Google is betting that its Daydream platform for mobile virtual reality—announced last week at Google I/O 2016—will be good enough, its performance will evolve faster and its price will drop faster than immersive VR headsets such as the top-tier Oculus and HTC Vive.Given a choice between a perfect immersive VR headset that costs at least $1,800, plus a PC upgrade, or good mobile VR like Google Daydream that stretches the smartphone upgrade budget by only a few hundred dollars, all but the most serious enthusiasts will choose Daydream.+ More on Network World: Google I/O 2016: Google’s biggest announcements +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
DARPA this week detailed the next development phase of its reusable Mach 10 satellite taxi capable of carrying and deploying a 3,000- 5,000 lb. satellite into low earth orbit (LEO) at a target cost of less than $5M per launch.
+More on Network World: NASA wants to get supersonic with new passenger jet+
The reusable Experimental Spaceplane (XS-1) XS-1 will demonstrate the potential for low cost and “aircraft-like” high operations payload delivery to orbit. DARPA said Phase 2 and 3 development will likely see a single contract worth $140M (Phase II - $123M, Phase III - $17M). The research agency in 2014 awarded Boeing (working with Blue Origin) Masten Space Systems (working with XCOR Aerospace) and Northrop Grumman Corporation (working with Virgin Galactic) contracts to begin phase 1 XS-1 work.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Air travel has come a long way since the dark days of 2001. Security remains a concern, but the industry is paying increasing attention to innovation and customer service, and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies are playing a big role in efforts to make aviation more efficient and improve the passenger experience. As the costs of Internet-connected sensors and networking equipment continue to plummet, airlines, airport operators, airplane manufacturers and other travel and aviation industry suppliers are finding new ways to deploy and use IoT technologies.IoT-related developments in the air travel market could be applicable in many other industries. For example, IT managers in retail may find inspiration from the ways IoT technology is being used at Miami International Airport. And aircraft and engine makers have found applications for connected systems that could be beneficial to companies throughout manufacturing and heavy industry.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If you go out shopping for a new PC after the Windows 10 Anniversary Update rolls out this summer, you might notice something we haven’t seen in a long, long time. The basic hardware requirements for Windows 10 are going up—albeit just slightly. This is the first such hardware increase since 2009 when Windows 7 rolled out.Starting with the Anniversary Update, Microsoft’s recommended specifications to hardware vendors—as first noticed by WinBeta and Nokia Power User—will see the RAM requirement increase for 32-bit versions from 1GB to 2GB. It’s a minor change to be sure, but it is the first such change in nearly seven years.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The TeslaCrypt creators called it quits recently, but unfortunately for users, there's a new ransomware program that's ready to take its place.Called DMA Locker, this threat first appeared in January, but its encryption implementation was so flawed that it was hard to take it seriously. Researchers had no problem developing a file recovery tool for the first two versions.However, its authors have recently fixed all issues and malware researchers believe that with the newly released version 4, DMA Locker has reached maturity and might be the next thing to hit users in widespread attacks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It's no secret that analytics is eating the enterprise world, but if there's anything in perpetually short supply, it's speed. Enter Cray, which on Tuesday unveiled a new supercomputing platform designed with that in mind.Dubbed Urika-GX, the new system is the first agile analytics platform to fuse supercomputing with an open, enterprise framework, Cray said.Due to be available in the third quarter, Urika-GX promises data scientists new levels of performance and the ability to find insight in massive data sets quickly. The system is tuned for highly iterative and interactive analytics, and integrated graph analytics offers rapid pattern matching.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Online reviews have already transformed the way people choose everything from restaurants to respiratory therapists, and now SaasGenius wants to do the same for enterprise software in the cloud.This week the company will launch a beta version of its service, and it invites participants to submit reviews of business software in 12 different categories.In the past, businesses looking for software relied primarily on word-of-mouth reviews, but SaasGenius aims to tap the model that's become so common on the consumer side.“We all now rely heavily on websites like Yelp and TripAdvisor in our personal lives -- these sites feature trusted reviews to help us make quick, easy purchase decisions," said Tom Gorski, cofounder and CEO at the firm. "Even employees in large companies now expect a more customer-like online research and buying experience.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
How real are virtual reality gaming experiences? If a video of a first-person shooter horror game on the HTC Vive are any indication, fairly real – at least real enough to totally freak out this chick.
I own neither Vive nor Oculus at this point; yet I built a beast of a box and am interested in HTC Vive due to SteamVR Desktop Theater Mode which would allow a person to play every game in their Steam library in virtual reality. I can’t wait to slay VR room-sized Bitterblack Isle monsters and the continual flood of new foes on Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Over the past two decades, the personal communications habits of Americans have profoundly changed. CTIA – The Wireless Association reported that the penetration of cellular devices surpassed 100 percent in 2012, and as of the latest 2014 report, penetration is now at 110 percent.With so many mobile devices deployed, it isn't surprising that the majority of calls to our nation’s 911 emergency public safety answering points (PSAP) originate from those devices. In fact, most U.S. dispatch agencies will tell you that wireless callers are responsible for at least 80 percent of their emergency call volume. Likewise, in the European Union, that number is well into the 90 percent range in many locations. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The CineMate 15 from Bose is a highly rated soundbar system that is easy to set up and promises the kind of full, rich sound with deep bass that you have come to expect from Bose. The soundbar itself is no longer than a ruler and simply sits in front of your TV, connecting with a single cable. The accoustic mass module can be placed out of site. Together, the system works with Bose TrueSpace signal processing to spread sound far and wide, fully immersing you in the action. The CineMate 15 averages 4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon (read reviews). With the current 17% off deal, it's regular list price of $599 has been temporarily discounted to $499. See the discounted CineMate 15 Home Theatre System now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
All of the top five tracking tools found on websites are from Google-owned properties.And new, cookie-replacing methods of identifying computers, called fingerprinting, is being used by advertisers, a new study found. Fingerprinting can work by sending audio files to individual web browsers. The method identifies the PC, Princeton University explains in its research (PDF).Princeton says its study, completed in January, is the biggest assessment of online tracking ever. The university trawled a million of the “top” websites.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Everybody loves smartphones, but almost nobody loves Windows smartphones.A majority (78 percent) of all mobile phones sold worldwide between January and March were smartphones, and smartphones sales grew by 4 percent compared to the same time period the year previous, according to a recent report by market research firm Gartner. Yet with all that smartphone activity, Windows phone sales fell even further. Actually, the word “fell” is being generous. The truth is they crashed.Hard.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: 10 (FREE!) Microsoft tools to make admins happier
Windows mobile device market share fell below the one percent mark worldwide to 0.7 percent during the first quarter of 2016, according to Gartner. Just one year ago, Windows device sales were anemic at 2.5 percent, but that’s still many times better compared to where they are now.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft’s putting away the carrots and breaking out the sticks in its quest to migrate 1 billion users to Windows 10 over the next couple of years.After pushing out the free upgrade as a Recommended update to Windows 7 and 8 users earlier this year—which means that you downloaded the initial installation bits if you use the default Windows Update, like most people should—Microsoft changed its nagging pop-up prompt in an insidious way over the past week. For the past six months, the “Get Windows 10” pop-up asked permission to start an update, but lacked a “No thanks” option, so the only way to avoid it was to close the window by pressing the X in the upper-right hand corner. Now, the pop-up says “We will upgrade you at this time,” and pressing the X counts as consent. You need to click a small, easily missed link in the pop-up to cancel the upgrade, instead.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
There's an update available for Microsoft's Dynamics CRM 2016, and it brings with it a brand-new tool to help companies tap the Internet of Things for their customer-service efforts.Announced on Monday, the Spring 2016 Wave of Dynamics CRM adds Connected Field Service, a new tool companies can soon use to leverage the potential of predictive maintenance via IoT devices.Available as a preview in June, Connected Field Service continuously monitors IoT-enabled devices for anomalies, generating alerts that trigger automated actions or service tickets and workflow according to service level agreements. Service technicians with the right skills and tools are then matched against the service requirement based on availability and proximity and routed to customer locations for preventive action.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The long answer is more complex, but security vendor Trustwave offered some insights in its 2016 Trustwave Global Security Report, which was released last month."Criminals are getting a lot savvier," says Karl Sigler, Trustwave's threat intelligence manager. "We're seeing their tactics changing a little bit."New bad news
In the study, Trustwave found that compromises affecting corporate and internal networks hit 40 percent in 2015, up from 18 percent from the year before."Criminals are discovering that if they can get themselves embedded into a corporate network, there's a wealth of monetizable data in those networks," says Sigler. This could also be a result of what he calls a "drastic decline" in the rate of point-of-sale breaches, which dropped by 18 percentage points from 2014 to 2015, according to the study. "Criminals don't go away. They just shift targets," he says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Using live data in development means you can test real workloads and get realistic results in transactions and reports. It’s also a significant security risk, as U.K. baby retailer Kiddicare recently found out: The company used real customer names, delivery addresses, email addresses and telephone numbers on a test site, only to have the data extracted and used to send phishing text messages to customers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
It took hackers less than two weeks to integrate a recently patched Flash Player exploit into widely used Web-based attack tools that are being used to infect computers with malware.The vulnerability, known as CVE-2016-4117, was discovered earlier this month by security researchers FireEye. It was exploited in targeted attacks through malicious Flash content embedded in Microsoft Office documents.When the targeted exploit was discovered, the vulnerability was unpatched, which prompted a security alert from Adobe Systems and a patch two days later.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Several CISOs I’ve spoken to over the past few years agree that identity is a new security perimeter. The thought here is that a combination of mobile device and cloud use renders existing network perimeters obsolete so security policy enforcement decisions must be driven by identity attributes (i.e. user identity, role, device identity, location, etc.) rather than IP packet attributes. We see this transition coming to fruition with the concept of a software-defined perimeter (SDP) and technologies such as Google BeyondCorp and Vidder PrecisionAccess.Yup, this makes sense. Armed with identity attributes, organizations can make intelligent network access decisions on who gets access to which IT assets regardless of their location. Unfortunately, there is a big problem here. The IAM infrastructure was built organically over the last 10-15 years so it depends upon a morass of disconnected and fragile elements. This situation greatly impacts security. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Several CISOs I’ve spoken to over the past few years agree that identity is a new security perimeter. The thought here is that a combination of mobile device and cloud use renders existing network perimeters obsolete, so security policy enforcement decisions must be driven by identity attributes (i.e., user identity, role, device identity, location, etc.) rather than IP packet attributes. We see this transition coming to fruition with the concept of a software-defined perimeter (SDP) and technologies such as Google BeyondCorp and Vidder PrecisionAccess.
Yup, this makes sense. Armed with identity attributes, organizations can make intelligent network access decisions on who gets access to which IT assets regardless of their location. Unfortunately, there is a big problem here. The identity and access management (IAM) infrastructure was built organically over the last 10-15 years, so it depends upon a morass of disconnected and fragile elements. This situation greatly impacts security. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Applications today look different from how they looked only a few short years ago. Instead of generally monolithic architecture, modern applications take on a far more modular approach leveraging component third-party services, new ways to deploy and interactions with an increasing number of third-party systems and tools. All of this complexity makes it hard for developers, operations teams or a combination thereof to really see what is going on.For that reason, vendors are increasingly looking to offer visibility as a specific product. That is the case for JFrog, which today announced Xray, a tool that aims to deliver transparency across applications. JFrog offers software management and distribution tools. Given that it already helps organizations deploy applications and manage those applications, it is a natural progression to offer visibility across those apps.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here