You've read about cities installing smart parking meters and noise- and air-quality sensors, but are you ready to embrace the idea of a city brain?The residents of Singapore are on track to do just that.Creating a centralized dashboard view of sensors deployed across a distributed network is nothing new, but it takes on a bigger -- perhaps ominous -- meaning when deployed across a major city.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If you’ve been following this blog, you may have seen me mention mainframes are popular with banks and financial institutions. In reading that again and again, you may have thought to yourself, “So what?” After all, banks are notoriously hidebound and slow to adopt new ideas (there’s a reason Mary Poppins’ Mr. Banks worked for the bank of London and not a toymaker to represent being conservative and slow to change.)And slow to change though the banks may be, what they most certainly are not is impractical. Banks don’t just love mainframes because that’s what they’ve always used. They love mainframes because they’re the right tool for the job: a tool with power.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
7 tech products we didn't need—and 1 we need but never arrivedImage by Thinkstock2016 has been a rather odd year in many ways. Not least of which has been the onslaught of technology gizmos and doodads produced by some of the biggest companies in the world—that just outright stink. What follows are some of the most interesting stinkers I could think of—stuff that nobody in their right mind would want. That statement, along with the rest of this list, is sure to annoy many. And I stand by it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Fiberlink MaaS360 won our Clear Choice test of mobile device management tools in 2011. IBM bought Fiberlink in 2013, so we wanted to see how the product has evolved over the years.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Calendar year 2016 was a big year of change at Cisco.Coming into the year, I wasn’t sure how aggressive new CEO Chuck Robbins would be at making changes. It turns out, he was far more active than I would have ever imagined, and 2016 will be remembered as the year Robbins stamped the company with his own thumbprint.During the year Cisco made several, the biggest of which was Jasper Technologies. That transformed Cisco from being an IoT evangelist into a major player. We also saw the company enter the analytics market with its Cisco Tetration Analytics Platform.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In Satya Nadella’s first press conference as CEO of Microsoft in 2014, he laid out a vision for the company to be a mobile-first, cloud-first company.On the cloud side, Microsoft has a broad portfolio of products that includes market-leading SaaS productivity applications, highlighted by Office 365. On the IaaS and PaaS side, Microsoft has Azure, a public cloud that has turned into one of the most prominent cloud platforms in the market and is considered the chief rival to market-leading Amazon Web Services’ public IaaS cloud.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
New products of the weekImage by BrocadeOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.BlueData EPIC on AWSImage by Blue DataTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Diamonds. Bitcoin. Pork. If you think you've spotted the odd one out, think again: All three are things you can track using blockchain technologies today.
Blockchains are distributed, tamper-proof, public ledgers of transactions, brought to public attention by the cryptocurrency bitcoin, which is based on what is still the most widespread blockchain. But blockchains are being used for a whole lot more than making pseudonymous payments outside the traditional banking system.
Because blockchains are distributed, an industry or a marketplace can use them without the risk of a single point of failure. And because they can't be modified, there is no question of whether the record keeper can be trusted. Those factors have prompted a number of enterprises to build blockchains into essential business functions, or at least to test them there.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The U.S. Department of Transportation is considering making it mandatory for airlines to inform passengers before purchasing tickets if they will allow voice calls using mobile wireless devices on board their aircraft, thus hoping to placate customers who could object to having co-passengers talking away on their phones in an enclosed space.An alternative measure would be to ban all voice calls on domestic and international flights to or from the U.S., the DOT said in a proposal for which it has asked for comments within 60 days of publication of the notice on the Federal Register.The Federal Communications Commission already bans the use of mobile devices on certain radio frequencies on board aircraft, including for voice calls, but it has not prohibited calls using the Wi-Fi network or other means, according to the DOT.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Spending time traveling can be a frustrating exercise in trying to find Wi-Fi. So much modern work often requires an internet connection, and while it’s possible to tether smartphones to PCs to help bridge the connectivity gap, that’s a clunky solution.Microsoft is aiming to help with that by supporting the installation of non-removable programmable SIM cards and data radios in PCs and Windows tablets. In the company's vision, users will then be able to purchase cellular data for those cards through the Windows Store. The announcement was made Thursday at the company’s WinHEC conference for device manufacturers in Shenzhen, China.By enabling the new form of internet access, Microsoft could give users an easy way to get online right from their computer, and encourage manufacturers to build cellular-capable devices. Users would also get settings to help them better manage the use of data plans, so it’s easier for them to control how much data apps can suck up.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Bluetooth is aiming straight for the internet of things as the fifth version of the wireless protocol arrives with twice as much speed for low-power applications.
Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), which gains the most from the new Bluetooth 5 specification, can now go as fast as 2Mbps (bits per second) and typically can cover a whole house or a floor of a building, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) said Wednesday. Those features could help to make it the go-to network for smart homes and some enterprise sites.
The home IoT field is pretty open right now because most people haven’t started buying things like connected thermostats and door locks, ABI Research analyst Avi Greengart said. Bluetooth starts out with an advantage over its competition because it’s built into most smartphones and tablets, he said. Alternatives like ZigBee and Z-Wave often aren’t.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A hacker in Turkey has been trying to encourage distributed denial-of-attacks by making it into a game, featuring points and prizes for attempting to shut down political websites.
The DDoS platform, translated as Surface Defense in English, has been prompting other hackers in Turkey to sign up and score points, according to security firm Forcepoint which uncovered it.
Users that participate will be given a tool known as Balyoz, the Turkish word for Sledgehammer, that can be used to launch DDoS attacks against a select number of websites.
For every ten minutes they attack a website, the users will be awarded a point, which can then be used to obtain rewards. These prizes include a more powerful DDoS attacking tool, access to bots designed to generate revenue from click fraud, and a prank program that can infect a computer and scare the victim with sounds and images.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Internet of Things (IoT) is heating up and will be a hot trend in 2017. And Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company, plans to be a part of it. The company has been active in the IoT industry by providing Wi-Fi connectivity to IoT endpoints and security through its ClearPass product. However, it has never put together a comprehensive IoT story that spans its portfolio.Last week at the HPE Discover Conference, though, Aruba announced several new products to position itself as a strong IoT enabler. The new solutions include security tools, wired switches and new partnerships.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
President-elect Donald Trump is showing a willingness to wage an economic battle with firms that move jobs offshore. He's threatening tariffs and promising H-1B visa reform, but may be offering carrots as well, namely tax incentives.These actions may be raising hopes among some IT employees who have lost jobs, or are losing them, that the incoming Trump administration is serious about keeping IT jobs in the U.S. But Trump's proposals -- particularly the tariff -- are also raising much uncertainty.Trump, in a series of tweets this weekend, reaffirmed plans to impose a 35% import tariff on "cars, A.C. units etc," on goods made by offshore U.S. firms but sold in the U.S.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The European Union's regulators on Tuersday approved Microsoft's acquisition of social network LinkedIn on the condition that the U.S. company abide by several minor concessions it made to secure the deal.The conditions were reminiscent of those forced on Microsoft in past antitrust actions, including the settlement between the firm and the U.S. Justice Department early in the century, and a later judgment against Microsoft in the European Union (EU).Microsoft promised it would not require PC makers to install a LinkedIn app or Windows 10 tile on machines sold in the European Economic Area (EEA), the region consisting of EU member states as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. Users will be able to remove any LinkedIn app or tile in Windows, Microsoft said, and pledged that it would not use Windows to nag customers to install a LinkedIn app.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Despite the fact there’s no such thing as a free lunch, you can download the eight virtual appliances discussed in this article for free. That doesn’t mean you can use any of these in a high-end production environment, but it doesn’t mean you can’t either. Some even have paid and supported versions should you choose to go that route.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
At the end of each year, many of us attempt to turn the technology we no longer need into cash. You could be cleaning out the drawers or closets to which you banished old gadgets. Perhaps you treated yourself to a Surface Studio or MacBook Pro and need some extra money to pay for that pricey new computer.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Digital transformation can mean many things and encompass many areas of technology, it will look entirely different from one company to the next. However, there is one common theme -- it requires that creativity and innovation be tailored specifically around your business' needs.But many companies suffer from, what Chakib Bouhdary, digital transformation officer at SAP calls, "corporate cholesterol." In other words, businesses are often entrenched in "rigid processes, risk avoidance and a mindset of 'it's working, why change?'," which can limit an organization's ability to quickly adapt.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
While the San Francisco 49ers are leading the NFL in defense, the New Orleans Saints currently hold the number one slot for total offense. In the overall league rankings, though, neither of those two teams rank in the top 10. What's the takeaway? Winning isn't strictly about strong offense or impenetrable defense. NFL league leaders advance to the top because they know how to balance the two; they know how to play the game.To address the growing number of attacks on the US government and private sector systems, President-elect Donald Trump's cybersecurity plan aims to, "Develop the offensive cyber capabilities we need to deter attacks by both state and non-state actors and, if necessary, to respond appropriately."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here