Amazon tries a physical button for making purchases

Amazon might be on to the killer app for restocking toilet paper from the privacy of your home.Amazon Prime members can now request an invite to get their hands on “Dash Button,” a small oval-shaped device to be placed strategically around the home like drawers, cupboards ... or the bathroom wall. Push its button, and the device will instantly purchase an item of the user’s choosing. Currently there’s more than a dozen buttons for buying Tide laundry detergent, Bounty paper towels and Gillette shaving products. Users can set up the device to send them any applicable item they want; a link on Amazon’s site refers users to more than 250 Dash button products including moisturizers, dog food, and paper towels.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Amazon tries a physical button for making purchases

Amazon might be on to the killer app for restocking toilet paper from the privacy of your home.Amazon Prime members can now request an invite to get their hands on “Dash Button,” a small oval-shaped device to be placed strategically around the home like drawers, cupboards ... or the bathroom wall. Push its button, and the device will instantly purchase an item of the user’s choosing. Currently there’s more than a dozen buttons for buying Tide laundry detergent, Bounty paper towels and Gillette shaving products. Users can set up the device to send them any applicable item they want; a link on Amazon’s site refers users to more than 250 Dash button products including moisturizers, dog food, and paper towels.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

HP hits former Autonomy execs with $5B suit

The UK’s Serious Fraud Office may have dropped its investigation of software firm Autonomy earlier this year, but that doesn’t appear to have done much to allay HP’s ire. HP—which acquired Autonomy in 2011—has confirmed that it plans to sue Mike Lynch and Sushovan Hussain, Autonomy’s former CEO and CFO, for $5.1 billion.HP filed a Claim Form against Lynch and Hussain on Monday alleging they engaged in fraudulent activities while executives at Autonomy, an HP spokeswoman said via email. “The lawsuit seeks damages from them of approximately $5.1 billion.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Budgeting For Wireless With E-Rate

Wireless

After having a nice conversation with Josh Williams (@JSW_EdTech) and helping Eddie Forero (@HeyEddie) with some E-Rate issues, I’ve decided that I’m glad I don’t have to deal with it any longer. But my conversation with Josh revealed something that I wasn’t aware of with regards to the new mandate from the president that E-Rate needs to address wireless in schools.

Building On A Budget

The first exciting thing in the new rules for E-Rate modernization is that there has been an additional $1 billion injected into the Category 2 (Priority 2) items. The idea is that this additional funding can be used for purchasing wireless equipment as outlined in the above initiative. I’ve said before that E-Rate needed an overhaul to fix some of the issues with reduced funding in competition for the available funding pool. That this additional funding came through things like sunsetting VoIP funding is a bit irritating, but sometimes these things can’t be helped.

The second item that caught my attention is the new budgeting rules for Category 2 in E-Rate going forward. Now, schools are allocated $150 per student for a rolling five year period. That means the old “2 Continue reading

IT troubles plague Federal Copyright Office

The IT department at the nation’s Copyright Office needs more than a little work.A report out this week from the watchdogs at the Government Accountability Office points out a number of different technical and management woes that see to start at the top – with the CIO (a position that has a number of problems in its own right) and flows down to the technology, or lack-thereof.As the nation’s copyright center it is imperative that it operate efficiently to effectively protect all manner of written and recorded material but according to the GAO it doesn’t.+More on Network World: CIA: A world without Google Maps or satellites?+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Seven things to know about Intel’s ‘Cherry Trail’ Atom chips

Microsoft’s Surface 3 is the first announced device to use Intel’s new Cherry Trail Atom chips, but you can expect therm to show up soon in other devices too. So what are the chips capable of and what should we expect?The Surface 3, which went on sale Tuesday, highlights some of the capabilities of Cherry Trail, officially called the Atom X5 and X7. The chips can run full Windows 8 and Windows 10 and are better at graphics than their ‘Bay Trail’ predecessors. But they also have limitations. They won’t do so well at compute intensive tasks such as video editing, which remain the domain of Intel’s faster Core processors.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

iPaaS: A new approach to cloud Integration

This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter’s approach.

Application integration has often been an exercise in frustration – long delays, high costs and over promises by vendors. How many ERP projects have you heard of that were canceled or shelved due to complex customization and integration challenges?

Integration though, is coming to a new place. Cloud technologies and open APIs are helping enterprises merge on-premise and off-premise systems without considerable coding and re-architecting. Instead of requiring specialists in SOA, enterprise service bus (ESB), extract transform and load (ETL) and data warehousing, organizations are hoping the concept of Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) can be used to integrate systems in half the time using technically-savvy generalists and increased involvement from lines of business.

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

New malware program used in attacks against energy sector companies

A new malware program is being used to do reconnaissance for targeted attacks against companies in the energy sector.The program, dubbed Trojan.Laziok by researchers from antivirus vendor Symantec, was used in spear-phishing attacks earlier this year against companies from the petroleum, gas and helium industries.The attacks targeted companies from many countries in the Middle East, but also from the U.S., India, the U.K., and others, according to malware researchers from Symantec.The Trojan is spread via emails with malicious documents that exploit a Microsoft Office vulnerability for which a patch has existed since April 2012.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Tanium’s fast-acting endpoint management tool grows up

A tool for nearly real-time management of clients like desktops, laptops and Windows tablets is now set to take on massive organizations that have millions of endpoints.Tanium is software that can examine and modify all such clients across an enterprise within 15 seconds, according to the company. It’s already being used by customers with more than 500,000 endpoints, and the newly released Version 6.5 is designed to serve some of the world’s largest organizations, especially in the public sector, Tanium says.At the heart of Tanium’s software is the ability to rapidly reach all endpoints throughout an organization, which can speed up both security and IT management tasks. Tanium makes this work by organizing endpoints into linear chains in which they communicate peer to peer.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Infinit speeds up video, photo sharing via smartphones

French company Infinit has released Android and iOS applications for free file-sharing that promise improved transmission speeds over cloud-based services.High-resolution smartphone cameras that can shoot 4K videos means that such a service is needed on mobile devices, Infinit said in a blog post on Tuesday. There are already apps for Mac OS and Windows.All the apps are free and there is no limit on file sizes or types that can be transferred. There are two ways to share files. Recipients who have the one of the apps installed get a notification they have to accept. It’s also possible to share content with users who don’t have the apps; they get a link to download it from via email.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

‘One-sentence stories’: An oxymoron from the New York Times for the Apple Watch

I figured this had to be an early April Fool’s Day joke … or the New York Times doesn’t understand that “one-sentence story” is an oxymoron.And a spokesperson for the newspaper tells me via email that it’s no joke. A press release reads: The New York Times has developed a new form of storytelling to help readers catch up in seconds on Apple Watch. One-sentence stories, crafted specially for small screens, will provide the news at a glance across many Times sections, including Business, Politics, Science, Tech and The Arts.One-sentence stories are accompanied by The Times’s award-winning photography and short, bulleted summaries. Readers can use Handoff to continue reading any story on iPhone or iPad, or tap “Save for Later” to build a personal reading list.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Facebook tracks all site vistors, violating EU law, report says

Facebook tracks everyone who visits its site, including people who don’t have an account, and even continues to track users and non-users who have opted out of targeted ads, researchers at two Belgian universities have found.Researchers at the University of Leuven in cooperation with researchers at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel have published an update to a February analysis of Facebook’s new policies and terms. The report, commissioned by the Belgian Privacy Commission, already found in preliminary conclusions in February that Facebook, with its 2015 privacy policy update, likely acts in violation of European law.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

BrandPost: Personalizing Business Technology

The Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) revolution is in full swing. According to a global survey of CIOs by Gartner, 38 percent of companies expect to stop providing devices to workers by 2016. As BYOD adoption accelerates and consumer smartphones and other devices evolve, the technology we use at work must find a way to keep up.Consumer devices are tightening the bond between ‘Man and Machine’, and one thing is certain: our smartphones and smart watches are getting smarter. In fact, it’s eerie how smart they have become. There are the widely used personal devices: the explosion of smart watches like the highly-anticipated Apple Watch™, the enormously popular fitness bands like FITBIT®, and smartphones like Samsung’s Galaxy S6 Edge™ that are making strides in streamlined app management.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cumulus Linux Switch Monitoring with Datadog

As a Linux platform, one of the cool things is that we often don’t have visibility into how customers use their switches running Cumulus Linux. They buy HCL-compatible hardware from our partners, and with some training and enablement, are off to the races.

The idea for running Datadog in Cumulus Linux came about for the simple reason that we were in adjacent booths at PuppetConf last year, and we all figured it would be cool to try it out. Further, since Datadog already provides visibility across systems, apps and services, they were interested in seeing how networking can be added into the mix. As you will see, it turns out to be pretty simple.

Installing Datadog in Cumulus Linux

The Datadog agent, as with most things Debian, installs easily on Cumulus Linux. For x86 switches, this is as simple as installing a Debian package and performing simple changes in the Datadog agent files, such as the application/API key, which is the tag associated with the switch. You can easily automate this installation using common automation tools like Puppet and Ansible.

Configuration

Since the Datadog agent is designed for servers, metrics can be collected using Datadog’s SNMP plugin, a custom sFlow Continue reading

Three Tips for Technical Blogging

From time to time, I’m asked by new or potential technical bloggers for advice on how to get into writing, or how to overcome some kind of mental reservation that he/she may have.

It’s actually somewhat ironic - I still suffer from many of the same issues that I suffered from back before Keeping It Classless existed.

So, truth be told, I constantly remind myself of the same advice that I give to the bloggers-to-be that ask me for advice. It’s high time that I open the kimono a little bit and hopefully help someone in the process. Here are my top three tips for technical bloggers - whether you’re just getting started, or if you’re already fairly established but maybe hitting some blockage.

Know Why You Do It

Be keenly aware of the motivation(s) that drive your blogging. Write them down. Look at them every day. Keeping these in mind should be your primary source of energy when writing about a technical topic. Unless blogging is your actual job (in which case this Continue reading

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