Rent the Runway calls itself "a fashion company with a technology soul," with proprietary systems driving its growth from its 2009 formation as an online dress rental company through its expansion into brick-and-mortar shops in 2013 to the introduction of the lineup of online features it has today.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
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.AOP ConnectKey features: AOP Connect, a unique online portal that allows organizations unprecedented access to their intellectual property research results and offers secure interaction with global researchers. The platform offers the ability to leverage results of all of a client’s previous AOP Studies for new purposes. More informationTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Asustek Computer may be considering a bid for HTC, but HTC said Monday it wants nothing do with it.On Friday, Asus Chairman Jonney Shih said he wouldn’t dismiss the possibility of buying HTC.Such a move could help both companies: Asus has been trying to move beyond its traditional PC business into sales of Android smartphones, and acquiring smartphone maker HTC would boost its market presence. It could also provide support for HTC, which has seen its market share dwindle in the face of tough competition from Apple, Samsung Electronics and Chinese smartphone vendors.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A look at 6 new Windows 8.1 mini-PCsImage by ThinkstockThe idea of a desktop PC traditionally invokes images of a tower or all-in-one that lives at your desk in your home or office. But as tech gets smaller and more mobile, so have desktop PCs. With a mini PC, you can have all the computing capabilities of a traditional desktop in a small, compact and portable package.Here are 6 mini PCs running Windows 8.1 that will let you take your desktop experience mobile.HP Stream Mini DesktopImage by ThinkstockTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Amazon Web Services has launched new, more powerful general-purpose and data-warehouse virtual servers as it works to stay ahead of the competition by offering users a wider array of cloud-service options.Amazon has had a busy week, expanding its portfolio on Tuesday and Thursday with new virtual servers, or "instances," for its public cloud.The M4 family is Amazon's latest generation of EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) general purpose instances. There are five sizes to choose among, each with up to 40 virtual CPUs and 172GB of system memory, Amazon said on Thursday.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: How to build a private cloud
The top size costs users from US$2.52 per hour when they pay on an on-demand basis. The smallest size costs $0.126 per hour and has 2 virtual CPUs and 8.6GB of system memory.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A deal for Taiwanese PC maker Asustek Computer to buy struggling phone-maker HTC makes sense to some, and on Friday Asus’s chairman said he wouldn’t rule it out.An acquisition of HTC would certainly help the PC maker boost its presence in the smartphone market. Asus has only recently begun selling handsets, but it’s aiming at shipping 17 million units this year.At the Asus shareholders’ meeting on Friday, Chairman Jonney Shih said in response to a question that Asus wouldn’t dismiss the possibility of buying HTC, but that no formal evaluation had been made, according to company spokesman Nick Wu.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Chinese search giant Baidu has fired one of its researchers, after the company found he had deliberately broken the rules of an artificial intelligence contest.The company was among the participants in a computing competition called the ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge. However, last month the contest organizers found that Baidu had essentially cheated to improve its results.Baidu was notified, and the company launched an investigation. On Thursday, it finally spoke publicly on the matter in a blog post, and said the team leader involved had been terminated from his position.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Dick Costolo has stepped down as CEO of Twitter after five years on the job, relinquishing his post amid longstanding problems including sluggish growth and frequent abusive comments posted to the social network. Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey, who is also CEO of Square, will be interim CEO when Costolo steps down on July 1.When Twitter finds a permanent replacement, he or she will face several big challenges. Here are four of them:1. Defining what Twitter isPerhaps the biggest problem Twitter has is that many people who aren’t tech enthusiasts still don’t understand what it’s for or why they should use it. For every occasion Twitter is referred to as a social network, it’s also identified as a news source, a publishing system, a feed of real-time events and a micro blog. Perhaps it’s all those things, but that doesn’t help sell it to people who aren’t yet on the service. If it’s a social network, why use it when Facebook’s around? If it’s a micro blog, why not use a proper blog like Tumblr instead?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Uber launched a new game for iPhone users today aimed at teaching people what it’s like to work as a driver for the tech-driven transportation company.UberDrive is equal parts teaching tool and recruitment mechanism: players are taught to find the most efficient route around a map of San Francisco for the digital passengers they “pick up” in the game. Players are taught to go and grab riders from areas where surge pricing is in effect, and get rewarded for taking efficient routes to their destination. Surge pricing is Uber’s practice of charging multiple times its base fare in areas seeing heavy demand.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) has become a key building block for the Internet of Things, and chip makers are working to make it an even better fit by using the technology to further reduce power consumption of devices and helping developers implement it.Applications have been a key ingredient in making smartphones a huge success. Vendors are hoping to repeat that recipe for IoT, with semiconductor companies such as ST Microelectronics coming up with tools to make BLE, a set of specifications for reduced-power wireless networking, easier for developers to use.ST has launched an offering for voice over BLE, which includes the necessary software, components and development tools to integrate voice control in wearables and home-automation systems. Voice control can aid battery life by minimizing touchscreen usage, while improving ease-of-use, according to ST.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Amidst all the venture investments this year in startups that generate gobs of data -- from those focused on everything from apps to drones to the Internet of Things to Big Data -- are a batch of newcomers aiming to help organizations store and access all that information. Yes, storage companies are pulling in big bucks in 2015, as they did in 2014, and a couple have even double-dipped this year and announced two rounds of funding.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Amidst all the venture investments this year in startups that generate gobs of data -- from those focused on everything from apps to drones to the Internet of Things to Big Data -- are a batch of newcomers aiming to help organizations store and access all that information. Yes, storage companies are pulling in big bucks in 2015, as they did in 2014, and a couple have even double-dipped this year and announced two rounds of funding.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft has taken its big data analysis to China, with computing models that can forecast the air quality across 41 cities in the country.Pollution continues to be a major problem in China, with hazardous air quality levels a common occurrence in cities including Beijing. To bring some clarity to the situation, Microsoft has come up with a mobile app that can predict the air quality two days in advance.The Your Weather app works by first taking official data from government air quality monitoring stations across a 300 kilometer distance, and then using weather data to predict the pollution levels. The weather data used includes forecasts, along with current information on humidity, temperature and wind direction in a selected city.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Give a marketer a sale, and you’ll keep his company afloat for a day; teach him to predict future sales, and you may just ensure his longevity.That, in essence, is the premise behind predictive marketing, a concept that’s increasingly taking hold in enterprises today.Tapping into the analytics trend that’s being felt throughout the business world as a whole, predictive marketing applies algorithms and machine learning to big data to help marketers direct their efforts in the most profitable directions. Predictive-analytics tools can help marketers gauge ahead of time what a particular customer will buy, for example, as well as when and how much. Equipped with that information, companies can tailor their campaigns accordingly.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
To help enterprise customers better manage applications sprawled across hybrid clouds, Microsoft has purchased BlueStripe Software, a provider of technology for watching over distributed applications.Microsoft plans to fold BlueStripe’s software into its System Center and Operations Management Suite software for managing IT resources, giving users more details on how their applications are running on premise and in the cloud.“BlueStripe’s enterprise-class solution enables IT professionals to move from monitoring IT at the infrastructure level to gaining visibility into applications at the transaction level,” Mike Neil, Microsoft general manager for the enterprise cloud operations, wrote in a blog post Wednesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft has a gigantic new member of its Surface family of touch-enabled devices called the Surface Hub, a widescreen all-in-one computer that can act as the focal point of conference-room meetings.Announced in January, the Surface Hub will go on sale in September, according to Brian Eskridge, senior manager for the Microsoft Surface Hub. Pre-orders for the computer begin Wednesday.The company is marketing the Surface Hub as a less expensive, and easier to maintain, replacement for the traditional assortment of office audio-video and computer equipment used in today’s conference rooms.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
SAN DIEGO -- Cisco is out to prove it has an SDN for everyone.At its Cisco Live conference, the company unveiled offerings to drive programmability across its product line to address the requirements of enterprises, service providers and mega-scale data centers.The additions are to Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI), Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) EVPN and NX-OS programmable network options. ACI is targeted at the mass market – commercial, enterprise and public sector customers – while BGP EVPN is aimed at service providers and programmable NX-OS at mega-scale data centers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
To encourage diversity in IT, Intel Capital has established a US$125 million investment program targeted at startups run by women and under-represented minorities.The investment program complements a separate $300 million Intel initiative announced in January whose goal is to bring more women and under-represented minorities into its workforce by 2020.Intel already chose four companies, all of which have diverse work forces, for the first round of investments, totaling $16.7 million. Intel Capital has a pipeline of companies it is looking to fund, said Intel’s CEO Brian Krzanich, during a webcast on Tuesday.Intel has talked about plans to change its capital investment program to make it more accessible for women and minorities. Intel wants to be clearer on funding plans and responsive to funding requests from startups run by women and minorities. The company has also established an advisory board of senior Intel employees to help make funding decisions.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The ongoing saga surrounding HP’s ill-fated Autonomy acquisition continued on Tuesday with the company’s announcement that it will pay $100 million in a settlement agreement with PGGM Vermogensbeheer B.V.Dutch PGGM Vermogensbeheer is the lead plaintiff in the securities class action arising from the impairment charge taken by HP following its acquisition of Autonomy.HP acquired the British software maker in 2011 for $11.7 billion. The following year, HP announced the $8.8 million impairment charge as a result of what it called “accounting improprieties, misrepresentations and disclosure failures” in Autonomy’s financial statements. HP shareholders filed suit that same year.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here