Amazon's Fire tablet comes in a well thought out kid's edition. If you're in the market for a kid-proof tablet that won't break the bank, this is one to consider at its currently discounted price of $99.99. That's a $50 savings on its regular list price of $149.99.The Fire Kids Edition sports a 7" 1024 x 600 IPS display (wider viewing angle and higher quality colors). There is a 2MP rear-facing HD camera as well as a VGA front-facing camera for things like Skype. 8GB internal storage is expandable to 128GB via a microSD slot, and Amazon gives you free unlimited cloud storage for Amazon content and photos/videos taken from the device. There's an accelerometer and gyroscopic sensor onboard, and Bluetooth for wireless headphones or microphone connections. Battery life is roughly 7 hours, and it recharges to 100% in about 6.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Big data is now a familiar term in most of the business world, and companies large and small are scrambling to take advantage of it. Data exhaust, on the other hand, is less widely known, and in some ways it's an evil twin brother. Here are five things you should understand about data exhaust's pros and cons.1. It's essentially all the big data that isn't core to your business. The "data exhaust" term has actually been around for more than a decade, and it arose with the new streams of data coming from smartphones, said Tye Rattenbury, director of data science and solutions engineering at Trifacta, which makes software for data preparation. Today, more accessible data tools are bringing exhaust to the fore.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
You'll find no shortage of career motivational phrases surrounding failure: Fail fast, failure builds character, the key to success is failure, mistakes make you grow, never be afraid to fail. But the idea of mistaking your way to the top of the software industry is probably unsound. Every developer will have their share of missteps in a career but why not learn from others’ experience -- and avoid the costliest errors?That’s what we did: We talked with a number of tech pros who helped us identify areas where mistakes are easily avoided. Not surprising, the key to a solid dev career involves symmetry: Not staying with one stack or job too long, for example, but then again not switching languages and employers so often that you raise red flags.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Most corporate acquisitions come with a fair share of complexities. But when Accuride acquired a majority stake in Italian truck wheel manufacturer Gianetti Ruote, the Indiana-based company never dreamed of the impact the deal would have on its IT activities. Since Accuride expanded into Europe late last year, its U.S. IT team has had to contend with everything from a stalled cloud strategy and decentralized systems to increases in hardware costs, licensing fees and IT head count.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Game onImage by thinkstockData breaches continue to grow in number, size, severity and cost. With the increase in new security holes, vulnerabilities and attack vectors that need to be fixed, many businesses are turning to gamification to help employees adhere to cybersecurity best practices.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Employee engagement is one of the most important key performance indicators businesses use to gauge success. But Gallup's most recent research shows that engagement's remained stagnant for the last few years. If organizations want to improve their competitive edge and attract elite talent, they have to make engagement a priority.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In its recently released 25 Best Jobs in America for 2016 report, Glassdoor listed data scientist as number 1 career -- but it wasn't just top of the list for tech. It topped every industry. The report cites 1,736 openings in the field, a median base salary of $115,840 and an overall job score of 4.7 out of a total 5, which are all promising stats for this quickly growing career path. But the fast-paced growth for data science jobs has been met with a severe lack of qualified candidates. And businesses that do hire data scientists often have no idea how to effectively utilize their skills.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Researchers from Kaspersky Lab have developed a method of decrypting files affected with the latest version of CryptXXX, a malware program that combines ransomware and information-stealing capabilities.CryptXXX was first discovered in April by security researchers from Proofpoint. In addition to encrypting user files on local drives and network shares, the malware also steals saved log-in credentials from browsers, instant messaging applications, FTP clients and email clients. It then asks for a US$500 ransom to be paid in bitcoins.Researchers from Kaspersky Lab found a way to recover files affected by the original variant of CryptXXX and created a decryptor tool. However, on May 6, CryptXXX authors released a new version that rendered that tool ineffective.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft’s smartphone business may be a flop, but the company is really taking it to Apple in the area of laplets, a new category somewhere between laptops and tablets. It's for devices with a detachable screen to be used as a tablet, but with a bigger screen than your average tablet.According to new research by 1010data, laplets are making big gains this year. The numbers are being released in advance of a full report that is due this week. While the Apple iPad is still the dominant tablet at 32.5 percent market share, Microsoft has come on very strong with the Surface Book, which is in second place at 25 percent, up 9 percentage points year over year.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Representing a rare hopeful sign in what is now an acrimonious month-long work stoppage, Verizon management and some 40,000 striking employees have agreed to return to the bargaining table tomorrow after the weekend intervention of U.S. Labor Secretary Thomas Perez.
From a Department of Labor press release:
Today, Secretary Perez met at the U.S. Labor Department with Lowell McAdam, chairman and CEO of Verizon; Chris Shelton, president of the Communications Workers of America; and Lonnie Stephenson, president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. The parties had an open, frank and constructive dialogue about finding a comprehensive way forward to resolve disputed issues and get people back to work. The parties agreed to return to the bargaining table on Tuesday to continue their discussion.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple CEO Tim Cook tweeted on Monday from Beijing a photograph of himself and Didi Chuxing’s President Jean Lui catching a cab, showing off the company’s spanking new relationship with China’s largest ride-hailing firm.A US$1 billion investment in Didi, announced last week, could be the harbinger of a long-term relationship that some analysts speculate could lead to the U.S. company partnering with the ride-hailing company not only in providing software and services, but also down the line in jointly developing self-driving cars.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Apache Hadoop ecosystem is a busy one.Cloudera, HortonWorks, MapR, IBM, Microsoft, Datastax and Pivotal are but a few of the vendors either focusing purely on Hadoop or offering a Hadoop product on the side. And why not? The open-source software framework for distributed computing and data storage has grown from strength to strength.The genesis of Hadoop came from a paper published back in 2003 by Google. A few years later, Doug Cutting, who at the time was working for Yahoo, took up the project and gave it a name (after his son's toy elephant, no less). And from that humble beginning, a massive ecosystem has grown.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
New products of the weekOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.Appian Quick AppsKey features: Appian Quick Apps enables citizen developers without technical knowledge to create fully-functional business application in 15 minutes or less. Apps are automatically supported on leading devices, desktop web browsers and mobile devices. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Mention "home Wi-Fi router" and you’ll probably think of a cheap device with cruddy performance. But dramatic changes are coming, with big boosts in bandwidth, thanks to two new Wi-Fi technologies.
Both beamforming and MU-MIMO (an acronym for the mouthful that is “multi-user, multiple input, multiple output”) are transformational technologies. We tested them in the new Linksys EA-7500, the company’s first small office/home office router to support the so-called Wave 2 technologies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
"Users will always find a way to get their job done. And if security gets in their way, they will find another, likely less secure, way to get their job done."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Google aims to make HTML5 the primary experience in Chrome by the fourth quarter of this year, except for a white-list of 10 sites that will run Adobe’s Flash Player.Under the plan revealed by Google, called “HTML5 by Default,” the Chrome browser will continue to ship with Adobe’s Flash Player, but its presence will not be advertised by default.If a website offers HTML5, that will be the default experience. For those sites that need Flash, a prompt will show up at the top of the page when the user first visits the site.The prompt will give users the option of running or declining to run Flash on the site. “If the user accepts, Chrome will advertise the presence of Flash Player and refresh the page,” Google said. On subsequent visits to the domain, the user's initial choice is likely to hold good, though Google is still working on the options for future prompts.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Perhaps we should have taken a week off from the iPhone 7 Rumor Rollup and given Google its chance to shine during the week of its Google I/O conference in Mountain View, where the latest Android this and that will be touted. But the Apple rumor mill does not rest, so neither will we.Connector rejector?
The iPhone 7 rumor mill for months has been buzzing with talk of Apple ditching the standard 3.5mm headset jack, but earlier this month the rumors reversed and everyone now thinks the jack will stay. The other sure thing was that Apple would be adding a smart connector, like it has on its iPad Pro for communicating with keyboard accessories, to the iPhone 7. But now that rumor is getting squelched as well.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Share of Apple may be taking a beating right now, but don't let the negative sentiment surrounding Apple fool you: the company is still incredibly profitable having delivered $50 billion in revenue and $10.5 billion in profits last quarter.Suffice it to say, the Apple brand is as strong as ever. Speaking to this fact, the latest Forbes rankings peg Apple as the most valuable brand on the planet, easily edging out Google, Amazon, Samsung and Facebook. According to Forbes' valuation, the Apple brand today is worth $154 billion, with Google and Microsoft worth $82.5 billion and $75.2 billion, respectively.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The personal banking information of about 160,000 U.S. residents walked out the door of the federal government's bank insurance agency on removable media of employees departing in recent months.During the last seven months, seven departing employees at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) have left with personal banking information on thumb drives and other removable media, agency officials told a congressional subcommittee Thursday.The FDIC, which provides deposit insurance to U.S. bank accounts, considered the data breaches as "inadvertent" copying of personal banking information that happened when departing employees were copying personal information to removable media, Lawrence Gross Jr., the FDIC's CIO, told the House of Representatives Science, Space, and Technology Committee's oversight subcommittee.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here