Microsoft has acquired LiveLoop and its technology for sharing PowerPoint presentations online more easily.The software giant didn’t reveal any financial details, but confirmed the deal via email saying the team from LiveLoop will help build great collaboration across Office applications, as part of the company’s strategy to reinvent productivity.Beyond that, MIcrosoft isn’t revealing what it plans to do with LiveLoop. The acquisition, however, fits well with its plan to make its applications and services available on as many devices as possible irrespective of the OS.LiveLoop’s technology converts PowerPoint files into URLs that can be viewed from computers and smartphones without installing any software, according to the company’s website.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A federal court has dismissed a lawsuit against Apple over the amount of storage available in mobile devices that come with iOS 8.The district court in San Jose, California, threw out the proposed class-action suit on Wednesday after Apple filed a motion saying the plaintiffs failed to back up their arguments. The case was dismissed with prejudice, meaning the plaintiffs can’t sue Apple again for the same thing.In the suit, filed last December, Paul Orshan and Christopher Endara charged that Apple misled consumers about how much of the storage on iPhones and iPads was taken up by the OS. For example, they said a 16GB iPhone 6 really had just 13GB of capacity available.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple has asked a federal court to dismiss a lawsuit accusing it of misleading customers about the amount of storage available in mobile devices that come with iOS 8.Apple filed a motion for dismissal Wednesday at the district court in San Jose, California, saying the plaintiffs failed to back up their arguments. It wants the case dismissed with prejudice, which would prevent the plaintiffs from suing Apple again for the same thing. Judge Edward Davila will now have to rule on the motion.In the suit, filed last December, Paul Orshan and Christopher Endara charged that Apple misled consumers about how much of the storage on iPhones and iPads was taken up by the OS. For example, they said a 16GB iPhone 6 really had just 13GB of capacity available.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Internet of Things is mostly about achieving greater scale, but in the case of an upcoming demonstration project, it will show how electrical grids can work at a smaller scale.The testbed announced Thursday by the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) will bring together software and other components for microgrids, which link together local, alternative sources of power and energy storage. Those sources, including rooftop solar panels and wind turbines, can keep providing power even if the main grid goes down.Most power grids were built for producing energy in one place and distributing it to users over a wide area. They’re not all equipped to manage or take advantage of small power sources out at the edge of the grid. The IIC, which is trying to get big industries and tech vendors on the same page about the Internet of Things, formed the testbed to promote work on IoT components for microgrids.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Several state consumer protection agencies in the U.S. have joined the state of Texas in objecting in bankruptcy court to the proposed sale by RadioShack of personal information of its customers.In a filing Wednesday, the state of Texas said it had received support from 21 governmental consumer protection entities to its objection last week to the planned sale of personally identifiable information (PII) of 117 million RadioShack customers.The state of Texas had earlier objected to the sale citing both the in-store and online privacy policies of the consumer electronics retailer. “All versions of the privacy policy contain an unequivocal provision that consumer PII will not be sold,” state officials said in a filing to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Foxconn Technology Group isn’t satisfied with just making iPhones, and plans to break into the information security market through an upcoming joint venture.On Thursday, the Taiwanese manufacturing giant announced it would set up in May a joint venture with Korea’s SK C&C, an IT services provider, to develop information security systems for the Chinese market.The venture will be based at one of Foxconn’s factories in China, where it has hired over a million workers to assemble electronics for vendors that include Apple, Microsoft and Sony.Electronics manufacturing has long been the core business of the company. Business from Apple is estimated to contribute 40 to 50 percent of Foxconn’s revenue.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The emerging USB 3.1 standard is set to reach desktops as hardware companies release motherboards with ports that can transfer data two times faster than the previous USB technology.MSI on Wednesday announced a 970A SLI Krait motherboard that will support the AMD processors and the USB 3.1 protocol. Motherboards with USB 3.1 ports have also been released by Gigabyte, ASRock and Asus, but those boards support Intel chips.USB 3.1 can shuffle data between a host device and peripheral at 10Gbps (bits per second), which is two times faster than USB 3.0. USB 3.1 is also generating excitement for the reversible Type-C cable, which is the same on both ends so users don’t have to worry about plug orientation.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple has reportedly acquired database company FoundationDB, a move that would allow the company to improve the underpinnings of its existing services and also lay the groundwork for an Internet of Things (IoT) expansion.Asked to confirm the deal, first reported by TechCrunch, Apple responded by saying that it from time to time buys smaller companies but doesn’t discuss its plans. On its part, FoundationDB said that it will no longer offer downloads of its database, and that “we have made the decision to evolve our company mission.”Apple could use FoundationDB’s technology to improve the performance of its own infrastructure. The reported acquisition comes just a couple of months after FoundationDB announced a major upgrade of its flagship NoSQL database. The database was redesigned to handle millions of random writes per second and make it a better fit for IoT systems.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google wants to let you pay bills inside GmailGoogle has a project in the works to let Gmail users not only receive bills but pay them from within the mail service, re/code reports. The news site viewed details of the project, called Pony Express, and said it is scheduled to start in the fourth quarter.Microsoft packages Azure for Web and mobile developersMicrosoft brought out an integrated set of Azure-based services on Tuesday that are meant to ease the process of developing applications that run in the cloud. The new Azure App Service could help organizations build Web applications or mobile applications that connect to a variety of data sources that reside in the cloud or in internal IT systems.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The grass isn't always greenerFew can withstand the siren song of the latest and greatest gear, the deep allure of a new and shiny gadget—but that doesn’t mean that tossing your old computer in the trash and picking up a fresh PC is necessarily a smart idea.While gamers and hardcore video editors always stand to gain extra performance out of fresh firepower, more casual users might be better off saving their cash and sticking with the PC you already own. Here’s why.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Researchers at Stanford University have come up with a new way to make chips and solar panels using gallium arsenide, a semiconductor that beats silicon in several important areas but is typically too expensive for widespread use.For several decades, silicon has been the go-to semiconductor for electronics. It’s abundant and cheap, and manufacturing processes are well understood, but it’s not always the best choice.Electrons move faster through gallium arsenide than through silicon, which makes it better suited for chips handling data at very high speeds or high-frequency radio signals. Solar panels based on gallium arsenide are more efficient than silicon panels at converting light to electricity.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Hutchison Whampoa has agreed to acquire U.K. mobile operator O2 for a price that could top US$15 billion, giving a company that already owns one major carrier an even bigger share of the British market.The deal, which has been in the works at least since January, continues a trend of consolidation among European service providers. Hutchison already owns Three, one of the U.K.’s biggest carriers. Together, Three and O2 would form the country’s number one mobile operator by subscribers, according to news reports.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The transformation of Network IT into a collaborative and agile team that is positioned to respond to rapid changes in technology is underway, according to Network World’s 2015 State of the Network survey. And IT decision-makers are optimistic that adopting advanced networking technologies will have a positive impact on IT operations.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
All-in-one boxes are hot in data centers, and the concept is starting to expand into backup and recovery.A Silicon Valley startup called Rubrik will start shipping a system later this year that combines software for backup, recovery and deduplication with commodity hardware for storage capacity and networking. Rubrik will sell the appliance in standard configurations so customers can just add more boxes as their needs grow.It’s an alternative to the way backup and recovery systems are typically built today, with specialized backup software from one vendor combined with deduplication from another provider and installed on storage hardware from yet another company, said Rubrik co-founder and CEO Bipul Sinha. Like makers of so-called hyperconverged computing, storage and networking platforms, Rubrik can make life easier for IT shops, Sinha said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Enterprises that wish to enjoy the benefits of cloud computing but still prefer to keep computational resources in-house should take a look at a new cloud system offered by Hewlett-Packard.A preconfigured package of hardware and software, the HP Helion Rack “is designed to help enterprises deploy private clouds much faster,” said Ken Won, director of HP Helion marketing.A private cloud allows an organization to offer cloud services, such as virtual machines, on internal networks. For example, employees could use a private cloud to provision their own IT resources. Or, a company may want to set up a cloud computing infrastructure itself to run cloud services on behalf of their customers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A Dutch utility is inviting five families to use radiator-sized servers to heat their living rooms for free.In a trial organized by local utility Eneco, Nerdalize will install its server radiators in five homes, using them to deliver cloud computing services to its clients.The households using the heater could save €400 (about US$440) on their annual heating bill, said Eneco spokesman Marcel van Dun .Nerdalize pays for the electricity, but doesn’t have to deal with the space and cooling costs of conventional cloud and co-location data centers, allowing it to sell its services for 30 to 55 percent less than more conventional cloud-providers, it said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
With Android and iOS dominating the tablet market, Mozilla’s Firefox OS hasn’t had much of a look in. It’s now getting a bit of help from ARM rival Imagination Technologies, which has ported a version of Firefox to a prototype tablet based on its MIPS chip architecture.The tablet is a reference design built by China’s Ingenic and it’s designed to be priced under $100. It can run either Android 4.4, known as KitKat, or an experimental version of the Firefox OS, Imagination said in a blog post.It’s designed to help Imagination and Mozilla target the market for very low cost tablets sold in emerging markets like Brazil and India.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Former AMD CEO Rory Read has seemingly stepped down the executive ladder by taking a job at Dell to lead global commercial sales, but some analysts think the move could give him a career boost.Read will be responsible for sales planning and execution as president of worldwide commercial sales and chief operating officer of the company’s Enterprise Solutions Group. He will report to Marius Haas, who is Dell’s Chief Commercial Officer and President of the Enterprise Solutions Group.Read was AMD’s CEO from August 2011 until October last year, when he stepped down and was replaced by Lisa Su. Read took aggressive steps to turn around AMD, replacing top management, revamping the product roadmap, cutting staff, and entering new markets outside PCs like custom chips. Under his leadership, AMD delivered a few quarters of profits, but remained financially unstable.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When Apple launched the new MacBook Pro earlier this month, the company claimed its performance would be double that of the previous model.As it turns out, that wasn't an exaggeration.Benchmark tests with Blackmagic software on a new 13-in. MacBook Pro with Retina display revealed it can pin the needle at more than 1,400MBps for writes and more than 1,300MBps for reads.
The machine that Computerworld tested had a 512GB PCIe M.2 form-factor flash module ($1,799) and an Intel dual-core i7 2.9GHz processor, 8GB of (1866MHz LPDDR3) RAM, and was running OS X 10.10.2 (Yosemite).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A group of big name vendors including Cisco, Microsoft, Dell, Intel, Broadcom, Juniper and Arista Networks this week created a consortium to address switch faceplate bandwidth density and airflow constraints caused by increasing networking speeds.The Consortium for On-Board Optics (COBO) is promoting collaboration in defining industry standards that permit relocating the optical module from the faceplate to inside the networking equipment where economic and environmental benefits can be achieved.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here