IDG Contributor Network: Researchers seek to harvest radio waves for extra smartphone battery power

All of the recent hoop-la about extending smartphone battery life with special metals, using graphite batteries to charge a device in seconds, and even power-reducing microprocessors, could well be moot.Researchers at Ohio State University think that the way to extend battery life is not by improving battery tech—something we've found hard to do in comparison with other tech innovations—but by using the existing energy that's already found in the device that goes to waste.The reason: the radio signals emitted by a smartphone are a form of power.So harvest the stray signals, convert it all to DC, and squirt it back into the phone in the form of electricity, the researchers say.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

5 ways Apple should reinvent the iPad

After enormous early success, Apple's iPad and its myriad competitors and imitators are facing a bit of an identity crisis. As laptops get smaller and lighter and smartphones get bigger and more powerful, tablet sales are slowing. According to IDC, the global 2015 tablet market will be 221.8 million units in 2015, down 3.8% from 2014.That's still a lot of tablets, of course, but the devices are increasingly seen as "nice-to-have" complements to smartphones for everyday use and awkward substitutes for a PC when you have to do real work. If tablets are going to regain their place at the center of mobile computing, something has to change.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Review: The Apple Watch after a month of use (video)

Every once in a while, there comes a bit of tech that lets you do what you're already doing, but in simpler and more effective ways. After using the Apple Watch for a month, I've decided that the watch is that kind of product. If you're already in the Apple ecosystem, chances are that you'll want one.The design of the watch is typical Apple minimalism: A simple square of stainless steel, aluminum, or gold measuring 1.65 x 1.41 x 0.41 in. for the 42mm versions and 1.52 x 1.31 x 0.41 in. for the 38mm version. Weight varies by model and materials, ranging from 2.43 oz. for the 42mm Edition to .88 oz for the 38mm Sport. All models feature a capacitive multitouch Retina display with Force Touch technology.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to use Google Now cards: 7 tips for managing what they show you, when and why

Google Now and its “cards”—those bite-sized alerts, reminders, and personalized recommendations—are so prescient, they’re positively spooky. One such card might tell you that today’s the birthday of a close friend, while another might point out a news article that it somehow knew you’d want to click.Google Now cards may also alert you to traffic jams on the way home, thunderstorms in tomorrow’s forecast, that dinner rezzie you made for Friday, a thrilling victory by your favorite baseball team, or a hot new bistro in your neck of the woods.ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Google Graveyard: Here's what Google has killed So, what’s going on here? Is Google Now reading our minds or something? Can these Google Now cards be controlled—or stopped?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Memory scraping malware targets Oracle Micros point-of-sale customers

A new malware program designed to steal payment card details from point-of-sale (PoS) systems is targeting businesses using Oracle Micros products.Micros, which was acquired by Oracle last year, develops front and back office customer service systems that are popular in the hospitality, food and retail industries. Its technology is used at over 330,000 customer sites in 180 countries, according to the company.Security researchers from antivirus firm Trend Micro recently came across a highly configurable memory scraping malware program that they dubbed MalumPoS.This kind of program monitors the memory of other processes for payment card track data—the information that’s encoded on the magnetic stripe of payment cards and which can be used to clone them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco denies MPLS may leave

Cisco says reports that its star spin-in engineers – Mario Mazzola, Prem Jain, Luca Cafiero and Soni Jiandani, aka “MPLS” – may leave the company this year are untrue. Speculation arose last week during Cisco’s top level management makeover that some or all of MPLS might leave after the departure of CEO John Chambers, and certain vesting and bonus milestones are reached in September.Cisco at first had no comment on the future of MPLS at Cisco while noting that incentives tied to their most recent spin-in, Insieme Networks, run through Cisco’s fiscal year 2017, which ends in July 2016. Once that response was published, Cisco followed up with a sterner denial in an e-mailed statement:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Architect or Designer?

Are you an architect or designer? What’s the difference? A reader asked this last week in email — my (probably) less than perfect response.

First, we have to dispense with this objection — network people aren’t “architects” in the first place. Nor are they “engineers.” Okay, so… A challenge: what else would you call someone who designs and builds things? When someone says, “You’re not a real architect, because you don’t build buildings, and you’re not held responsible for your work,” I tend to reply, “Why are you talking to me if I don’t exist?”

I’ve probably spent a lot more time than most people thinking about what the difference between design and architecture is, as it was a major issue when the CCDE and CCAr were split into two certifications (long ugly story — but then again, whenever marketing is involved, it normally is). With the help of some psychos (psychometricians, actually, but saying you worked with psychos for seven years to develop certification just sounds cooler somehow), we came up with some differentiators that I think are useful.

The difference is in focus, not task — the designer focuses on a solution to a narrower engineering problem, Continue reading

The Upload: Your tech news briefing for Monday, June 8

South Korean team wins DARPA bot battleSouth Korea’s Team Kaist took the top honors in the DARPA Robotics Challenge finals on Saturday after a two-and-a-half-year battle. The group won a $2 million prize in the competition among 24 teams of roboticists from around the world, Computerworld reports. Their nearly six-foot-tall, 176-pound humanoid robot finished all eight tasks in the course in just 44 minutes and 28 seconds.Apple Pay for UK, streaming music to debut at WWDCApple is expanding the reach of its mobile payments system, with Apple Pay slated for launch in the U.K. in a couple of months, the Telegraph reports. The newspaper cited sources saying that the news will break at the World Wide Developers Conference on Monday, one of a number of announcements planned for the event. The CEO of Sony Music shocked no one this past weekend by confirming that Apple will unveil a streaming music service at WWDC.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Bing Translator

I’ve rearranged the slideout sidebar a little; tightened up the text a little so more will fit (I might customize the styling a little to make it even tighter). I also added a bing translator widget; slide out the bar, press the translate button, and a small floating popup will appear. Click down to choose a language to translate to. I don’t know how good the translation is, but I thought this might be useful.

The post Bing Translator appeared first on 'net work.

UK spies sued over phone data collection scheme already banned in US

In an effort to put an end to the bulk data collection of phone records and other large datasets from millions of people, campaign group Privacy International has filed a complaint with a U.K. court.The complaint was filed with the U.K. Investigatory Powers Tribunal, which deals with claims against U.K. intelligence agencies, including the country’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). It is meant to put an end to bulk data collection that was already banned in the U.S.Last Tuesday, the U.S. Senate passed the USA Freedom Actwhich put a stop to the old U.S. National Security Agency’s (NSA) bulk collection of domestic telephone records, restoring a limited telephone records program.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Five network trends challenging the enterprise

As cloud computing, big data and the deployment of mega-scale data centers accelerates, organizations need to continually recalibrate and evolve the network. This challenge has led to the development of new technologies and standards designed to increase and optimize network capacity, security and flexibility, all while keeping a lid on cost. Here are the top five trends as we see them:* Rapid Adoption of 802.11ac. Tablets and smartphones are becoming ubiquitous in the workplace. As the number of mobile devices and the deployment of cloud-based enterprise services continues to scale at a dramatic rate, the keepers of the network must reconsider how they provision, secure and control enterprise computing resources and information access.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Five network trends challenging the enterprise

As cloud computing, big data and the deployment of mega-scale data centers accelerates, organizations need to continually recalibrate and evolve the network. This challenge has led to the development of new technologies and standards designed to increase and optimize network capacity, security and flexibility, all while keeping a lid on cost. Here are the top five trends as we see them:

* Rapid Adoption of 802.11ac. Tablets and smartphones are becoming ubiquitous in the workplace. As the number of mobile devices and the deployment of cloud-based enterprise services continues to scale at a dramatic rate, the keepers of the network must reconsider how they provision, secure and control enterprise computing resources and information access.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New products of the week 06.08.2015

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.Gluware 2.0 SD-WAN Orchestration PlatformKey features: Gluware 2.0 is the intelligent orchestration platform designed to unlock the potential of Software-Defined Wide Area Networks (SD-WAN) for enterprise networks and operations teams across the services lifecycle. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to train your Surface Pro 3: Tips, tricks, hacks

Surface Pro 3 tipsWe’ve collected several tips for Microsoft’s popular tablet computer. Most are useful or interesting, one is kind of silly, and another is a nearly literal hack to the Surface Pro 3. Enjoy!Train Surface Pro 3 to better recognize your handwriting The Surface Pro 3 has software that’s already set to learn your handwriting when using the Surface Pen, for converting your written notes to typed text. If you use the tablet a lot for note taking, though, then you should run the Handwriting Personalization program and take a moment to train it to improve its recognition of what you write. There are two ways to do this: by writing specific characters and words you want it to recognize, or following the program as it instructs you to write out sentences or characters (letters, numbers, symbols) that it assigns you.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

5 low-cost Wi-Fi stumblers and analyzers

Stumblers and analyzersWi-Fi stumblers and analyzers are a must-have when troubleshooting Wi-Fi interference and performance issues, or when checking channel usage. They’re also needed for Wi-Fi site surveys and for security audits to look for rogue or misconfigured APs. Each of these five tools gives you the basic wireless details of nearby APs, including SSIDs, signal strength, channels, MAC addresses, and security status. Most can also reveal “hidden” or non-broadcasted SSIDs. Some offer additional functionality, such raw 802.11 packet capturing, frame statistics, performance testing, and map-based surveying. (Read the full product review.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

5 Wi-Fi stumblers and analyzers for less than $100

Wi-Fi stumblers and analyzers are a must-have when troubleshooting Wi-Fi interference and performance issues, or when simply checking channel usage on the wireless bands. They’re also needed for Wi-Fi site surveys during the network design and deployment phases, as well as for security audits to look for rogue or misconfigured access points.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Let’s Revisit The Aruba Networks Acquisition

Aruba-HP-LogoBack in February, I wrote a piece entitled “HP Buying Aruba?”. In that post, I provided some context around why I thought HP buying Aruba could end up being a bad idea. I also mentioned in that post that I hoped HP did right by Aruba’s customer base and didn’t put the corporate handcuffs on them.

After several months and many conversations with HP, Aruba, and my peers, I have a different take. I am not 100% ready to back off from my concerns though. The acquisition has closed. The deal is done. However, it is too early in the process to be certain of much of anything regarding the future state of Aruba, its products, and its ability to execute as they have in the past. Let’s just say I am about 75% headed in the opposite direction of my initial concerns.

This past week, I was fortunate enough to attend HP Discover in Las Vegas. HP paid for my travel and expenses for HP Discover. For that, I thank them and I can definitively tell you that I was not pressured into writing anything as a result of this trip. As luck would have it, Aruba Continue reading

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