Microsoft closes in on Apple as top tablet maker

Microsoft’s smartphone business may be a flop, but the company is really taking it to Apple in the area of laplets, a new category somewhere between laptops and tablets. It's for devices with a detachable screen to be used as a tablet, but with a bigger screen than your average tablet.According to new research by 1010data, laplets are making big gains this year. The numbers are being released in advance of a full report that is due this week. While the Apple iPad is still the dominant tablet at 32.5 percent market share, Microsoft has come on very strong with the Surface Book, which is in second place at 25 percent, up 9 percentage points year over year.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Washington nudges Verizon, striking unions back to bargaining table

Representing a rare hopeful sign in what is now an acrimonious month-long work stoppage, Verizon management and some 40,000 striking employees have agreed to return to the bargaining table tomorrow after the weekend intervention of U.S. Labor Secretary Thomas Perez. From a Department of Labor press release: Today, Secretary Perez met at the U.S. Labor Department with Lowell McAdam, chairman and CEO of Verizon; Chris Shelton, president of the Communications Workers of America; and Lonnie Stephenson, president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. The parties had an open, frank and constructive dialogue about finding a comprehensive way forward to resolve disputed issues and get people back to work. The parties agreed to return to the bargaining table on Tuesday to continue their discussion.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Washington nudges Verizon, striking unions back to bargaining table

Representing a rare hopeful sign in what is now an acrimonious month-long work stoppage, Verizon management and some 40,000 striking employees have agreed to return to the bargaining table tomorrow after the weekend intervention of U.S. Labor Secretary Thomas Perez. From a Department of Labor press release: Today, Secretary Perez met at the U.S. Labor Department with Lowell McAdam, chairman and CEO of Verizon; Chris Shelton, president of the Communications Workers of America; and Lonnie Stephenson, president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. The parties had an open, frank and constructive dialogue about finding a comprehensive way forward to resolve disputed issues and get people back to work. The parties agreed to return to the bargaining table on Tuesday to continue their discussion.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Tim Cook’s visit to China may help build bridges with consumers, developers, local companies

Apple CEO Tim Cook tweeted on Monday from Beijing a photograph of himself and Didi Chuxing’s President Jean Lui catching a cab, showing off the company’s spanking new relationship with China’s largest ride-hailing firm.A US$1 billion investment in Didi, announced last week, could be the harbinger of a long-term relationship that some analysts speculate could lead to the U.S. company partnering with the ride-hailing company not only in providing software and services, but also down the line in jointly developing self-driving cars.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

GUI Vs. CLI In Networking

IDG Contributor Network: AtScale scoops up $11 million in Series B funding for its Hadoop-based BI

The Apache Hadoop ecosystem is a busy one.Cloudera, HortonWorks, MapR, IBM, Microsoft, Datastax and Pivotal are but a few of the vendors either focusing purely on Hadoop or offering a Hadoop product on the side. And why not? The open-source software framework for distributed computing and data storage has grown from strength to strength.The genesis of Hadoop came from a paper published back in 2003 by Google. A few years later, Doug Cutting, who at the time was working for Yahoo, took up the project and gave it a name (after his son's toy elephant, no less). And from that humble beginning, a massive ecosystem has grown.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Making IT A Strategic Choice

New products of the week 5.16.16

New products of the weekOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.Appian Quick AppsKey features: Appian Quick Apps enables citizen developers without technical knowledge to create fully-functional business application in 15 minutes or less. Apps are automatically supported on leading devices, desktop web browsers and mobile devices. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New products of the week 5.16.16

New products of the weekOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.Appian Quick AppsKey features: Appian Quick Apps enables citizen developers without technical knowledge to create fully-functional business application in 15 minutes or less. Apps are automatically supported on leading devices, desktop web browsers and mobile devices. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New products of the week 5.16.16

New products of the weekOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.Appian Quick AppsKey features: Appian Quick Apps enables citizen developers without technical knowledge to create fully-functional business application in 15 minutes or less. Apps are automatically supported on leading devices, desktop web browsers and mobile devices. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Review: Wave 2 Wi-Fi delivers dramatic performance boost for home networks

Mention "home Wi-Fi router" and you’ll probably think of a cheap device with cruddy performance. But dramatic changes are coming, with big boosts in bandwidth, thanks to two new Wi-Fi technologies. Both beamforming and MU-MIMO (an acronym for the mouthful that is “multi-user, multiple input, multiple output”) are transformational technologies. We tested them in the new Linksys EA-7500, the company’s first small office/home office router to support the so-called Wave 2 technologies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Minds Of Men

What is Wi-Fi beamforming and MU-MIMO?

New home Wi-Fi routers have some impressive advanced features to help boost speed, range and capacity. Network World Lab Alliance member David Newman explains how beamforming and MU-MIMO technologies work in the latest Wi-Fi routers.

5 ways Microsoft has improved SharePoint security

"Users will always find a way to get their job done. And if security gets in their way, they will find another, likely less secure, way to get their job done."Navjot Virk made that point during the launch of the latest version of SharePoint, Microsoft’s 15-year-old content management and collaboration platform. More than 200,000 organizations use SharePoint, which today reaches more than 190 million users.Security is one of four key areas of investment in the new SharePoint, according to Jeff Teper, corporate vice president for the OneDrive and SharePoint teams (pictured with Virk). Teper presided over Microsoft’s Future of SharePoint event, held last week, and detailed enhancements to SharePoint Online in the cloud and SharePoint Server on-premises. Together, Teper and Virk gave an overview of Microsoft’s investments in security, privacy and compliance in SharePoint and the OneDrive online storage service. The common theme is tighter, more granular security controls that aim to help IT strike the desired balance between security and user productivity. Here are the specifics.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

5 ways Microsoft has improved SharePoint security

"Users will always find a way to get their job done. And if security gets in their way, they will find another, likely less secure, way to get their job done."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Let’s Focus on Realistic Design Scenarios

An engineer working for a large system integrator sent me this question:

Since you are running a detailed series on leaf-and-spine fabrics these days, could you please suggest if following design scenarios of Facebook and Linkedin Data centers are also covered?

Short answer: No.

Google aims to block Flash by default for Chrome users, except for 10 white-listed sites

Google aims to make HTML5 the primary experience in Chrome by the fourth quarter of this year, except for a white-list of 10 sites that will run Adobe’s Flash Player.Under the plan revealed by Google, called “HTML5 by Default,” the Chrome browser will continue to ship with Adobe’s Flash Player, but its presence will not be advertised by default.If a website offers HTML5, that will be the default experience. For those sites that need Flash, a prompt will show up at the top of the page when the user first visits the site.The prompt will give users the option of running or declining to run Flash on the site. “If the user accepts, Chrome will advertise the presence of Flash Player and refresh the page,” Google said. On subsequent visits to the domain, the user's initial choice is likely to hold good, though Google is still working on the options for future prompts.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google aims to block Flash by default for Chrome users, except for 10 white-listed sites

Google aims to make HTML5 the primary experience in Chrome by the fourth quarter of this year, except for a white-list of 10 sites that will run Adobe’s Flash Player.Under the plan revealed by Google, called “HTML5 by Default,” the Chrome browser will continue to ship with Adobe’s Flash Player, but its presence will not be advertised by default.If a website offers HTML5, that will be the default experience. For those sites that need Flash, a prompt will show up at the top of the page when the user first visits the site.The prompt will give users the option of running or declining to run Flash on the site. “If the user accepts, Chrome will advertise the presence of Flash Player and refresh the page,” Google said. On subsequent visits to the domain, the user's initial choice is likely to hold good, though Google is still working on the options for future prompts.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

iPhone 7 Rumor Rollup: Smart Connector no-show; what the latest leaked images suggest

Perhaps we should have taken a week off from the iPhone 7 Rumor Rollup and given Google its chance to shine during the week of its Google I/O conference in Mountain View, where the latest Android this and that will be touted. But the Apple rumor mill does not rest, so neither will we.Connector rejector? The iPhone 7 rumor mill for months has been buzzing with talk of Apple ditching the standard 3.5mm headset jack, but earlier this month the rumors reversed and everyone now thinks the jack will stay. The other sure thing was that Apple would be adding a smart connector, like it has on its iPad Pro for communicating with keyboard accessories, to the iPhone 7. But now that rumor is getting squelched as well.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple named world’s most valuable brand

Share of Apple may be taking a beating right now, but don't let the negative sentiment surrounding Apple fool you: the company is still incredibly profitable having delivered $50 billion in revenue and $10.5 billion in profits last quarter.Suffice it to say, the Apple brand is as strong as ever. Speaking to this fact, the latest Forbes rankings peg Apple as the most valuable brand on the planet, easily edging out Google, Amazon, Samsung and Facebook. According to Forbes' valuation, the Apple brand today is worth $154 billion, with Google and Microsoft worth $82.5 billion and $75.2 billion, respectively.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here