Social media helps curb Nigerian election deathtoll, paving future path

The dozens of deaths that marred the recent Nigerian elections would be considered shocking by the standards of most developed nations. Compared to past elections, however, the violence this time around was limited, and many observers say social media and technology such as biometric card readers played a big role in minimizing conflict.Online services are credited with keeping people informed during the runup to the elections, promoting the feeling they could communicate and express their views without resorting to violence, and other technology helped to ensure cheating would be kept to a minimum. Nigeria’s experience suggests that tech can play a role in reducing election-related violence in other countries.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Salesforce said to be fielding buyout offers

Salesforce is working with financial advisors to field bids after being approached by an unnamed party about a possible buyout, according to a Bloomberg report.The cloud-based CRM (customer relationship managment) company has a market value of more than $40 billion. It could be the largest software acquisition ever, according to Bloomberg.The report cited unnamed sources and did not name any potential bidders. There is no guarantee a deal will come together, the sources told Bloomberg.Salesforce stock was up almost 9 percent on the New York Stock Exchange less than an hour before the end of trading Wednesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: New algorithms could keep drones from crashing into people

Major delivery firms are experimenting with drones for deliveries. If you've started to experiment with drone flying for fun, you'll know that it isn't easy. There's a steep learning curve, and they crash quite a lot, I've found.However, it doesn't have to be like that. Collision avoidance is technically feasible. The drone senses objects and diverts.One of the issues with that, though, has been that developers only have a certain amount of time and money to develop new features. Those features have, thus far, been the tempting, seductive ones, like "follow-me" where the hobbyist drone follows the pilot like a dog on a leash. It's the latest thing.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Adobe Marketing Cloud gets a CRM boost with Microsoft Dynamics integration

While marketers want to engage customers in a unified way, disconnected systems often make that difficult. Adobe and Microsoft aim to tackle that problem by integrating Adobe’s Marketing Cloud with Dynamics CRM.The goal of the integration, announced Wednesday at Adobe Summit in London, is to let companies execute marketing strategies that take all customer engagements into account, from reach and acquisition to retention and loyalty.Microsoft Dynamics Marketing complements Adobe’s Marketing Cloud with capabilities including marketing-resource management. With the new integration, companies get a combined tool for both customer relationship management and marketing.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google Fi app surfaces on Play Store, though most can’t use it yet

The Google Fi app showed up for the first time Wednesday on the Play Store: The catch is that you'll need a Nexus 6 phablet and an invitation to the new wireless service in order to make any use of it. Google's Project Fi, unveiled last week to mixed reviews, offers a potentially lower cost wireless service whose magic includes a SIM card that enables your Android device to bounce between Sprint and T-Mobile LTE networks as well as WiFi hotspots. Initially, the mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) service will only be available on the Nexus 6.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

PC prices to go up later this year, Gartner warns

PC prices have enjoyed record lows for many years now, but buyers might have to shell out a few more bucks for their desired laptop or desktop later this year. Research firm Gartner is sounding the alarm that PC prices might go up later this year due to recent currency fluctuations. The effect may especially be felt in Europe and Japan, where local currencies are weakening against the U.S. dollar. The alternative to rising prices is fewer features. PC makers might opt for less memory, a cheaper webcam or a lower-capacity hard drive to avoid higher prices. PC makers do something similar every holiday shopping season when they sell computers at rock-bottom prices.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Massive China market offers even more upside for Apple

Although Apple announced record revenue from its Greater China sales region this week, the company's strategy has enough legs to push the market into the No. 1 spot on its books, analysts said today."It may take a couple of years, but China can become Apple's biggest," said Jan Dawson, chief analyst with Jackdaw Research.MORE: 10 mobile startups to watch The Americas, dominated by the U.S., remained Apple's largest sales region in the March quarter, generating $21.3 billion or 37% of the $58 billion total. But Greater China -- composed of the People's Republic, Taiwan and Hong Kong -- came in second with $16.8 billion, or 29%, supplanting the usual No. 2, Europe, for the first time.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Glitch in iPad app causes travel headaches for American Airlines passengers

Some American Airlines passengers faced lengthy flight delays on Tuesday after a fault in the iPad navigation app used by the carriers' pilots and co-pilots caused the tablets to crash."Some flights are experiencing an issue with a software application on iPads," American Airlines said on Twitter to a passenger whose flight was delayed.The glitch appeared to impact the airline's fleet of Boeing 737 aircraft and occurred suddenly.+ ALSO Big new United Airlines carry-on item: iPhone 6 Plus phablets for 23,000 flight attendants +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Glitch in iPad app causes travel headaches for American Airlines passengers

Some American Airlines passengers faced lengthy flight delays on Tuesday after a fault in the iPad navigation app used by the carriers' pilots and co-pilots caused the tablets to crash."Some flights are experiencing an issue with a software application on iPads," American Airlines said on Twitter to a passenger whose flight was delayed.The glitch appeared to impact the airline's fleet of Boeing 737 aircraft and occurred suddenly.+ ALSO Big new United Airlines carry-on item: iPhone 6 Plus phablets for 23,000 flight attendants +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Uber shifts strategy, requiring taxi licenses for Dutch UberPop drivers

Uber will require drivers of its Dutch UberPop ride-hailing service to have a taxi license. That will not, however, be enough to mitigate its legal troubles in the country.UberPop connects passengers with drivers who use their own cars and typically don’t have a taxi license, allowing them to offer rides for a much lower fare then regular taxis.A Dutch court last year declared the service illegal, banning it because it unfairly competes with strictly regulated taxi services. Even though fines totaled €100,000, several UberPop drivers landed in court and Dutch authorities raided company offices, Uber kept on flouting the ban, operating UberPop with unlicensed drivers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Introducing Multi-User Organizations: Share An Account Without Sharing A Login

An enterprise needs security and controls around access.

Your web developer needs to update your website’s logo and make sure it’s live immediately, but doesn’t need access to your SSL keys. Your sysadmin manages your DNS, but doesn’t need to see your visitor traffic. Your marketing team needs to see traffic, but shouldn’t have access to your WAF.

Today CloudFlare is introducing new Multi-User functionality so that many members of a team can work together to manage one CloudFlare account, each with different levels of access.

The Super Admin, and Role-Based Permissions

CloudFlare Multi-User accounts are hierarchical, with the root privileges given to the account’s Super Administrator. The Super Administrator can add or delete users in the organization, change the permissions given to each user, and see and edit all CloudFlare settings. If there is more than one Super Administrator, the Super Administrators can remove each other, which is good practice when an employee leaves the company or switches jobs.

When a user joins a multi-user organization on CloudFlare, they can only see and access the settings that a Super Admin has delegated to them. For example, a user added to the organization as a DNS Administrator would only be Continue reading

Introduction to Storage Networking and Design

Introduction

Storage and storage protocols are not generally well known by network engineers. Networking and srorage have traditionally been two silos, Modern networks and data centers are looking to consolidate these two nettworks into one and to run them on a common transport such as Ethernet,

Hard Disks and Types of Storage

Hard disks can use different type of connectors and protocols.

  • Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA)
  • Serial ATA (SATA)
  • Fibre Channel (FC)
  • Small Computer System Interface (SCSI)
  • Serial Attached SCSI (SAS)

ATA and SATA and SCSI are older standards, newer disks will typically use SATA or SAS where SATA is more geared towards the enterprise market. FC is used to attach to Storage Area Network (SAN)

Storage can either be file-level storage or block-level storage. File-level storage provides access to a file system through protocols such as Network File System (NFS) or Common Internet File System (CIFS). Block-level storage can be seen as raw storage that does not come with a file system. Block-level storage presents Logical Unit Number (LUN) to servers and the server may then format that raw storage with a file system. VmWare uses VmWare File System (VMFS) to format raw devices.

DAS, NAS and SAN

Storage can Continue reading

Facebook, under siege, slams European privacy regulators

Facebook has warned that overlapping national probes into its privacy policy could severely endanger the European Union’s economy if such a fragmented strategy is continued and applied to other businesses.The social networking company also warned that the high cost of compliance with multiple national laws, rather than with an overarching EU regime, could cause it to introduce new features more slowly or not at all.Data protection authorities from Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany in February formed a task force to deal with Facebook’s new privacy policy, introduced late January. They suspect that the new policy violates EU privacy laws. French, Spanish and Italian authorities later joined the group.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Going Back to the Mainframes?

25 years ago when I started my networking career, mainframes were all the rage, and we were doing some crazy stuff with small distributed systems that quickly adapted to topology changes, and survived link, port, and node failures. We called them routers.

Yes, we were crazy and weird, but our stuff worked. We won and we built the Internet, proving that we can build networks bigger than any mainframe-based solution could ever hope to be.

Read more ...

After Google, Microsoft also cracks down on misleading advertisements

Microsoft is taking a hard stance against advertisements that trick users into visiting malicious websites or downloading potentially harmful applications.The effects will be seen in Internet Explorer, whose SmartScreen Filter feature will enforce new rules against misleading ads beginning June 1. The filter will display warnings to users when they encounter such ads.“There has been a recent increase in the number of online advertisements that are intentionally misleading in nature,” Microsoft said in a blog post Tuesday. “Weve found that these types of advertisements often try to convince a user to do something, the consequences of which they may not fully understand, such as visiting an infected website or downloading a program that can negatively impact their browsing experience.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Here’s what Google Glass v2.0 needs

With reports that Google is developing a new version of its troubled wearable, Glass, industry watchers weighed in on what changes are needed to turn the product from being the butt of jokes to a computer that people would want to wear.After pulling Google Glass out of the public's critical gaze this past January, the Wall Street Journal reported that the company may be close to unveiling an updated version of Glass.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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