As anyone who has sampled the immersive worlds of early augmented or virtual reality apps can attest, the experience can be downright exhilarating. So too will be the vendor battles that erupt and the commercial uses to emerge around the technologies.So says Tom Mainelli, program vice president for devices and AR/VR at IDC, which held its annual Directions conference in Boston this week. Mainelli is excited about the prospect that these eventually comingled technologies will enable us to “fundamentally rethink how we create information, share information and absorb information.”VIRTUAL REALITY
Mainelli first dove into VR, which he said basically involves “leaving one reality for another.” A recent IDC survey of more than 2,000 U.S. consumers found that three quarters of them said they had heard of VR and knew what it was – not surprising in light of all the new technology rolled out last year from the likes of Samsung, Facebook/Oculus and HTC. So yes, VR has gotten off to a faster start than AR through gaming apps and low-end gear such as Google Cardboard, but it could eventually become a subset of AR, the industry watcher said.To read this article in full Continue reading
As anyone who has sampled the immersive worlds of early augmented or virtual reality apps can attest, the experience can be downright exhilarating. So too will be the vendor battles that erupt and the commercial uses to emerge around the technologies.
So says Tom Mainelli, program vice president for devices and AR/VR at IDC, which held its annual Directions conference in Boston this week. Mainelli is excited about the prospect that these eventually comingled technologies will enable us to “fundamentally rethink how we create information, share information and absorb information.”VIRTUAL REALITY
Mainelli first dove into VR, which he said basically involves “leaving one reality for another.” A recent IDC survey of more than 2,000 U.S. consumers found that three quarters of them said they had heard of VR and knew what it was – not surprising in light of all the new technology rolled out last year from the likes of Samsung, Facebook/Oculus and HTC. So yes, VR has gotten off to a faster start than AR through gaming apps and low-end gear such as Google Cardboard, but it could eventually become a subset of AR, the industry watcher said.To read this article in full Continue reading
Confide, a messaging app reportedly used by U.S. White House staff, apparently had several security holes that made it easier to hack.Security consultancy IOActive found the vulnerabilities in Confide, which promotes itself as an app that offers “military-grade” end-to-end encryption.But despite its marketing, the app contained glaring problems with securing user account information, IOActive said in a Wednesday post.The consultancy noticed it could access records for 7,000 Confide users by exploiting vulnerabilities in the app’s account management system. Part of the problem resided with Confide’s API, which could be used to reveal data on user’s phone numbers and email addresses.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When Henry Ford introduced the Model T in the fall of 1908, he likely didn’t comprehend the full scope of events he would set in motion. Come 1914, and Ford’s production line had reduced assembly times from 12 hours to less than two and a half hours, slashed the going price of an automobile, and redefined the working wage of factory employees, ultimately putting more than 15 million Model T’s on the road and igniting the entire automotive industry in the years to come.
Competition often leads to innovation and progress for other industry players. One modern equivalent of this can be seen in the rise of public and private cloud providers like Amazon and Microsoft. AWS’ sales numbers recently topped $12 billion, up nearly 55 percent from the same period last year. Meanwhile, Microsoft continues to push ahead and is projected to reach $20 billion in annual cloud revenue by June 2018. As these powerhouses and others like Oracle and Google continue to see widespread adoption across industries, other players have stepped in to consume their piece of the $204 billion-dollar cloud infrastructure pie, leading to an ecosystem of cloud and data center partners that continue to push Continue reading
Tariq Shaukat doesn’t have the typical background you’d expect from someone leading the sales and professional services division at Google’s Cloud. Before becoming president of customers, Shaukat was chief commercial officer for Caesar’s Entertainment, the vast hotel and casino chain. As Google is attempting to court enterprise clients, Shaukat is bringing a customer-centric view to the business. And by the way, he’s no tech novice: He’s got undergraduate and graduate degrees from MIT and another graduate degree from Stanford.Analysts who track the IaaS cloud computing market give Google high marks for innovation and infrastructure backbone. But in last year’s Magic Quadrant, Gartner noted that Google was in the “rudimentary stages” of interacting with enterprise clients. The hiring of VMware co-founder Diane Greene in early 2016 was seen as a turning point for Google being serious about pursuing the enterprise market. Shaukat is continuing that work. In a market dominated by Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, how will Google reach out to enterprise clients? That’s Shaukat’s job.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Purported CIA documents leaked Tuesday appear to confirm that the U.S. National Security Agency and one of CIA's own divisions were responsible for the malware tools and operations attributed to a group that security researchers have dubbed the Equation.The Equation's cyberespionage activities were documented in February 2015 by researchers from antivirus vendor Kaspersky Lab. It is widely considered to be the most advanced cyberespionage group in the world based on the sophistication of its tools and the length of its operations, some possibly dating as far back as 1996.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Enterprises: Google wants you. That's the message coming out of the first keynote address at the company’s Google Cloud Next conference in San Francisco on Wednesday. The tech titan's cloud team really wants enterprises to know that it's serious about serving their needs.Diane Greene, the senior vice president of Google Cloud, showcased a suite of partnerships and customer announcements that provided concrete results for the enterprise-focused strategy that Greene kicked off when she joined Google in 2015.Google hasn't always focused on the enterprise. The announcements showcased on Wednesday show that the company's initiatives to make its G Suite productivity service and public cloud platform offerings have been resonating with customers it may not have reached in the past.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The tech world can be a haven for people who enjoy solitary, focused work, and it often attracts people who gravitate toward the quiet end of the introvert-extrovert spectrum. For managers, the challenge is how to make the most of introverts’ and extroverts’ strengths. Team diversity can be a tremendous asset if companies are prepared to accommodate divergent work preferences.Another approach is to create speaking roles in meetings, says Shobhna Upadhyaya, senior manager, business operations, at LinkedIn. “Given that introverts may not speak up in meetings on their own, carve out a role for them to participate in meetings, [for example] have them present a certain section if they are up for it.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Intel's TV marketing campaign says the company is driving 98 percent of the cloud. That statistic will come under attack with some chip and OS announcements on Wednesday.The most significant announcement: Microsoft's Windows Server OS now running on ARM chips. The OS was exclusive to x86 chips, but now customers can consider ARM chips to run Windows Server.Microsoft did not announce an official date for an ARM version of Windows Server, though the software company is using such systems internally. The announcement was made on the opening day of Open Compute Project's U.S. Summit in Santa Clara, California.At the summit, Qualcomm showed a new 48-core 1U server running its Centriq 2400 ARM chip. The server is based on Microsoft's Project Olympus server design and was shown running Windows Server. It was designed for the Azure cloud at Microsoft. The Centriq 2400 chip isn't available commercially but is still in testing.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
France has followed the Netherlands in placing its faith in paper-based voting systems ahead of key elections later this year, following allegations that Russian hackers influenced last year's U.S. presidential election.
The French government will not allow internet voting in legislative elections to be held in June because of the "extremely elevated threat of cyberattacks." The move follows a recommendation from the French Network and Information Security Agency (ANSSI), it said Monday.
The move will only affect 11 of the 577 electoral districts voting, those representing French citizens living outside their home country. These expatriates had previously been allowed to vote over the internet in some elections because the alternative was to require some of them to travel vast distances to the nearest embassy or consulate with a ballot box.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A number of reports are warning businesses and consumers alike that a new round of ransomware based on the infamous Cryptolocker (aka TorrentLocker or Teerac) code is making the rounds.Today Cisco Talos wrote: “Crypt0l0cker has gone through a long evolution, the adversaries are updating and improving the malware on a regular basis. Several indicators inside the samples we have analyzed point to a new major version of the malware. We have already seen large campaigns targeting Europe and other parts of the world in 2014 and 2015. It seems to be that the actors behind these campaigns are back now and launching again massive spam attacks.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A U.S. senator is probing reports of a breach of data from smart toys from Spiral Toys, writing to the company’s CEO a letter with ten questions about the issue, including about the company’s security practices.Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, wrote in a letter Tuesday to CEO Mark Meyers that the breach raises serious questions concerning how well the company protects the information it collects, particularly from children.Nelson also said that the incident raises questions about the vendor's compliance with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act that requires covered companies to have reasonable procedures to protect the confidentiality, security and integrity of personal information collected from children.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft’s tools for developers hit another milestone Tuesday, when the company made Visual Studio 2017 generally available. As the name implies, this is the next major release of Microsoft’s integrated development environment.
It’s aimed at providing tools for developers to create modern apps for the cloud, mobile platforms and more. The software gained a Xamarin Forms previewer that lets users view a mobile user interface for iOS and Android apps as they’re writing XAML, an XML-based markup language developed by Microsoft.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The fate of Avaya’s networking business has been the subject of speculation for well over a year now. In December, I wrote about the most likely suitors for the business. Ideally, I would have liked to have seen Avaya remain a “full stack” solution provider and keep the group, but it appears that wasn’t in the bankruptcy cards. This brings us to the current news where the winner of the Avaya Networking sweepstakes is (drum roll… although its in the title) Extreme Networks. That’s correct: Purple Extreme Networks is purchasing the networking assets from Avaya (Red) that came to it from Nortel (blue), so from a color perspective, it all makes sense. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Thanks to WikiLeaks, antivirus vendors will soon be able to figure out if you have been hacked by the CIA.
On Tuesday, WikiLeaks dumped a trove of 8,700 documents that allegedly detail the CIA’s secret hacking operations, including spying tools designed for mobile phones, PCs and smart TVs.
WikiLeaks has redacted the actual source code from the files to prevent the distribution of cyber weapons, it said. Nevertheless, the document dump -- if real -- still exposes some of the techniques that the CIA has allegedly been using.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
President Donald Trump's revised travel ban, released Monday, ensures that H-1B visa workers from banned countries won't have problems as long as they stay in the U.S. But if they take a trip abroad, they could have trouble returning.The changes unveiled today are technical, and immigration attorneys will be waiting for the U.S. State Department to clarify the rules. In the meantime, what may be a greater issue is how the move by Trump affects immigration and travel.[ Discuss this story. Join our H-1B/Outsourcing group on Facebook. ]
"The real impact will be global in terms of how people perceive the U.S.," said William Stock, an immigration attorney and president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
SAN FRANCISCO -- Artificial intelligence (AI) will become so instrumental to corporate revenue growth that businesses should hire a chief artificial intelligence officer to spearhead AI initiatives, says Andrew Ng, who drives global AI strategy at Chinese search giant Baidu. Not so fast, says Neil Jacobstein, chair of artificial intelligence and robotics at Singularity University, who isn't a fan of companies centralizing leadership for AI functions.The two clashed on the topic here last week at the WSJ's CIO Network, where Ng and Jacobstein spoke on a panel. Although they disagreed on the organizational approaches to AI, Ng and Jacobstein both said that the technology is a potentially game-changing way to harness the vast amounts of information corporations collect.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The war for IT talent in 2017 is becoming even more competitive - and even more expensive. The demand for talent certainly isn't slowing down, and companies are offering hefty compensation packages to try and fill open roles.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
If you thought it was bad when the FBI reported last year that ransomware was on the rise, you should read the forecasts for this year. According to SonicWall’s most recent Annual Threat Report, “ransomware attacks grew 167 times since 2015, from 3.8 million in 2015 to 638 million in 2016.”This year, TrendMicro sees a 25-percent growth in the number of new ransomware families available for use in breaches. Reports of the encroachment of ransomware on government, law enforcement, critical infrastructure, and health and safety are already climbing.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
There is a lot of chatting going on in corporate America these days, but not everyone is speaking the same language.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)