The industry’s largest collaboration show, Enterprise Connect, gets underway this week in Orlando, Florida. The show has become the place for vendors to show off the latest and greatest, and the week started off with Cisco announcing some new products and updates to existing ones. Cisco’s collaboration business has been on quite a roll of late, as it has released a number of new solutions, including the game-changing Spark Board, which was unveiled earlier this year. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Carnegie Mellon University this week launches its third annual online capture the flag (CTF) contest aimed at introducing middle and high school students to the world of IT security — and just maybe attract some of them into a segment of the job market hungry for talent.Anyone can register to play the free picoCTF online hacking contest beginning on March 31 and ending April 14, but only U.S. students in grades 6-12 are eligible for some $30K in prizes. CMU says about 30,000 people have partaken in picoCTF, a game in which participants must reverse engineer, hack, decrypt and do whatever it takes to solve a challenge.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
You have until Friday, March 31 at 10am pacific time to register for a chance to buy tickets to Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference, which takes place at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose from June 5-9.Oh, and make sure you have $1,600 to spare for a ticket in case you do get selected. You must be a member of the Apple Developer Program or Apple Developer Enterprise Program as of February 16, 2017 to register for the lottery. Last year, those who were picked in the lottery started getting notifications within a few days of the lottery deadline.MORE: You'll see right through this iPhone 8 concept designTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
At your company, who’s responsible for what technology is bought and implemented?It’s a critical question, with deep implications for how your company leverages technology to get things done and drive competitive advantage. A recent survey from Spiceworks takes a stab at answering this question. But while the survey offers a number of insights, it leaves out perhaps the most important constituency in the procurement process.+ Also on Network World: Struggling with shadow IT? Maybe re-evaluate the IT department +
As you can surmise from the title—ITDMs and BDMs: Tech Purchase Superheroes—the Spiceworks survey was taken mostly from the standpoint of vendors trying to sell you hardware, software and services. It focuses on teasing out the differences between two key groups: IT decision makers (ITDMs) and business decision makers (BDMs). Amidst perceptions that the balance of power is shifting from IT to the business, the survey attempts to find out if the two groups work together in a smooth, well-oiled process or if they struggle to coordinate separate agendas. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple has made iOS 10.3 publicly available and the software update for its iPhones and iPads is packed with a Find-My-AirPod feature as well as a slew of Siri, CarPlay and other additions.You probably know the routine by now: Head over to the General icon on your device, then hit Software Update and you'll be given the option to grab iOS 10.3 (a bit over 611MB on my iPhone) either over the air or via iTunes on a Mac or Windows PC. Unless you want to wait it out a bit and make sure Apple hasn't mucked anything up. Bob Brown/NetworkWorld
Bob Brown/NetworkWorld
Not to be overlooked in iOS 10.3, even though it works behind the scenes, is support for the Apple File System (APFS) that the company introduced last year at its Worldwide Developers Conference. APFS is designed to work better with flash storage and has improved encryption support.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Actually, he tweets nothing.President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, plays a key role in the administration and is featured in a pair of big news headlines just today – his leading a special task force featuring tech industry luminaries, and his pending testimony before a Senate committee investigating Russian meddling in November’s election.Kushner’s father-in-law would be tweeting up a storm on such a busy day.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Intel's spanking new high-capacity Optane SSD is cool, but drives from other storage vendors based on the 3D Xpoint technology could be coming later this year.Micron will start shipping its 3D Xpoint memory technology -- branded QuantX -- later this year, which will go into SSDs offered by storage makers. The company made that announcement during an earnings call on Friday.Intel and Micron co-developed 3D Xpoint. Intel says Optane is significantly faster and could replace conventional SSDs and DRAM in the coming years.But unlike Intel, Micron is not interested in making its own Optane-like storage. The company is licensing its 3D Xpoint technology to other storage makers. Micron's QuantX will also be available the form of DDR-style memory, the company has said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Augmented reality (AR) is on the verge of entering the mainstream. Apple is preparing to introduce an AR product, not because it invented AR, but because the technology, long under investigation by academic researchers and Google is ready.Commercial prototypes Microsoft Hololens and Google Tango already have publicly demonstrated the potential of and have created enthusiasm for AR.But consumer electronics products we use every day are rarely invented and materialize right away on retails’ shelves. Often, well-understood technologies like AR, virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence (AI) have been proven in theory and built as prototypes in researchers labs but await practical applications and cheap hardware.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
IT administrators managing fleets of Skype for Business users could have an easier time diagnosing and fixing problems. Microsoft unveiled the beta of a new Call Analytics Dashboard on Monday, which is supposed to provide admins with a diagnosis of issues that users are having on a call.There are several different issues that could arise and cause a degradation in call quality, which is why these analytics are helpful. If a user complains about a call only working intermittently, it can be hard to diagnose whether that’s an issue with their network connection, headset, Microsoft’s infrastructure, or something else.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Will that new couch fit in my living room? How about that table, is it too big for the space?
In the old days you would have to break out a tape measure to see if furniture fits or just imagine it’s coloring in the room. But thanks to advancements in augmented reality, you can now see exactly it will look like in your home before you buy it.
Home décor retailer Pottery Barn has released a new app named 3D Room View that will implant a virtual three-dimensional image select furniture pieces on a smartphone or tablet screen, allowing the customer to get an augmented reality view of what the couch, seat, table, lamp or chair will look like in the room.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
No doubt many a soccer fan has been inspired to pick up a fancy call center package or some sweet, sweet SDN technology after catching a San Jose Earthquakes soccer match at Avaya Stadium, but the company found its brand splattered all over headlines it would rather have avoided after an ugly incident at the field on Sunday.
My Google Alert on Avaya, used mainly to help keep track of the company's product announcements and business drama (Chapter 11 filing, networking business sale to Extreme, etc.), started blowing up this morning:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When the Internet Engineering Task Force meets this week in Chicago it will have a new chair – Cisco Fellow Alissa Cooper. Cooper will be the first woman to hold the position as the standards-setting body continues its work to improve all things internet technology-related.The Stanford and Oxford graduate comes to the job having worked with Cisco since 2014 in its collaboration business and the IETF since 2008.Jonathan Rosenberg, Cisco Fellow and Vice President, CTO for Cisco's Collaboration Business [who has authored many of the internet standards that define modern telecoms, including the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)], and Cooper’s boss wrote that “Alissa has a long history of contributions to the IETF, serving most recently as the area director for the set of working groups that produce real-time communications protocols like SIP. Alissa, who was recently appointed to Cisco’s top technical rank of Cisco Fellow, takes the IETF reins in an exciting time. Areas like IoT, SDN, and NFV are requiring significant attention and making big impacts on the industry.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In 2015, ESG did an in-depth research project on cyber threat intelligence usage at enterprise organizations (i.e. more than 1,000 employees). The goal of this project was to determine how large firms were using threat intelligence, what challenges they faced, how they were addressing these challenges and what their strategies were moving forward.The research revealed that many threat intelligence programs were relatively immature—40 percent of threat intelligence programs had been in place fewer than two years at that time. Cybersecurity professionals were also asked to identify the top objectives for their organization’s threat intelligence program. The top results were as follows:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
What follows is all about Linux podcasts—something I’ve spent a fairly ridiculous amount of time on over the last decade or so. So, this post is basically inside baseball—for Linux podcasts. You’ve been warned.--------------------------------------------------This past Sunday, Jupiter Broadcasting announced the Linux Action Show—one of the longest-running podcasts in the Linux world, which has aired almost continuously since June 10, 2006—is coming to an end and closing down production.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If you use Microsoft’s Docs.com to store personal documents, stop reading this and make sure you aren’t inadvertently leaking your private information to the world.Microsoft sets any documents uploaded to the document sharing site as public by default—though it appears that many users aren’t aware of it. That means anyone can search Docs.com for sensitive personal information that wasn’t manually set private. PCWorld found social security numbers, health insurance ID numbers, bank records, job applications, personal contact details, legal correspondence, and drivers license numbers with just a few minutes of searching.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Earlier this year Fortinet hired its first chief information security officer (CISO). The timing makes sense, as the company has grown into a leading security vendor with an integrated, security fabric vision that few competitors can match.As Fortinet continues to expand its presence in the federal and critical infrastructure markets, CISO Philip Quade brings the credentials and background needed to help lead the strategy. Prior to joining Fortinet, Quade was the NSA director’s special assistant for cyber and chief of the NSA Cyber Task Force. Before that, he was chief operating officer of the Information Assurance Directorate at the NSA.I recently talked with Quade regarding his new role and the challenges the United States and businesses in general face with respect to security.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Hitachi announced it has developed a new image analysis system that uses artificial intelligence (AI) for real-time people tracking and detection. The AI can detect an individual in real time by combining over 100 external characteristics and then track that person using wide-area security and surveillance systems.Systems that capture facial images and color of clothing have previously been deployed in public areas, but according to Hitachi, it is difficult for security staff to find and track a person based on an eyewitness account or poor surveillance camera footage.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Get powerful performance, stunning 4K and HDR picture quality, and an advanced remote for an amazing streaming experience. The new Roku Premiere+ is for HD & 4K Ultra HD TVs. It delivers ultra-smooth quad-core streaming, brilliant 4K resolution at 60fps, vibrant HDR color, access to 450,000+ movies and TV episodes across 4,500+ paid or free channels, and a handy point anywhere remote. The Roku Premiere+ list price has been reduced a significant 21% to $79. See the deal now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Here's an adapter that's always good to have on hand. Pop one of them on the end of an HDMI cable and extend your back-of-the-tv HDMI port around front where it's easier to access. Or use them to couple multiple HDMI cables together for extended reach. Supports 3D and 4k signals. The list price of $10.99 has been reduced 46% to just $5.89 for the two-pack. See this deal now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Real-time strategy makes an explosive return to the Halo universe with Halo Wars 2: Ultimate Edition, included as a full game download for Xbox One and Windows 10. This bundle also comes with the Halo Wars 2: Season Pass, featuring six months of additional content, plus Halo Wars: Definitive Edition, an enhanced version of the real-time strategy classic-all as full game downloads for Xbox One and Windows 10 PC. Watch 4K Blu-ray movies and stream Netflix in 4K Ultra HD. Experience richer, more luminous colors in games and video with HDR. And play a growing library of Xbox 360 games with advanced features like Game DVR and in-home streaming to Windows 10. The bundle's price has been discounted, for now, to $299 on Amazon. See this deal now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here