Until the massive success of Pokémon Go in 2016 when augmented reality (AR) was catapulted into the public’s consciousness, AR was overshadowed by its cousin, virtual reality (VR). Many were more optimistic about the applications of virtual reality compared to augmented reality. However, as AR and VR have evolved over the past year, it has become evident that AR offers more practical daily use cases. From retail to education to manufacturing, AR is positioned to drive business value across sectors. With that, there are still several challenges that lie ahead for the mass adoption of AR in the short term. Here's a look at three:1. Augmented reality hardware
Today, no AR headsets are available for consumers. Microsoft HoloLens and Meta 2 have released developer versions, but they have not yet announced when we can expect their devices to ship to consumers. Even more, HoloLens and Meta still boast hefty price tags at $3,000 and $949, respectively. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It sounds like a smartphone user's worst fear: Software that starts up before the phone's operating system, intercepting and encrypting every byte sent to or from the flash memory or the network interface.
This is not some new kind of ransomware, though, this is the D4 Secure Platform from Cog Systems.
The product grew out of custom security software the company developed for governments, and which it saw could also be put to use in the enterprise as a way to make smartphones more productive while still maintaining a high level of security.
It includes a Type 1 hypervisor, a virtualized VPN and additional storage encryption that wrap the standard Android OS in additional layers of protection largely invisible to the end user.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Smartphones with Intel-based x86 chips aren't dead yet. Intel may have stopped making Atom chips for smartphones, but a partner is keeping that effort alive.Chinese chip maker Spreadtrum is still making x86 smartphone chips based on the Atom architecture named Airmont. The company will ship a powerful eight-core Atom variant for smartphones in the second half of this year.Smartphone makers will be able to use the Spreadtrum SC9861G-IA chip in mid-range handsets. It will have a PowerVR GT7200 graphics core and support 4K video and displays with resolutions up to 2560 x 1440 pixels.It's far more powerful than the original Atom smartphone chips made by Intel. Handsets with the chip were shown at Intel's booth at the ongoing Mobile World Congress trade show.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
My home is my sanctuary. My computers (and handheld devices) all run free software systems that have been (fairly) tightly buttoned down and secured. My online documents, messaging and emails are handled either on my own servers or by companies dedicated to open source and security. Is my personal information 100 percent safe and unhackable? No, but it’s pretty good. And it’s about as good as I can get it without making significant sacrifices in the name of privacy. But eventually I need to leave my home. And that is where things get much more difficult. Let’s talk, briefly, about the challenges faced when trying to maintain a certain level of personal privacy when traveling around your city. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In 2010, Apple's Steve Jobs welcomed the post-PC era when it introduced the iPad.
Now in 2017, PCs are still around and on their way to recovery, while slate-style tablets are struggling. Apple remains the top tablet seller, but its shipments are diving, and Android tablets aren't as hot as they used to be.
Unlike its heyday, tablets aren't expected to be huge presence at this year's Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona. Lenovo and Samsung are launching some Android tablets, but more attention is being heaped on Windows 10 2-in-1 PCs that can be tablets and laptops.
Where Android has faltered, Windows is now taking over. Many people are replacing tablets with multipurpose Windows 2-in-1 PCs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Developed by id Software, the studio that pioneered the first-person shooter genre and created multiplayer Deathmatch, DOOM returns as a brutally fun and challenging modern-day shooter experience. Relentless demons, impossibly destructive guns, and fast, fluid movement provide the foundation for intense, first-person combat – whether you’re obliterating demon hordes through the depths of Hell in the single-player campaign, or competing against your friends in numerous multiplayer modes. Expand your gameplay experience using DOOM SnapMap game editor to easily create, play, and share your content with the world. At the moment its typical price has been slashed 50% on Amazon down to just $19.99. See the deal now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
BARCELONA -- BlackBerry phones with their physical keyboards were around years before the iPhone emerged in 2007. Yet, BlackBerry devices today command less than 1% of the world's smartphone market.Under a licensing deal with BlackBerry of Canada announced last year, TCL Communication of China on Saturday announced another physical keyboard smartphone model called the BlackBerry KEYone.In a bid to recall the glory days of BlackBerry, the KEYone features a 4.5-in. touchscreen as well as 52 raised physical keys in four rows at the bottom and a speedy SnapDragon 625 processor.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The mobile industry is so anxious for 5G that it’s now planning something that’s almost 5G, but will be ready a year earlier.On Sunday, many of the world’s biggest equipment vendors and mobile operators joined hands to accelerate the 5G NR (New Radio) specification that will define many elements of 5G. The new technology they plan to produce will handle some of the planned uses of 5G but will be ready for large-scale trials and deployments in 2019 instead of 2020, they say.There’s a lot at stake with 5G for both carriers and the companies that supply their networks, who are all gathering this week at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The next generation of technology will give operators new services to sell, like multi-gigabit broadband and special offerings for the internet of things and connected cars, and it should help vendors emerge from a years-long sales drought following the rollout of LTE.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Almost a year after SAP teamed with Apple to develop business applications for smartphones and tablets, the German enterprise software developer is ready to unveil the first fruits of their partnership.On March 30, it plans to release the first version of SAP Cloud Platform SDK for iOS, a tool to enable businesses to integrate Apple's handheld devices with their back-end information systems. And at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week it opened enrollment for SAP Academy for iOS, a mix of paid and free training services to help develop apps with that tool.It may have looked as though Apple were retreating from the enterprise when it axed its Xserve rack-mounted server line in 2011, it, but since then it has multiplied its partnerships with enterprise hardware, software and service vendors, most notably IBM in 2014, Cisco Systems in 2015 and, last year, SAP.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
BARCELONA -- Samsung promoted its smartphone device testing and upgraded safety review processes during a major press event prior to Mobile World Congress on Sunday, almost without mentioning the disastrous Galaxy Note7 by name.That was the infamous smartphone that Samsung recalled globally -- to the tune of 3 million devices -- after lithium ion batteries inside some units short-circuited, overheated and even caught fire. Samsung instituted an 8-step battery safety check process in January in reaction to the recall.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
We all learned about mathematical functions when we studied algebra: y = f(x), where f(x) = ax2+…. In the abstract world of mathematics, functions are pure and reproducible and have no side effects.Fold, reduce, map, and iterateTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, the chair of the House Science, Space and Technology committee, believes the U.S. is losing its leadership position in computing. That may sound good for funding, but Smith's solution is controversial.Smith wants to shift National Science Foundation (NSF) R&D funding from efforts he believes may be "frivolous" or "low risk," to "biology, physics, computer science and engineering."What Smith is outlining is a change in research priorities, such as moving research funding from anthropology to engineering. But complex systems require insights from human behavior, and this is expertise outside of computer science. Tech firms are hiring people with skills at interpreting behavior, including anthropologists.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Left to chance, unless you happen to bump into someone leaving the building with a box full of documents, you might never catch an insider red-handed. That is where an insider risk team comes in — group of employees from various departments who have created policies that create a system to notice if those confidential items have left the building.“Insider risk is a real cybersecurity challenge. When a security professional or executive gets that call that there’s suspicious activity — and it looks like it’s someone on the inside who turned rogue — the organization needs to have the right policies and playbooks, technologies, and right team ready to go,” said Rinki Sethi, senior director of information security at Palo Alto Networks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Just before the holidays, a company was faced with cutting the pay of their contracted janitors. That didn’t sit well with those employees.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
A cellular base station with 128 antennas may soon help some mobile operators serve many more subscribers in crowded areas.Nokia demonstrated the technology, called massive MIMO (multiple in, multiple out) with Sprint at Mobile World Congress on Monday. It’s one of several types of advances in LTE that could eventually come into play with 5G, too.Massive MIMO uses a large number of small antennas to create dedicated connections to multiple devices at once. In this case, the base station has 64x64 MIMO, or 64 antennas each for upstream and downstream signals. In Nokia and Sprint’s tests, it increased the capacity of a cell by as much as eight times for downloads and as much as five times for uploads.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
BARCELONA -- The big themes of Mobile World Congress (MWC) so far center around the internet of things, artificial intelligence and 5g wireless.
But you can add in more than 35 new smartphones and a smattering of products and services related to just about anything in wireless communications and mobility.
There are 100,000 visitors at MWC this year and thousands of vendors. Something, it seems, for everybody.
Major companies like Samsung have mega-booths, but there are some thematic exhibits too, like the GSM Association's Innovation City, which focuses heavily on smart city-related tech.
AT&T has set up an exhibit also showing off smart city tech, including a light pole equipped with sensors that can communicate to public safety and traffic officials about road, parking and pedestrian conditions. Sensors can also be installed to monitor air pollution, weather or the sound of gunshots.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Remember when Ruslan Stoyanov, a top cybercrime investigator for Kaspersky Lab, was arrested and charged with treason? It is now being reported that the treason charges were for allegedly passing state secrets to Verisign and other US companies.An unnamed source told Reuters that the accusations of treason were first made in 2010 by Russian businessman and founder of the online payment firm ChronoPay, Pavel Vrublevsky. The December 2016 arrests of Stoyanov and two FSB officers, Sergei Mikhailov and Dmitry Dokuchayev, were in response to those 2010 claims that the men had passed secrets on to American companies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Back in the history of the cloud (say, eight years ago), there were copious debates around the topic of cloudbursting. Cloudbursting, for those unaware of the term, describes an approach toward hybrid infrastructure whereby a workload could run on-premises for standard load periods and then, when spikes in traffic occurred, would magically "burst" into the cloud for extra capacity.While many appreciated the idea of cloudbursting from a conceptual viewpoint, others doubted its practicality.But despite cloudbursting not really coming to pass, the idea of hybrid infrastructure, whereby organizations have workloads across many setups (from on-premises to the public cloud and on to multiple private clouds), has become very much a reality. One of the reasons for this is for risk reduction -- the thinking goes that by using a variety of different service providers, critical issues with one provider are, in theory, less likely to have a negative impact on the organization.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Most organizations are managing record amounts of data while trying to satisfy the need to access it on-demand through various analytic and operational systems. To meet these expectations in near-real time, they don't just need the best data storage technologies on the market today—they also must anticipate what will be available 18 to 24 months from now so they don’t limit their future success.Traditionally, the storage network hasn’t been the limiting factor in application performance. But the advent of solid-state flash-based storage has changed that. Once considered insufficient for mission-critical environments, flash is now aggressively being deployed for all application types in data centers around the globe. It has not only shown itself to be reliable, it has proven to be an essential technology in handling rapidly increasing data growth.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here