Welcome to Google summer camp!Google’s annual I/O developer conference and general “give us this news cycle” event usually takes place in downtown San Francisco, but the company has opted for its own back yard this time around. Enjoy this collection of the woodsy sights of Google I/O 2016.RELATED: Follow all the stories coming out of Google I/O 2016To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google’s been hard at work under the hood of its Android operating system, announcing performance, security and productivity updates in the new Android N alongside a swanky new suite of VR capabilities called Daydream and version 2.0 of Android Wear.Android N is available for select devices in beta today, and will be released in a stable version this fall. It’s been publicly available as an open alpha for developer use for some time, but Google’s presentation offers the company’s definitive vision for the future of the Android platform.+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Microsoft leaves feature-phone business as Nokia moves back in, sort of + ARM acquires Apical to add eyes to IoTTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Riverbed baked several new features into the latest version of its SteelCentral application performance and network management suite, designed to help manage networking components and applications that live in the cloud and unified communications systems – as well as making the whole thing a little more intuitive.The new features, which are available for SteelCentral customers to download today, provide visibility into application traffic in Azure and AWS, as well as PaaS and containerized environments. They also offer newly integrated support for a range of unified communications applications, letting IT manage them from the same portal.+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: New build of Windows 10 Anniversary Update preview tweaks Edge, Wi-Fi Sense + Half the Web's traffic comes from bots, and that's costing you more than you thinkTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
IT analytics company Nyansa today rolled out a public web portal, offering anonymized data pulled from instances of its flagship Voyance product in operation around the world.The idea behind Voyance Live, according to CEO Abe Ankumah, is to provide insight into common enterprise network problems and suggest possible solutions to IT departments.+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Software audits: How high tech plays hardball + Washington nudges Verizon, striking unions back to bargaining tableTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google I/O, the company’s annual developer conference that takes place May 18-20 in Mountain View, Calif., can be a tough ticket to get – there’s a lottery just to get the opportunity to buy one. Academic tickets are $300, and general admission is a weighty $900. So there are a lot of interested folks who might not have the time, money, or opportunity to get to Mountain View this year.Fortunately, Google’s got a number of ways to watch the events of I/O unfold, most notably live video streaming, which you ought to be able to stream it on their site here.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A controversial new wireless technology is closer to widespread use, after Qualcomm and T-Mobile got an official green light from the FCC to test LTE-U in four U.S. locations late last week.Qualcomm has had limited testing underway with Verizon since January, but the new authorization from the FCC means that the T-Mobile implementations will be of greater scope. T-Mobile will trial LTE-U (see explainer on LTE-U here) infrastructure in Richardson, Texas; Bellevue, Wash.; Simi Valley, Calif.; and the city of Las Vegas. Verizon’s testing is taking place in Raleigh and Oklahoma City.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Wireless big shotsIt’s a wireless world, of course, and one only likely to get less dependent on physical connectivity in the future – but what that future looks like will depend a lot on the companies exerting the strongest influence on the industry. We checked in with analysts and tapped our own institutional expertise to create this list of the companies that, in our opinion, are the biggest influencers in enterprise wireless networking and beyond.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
HPE/Aruba confirmed today that the company has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Rasa Networks, a network performance management and analytics startup, for an undisclosed amount.As Network World reported last month, HPE/Aruba had been planning the move for several weeks. An internal communique to employees stated that Rasa’s technology would become a part of the company’s Clarity wireless management software, and that Rasa workers would be integrated into Aruba’s R&D team, reporting to CTO and co-founder Keerti Melkote.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Experience in the open-source world is a valuable asset for technology job-seekers, and it’s getting more so over time, according to the latest Open-Source Jobs Report, which was published today by Dice and the Linux Foundation.The report, which surveyed tech hiring managers, found that nearly two-thirds were planning to increase open-source hiring more than other areas of their business in the near future, and that 59% had definite plans to add open-source workers.+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: A look at Apple's rise in the enterprise with IBM's help | Former insider’s book explores morality of offshore outsourcing +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Star Wars video gamesStar Wars, as an enormous building block of nerd culture, and one that got popular right when home computing was really taking off, has an unsurprisingly huge number of video games set in its universe. Some of them are very good, and some are the opposite of very good. Here’s a look at four of the former, and four of the latter.RELATED: Cool ways to celebrate Star Wars DayTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Star Wars video gamesStar Wars, as an enormous building block of nerd culture, and one that got popular right when home computing was really taking off, has an unsurprisingly huge number of video games set in its universe. Some of them are very good, and some are the opposite of very good. Here’s a look at four of the former, and four of the latter.RELATED: Cool ways to celebrate Star Wars DayTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
May the Fourth be with youImage by Flickr/Josh HallettMay 4 is International Star Wars Day, the unofficial holiday where we celebrate the Force, X-wings, Ewoks and women wearing their hair in the shape of their favorite breakfast pastries. But how do you give your week that particular galaxy-far-far-away flavor? Some suggestions follow.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The City of New York became the latest entity to weigh in on the subject of LTE-U, as an open letter from the mayor’s office to policymakers at the 3GPP standards body pushes for thorough protection for existing Wi-Fi.LTE-U, a carrier technology designed to take the load off of existing networks by using the unlicensed frequency bands where Wi-Fi lives, has provoked widespread concerns about interference and disruption. The technology’s inventors, Qualcomm and Ericsson, and the carriers have insisted that LTE-U contains features that will enable it to co-exist peacefully with Wi-Fi, but many others, from the cable industry to Google and Microsoft, have expressed serious doubts.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Open source’s march toward preeminence in business software continued over the past year, according to a survey released today by open source management provider Black Duck Software and venture capital firm North Bridge.Roughly two-thirds of respondents to the survey – which was administered online and drew 1,300 respondents – said that their companies encouraged developers to contribute to open-source projects, and a similar proportion said that they were actively engaged in doing so already. That’s a 5% increase from the previous year’s survey.+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: OpenStack users talk benefits, challenges of open source clouds + IBM lines up all-flash storage to help power cognitive computingTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
An international group of investors announced today that Sirin Labs, a startup with $72 million in venture funding, is planning to create a smartphone that combines premium performance and functionality with strong privacy protection.Sirin’s announcement gave few details about the device, internally dubbed the SP1, but the company says that interested parties won’t have long to wait for additional information, as it should go on sale within the next two months. The SP1’s design, according to Sirin, will attempt to graft high-end flagship features onto a far greater emphasis on security than most modern smartphones.+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Top U.S. universities failing at cybersecurity education + Malvertising attack silently infects old Android devices with ransomwareTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
An international group of investors announced today that Sirin Labs, a startup with $72 million in venture funding, is planning to create a smartphone that combines premium performance and functionality with strong privacy protection.Sirin’s announcement gave few details about the device, internally dubbed the SP1, but the company says that interested parties won’t have long to wait for additional information, as it should go on sale within the next two months. The SP1’s design, according to Sirin, will attempt to graft high-end flagship features onto a far greater emphasis on security than most modern smartphones.+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Top U.S. universities failing at cybersecurity education + Malvertising attack silently infects old Android devices with ransomwareTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A feature in the just-released 16.04 version of Ubuntu could pose a serious threat to the privacy of desktop Linux users, according to a well-known open-source software expert.Version 16.04, the latest long-term-support release of Ubuntu, features a new package format used for installing software on an Ubuntu system, called snap. Snaps are designed to be easier for developers to construct, simpler to deploy, and able to work comfortably alongside the existing deb package format.ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Windows 10's upgrade model temporarily wipes $1.6B from Microsoft's books | One of GNU/Linux’s most important networking components just got an update To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The software framework that powers the network connections on many GNU/Linux systems just got its second major update in less than a year and a half, with the version 1.2 release of NetworkManager.Version 1.2 brings several improvements to NetworkManager, including better security and usability for Wi-Fi. The changes should make the list of available access points more responsive and manageable, save energy on mobile devices and laptops, and even improve privacy by MAC address randomization, according to an official announcement. LuisalvaradoxWikipedia
An earlier version of NetworkManagerTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The software framework that powers the network connections on many GNU/Linux systems just got its second major update in less than a year and a half, with the version 1.2 release of NetworkManager.Version 1.2 brings several improvements to NetworkManager, including better security and usability for Wi-Fi. The changes should make the list of available access points more responsive and manageable, save energy on mobile devices and laptops, and even improve privacy by MAC address randomization, according to an official announcement. LuisalvaradoxWikipedia
An earlier version of NetworkManagerTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
HPE/Aruba is said to be planning to acquire the intellectual property of failing startup Rasa Networks within the next 2 to 4 weeks, according to sources close to the matter.The transaction could see between $5 million and $10 million change hands, the sources added, noting that it’s not a full buyout of the company, but merely a deal for Rasa’s IP and, potentially, one or two of the company’s data scientists.+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Don’t buy into hybrid cloud headache hype, GE’s cloud guru says + Meet a handheld server with a 13-terabyte SSDTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Jon Gold