IDG Contributor Network: #WirelessSucks: Where do we go from here?

“The Wi-Fi doesn’t work.” After speaking to hundreds of customers of all sizes, this is consistently one of the top help desk complaints that I hear. Not surprisingly, this creates a common perception about wireless that is unflattering to say the least.Some of the time, this is a fair complaint. Wireless is a pervasive technology, and it is difficult to deliver a consistent and reliable experience across the exploding stream of different devices and device types.+ Also on Network World: Wi-Fi troubleshooting remains a challenge for most organizations + Other times, however, the Wi-Fi network is just getting a bad rap. It is guilty by association—i.e an easy target for people to blame when other issues might be at play. In fact, all of the following issues could impact network connectivity, casting a pall over the wireless experience:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: #WirelessSucks: Where do we go from here?

“The Wi-Fi doesn’t work.” After speaking to hundreds of customers of all sizes, this is consistently one of the top help desk complaints that I hear. Not surprisingly, this creates a common perception about wireless that is unflattering to say the least.Some of the time, this is a fair complaint. Wireless is a pervasive technology, and it is difficult to deliver a consistent and reliable experience across the exploding stream of different devices and device types.+ Also on Network World: Wi-Fi troubleshooting remains a challenge for most organizations + Other times, however, the Wi-Fi network is just getting a bad rap. It is guilty by association—i.e an easy target for people to blame when other issues might be at play. In fact, all of the following issues could impact network connectivity, casting a pall over the wireless experience:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Nokia accuses Apple of infringing 32 of its patents

Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia has filed lawsuits against Apple in Germany in the U.S., alleging that the smartphone giant has infringed 32 of its patents, including the widely used H.264 video codec.The patent infringement lawsuits, filed with the Regional Courts in Dusseldorf, Mannheim and Munich in Germany and the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, cover patents related to displays, user interfaces, software, antennas, chipsets, and video coding, Nokia said Wednesday. Nokia is planning to file more lawsuits in other jurisdictions, the company said in a press release.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Reshaping the project manager role for the digital age

Recent IT labor market analysis from CEB reveals that "IT project manager" is the most difficult-to-fill IT role globally. This comes as no surprise to IT and project management leaders who have consistently struggled to find the right talent to oversee their most critical projects and programs. As organizations strive to digitize, the challenge of finding skilled IT project managers will only increase. The type of work that supports the typical organization’s digitization ambitions—rapid, often iterative, and typically involving new technologies or processes—is the type of work that the average, process-focused project manager isn’t well equipped to handle.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

10% off Oster Cordless Electric Wine Bottle Opener with Foil Cutter – Deal Alert

This cordless electric wine opener from Oster removes the cork in seconds with one-button operation, and opens up to 30 bottles before needing to be recharged. It features a foil cutter for easily removing seals and a comfortable soft-grip handle. Currently averages 4 out of 5 stars from over 4,300 people (read reviews). It's discounted 10% on Amazon, so you can get it right now for just $17.99. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Facebook delivers its state of the open source union

There’s no doubting Facebook’s commitment to open-source projects. The company has a portfolio of over 400 open-source projects with over a half million followers. A look at the top five projects gives a bird’s eye view of Facebook’s obsession with unifying and improving the effectiveness of its large internal developer community, automating the process of building software by continually deploying it, and operating at a scale matched by just a few other companies, such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft.The commit statistics below are a measure of the development activity of Facebook’s top five open-source projects that impact different parts of software development and execution. A commit is a revision or additional file usually containing software code that is saved to a GitHub repository. The commit is saved with a unique generated ID or hash and is time-stamped so that code contributions can be managed from creation through final release.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

2016’s biggest social media stories

Social media had a big 2016. The medium and all of the leading social companies reached new heights of influence … but not without consequence. These are the stories that shaped the conversations and intrigue around social media during the past year.Social media and the 2016 presidential election The American public is still grappling with all the ways social media shaped the 2016 presidential campaign. However, CIO.com uncovered how social media brings out the darker side of digital introverts and often amplifies slanted views or political biases. During the final weeks of the 2016 presidential election it became quite clear that social could not be more powerful or dangerous.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Has VMware found a cloud strategy savior in AWS?

Adversity makes strange bedfellows, and in the case of VMware — a company that has made its fortune selling server virtualization software — that bedfellow is Amazon Web Services (AWS), the  public cloud leviathan.Let's rewind to the middle of October, when Mark Lohmeyer, a VMware cloud business unit vice president,  announced that the company was forming a strategic partnership with AWS so that VMware's server virtualization and other software could be run in the AWS public cloud. The idea is that VMware customers using the company's software to run a private cloud in their own data centers will be able to expand into a similar VMware infrastructure run in AWS's public cloud, thereby forming a VMware-based hybrid cloud. The VMware software (called vCenter) used by company administrators to manage the private cloud will reach into the AWS cloud to manage the VMware software running there as well.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Nmap security scanner gets new scripts, performance boosts

The Nmap Project just released the Holiday Edition of its open source cross-platform security scanner and network mapper, with several important improvements and bug fixes.New features in Nmap 7.40 include Npcap 0.78r5, for adding driver signing updates to work with Windows 10 Anniversary Update; faster brute-force authentication cracking; and new scripts for Nmap Script Engine, the project’s maintainer Fyodor wrote on the Nmap mailing list.[ Give yourself a technology career advantage with InfoWorld's Deep Dive technology reports and Computerworld's career trends reports. GET A 15% DISCOUNT through Jan.15, 2017: Use code 8TIISZ4Z. ] The de facto standard network mapping and port scanning tool, Nmap (Network Mapper) Security Scanner is widely used by IT and security administrators for network mapping, port-scanning, and network vulnerability testing. Administrators can run Nmap against the network to find open ports, determine what hosts are available on the network, identify what services those hosts are offering, and detect any network information leaked, such as the type of packet filters and firewalls in use.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Nmap security scanner gets new scripts, performance boosts

The Nmap Project just released the Holiday Edition of its open source cross-platform security scanner and network mapper, with several important improvements and bug fixes.New features in Nmap 7.40 include Npcap 0.78r5, for adding driver signing updates to work with Windows 10 Anniversary Update; faster brute-force authentication cracking; and new scripts for Nmap Script Engine, the project’s maintainer Fyodor wrote on the Nmap mailing list.[ Give yourself a technology career advantage with InfoWorld's Deep Dive technology reports and Computerworld's career trends reports. GET A 15% DISCOUNT through Jan.15, 2017: Use code 8TIISZ4Z. ] The de facto standard network mapping and port scanning tool, Nmap (Network Mapper) Security Scanner is widely used by IT and security administrators for network mapping, port-scanning, and network vulnerability testing. Administrators can run Nmap against the network to find open ports, determine what hosts are available on the network, identify what services those hosts are offering, and detect any network information leaked, such as the type of packet filters and firewalls in use.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

2017 tech outlook — and saving predictions from the digital dustbin

Anyone who has ever done any news video knows that much of what originally gets recorded winds up on the cutting room floor, or these days, in the digital dustbin. That's usually for the best and that was the case recently when myself and other IDG editors were asked to share our 2017 tech predictions, as seen in the embedded video here. But since I went to the effort of coming up with another prediction, beyond expecting 5G hype to crank up in 2017, and looked back to see how my 2016 predictions fared, I figured I'd lay that all out here. My other prediction, which was essentially thrust upon me every time I attended a conference in the second half of 2016, or more recently, peered into my email inbox, is that enterprise IT staffs are going to be inundated with requests by higher ups and end users to support conversational interfaces and chatbots.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Our Most Popular Blog Posts of 2016

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2016, what a year. Ansible upgrades galore, Tower 3 was released, a tipping point for DevOps, and much more.

All these themes were reflected in our blog this year. From doing more with automation, working across platforms (think Windows automation), orchestrating containers at scale, to exploring all the great new features in Tower 3, we covered a lot.

Just in case you missed them, here are our 10 most viewed blog posts of the year (plus a sneaky few honorable mentions).

1. 6 Ways Ansible Makes Docker-Compose Better

Containers are an integral part of DevOps workflows. With containers you can be sure that if you build an application once, you can run it in the same way across every environment along the application lifecycle. That’s great, until one developer announces the need for a second, third, or fourth container. More of them, all doing different things, and all connecting together – somehow. But how? Docker has a tool that can help – docker-compose. But it’s limited to environments with a Docker-centric view of the world and doesn’t solve non-Docker orchestration problems. That’s where Ansible comes in. Read more

2. Testing Ansible Roles with Docker

Ansible plus Docker was a big deal in 2016, Continue reading

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  • The New York Times is looking for a Software Engineer for its Delivery/Site Reliability Engineering team. You will also be a part of a team responsible for building the tools that ensure that the various systems at The New York Times continue to operate in a reliable and efficient manner. Some of the tech we use: Go, Ruby, Bash, AWS, GCP, Terraform, Packer, Docker, Kubernetes, Vault, Consul, Jenkins, Drone. Please send resumes to: [email protected]
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Cool Products and Services

  • A note for .NET developers: You know the pain of troubleshooting errors with limited time, limited information, and limited tools. Log management, exception tracking, and monitoring solutions can help, but many of them treat the .NET platform as an afterthought. You should learn about Loupe...Loupe is a .NET logging and monitoring solution made for the .NET platform from day one. It helps you find and fix problems fast by tracking performance metrics, capturing errors in your .NET software, identifying which errors are causing the greatest impact, and pinpointing root causes. Learn more and try it free today.

  • ScaleArc's database load balancing software empowers you to “upgrade your apps” to consumer Continue reading

BrandPost: Assess Your Organization’s DevOps Maturity

Portions of this post were originally posted on the Puppet blog, and republished here with Puppet's permission.DevOps practices and cultural norms positively impact IT and organizational performance. Our annual State of DevOps Report demonstrates how DevOp improves operational efficiency, creates space for innovation and increases employee engagement.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Protect your privacy with surveillance-defeating sunglasses

Have you done something for yourself lately? If you end up with holiday money to spare, then you might consider buying yourself a cool pair of shades that would help protect your privacy while you are out in public.I saw Reflectacles on Kickstarter a few weeks ago, but since this is likely my last article of 2016, then I wanted to make sure you know about these surveillance-defeating glasses as well.The glasses are the brainchild of Scott Urban who claims that wearing Reflectables “ensure you’re noticed and anonymous at the same time.” The anonymous portion is due to light-reflecting frames which can end up looking like a big, shiny blur when captured by CCTV. Since the wearer’s face can’t be seen in any detail behind the bright glare of the glasses, it renders facial recognition tech useless.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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