The Upload: Your tech news briefing for Tuesday, March 3

Google will sell wireless service in the U.S.At Mobile World Congress on Monday, Google executive Sundar Pichai confirmed the rumors: The company plans to sell mobile service in the U.S., but insists it won’t mount significant competition to mobile carriers. Pichai said the offering will give Google a platform for experimenting with new services for Android smartphones....And teases launch of Internet-via-balloon, but Zuckerberg scoffsGoogle’s ambitious efforts to bring balloon and aircraft-borne connectivity to underserved areas of the globe are pushing past some key milestones, with a public launch likely in a few years, Pichai said at MWC. But Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg later picked holes in the plans, criticizing them as costly and impractical, and said the best way to grow Internet access worldwide is to work with telco operators—as he’s doing with the internet.org effort.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Geofencing could add security layer for mobile devices

Geofencing technology -- tracking the location of a mobile device -- could offer an extra layer of security for enterprises trying to manage both company-owned and employee-owned devices. However, the technology can also raise worries about privacy and battery life.Extra layer of securityLast fall, Romania-based CoSoSys Ltd. added geofencing to its mobile device management software, tracking location via GPS, Wifi and Bluetooth beacons.But the first major use of the technology wasn't for companies tracking employees -- but for companies tracking visitors.MORE: 10 mobile startups to watch CoSoSys has customers in the high-tech industry who want to ensure that visitors can't take pictures when they enter particular secured areas. Typically, they ask visitors to leave their mobile devices at the door, to put tape over the camera lenses.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Volvo cars to start talking to each other

Volvo has developed a system that provides real-time warnings to drivers of black ice or disabled vehicles on the road ahead.The technology is currently being tested in Sweden and pulls data from wheel sensors to detect when tires encounter black ice. When that happens, the car transmits a GPS location to a Volvo server, which then sends the data to other vehicles nearby that are equipped with the system.Drivers of those cars see a small warning icon on the dashboard to alert of the black ice ahead. The icon gets bigger as the car approaches the dangerous area, said Erik Israelsson , project leader for safety at Volvo, during a demonstration at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

BlackBerry launches all-touch Leap with $275 price tag

BlackBerry isn’t giving up on the smartphone market, and now hopes to make a mark with the Leap, an all-touch LTE device with a keen price tag. The company launched the new product on Tuesday at an event in Barcelona, where Mobile World Congress is now in full swing. And just like many other vendors at the event, BlackBerry isn’t focusing on the high end of the market but the mid-range, with smartphones that cost about US$300 or less.+ See our full coverage of MWC 2015 + The Leap will run BlackBerry 10 OS and cost $275 unlocked when it goes on sale in April. The smartphone has a 5-inch, 720 x 1280 pixel screen and is powered by a 1.5GHz dual-core processor from Qualcomm.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Best business-class tablets for the front office and factory floor

In this review, we looked at two types of business-class tablets, traditional tablets used by the sales force or other front-office workers, and ruggedized devices that can be used on the factory floor or other back-office environments.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Best business-class tablets for front office and factory floor

Business-class tabletsIn this review, we looked at two types of business-class tablets, traditional tablets used by the sales force or other front-office workers, and ruggedized devices that can be used on the factory floor or other back-office environments. In the front-office category, we tested the Lenovo ThinkPad 10 and the E FUN Nextbook 10. In the back-office category, we looked at the Adlink IMT-1, Arbor Gladius Atom and Gammatach’s Durabook R11. Here are the individual reviews:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

China defends cybersecurity demands, amid complaints from U.S.

President Barack Obama isn’t happy with new rules from China that would require U.S. tech companies to abide by strict cybersecurity measures, but on Tuesday the country was quick to defend the proposed regulations.“All countries are paying attention to and taking measures to safeguard their own information security. This is beyond reproach,” said China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Hua Chunying in a news briefing.She made the statement after Obama criticized a proposed anti-terror law that he said could stifle U.S. tech business in China. The legislation would require companies to hand over encryption keys to the country’s government, and create “back doors” into their systems to give the Chinese government surveillance access.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Response: Why Technology Still Matters

My good friend Tom Hollingsworth wrote a great blog post about hypermyopia in the networking industry. I agree with most everything he wrote (I have to – I’m always telling people to focus on business needs and to change their mentality before relying on shiny new gizmos), but I still think it’s crucial to consider the technology used in products we’re looking at.

iPhone theft victims tricked into unlocking devices

It seems there can be further indignity foisted onto people who’ve had their iPad or iPhone stolen.Symantec has discovered a campaign that aims to unlock Apple devices after they’ve been lost, which requires either the device’s passcode or the credentials for a person’s iCloud account.To get in contact with victims, the criminals appear to be relying on information displayed on the lost device, wrote Joji Hamada of Symantec in a blog post.Apple’s Find My iPhone feature has a “Lost Mode” that allows users to display a message on the screen of their lost device, such as a phone number, he wrote.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Is data on your new Lollipop Android device encrypted? Maybe not

Some smartphone manufacturers are not configuring devices running the latest version of Android to automatically encrypt personal data, which Google had said would scramble data by default.Google has apparently left it up to manufacturers to turn encryption on or off, a surprising change that came after the company pledged last September to strengthen defenses around personal data.It’s unclear why Google did not publicize the change, although it is possible some hardware devices will not perform as well with encryption turned on. Analyst Canalys tweeted it was a wise move for Google, as many devices do not have the right hardware to accommodate it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Control an Amazon EC2 server from an Apple iPad using SSH and VNC

I recently configured an Amazon EC2 instance so that I could run the XFCE desktop environment on it and control it from my local laptop computer using SSH and VNC. But what if I want to use my iPad to do control the remote Amazon EC2 server?

I want to experiment with complex network simulations running on open-source networking software when I happen have the time, from any location with a WiFi connection. I do not always have my laptop with me, but I usually have either my iPad or iPhone.

In this blog post, I will show how to configure and use an iPad (and iPhone) VNC viewer app to view and control the desktop environment running on my Amazon EC2 server.

iPad software

To connect to a remote server from an iPad, we need a VNC viewer app. The VNC viewer app I use is Screens.

I use the Edovia Screens iPad app, which displays the full-screen desktop environment running on the remote server. There are other VNC viewer apps in the App Store but Screens seems to have a lot of functionality and I was confident it would support SSH tunneling. Screens is also a universal iOS Continue reading

A quick hands-on with Cherry Trail: screaming graphics for tablets

Intel’s Cherry Trail Atom chips are almost here, and if you’re in the market for an Intel-based tablet the future looks bright.We briefly got our hands on what could be the first Cherry Trail tablet shown publicly—an 8-inch prototype from Intel running Android with a variety of apps and games installed. The graphics in particular stood out.The game “Real Racing 3” took some time to load, but when it started the display kept pace easily with the fast-moving visuals. A previous Bay Trail chip in an Asus Transformer Book T100 struggled with demanding games, showing how far the Atom X5 and X7 chips, as they’re known, have come.The tablet wasn’t connected to the Internet, so we didn’t get a taste of the Wi-Fi speed or how fast cloud applications will load. But other local apps fired up quickly. The tablet had USB 3.0 and HDMI ports and a audio jack.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

D-Link patches router, says more fixes are on the way

D-Link issued fixes on Monday for flaws that could allow remote access to one of its routers, and will patch several other models in the coming week.The vulnerabilities were found by Peter Adkins, a systems engineer in Canada who said he alerted the company to the issues in early January and decided to publicize them last week after falling out of contact with D-Link.D-Link acknowledges Adkins’ findings in its advisory, which included three new firmware versions for its DIR-820L router. The company expects to release firmware updates in the next week for the DIR-626L, DIR-636L, DIR-808L, DIR-810L, DIR-826L, DIR-830L and DIR-836L.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft ‘excited’ about Windows Phones announced at Mobile World Congress

Bless Microsoft’s heart; it’s still betting on Windows Phones. In fact, Microsoft is “excited” about the “impressive growth of the Windows Phone ecosystem.” The company is so excited that it released the infographic (posted above), bragging about that growth.Have you looked at the smartphones Microsoft has introduced so far at World Mobile Congress? I hadn’t heard of most of the brands, but any growth is better than none. We aren't going to look too hard at any specs, since none of them are high-end, but you can see some pictures of them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Spec showdown: HTC One M9 vs. Samsung Galaxy S6

If you’re on the lookout for a new Android high-end smartphone, the One M9 from HTC and Samsung Electronics’ Galaxy S6 are two hot possibilities.The products were announced on Sunday in Barcelona. They are both good-looking devices with the latest components integrated, but there are also differences that might sway you one way or the other. Here’s a spec comparison between the phones:ProcessorAs anticipated, Samsung chose its own Exynos processor to power the S6. The version used by the smartphone has four cores running at 2.1GHz and another four cores running at a slower 1.5GHz. HTC decided to stick with Qualcomm, and the One M9 is powered by a Snapdragon 810, which has four cores running at 2.0GHz plus another four cores running at a slower 1.5GHz.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

3 Useful Juniper Commands

wildcard delete
Deletes all configuration associated with a level.

show system commit
Shows any annotations performed during the previous commit. Requires that the previous commit used a “commit comment” when committing the configuration.

clear system commit
Removes any pending commits.

Millicom deal with Vodacom on mobile money in Tanzania a sign of the times

Millicom’s agreement with Vodacom to allow users of their respective mobile money services in Tanzania transmit funds to each other is part of an ongoing trend to allow interoperability among services from different networks.The agreement, announced last week, means that four million Tigo Pesa users will for the first time be able to exchange money with Vodacom’s six million M-Pesa users in Tanzania. Tigo is Millicom’s subsidiary.Last year, the company brokered a deal with India’s Bharti Airtel and Tanzania’s Zantel, a subsidiary of Etisalat, that allowed customers of the three operators to conduct mobile money transfers across their networks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Best new Android & Windows smartphones at MWC 2015

Best at MWC 2015Samsung, HTC, Sony, Microsoft and others are using the annual Mobile World Congress (MWC) event in Barcelona to debut their latest smartphones and other gear. Here’s a look at the new Android and Windows devices.ALSO: Read all the stories out of MWC 2015To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Indeni, Smart Advisors and Crowd-Sourcing

Monitoring needs to move on from traditional fault and performance polling. It should include identifying common misconfigurations and known faults. We’re all using the same technologies, so we’ve all got the same problems. I like the look of Indeni, a new approach to this problem. It uses a form of crowd-sourcing to act as a smart advisor.

Precious Snowflakes?

We all think we’re precious snowflakes. But we’re not. We use the same technologies, glued together in the same ways. That means we all have the same problems, and make the same misconfigurations.

Vendors frequently publish new bug fixes, KB articles, EOS notices, etc. Some of these apply to products/versions/features we’re using. We struggle to keep up with the volume, and we miss these – so maybe our network is running with a known issue. Striking an unknown bug is bad. Getting caught out by a published issue is worse. Having an outage because we didn’t make sure the routing tables were in sync on our firewall cluster is unforgivable.

Vendors Need Help Too

Information flow is a two-way problem. The vendors can’t always see how customers deploy their products in the real world. They think they know. They write manuals, they write Continue reading

Tinder grants do-overs, transatlantic swiping with paid version

Tinder, the popular dating app, wants to offer a second chance at love for users who may passed on a potential mate.For a price, users can now undo their most recent left-swipe on someone’s profile, which signals disinterest. Another new feature, called Passport, lets users search for people in other locations beyond their pre-selected geographic radius.Tinder said these are its two most requested features. They’re available in a new paid version of the app called Tinder Plus.Pricing details were not disclosed at the time of launch on Monday, though the cost of upgrading in San Francisco is US$19.99 per month. A report in TechCrunch cited a monthly fee of US$9.99, but it appears the price might vary from market to market. Tinder, based in Los Angeles, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here