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Firefox OS to help Orange boost smartphone use in Africa

Orange is hoping a sub-US$40 bundle of a Firefox OS smartphone with calls, messages and data will help boost smartphone usage in Africa and the Middle East.On the same day that Samsung Electronics and HTC are announcing new flagship models, Orange is launching a smartphone at the other end of the spectrum. The Klif is a 3G smartphone based on Mozilla’s Firefox OS platform. It has a 3.5-inch screen and a dual-core processor from MediaTek.Firefox OS is an open source platform built around applications and a user interface written in HTML5, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and JavaScript, and Mozilla Foundation is pitching it as a cheaper and more open alternative to Android and iOS. Orange says it was the only platform to meet its requirements on both price and a good user experience. For now, Android can’t get quite as low, according to Orange.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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ZTE’s Grand S3 smartphone scans eyes for authentication

ZTE is taking biometric authentication in a new direction with its Grand S3 smartphone, which lets users log into their phones with eye scanning.By including fingerprint recognition on its iPhones, Apple helped legitimize biometric authentication for phones. But fingerprints aren’t the only thing that can be used to authenticate, so in collaboration with EyeVerify, ZTE has integrated retina scanning technology in the customized front camera of the new Grand S3.For now, the Eyeprint ID feature only controls log-in, but ZTE has plans to expand the feature to work with apps. The underlying technology works by identifying unique vein patterns in the human eye. It doesn’t take a picture, but shoots a short video to ensure the right person is trying to access the phone.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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MediaTek eyes new markets with $300 million startup fund

MediaTek, the Taiwanese chip maker that has helped create the market for low cost smartphones and tablets, is setting up a $300 million venture fund to expand in new areas.MediaTek Ventures will invest in startups in Asia, North America and Europe, with a focus on areas like the Internet of Things, Internet infrastructure and online services, the company announced Monday.Along with China’s Rockchip, MediaTek produces a lot of the processors that go into the cheap smartphones and tablets that are being adopted quickly in developing markets like India and China. By investing in startups, it hopes to expand more quickly in emerging areas like wearables.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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Acer going all in with Windows 10 smartphones

Acer didn’t embrace Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8.1 OS for smartphones, but it’s really warming up to Windows 10.The Taiwanese company plans to launch more Windows 10 smartphones as it looks to bring a consistent user experience across its phones, tablets and PCs, said Wahid Razali, marketing manager for Acer in Europe, at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona. Unlike its predecessor, the new OS makes it easier to share content and use the same applications across the range of Windows devices.Acer has mainly offered Android smartphones in the past, but Windows 10 has made it rethink that strategy. It’s one of the only PC makers that can offer Windows on tablets, laptops and smartphones, which makes adoption of the OS on handsets an easy decision, Razali said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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New products of the week 03.02.2015

New products of the weekOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.Transporter 15 and 30 appliances Key features: Private cloud file sync and share appliances that have been designed to deliver critical business-class file sharing features, performance and capacity to small businesses, departments and remote offices. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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New products of the week 03.02.2015

New products of the weekOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.Transporter 15 and 30 appliances Key features: Private cloud file sync and share appliances that have been designed to deliver critical business-class file sharing features, performance and capacity to small businesses, departments and remote offices. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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HTC One M9 revealed ahead of official launch

HTC’s new flagship Android smartphone, the One M9, has been revealed by a U.S. retailer hours before its expected launch at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.Best Buy is listing a 32GB version of the handset for use on AT&T’s 4G LTE network in the U.S. for US$650.It says the phone is based on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor running at 2GHz and Google’s Android 5.0 operating system, popularly known as “Lollipop.” It has a 5-inch screen with 1920-by-1080-pixel resolution, a 20-megapixel front-facing camera and a 4-megapixel rear camera.The phone is one of a number of new handsets being launched at the event, which is the biggest annual get-together for the mobile telecommunications industry.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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HTC One M9 revealed ahead of official launch

Martyn Williams, IDGNS HTC’s new flagship Android smartphone, the One M9, has been revealed by a U.S. retailer hours before its expected launch at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.Best Buy is listing a 32GB version of the handset for use on AT&T’s 4G LTE network in the U.S. for US$650.It says the phone is based on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor running at 2GHz and Google’s Android 5.0 operating system, popularly known as “Lollipop.” It has a 5-inch screen with 1920-by-1080-pixel resolution, a 20-megapixel front-facing camera and a 4-megapixel rear camera.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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Acer’s new low-cost handset will be upgradeable to Windows 10

Acer is getting a head-start on Windows 10, releasing a new smartphone that comes with Windows Phone 8.1 but which it promises will be upgradeable to the new OS when it arrives later this year.Called the Liquid M220, it’s priced from €79 (US$89) and will go on sale in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Acer couldn’t immediately say if it will be sold in the U.S., but it’s been focussing on EMEA lately for its mobiles and wearables.It is one of many low-cost phones Acer is announcing at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The others run Android.The M220 has a 4-inch screen, which is similar to other low-cost Windows handsets like the Lumia 435 and Lumia 512. It has a 5-megapixel rear camera and a 2-megapixel front camera, and comes with a bevy of Microsoft apps including Cortana and OneDrive.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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Acer’s new low-cost handset will be upgradeable to Windows 10

Acer is getting a head-start on Windows 10, releasing a new smartphone that comes with Windows Phone 8.1 but which it promises will be upgradeable to the new OS when it arrives later this year.Called the Liquid M220, it’s priced from €79 (US$89) and will go on sale in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Acer couldn’t immediately say if it will be sold in the U.S., but it’s been focussing on EMEA lately for its mobiles and wearables.It is one of many low-cost phones Acer is announcing at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The others run Android.The M220 has a 4-inch screen, which is similar to other low-cost Windows handsets like the Lumia 435 and Lumia 512. It has a 5-megapixel rear camera and a 2-megapixel front camera, and comes with a bevy of Microsoft apps including Cortana and OneDrive.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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Acer’s new low-cost handset will be upgradeable to Windows 10

Acer is getting a head-start on Windows 10, releasing a new smartphone that comes with Windows Phone 8.1 but which it promises will be upgradeable to the new OS when it arrives later this year. Called the Liquid M220, it’s priced from €79 (US$89) and will go on sale in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Acer couldn’t immediately say if it will be sold in the U.S., but it’s been focussing on EMEA lately for its mobiles and wearables. It is one of many low-cost phones Acer is announcing at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The others run Android.+ See our full coverage of MWC 2015 +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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Review: Hosting WordPress with GoDaddy

GoDaddy recently entered the turnkey WordPress hosting fray, offering a one year trial for $1 a month. I had been toying with the idea of another blog, so I decided to give them a try. The experience of hosting at GoDaddy has been...sort of neutral.

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Filtering .raw fields with Python Elasticsearch DSL High-Level Client

It took me a while to figure out how to search the not_analyzed ".raw" fields created by Logstash in Elasticsearch indices, using the high-level Python Elasticsearch client. Because keyword arguments can't have attributes, Python throws an error if you try it the intuitive way (this assumes you've already set up a client as es and an index as i, as shown in the docs):

Instead, you create a dictionary with your parameters and unpack it using the ** operator:

This produces the Elasticsearch query we want:

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Filtering .raw fields with Python Elasticsearch DSL High-Level Client

It took me a while to figure out how to search the not_analyzed ".raw" fields created by Logstash in Elasticsearch indices, using the high-level Python Elasticsearch client. Because keyword arguments can't have attributes, Python throws an error if you try it the intuitive way (this assumes you've already set up a client as es and an index as i, as shown in the docs):

Instead, you create a dictionary with your parameters and unpack it using the ** operator:

This produces the Elasticsearch query we want:

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Installing cAdvisor and Heapster on bare metal Kubernetes

If you’ve spent some time with Kubernetes, or docker in general, you probably start to wonder about performance.  Moreover, you’re probably wondering how to gauge performance of he overall host as well as the containers running on it.  This is where cAdvisor comes in.  CAdvisor is a open source tool for monitoring docker and it’s running containers.  The best part about cAdvisor is that it has native docker support and is super easy to integrate into an existing Kubernetes cluster.  Additionally, cAdvisor runs in a container (starting to see why docker is awesome?) so the configuration changes required on the host are super minimal.  AKA – You just need to tell the host to run the container.

In addition to installing cAdvisor on our bare metal Kubernetes cluster, we’re also going to install another awesome open source Google tool call Heapster.  Heapster gathers all of the data from each Kubernetes node via cAdvisor and puts it all together for you in one spot.

So let’s get started with installing cAdvisor…

The cAdvisor container needs to run on each host you want cAdvisor to monitor.  While we could do this through the Continue reading

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Experimenting with Docker, Registrator, and Consul

Over the last few days, I’ve been experimenting with Docker, Registrator, and Consul in an effort to explore some of the challenges involved in building a robust containerized infrastructure. While I haven’t finished fully exploring the idea (and documenting what I’ve learned), I did discover one interesting—and unexpected—interaction.

Here’s a quick overview of my testing environment:

• I used two OpenStack Heat templates to spin up two clusters of 5 instances each.
• The first cluster is a set of CoreOS Linux instances, customized via cloud-init to not run etcd. These instances are attached to a VMware NSX-powered logical network using IP addresses from the 10.1.1.0/24 subnet.
• On each CoreOS Linux instance, I have Registrator running as a Docker container and listening to the Docker socket (thus listening to Docker events).
• The second cluster is a set of Ubuntu 14.04 instances running Consul. These instances are connected to an NSX-powered logical network using IP addresses from the 10.1.2.0/24 subnet.
• The two logical networks are connected by a logical router and thus have full connectivity.

Registrator, if you’re not already familiar with it, is a service registry tool that listens to the Docker Continue reading

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Protecting web origins with Authenticated Origin Pulls

As we have been discussing this week, securing the connection between CloudFlare and the origin server is arguably just as important as securing the connection between end users and CloudFlare. The origin certificate authority we announced this week will help CloudFlare verify that it is talking to the correct origin server. But what about verification in the opposite direction? How can the origin verify that the client talking to it is actually CloudFlare?

TLS Client Authentication

TLS (the modern version of SSL) allows a client to verify the identity of the server it is talking to. Normally, a TLS handshake is one-way, that is, the client is able to verify the server's identity, but the server is not able to verify the client's identity. What about when both sides need to verify each other's identity?

Enter TLS Client Authentication. In a client authenticated TLS handshake both sides provide a certificate to be verified. If the origin server is configured to only accept requests which use a valid client certificate from CloudFlare, requests which have not passed through CloudFlare will be dropped (as they will not have our certificate). This means that attackers cannot circumvent CloudFlare features such as our WAF Continue reading

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Personal data on 50,000 Uber drivers exposed in breach

The names and license plate numbers of about 50,000 Uber drivers were compromised in a security breach last year, the company revealed Friday.Uber discovered a possible breach of its systems in September, and a subsequent investigation revealed an unauthorized third party had accessed one of its databases four months earlier, the company said.The files accessed held the names and license plate numbers of about 50,000 current and former drivers, which Uber described as a “small percentage” of the total. About 21,000 of the affected drivers are in California. The company has several hundred thousand drivers altogether.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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Personal data on 50,000 Uber drivers exposed in breach

The names and license plate numbers of about 50,000 Uber drivers were compromised in a security breach last year, the company revealed Friday.Uber discovered a possible breach of its systems in September, and a subsequent investigation revealed an unauthorized third party had accessed one of its databases four months earlier, the company said.The files accessed held the names and license plate numbers of about 50,000 current and former drivers, which Uber described as a “small percentage” of the total. About 21,000 of the affected drivers are in California. The company has several hundred thousand drivers altogether.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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iPexpert’s Newest “CCIE Wall of Fame” Additions 2/27/2015

Please join us in congratulating the following iPexpert client’s who have passed their CCIE lab!

This Week’s CCIE Success Stories

• Haroon Raees, CCIE #46529 (Collaboration)
• Evariste Happi, CCIE #46452 (Collaboration)
• Daniel Flieth, CCIE #46067 (Collaboration)
• Majid, CCIE #45866 (Collaboration)
• Rob Lacrosse, CCIE #45283 (Collaboration)
• Devan Lim, CCIE #45991 (Collaboration)
• Clay Ostlund, CCIE #45770 (Collaboration)

We Want to Hear From You!

Have you passed your CCIE lab exam and used any of iPexpert’s self-study products, or attended a CCIE Bootcamp? If so, we’d like to add you to our CCIE Wall of Fame!