Call it the first real result from Microsoft's recently finalized $26B buyout of LinkedIn: The former has named the career networking site’s Kevin Scott as its new CTO, a job he will hold in addition to being LinkedIn’s SVP of Infrastructure.
Having not actually met Scott, where else to start learning about him than on his LinkedIn page, which features a nice fresh post dated Jan. 24, 2017 and titled “Dream Jobs”?
(I checked his Twitter profile too, but this self-described “Old School Geek, Husband, Father, Hacker of Things Large and Small” had no public posts there since late 2014.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Ahead of the iPhone 8 launch later this year, a new report from Digitimes relays that Apple is currently working on a more "enhanced" version of Siri that may take advantage of Apple's ongoing research in the field of machine learning.While iOS 10 ushered in a number of improvements in this regard -- such as the ability to search for photos and people by name -- it's no secret the AI space is becoming more and more competitive with each passing month. As a quick example, Samsung with its upcoming Galaxy S8 will introduce a new AI personal assistant dubbed Bixby that will be built on technology the company picked up when it acquired Viv Labs. As a quick point of interest, Viv Labs is led by Dag Kittlaus who helped co-found Siri.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Ahead of the iPhone 8 launch later this year, a new report from Digitimes relays that Apple is currently working on a more "enhanced" version of Siri that may take advantage of Apple's ongoing research in the field of machine learning.While iOS 10 ushered in a number of improvements in this regard—such as the ability to search for photos and people by name—it's no secret the AI space is becoming more and more competitive with each passing month. As a quick example, Samsung with its upcoming Galaxy S8 will introduce a new AI personal assistant dubbed Bixby that will be built on technology the company picked up when it acquired Viv Labs. As a quick point of interest, Viv Labs is led by Dag Kittlaus who helped co-found Siri.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
ARM tried to break into the PC market but had a disastrous outing starting with Linux-based smartbooks and then tablets with Windows RT.But ARM is launching a comeback in PCs, and the third time could be a charm. ARM chips could emerge as a threat to Intel's x86 as super thin laptops get smartphone-like usability with cellular connectivity and long battery life.The comeback for ARM is starting with Chromebooks, with more models hosting the chip architecture. Lenovo's new N23 Yoga Chromebook -- a 2-in-1 with an 11.6-screen -- has MediaTek's quad-core MT8173c chip, based on ARM.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
GPG Suite, an application that brings encrypted email to Mac OS, is now available in public beta for Sierra.The software package had been compatible up to El Capitan but wasn't working with Sierra, which was released by Apple in September. The new software can now be downloaded from the GPG Tools website.It adds support for the OpenPGP encryption standard, which is an open-source version of the PGP encryption package first developed in 1991.Four software apps are contained in the package:-- GPG Mail is a plugin for Apple Mail that allows users to encrypt, decrypt, sign, and verify mails sent using OpenPGP.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The CEO of Vivaldi Technologies, the maker of a niche browser, today blasted Microsoft for forcing Edge, the default browser in Windows 10, onto users."I understand that Microsoft is concerned with the low usage of Edge, but instead of building a better browser, Microsoft is forcing its product onto people in the most unapologetic manner," said Jon von Tetzchner, the co-founder and CEO of Norway-based Vivaldi.Vivaldi's same-named browser reached version 1.0 in April 2016, following more than a year of beta testing. The browser runs on Windows, OS X/macOS and Linux.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The funny thing about pendulums is that they love to swing. There are plenty of examples, from politics to nutrition, but computing cycles just might illustrate it best.The mainframe computer was a centralized model, with access through dumb terminals. PCs enabled distributed client/server computing. Now we are swinging back to centralized computing, with dumb smartphones connecting back to robust cloud-services. Enterprises are shuttering their data centers and moving to cloud services.Most of yesterday’s applications, such as CRM, ERP and UC, are moving toward the cloud. But the swing back to a distributed model is inevitable. If not for those applications, then something else. The Internet of Things (IoT) just may be the killer app that does it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Yes, the term “fake news” has already been politicized to the point of near-meaninglessness, but before it is relegated to the dustbin of our lexicon, allow me to note that the practice itself has been around for eons and is no stranger to the world of technology.Just ask the peddlers of eBay’s famously fake tale of being born out of a girlfriend’s love for Pez dispensers, a fib I fumed about in the former print edition of Network World way back in 2002.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It takes a lot of horsepower to support LinkedIn’s 467 million members worldwide, especially when you consider that each member is getting a personalized experience, a web page that includes only their contacts. Supporting the load are some 100,000 servers spread across multiple data centers. To learn more about how LinkedIn makes it all happen, Network World Editor in Chief John Dix recently talked to Sonu Nayyar, VP of Production Operations & IT, and Zaid Ali Kahn, Senior Director of Infrastructure Engineering. LinkedIn
Sonu Nayyar, LinkedIn VP of Production Operations & ITTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Some Chromebooks released this year will be able to run Android apps from the Google Play Store. Lenovo has tuned its new N23 Yoga Chromebook 2-in-1 to effectively run Android mobile apps.PC makers are taking a page from smartphones and tablets and adding touchscreens to Chromebooks. Many new models can be interchangeably used as laptops or tablets.More Chromebooks are also getting ARM processors -- which dominate in smartphones and tablets -- to effectively run Android apps. Most Chromebooks today have Intel x86 chips, which dominate in PCs, but Android apps best run on ARM processors.Lenovo, for the first time, is using an ARM chip in the N23 Yoga Chromebook 2-in-1, breaking its long-time reliance on x86 chips. The device has an 11.6-inch touchscreen, and it can be used as a tablet or laptop thanks to a hybrid design.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Resin.IO is working to make the use of containers and microservices useful tools to developers of Linux-based Internet of Things (IoT) applications.CEO Alexandros Marinos said the company has been working for three years to make mainstream containers attractive to developers of embedded workloads, such as those found in IoT applications. The company calls this the "Industrial Internet."What Resin.IO offers
Resin.IO offers a development and deployment framework based upon Linux and containers (Docker) that is designed to facilitate control of the on-device environment, provision devices on the network, and manage of what the company calls a "fleet" of systems. These tools also make it possible to automate operations of "the fleet" and keep it secure through the use of encrypted communications to/from devices in "the fleet" that deploys two-factor authentication.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
MQTT is a messaging technology for machine-to-machine communication that’s lightweight and relatively simple to implement on pretty much any device. In my first post on MQTT I covered the basics and background of the protocol and threatened to follow up with a discussion of Mosquitto, a free, open source MQTT server (the MQTT developers no longer call them “brokers”) that’s one of the most widely used messaging platforms in the Internet of Things world. Being a man of my word, here goes …The Mosquitto broker (apparently the Mosquito developers and MQTT developers do not see eye-to-eye on terminology) is part of the Eclipse IoT Working Group, “an industry collaboration of companies who invest and promote an open source community for IoT.” Mosquito currently supports MQTT versions 3.1 and 3.1.1 and support for the proposed MQTT v5, which introduces scalability and protocol improvements is under way.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
iPhone 8 (or iPhone X?) security is indeed a touchy subject, though it could become less so if the latest rumors about the next great Apple smartphone prove true.Say Cheese!
Apple Insider's Mikey Campbell has an excellent piece dissecting the latest research from Apple insider (small "i") and KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who says to expect Apple to deliver full-face bio-recognition technology before long on the iPhone.First up, though, might be a Touch ID replacement based on optical fingerprint reading, technology that won't require an indented button as is the case on current models. Optical fingerprint readers would work with the sort of full-screen OLED display most expect Apple to bring forth with its next slew of iPhones.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Cellular, short range Wi-Fi (good for WAN gateways) and Bluetooth (good for wearables) aren’t the only wireless technologies IoT development has available. Some newer networks are being developed specifically for the Internet of Things.Here’s what you need to know.Ultra-narrowband Sigfox, beginning its roll-out in the U.S., says its low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) has the lowest subscription costs (digging at expensive LTE) and that its communications proffer “radically lower energy consumption.” To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Anyone who uses the popular Cisco WebEx extension for Chrome should update to the latest version pronto. Google security researcher Tavis Ormandy recently discovered a serious vulnerability in the Chrome extension that leaves PCs wide open to attack.In older versions of the extension (before version 1.0.3) malicious actors could add a “magic string” to a web address or file hosted on a website. The magic string was designed to remotely activate the WebEx browser extension. Once the extension was activated the bad guys could execute malicious code on the target machine. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Cloud-based collaboration software has helped enterprises take meetings beyond the conference room. Now Cisco Systems is bringing its Spark cloud platform back inside.On Tuesday, Cisco introduced the Spark Board, an all-in-one collaboration device that can be a screen-sharing presentation tool, a digital whiteboard and a videoconferencing display. It’s designed to make it easier to set up and use connected conference rooms, taking the place of a hodgepodge of components that are managed and operated separately.After selling various voice and video tools for years, Cisco has made Spark the centerpiece of the company’s collaboration portfolio. It’s a text messaging, voice, videoconferencing and presentation platform that runs completely in the cloud, with encryption, so meeting participants on the road can use all those functions. Through the cloud, a Spark session can also incorporate older Cisco tools like WebEx and Telepresence.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Box Notes is getting its own standalone web app and a new desktop app for Windows and Mac. It's a new turn for the product, which allows users to collaboratively edit documents in real time.Notes gives users a workspace for jotting down ideas and sharing them with others. Those notes can include rich text elements like embedded images, tasks and tables, in addition to plain text.
The service is designed to give users a shared workspace in the cloud for discussing ideas and working on them with other people. Making Notes a standalone app could help it appeal to a broader audience and increase its usage. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In the technology industry, we like to swing pendulums too far one way or the other and make general statements like “everything is moving to the cloud” or “everything is connecting over wireless,” and those statements are, of course, false. There are still more on-premises workloads than cloud ones, and there’s a huge world of devices that are connected with wires.
The collaboration industry is no different, as there has bee a significant rise in the number of tools to improve virtual meetings. We have web conference platforms, audio bridges and advancements in video. And recently there has been an explosion in the number of team messaging products. All of these products help workers conduct virtual meetings.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
HP is expanding its recall of laptop batteries with overheating issues that can cause computer damage and even fire.
The company is recalling an additional 101,000 batteries in some laptops sold between March 2013 through October 2016. This is an expansion of the recall initiated in June 2016, which involved HP recalling 41,000 batteries.
The batteries are in laptop brands including HP, Compaq, ProBook, Envy, Compaq Presario, and Pavilion laptops. Battery packs sold separately are also affected.
Batteries are being recalled in the U.S, Canada and Mexico. Most are in the U.S., while 3,000 are being recalled in Canada, and 4,000 in Mexico. The laptops were sold through big-box retailers and online.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The disk-wiping Shamoon malware, which was used in attacks that destroyed data on 35,000 computers at Saudi Aramco in 2012, is back; the Shamoon variant prompted Saudi Arabia to issue a warning on Monday.An alert from the telecoms authority, seen by Reuters, warned all organizations to be on the lookout for the variant Shamoon 2. CrowdStrike VP Adam Meyers told Reuters, “The Shamoon hackers were likely working on behalf of the Iranian government in the 2012 campaign and the more-recent attacks. It's likely they will continue.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here