These days, researchers at AT&T Labs are focusing on cars, smart homes, wearables and health apps, judging by projects showcased at the company’s Research Day. This year’s exhibit, held Friday in New York, was more practical than previous ones, with many projects being close to release.Here are five interesting projects shown at the event:Connected carsAs your car gets close to home, the garage door automatically opens and the living room lights and air-conditioning system switch on. Convenient, no? AT&T wants to make that a reality with its Drive initiative, which will track a car’s location, and when it’s within a certain distance of the house, trigger certain pre-configured actions. Alternatively, users could manually issue commands through a console in the car. AT&T already offers smart home and security services, and it’ll be up to car makers to implement this vehicle-based home automation service.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
These days, researchers at AT&T Labs are focusing on cars, smart homes, wearables and health apps, judging by projects showcased at the company’s Research Day. This year’s exhibit, held Friday in New York, was more practical than previous ones, with many projects being close to release. Here are five interesting projects shown at the event: Connected cars As your car gets close to home, the garage door automatically opens and the living room lights and air-conditioning system switch on. Convenient, no? AT&T wants to make that a reality with its Drive initiative, which will track a car’s location, and when it’s within a certain distance of the house, trigger certain pre-configured actions. Alternatively, users could manually issue commands through a console in the car. AT&T already offers smart home and security services, and it’ll be up to car makers to implement this vehicle-based home automation service.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
I attended the recent EMC World, which is one of the best events for press and analysts because it tailors its program for us and our specific needs. There was a nice balance of group sessions and one-on-ones. One of the sessions I found fascinating was given by Scott Darling from EMC Ventures about EMC’s venture funding efforts.Not long ago I attended an event in San Jose where Intel’s investment group leader gave a similar talk, so it was interesting to contrast the two groups. Intel is focused on investing in young companies that consume Intel’s products, EMC is interested in investing in young companies that could grow up to replace all or part of them. These are two very different strategies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Rumors of a potential Salesforce acquisition have been flying for over a week now, including the recent suggestion that Microsoft was a likely contender. According to a new report, however, it now looks like that’s not the case.Microsoft considers Salesforce’s almost $50 billion market valuation too high and has no plans to make a bid for the cloud-software company in the near term, Reuters reported late on Thursday, citing unnamed sources. It may, however, reconsider the possibility in the future, the sources reportedly said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Bob Brown/NetworkWorld TIE Startup Con "Unicorn" panel (L-R) Moderator Deepak Sindwani of Bain, WeWork co-founder Miguel McKelvey, Actifio CEO Ash Ashutosh Unicorns are all the rage these days, and we’re not talking about the ones in fantasy stories or on your kids’ bedspreads. The unicorns that people at events like last week’s TIE Startup Con (formerly TIEcon East) are agog over are private companies with valuations of $1 billion or more, such as co-working office space provider WeWork and data virtualization company Actifio, whose founders talked shop during the opening panel at the Cambridge, Mass., get-together for entrepreneurs and investors.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft’s Surface 3 tabletImage by ShutterstockMicrosoft is releasing its new 10-inch tablet that runs on Windows 8.1. With a starting price of $499, the Surface 3 is pitted squarely against Apple’s iPad Air 2 tablet, and is a highly compelling option if you are looking to get a new tablet or replace your iPad.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It’s nice to have the latest kit, but a supercomputer upgrade is about to bring the German Climate Computing Center, DKRZ, a big problem: a shortage of space.Not space for the computer itself, but for the data it generates.DKRZ runs climate models on its supercomputer, projecting how our planet’s weather will evolve over decades or even, in some cases, hundreds of millennia, from the last ice age and into the future.All those models generate huge volumes of data—40 petabytes of so far—that DKRZ archives for future reference, allowing researchers to analyze the models’ output in different ways. The center also offers to store the output from climate models run by other supercomputing centers, forming a world climate studies archive drawn on by researchers around the world.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Uber Technologies has bid for Nokia’s Here mapping business, in a bid to reduce its dependence on Google, according to a newspaper report.Nokia said last month it was considering a possible divestment from Here as it reviewed strategic options for the business. The Finnish company made the announcement on the same day it revealed plans to acquire rival Alcatel-Lucent, which led to speculation that the company would like to sell off Here to focus on its core business of equipment for telecommunications service providers.The ride-hailing company has bid as much as US$3 billion for the business, The New York Times reported Thursday, citing people with knowledge of the offer. The bid is in competition with one from a consortium of German automakers, including BMW, Audi and Mercedes-Benz, which also could have the backing of China’s Baidu, according to the report.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Fitbit, the maker of wearable activity trackers, has filed to go public and revealed some strong sales numbers in its pitch.The company seeks to raise as much as US$100 million, according to a regulatory filing on Thursday, though the amount is subject to change. Fitbit plans to list its stock on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “FIT.”The filing reveals what seems to be a healthy business. The company sold roughly 10.9 million devices in 2014, more than double what it sold in 2013 and more than eight times as many as it sold in 2012.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Two years ago, AMD tried to cut its reliance on the plodding x86 design by building server chips around ARM, the hot architecture driving mobile devices. That hasn’t worked out, and the company is now putting its faith back in x86.At an investor meeting on Wednesday, AMD further delayed its ARM-based server chip code-named Seattle and cut a major project that could have bridged the gap between its x86 and ARM chips. AMD executives also took responsibility for misreading the fast-growing server market, which is dominated by Intel x86 chips.AMD is still developing ARM-based server chips, but instead of mainstream servers, those chips will now be aimed mainly at storage, networking and other infrastructure equipment. That’s a downgrade from AMD’s focus over the last two years to make ARM servers the centerpiece of server rooms.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When it comes to storage, Facebook is learning to do more with less.For backup copies of older content, the social network is building “cold storage” facilities that are designed to keep data available without some of the expensive, power-sucking features found in a traditional data center. Facebook says it’s built in strong protection against data loss while reducing the overhead of additional storage.These are data centers designed to hold more than an exabyte of data—1,000 petabytes—with no redundant electrical systems, while consuming less than one-sixth as much power as a conventional facility. And they store all that data on cheap, consumer-grade media.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
AMD will battle Intel for computer performance supremacy with a new high-speed chip that could be the fastest when it ships.The chip will combine many CPUs and graphics processors in a single package. It will deliver multiple teraflops of performance, and will be targeted at high-end graphics, supercomputing and data modeling.The chip doesn’t have a name yet, and could be released in the next two years, said Forrest Norrod, senior vice president at AMD, during an investor meeting on Wednesday.There is no chip that mixes CPUs and GPUs, and AMD wants to introduce the concept to high-performance computing, Norrod said.For decades, AMD and Intel have been locked in a leapfrogging race, one-upping each other by increasing their chips’ clock speeds. At the height of the chip wars in 2011, AMD claimed a Guinness World Record for achieving the “highest frequency of a computer processor” with its eight-core FX chip, which ran at a clock speed of 8.4GHz. The silliness of the chip battles dissipated soon after, though chip makers still love to parade high-performance chips as a sign of technological progress.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It's going to happen, and happen to you and your organization. No, I'm not a salesguy, otherwise bereft of booth babes at RSA. I'm a systems engineer going back to the days of SNA, DSLAMs, CSU/DSUs, ARCNet over NetWare, and other ancient interconnect. Stuff happens.So, whatchya gonna do? What is your plan?Did you notice how none of this cloud stuff talks to none of this cloud stuff among competing vendors? Even the mighty Open Data Center Alliance can't help you if you don't have a plan, and haven't tried to do a failover successfully.This year, thankfully, we dodged a number of hurricanes and tornadoes. The snows were gruesome, but it was rare to see data centers go down because of it. The cloud usually kept on ticking.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Though Alibaba Group is succeeding in generating more revenue from mobile, it is nevertheless shuffling executives, elevating its chief operating officer Daniel Zhang to CEO in the face of a stock-based compensation program that has depressed profit.Zhang will take over on May 10, and current CEO Jonathan Lu will step down, remaining on Alibaba’s board of directors as vice chairman.The company made the announcement on Thursday, when it reported its first quarter earnings. Alibaba’s profit fell 49 percent year over year to about 2.9 billion yuan (US$476 million). Profit has been weighed down by continued stock awards given to employees since its IPO last year. Without the share-based compensation, Alibaba said its profit would have risen 14 percent.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Three men accused of selling and exporting over $10 million worth of fake Cisco networking equipment into the U.S. have been arrested by U.K. police.The men are believed to have imported and exported counterfeit Cisco equipment through a company website and telesales. The arrests, made last week by the U.K. Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU), were announced Thursday.“Last week’s action saw PIPCU dismantle a criminal gang suspected of cheating the computer industry out of millions of pounds,” said PIPCU Detective Inspector Mick Dodge, in a statement. Using counterfeit products could also seriously harm businesses that use them, since company network integrity could be compromised and significant network outages could occur, Dodge said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Chinese authorities visited an Uber office in the country on Wednesday, just a week after another company office faced a local police raid over its ride-hailing service.Local authorities came to Uber’s office in the Chinese city of Chengdu, Uber confirmed in en email. But the visit was “routine,” it added.“There are no disruptions to the Uber platform, and it’s business as usual,” the company said.Chengdu authorities have opened an investigation against Uber, but its office has not been closed, according to local media. Uber did not elaborate, and Chengdu’s Transportation Committee could not be immediately reached for comment.The visit follows a police raid of an Uber office in the Chinese city of Guangzhou, reportedly for letting private drivers use the ride-hailing service without proper qualifications.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Intel is becoming a little more diverse, just several months after announcing an ambitious plan to add more women and minority workers to its ranks.Since January, roughly 17 percent of Intel’s senior hires were historically under-represented minorities—about double the rate last year. Intel also doubled its senior hiring among women to 33 percent, CEO Brian Krzanich said on Wednesday.More broadly, roughly 41 percent of Intel’s hires for the year so far have been “diverse,” he said, without specifying further. That’s up from about 30 percent a year ago, Krzanich said. He gave the figures during a talk at the Push Tech 2020 Summit in San Francisco, an event focused on diversity issues in the technology industry.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
AMD’s recent chips haven’t rocked Intel’s PC market dominance, but new chips based on the company’s Zen architecture could change the narrative next year.The company on Wednesday shared initial details about the new FX and seventh-generation A-series chips, which will be in desktops and laptops next year. The chips are based on Zen, the brainchild of Jim Keller, a leading iPad and iPhone chip designer at Apple until AMD hired him on 2012.The new AMD chips will battle Intel’s highly anticipated chips code-named Skylake, which will start appearing in tablets, laptops and desktops starting later this year. Intel has called Skylake its most significant chip family of last decade, designed to bring many wireless charging and data transfer features to laptops.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
AMD has been forced to pick its battles, wary of going toe-to-toe with Intel and its mighty manufacturing machine. But AMD chief executive Lisa Su said Wednesday that it’s time for AMD to re-enter the ring and again commit to high-end, premium products.Su said that AMD plans to launch a new high-performance “Zen” core next year that will be marketed as the AMD FX CPU—AMD’s traditional brand for the high-end gaming market. AMD also plans to add cutting-edge high-bandwidth memory to its forthcoming Radeon graphics products, and address new, emerging markets such as the virtual reality space. Su also said she aggressively plans to go after the data center—not a space consumers may care about, but a high-margin business that Intel has used as a profit center for decades.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
AMD hasn’t been competitive in the chip market over the last few years thanks to some poor decisions, but the company is simplifying its product lineup for PCs while getting into some newer, hotter product areas in hopes of reaching consistent profitability by the end of this year.On Tuesday, AMD CEO Lisa Su provided details on the company’s plan to reverse its sagging fortunes. The company will accelerate its move from PCs in an attempt to be a more diversified company that embraces graphics—where it already has a big presence—and other markets such as the Internet of Things, servers and custom chips.AMD still wants to make gains in the PC market, but is also hoping to increase market share in the graphics and custom chip market in 2016, Su said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here