Camera chip could turn phones into 3D scannersCaltech researchers have developed a camera chip that could let you use your smartphone to take 3D scans of an object, then send the results to a 3D printer to duplicate the thing. The device works by shining perfectly aligned beams of light on a targeted object. It detects subtle differences in the light that is reflected back from that object and uses those differences to build a digital 3D image.U.S.—and IBM—are surging in mobile patents raceThe days are gone when the U.S. was the notable laggard behind Europe in mobile technology: a new report on mobile patents won last year show a sizable increase in the U.S. but a decrease in Europe. And while Samsung still has the biggest mobile patent portfolio, IBM is gaining on it with the most new mobile patentTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The operator of a revenge porn website has been sentenced to 18 years in prison, in what is being described as the first criminal prosecution in the U.S. of the operator of a website of this type.Kevin Christopher Bollaert, 27, of San Diego, was found guilty in February this year on six counts of extortion and 21 counts of identity theft, California’s Attorney General Kamala D. Harris said in a statement. He was arrested in December 2013.U.S. regulators have started clamping down on revenge porn, which generally consists of the posting of nude photos and other explicit content of users without their permission, and then blackmailing them for payment to take it down.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The operator of a revenge porn website has been sentenced to 18 years in prison, in what is being described as the first criminal prosecution in the U.S. of the operator of a website of this type.Kevin Christopher Bollaert, 27, of San Diego, was found guilty in February this year on six counts of extortion and 21 counts of identity theft, California’s Attorney General Kamala D. Harris said in a statement. He was arrested in December 2013.+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Meet the White House's new open-source happy IT Director +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
After two U.S. women were charged this week with conspiring to build bombs in support of terrorist groups, a U.S. senator wants two publications that include bomb-making instructions deleted from the Internet.Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, called for the 44-year-old Anarchist Cookbook and al-Qaeda’s Inspire Magazine to be banished from the Web, notwithstanding the difficulty of removing material from the entire Internet or the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment. It’s not the first time that Feinstein has tried to ban publications that instruct would-be bomb-makers.“I am particularly struck that the alleged bombers made use of online bomb-making guides like the Anarchist Cookbook and Inspire Magazine,” Feinstein, a veteran member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement. “These documents are not, in my view, protected by the First Amendment and should be removed from the Internet.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Uber poaches Facebook’s Joe Sullivan for security chiefIn an indication that the ride-hailing app company is aware that it had better get security right, Uber Technologies has hired away Facebook’s head of security, Joe Sullivan, to be its first CSO. Sullivan has been fairly high profile as Facebook’s CSO for the last five years, and besides time spent at PayPal and eBay, he has a background prosecuting cyber crime, re/code reports. Sullivan has his work cut out for him, with Uber facing challenges ranging from data privacy to its riders’ physical security.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Gilat Satcom has launched a portfolio of satellite services for rural Africa that will require subscribers to pay as little as US$1.00 per month.The Village Island portfolio of services will allow rural dwellers in Africa to access voice-over-IP (VoIP), cellular, video over IP and Wi-Fi connections via private satellite networks.Gilat said Village Island is being supported by governments, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), network operators, churches and major Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and is aimed at specified groups in rural areas.The initiative comes as the high cost of communications and Internet connectivity in the region prevent many rural Africans from using telecom and Web services.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
East Africa’s One Area Network initiative is being expanded to include data and mobile money services, a move expected to result in lower costs for subscribers.The One Area Network initiative, launched in January, has led to a decline in mobile phone communication rates across borders in East Africa.The East African Community (EAC) last year agreed that all calls between member countries should be billed as though they were local. The agreement led to a pact between Safaricom, MTN and Airtel Uganda that enables subscribers to receive calls for free while in Uganda and pay a flat rate of $0.11 for calls to other East African countries including Tanzania and Burundi.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
For years we've been obsessed with increasing chip processing power. Intel's i386, launched in 1985, followed by the i486 in 1989, introduced economical multitasking and number crunching to the enterprise.In the following years, the chips got more powerful still, culminating with today's hundred-dollar smartphone threatening the PC.It could be argued that we've reached an acceptable level of multitasking and personal computing power for cost. We've found it in small-form-factor smartphones, and it may be all we really need now.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Obama authorizes sanctions against hackersThe White House has added another weapon to the U.S. government’s arsenal in its fight against hackers, with an executive order signed by President Obama authorizing sanctions against hackers who harm critical infrastructure, or expose personal information and trade secrets. The order allows the government to block a person or organization’s access to U.S. financial institutions and any property they have in the country.Facebook Riffs on Snapchat with video appTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Last March, a very satisfied user of the Honeywell Wi-Fi Thermostat left a product review on Amazon.com that shed some light on an unexpected benefit of the smart home – revenge.The reviewer wrote that his wife had left him, and then moved her new lover into the home they once shared, which now featured the Honeywell Wi-Fi thermostat. The jilted ex-husband could still control the thermostat through the mobile app installed on his smartphone, so he used it to make the new couple's lives a little less happily ever after:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A Chinese Internet administrator blasted Google on Thursday, after the U.S. search giant decided to stop recognizing digital certificates issued by the group following a security lapse.“The decision that Google has made is unacceptable and unintelligible,” China’s Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) said in an online posting.Google’s decision means that its Chrome browser could end up clashing with sites served by the Chinese Internet agency.On Wednesday, Google explained the move in an update to an earlier blog posting. The company is still concerned by the way CNNIC issued a certificate to an IT company based in Egypt that misused it in a botched security test.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Opponents of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission’s new net neutrality rules aren’t giving up, with a conservative advocacy group saying it has collected more than 540,000 signatures on a petition asking Congress to overturn the agency’s action.American Commitment, a group with connections to Republican billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, delivered those petitions to Congress this week. Each petition went to the three members of Congress, one representative and two senators, representing the person signing the letter, American Commitment said.“The landslide 2014 elections made crystal clear that the American people reject larger, more intrusive government,” the Web form leading to the letters says in part. “But President [Barack] Obama reacted by moving even further left, ignoring the fact the Federal Communications Commission is supposed to be an independent agency, and openly demanding the FCC take the most radical action imaginable: reducing the Internet to a ‘public utility,’ imposing sweeping new taxes and destroying private investment, competition, and innovation while putting bureaucrats firmly in control.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Amazon might be on to the killer app for restocking toilet paper from the privacy of your home.Amazon Prime members can now request an invite to get their hands on “Dash Button,” a small oval-shaped device to be placed strategically around the home like drawers, cupboards ... or the bathroom wall. Push its button, and the device will instantly purchase an item of the user’s choosing. Currently there’s more than a dozen buttons for buying Tide laundry detergent, Bounty paper towels and Gillette shaving products. Users can set up the device to send them any applicable item they want; a link on Amazon’s site refers users to more than 250 Dash button products including moisturizers, dog food, and paper towels.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Arista Networks this week decoupled the pricing of its software and switch hardware as a consumption option for cloud providers.Arista is offering its EOS operating system as a separate subscription-based license from its switch hardware. The hardware is priced under a separate bundle but its purchase requires an EOS subscription.Essentially what Arista has done is priced its hardware and software separately and offered EOS as a subscription-based license vs. a perpetual license. It’s a new consumption model for Arista kit that the vendor says is more aligned with the way cloud providers purchase and operate the products.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Silk Road investigators charged with stealing bitcoinVirtual evidence is no less tempting to a corrupt agent than cash or drugs found in a raid: Two former US federal agents face charges related to stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of bitcoin in the course of investigating the Silk Road marketplace. A former DEA special agent, who worked undercover to cultivate a relationship with recently convicted Ross Ulbricht, allegedly used online personas to engage in complex bitcoin transactions to steal both from the government and the targets of the investigation. And a former Secret Service agent who served as a computer forensics expert allegedly took more than $800,000 in digital currency that he gained control of during the Silk Road investigation—and put it in his account at now-defunct bitcoin exchange Mt Gox.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Internet of Everything elseWhen most people talk about the Internet of Things, they’re talking about Nest, wearables, and other devices. But there are all sorts of “things” that can be monitored and tracked with network monitoring software. Paessler created the list.Jackpot ValuesKrijco Casinos & Leisure monitors the jackpot values in our casinos. "This gives us insight on how the value is built up and its hit frequency. We also use the live values to show them on our internal narrowcasting system,” says Gerard Feijth, Manager ICT.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Looking for an Internet of Things (IoT) project to play around with? Chicago-originating Konekt's Dash is a mobile network development kit for building IoT devices for cellular networks, rather than what is says is restrictive Wi-Fi.The company is looking for funding right now at Kickstarter.The platformA global SIM card with a data plan plus a hardware kit is included in the package. The PCB-mounted hardware consists of a micro-controller, cellular modem, and battery management tools. It functions somewhat like an Arduino.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A year after China began tightening regulations around Bitcoin, the virtual currency is still thriving in the country, albeit on the fringes, according to its largest exchange.Bitcoin prices may have declined, but Chinese buyers are still trading the currency in high volumes with the help of BTC China, an exchange that witnessed the boom days back in 2013, only to see the bust following the Chinese government’s announcement, in December of that year, that banks would be banned from trading in bitcoin.This eventually led to a clampdown that scared customers away from the currency, and threw a wrench in the business of local exchanges, including BTC China.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
To some degree, open source is already present throughout the Internet of Things value chain. Cloud apps that collect and analyze data are heavily dependent on open source software and standards, for example.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Facebook annoyed and puzzled many people last year when it forced them to download its Messenger app for chats. Its reasons for doing so are now clearer: Messenger is becoming a beast of an app, with its own links to outside businesses and software apart from Facebook’s main site.At the company’s F8 developer conference this week in San Francisco, executives pulled back the curtain on the new Messenger. It’s now a storefront and a platform for other mobile apps, which can be downloaded from within Messenger and integrated into people’s Messenger chats. There are more than 40 outside app partners already aiming to spice up users’ conversations with things like personalized GIFs, tools to turn your texts into songs, and even sports animations from ESPN. The apps can be accessed by hitting the “...” button on the Messenger compose screen.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here