Samsung is getting serious about Internet of Things (IoT). Following up on its 2014 purchase of startup SmartThings, Samsung has just unveiled a set of modules called ARTIK, which it hopes companies will adopt in order to build IoT into their products.SmartThings is an app-controlled remote control for a smart home.ARTIK
Three tiny circuit boards make up the ARTIK collection. They're about the "size of a ladybug," says Don Clark, writing about the technology in the Wall Street Journal. The smallest is 12 millimeters on each side.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The very term "cloud" refers to any computing resource not in your current building. There is cloud storage, computing, and various applications ranging from the success of Salesforce online apps to the map you used on your phone (or watch) this morning.The Internet is now synonymous with the The Cloud. Let's dream about the cloud a little bit.Your JourneyYour body token was read by an RFID scanner as you walked in the door to the (train station, airport, building complex entrance) where it authorized you to go inside, noted you have $20 to spend on food in the (canteen, restaurant, company cafeteria), and that you can use the (company self-driving car, network terminals, network itself to Grade 51, doors to all red/green/black restrooms with unlimited toilet paper) and are permitted to exit any door.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
China’s government is pressing for faster Internet access speeds and lower prices, two moves that aim to boost the number of its citizens going online.On Friday, all three of China’s telecommunications operators announced plans to lower broadband and data plan costs for consumers. This came a month after China’s premier Li Keqiang said the country needed to do more to expand Internet access.China has the world’s largest Internet-connected citizenry at over 649 million users, but that’s still less than half of the country’s population. And average Internet speeds in China are 3.4 megabits per second(Mbps), far lower than the U.S. where average access speeds reach 11.1 Mbps, according to Akamai Technologies.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
A lopsided vote in the U.S. House of Representatives this week to rein in the National Security Agency’s domestic telephone records dragnet won muted praise, with many supporters calling on Congress to take stronger action.Critics, meanwhile, slammed the USA Freedom Act for extending the section of the antiterrorism Patriot Act that the NSA has used to collect the telephone records of nearly all U.S. residents. The bill, passed by a 338-88 vote late Wednesday, would end the NSA’s bulk collection of domestic telephone records, while allowing the agency to continue to collect phone and other business records in a more targeted manner.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
U.S. House votes to end NSA bulk data collectionThe dragnet collection of U.S. phone records by the National Security Agency exposed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden nearly two years ago is finally on its way to being a relic of history. The U.S. House of Representatives voted 338 to 88 in favor of a bill that prohibits the practice. However, the USA Freedom Act does extend an expiring provision in the anti-terrorism Patriot Act that allows the NSA to collect U.S. telephone and business records, but with a more limited scope.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
The U.S. House of Representatives has voted to rein in the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of the country’s telephone records, while allowing the agency to engage in more targeted surveillance.The House voted 338-88 late Wednesday to approve the USA Freedom Act, a bill intended to end the NSA’s mass collection of telephone metadata within the U.S. But the bill would extend an expiring provision in the anti-terrorism Patriot Act that allows the NSA to collect U.S. telephone and business records, but with a more limited scope.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Nuage Networks this week released an application designed to better integrate physical and virtual networks.The company’s Virtualized Services Assurance Platform (VSAP) correlates the operation of virtual overlays and physical underlays in software defined networks on behalf of applications and workloads. Nuage says it employs standard protocols to achieve this instead of proprietary approaches offered by its SDN competitors that require specific hardware.+MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: Alcatel-Lucent SDN company puts pedal to bare metal+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
First smartphone with iris unlocking bows in JapanForget fingerprints: Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo has just unveiled the first smartphone that looks deep into your eyes to recognize you and let you access your device. The Arrows NX F-04G is made by Fujitsu. Its iris authentication technology can also be used to authorize mobile payments via specifications set by the FIDO (Fast IDentity Online) Alliance, which is backed by Microsoft, Google, PayPal and others.Russian cybergroup is said to be planning bank attacksTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Japanese mobile carrier NTT DoCoMo has released a smartphone that can be unlocked with a mere glance.The Arrows NX F-04G, unveiled Wednesday in Tokyo, is billed as the first commercialized smartphone with iris authentication technology, which can also be used to authorize mobile payments.Iris scanners make it easier to unlock phones than keying in a PIN, which can be forgotten or stolen. Authentication takes a second or two, a bit slower than fingerprint authentication, and is based on patterns in the iris that are unique to each individual.The device works with authentication specifications set by the FIDO (Fast IDentity Online) Alliance, which is supported by Microsoft, Google, PayPal and others.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The next time you watch “House of Cards” on Netflix, think about the impact you might be having on the environment.As the Internet powers ever more services, from digital video to on-demand food delivery, energy use in data centers will rise. To reduce their impact on the environment, companies like Apple, Google and Facebook have taken big steps to power their operations with renewable energy sources like hydro, geothermal and solar.But despite those efforts, the growth of streaming video from the likes of Netflix, Hulu and Google’s YouTube presents a pesky challenge to the companies’ efforts to go green, according to a report Tuesday from Greenpeace.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Here's a question: who remembers the pre-broadband days of web? You'd use a voice line, acoustic coupler, and a modem, right?Well, believe it or not, huge swaths of the global population might be about to revert back to this old method for sending data. Only this time it will be over mobile 2G networks instead of dial-up copper twisted-pair—and you won't have to wrap your acoustic coupler in a pillow to prevent stray noise corrupting the data transmission.Modulated sound wave
Startup Pangea Communications, presenting at Disrupt NY, reckons that the answer to a lack of data infrastructure for consumers in places such as Africa is to simply convert data into a modulated sound wave and then send the audio down existing 2G pipes to and from mobile devices. Any mobile device would work.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission is facing a new, novel challenge to its recent net neutrality rules: a communications law firm is arguing the regulations aren’t strong enough.The petition from Washington, D.C., law firm Smithwick and Belendiuk is a new wrinkle for the FCC, after a spate of lawsuits from broadband providers and trade groups challenging the rules for creating too many regulations.The FCC’s net neutrality rules, passed Feb. 26, fall short in several ways, firm partner Arthur Belendiuk said. The shortcomings are largely related to the agency’s decision to forbear from applying traditional telecommunication regulations to broadband even though it reclassified broadband as a regulated telecom service, he said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Mobile carriers Verizon Wireless and Sprint will pay a combined US$158 million[m] to settle complaints by two U.S. government agencies that they billed millions[m] of customers for unauthorized, third-pay text messaging services.Verizon will pay $90 million[m] and Sprint $68 million[m] to settle the so-called bill cramming complaints brought by the Federal Communications Commission and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.Along with other recent federal and state actions targeting bill cramming, the nation’s four largest mobile phone carriers have agreed to pay $353 million[m] in penalties and restitution in recent months, with more than $267 million[m] set aside to be returned to affected customers, the FCC said on Tuesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In a move designed to bolster its content offerings – particularly in video delivered to mobile devices – Verizon is shelling out some $4.4 billion for AOL.From a Verizon statement released with the hour:
Verizon’s acquisition further drives its LTE wireless video and OTT (over-the-top video) strategy. The agreement will also support and connect to Verizon’s IoT (Internet of Things) platforms, creating a growth platform from wireless to IoT for consumers and businesses.AOL is a leader in the digital content and advertising platforms space, and the combination of Verizon and AOL creates a scaled, mobile-first platform offering directly targeted at what eMarketer estimates is a nearly $600 billion global advertising industry. AOL’s key assets include its subscription business; its premium portfolio of global content brands, including The Huffington Post, TechCrunch, Engadget, MAKERS and AOL.com, as well as its millennial-focused OTT, Emmy-nominated original video content; and its programmatic advertising platforms.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google says its self-driving cars can make driving safer because they pay better attention to the road than humans do—though there have been dings along the way.While smartphones and other in-car distractions can fatally hinder a driver’s concentration, “a self-driving car has people beat on this dimension of road safety,” says Chris Urmson, director of Google’s self-driving car program. With 360-degree visibility, the newest sensors in Google’s fleet can keep track of other vehicles, cyclists, and pedestrians to a distance of nearly two football fields, he wrote in a post on Medium on Monday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
IBM’s Andy Thurai didn’t quite put the words into former RSA CTO Deepak Taneja’s mouth, but did prompt him by asking at the start of a TIE Startup Con panel in Cambridge, Mass., earlier this month whether Internet of Things security is a “time bomb ready to explode.”Taneja responded that technology is advancing at a rate that’s outstripping enterprises’ ability to secure internal and cloud resources, and then along comes IoT in the form of all sorts of networked sensors and gadgets. “Organizations aren’t spending that much on security. It’s increasing, but it’s not enough and IoT only makes it worse,’ he said. “So it is a time bomb. “To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
With projections of more than 5 billion connected devices by the end of this year and growth to 50 billion by 2020, the challenges facing the Internet of Things (IoT) include a lack of standardization, security, integration, battery life, and rapid evolution. Wi-Fi, in its 16th year, is getting ready for IoT and will perhaps make the most suitable network for the technology.IoT may be a recent buzzword, but the quest for connected things is old. Very old. Caller ID, connected Coca-Cola vending machines, M2M, smart meters, RFID, AutoID, etc. The whole appeal of connected things has been efficiency and experience. And the desire for experience and efficiency is even greater today. We live in an experience era and have no patience. We expect 'great experience' and 'efficiency' around us. Only IoT can enable that. IoT is nothing but an intelligent and invisible network of things that communicate directly or indirectly with each other or the internet to enable experience and efficiency.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here