A different kind of technology recycling

You can find plenty of examples of sustainability on a quick spin around Wellesley College in suburban Boston, where solar panels shimmer above the athletic fields and Wells on Wheels supply water in an effort to dissuade disposable bottled water use. But when Wellesley College CIO Ravi Ravishanker blogged this past week about the "Creative (Re)Uses of Technologies," he focused less on environmental green and more on maximizing the green spent on various technologies.Ravishanker touted, for example, his team's resourcefulness in finding fresh uses for a drone acquired for teaching and learning -- and in fact, it was used by a college research team to film archeological sites in Greece. But since then, the drone has also been employed to map the school's Nehoiden golf course, and plans are to post the data online and maybe even work in some virtual reality technology to let people play a round remotely.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Fun in the Lab: Setting up 3 Phones – Part 1 Prep Work

For those of you who know me I always kid that I’m afraid of UC.  But a few things conspired together to make me decide to attempt the plunge.

 

  • IWAN PreBuilt ReBuilt  ?  I completely tore down and destroyed the original IWAN PreBuilt Testbed so I could rebuild it.  Which meant I also lost my CallMgr and my voice/video phone setup I had inherited.
  • Voice/Video is typically in either 1st place or 2nd place as the most business critical application for the majority of customers i talk with.
  • NBAR2 interests me and I’d like to learn about and play some with QoS classification based on NBAR2 application recognition coming in.  Just finished reviewing a QoS chapter for the upcoming CiscoPress IWAN book and I just want to see, touch, and play.  ?
  • Documentation – I’m so incredibly tired of not knowing how to do this.  Voice/Video is such a perfect application and visual to help me knowledge share with co-workers and customer so very many concepts – QoS, AV, AVC, Application Recognition, business critical traffic, impairment avoidance… the list goes on and on.  I need to know how to build up a simple and Continue reading

Bitcoin exchange Bitfinex apparently loses $63 million to hackers

A digital currency exchange in Hong Kong has suspended trading after a security breach in which thieves made off with an apparent $63 million worth of bitcoin.The exchange, Bitfinex, reported the intrusion on Tuesday and said it was working with law enforcement.“We are investigating the breach to determine what happened, but we know that some of our users have had their bitcoins stolen,” the exchange said.Its statement doesn't say how many bitcoins are missing, but Zane Tackett, the site's director of community and product development, said on Reddit that the losses stand at 119,756 bitcoins. Bitfinex didn't immediately respond to a request to confirm that figure.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Bitcoin exchange Bitfinex apparently loses $63 million to hackers

A digital currency exchange in Hong Kong has suspended trading after a security breach in which thieves made off with an apparent $63 million worth of bitcoin.The exchange, Bitfinex, reported the intrusion on Tuesday and said it was working with law enforcement.“We are investigating the breach to determine what happened, but we know that some of our users have had their bitcoins stolen,” the exchange said.Its statement doesn't say how many bitcoins are missing, but Zane Tackett, the site's director of community and product development, said on Reddit that the losses stand at 119,756 bitcoins. Bitfinex didn't immediately respond to a request to confirm that figure.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

85% off Business Intelligence & Data Science Online Course Bundle – Deal Alert

Become Your Office's Data Analytics Hero with These 4 Interactive Courses, discounted 85% for a limited time, from $276 down to just $39. Successful businesspeople make the most out of the numbers available to them. If you're to succeed in the business world, you're going to need how to crunch and effectively analyze data. This course bundle teaches you how to interpret critical data, walks you through exercises, shows you how to present complex data to business and customer stakeholders, gives you access to professional spreadsheet models, and much more. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

85% off Business Intelligence & Data Science Online Course Bundle

Become Your Office's Data Analytics Hero with These 4 Interactive Courses, discounted 85% for a limited time, from $276 down to just $39. Successful businesspeople make the most out of the numbers available to them. If you're to succeed in the business world, you're going to need how to crunch and effectively analyze data. This course bundle teaches you how to interpret critical data, walks you through exercises, shows you how to present complex data to business and customer stakeholders, gives you access to professional spreadsheet models, and much more. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

27% off TotalMount Apple TV Mount – Deal Alert

Apple TV is an amazing product, but it's hard to find the right place for it. Its cables are often not long enough, or look messy when exposed. And routing them through the wall isn't an easy task. This Apple TV mount from TotalMount is unique in that it mounts your Apple TV to the back of your TV, out of site. Once mounted, your Apple TV remote functions normally, simply bouncing its signal off your ceiling. It may sound too good to be true, but the mount averages 4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon from over 550 customers (read reviews), who indicate that it's simple to install and works as promised. This mount is compatible with all versions of Apple TV except generation 4 (the newest model). Its typical list price of $19.95 has been reduced 27% to $14.50.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Windows 10 finishes first year on 1-in-4 Windows PCs

Windows 10 wrapped up its first year powering nearly one-in-four Windows PCs, a record adoption pace fueled by the now-expired free upgrade for consumers and many businesses.According to U.S. analytics vendor Net Applications, Windows 10 was on 21.1% of the planet's personal computers in July, and on 23.5% of those machines running Windows. The difference between its user share of all PCs and only those running Windows stemmed from the fact that Windows powered 90% of all personal computers, not 100%.The July increase of about 2 percentage points was larger than June's gains but fell short of May's; the latter was the largest one-month growth since August 2015, the first full month of availability.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Office 365 training courses to increase your expertise

Microsoft's Office 365 subscription service makes the company's most popular apps and business tools available via the cloud, which means the features change often. Office 365 users, including beginners and veteran IT professionals, have a wide range of options for related training tools, depending on their needs and levels of expertise. Many free, basic training classes are available to teach the ins and outs of Office 365, but IT professionals will likely benefit more from intensive, and sometimes costly, seminars that can help prepare for formal tech support certification.Many IT pros, for example, must pass Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate (MCSA) exams to qualify as cloud applications administrators focused on managing Office 365. Microsoft's Office 365 suite constantly changes as the company introduces new versions of apps, and Microsoft updates the MCSA exams accordingly.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft’s Windows 10 Anniversary Update is rolling out, but not to phones—yet

As expected, Microsoft said Tuesday that its Windows 10 Anniversary Update is beginning to roll out. Surprisingly, perhaps, Windows phones aren’t on the approved list.We found the Windows 10 Anniversary Update to be a positive step forward for users, with substantial updates to features you use the most. Since the AU is a standard update, you really don’t have to do anything to receive it: It will be downloaded and installed automatically.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IRS warns on super summer scam scourge

In the ideal world the infamous Internal Revenue Service call scam should have faded away replaced by some other stupid ploy but alas…The IRS said today that the scammers have ramped up their efforts to grab even more money -- over $26 million -- and rip-off even more people -- -- 5,000 or so since last count.+More on Network World: IRS: Top 10 2015 identity theft busts+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IRS warns on super summer scam scourge

In the ideal world the infamous Internal Revenue Service call scam should have faded away replaced by some other stupid ploy but alas…The IRS said today that the scammers have ramped up their efforts to grab even more money -- over $26 million -- and rip-off even more people -- -- 5,000 or so since last count.+More on Network World: IRS: Top 10 2015 identity theft busts+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Hot products at Black Hat 2016

Demisto Free EditionKey features:  The free edition of Demisto’s  ChatOps platform automates and streamlines security operations and incident management processes. It includes the ability to create playbooks that can be shared to collaborate among organizations to combat cybercrime and imported to other products. orchestration and automation, advanced investigations, improved collaboration and much more. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Hot products at Black Hat 2016

Demisto Free EditionKey features:  The free edition of Demisto’s  ChatOps platform automates and streamlines security operations and incident management processes. It includes the ability to create playbooks that can be shared to collaborate among organizations to combat cybercrime and imported to other products. orchestration and automation, advanced investigations, improved collaboration and much more. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Selfie fits modern politics like a handshake

The selfie as a political toolImage by ReutersHolding or running for a political office in 2016? You had better be able to take a decent selfie, or at the very least understand your need – responsibility may not be too strong of a word – to abide by the voting public’s thirst for that smartphone snap. It’s like knowing how to properly lift and eat a local delicacy, or name-drop the state university’s football coach. Politics 101. It’s a non-partisan, worldwide requirement, too. Here are recent examples via Reuters:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Layer 2 Routing—Haven’t we been here before?

We often think the entire Internet, as we know it, just popped out of “thin air,” somehow complete and whole, with all the pieces in place. In reality, there have been many side roads taken, and many attempts to solve the problem of pushing the maximum amount of data across a wire along the way. One of these ways came to mind this last week, when I ran across this story—

Also on the virtualisation list is the customer premises equipment (CPE), and this deserves a little explanation. Obviously every premises needs some sort of physical connection to the network providing the services. What CPE virtualisation refers to is making the CPE as generic as possible. —The Register

Pulling layer 2 into the network to centralize the edge—where have I heard this before? Maybe it was all those years ago, when I was in TAC, and we used to support Cisco 1001’s, or the LEX—LAN Extenders. The promise then was the same as the promise now: a lightweight, easy to manage device that would relocate all the intelligence from the network edge into the access layer of the “mother ship,” where it could be properly managed.

Remember Rule 11? If Continue reading