluded that Google’s business tactics had caused “real harm to consumers and to innovation,” and had recommended a lawsuit against the company.The FTC’s decision on the search allegations was in accord with the recommendations of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, Bureau of Economics, and Office of General Counsel, the three commissioners wrote, claiming that the document, which was inadvertently provided to The Wall Street Journal as part of a public records request, was only “a fraction” of the voluminous record and extensive internal analysis that was reviewed at the time.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A majority of the Internet attack traffic in 2014’s fourth quarter originated in China, followed by the U.S., according to cloud service provider Akamai.China and the U.S. were the only countries where more than 10 percent of attack traffic originated, Akamai said in its quarterly state of the Internet report. The other top 10 nations each had less than 5 percent of the world’s attack traffic. Taiwan, for instance, came in third with 4.4 percent of the traffic.Still, the attack traffic coming from China was down compared to the third quarter, falling to 49 percent from 41 percent. Attack traffic coming from the U.S. also fell, decreasing to 13 percent from 17 percent.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Cisco recently unveiled three enhancements to its core and edge platforms for service providers to increase programmability for cloud and IP traffic growth. The new offerings include Application Engineered Routing, the IOS XRv 9000 Virtual Router and 100G Ethernet line cards for the ASR 9000 series edge router.The new and enhanced products are intended to allow service providers to scale their networks and to uncover new revenue opportunities. Cisco says global IP traffic will increase three-fold from 2013 to 2018, a compound annual growth rate of 21%, due to more Internet users and devices, faster broadband speeds and more video viewing.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Oh, sure, we take this stuff for granted today (except for Howard Johnson’s). Yet every now and then I feel a need to thank the Internet and Google for doing what they do best: finding answers to questions that would otherwise nag me no end.This morning I read a story about the impending closure of the Howard Johnson’s restaurant in Lake Placid, N.Y. As the story noted, this iconic eatery, owned and operated by the same family for more than 50 years, is one of only three HoJo’s restaurants still in operation in the United States.Where are the other two?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Facebook’s app for its F8 developer conference stole some of the show’s thunder by sending out, ahead of the event, a notification that revealed what products will most likely be discussed.“F8: Just revealed: Parse of IoT, Messenger as a Platform, and the Teleportation Station,” read the message, which several people posted to Twitter. The two-day conference starts Wednesday morning Pacific time.Parse is Facebook’s development platform for creating mobile apps. The message, if correct, implies that Facebook is entering the Internet of Things space, which aims to connect assorted devices to the Web.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google wants to let you pay bills inside GmailGoogle has a project in the works to let Gmail users not only receive bills but pay them from within the mail service, re/code reports. The news site viewed details of the project, called Pony Express, and said it is scheduled to start in the fourth quarter.Microsoft packages Azure for Web and mobile developersMicrosoft brought out an integrated set of Azure-based services on Tuesday that are meant to ease the process of developing applications that run in the cloud. The new Azure App Service could help organizations build Web applications or mobile applications that connect to a variety of data sources that reside in the cloud or in internal IT systems.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google reportedly is creating a service to let people pay their bills from their Gmail accounts.The service, currently dubbed Pony Express, would ask users to provide personal information, including credit card and Social Security numbers, to a third-party company that would verify their identity, according to a Re/code report on Tuesday.Google also would work with vendors that distribute bills on behalf of service providers like insurance companies, telecom carriers and utilities, according to the article, which was based on a document seen by Re/code that describes the service.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Hutchison Whampoa has agreed to acquire U.K. mobile operator O2 for a price that could top US$15 billion, giving a company that already owns one major carrier an even bigger share of the British market.The deal, which has been in the works at least since January, continues a trend of consolidation among European service providers. Hutchison already owns Three, one of the U.K.’s biggest carriers. Together, Three and O2 would form the country’s number one mobile operator by subscribers, according to news reports.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
While those of us interested in obtaining the fastest download speeds possible closely watch, and then seize on, fiber and upgraded cable rollouts, salivating over speeds of 100 Mbps and up, it's easy to forget the many people still can't get cable and rely on lowly, twisted-pair DSL. DSL download speeds at common ISPs range from 14 to 43 Mbps, according to Ookla's Speedtest.net. Crosstalk between lines has restricted bandwidth, for one thing.However, things might be about to change, particularly in Europe.G.fast technologyG.fast is a fiber-to-the node (FTTN) DSL technology that has obtained accelerated speeds of 170 Mbps over a quarter mile in the lab, and 1 Gbps over a less-usable 100 yards in the same setting. It works best over short distances.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Verizon on Tuesday announced new technology to bolster its super-fast 100 Gbps fiber-optic network serving metro areas, but didn't reveal where the work will be done or other details.The vague announcement raised the question of whether Verizon is simply trying to show its competitive value against Google and AT&T, which have both announced fiber Internet services in a number of cities.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: 5 free Ethernet tools you should check out
"I think Verizon is trying to play catch up to the others without saying it that way," said independent analyst Jeff Kagan. "The only question I still have is will Verizon be a real competitor or is this mostly just talk to cover their butts in the rapidly changing marketplace?"To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
On Reddit’s forum devoted to networking – r/networking – a user asks: “I know that IPv4 is all out of addresses, and most devices are running both IPv4 and IPv6. How long is it going to take before we no longer see both addresses on a device, but only IPv6? 5 years? 10 years? 20 years? Does anyone have an estimate?”Oh, yes, they do; in fact, 82 Redditors offer their views on the matter. Here are a few that represent the general tenor:
Well since I still support IPX for some legacy apps ... in 100 years.
Right after POTS dies. And then only after another 30 years.
General IPv6 adoption is 18 months away. My college prof told me this in 1995, and he's still right.
Not in our career lifetime.
IPv6 will take off during the year of the Linux desktop. You'll pull IPv4 from my cold, dead hands...
But there were also a fair number of more nuanced replies:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
India’s Supreme Court has struck down as unconstitutional an Internet law that provided for the arrest of people sending online messages considered offensive or menacing.The court struck down on Tuesday section 66A of the Information Technology Act, describing it as vague, and said it did not fall under reasonable restrictions on free speech.The decision by the Supreme Court follows a bunch of lawsuits that alleged that this section of India’s cyberlaw was a threat to free speech in the country, and had led to arbitrary arrests.“This is a clear win for democracy and free speech,” said Mishi Choudhary, a lawyer focused on technology. She added that the Supreme Court had proven to be “very tech-savvy.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here