Fave Raves 2015We asked, and IT pros answered. Their favorite tech products keep people productive and enterprise assets running safely and efficiently. Check out the must-haves.SEE ALSO: Security pros name their must-have tools | Go-to storage and disaster recovery products | IT pros in retail are sold on these 6 products | Tech pros' favorite tools increase IT efficiency | To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In antitrust case, EC could have a tough time proving Google abuseA European Commission victory in its antitrust case against Google is not a sure bet. The narrowly defined case, focusing on search results that allegedly favor Google Shopping, indicates that the Commission thought that broad charges would not stick, legal experts say. And to successfully conclude the case, the Commission must show that Google’s actions harm not just competitors, but consumers as well, which could be a stretch.Israeli camera tech may be lens on future Apple productsTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
ALLEN, TX -- Nokia’s $16.6 billion acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent is an example of the industry shifting just as Cisco predicted, its CEO said this week.Cisco CEO John Chambers has said that the IT industry in in for some “brutal” consolidation with perhaps only two or three of the top five companies standing in five years. Alcatel-Lucent may be vanishing if Nokia’s offer to swallow the company up is approved.“The market is playing out just as we expected,” Chambers said during an exclusive interview with Network World at Cisco IT Data Center Day here. “It’s going to be brutal, with some musical chairs. They missed market transitions so now they have to move rapidly.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Internet hasn’t totally invaded the nation’s air traffic control system, but as it does the Federal Aviation Administration faces a growing challenge to make sure the network is locked down secure.The security issues arise as the agency moves from a point-to-point legacy air traffic control structure to a new IP-based system commonly known as NextGen or Next Generation Air Transportation System. NextGen in a nutshell will move the current radar-based air traffic system to one that is based on satellite navigation and automation.+More on Network World: The most magnificent high-tech flying machines+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The term 'disruption' gets tossed about a lot -- too often -- in the technology industry. But it isn't always hype. Backed by nearly half a billion dollars in investment, CEO Scott Dietzen and Pure Storage are hard at work disrupting a big chunk of the enterprise storage market owned by the likes NetApp and EMC, which is no stranger to disruption itself, having turned the tables on a previous generation of storage leaders.I had the opportunity to talk to [EMC CEO] Joe Tucci a couple of months back and I asked him about flash. I'm paraphrasing him here, but he describes a world where there's a role for tape, disk, flash. Do customers still buy that?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
In an effort to boost its mobile offerings, Yahoo is reportedly finishing up a deal to buy Foursquare.Foursquare’s search app can be used to as a local city guide to find shops, restaurants and other points of interest. The startup also created the social networking app Swarm, which allows people to check-in at locations and see if friends are nearby.The deal, which would be worth around US$900 million, has been agreed to and the companies are now working through details, according to sources cited by TechCrunch. However, other sources said they had no knowledge of the deal.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
With the upcoming Surface 3, Microsoft is ending experimentation and bringing back hardware and OS consistency across its line of tablets, hoping that consumers and businesses will find a lot to like.The Surface 3 is radically different than its predecessor, Surface 2, which had an ARM processor and the tablet-specific Windows RT OS. The Surface 3 sports a full Windows 8.1 OS and an Intel x86 processor, which is the combination available in most PCs and laptop-tablet hybrids today.The Surface 3, which has a 10.8-inch screen, is a thinner and lighter version of Surface Pro 3 and can offer longer battery life, said Brian Eskridge, senior manager for Microsoft’s Surface products.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Automated teller machines have been around for decades, but surprisingly few changes have been made to the technologies that run them. That’s about to change.NCR on Wednesday rolled out new software that will transform ATMs to use the cloud with Android and a thin-client model of computing. The result, it says, will be a big boost in security as well as dramatically lower costs.Most of the world’s 2.2 million or so ATMs today are essentially thick-client PCs, and the vast majority of them—as much as 75 percent—run Windows XP, NCR says. It’s perhaps no wonder that security is an issue, yet banks typically must still administer updates manually to each ATM in their network.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple has purchased LinX Imaging, an Israeli company that makes multi-lens cameras for smartphones, tablets and ultrabooks.A distinguishing feature of LinX’s cameras are their small size. Its cameras “are nearly half the height of a standard mobile camera,” according to a news release from 2014 discussing the company’s latest imaging technology. LinX’s cameras can capture images that rival the quality of pictures taken with high-end SLR cameras, the release said.Smaller components could help Apple since the company is known for slimming down its hardware. For example, Apple’s new MacBook replaces the traditional USB Type-B ports and power jack with a single USB Type-C port to cut down on size.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Nokia has said it has entered into a memorandum of understanding to acquire Alcatel-Lucent in a deal that would value the French telecommunications equipment maker at $16.5 billion.The Finnish company is also considering a possible divestment from its Here mapping and navigation business.On Tuesday, Nokia said it was in talks for a merger with Alcatel-Lucent. Under the all-share deal announced Wednesday, Nokia will make an offer for all of the equity securities issued by Alcatel-Lucent, through a public exchange offer in France and the U.S., on the basis of 0.55 of a new Nokia share for every Alcatel-Lucent share.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
To hear some tell it, the world will soon be abuzz with small drones that inspect bridges, monitor pipelines, survey crops and help assess damage for insurance claims.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
The PC business enjoyed a bit of a revival last year as companies replaced older systems running Windows XP. Those upgrades are mostly done now, and the slower market has hit Intel’s financial results.The chip maker reported first-quarter revenue of $12.8 billion on Tuesday, flat from the same quarter last year and a bit lower than financial analysts had been expecting, according to a poll by Thomson Reuters.Intel blamed lower than expected sales of business PCs but said the decline was offset by strong sales of servers and other data center products. The company had already cut its forecast for the quarter last month.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Expanding from its roots as a MySQL software vendor, Percona has also added the MongoDB to the roster of open source databases it supports, thanks to its acquisition of open source database software specialist Tokutek.With the purchase, “we’re becoming more of a database performance business rather than one focusing on a particular type of technology like MySQL,” said Jim Doherty, Percona chief marketing officer. “We’re broadening the scope of our technologies to better serve our customers and the market.”Tokutek offered a commercially supported distribution of the open source MongoDB NoSQL database, TokuMX. Percona will continue to offer TokuMX alongside its own enterprise-grade edition of the open source MySQL database, called Percona Server, which is a competitor to Oracle’s own MySQL commercial distribution.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft has been nothing if not voracious this year when it comes to acquiring promising young companies, and on Tuesday it snatched up yet another: Datazen Software, which focuses on mobile business intelligence.Datazen’s technology will complement Microsoft’s cloud-based Power BI business-analytics service with mobile BI capabilities that are designed for on-premises implementation and optimized for SQL Server, Kamal Hathi, Microsoft’s partner director for cloud and enterprise, wrote in a blog post announcing the news.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Over the past year, Facebook has thrown some interesting wrenches into the gears of the traditional networking industry. While mainstream thinking is to keep most details of your network operations under wraps, Facebook has been freely sharing its innovations. For a company whose business model is built on people sharing personal information, I suppose this makes perfect sense.What makes even more sense is the return Facebook gets on their openness. Infrastructure VP Jason Taylor estimates that over the past three years Facebook has saved some $2 billion by letting the members of its Open Compute Project have a go at its design specifications.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Yesterday we posted a collection of anecdotes from IT pros telling of the times they have witnessed – or have claimed to have witnessed – damage done by electrostatic discharge (ESD).Only this morning did I remember this semi-famous YouTube video – seen 2 million-plus times – and that I did a post about it a few years back:
There was considerable debate in 2013 about whether the guy in the video was shocking himself on purpose or for the laughs. So I emailed him and asked. He insisted it was legit.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Former Office chief DelBene returns to Microsoft to head strategyKurt DelBene, who left Microsoft as president of its Office group in 2013, is coming back to Microsoft as executive vice president of corporate strategy and planning, reporting to CEO Satya Nadella. After leaving Microsoft last time, he did a stint helping the federal government recover from the bungled Healthcare.gov launch, and has been a partner in a venture capital firm. He’ll be on the lookout for acquisition targets for Microsoft.Turing manuscript sold for more than $1 millionTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent are in advanced merger talks, the companies confirmed Tuesday following media speculation that a deal was in the works.The talks could still fall apart, but a deal is on the table that would see Nokia acquire Alcatel-Lucent in a stock swap, the companies said.A merger would give the combined entity a broader product portfolio and greater scale, but would bring its own challenges.It makes sense for Nokia, a mobile broadband specialist, to merge with Alcatel-Lucent, which has a strong position in fixed networks, according to Mark Newman, chief research officer of Ovum’s telecoms research business.As mobile and fixed networks become increasingly integrated, not having the latter is becoming a disadvantage for Nokia, Newman said. The growing worldwide popularity of smartphones has increased the focus on mobile networks, but fixed broadband networks are still needed to deliver high-resolution video content and to provide backhaul for Wi-Fi networks in homes. The integration of Alcatel-Lucent’s fixed offering with the best parts of the two companies’ respective mobile offerings could in that regard be a boon for end-users, he said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
RadioShack will press on with its plan to sell its customer data, despite opposition from a number of U.S. states.The company has asked a bankruptcy court for approval for a second auction of its assets, which includes the consumer data.The state of Texas, which is leading the action by the states, has opposed the sale of personally identifiable information (PII), citing the online and in-store privacy policies of the bankrupt consumer electronics retailer.The state claimed that it found from a RadioShack deposition that PII of 117 million customers could be involved. But it learned later from testimony in court that the number of customer files offered for sale might be reduced to around 67 million.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A 56-page notebook manuscript by Alan Turing, the English mathematician considered to be the father of modern computer science, was sold at auction Monday for US$1.025 million.
The manuscript is almost certainly the most extensive by Turing, in his own hand, in existence, experts at Bonhams auction house said. Turing apparently wrote in the notebook in 1942 when he was working in Bletchley Park, England, trying to break German military code.
The bidding took place at Bonhams on Madison Avenue in New York, with about 50 bidders present in the auction room and lines open for bids coming in by phone and Internet. The winning bid was from a private collector who did not wish to be identified.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here