Google’s Project Loon close to launching thosands of balloons

Google says it’s Project Loon is close to being able to produce and launch thousands of balloons to provide Internet access from the sky.Such a number would be required to provide reliable Internet access to users in remote areas that are currently unserved by terrestrial networks, said Mike Cassidy, the Google engineer in charge of the project, in a video posted Friday.The ambitious project has been underway for a couple of years and involves beaming down LTE cellular signals to handsets on the ground from balloons thousands of feet in the air, well above the altitude that passenger jets fly.“At first it would take us 3 or 4 days to tape together a balloon,” Cassidy says in the video. “Today, through our own manufacturing facility, the automated systems can get a balloon produced in just a few hours. We’re getting close to the point where we can roll out thousands of balloons.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google’s Project Loon close to launching thousands of balloons

Google says its Project Loon is close to being able to produce and launch thousands of balloons to provide Internet access from the sky. Such a number would be required to provide reliable Internet access to users in remote areas that are currently unserved by terrestrial networks, said Mike Cassidy, the Google engineer in charge of the project, in a video posted Friday. The ambitious project has been underway for a couple of years and involves beaming down LTE cellular signals to handsets on the ground from balloons thousands of feet in the air, well above the altitude that passenger jets fly. “At first it would take us 3 or 4 days to tape together a balloon,” Cassidy says in the video. “Today, through our own manufacturing facility, the automated systems can get a balloon produced in just a few hours. We’re getting close to the point where we can roll out thousands of balloons.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Demystifying myths in the networking industry

I have great respect for my previous company, Cisco Systems, and truly believe that the company has successfully brought a disruptive approach of applying network technologies to answer major business challenges.

Working at Cisco was like being conferred with an honorary doctorate from an Ivy League school in engineering, management, leadership and entrepreneurship simultaneously . The experience of working in multiple lines of businesses was helpful in shaping the mindset on how best to manage innovations and productize them so that it was mutually beneficial to the customers and the company. This productization often required an intense validation process, which resulted occasionally in some really cool technology ideas not ever seeing the light of day. Thoughts presented for the rest of this blog are an attempt to share my experience and possibly dispel some myths in the industry.

Myth – One Vendor Can Answer All Networking Requirements

Network vendors for the longest time have enjoyed a monopoly (or duopoly). If an organization had some IT infrastructure requirements, there were a handful of vendors that would satisfy all their needs. This was great for everyone! As a measure of risk mitigation, a famous unwritten policy surfaced that “you would not lose your Continue reading

FCC faces seventh net neutrality lawsuit

Broadband provider CenturyLink has joined the long list of ISPs and trade groups suing the U.S. Federal Communications Commission over its net neutrality rules.CenturyLink filed its lawsuit Friday, becoming the seventh organization to challenge the rules approved by the FCC in late February. The FCC officially published the rules in the Federal Register, the official publication for U.S. agency rules, earlier this week, prompting a round of lawsuits.The company objected to the FCC’s reclassification of broadband from a lightly regulated information service to a more heavily regulated common-carrier service. CenturyLink spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year to “build, maintain and update an open Internet network and does not block or degrade lawful content,” it said in a statement.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

US intelligence outfit wants the ultimate quantum qubit

Researchers behind the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) want to gather computer scientists engineers and physicists to define the challenge of “encoding imperfect physical qubits into a logical qubit that protects against gate errors and damaging environmental influences.”A quantum bit or qubit or quantum bit in the quantum computing realm usesqubitsinstead of the usual bits representing 1s or 0s. Ultimately quantum computing efforts should result in super-fast, super secure computers the experts say. [For a good article on why quantum computing can be so damn confusing and why its development is critical, go here.]To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

AMD pulls back: Less ARM in the cloud, more NOC power consumption

I have a certain sadness as I write this. Data center computational densities have incurred a setback.There was a time when it looked as though ARM might give power-hungry Intel designs a run for their money in the world of high-density computing. It's the sort of density that cloud providers need: rack after rack, crammed to the gills, chilled, high-speed buses. But power costs a lot of money, alternate energy initiatives aside.AMD had bought SeaMicro, whose high-density chassis full of power-sipping ARM CPUs form large arrays of calculative strength, without the hefty bill from the power company for oceans of coulombs. HP had initially announced Project Moonshot, the cartridge-based high-density server with ARM, or FPGA cartridges to slowly sip power, but ultimately delivered its chassis with Intel Atom. ARM blades are still available, and FPGAs are said to be shipping.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Facebook tries to keep it real by killing more ‘fake’ likes

Facebook has tripled its detection and elimination of “fake” likes, which can artificially inflate a brand’s prominence on the site and deceive users, the company said on Friday.Facebook began improving its processes for eliminating fake likes this past October. They’re a real problem for the site, because they can trick a page owner or business into thinking they’re more popular on Facebook than they really are, fooling regular users along the way.Fraudulent likes originate from click farms, fake accounts and malware, and are sold to page owners who want to boost their exposure on Facebook. But in reality they don’t do much to win them actual customers, fans or increased sales.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ben and Jerry’s spoofs Apple’s ‘1984’ ad in new BRRR-ito commercial

Largely considered one of the best TV commercials to ever hit the air, Apple's award-winning "1984" ad is ripe for parody, even in 2015.Putting that thought into practice, Ben & Jerry's today rolled out a new commercial for its upcoming BRRR-ito product. As the name implies, think ice cream delightfully wrapped up in a waffle cone shell, a'la a standard burrito.To help get the word out, Ben and Jerry's new commercial liberally borrows quite a few directorial cues from Apple's "1984" ad, resulting in an all around great and super creative advert.Check it out below. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How developers can profit from the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things promises to be a job bonanza for developers, and coders can expect plenty of work at very good pay, according to Michael Rasalan, a director at California-based developer research company Evans Data Corp.But there's a catch: To get the best jobs, you'll need the right skills and plenty of experience.INSIDER: 5 ways to prepare for Internet of Things security threats Most developers are already on the right path to acquiring that mix of skills and experience. An Evans Data survey in July found that 17 percent of the developers contacted were already working on applications for connected devices, while an additional 23 percent expected to begin working on them in the next six months.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Should computers determine how our kids learn to talk? Maybe not

Increasingly, computers are deciding what news stories we read, and may even end up teaching our children to speak. But whether we should allow them to is becoming the subject of a heated debate related to the use of algorithms.Algorithms are pieces of code that, much like a recipe, provide a set of instructions to complete a task. They are used by companies like Google and Facebook to determine what search results are relevant and what posts are shown in someone’s timeline. They are used to mediate social, political, personal and commercial interactions for billions of people and can act as powerful gatekeepers that are increasingly used to make decisions for us or about us.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

FCC moves toward ‘historic’ spectrum sharing plan

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has approved what some commissioners called a "historic" plan to allow private mobile broadband services to share spectrum with incumbent military users.The FCC voted Friday to approve its so-called Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) plan to open up wireless frequencies from 3550MHz to 3700MHz to new users, including new devices that could use the spectrum like current devices use Wi-Fi.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: The 700MHZ spectrum: Who owns what? Commercial access to the spectrum may still be years away, and the FCC has several sticky issues it needs to resolve, including questions about the best ways to limit inference between users in the band. But with little new spectrum available to satisfy skyrocketing demand for mobile data services, some commissioners hailed the spectrum-sharing plan as a new model for dealing with a spectrum shortage.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Spec showdown: Samsung Galaxy S6 vs. Huawei P8

The Samsung Galaxy S6 is now the benchmark for high-end smartphones running Android, but there are lots of challengers, including the new P8 from Huawei Technologies.The two smartphone vendors have had many of the same goals when building their respective smartphones, including improving the looks and the cameras. But there are still differences that will likely sway you one way or the other. Here’s a spec comparison between the phones:DesignA more premium design has been a common theme for this year’s launches of high-end smartphones. In this regard, both Huawei and Samsung have succeeded. The P8 has a metal unibody design and the Galaxy S6 combines a metal frame with a glass back. They are both good-looking devices, but neither design is very original. The P8 looks a little bland because Huawei doesn’t put its logo on the front.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

4 lessons the iPhone should learn from the Apple Watch

For the past eight years, the iPhone has been the innovator. Whether we’re talking about hardware breakthroughs, software solutions, or just plain good looks, the iPhone has always taken the lead, ushering in the latest technologies and design shifts before any other device: the Retina screen, Siri, Lightning, Touch ID, Apple Pay—even the new MacBook’s shiny gold case owes a debt to the iPhone 5s.MORE: 10 mobile startups to watch For the first time since its debut, the iPhone isn’t the most cutting-edge piece of technology in Apple’s lineup. While Apple Watch borrowed some of the iPhone 6’s style and smarts, it also brings a host of new features and technologies made possible by the uniqueness of the device. So while I wouldn’t expect the next iPhone to sport a Digital Crown or a dedicated Friends button, there are still plenty of tricks it can learn from the new kid on the block.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google seeks $19.8M tax break in Iowa

Google needs a tax break like Bill Gates needs food stamps, yet that isn’t stopping the search giant from asking for $19.8 million in “economic development incentives” from Iowa to build a $1-billion expansion of its growing data center facility in Council Bluffs.And, well, why not ask? The company has already been given $16.8 million in tax breaks to build out the various stages of the existing Council Bluffs facility, which opened in 2007.According to this Omaha World-Herald report, the latest tax break is expected to be approved by the Iowa Economic Development Authority and the Council Bluffs City Council with little or no opposition.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

PlexxiPulse—Are you ready for Interop 2015?

We had a great time showcasing the CloudOOP Big Data Pod at HIMSS this week with our new partner, PSSC Labs. We are back in Nashua and the team is busy gearing up for Interop 2015 in Las Vegas. CEO Rich Napolitano and other members of the Plexxi team will be at the show from April 28–30 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center. We have a lineup of demos you will not want to miss. Drop us a line on Twitter or email [email protected] if you are interested in meeting with the team at the show. We’ll see you there!

Below please find a few of our top picks for our favorite news articles of the week. Have a great weekend!

Enterprise Networking Planet: Optimizing SDN for the Coming Data Deluge
By Arthur Cole
There are two ways of looking at the state of enterprise technology today. Either challenges like Big Data and the Internet of Things are fueling the development of the cloud and software defined infrastructure, or cloud and SDx development are driving Big Data and the IoT. Either way, these twin forces affecting Information Technology have at least given the enterprise a goal and the means Continue reading

Pawn Storm cyberespionage group increases activity, targets NATO

Even though its activities were exposed last year, a cyberespionage group dubbed Pawn Storm has ramped up its efforts over the past few months, targeting NATO members and potentially the White House.The first quarter of this year “has seen a great deal of activity from the group,” researchers from antivirus firm Trend Micro said Thursday in a blog post. “Most notably this involved setting up dozens of exploit URLs and a dozen new command-and-control (C&C) servers targeting NATO members and governments in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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