MIT researchers develop wearable thumbnail-mounted wireless controller

Researchers at MIT have come up with a novel way to interact with wireless devices – a miniaturized trackpad so small that it can be stuck onto a user’s thumbnail.NailO, as the device is called, is the brainchild of media arts and sciences grad student Cindy Hsin-Liu Kao, a native of Taiwan, who came up with the idea when she couldn’t find the nail art stickers popular in that country in the U.S. She called the device “unobtrusive.”+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Fave Raves: 34 tech pros share favorite IT products + Techiest college commencement speakers of 2015+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Feeling the Love from our IT Brethren

I had the honor of accepting two awards yesterday on behalf of the Cumulus Networks team. We’re pleased because the honors were awarded based on a broad poll of real people in real IT shops, including some of the world’s biggest enterprises and service providers. You can’t buy these; we didn’t even know that the poll was being taken. Those voters, who we think of as our IT brethren, chose us for “Bare Metal Switch OS Market Leader,” for one of only two “Special Achievement” awards (together with our partner, VMware), and three other accolades.

Bare Metal Switch winners: Cumulus Networks and Dell
With Sudi Krishnamurthy, Dell Networking

 

Bare Metal Switch OS #1
Bare Metal Switch OS awards: #1 for market leader, innovation leader and price leader, and tied for #1 performance leader.

“Well, how did I get here?”

When we founded Cumulus Networks, we were driven by a vision of how high-capacity interconnect would change modern applications.

We set out to make great networking technology available to the masses, addressing three critical needs: affordability, an efficient operating model, and availability via a variety of channels. These tenants have become the definition of open networking.

To fulfill these goals, we built the company with IT professionals from all disciplines: development, operations, support and logistics. Continue reading

Moore’s Law at 50: The past and future

When you’re strapping on the latest smart watch or ogling an iPhone, you probably aren’t thinking of Moore’s Law, which for 50 years has been used as a blueprint to make computers smaller, cheaper and faster.Without Moore’s Law it’s quite possible that new types of computers like Microsoft’s HoloLens, a holographic wearable with which users can interact with floating images, would not have been developed. For decades, Moore’s Law has been a guiding star for the development of modern electronics, though in recent years its relevance has been subject to debate.Moore’s Law isn’t a scientific theory, but a set of observations and predictions made by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in an article [click here to download] first published in Electronics Magazine on April 19, 1965, which were subsequently modified. His core prediction states that the density of transistors, or the number of transistors on a given die area, would double every two years, which leads to double the performance. Loosely translated, that means in 18 to 24 months you could buy a computer that is significantly faster than what you have today with the same amount of money.To read this article in full or to Continue reading

Instagram clarifies rules to ban revenge porn

Instagram is clarifying its rules around sexual, illegal and other inappropriate content, including posts involving revenge porn.The site now expressly forbids users from threatening to post intimate images of others, as well as sexual content involving minors, the service said in its updated policies on Thursday. More broadly, photos showing sexual intercourse, genitals, and close-ups of fully-nude buttocks aren’t allowed, Instagram says.For safety reasons, Instagram may also remove images that show nude or partially nude children, the company said.Instagram previously had a ban on nude images and other content like photos depicting extreme violence or gore. But as the Facebook-owned company has grown, it’s now clarifying its rules, aiming to keep its app friendly for a general audience. Instagram, which Facebook bought for US$1 billion in 2012, now has more than 300 million users who log in monthly.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Size matters in mobile, but Nokia may find bigger isn’t better

Size is power in the mobile networks business, but it’s only one of the reasons Nokia is acquiring Alcatel-Lucent.Nokia estimates the company that will emerge from the planned buyout will be the second-largest vendor of carrier infrastructure by revenue, a bit smaller than Ericsson and slightly larger than Huawei Technologies. In a price-competitive industry where technology is constantly evolving, that matters, analysts say. But size alone isn’t reason enough to justify the €15.6 billion (US$16.5 billion) deal.As consumers watch more videos and use more apps on mobile devices, vendors are developing new technologies on multiple fronts to make sure networks can keep up with the demand. Putting up more conventional cells doesn’t cut it anymore, so they’re turning to exotic approaches like millimeter-wave beams and LTE networks that can use the same frequencies as Wi-Fi. Vendors are already jockeying for influence over 5G, the next generation of wireless specifications expected by 2020.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Size matters in mobile, but Nokia may find bigger isn’t better

Size is power in the mobile networks business, but it’s only one of the reasons Nokia is acquiring Alcatel-Lucent.Nokia estimates the company that will emerge from the planned buyout will be the second-largest vendor of carrier infrastructure by revenue, a bit smaller than Ericsson and slightly larger than Huawei Technologies. In a price-competitive industry where technology is constantly evolving, that matters, analysts say. But size alone isn’t reason enough to justify the €15.6 billion (US$16.5 billion) deal.As consumers watch more videos and use more apps on mobile devices, vendors are developing new technologies on multiple fronts to make sure networks can keep up with the demand. Putting up more conventional cells doesn’t cut it anymore, so they’re turning to exotic approaches like millimeter-wave beams and LTE networks that can use the same frequencies as Wi-Fi. Vendors are already jockeying for influence over 5G, the next generation of wireless specifications expected by 2020.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IBM opens up its threat data as part of new security intelligence sharing platform

IBM has joined an increasing number of vendors who are pushing for real-time cybersecurity information sharing among private and public organizations, researchers and other network defenders.On Thursday, the company opened up over 700 terabytes of data about vulnerabilities, attacks and other threats through a new cloud-based threat intelligence sharing platform called IBM X-Force Exchange. Other organizations can use the platform to share or confirm their own data, so they can more efficiently respond to security incidents.The information that IBM made available through the X-Force Exchange includes one of the largest catalogs of vulnerabilities in the world, according to the company. The information also includes threat information based on monitoring of more than 15 billion security events per day, malware threat intelligence from a network of 270 million endpoints, and threat information based on more than 25 billion Web pages and images.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Forever 21 denies pirating Adobe software, strikes back

Retail chain Forever 21 has denied making illegal copies of Adobe’s software, as the Photoshop maker alleged in a lawsuit, and shot back that Adobe tries to bully customers who are accused of piracy into paying exorbitant license fees.Adobe sued Forever 21 in January, in a copyright lawsuit filed along with software makers Corel and Autodesk. All three companies claim that Forever 21 “wilfully, maliciously and intentionally” used their software without proper licenses.The retailer skirted copy protection technologies to illegally install software on its computers, they said. And it continued the behavior after it was alerted by Adobe to its infringement, according to the lawsuit, filed in federal district court in Northern California. The companies want a jury trial to determine financial damages.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Data breach notification bill could weaken consumer protections

Legislation that would require businesses across the U.S. to notify affected customers after a data breach is headed toward a vote on the floor of the House of Representatives even though some digital rights groups say the bill will actually weaken protections for consumers.The Data Security and Breach Notification Act, approved by the House Energy and Commerce Committee Wednesday, would pre-empt stronger breach notification laws in several states and would eliminate data protections of telecom account records, several consumer and digital rights groups said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Bad cell service? Just start your own telco

We've all enjoyed a good moan about our cellular phone service over the years. Iffy coverage, bizarre billing practices, and infuriating customer service have all provided a source of jovial dinner table chat in my home. As the expression goes: you've got to laugh or you'd cry.But our trials are nothing compared to what some people experience. Many in rural areas have no service at all.Those unfortunate souls have, until now, had no redress. When powerful telco won't provide service, you simply don't have service.However, in Mexico, that's changing. Just as individual citizens in some Mexican communities have bandied together to create their own prisons (due to a lack of them), citizens are also creating their own local cellular systems.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Tata gives employees anniversary bonus, cuts into profits

India’s outsourcing industry needs to hire and retain staff in big numbers to keep business humming, so for the 10th anniversary of its initial public offering, Tata Consultancy Services announced a one-time “special reward” for its employees.As a result, Tata took a dip in profits in the first quarter to give out a large bonus.TCS said all its employees worldwide, who have completed at least one year of service, would be eligible for the special bonus, with each employee paid one week’s salary for every year of service in the company.At the end of the quarter TCS had 319,656 employees. The bonus will cost the company about US$423 million.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft to integrate Skype, Office with Cyanogen’s version of Android

Microsoft’s mobile apps will be integrated into a future version of Cyanogen’s Android-based operating system, as CEO Satya Nadella steps up efforts to make the company’s software more popular on Google’s platform.Cyanogen and Microsoft announced a partnership on Thursday that will result in Bing search, Skype, OneDrive, OneNote, Outlook, and Microsoft Office becoming part of the Cyanogen OS, which uses a heavily modified version of the Android interface.Exactly what this will look like remains to be seen, but Microsoft said it will create “native integrations” with Cyanogen’s operating system. That hints at integration that goes beyond pre-installed apps and well-placed icons.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New malware program Punkey targets point-of-sale systems

Point-of-Sale (PoS) terminals have become an attractive target for hackers over the past year, reflected in the increasing number of RAM-scraping programs that steal payment card information from the memory of such systems.Last month security researchers from Cisco Systems issued a warning about a new PoS threat dubbed PoSeidon and on Wednesday security blogger Brian Krebs reported that the program has already infected PoS terminals at restaurants, bars and hotels in the U.S.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Go-to storage and disaster recovery products

LEAF Commercial Capital used to wrestle with tape backups for disaster recovery. Now the equipment leasing and finance company is using a software-based service from Evolve IP for disaster recovery.Rusty Lorenzon, director of IT Infrastructure at Philadelphia-based LEAF, says Evolve IP’s disaster-recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS) has allowed the company to reduce its recovery-time objectives from 48 hours or more to four hours or less. At the same time, LEAF has reduced its disaster recovery operational expenses.“We adopted Evolve IP as an update to our traditional disaster recovery strategy, which had our team using tape backups and interfacing with various DR suppliers,” Lorenzon says. “Evolve IP DRaaS ZT is a flexible solution with an intuitive interface that is easy to configure and use. It’s built for the VMWare hypervisor and is completely SAN agnostic, which allows us to avoid SAN vendor lock-in.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Tech pros’ favorite tools increase IT efficiency

Content is core to the work of Densho, an organization whose mission is to preserve the testimonies of Japanese Americans who were held in internment camps during World War II.In the past, Densho needed a complex storage environment to house its 30TB of production data, says Geoff Froh, deputy director and CIO at the nonprofit organization based in Seattle.“The two-tier infrastructure was composed of high-performance SAN hardware and high-capacity consumer-grade NAS appliances. The SAN was expensive, difficult to manage and not scalable. The NAS gear was unreliable and lacked the IOPS to handle our workload,” Froh recalls.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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