A new survey is attempting to kick-start a rivalry between New York and Silicon Valley, claiming tomorrow’s innovative tech companies will pick east over west to set up shop.Out of 318 executives surveyed, more picked New York over Silicon Valley as the superior place to start a business, due to factors such as growing interest from venture capitalists, support from city and state government, and the considerable talent pool from Wall Street firms and Fortune 500 companies in the city.The survey was conducted by a New York-based data analysis company, 1010data, so we should probably take the findings with a grain of salt. But it claims the executives surveyed, taken from its customer base, were from companies throughout the U.S.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
University of Utah researchers are touting an engineering breakthrough that they say could have supercomputers working at the speed of light within three years and other computers including mobile devices doing the same sometime after that.The University's Menon Research Group, led by Associate Professor Rajesh Menon, specializes in the intersection of nanotechnology and optics, and has a good track record of commercializing its work. MORE: 10 cool network and computing research projectsTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Reports surfaced last week that Cisco may be close to buying hyperconvergence start-up Nutanix.The speculation is based on an article in Storage Newsletter by Jared Rinderer, an analyst at Equity Capital Research Group. In it, Rinderer says outgoing Cisco CEO John Chambers is looking to leave with a bang – one last big acquisition to stick it to partners-turned rivals EMC and VMware.Nutanix makes integrated compute/storage, networking, virtualization and management products for the data center that run on x86 hardware. The privately held company is recognized as the leader in the hyperconverged infrastructure market, which was recently entered by VMware with its EVO:RAIL product.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Amazon Web Services is hoping better management tools will convince enterprises to move more applications to the cloud, but getting their internal management processes right is even more important than anything the vendor can offer.On Monday, Amazon updated its OpsWorks management platform to work with Windows Server, and published a new API that lets IT staff start thousands of so-called spot instances with one request.Step by step, cloud providers like Amazon are adding new features to make the IT management capabilities they offer to their customers more efficient and all-encompassing. As enterprises move more and larger IT systems to the cloud, advanced management functionality is becoming increasingly important.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A startup company with some very big-name backers has just come out of stealth mode and revealed a business plan that could turn bitcoin mining—and even the economics of selling chips and smartphones—on its head.The first thing to know about the company, which calls itself 21, is that it has designed an embedded chip for bitcoin mining—the process of running complex algorithms that are required to solve an equation to generate, or mine, new coins in the digital currency.Bitcoin mining initially was done by individuals on home PCs, but the work has gradually been taken over by mining collectives and large compute clusters that are now needed to solve the increasingly complex Bitcoin algorithms.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It's not exactly news that Facebook and (especially) Google dominate a large portion of what happens online. Add in a few other major players—Apple, Amazon, Microsoft maybe, you know them all—and the supposedly wide-open internet increasingly seems like the private playground and captive market.Google's "buy" button?
Two unrelated events last week brought that reality home for me. First, and most importantly, the Wall Street Journal reported that Google is planning to add a "buy" button to its ubiquitous search results pages. Google hasn't confirmed the report, and the Journal says the buttons will appear only on a small percentage of mobile devices (not desktop Web browsers), at least at first. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple, which has been working hard to bolster its mapping technology since ditching Google Maps in 2012, has acquired Coherent Navigation, a startup offering a high-accuracy GPS navigation service.Coherent’s navigation system is used in the Iridium satellite network, according to the LinkedIn profile of Paul Lego, who was CEO of the company before going to work for Apple. Coherent, which was founded in 2008 and is based in the San Francisco area, counts the U.S. government as a customer and had been aiming its technology at the mining, construction, energy and agriculture industries. Coherent had fewer than 10 employees, according to its LinkedIn page, which states that the company “has ceased operations.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Remember that road surface being tested in the Netherlands that acted as a giant solar panel converting solar energy into electricity? Well, guess what? It actually worked.Six months into the test, the engineers say they've generated 3,000kwH of power from the 70-meter bike path test track. That's enough power to run a one-person household for a year, and more than expected of the project, according to SolaRoad, the company behind the experiment.Energy-neutral mobility
Data centers are heavy users of electricity, and SolaRoad's better-than-expected electricity generation will be interesting news for those designing data centers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
I’ve made a decent to large part of my living for more than 20 years learning about how to fix problems and then trying to tell others how to follow suit. And this last week has been among my highest in terms of frustration in using computers in my entire life. But, per my modus operandi, I have truth born from a bloody fight to share with you.A few weeks ago, I tried to deal with the mystery of my 2011 Mac mini taking forever to start up and be ready to use by switching to an external SSD drive with both FireWire 800 and USB 3.0 built in. I documented that here, and people have a lot of good opinions about my choice. Some thought I should have cracked open the Mac mini and put in a new drive; others thought that I should’ve used Thunderbolt; and others that I should have bought a new computer.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.Atlantis HyperScale CX12Key features: Atlantis HyperScale hyper-converged appliances are turnkey solutions that offer the freedom to choose server hardware and hypervisor, and deliver 12TB all-flash performance at 50%-90% lower cost than traditional storage or competitive hyper-converged appliances. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has weighed in on the contentious issue of the proposed sale of consumer data by bankrupt retailer RadioShack, recommending that a model be adopted based on a settlement the agency reached with a failed online toy retailer.The state of Texas, which is leading action by several U.S. states, has opposed the sale of personally identifiable information by RadioShack, citing the online and in-store privacy policies of the bankrupt consumer electronics retailer.Apple and some wireless carriers have opposed the sale of some of the customer data, which it said was collected from their respective customers and was governed by their privacy policies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
ARM’s next major CPU design could be here sooner than you think.The company is in the advanced stages of development with its next high-end processor, which will succeed the Cortex-A72 and could reach smartphone and tablet makers by the end of next year, chip analyst Linley Gwennap said in a research note this week.ARM’s chip designs are used in most of the world’s smartphones and tablets, and its speedy development work reflects the intense pressure gadget makers are under to get new products to market quickly. It also reflects heightened competition from Intel.ARM hasn’t discussed the new chip publically and even its name it not yet known. But the company seems to be accelerating the pace at which it gets new processor designs to market.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The first self-driving cars built by Google are heading to public roads for the first time.A “few” of the prototype vehicles Google has developed will appear on the streets of Mountain View, California, this summer, the company said Friday. Until now, those vehicles have been tested and driven on private property.“Safety drivers” will go along for the ride, but they’ll only take control “if needed,” using a removable steering wheel and brake and accelerator pedals, according to the company.The initial prototype Google showed in May of last year lacked manual controls and only had a power button, but the company promised that later versions would include these components.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google is ready to put its prototype self-driving cars on the roadGoogle said Friday that its prototype self-driving car will leave the test track and hit the local roads around Mountain View, California, this summer. Speed is capped at 25 miles per hour, and safety drivers will be onboard, a blog post stressed, with a removable steering wheel, accelerator pedal, and brake pedal so they can take over driving if necessary.Upstarts Xiaomi, Micromax pressure established smartphone playersSmartphone manufacturers Micromax in India and Xiaomi in China are shaking up the high-growth low end of the market with their latest launches, and even if the devices don’t go on sale around the world, their impact will be felt globally. The impressive specs and aggressive pricing of the Micromax Yu Yuphoria and the Xiaomi Mi 4i are putting pressure on phone makers Samsung Electronics and Motorola Mobility to step up their efforts in the segment for sub-$200 smartphones, as they reset customer expectations.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Seoul is trying to put one of the world’s highest concentrations of electric vehicles (EVs) on its roads with a project that would let drivers charge their vehicles in residential parking lots and other everyday locations.The city is planning to give out electric charger cables fitted with RFID readers that would allow drivers to recharge their batteries through standard power outlets at 100,000 locations—a huge increase from current numbers.Central to the project is a charger cable called the EV-Line, developed by Gyeonggi-based Power Cube. The cable has an RFID reader than can scan an RFID tag attached to power outlets in parking lots for apartments, offices and elsewhere. It also has a 3G wireless module.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Simplicity is an oft-cited goal in the world of enterprise software, but by most accounts, it’s rarely achieved. Percolate is hoping to change that, at least for marketing professionals.The startup says its namesake software platform offers an all-in-one alternative to the hodgepodge of smaller marketing tools used by many companies today.Percolate’s software is designed to act as a central hub for myriad aspects of the marketing function, including campaign planning and collaboration, storage of all files and brand-identity elements, production of marketing and advertising content, multichannel distribution, analytics and customer interaction.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
After taking over the reins, Alibaba Group’s new CEO has made global expansion a top priority for the Chinese e-commerce giant.Alibaba will heavily invest in “new and existing overseas operations,” said Daniel Zhang in a speech on Wednesday to employees, an excerpt of which was posted on the group’s website.Zhang, 43, was the company’s chief operating officer until he replaced CEO Jonathan Lu last week, as the group said it was looking to tap new younger talent.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
John Chambers got a little feisty and a little sentimental in his last earnings call as Cisco’s CEO on Wednesday, dismissing a criticism of the company as “garbage” and saying he hopes to be working half time by the fall because “the hunting season’s coming up.”“It’s been fun, it’s been challenging, and I’m very humbled by having this chance for 20 years,” he said.Cisco said last week that Chambers will be replaced as CEO in July by Chuck Robbins. He’ll stay on as executive chairman of the board.“Let me first say very crisply: Chuck is the CEO. Period. He’ll make the decisions,” Chambers said. He’ll be an advisor to Robbins and be involved “where he wants me to be.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
HP’s PC group doesn’t want to be a “screwdriver” PC maker making look-alike laptops and desktops, and it is focusing heavily on design and new innovations as it prepares for a spin-off into a separate company.The company is focusing on cutting the plastic and adding metal and new colors to the chassis of its laptops and desktops. HP also is expanding its hardware options for consumers, businesses and gamers, and focusing on a future when virtual reality will be an important part of the computing experience.PC makers need to update the devices because customers are paying more attention to how devices look and function, said Mike Nash, vice president for consumer PC and solutions at HP’s Printing and Personal Systems Group.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here