Cisco Monday named sales executive Chuck Robbins to be its next CEO, replacing John Chambers, who held the title for 20 years.
The change takes effect July 26. Chamber will become executive chairman of the company.
MORE: How Chambers has kept high profile over the years | Critical Milestones in Cisco's HistoryTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Facing little work in his regular construction job, Li Gengming has become a big supporter of Uber Technologies in China.He is just one several private drivers who have signed up with the ride-hailing service in Beijing. Each day, Li picks up around 7 or 8 customers, taking about 200 yuan (US$32) from the rides altogether.“There are not enough taxis in the city, so there’s demand,” he said on Monday. “Uber is also much cheaper than taxis.”In China, however, not everyone is a fan of the service. Last Thursday, police reportedly raided Uber’s office in the Chinese city of Guangzhou, for letting private drivers operate without the needed qualifications, according to local media 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.CudaSign for SharePointKey features – CudaSign for Sharepoint speeds up and optimizes workflows by sending documents directly from Sharepoint to your CudaSign account without the need to download files or log into CudaSign. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Gamers will be able to overclock and add more horsepower to HP’s signature gaming desktop without worrying about invalidating their warranties.The Envy Phoenix Desktop is among a number of newly redesigned desktops announced by HP on Monday. The towers have a premium look with an aluminum finish on the chassis, where HP had previously used plastic.For the first time, HP is offering Intel Core i5 and i7 chips that can be overclocked with its top-line Envy Phoenix desktop PC. That means gamers can increase computer performance by raising the CPU clock speed, which can be handy when running demanding games. These chips are often incorporated into home-built PCs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Terry Johnston/Flickr
Just as I was deciding between going with an Apple Watch tattoo or one of the old Fantasy Island TV show star Tattoo on my wrist, comes confirmation from Apple that ink on your wrist indeed can much up heart rate readings on your new Apple timepiece. Oh well, back to the iPhone 7 rumor rollup for me...To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Politics and technology: An uneasy relationshipImage by Happyme22/WikipediaThomas Jefferson was an inventor and Herbert Hoover was an engineer, but other presidents, candidates, and politicians have had a more, shall we say, fraught relationship with technology. Ronald Reagan, for instance, joked into a live microphone about "outlawing Russia forever" at the height of the Cold War in 1984. But with technology becoming an ever more important part of our daily lives, so too will some of the inevitable slew of political gaffes we'll encounter over the next 18 months of campaigning come in tech form. And we here at ITworld promise to keep track of them all! Here's a bunch to get you started; we'll update as more arise, and feel free to let us know if you read about one you think should be included.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Take a quick tour through the C-suite of any major corporation today, and there’s a good chance you’ll see some titles that weren’t there a few years ago: chief data officer, chief data scientist, chief analytics officer, to name just a few.Data is the element they all share in common, and it’s affecting more than just the executive ranks.In the business world’s headlong rush to collect as much data about as many things as possible as quickly as it can, a question has been left for later: How do you turn those massive volumes into practical value? Turns out, “later” is now, and there’s a crushing shortage of specialized data scientists. Few companies, meanwhile, even have a plan for bolstering their data talent.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft will soon own the company that provided the stylus and touch display interface technology for its Surface Pro 3, according to a media report.The company has agreed to acquire Israel-based N-Trig for $30 million, according to The Wall Street Journal.Microsoft already had a minority stake of 6 percent in N-trig, but apparently had been in negotiations to acquire the company for months. In February, Israel's Haaretz newspaper said N-Trig was valued at less than $10 million, while Calcalist -- which originally broke the story of Microsoft looking to acquire the company -- reported that Microsoft would pay at least $200 million.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft wants you to abandon your preconceived notions of a laptop and embrace the Surface as more than just a tablet. In fact, Microsoft wants you to ditch your cumbersome notebook and one-dimensional tablet -- presumably your iPad -- and replace them with one device: the Surface 3. But even with an adjustable kickstand and full Windows 8.1, can the Surface 3 compete with a traditional notebook, or tablet for that matter?In 2012, the answer would have been -- and often was -- a resounding "No." However, the Surface line has come a long way in delivering the performance and usability you would need in order to dump your notebook. And Microsoft is not alone in its hybrid efforts. The trend is for notebook and tablet manufacturers to throw everything against the wall to see what sticks. As a result, the hybrid market is booming, and we've seen a slew of tablets that do a great impression of a notebook, and vice versa.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
There's an inherent problem with Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites of the kind used for remote observation, such as border security and disaster monitoring.The problem is that because of their low orbit—they're a few hundred miles above earth's surface, rather than 22,300 miles as found with Geostationary (GEO) satellites—they can't see their ground station at all times.They can see the earth more clearly, so they are good for monitoring; they are cheap to deploy because they don't need such a big rocket to get it up there; and they don't suffer from as much packet latency as GEO satellites because the distances are shorter.However, they aren't visible from any given point on earth at all times—they're not stationary, and they're low-down.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Federal Aviation Administration this week said it had completed the momentous replacement of 40-year old main computer systems that control air traffic in the US.Known as En Route Automation Modernization (ERAM), the system is expected to increase air traffic flow, improve automated navigation and strengthen aircraft conflict detection services, with the end result being increased safety and less flight congestion.+More on Network World: Graphene is hot, hot, hot+The FAA said the first of 20 installations of the ERAM system went online at Salt Lake City Center in March 2012 and the final installation was completed last month at New York Center.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A school technology project funded by UNESCO and the Chinese government will help Liberia’s educational system recover from the Ebola virus outbreak, which has led to more than 10,000 deaths in West Africa.The US$700,000 “Harnessing Technology for Quality Teacher Training” project is part of a US$8 million funding agreement signed in March 2012 between UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) and the Chinese government that was established to support teacher education and development. The funding agreement is intended to help African nations achieve the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple says that iOS 8, released to the public in September, can now be found on 81% of iPhones, iPads and iPod touch devices accessing the Apple Store. That's up from 77% from Apple's March report and up from 68% in January.The iOS 7 edition of Apple's software for iPhones and iPads now accounts for just 17% of devices, with 2% on even older versions, according to Apple on its developer page. Some have balked at moving to iOS 8 because of the space required to download it, while others have been spooked by buggy releases. Apple
But iOS 8 has a lot going for it, including that it's compatible with devices as far back as iPhone 4S and iPad 2, from 2011. What's more, people are buying the new iPhone 6 and 6S in droves, with Apple selling 61.2 million units during the the first three months of 2015, way more than the 44 million iPhones it shipped during the same quarter last year.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft says its HoloLens head-mounted computer can bring robots and gadgets based on Raspberry Pi 2 to life as they are being developed.
HoloLens is an augmented-reality headset that lets users interact with 3D objects that show up as floating images, much like holographic projections. By blending computer-generated images with a user's view of the real world, Microsoft wants to change the way we interact with the environment.
Microsoft also believes HoloLens can bring a new level of interactivity to enthusiasts making gadgets, robots or appliances using developer boards like the US$35 Raspberry Pi 2. The HoloLens could help makers envision how a gadget would look or how a robot would behave.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Sony’s CEO Kazuo Hirai has some difficult decisions to make as consumers continue to shun the company’s smartphones, resulting in continued losses.The company on Thursday reported a net loss of ¥126 billion (US$1.1 billion) for its latest fiscal year, which ended on March 31. Year-on-year, Sony’s revenue increased by 5.8 percent to ¥8.2 trillion.Not surprisingly, Sony’s Mobile Communications unit, which develops the Xperia smartphones, gets part of the blame for another year in the red.The future of the mobile division has been very much up in question since a new head of Sony Mobile Communications was appointed in October last year. Sony has announced layoffs and pulled the plug on the PlayStation Mobile platform, but hasn’t been able to turn around its fortunes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Amazon has acquired ClusterK, a developer of software that helps companies run mission-critical applications on spare cloud compute capacity sold by Amazon Web Services.A spokeswoman for AWS confirmed the acquisition, but did not provide further details.Spot instances are spare Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) instances for which users name their price. The price for the spot instances can vary in real-time depending on demand and supply. The instance will run until the spot price exceeds the bid or the user terminates it.This is in contrast with AWS On-Demand instances that let users pay for compute capacity by the hour without long-term commitments, or Reserved instances, which provide capacity reservation. AWS has positioned spot instances as the option to use when customers have flexibility in when their applications can run.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple has warned that an European probe into its tax payments in Ireland could lead to the company having to pay disputed past taxes covering up to 10 years.The company said the impact could be “material,” but did not provide an estimate.The European Commission began a probe last year into a tax deal between Ireland and Apple to ascertain whether the taxes the company paid complied with European Union rules on state aid.The investigation would address rulings by Irish tax authorities on the calculation of the taxable profit allocated to the Irish branches of Apple Sales International and of Apple Operations Europe, to find out if the rulings involved state aid that benefited the company.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Designed by Apple in California—that nod to its home state has appeared on Apple products for years, but increasingly, Apple’s gadgets are being sold far from its Cupertino headquarters.In the first three months of this year, iPhone sales in China surpassed those in the U.S. for the first time. Also for the first time, China jumped ahead of Europe as Apple’s biggest overall market after the Americas.Can the day be far off when Apple sells more in China than it does at home? The idea isn’t as far fetched as you might think.Thanks to the dominant role the iPhone plays in Apple’s revenue and the considerable untapped demand among China’s burgeoning middle class, sales aren’t showing any signs of stopping.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Less than a week after reporting that Microsoft’s enterprise cloud business is currently on an annual run rate of US$6.3 billion, CEO Satya Nadella says the company’s goal is to increase that figure to $20 billion by fiscal year 2018.“That’s the cloud that we want to build,” he said Wednesday at the company’s briefing for financial analysts during its Build conference in San Francisco. “It’s leading with some of our SaaS applications and having the IaaS, PaaS capability and our servers, which are the edge of our cloud. That’s our vision. That’s why we believe that we get to participate in future growth.”Run rate is simply quarterly revenue presented on an annualized basis. Microsoft’s cloud business includes its Azure platform and cloud versions of Office 365 and Dynamics CRM.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A report that Salesforce.com is entertaining takeover offers whipped up a storm of speculation Wednesday, as analysts and other observers mulled the possibility and what it could mean for the enterprise software market.“It would require a massive deal for that to happen,” noted Ray Wang, founder and principal analyst with Constellation Research. “Salesforce still has a lot of growth ahead.”Spurred by the approach of a potential acquirer, Salesforce has hired financial advisers to help it field such offers, according to the Bloomberg To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here