To Cisco-backed Sensity, lights are just IoT waiting to happen

Cisco Systems is tightening its relationship with Sensity Systems, a Silicon Valley startup that wants buildings and cities now adopting LED lighting to embrace the Internet of Things.Sensity makes sensors and computers designed to be integrated with LED lights that can go into existing outdoor light fixtures. With Sensity’s gear, the fixtures can do more than light up the streets and parking lots where they’re installed. Its cameras, thermometers and other sensors can tell a lot of stories about what’s going on under the lights. Parking, security and pedestrian traffic are key applications.As lighting owners move to LED to save energy, Sensity wants to usher them into the age of IoT and data analysis. It estimates there are about 4 billion outdoor light fixtures around the world and most will be converted to LED over the next 10 to 15 years.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

To Cisco-backed Sensity, lights are just IoT waiting to happen

Cisco Systems is tightening its relationship with Sensity Systems, a Silicon Valley startup that wants buildings and cities now adopting LED lighting to embrace the Internet of Things.Sensity makes sensors and computers designed to be integrated with LED lights that can go into existing outdoor light fixtures. With Sensity’s gear, the fixtures can do more than light up the streets and parking lots where they’re installed. Its cameras, thermometers and other sensors can tell a lot of stories about what’s going on under the lights. Parking, security and pedestrian traffic are key applications.As lighting owners move to LED to save energy, Sensity wants to usher them into the age of IoT and data analysis. It estimates there are about 4 billion outdoor light fixtures around the world and most will be converted to LED over the next 10 to 15 years.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft reports first quarterly loss since 2012 after Nokia write-down

Microsoft has reported its first quarterly loss in three years, largely as a result of a $7.5 billion write-down for its acquisition last year of Nokia’s devices and services business.Microsoft’s net loss for the quarter, the fourth of its fiscal year, was $3.2 billion, compared to $4.6 billion in profit during the same period a year earlier, the company announced Tuesday. That translated into a loss of $0.40 a share. Microsoft’s quarterly revenue declined more than 5 percent year over year to $22.2 billion. The news comes after a few tumultuous weeks for the company. Microsoft announced two weeks ago that it was cutting 7,800 jobs to streamline its smartphone hardware business.  The company also transferred technology and employees from the Bing Maps team to Uber and sold part of its display advertising business to AOL.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Some Impressions from Open Networking Summit 2015

I’ve used the Open Networking Summit (ONS 15) the last few years as part of my education plan to re-tool for the word of SDN and NFV. You can too – the ONS posts videos from most of the sessions (except those that cost a few extra $$.) While I think it’s worth attending the show for the hallway conversations alone, I think you can pick up a lot from just watching the sessions.

I plan a few posts about things I learned at the show; to start, this post hits a few highlights about a few speakers and topics that made a particularly strong impression.

Quick Aside

Sorry it took a while to make this post. This blog site got infected, and I've spent all my blog time working to overcome the problem. Should be back on track now!

 

Small Appetizers

To get rolling, here are a few big observations from the show – things that might not jump out at you if you just cherry pick a few of the videos to watch.

First, Open Source software rules. Open Daylight was of course prominently mentioned, but so was ONOS. But it wasn’t just an Continue reading

Nokia Here said to be snatched up by Audi, BMW and Daimler for $2.7B

Audi, BMW and Daimler will jointly purchase Nokia’s Here digital mapping service for roughly $2.7 billion, and they plan to invite other auto makers to take a stake in the company as well, according to reports published on Tuesday.The deal could be signed in the next few days, with an announcement targeted for next week, according to separate reports in the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and German publication Manager Magazin. All reports were based on anonymous sources familiar with the deal.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google grabs Pixate to improve its apps, and others

Google has acquired Pixate, whose app-prototyping service could help Google make better apps of its own.Pixate provides a suite of tools to help mobile developers design and prototype their apps. Thousands of mobile designers at companies including Amazon, Apple and Facebook—and Google—have used its services, the company says.The Google acquisition will help Pixate expand its service to improve the app development process for many more designers across iOS, Android and other platforms, the company said Tuesday.Pixate will live on as a standalone service. But its tools will also aid in Google’s own development processes. This would include material design, Google’s new design aesthetic to unify the look and feel of its various apps and online services. Google released a material design guide for Android L at its I/O conference last year, partly in an effort to compete against the slick design of Apple’s services.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Expect more prize competitions to address tough IT, high-tech challenges

Many people criticize the federal government for myriad problems, but there is at least one program in recent years that has been a success – the use of competitions or crowdsourcing to address sometimes complex problems. And because of those accomplishments you can expect many more such contests in the future.+More on Network World: DARPA’s $4M cyber-threat clash down to seven challengers+The White House Office of Science and Technology notes that in January 2015 the government will celebrate the fifth anniversary of the America Competes Act which in combination with Challenge.gov has prompted more than 400 public-sector prize competitions which have doled out some $72 million in prizes.  Some agencies like NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency as well as private entities like the X Prize Foundation have used competitions to address high-tech challenges for years with great success.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

SLAPPED! The Year in Tech Industry Fines

NAUGHTY, NAUGHTY, NAUGHTY’It’s not like most of the big carriers and tech companies can’t afford a fine or two from the FCC, Justice Department or Federal Trade Commission here and there, but it’s still not the best publicity. Here’s a rundown of the year in tech industry fines to date:VERIZON 911The FCC in March fined Verizon $3.4 million for failing to notify police and fire departments last year during a six-hour 911 service outage affecting 750,000 California residents. The outage stemmed from a coding error at a big 911 routing center. Other carriers were also involved.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Startup Radar: Verilume Builds Private Clouds From Spare Capacity

Startup Verilume uses OpenStack, Ceph, and proprietary software to assemble private clouds and Hadoop clusters from spare capacity in VMware environments. The product targets developers and data scientists.

Author information

Drew Conry-Murray

I'm a tech journalist, editor, and content director with 17 years' experience covering the IT industry. I'm author of the book "The Symantec Guide To Home Internet Security" and co-author of the post-apocalyptic novel "Wasteland Blues," available at Amazon.
TwitterLinkedIn

The post Startup Radar: Verilume Builds Private Clouds From Spare Capacity appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Drew Conry-Murray.

Senate bill proposes cyber security standard for cars

Cars will have to be much better protected against hacking and new privacy standards will govern data collected from vehicles under proposed legislation introduced in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday.The Security and Privacy in Your Car Act of 2015 seeks to get a step ahead of what is seen by some as one of the next fronts in hacking: connected vehicles, which are always on the Internet and rely on sophisticated computer control systems.Proposed by Senators Edward J. Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, and Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, the act would mandate that critical software systems in cars be isolated and the entire vehicle be safeguarded against hacking by using “reasonable measures.” The proposed bill doesn’t define those measures.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Former Hacking Team supplier stops selling zero-day exploits on ethical grounds

Italian surveillance software maker Hacking Team recently claimed that it hasn’t lost any customers after the massive leak of its internal data two weeks ago. But it has lost at least one business partner: U.S.-based penetration testing specialist and zero-day exploit broker Netragard.Over the weekend, Netragard announced that it is terminating its long-time running Exploit Acquisition Program (EAP), citing revelations about Hacking Team’s customers as one of the reasons.Set up in 1999, EAP allowed Netragard to broker the sale of exploits for unpatched vulnerabilities—also known as zero-day exploits—between private researchers and select organizations interested in such computer intrusion tools.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple hires Chrysler executive, furthering speculation of its automotive ambitions

Apple has hired an automotive industry veteran, increasing speculation that the company is working on an electric car.Earlier this month, former Fiat Chrysler Automobiles executive Doug Betts took an operations role at Apple, according to his LinkedIn profile, which didn’t offer additional information on his new job. The Wall Street Journal first reported the story Monday.Betts has spent nearly 20 years in the car industry and held management roles at three major vehicle makers. As a senior vice president at Chrysler, he focused on product service and quality. Prior to joining Chrysler, he was the head of total customer satisfaction for the Americas at Nissan where his responsibilities included engineering quality and proving-ground operations.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Network Break 45

Network Break 45 talks Plexxi switches, Cisco moves, Intel revenue, the latest open networking news from CloudRouter and OpenStack, a prediction of rising cloud prices, and why Flash should die.

Author information

Drew Conry-Murray

I'm a tech journalist, editor, and content director with 17 years' experience covering the IT industry. I'm author of the book "The Symantec Guide To Home Internet Security" and co-author of the post-apocalyptic novel "Wasteland Blues," available at Amazon.
TwitterLinkedIn

The post Network Break 45 appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Drew Conry-Murray.

10 (harrowing) tales of outdated tech used way past its prime

Old but unable to be forgottenImage by U.S. Census Bureau/WikipediaIn May, Rhode Island politics was roiled by the revelation that the state Department of Human Services's attempt to move away from its outdated InRhodes computer system wasn't going to happen. If you know anything about major government computer rollouts, you know this wasn't the first time this had happened, either; a state legislator compared it to "a similar situation as we have with the DMV where we had to practically get people out of nursing homes to come keep our old programs working."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

There’s more to municipal broadband than public funding, says report

U.S. communities looking for faster broadband service than incumbent ISPs provide have alternatives to the increasingly controversial choice of seeking to publicly fund a network, according to a new handbook for city officials. Public funding of broadband is just one of several possibilities, according to "The Next Generation Connectivity Handbook: a Guide for Community Leaders Seeking Affordable Abundant Bandwidth," released Tuesday by Gig.U, a coalition of universities focused on building high-speed broadband networks, and the Benton Foundation, an advocacy group focused on media and telecom issues. Most city officials say that their local broadband networks aren't good enough in the long term, according to the report, which advises that "the time to begin thinking about faster speeds, more competition and better service is now. Network upgrades do not happen overnight."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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