Liquid Telecom raises $150 million to extend broadband in Africa

Liquid Telecom has raised US$150 million to extend its fiber networks across Africa, a sign of the growing need for broadband services on the continent.The company, controlled by African telecom company Econet Wireless, has already invested heavily in East Africa, where it is laying thousands of kilometers of new fiber-optic cable to connect Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo.The company has also already completed its East Africa fiber ring, which connects Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, in order to provide high speeds and continuous uptime across the region.Liquid will use the additional funds it raised to build fibre broadband networks in several other countries.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Long-awaited Blackphone tablet may emerge at MWC

Paranoid tablet users, rejoice. The first units of the secure Blackphone tablet will be demonstrated at the upcoming Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona early next month.The tablet will be the second product from SGP Technologies, which makes the privacy-centric Blackphone smartphone. A pre-release version of the tablet will be shown at the booth of Graphite Software, which has written a special interface for the device to run sensitive applications.SGP is planning a press conference at MWC where it will probably announce the tablet. A Blackphone spokesman declined to share details on the tablet launch or the press conference. However, a Graphite Software executive said the tablet would be announced at MWC and would be on display at Blackphone’s booth as well as Graphite’s.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Long-awaited Blackphone tablet may emerge at MWC

Paranoid tablet users, rejoice. The first units of the secure Blackphone tablet will be demonstrated at the upcoming Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona early next month.The tablet will be the second product from SGP Technologies, which makes the privacy-centric Blackphone smartphone. A pre-release version of the tablet will be shown at the booth of Graphite Software, which has written a special interface for the device to run sensitive applications.SGP is planning a press conference at MWC where it will probably announce the tablet. A Blackphone spokesman declined to share details on the tablet launch or the press conference. However, a Graphite Software executive said the tablet would be announced at MWC and would be on display at Blackphone’s booth as well as Graphite’s.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Former GM CEO warns Apple not to get into the car business

With all of the varying news reports claiming that Apple has plans to develop its own car, there has been a lot of debate regarding the wisdom behind such a strategy. While some Apple enthusiasts might understandably welcome an Apple-inspired car, there is certainly no shortage of arguments to make against Apple entering an entirely new industry.Falling in the latter category, former GM CEO Dan Akerson recently sat down for an interview with Bloomberg where he advised Apple that it has no idea what it's getting itself into.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Sony looks to PlayStation to revive fortunes, could ditch smartphones

Sony will invest more money in the PlayStation as it fights to return to a profit, and could reportedly exit from selling smartphones and TVs.Sony will pump extra cash into its games and network services division in a bid to attract more users to the PlayStation and its PlayStation Network of online games. The company has sold 18.5 million PlayStation 4s since they went on sale in late 2013, of which 4.1 million were sold in the 2014 holiday season.Sony will also provide more funding for the division that makes image sensors for devices including the iPhone 6. That cash will go towards researching new technologies and increasing production.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple Watch launch projected to be 7 times more successful than Android Wear

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Apple placed its first Apple Watch orders with its manufacturing partner Quanta for 5 to 6 million watches. That's extremely bullish for Apple because only 720,000 Android Wear watches shipped in 2014 from such companies as Motorola, Samsung, and LG, while Pebble shipped 1 million smartwatches, according to market watcher Canalys. Apple's rosy forecast for its premium-priced watch appears aggressive when one considers that Canalys reported a total 4.6 million smart wearable bands shipped in 2014.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Both sides make last-minute push on net neutrality

The clock is running down on the chance to lobby the U.S. Federal Communications Commission before it votes on putting stronger net neutrality rules in place, and both sides of the battle are making sure their voices are heard.Advocates of strong net neutrality rules have generated more than 1 million messages to the FCC or Congress since the beginning of 2015 via the Battleforthenet.com website. “You can’t buy public opinion,” Evan Greer, campaign director of digital rights group Fight for the Future, said during a press briefing Wednesday. “We very clearly have won in the sphere of public opinion.”The FCC is scheduled to vote on new rules that would reclassify broadband as a regulated utility on Feb. 26, and with agency rules mandating a week-long quiet period on lobbying before then, groups on both sides of the long-running debate were making last-minute pitches.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Can Network Startups Stay Small and Survive ?

A client recently asked me about startups in the networking space and how to pick the one whose products be around for five years. After some research and reflection, I am beginning to realise that size doesn’t matter like it used to. While big companies selling hardware have big costs, small companies selling software can […]


The post Can Network Startups Stay Small and Survive ? appeared first on EtherealMind.

IBM’s Robert LeBlanc has his head in the cloud

IBM’s new man in charge of the cloud business is moving fast.“What I’m focusing on is speed,” said Robert LeBlanc, the new senior vice president for IBM Cloud. “Because the market continues to change, we have to get things to market quickly and then iterate.”LeBlanc is in a key spot at IBM: the company’s cloud-related technologies enjoyed a whopping 60 percent growth to $7 billion in 2014. The growth came much sooner than expected, and that’s critical in the midst of the company’s ongoing struggle to shift focus from low-margin hardware to the new paradigm of cloud computing.That struggle was evident in IBM’s financial results for 2014. The fourth quarter brought yet another decline in sales—it was the 11th consecutive quarter to do so—and profit targets for 2015 were down as well.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

6 ways ‘shadow IT’ can actually help IT

In most IT departments, the very words "shadow IT" conjure visions of out-of-control users merrily spreading sensitive data on insecure services and unapproved devices, risking huge losses and costing IT personnel lost sleep. From the CIO to the help desk, IT folks typically make their disdain clear to any user who will listen.But most users aren't listening. They're too busy riding the wave of slick cloud-based apps and services and powerful consumer-oriented devices to do their work faster, easier, and cheaper than they can with the outmoded enterprise offerings available through official channels. They see shadow IT as essential to achieving maximum productivity.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Light network via air hits 224 Gbps

How about this for an idea: run broadband to the home via wires and then spurt the last few meters via airwaves.Neat idea, right? You get the benefits of bulk speed through wire and the portability of a consumer device through airwaves.And, if you think you've heard the idea before, you're not mistaken. It's called wired Internet service coupled with Wi-Fi. Been there, done that.Still, it's a good idea.Well, here's a novel twist on that theme — run broadband via fiber to the home and then send the last couple of yards via airwaves. But, in this case, don't translate to Wi-Fi for the last few yards. Use the light you've already got in the fiber and just extend it outwards from the wire to the devices.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Light network via air hits 224 Gbps

How about this for an idea: run broadband to the home via wires and then spurt the last few meters via airwaves.Neat idea, right? You get the benefits of bulk speed through wire and the portability of a consumer device through airwaves.And, if you think you've heard the idea before, you're not mistaken. It's called wired Internet service coupled with Wi-Fi. Been there, done that.Still, it's a good idea.Well, here's a novel twist on that theme — run broadband via fiber to the home and then send the last couple of yards via airwaves. But, in this case, don't translate to Wi-Fi for the last few yards. Use the light you've already got in the fiber and just extend it outwards from the wire to the devices.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Presentations in Markdown Using Deckset

Over the past couple of years, Markdown has become an important part of my computing landscape. I’ve transitioned almost all of my text-based content creation, including this blog, over to Markdown. I’d also been looking for ways that I might be able to extend my use of Markdown into creating presentations as well, but hadn’t—until recently—found a tool that fit into my workflow. Then I started using Deckset.

The idea behind Deckset is not unique; there are other projects out there that do the same sort of thing. (Remarkjs is one example that I’ve also used; more on that in a moment.) You create your presentation in Markdown, using headings, bulleted lists, numbered lists, etc. Markdown is just plain text, so you can use any plain text editing tool you like for this part. Deckset itself is OS X-specific, but the content remains platform- and application-independent (use any text editing tool on any platform you like).

Because Markdown isn’t natively suited to creating presentations, Deckset—along with all the other solutions I tried—have to add some “extensions” to Markdown. For example, in Deckset’s case:

  • You’ll use three hyphens (---) to denote the start of a new slide.
  • Continue reading

Samsung smart TVs don’t encrypt the voice data they collect

Samsung does not encrypt voice recordings that are collected and transmitted by its smart TVs to a third party service, even though the company has claimed that it uses encryption to secure consumers’ personal information.A week ago, the revelation that Samsung collects words spoken by consumers when they use the voice recognition feature in their smart TVs enraged privacy advocates, since according to Samsung’s own privacy policy those words can in some cases include personal or sensitive information. The incident even drew comparisons to Big Brother behavior from George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Why Apple isn’t likely to compete with Tesla

With nearly $200 billion in cash on its balance sheet, Apple can do almost anything – including buying Tesla at a relatively affordable market cap of just $25 billion. But the swashbuckling Elon Musk's electric vehicle and reusable SpaceX rocket depend on technological breakthroughs and big capital investments over long periods before seeing a payback. That just isn't how Apple rolls.The abbreviation for research and development at Apple should be r&D (small r, big D) because the company keeps the riskier research small and invests big in development. The battery breakthroughs needed for mainstream electric vehicles are still on the horizon, and Apple doesn't have the cultural disposition to put its battery patents in the public domain to stimulate innovation as Tesla did. Nor does Apple have the stomach to make big investments to achieve speculative economies of scale needed for a mass-produced electric vehicle like Telsa has in its battery Gigafactory. No one at Apple has ever said anything like JB Straubel, Chief Technical Officer and Co-founder of Tesla Motors, has said:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Why Do TFD Delegates Hate Gartner?

Gartner Logo

A thought, since I’ve just returned form Networking Field Day 9: I’ve heard it said that delegates to Tech Field Day events hate Gartner; that this is stupid, or that it’s some other form of snobbery. It’s certainly true that on the whole, TFD delegates do not like to see Gartner slides in presentations.

That Gartner Slide

So why do Tech Field Day delegates hate Gartner?

We don’t.

We do.

We don’t, but we do. It’s complicated.

Hey, it’s complicated, alright?

Bonus points for obvious movie reference identification. So look, here’s the thing. You folks reading this blog are likely pretty intelligent. The fact that you read tech blogs means you are looking to get information that will help you make a decision or solve a problem.

Gartner Magic Quadrants

In my opinion, the problem with a company at Tech Field Day putting up a Gartner slide and maybe boasting that “we’re in the top right quadrant” is that it’s not what we think we’re there to hear. We’re sitting in front of the actual people who make the product, and instead of convincing us of their product’s merits by telling and showing us how amazing it is, they’re saying “Here’s what Continue reading

Researcher faults unlocking policies from Sprint and T-Mobile

Sprint and T-Mobile don't fully comply with a series of voluntary smartphone and tablet unlocking policies, even though both companies were praised last week by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for doing so, according to an independent analysis performed by a former developer of unlocking software."Sprint and T-Mobile aren't delivering on half the commitments they made to the FCC," said Sina Khanifar, a Web developer who conducted the analysis on his own by comparing carrier unlocking policies with a voluntary Code the carriers committed to follow.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

First look: Windows 10 preview for smartphones is off to a slow start

Last Thursday, Microsoft released its long-anticipated Windows 10 Technical Preview for smartphones. This first public release of Windows 10 for smartphones improves on many Windows Phone 8.1 features, but it offers few compelling new capabilities. Also, while Win10 TP for smartphones is supposed to run universal-style apps (the latest incarnation of what have been called Metro, Modern, and Windows Store apps), there's still little congruence between the new universal smartphone apps and their big-screen universal namesakes.Note that Microsoft limited the beta bits to Lumia 630, 635, 636, 638, 730, and 830 smartphones. The advanced Windows Phone fan base, which has been migrating to the Lumia 930 (Icon), 1000, 1300, and 1500 series, got snubbed. Microsoft explained that it didn't bring this first beta to the 930 or the 1520 because of conflicts with "a feature that will be coming soon called partition stitching."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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