Internet of Things poised to transform cities

The internet of things (IoT) is set to transform municipal life, according to government officials surveyed by the nonprofit trade association Computing Industry Trade Association (CompTIA)."Cities and city leaders are thinking more holistically about different uses of technology that are integrated and bringing different aspects of the city together into a unified whole," says Tim Herbert, senior vice president, research and market intelligence, CompTIA."Improved decision-making made possible through new or better streams of data ranks as the highest perceived benefit," he adds.How to build a smarter city In June and July of this year, CompTIA surveyed 172 government personnel with some degree of technology decision-making responsibility for its Building Smarter Cities report. It found that one-half of local, state and federal government personnel believe IoT and the smart cities enabled by IoT will definitely provide value. A further 39 percent felt IoT and smart cities would probably provide value.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to maximize the value of your software IP

Last month, BlackBerry announced that it was quitting the phone-making business, but the BlackBerry name will live on. That's because the company has entered into a licensing agreement with an Indonesian company that will manufacture, distribute and promote BlackBerry-branded devices running BlackBerry software.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Apple design chief Jony Ive rules out touchscreen Macs

PC makers have fully embraced touchscreen laptops and desktops, but don’t expect Apple to head down that road.Last week, the company introduced two MacBook Pros that feature slim OLED displays to replace the keyboard’s function keys. Apple launched its latest products just one day after Microsoft unveiled its massive Surface Studio desktop designed for creative professionals, a demographic once solidly in Apple territory. Why didn’t Apple go fully touchscreen with its new MacBooks? Is the Touch Bar an interim step, a sign that Apple is unsure of its footing?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft introduces mobile scheduling app for Outlook

Stating it wants Outlook for mobile to be more than just checking messages while waiting in line for coffee, Microsoft today announced a new scheduling experience for Outlook for iOS that's similar to the Outlook feature on the desktop. The scheduling assistant for Outlook for iOS is similar to the desktop version of the app, which lets you see your co-workers' schedules, so you can schedule an event at a time that works for everyone.First, you create an event in your calendar, then add co-workers to the “People” field. Times that work for everyone show in white, yellow indicates availability for one or more people in the group, and red indicates times with no availability. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

5 Tales from the Docker Crypt

(Cue the Halloween music)

Welcome to my crypt. This is the Docker crypt keeper speaking and I’ll be your spirit guide on your journey through the dangerous and frightening world of IT applications. Today you will learn about 5 spooky application stories covering everything from cobweb covered legacy processes to shattered CI/CD pipelines. As these stories unfold, you will hear  how Docker helped banish cost, complexity and chaos.

Tale 1 – “Demo Demons”

Splunk was on a mission to enable their employees and partners across the globe to deliver demos of their software regardless of where they’re located in the world, and have each demo function consistently. These business critical demos include everything from Splunk security, to web analytics and IT service intelligence. This vision proved to be quite complex to execute. At times their SEs would be in customer meetings, but their demos would sometimes fail. They needed to ensure that each of their 30 production demos within their Splunk Oxygen demo platform could live forever in eternal greatness.

To ensure their demos were working smoothly with their customers, Splunk uses Docker Datacenter, our on-premises solution that brings container management and deployment services to the enterprise via an integrated platform. Images are Continue reading

How AWS has turned into Amazon’s crutch

When Amazon announced its earnings last week, Wall Street was disappointed, with the company’s stock tumbling 5%. But if Amazon didn’t have its cloud business, Wall Street may have been even more bearish. By non-Wall Street standards, the online ecommerce giant had a nice quarter: Revenues of $32. 7 billion were up 29% from the same quarter last year and the company turned a $575 billion profit. The revenues and earnings were less than consensus estimates and Amazon gave vague guidance on future performance heading into the always-busy holiday shopping season. Amazon AWS continued its healthy growth across sales, operating income and Trailing Twelve Month (TTM) Net Sales  To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: The real unified communications

A few weeks back, I wrote a post contending that, as traditionally defined, the term unified communications has no meaning. Since then, I have had many interesting conversations with people who have varying opinions on the subject. This post is to pass along some of what I have learned.Un-unified In alignment with my contention, most of the conversations on the subject have confirmed that when someone in a work situation needs to communicate with someone who is not within earshot, they typically use tools that are very, well, un-unified. If we need to talk to someone, we call. We still email as much as any other modality. Second to that, we text and increasingly group message. If we need to share or collaborate on information that is in a document, we webchat. Begrudgingly, we occasionally video chat. A few people do use a single tool for these functions, but more often we choose between a set of tools—applications that are specialized to the task at hand.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: The Internet Needs a Security Upgrade

The recent Internet outages caused by the DDoS attack on Dyn’s infrastructure highlights deep architectural issues that need resolution. Security and performance are intertwined, and both need fundamental upgrades. A few days ago I was working at a friend’s house. He likes to have Magic FM on during the day. They regurgitate the same playlist of inoffensive 70s, 80s and 90s pop music, with live drive-time shows. Later in the day I heard the DJ sputter how their Twitter access had gone wonky, so you couldn’t expect to interact with them via that channel. I thought little of it. —CircleID

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Major Roadblocks on the Path to Machine Learning

In part one of this series last week, we discussed the emerging ecosystem of machine learning applications and what promise those portend. But of course, as with any emerging application area (although to be fair, machine learning is not new), there are bound to be some barriers.

Even in analytically sophisticated organizations, machine learning often operates in “silos of expertise.” For example, the financial crimes unit in a bank may use advanced techniques to catch anti-money laundering; the credit risk team uses completely different and incompatible tools to predict loan defaults and set risk-based pricing; while treasury uses still other …

Major Roadblocks on the Path to Machine Learning was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

Adapting the network for the rise of containers

They say necessity is the mother of invention. That statement has been true in networking for decades now, as many of the innovations in the network have been driven by changes in compute.For example, Ethernet became the de facto standard to consolidate all of the various LAN protocols that once existed. Another example is the virtual switch. That was invented to solve the hair pinning problem associated with moving traffic between two virtual machines on the same host.+ Also on Network World: Which is cheaper: Containers or virtual machines? + There’s another major compute shift going on that will drive the need for network evolution, and that’s the rise of containers. If you’re not familiar with containers, think of them as a lightweight runtime environment that includes an application and all of its dependencies, including configuration files, binaries and libraries. Containers are similar to virtual machines except they share a single operating system and kernel, so it’s much lighter weight. A VM can be a few to tens of gigabytes in size,where a container is likely to be just a few megabytes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Shadow Brokers leaks list of NSA targets and compromised servers

The Shadow Brokers hacker group is back, releasing message 5 - trick or treat. This time, instead of releasing Equation Group exploit tools, the group dumped a list of servers allegedly compromised by the NSA-linked Equation Group.As usual, the Shadow Brokers included a slaughtered-English rambling message that primarily focused on the upcoming elections. One portion reads: TheShadowBrokers is having suggestion. On November 8th, instead of not voting, maybe be stopping the vote all together? Maybe being grinch who stopped election from coming? Maybe hacking election is being the best idea? #hackelection2016.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Shadow Brokers leaks list of NSA targets and compromised servers

The Shadow Brokers hacker group is back, releasing message 5 - trick or treat. This time, instead of releasing Equation Group exploit tools, the group dumped a list of servers allegedly compromised by the NSA-linked Equation Group.As usual, the Shadow Brokers included a slaughtered-English rambling message that primarily focused on the upcoming elections. One portion reads: TheShadowBrokers is having suggestion. On November 8th, instead of not voting, maybe be stopping the vote all together? Maybe being grinch who stopped election from coming? Maybe hacking election is being the best idea? #hackelection2016.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Shadow Brokers leak list of NSA targets and compromised servers

The Shadow Brokers are back, releasing message 5 - trick or treat. This time, instead of releasing Equation Group exploit tools, the group dumped a list of servers allegedly compromised by the NSA-linked Equation Group.As usual, the Shadow Brokers included a slaughtered-English rambling message which primarily focused on the upcoming elections. One portion reads: TheShadowBrokers is having suggestion. On November 8th, instead of not voting, maybe be stopping the vote all together? Maybe being grinch who stopped election from coming? Maybe hacking election is being the best idea? #hackelection2016.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Trend Micro’s Enterprise Play

I spent a few days with Trend Micro last week at its Insight event here in Boston.  While Trend is a $1 billion + global cybersecurity vendor, too many cybersecurity professionals still think of Trend as an Asian-based AV player.   This perception is completely antiquated however, as Trend now offers: A tightly-integrated next-generation endpoint security suite.  There’s a lot of industry rhetoric out there proclaiming Trend as a legacy AV vendor.  Don’t believe it!  Yes, Trend Micro’s endpoint security product has been around forever but the company has continuously enhanced it technology to keep up with the latest requirements.  Most recently, Trend added machine learning for pre- and post-execution prevention/detection of 0-day malware which puts in on par with the next-generation endpoint security crowd.  Oh, and Trend also offers its own EDR functionality as well.  Armed with its new product, Trend’s layered endpoint defense should meet the security efficacy and operational efficiency requirements of even the most demanding enterprises. A strong network security defense portfolio.  Now that the dust has settled from Trend’s acquisition of TippingPoint a year ago, the company also has robust products for network security.  After HP let Continue reading

Trend Micro’s Enterprise Play

I spent a few days with Trend Micro last week at its Insight event here in Boston.  While Trend is a $1 billion + global cybersecurity vendor, too many cybersecurity professionals still think of Trend as an Asian-based AV player.   This perception is completely antiquated however, as Trend now offers: A tightly-integrated next-generation endpoint security suite.  There’s a lot of industry rhetoric out there proclaiming Trend as a legacy AV vendor.  Don’t believe it!  Yes, Trend Micro’s endpoint security product has been around forever but the company has continuously enhanced it technology to keep up with the latest requirements.  Most recently, Trend added machine learning for pre- and post-execution prevention/detection of 0-day malware which puts in on par with the next-generation endpoint security crowd.  Oh, and Trend also offers its own EDR functionality as well.  Armed with its new product, Trend’s layered endpoint defense should meet the security efficacy and operational efficiency requirements of even the most demanding enterprises. A strong network security defense portfolio.  Now that the dust has settled from Trend’s acquisition of TippingPoint a year ago, the company also has robust products for network security.  After HP let Continue reading

53% off Etekcity Wireless Bluetooth 4.0 NFC-Enabled Audio Adapter – Deal Alert

The Roverbeats Unify enables Bluetooth 4.0 capability on traditional audio systems lacking Bluetooth functionality. Just connect it to your system's A/V, RCA, or 3.5mm jack input. The Unify is the first Bluetooth receiver to have a 200mAh battery, allowing it to provide up to 10 hours of continuous high quality music playback. And with NFC capability, the Unify can quickly connect with any other NFC enabled device in the matter of seconds. The adapter gives you wireless control up to 33 feet. It currently averages 4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon from over 1,100 people (read reviews), where its typical list price of $36 has been significantly reduced to just $17.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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