The next step in the evolution of wireless WAN communications - known as 5G - is about to hit the front pages, and for good reason: it will complete the evolution of cellular from wireline augmentation to wireline replacement, and strategically from mobile-first to mobile-only.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
This is a Prime Day deal good for today only, and reserved for Amazon Prime members (or those with a free trial: sign up here). The Roomba 652 Vacuuming Robot provides a thorough clean at the push of a button. Preset Roomba to clean when it’s convenient for you, so you can keep up with everyday mess. The Roomba 652 is discounted a 33%, so you save a whopping $125 if you buy it today. If you've always wanted a robot to clean your house, see this deal on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Amazon Prime members save a generous 35% ($70) on the highly rated Bose SoundLink Mini Bluetooth Speaker II. This is a Prime Day deal, so good for today only until they run out of stock. The SoundLink Mini Bluetooth speaker II delivers full sound with dramatically deeper lows than you’d expect from a speaker that fits in the palm of your hand. And because it’s wireless and ultra-compact, it’s easy to take anywhere. The built-in speakerphone lets you take calls out loud with clear sound. And voice prompts make Bluetooth pairing easy. Plays unplugged for hours and can be charged from most USB power sources. Head over to Amazon and take advantage of this Prime Day deal. If you're not a Prime member, you can sign up for a free trial here to unlock the deals. To see our picks for today's best Prime Day deals, read our guide (on our sister site PCWorld.com) to the best deals: "Amazon Prime Day 2017: We pick the best electronics, PC, and mobile deals"To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
This solar charger from Anker delivers the fastest possible charge up to 2.1 amps under direct sunlight. 15 watt SunPower solar array is provides enough power to charge two devices simultaneously. Industrial-strength PET polymer faced solar panels are sewn into a rugged polyester canvas for weather-resistant outdoor durability. Clip it to your backpack, or attach to your tent or a tree. The charger currently averages 4.3 out of 5 stars from over 340 people on Amazon (read reviews), where its typical list price of $79.99 has been reduced 48% to $41.99. See this deal on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It seems more vendors are looking beyond the x86 architecture for the big leaps in performance needed to power things like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. Google and IBM have their processor projects, Nvidia and AMD are positioning their GPUs as an alternative, and now Japan’s NEC has announced a vector processor accelerates that data processing by more than a factor of 50 compared to the Apache Spark cluster-computing framework. + Also on Network World: NVM Express spec updated for data-intensive operations +
The company said its vector processor, called the Aurora Vector Engine, leverages “sparse matrix” data structures to accelerate processor performance in executing machine learning tasks. Vector-based computers are basically supercomputers built specifically to handle large scientific and engineering calculations. Cray used to build them in previous decades before shifting to x86 processors. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The SanDisk Ultra USB 3.0 Flash Drive takes the wait out of moving, sharing or backing up big files. Transfer a full-length movie in seconds with speeds up to 100MB/s. The included SanDisk SecureAccess software provides 128-bit AES encryption and password protection to keep your private files private. SanDisk's Ultra CZ48 flash drive with 32GB capacity is listed on Amazon for 28% off, so you can pick one up for a little over $14. See this deal on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
I’ve been reading and writing daily about the Internet of Things (IoT) for about a month, and I have not found ground truth. I’m not new to the field, but now focused on IoT I am trying to find a relative measure of the importance of IoT developments.One of the definitions of ground truth in the Oxford Dictionary is:
“Information obtained by direct observation of a real system, as opposed to a model or simulation; a set of data that is considered to be accurate and reliable, and is used to calibrate a model, algorithm, procedure, etc.”
Calibrating the development of the IoT with ground truths that match the 20 billion to 50 billion forecasted devices requires a departure into the leap-of-faith lane. This is not pessimism, but a lack of published information that probably does not exist outside of research papers. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
We all know the flagship metrics by which Software-as-a-Service businesses are gauged — Customer Acquisition Cost, Customer Lifetime Value, churn and the like. Understanding these metrics is key to measuring the health and value of a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business, and if you’re the operator of a SaaS company, you should have a deep understanding of what each of these metrics means, how to measure them for your business and whether your metrics are healthy or indicate potential issues.Every company is different, but a combination of common knowledge and some business-specific reasoning should give you a sense of whether your SaaS metrics jive with where you want your business to head.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Wi-Fi networks of today were architected more than a decade ago. That even predates the iPhone, which ushered in the era of mobility. These old Wi-Fi architectures aren’t ready to handle the vast number of mobile devices that want to connect to wireless networks today.What’s more, these networks aren’t able to put any focus on what users experience when they are connected.The old generation of Wi-Fi networks are a hindrance to businesses that want to increase customer engagement over ubiquitous mobile devices. For example, restaurants and retail stores would like to capture customers’ attention by offering real-time discounts or coupons when customers enter or walk by the establishment. Doing so requires the use of several technologies that old wireless networks just can’t support at scale.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
This is another one of those geeky stories that actually has some significance. The Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) Express group has issued version 1.3 of its SSD spec, with emphasis on performance around analytics and virtualization. NVMe is a communications interface/protocol designed specifically for solid-state drives (SSDs) because the old standard, SATA, was a relic of the hard disk days and nowhere near fast enough to provide proper throughput for flash memory. The NVM Express organization consists of storage and flash vendors such as Intel, Samsung, Sandisk, Dell EM, and Seagate. NVMe works with the M.2 and PCI Express buses, which are considerably faster than SATA. For example, it can handle 65,000 queues instead of one like in SATA, which is idea for a server environment where there is a lot of I/O. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Consumer Physics is all about enabling people to get a better handle on their field, receiving dock or production line. The company offers the SCiO pocket-sized spectrometer, which enables farmers and agricultural organizations to analyze the makeup of the forage that dairy cows are grazing.In the past there was a dual barrier to really taking action on this data—spectrometers were big and clunky and the data was disconnected from operational systems. But Consumer Physics is closing that loop by making the device smaller and connecting it to a smartphone application and the cloud.+ Also on Network World: John Deere leads the way with IoT-driven precision farming +
So, given this Internet of Things play, it is particularly interesting to hear that Cargill, a huge multinational in the food, agriculture, financial, and industrial products and services space is partnering with Consumer Physics to deliver a new joint offering: Reveal. Reveal is a real-time forage analysis service that puts the formerly hard to attain Cargill forage lab analysis in the palm of a hand.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Earlier this month, Cisco held a media and press event to launch its intent-based networking solution. To no surprise, its user event, Cisco Live 2017 was all about the network as Cisco looks to get customers to think more broadly about the role of the network in digital transformation.Brandon Butler did a great follow-up post to mine that talked about why intent-based networking is a big deal. He called out a number of benefits, including streamlined operations and better security.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The internet has of course been wildly successful over the last thirty years as more and more functionality has moved online. A large part of this success has been due to two key protocols that have allowed the internet to scale relatively gracefully: HTTP which stands for Hypertext Transmission Protocol, and DNS which stands for Domain Name System. HTTP is the protocol used to send data between a web browser running on a laptop or mobile phone and the web page or application that it is communicating with, which is running on a server in the network. No matter where the web page is located or who develops the web browser, it is guaranteed that they will be able to interoperate because they all use the standardized HTTP protocol to communicate. DNS is equally fundamental as it is the protocol which allows end user devices to translate a given human readable URL such as “www.google.com” to a machine usable IP address that the network can make sense of.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
This week at the Cisco Live conference in Las Vegas, Cisco made a couple of big IoT platform announcements. The networking giant showed off upgrades to its Cisco Jasper platform with Jasper Control Center 7.0, and it introduced Cisco Kinetic (and discussed a partnership with IBM).+ Also on Network World: Cisco upgrades one IoT platform and announces another +
The new IoT platforms seem great, but do they really address the elephant in the IoT room: interoperability? As far as I can tell, the Cisco platforms offer improved ways to manage IoT devices in a wide variety of use cases. But they don’t deal with what many observers call the biggest challenge facing the Internet of Things. As Altimeter puts it, “IoT requires standards to enable horizontal platforms that are communicable, operable, and programmable across devices, regardless of make, model, manufacturer, or industry.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Treatment will be brought to the patients and patient data will be centralized, “turning hospitals into data centers,” a telco equipment maker says in a recent report.Ericsson, in its 2017 Mobility report (PDF), published this month, says patient treatment will, in the future, no longer be performed in hospitals located far from patients’ homes, but performed remotely through new 5G wireless radio.+ Also on Network World: Reliability, not principally speed, will drive 5G +
Wearables will be among the tools used for keeping an eye on folks’ health and dishing out medication. Diagnosis will be accomplished through online consultations, and robots will remotely execute surgeries at nearby healthcare clinics rather than far-off hospitals.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The upside of life as an IT contractor is alluring. You get to be your own boss, accept only the jobs you want, and work flexible hours. With each assignment comes the opportunity to learn new skills and gain exposure to different environments.But there are obvious sacrifices – job security and paid vacations, for starters. As an IT contractor, you’re also often responsible for your own benefits (healthcare, retirement), paying taxes, and marketing yourself for the next gig.Tech pros who successfully balance the pros and cons of contracting play an important role in the IT world. They provide manpower when workloads spike and can bring key expertise or niche skills to a team. In recent years, companies have increasingly relied on a contingent workforce to augment their full-time staff. According to new survey data from IT staffing and services firm TEKsystems, 26% of IT hiring managers expect to increase headcount for contingent workers in the second half of 2017 (another 46% report that headcount will remain the same for temporary workers, and 13% say it will decrease).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The mobile internet was a simpler infrastructure to design than the one that will be needed for the smart city, smart grid, smart health and smart transportation. Smartphones are homogeneous with relatively powerful processors and batteries driving transmission and reception. Designed to bring the internet to smartphones, 3G and 4G networks could be simpler. But IoT devices will span a range of heteroneous designs.The range of heterogeneity of the IoT is defined today by autonomous vehicles, which have thousands of sensors powered by high-capacity batteries that frequently communicate at high speed and low latency to simple sensors. Those sensors are powered by ambient power sources, sending a few infrequent bytes to communicate state (on/off, temperature, vibration amplitude and phase, etc.).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Cisco Live kicked off this week in Las Vegas. The annual event is where Cisco shows off its latest and greatest innovations, such as the intent-based networking system Cisco announced last week.However, it’s also a forum for many of Cisco’s technology partners to show off their wares in the World of Solutions Expo Hall. One of the more interesting vendors there was ThousandEyes, which demonstrated their network monitoring solution, as well as their new Unified Communications monitoring and management capabilities that provide visibility into the performance and connectivity across Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS), on premises and hybrid VoIP deployments. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Following Cisco's launch last week of its Digital Network Architecture (DNA), which delivers intent-based networking solutions and services, this week’s Cisco Live event in Las Vegas was highly focused on networking. Only a few announcements were made, but the Internet of Things (IoT) made the cut.Cisco’s approach to IoT has been difficult to grasp because it crosses so many divisions. Its largest IoT unit, Cisco Jasper, is exclusively focused on cellular-connected devices.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Take your workout to the next level with Bose SoundSport Pulse wireless headphones. A built-in heart rate sensor makes it easy to track your performance without missing a beat of your music. The sensor measures your heart rate directly from your ear, delivering a highly accurate reading without interfering with your workout. And while you’re on the move, SoundSport Pulse wireless headphones stay secure. The StayHear+ Pulse tips are designed for stability even during intense workouts. Connect to your device easily with Bluetooth and NFC pairing. The Bose SoundSport Pulse headphones average 4 out of 5 stars from over 1,900 people on Amazon (read recent reviews here), where their typical list price of $199 has been reduced to $179. See this deal on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here