New products of the weekOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.CloudBerry Backup for Mac OS and Linux OS FreewareKey features: CloudBerry Backup for Mac and Linux provides flexible scheduling options and retention policies, email notifications, as well as support for MS Azure, Amazon S3 including Standard-IA storage class. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
WackyImage by Reuters/ Toby MelvilleIt’s that time of year again when we take a look at some of the most interesting and sometimes silly sci/tech stories of the year. This year we have flame-throwing drones, wicked cool pictures of Pluto and quantum computing advancements to name just a few topics. Take a look.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The U.S. data center industry is now operating just like a sports franchise. When a local NFL football team wants a new stadium, it can threaten to move to a city promising a bigger and better stadium.Michigan now faces the data center version of this dilemma.The state's data center industry is growing at about 12% a year, thanks to a shift to cloud computing. Life has been good for commercial data center operators, and they haven't been pushing for tax breaks. But that changed once Nevada-based Switch, a data center facilities firm, arrived with a plan to build a mega data center.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Corporate giving is on the rise, and the tech industry is keeping pace. One big reason? It’s what the people want.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
IT managers responsible for finding new talent can expect a busy first half of the year, according to the latest forecast for tech hiring.
A solid 78% of hiring managers anticipate bringing on more tech people in the first six months of 2016 compared to the second half of 2015, reports tech career site Dice. Among those who see more hiring on the horizon, 71% plan to boost their teams by 11% or more.
Meanwhile, it doesn’t appear to be getting any easier to find skilled talent. Nearly half (49%) of hiring managers said the time to fill open positions has lengthened relative to last year, Dice reports. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
New products of the weekOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.Array Networks vAPV Virtual Application Delivery Controller for Microsoft Azure MarketplaceKey features: Array’s vAPV Virtual Application Delivery Controller gives customers deploying on Microsoft Azure the ability to significantly enhance the availability, performance and security of cloud-based services. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Four weeks: That's how long Swedish bitcoin mining company KnCMiner takes to build a new datacenter, from breaking ground to beginning operations."The longest part is signing the agreement," CEO Sam Cole said Friday, announcing plans for another 20MW datacenter in the Swedish town of Boden, part of the "Node Pole" technology cluster near Lulea where Facebook built one of its most energy-efficient datacenters.One reason for the speed is that KnC doesn't have to worry about air conditioning. The Node Pole is on the edge of the Arctic Circle, where cooling can be as simple as opening a door.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The diversity and capabilities as well as a lack of security found in the multitude of devices in the Internet of Things world is making people at the US Department of Homeland Security more than a little concerned.This week it put out a call for “novel ideas and technologies to improve situational awareness and security measures for protecting IoT domains, as well as technologies that will help DHS operational and support components gain comprehensive and near continuous knowledge of IoT components and systems that affect their operations and assets.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
As litigation continues in the patent infringement case Cisco filed against Arista Networks, the defendant is developing “work arounds” for its customers should the courts rule in Cisco’s favor. Arista said during its Q3 earnings call on Nov. 5 that it has developed “design arounds” for each of the patents in question in the event of an adverse outcome.From Marc Taxay, Arista vice president and general counsel:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The U.S. Marshals Service today warned of a telephone scam that has some scamster calling random victims and alleging they or their family members have an active federal arrest warrant and demanding payment of fines.From the US Marshals office: “On December 7, 2015, the fraudster identified himself as a Deputy United States Marshal and informed the potential victims they or their family member had active federal warrants for their arrest. The caller then gave the potential victims a contact number and information to pay the fine. The phony law enforcement officer threatened the potential victims with arrest if the fine was not paid. The fraudster then tells the victim to buy a prepaid money card from a local grocery store in the Cincinnati area. The victim is then instructed to give the access account code for the prepaid money card to the phony law enforcement officer. “To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The black box sitting at the heart of NASA's Advanced Supercomputing facility in Silicon Valley isn't much to look at. The size of a garden shed, it's smaller than a conventional supercomputer, but inside something quite impressive is happening.The box is a D-Wave 2X quantum computer, one of the most advanced examples yet of a new type of computer based on quantum mechanics, which can theoretically be used to solve complex problems in seconds rather than years.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: 13 awesome and scary things in near Earth space
Quantum computers rely on fundamentally different principles to today's computers, in which each bit represents either a zero or a one. In quantum computing, each bit can be both a zero and a one simultaneously. So while three conventional bits can represent any of eight values (2^3), three qubits, as they're called, can represent all eight values at once. That means calculations can theoretically be performed at much higher speeds.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
IBM today got a multi-year grant from the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) to build key components of what it calls a universal quantum computer.
+More on Network World: Intelligence agency wants a superconducting, super cool, supercomputer+
You may recall that IARPA operates as part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Big Blue award was granted under the auspices of the group’s Logical Qubits (LogiQ) program which is looking to develop technologies that overcome the limitations of current quantum systems by building a logical qubit from a number of imperfect physical qubits.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
For nearly 150 years, Schindler Group has been moving people. The Lucerne, Switzerland-based company makes, supplies and services elevators, escalators and moving walkways. As it moves toward the future, Schindler is deploying smart equipment capable of sharing information with back-end systems and, among other things, sending alerts about maintenance needs to service personnel.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
From Philadelphia to Phoenix and points in between, the Commvault Hockey Team is lacing up their skates this winter to raise awareness and money for children's organizations.The data-management vendor's Hockey Helping Kids program, now in its 16th season, runs hockey events in NHL arenas across the country. Employees, partners, customers and kids have a chance to skate with former NHL and Olympic players. Raffles and auctions are part of each day-long event, and all proceeds go to designated children’s charities.Getting kids, many of whom have disabilities, on the NHL ice with the other players is one of the most rewarding parts of the program, says Randy DeMeno, chief technologist at Commvault.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Techies pitch inTech companies are as creative in their social and charitable works as they are in their businesses. Cleaning up parks, teaching kids about technology, boxing donated food, running races – the projects are too numerous to list. We heard from dozens of tech vendors, big and small, about how they make time for employees to volunteer and participate in fundraising opportunities. While the events are all different, the outcome is universal: Giving back benefits not only the designated recipients but also the tech companies, which find employees are happier and work culture is stronger. Here are some of their firsthand accounts.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
New products of the weekOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.OOB Console Access & Remote 240VAC RebootKey features: Out-of-Band access to console ports plus OOB reboot control for managing network applications at inaccessible equipment sites. Features dual power inlets and built in ATS, plus monitoring and alarm functions. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Flickering lights, tripping breakers, and discolored outlets are among the ways one can guess that wiring is overloaded. Add visual access, and you can tell if the sheathing may appear discolored.But some of us who've been around electricity for a while have also developed an acute sense of smell for wiring trouble. There's a distinctive acrid odor that can be caused by melting components on a PCB, the plastic around a part, or the polyvinyl chloride (PVC) covering on the wire emitting vapor.That odor on its own, even without visible smoke, is a heads-up to troubleshoot the wiring.Nasal range?
There are, however, flaws in the sniffing method of overloading detection. What happens if the overloading occurs in an overhead crawl space, for example? Or at a remote, non-staffed installation?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
More and more CEOs are peppering their corporate strategy talks with two words: digital transformation. In fact, market-research firm IDC says “it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep track of all the CEO proclamations related to digital transformation.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
This is an exciting moment for data virtualization. The options available for virtualization are expanding, and are providing advances in processing speed around big data and data integration. This is just one of many areas around virtualization getting attention…and usually with the words "new" and "future" close by. But if the technology that pioneered virtualization – mainframes – is mentioned at all, it is usually dismissed. Why? Usually, the motivation is to serve the interests of the people who are trying to sell their product.Do you remember the classic sci-fi movie Logan's Run? In it, anyone who reaches the age of 30 meets his or her end in a public ceremony. Sometimes it feels like our industry has the same attitude towards existing software and hardware. This shortsighted approach does a disservice to technology, new and old. Let's look at the reasons why from the perspective of mainframes and virtualization.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The fact that circuits are not designed to flex hinders product design, causes maintenance issues in the field, and is slowing the move towards bendable, rollable gadgets.However, some scientists think they've got a solution. Researchers in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin say they've invented a healing gel that doesn't need an application of light or heat to fix a broken connection.Until now, you'd need "external stimuli" to mend cracks or breaks in circuits, Guihua Yu, the UT Assistant Professor who developed the gel, said in an article at UT News.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here