Nokia has reached an agreement to sell its Here mapping and location services business to an automotive industry consortium consisting of Audi, BMW Group and Daimler, in a deal that gives the business an enterprise value of €2.8 billion (US$3.1 billion).The deal fits with the plans of the automakers to progressively introduce more Internet-based services and automation to assist drivers. Here is developing a location cloud that uses the data generated by vehicles, devices and infrastructure to deliver real-time, predictive and personalized location services, Nokia said in a statement Monday.The three automotive companies said they will each hold an equal stake in Here, but will take a hands-off approach to the business which will be run independently to serve the entire industry.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Earlier this month, a security vulnerability in Adobe Flash compelled Google and Mozilla to temporarily block the plug-in from their browsers. Now, Facebook says the problems with Flash could hurt its bottom line.In a filing with U.S. regulators on Friday, Facebook said security issues with Flash could harm the revenue it collects from its Payments service. That’s because social games on Facebook rely on Flash, and they’re also the source for substantially all the revenue it gets from Payments.The company listed the concern for the first time among the “risk factors” in its quarterly filing. Public companies in the U.S. are required to disclose such risks to investors. It doesn’t mean Facebook’s revenue from Payments is about to collapse, but it means it’s enough of a concern that Facebook felt the need to disclose it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Three U.S. lawmakers are traveling to Silicon Valley to push tech companies to offer opportunities for African-Americans, an area in which most of these companies have poor track records.Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) Chairman G. K. Butterfield and Representatives Barbara Lee and Hakeem Jeffries, all members of the CBC Diversity Task Force, will travel to Silicon Valley on Sunday to meet with executives at companies and organizations there, including Apple, Bloomberg, Google, Intel, Kapor, Pandora and SAP.“Our goal for this trip is to encourage and partner with these organizations to implement a diversity plan that will place more African-Americans in the tech pipeline,” Butterfield said in a statement Thursday. “This will potentially lead to a wide range of opportunities, from student internships to positions on the boards of tech companies.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Cisco will pay incoming CEO Chuck Robbins a higher salary than outgoing chief John Chambers made in fiscal 2014.Robbins will make US$1.15 million in salary in fiscal 2016, which began this week, and he could earn another $2.59 million based on performance under Cisco’s Executive Incentive Plan. Add in as much as $13 million in stock grants, and Robbins could bring in more than $16.7 million for his first year at the helm.By contrast, Chambers got $1.1 million in salary and a smaller basic percentage bonus under the Executive Incentive Plan in fiscal 2014, according to the company’s proxy statement issued last September. Chambers was a 20-year veteran at the helm of the company and was also chairman of the board. He’s now stepped back to become executive chairman.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
While the buzz around big data analysis is at a peak, there is less discussion about how to get the necessary data into the systems in the first place, which can involve the cumbersome task of setting up and maintaining a number of data processing pipelines.
To help solve this problem, Santa Clara, California start-up DataTorrent has released what it calls the first enterprise-grade ingestion application for Hadoop, DataTorrent dtIngest.
The application is designed to streamline the process of collecting, aggregating, and moving data onto and off of a Hadoop cluster.
The software is based on Project Apex, an open source software package available under the Apache 2.0 license.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Yes, indeed, someone had an issue with this rack. That assessment and the picture come from a reader of the Reddit section devoted to networking.Here’s the full picture, followed by commentary from network professionals. Reddit/Juvey88 via Imgur
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US President Barack Obama has signed an executive order setting up the National Strategic Computing Initiative that will adopt a coordinated strategy involving multiple government agencies, academia and the private sector for the development of high-performance computing systems.Adopting a “whole-of-government” approach, involving all departments and agencies with expertise and interests in HPC, one of the objectives of the NSCI will be to speed up the delivery of “a capable exascale computing system that integrates hardware and software capability to deliver approximately 100 times the performance of current 10 petaflop systems across a range of applications representing government needs.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Lackluster demand for its flagship Galaxy S6 smartphone and higher marketing costs led Samsung Electronics to another quarter of falling sales and profits in the April to June period.Net profit at the company was 5.75 trillion won (US$49 billion), down 8 percent on the same period a year earlier, while sales fell 7 percent to 48.5 trillion won, it said Wednesday. Both figures are in line with expectations published by Samsung earlier this month.In the key smartphone market, an area led by Samsung until recently, the popularity of Apple’s iPhone 6 and 6 Plus handsets and the rise of lower-cost phones from Chinese vendors squeezed Samsung at both the high and low end of the market.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Facebook has posted strong sales results for the second quarter, showing continued success in its advertising business, though its costs also rose sharply.Total revenue for the quarter ended June 30 was US$4.04 billion, Facebook reported Wednesday, up 39 percent from the same period last year and just over analysts’ estimates of $3.99 billion, as polled by Thomson Reuters.But the company made less money than it did a year earlier, with net income falling by nearly 10 percent to $719 million. Earnings per share declined from $0.30 to $0.25.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Computer fires severe enough to prompt a 911 call are so unusual that when it does happen, local media sometimes makes note of it. That was the case in Arlington, Va., recently, when firefighters found a computer burning on the balcony of an apartment complex.According to the Arlington County Fire Dept., the resident of the apartment had built his own desktop computer. The computer wasn't in use, but was plugged in -- and the resident was in another room when it caught fire."He was alerted to the fire by the sound of the smoke alarm and then found smoke coming from his hard drive," said department Lt. Sarah-Maria Marchegiani.The resident carried the computer out to the balcony after it caught on fire, according to a local media report on Arlington Now.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
John Curran, CEO of the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN), told attendees at the Campus Technology conference in Boston on Wednesday that the IP address authority's pool of IPv4 addresses has dwindled to 90,000 and will be exhausted in about two weeks.
"This is a pretty dramatic issue," says Curran, who founded ARIN in 1997 and was once CTO of Internet pioneer BBN.
Curran’s revelation came during a talk during which he urged IT pros from educational institutions to upgrade their public facing websites to IPv6 as soon as possible. Not that the IPv4 address pool drying up will result in such websites being cut off from the Internet, but Curran did say moving to IPv6 will provide much more direct access to end users whose mobile and other devices increasingly have IPv6 rather than IPv4 addresses.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Enterprise customers can expect to hear more from e-commerce giant Alibaba Group. The Chinese company is accelerating the global expansion of its cloud computing business, with a US$1 billion investment.Alibaba announced the move on Wednesday, months after it opened its first data center in the U.S., in an effort to target customers there.The Chinese company clearly has more in store. Part of the $1 billion investment will go toward the international expansion. The rest will go to developing new products, and building up partnerships with other companies in the industry.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Japanese gaming icon Nintendo posted a profit for the April-June quarter on Wednesday thanks in part to surging sales of a game in which players can squirt ink all over the place and transform into squids.“Splatoon” for the Wii U console launched globally in May and has since sold over 1.62 million units, Nintendo said as it notched a profit of ¥8.3 billion (US$67 million) for the three months to June 30, a reversal of a ¥9.9 billion loss a year earlier.Hardware in the Nintendo 3DS lineup saw global sales reach 1.01 million units in the quarter and associated software reached 7.92 million units. Other factors that buoyed the company’s business were the weakness of the yen and strong sales of Amiibo, which are figurines that are designed to wirelessly communicate with the Wii U and 3DS, triggering in-game benefits.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Twitter reported a higher than expected increase in revenue on Tuesday, suggesting progress in the company’s efforts to grow its ad sales.Total revenue for the second quarter ending June 30 was US$502 million, Twitter reported, up 61 percent from the same period last year, and beating estimates of $481 million from analysts polled by the Thomson Financial Network.Twitter also reported decent growth in its users, although with a caveat. For the quarter, the total number of users logging in monthly was 316 million, up 15 percent. But compared to the first quarter, the vast majority of the increase was derived from SMS Fast Followers, people who access Twitter content on mobile devices but do not have accounts on the service.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A safety system that ties cars and smartphones together to stop those heart-stopping near misses between cars and pedestrians could be standardized by the end of this year.The technology involves smartphones broadcasting data over a short-range radio channel to nearby cars, so the cars can determine if a collision is likely. Unlike today’s radar-based systems, this has the ability to warn around blind corners and can alert both the driver and pedestrian.It’s being developed by engineers at Honda and was demonstrated last week at the company’s new research and development center in Mountain View, in the heart of Silicon Valley.In the demonstration that took place in a parking lot, a car was slowly cruising a row looking for a space. Ahead, and unseen to the driver, a pedestrian was walking between a car and SUV while listening to music, and about to step into the path of the oncoming vehicle.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A safety system that ties cars and smartphones together to stop those heart-stopping near misses between cars and pedestrians could be standardized by the end of this year.
The technology involves smartphones broadcasting data over a short-range radio channel to nearby cars, so the cars can determine if a collision is likely. Unlike today’s radar-based systems, this has the ability to warn around blind corners and can alert both the driver and pedestrian.
It’s being developed by engineers at Honda and was demonstrated last week at the company’s new research and development center in Mountain View, in the heart of Silicon Valley.
In the demonstration that took place in a parking lot, a car was slowly cruising a row looking for a space. Ahead, and unseen to the driver, a pedestrian was walking between a car and SUV while listening to music, and about to step into the path of the oncoming vehicle.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Self-driving cars will try to avoid robot pedestrians in a simulated city as part of an effort to make real-world streets safer.M-City, a test facility that the University of Michigan opened this month in Ann Arbor, packs a range of street configurations and road conditions into a 32-acre (13-hectare) facility for testing emerging automotive technologies. The site includes stoplights, traffic circles, gravel and brick roadways and movable building facades. It will play host to some of the testing for vehicle-to-pedestrian (V2P) detection systems that Verizon Communications hopes to turn into a commercial reality.V2P uses DSRC (Dedicated Short Range Communications), the same radios as vehicle-to-vehicle technology that could prevent crashes between cars that approach each other unexpectedly around a blind corner. In the pedestrian safety system, the smartphones people carry would talk to specialized radios in cars or even just to drivers’ phones. Those wireless exchanges are part of a broader effort to prevent vehicle accidents that killed 30,000 people per year in the U.S., according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The agency estimates 14 percent of those accidents involve pedestrians.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Your wackiestIn 2015 the science world has been dominated by space event – NASA’s flyby of Pluto and subsequent deluge of information about that dwarf planet. Then we have another NASA probe – Kepler – pointing out one closest-to-Earth planet discoveries to date. There have been tons of other interesting stories though regarding 3D printed cars, drones, high-tech singers and more. Take a spin:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Facebook prevails in shareholder lawsuit over IPOYou have to own stock to participate in a shareholder class action lawsuit, an appeals court has ruled, confirming an earlier Manhattan district court ruling. The case brought by Facebook shareholders accused the company of withholding key financial information from the public until after its IPO. Circuit Judge Dennis Jacobs said that because the shareholders weren’t owners of Facebook stock at the time the sales information wasn’t disclosed, they had no legal standing to sue.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.CudaLaunchKey features – CudaLaunch is designed for both mobile workers and IT administrators, with simple end-user features for productivity and easy-to-use management features for administrators. More info. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here