Microsoft is reported to be working on a new design language, which affects how the UI looks and functions, that will eventually be rolled into one of the major Windows 10 updates coming out next year. Windows Central said Microsoft is working on what it called Microsoft Design Language 2 (MDL2), or Project NEON. A design language is a term that refers to a language for how controls, fonts and iconography in the desktop and mobile versions of Windows 10 are controlled. It manages things such as switches, toggles, pickers and dialog windows. You know and hate MDL1 already. It was Metro, introduced in Windows 8 and Windows Phone 7. It introduced the flat, dull UI instead of the more 3D-looking skeuomorphism that iOS and Android were adopting. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
DARPA next month will talk about a proposed consortium of industry players that will research, develop, and publish standards for safe commercial robotic servicing operations in Earth’s orbit.Specifically, DARPA said it wants to create the Consortium for Execution of Rendezvous and Servicing Operations or CONFERS that looks to establish a forum that would use best practices from government and industry to research, develop and publish non-binding, consensus-derived technical and safety standards for on-orbit servicing operations. In doing so, the program would provide a clear technical basis for definitions and expectations of responsible behavior in outer space. In the end the ultimate goal is to provide the technical foundation to shape safe and responsible commercial space operations to preserve the safety of the global commons of space, DARPA stated.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
So you want a private/hybrid cloud strategy for your company. Great idea. Now, how do you ensure that your cloud strategy will be successful? Well, this requires understanding how to measure success. Let me suggest the following criteria:
Your constituents (generally the business and applications owners) can voluntarily decide to adopt your cloud or not.
You need to be able to prove to them that it is to their advantage to run their applications in your cloud.
MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: How to build a private cloud
Now, to do the above, you need to be able to provide cloud operational metrics that mirror what the business uses. Let’s review what the business uses as metrics:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
With the rise of technology, the availability of instant communication and collaboration tools that bring the virtual world into the boardroom, the face of the modern office is rapidly changing. According to Gallup's most recent Work and Education poll, 37 percent of U.S. workers say they have telecommuted. And with GlobalWorkplaceAnalytics.com reporting that at least half of all jobs in the U.S. lend themselves to telecommuting that number is likely to continue to rise. Already, in Fortune 1000 companies, increasingly mobile employees “are not at their desk 50-60 percent of the time,” according to GlobalWorkplaceAnalytics.com.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Forced updates in Windows 10 have their appeal. For Microsoft, it helps keep the majority of its users on the same build of Windows 10, reducing legacy support issues. For users, it keeps your system up-to-date and reduces the chances of getting hit with malware that takes advantage of unpatched systems.But some folks resent the idea of having updates forced on them—especially when some of those updates cause problems or won’t install properly. If you’re running Windows 10 Home you’re at the mercy of Microsoft’s update schedule (though we have some tips for you at the end of this article). Windows 10 Pro and Enterprise users, however, have the opportunity to defer certain types of updates.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Raspberry Pi 3 today has only Wi-Fi connectivity, but soon it will also be able to handle low-throughput cellular communications and let users control devices over long distances.Altair has completed testing of its ALT1160 Category 1 LTE chip on Raspberry Pi, and is now making it available, a company representative said. That's significant, as it will bring much-needed, long-range communications to the popular board computer.The LTE chip is ready for sale by Altair and its partners, a company representative said. The chip will be included in various third-party add-on LTE expansion boards and sensor modules for Raspberry Pi; otherwise, Altair will take volume orders for the chip. Each chip will cost roughly $15 to $20, though prices are coming down, said Eran Eshed, co-founder of Altair. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Britons hoping that a quaint historical tradition might stop a Draconian internet surveillance law in its tracks were disappointed on Tuesday morning, when the Queen gave her approval to the Investigatory Powers Act 2016.In theory, the Queen has the power of veto over all U.K. legislation as bills do not become law until they receive royal assent.In practice, though, it's just a formality: no reigning British monarch has rejected a piece of legislation since 1707. Besides, given the post-Brexit backlash against anyone than Parliament deciding British law, it would have been a daring move for a hereditary head of state.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Roughly one year ago, I made a series of predictions about what would happen in the Linux world during 2016. Let’s take a look at just how wrong I was.1. We still won’t be using WaylandAh, Wayland. The eternally yearned for replacement for Xorg that never seems to ship by default on any (major) Linux distribution. I predicted that the status quo would remain the same—that the world would remain Wayland-less throughout 2016.I was wrong.On Nov. 22, 2016, Fedora 25 shipped—and with Wayland as the default display server.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
IBM today announced that American Airlines, considered by some metrics to be the largest airline in the world, would be using its cloud platform.+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: How to compare cloud costs between Amazon, Microsoft & Google +A press release announcing the deal provided scant details of how AA will use IBMs cloud. American “will move select enterprise applications to IBM’s Cloud,” is about the all it said, adding that AA has chosen IBM as its cloud provider but not saying the agreement is exclusive.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems have been around for a dozen years or so. During that timeframe, SIEMs evolved from perimeter security event correlation tools to GRC platforms to security analytics systems. Early vendors such as eSecurity, GuardedNet, Intellitactics and NetForensics are distant memories. Today’s SIEM market is now dominated by a few leaders: LogRhythm, McAfee (aka: Nitro Security), HP (aka: ArcSight), IBM (aka: QRadar) and Splunk.Of course, there is a community of innovative upstarts that believe SIEM is a legacy technology. They proclaim that log management and event correlation can’t keep up with the pace of cybersecurity today, thus you need new technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning algorithms and neural networks to consume, process, and analyze security data in real time. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Success in the digital era requires a significant rethink of IT strategy. Technology approaches have historically focused on the compute platforms, but in today’s digital world where billions of devices are being connected and the cloud and mobility have become the norm, IT strategies must become network-centric.In a digital organization, the network will evolve from being a tactical resource into a high-value, strategic asset that will have a direct impact on the success of new business initiatives.However, if the network is to become the foundation for the digital enterprise, it must evolve to do the following:
Ensure the availability, flexibility and scalability of digital services.
Provide security that cuts across silos and eases operations.
Automate compliance tasks.
Unlock meaningful insights to transform the organization.
Provide full visibility and operational efficiency to make the network a competitive differentiator.
Accomplishing the above requires IT to find a way to control and automate processes. This can be achieved through the use of actionable network intelligence (ANI) that ensures network and service availability, improves risk management and operational efficiencies, and transforms the network into a competitive advantage.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Most popular companies for job seekersImage by Thinkstock/UnsplashIt's no surprise that IT jobs are some of the hottest, most lucrative and exciting careers around, but some companies are more alluring than others. Job search site Indeed.com searched through its more than 16 million job postings last month, filtered results to focus on only the IT industry jobs, and then ranked each company based on viewer impressions and click-through rate to gauge how appealing each company is to potential candidates.
"With over 16 million job postings globally and more than 200 million unique visitors a month … We compiled a list of the most popular tech company job postings. We then ranked the companies by click through rates on job postings during the month of October. Each company had to have at least 100 job postings to be considered. To compile the list, Indeed looked at the number of job seeker clicks relative to impressions -- or click through rate," according to Indeed.
There were some surprises, says Daniel Culbertson, Indeed.com's lead economist; many of the Silicon Valley heavyweights like Facebook, Google and Apple had received lower job seeker scores than anticipated, and two lesser-known companies, Concur Continue reading
The InfoSec market is predicted to grow from $75 billion in 2015 to $170 billion by 2020, but – like any child star – it finds itself struggling with growing pains.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Comparing prices among the major IaaS cloud vendors is not as easy as simply checking the cost of one virtual machine versus another. Myriad factors influence price: Size of the virtual machine, type of VM and contract length, to name a few.So how are you supposed to know which vendor offers the best deal? The key is to understand the different offers from Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform and then determine which is best for your use case.“Comparing cloud pricing is complicated,” begins a blog post from RightScale that analyzes cloud prices among the major vendors. “It can be difficult to make apples-to-apples comparisons because cloud providers offer different pricing models, unique discounting options, and frequent price cuts.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
This will likely make you angry. It made me livid.
It’s a report, 34 pages long, from the Identity Theft Resource Center of the known systems breaches just this year.
Read it and rage.
It does not include the San Francisco Metro Transit Authority (SFMTA) hack from Thanksgiving weekend, where the SFMTA had to let passengers go free through the gates. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
There is a fundamental differentiator between companies that are winning the digitization race and transforming industry segments and those that have traditional business models.I’m talking about companies like Airbnb, Uber, Facebook or Amazon. Those companies don’t just create stuff for their customers, their customers create stuff for them, and for each other. The value of their product or service, therefore, is co-created by the people who use it.+ Also on Network World: Is your network a platform for business innovation and growth? +
Facebook is the most obvious example of this. We are the product. Facebook just provides a platform. Its customers create all of the content and thus create the reason to engage as well as the value of the platform. Without us, there is no reason to be on Facebook.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency said late Monday that no data had been accessed from its servers in a ransomware attack on the Muni transit system and the agency has never considered paying the ransom asked by the attacker.The statement by the SFMTA follows reports that the alleged attacker has threatened to dump 30GB of data stolen from the agency, if the ransom of the equivalent of about $73,000 in bitcoin was not paid.“The SFMTA network was not breached from the outside, nor did hackers gain entry through our firewalls,” the agency’s spokeswoman Kristen Holland wrote in a blog post. She did not mention how the ransomware had got to the SFMTA systems, though there is the possibility that it may have been activated through a link in an email or a web link by an unsuspecting insider.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Make every beat count with Fitbit Charge 2, the all-new heart rate and fitness wristband built for all-day, workouts and beyond. PurePulse continuous heart rate makes it easy to maximize workouts, better track calorie burn and get a snapshot of your cardio fitness level, while all-day activity and auto sleep tracking, lets you see how your whole routine adds up. Record your workouts with multi-sport modes to see real-time workout stats on screen, or rely on SmartTrack to automatically record select exercises for you. The large OLED display helps you stay connected with call, text and calendar alerts, stay active with Reminders to Move, and find moments of calm with personalized guided breathing sessions. Plus, you can find a look that fits your style with customizable clock faces and interchangeable bands. With more advanced features in a sleeker package, it's the motivation you need to push yourself further-every step, every beat, every day. The Charge 2 is a #1 Amazon best seller with over 1,300 ratings averaging 4 out of 5 stars (read recent reviews). Its typical list price is $149.95, but it's currently available on Amazon at the discounted price of $129.To read this article Continue reading
Ordinary thermostats only read the temperature in one room, but are supposed to deliver comfort in all rooms. Ecobee3 remote sensors deliver the right temperature in the rooms that matter most. Now homekit enabled. Ecobee3 sensors know which rooms are occupied to deliver the right temperature in the right places. And they know whether someone's home to help you save energy and money when you're away. Ecobee3 comes with 1 free remote sensor that measures temperature and occupancy. You can have up to 32 sensors. The more you add, the smarter your Ecobee3 becomes at delivering comfort where it matters and savings where it counts. It averages 4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon, where its typical list price of $249 has been reduced 20% to $198.99 for a limited time.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
This extremely versatile device from Lexar reads 25 popular memory card formats, and leverages SuperSpeed USB 3.0 technology for high-speed file transfers, with a USB interface speed up to 500MB/s. It reads multiple slots at once to allow for simultaneous downloads/transfers, and pops closed to protect its card slots when not in use. It averages 4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon, where its typical list price of $35 has been reduced 34% to $23.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here