Apple WWDC ticket lottery registration countdown is on

You have until Friday, March 31 at 10am pacific time to register for a chance to buy tickets to Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference, which takes place at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose from June 5-9.Oh, and make sure you have $1,600 to spare for a ticket in case you do get selected. You must be a member of the Apple Developer Program or Apple Developer Enterprise Program as of February 16, 2017 to register for the lottery. Last year, those who were picked in the lottery started getting notifications within a few days of the lottery deadline.MORE: You'll see right through this iPhone 8 concept designTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The real reason shadow IT is so widespread

At your company, who’s responsible for what technology is bought and implemented?It’s a critical question, with deep implications for how your company leverages technology to get things done and drive competitive advantage. A recent survey from Spiceworks takes a stab at answering this question. But while the survey offers a number of insights, it leaves out perhaps the most important constituency in the procurement process.+ Also on Network World: Struggling with shadow IT? Maybe re-evaluate the IT department +  As you can surmise from the title—ITDMs and BDMs: Tech Purchase Superheroes—the Spiceworks survey was taken mostly from the standpoint of vendors trying to sell you hardware, software and services. It focuses on teasing out the differences between two key groups: IT decision makers (ITDMs) and business decision makers (BDMs). Amidst perceptions that the balance of power is shifting from IT to the business, the survey attempts to find out if the two groups work together in a smooth, well-oiled process or if they struggle to coordinate separate agendas. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The real reason shadow IT is so widespread

At your company, who’s responsible for what technology is bought and implemented?It’s a critical question, with deep implications for how your company leverages technology to get things done and drive competitive advantage. A recent survey from Spiceworks takes a stab at answering this question. But while the survey offers a number of insights, it leaves out perhaps the most important constituency in the procurement process.+ Also on Network World: Struggling with shadow IT? Maybe re-evaluate the IT department +  As you can surmise from the title—ITDMs and BDMs: Tech Purchase Superheroes—the Spiceworks survey was taken mostly from the standpoint of vendors trying to sell you hardware, software and services. It focuses on teasing out the differences between two key groups: IT decision makers (ITDMs) and business decision makers (BDMs). Amidst perceptions that the balance of power is shifting from IT to the business, the survey attempts to find out if the two groups work together in a smooth, well-oiled process or if they struggle to coordinate separate agendas. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple iOS 10.3 packs 20-plus new features & is available now

Apple has made iOS 10.3 publicly available and the software update for its iPhones and iPads is packed with a Find-My-AirPod feature as well as a slew of Siri, CarPlay and other additions.You probably know the routine by now: Head over to the General icon on your device, then hit Software Update and you'll be given the option to grab iOS 10.3 (a bit over 611MB on my iPhone) either over the air or via iTunes on a Mac or Windows PC. Unless you want to wait it out a bit and make sure Apple hasn't mucked anything up. Bob Brown/NetworkWorld Bob Brown/NetworkWorld Not to be overlooked in iOS 10.3, even though it works behind the scenes, is support for the Apple File System (APFS) that the company introduced last year at its Worldwide Developers Conference. APFS is designed to work better with flash storage and has improved encryption support.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple iOS 10.3 packs 20-plus new features & is available now

Apple has made iOS 10.3 publicly available and the software update for its iPhones and iPads is packed with a Find-My-AirPod feature as well as a slew of Siri, CarPlay and other additions.You probably know the routine by now: Head over to the General icon on your device, then hit Software Update and you'll be given the option to grab iOS 10.3 (a bit over 611MB on my iPhone) either over the air or via iTunes on a Mac or Windows PC. Unless you want to wait it out a bit and make sure Apple hasn't mucked anything up. Bob Brown/NetworkWorld Bob Brown/NetworkWorld Not to be overlooked in iOS 10.3, even though it works behind the scenes, is support for the Apple File System (APFS) that the company introduced last year at its Worldwide Developers Conference. APFS is designed to work better with flash storage and has improved encryption support.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner tweets nothing like Trump

Actually, he tweets nothing.President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, plays a key role in the administration and is featured in a pair of big news headlines just today – his leading a special task force featuring tech industry luminaries,  and his pending testimony before a Senate committee investigating Russian meddling in November’s election.Kushner’s father-in-law would be tweeting up a storm on such a busy day.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Micron to ship Intel Optane competitor later this year

Intel's spanking new high-capacity Optane SSD is cool, but drives from other storage vendors based on the 3D Xpoint technology could be coming later this year.Micron will start shipping its 3D Xpoint memory technology -- branded QuantX --  later this year, which will go into SSDs offered by storage makers. The company made that announcement during an earnings call on Friday.Intel and Micron co-developed 3D Xpoint. Intel says Optane is significantly faster and could replace conventional SSDs and DRAM in the coming years.But unlike Intel, Micron is not interested in making its own Optane-like storage. The company is licensing its 3D Xpoint technology to other storage makers. Micron's QuantX will also be available the form of DDR-style memory, the company has said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Advanced technologies that are ready to make AR a consumer reality

Augmented reality (AR) is on the verge of entering the mainstream. Apple is preparing to introduce an AR product, not because it invented AR, but because the technology, long under investigation by academic researchers and Google is ready.Commercial prototypes Microsoft Hololens and Google Tango already have publicly demonstrated the potential of and have created enthusiasm for AR.But consumer electronics products we use every day are rarely invented and materialize right away on retails’ shelves. Often, well-understood technologies like AR, virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence (AI) have been proven in theory and built as prototypes in researchers labs but await practical applications and cheap hardware.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Don’t Leave Features Lying Around

Many years ago, when multicast was still a “thing” everyone expected to spread throughout the Internet itself, a lot of work went into specifying not only IP multicast control planes, but also IP multicast control planes for interdomain use (between autonomous systems). BGP was modified to support IP multicast, for instance, in order to connect IP multicast groups from sender to receiver across the entire ‘net. One of these various efforts was a protocol called the Distance Vector Multicast Routing Protocol, or DVMRP. The general idea behind DVMRP was to extend many of the already well-known mechanisms for signaling IP multicast with interdomain counterparts. Specifically, this meant extending IGMP to operate across provider networks, rather than within a single network.

As you can imagine, one problem with any sort of interdomain effort is troubleshooting—how will an operator be able to troubleshoot problems with interdomain IGMP messages sources from outside their network? There is no way to log into another provider’s network (some silliness around competition, I would imagine), so something else was needed. Hence the idea of being able to query a router for information about its connected interfaces, multicast neighbors, and other information, was written up in draft-ietf-idmr-dvmrp-v3-11 (which Continue reading

Skype for Business admins get tool to diagnose call problems

IT administrators managing fleets of Skype for Business users could have an easier time diagnosing and fixing problems. Microsoft unveiled the beta of a new Call Analytics Dashboard on Monday, which is supposed to provide admins with a diagnosis of issues that users are having on a call.There are several different issues that could arise and cause a degradation in call quality, which is why these analytics are helpful. If a user complains about a call only working intermittently, it can be hard to diagnose whether that’s an issue with their network connection, headset, Microsoft’s infrastructure, or something else.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Faster Networks + Cheaper Messages => Microservices => Functions => Edge

When Adrian Cockroft—the guy who helped put the loud in Cloud through his energetic evangelism of Cloud Native and Microservice architectures—talks about what’s next, it pays to listen. And you can listen, here’s a fascinating forward looking talk he gave at microXchg 2017: Shrinking Microservices to Functions. It’s typically Cockroftian: understated, thoughtful, and full of insight drawn from experience.

Adrian makes a compelling case that the same technology drivers, faster networking and cheaper messaging, that drove the move to Microservices are now driving the move to Functions.

The payoffs are all those you’ve no doubt heard about Serverless for some time, but Adrian develops them in an interesting way. He traces how architectures have evolved over time. Take a look at my gloss of his talk for more details.

What’s next after Functions? Adrian talks about pushing Lambda functions to the edge. A topic I’m excited about and have been interested in for sometime, though I didn’t quite see it playing out like this.

Datacenters disappear. Functions are not running in an AWS region anymore, code is placed near the customer using a CDN at CDN endpoints. Now you have a fully distributed, at the edge, low Continue reading

This augmented reality app will help you to furnish your home

Will that new couch fit in my living room? How about that table, is it too big for the space? In the old days you would have to break out a tape measure to see if furniture fits or just imagine it’s coloring in the room. But thanks to advancements in augmented reality, you can now see exactly it will look like in your home before you buy it. Home décor retailer Pottery Barn has released a new app named 3D Room View that will implant a virtual three-dimensional image select furniture pieces on a smartphone or tablet screen, allowing the customer to get an augmented reality view of what the couch, seat, table, lamp or chair will look like in the room.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Not the sort of publicity Avaya was seeking

No doubt many a soccer fan has been inspired to pick up a fancy call center package or some sweet, sweet SDN technology after catching a San Jose Earthquakes soccer match at Avaya Stadium, but the company found its brand splattered all over headlines it would rather have avoided after an ugly incident at the field on Sunday. My Google Alert on Avaya, used mainly to help keep track of the company's product announcements and business drama (Chapter 11 filing, networking business sale to Extreme, etc.), started blowing up this morning:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Not the sort of publicity Avaya was seeking

No doubt many a soccer fan has been inspired to pick up a fancy call center package or some sweet, sweet SDN technology after catching a San Jose Earthquakes soccer match at Avaya Stadium, but the company found its brand splattered all over headlines it would rather have avoided after an ugly incident at the field on Sunday. My Google Alert on Avaya, used mainly to help keep track of the company's product announcements and business drama (Chapter 11 filing, networking business sale to Extreme, etc.), started blowing up this morning:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Memory and Logic in a Post Moore’s Law World

A key for computing architectures going forward is the development of efficient ways of integrating memory and logic functions in a single device, and much of the focus of research here is in the area of magnetism. Magnetism is at the heart of such storage devices as hard-disk drives and STT-MRAM, and as magnets continue to shrink, they need less power to switch polarization. With the recent development by researchers into new energy-efficient switching mechanisms, scientists are now looking into how the new physics of nanomagnetism can be used in digital device logic. —The Next Platform

The post Worth Reading: Memory and Logic in a Post Moore’s Law World appeared first on 'net work.

5 burning questions with new IETF Chair and Cisco Fellow Alissa Cooper

When the Internet Engineering Task Force meets this week in Chicago it will have a new chair – Cisco Fellow Alissa Cooper. Cooper will be the first woman to hold the position as the standards-setting body continues its work to improve all things internet technology-related.The Stanford and Oxford graduate comes to the job having worked with Cisco since 2014 in its collaboration business and the IETF since 2008.Jonathan Rosenberg, Cisco Fellow and Vice President, CTO for Cisco's Collaboration Business [who has authored many of the internet standards that define modern telecoms, including the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)], and Cooper’s boss wrote that “Alissa has a long history of contributions to the IETF, serving most recently as the area director for the set of working groups that produce real-time communications protocols like SIP. Alissa, who was recently appointed to Cisco’s top technical rank of Cisco Fellow, takes the IETF reins in an exciting time. Areas like IoT, SDN, and NFV are requiring significant attention and making big impacts on the industry.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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