Google tests business Hangouts in search results

Using Hangouts, Google is testing a search feature that enables users to conduct live chats with businesses directly from their search results. Google confirmed to Computerworld that it is running a test on the technology, but declined to offer any specific details about the size of the test or which businesses are participating. Matt Gibstein seems to be the first one who spotted the test, tweeting, "Super interesting: @Google search now offering the ability to chat with local businesses (a la @Path Talk)." The feature has a live chat, or Hangout, feature pop up in the search results if a business has someone available to communicate with the user. The Hangout can be launched on a desktop system or mobile device.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Funniest video about Boston winter e-vah

I’d pay good money to watch Ken Burns watch this hilarious YouTube video: “Facebook Statuses About the Boston Snowstorm With Sad Civil War Fiddle Music.” (Some NSFW language.) Thanks, Safety Whale Comedy Collective; we needed that.One of the voices on the video, actor and filmmaker Harry Aspinwall, tells me the back story via email: “My friend Luke Palmer made it after I wrote the final quote, about eating dogs and so on, as a Facebook status. He commented by posting Ashokan Farewell (the fiddle piece, which has been used in Ken Burns' stuff about the Civil War) and it sort of went from there. He got me to record the male voices.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Avaya takes a unique approach to ease the pain of SDN migrations

In the movie, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Spock's older brother, Sybok, had telepathic abilities and he could feel people's pain by touching them. In the movie he would say, "share your pain with me and gain strength from sharing." Sybok was a deeply religious Vulcan and, in the movie, sought out to find "Sha Ka Ree," the Vulcan equivalent of Eden, where everything began. Nirvana, if you will.In the networking industry, software defined networks (SDN) are supposed to bring the networking equivalent of Sha Ka Ree. However, I don't need to be a Vulcan telepath to understand customers' pain when it comes to SDNs. Almost every network professional I talk to today has an interest in SDN. However, the majority of businesses feel that deploying a software defined network is too complicated.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The FCC’s net neutrality rules: What we know so far

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission voted Thursday to pass new net neutrality rules and reclassify broadband as a regulated telecommunications service, but the text of the full order may not be released for several weeks. Here’s what we know so far:What’s next?The new rules take effect 60 days after the full order is published in the Federal Register, the official journal of the U.S. government. The FCC has some procedural hoops to clear before publishing the text, including drafting responses to the dissents by the FCC’s two Republican commissioners. So publication may not come for months.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Smartphones charge in a minute with bio-battery

Better batteries? In the words of one Reddit user: "OMG, not this again."But wait, there's more, as the expression goes. There's a reason that new battery technology piques our interest whenever we hear about it. Batteries are the last insurmountable hindrance to the seductive idea of total nomadism and blissful un-tethered freedom.Murphy's LawBatteries are one technology that haven't really seen a Moore's law-esque periodic doubling of capacity. Moore's law says that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles about every two years.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Smartphones charge in a minute with bio-battery

Better batteries? In the words of one Reddit user: "OMG, not this again."But wait, there's more, as the expression goes. There's a reason that new battery technology piques our interest whenever we hear about it. Batteries are the last insurmountable hindrance to the seductive idea of total nomadism and blissful un-tethered freedom.Murphy's LawBatteries are one technology that haven't really seen a Moore's law-esque periodic doubling of capacity. Moore's law says that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles about every two years.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Samsung and HTC have a lot to prove with Sunday smartphone launches

Samsung Electronics and HTC are going head to head on Sunday with almost simultaneous launches of new flagship smartphones. Both companies have a lot to prove, but for different reasons.“Samsung is fighting for its credibility and HTC for its survival,” said Neil Mawston , executive director at market research company Strategy Analytics, speaking of the duelling events ahead of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.Mawston thinks Samsung’s critics have been a bit too harsh on the company. Despite the shortcomings of the Galaxy S5, it was the second-best-selling phone last year, beaten only by the iPhone 5S. However, the S5 wasn’t able to live up to expectations, and Samsung is now under pressure to launch something special.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Fresh from $532.9M win, Smartflash sues Apple again

Shortly after a jury in Texas awarded it US$532.9 million in damages in a patent dispute with Apple, patent company Smartflash has sued the iPhone maker again, this time to focus on newer Apple products."Apple has released new products that came out too late for inclusion in Smartflash's previous action against Apple," Smartflash's attorney Bradley W. Caldwell said in an email Thursday.The company sued Apple and others in May 2013 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Tyler division, alleging that iTunes software infringed on six of its patents related to serving and managing access to data.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Survey: iPhone 6 powers an increase in enterprise adoption of iOS

Apple's iOS mobile platform gained user share in security-conscious businesses late in 2014, taking it away from Google's Android platform, thanks to the introduction of the iPhone 6 smartphone, according to a survey of its enterprise customers by mobile security vendor Good Technology.Good's customers increased their activation of iOS devices -- meaning enrollment in the Good movie management server -- to 73 percent; iOS devices accounted for 69 percent of activations in the previous quarter. Over the same period, Android activations declined from 29 percent to to 25 percent.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IBM to pump $4 billion into cloud, mobile and analytics

IBM will dedicate $4 billion in spending this year to the cloud, analytics and mobile technologies, as it struggles with seismic shifts that are changing the computing landscape it once dominated, In return, by 2018 IBM expects to reap a combined $40 billion in annual revenue from the areas in which it's investing, which also include social and security, the company said at an annual meeting on Thursday. It could use the growth. IBM's sales declined to about $93 billion last year, from just over $98 billion in 2013, thanks to declines in some of its traditional businesses and the sale of two big hardware divisions to Lenovo and GlobalFoundries.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ericsson seeks to block sales of Apple products in US, stepping up patent dispute

Some Apple products may be banned from sale in the U.S. if Ericsson gets its way after filing a barrage of patent lawsuits.The Swedish telecommunications equipment vendor filed nine lawsuits against Apple on Thursday, seven in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas and two in the U.S. International Trade Commission, alleging infringement of a total of 41 of its patents, it said Friday.Apple is no stranger to the courts when it comes to patent disputes. Previous cases have often focused on the “look and feel” of its products, turning on the curvature of a phone’s corners, or how it indicates that it can’t perform an action when someone swipes the screen. Many of the patents Ericsson says Apple is infringing, though, cut right to the heart of smartphone and tablet functionality: their ability to connect to 2G, 3G or 4G mobile networks to make calls or exchange data.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Network Break 29

Over-opinionated analysis on data network and IT Infrastructure.

Author information

Greg Ferro

Greg Ferro is a Network Engineer/Architect, mostly focussed on Data Centre, Security Infrastructure, and recently Virtualization. He has over 20 years in IT, in wide range of employers working as a freelance consultant including Finance, Service Providers and Online Companies. He is CCIE#6920 and has a few ideas about the world, but not enough to really count.

He is a host on the Packet Pushers Podcast, blogger at EtherealMind.com and on Twitter @etherealmind and Google Plus.

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The post Network Break 29 appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Greg Ferro.

Do We Need QoS in the Data Center?

Whenever I get asked about QoS in the data center, my stock reply is “bandwidth is cheaper than QoS-induced complexity.” This is definitely true in most cases, and ideally the elephant problems should be solved higher up in the application stack, not with network-layer kludges, but are there situations where you actually need data center QoS?

Apple Watch may be more water resistant than previously thought

One of the longstanding questions surrounding the Apple Watch is how water resistant the device is going to be.As a quick aside, "waterproof" denotes a product that can be completely submerged under water for extended periods of time and still function as intended. So while a device filled to the brim with complex electronics, like the Apple Watch, isn't likely to be waterproof, having a degree of water resistance is extremely important.To that end, Apple CEO Tim Cook was recently in Germany, where he reportedly spoke to some Apple employees and remarked that he wears his Apple Watch all the time, "even in the shower." The report comes courtesy of iGen.Fr which relayed the news earlier this week.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple Watch may be more water resistant than we thought

One of the longstanding questions surrounding the Apple Watch is how water resistant the device is going to be.As a quick aside, "waterproof" denotes a product that can be completely submerged under water for extended periods of time and still function as intended. So while a device filled to the brim with complex electronics, like the Apple Watch, isn't likely to be waterproof, having a degree of water resistance is extremely important.To that end, Apple CEO Tim Cook was recently in Germany where he reportedly spoke to some Apple employees and remarked that he wears his Apple Watch all the time, "even in the shower." The report comes courtesy of iGen.Fr which relayed the news earlier this week.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

D-Link remote access vulnerabilities remain unpatched

D-Link routers have several unpatched vulnerabilities, the worst of which could allow an attacker to gain total control over a device, according to a systems engineer in Canada.Peter Adkins, who does security research in his free time, released details of the flaws on Thursday. Adkins said in a phone interview that he has been in intermittent contact with D-Link since Jan. 11 on the issues, but the company has not indicated when it might patch.“I believe it’s probably better for the end user to know that these exist than be completely in the dark for months on end while the vendor prepares patches,” he said.D-Link officials did not have an immediate comment.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Hackers exploit router flaws in unusual pharming attack

An email-based attack spotted in Brazil recently employed an unusual but potent technique to spy on a victim’s Web traffic.The technique exploited security flaws in home routers to gain access to the administrator console. Once there, the hackers changed the routers’ DNS (Domain Name System) settings, a type of attack known as pharming.Pharming is tricky to pull off because it requires access to an ISP’s or an organization’s DNS servers, which translate domain names into the IP addresses of websites. Those DNS systems are typically well-protected, but home routers often are not.Security firm Proofpoint wrote in a blog post Thursday that launching the attack via email was a novel approach since pharming is normally a network-based attack.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Programmatic Access to CLI Driven Devices with TextFSM

Thoughts on Network Neutrality, the FCC, and the Future of Internet Governance

Today the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to extend the rules that previously regulated the telephone industry to now regulate Internet Service Providers (ISPs). The Commission did this in order to preserve the principle of network neutrality. Broadly stated, this principle is that networks should not discriminate against content that passes through them.

At CloudFlare, we are strong proponents of network neutrality. My co-founder, Michelle Zatlyn, sat on the FCC's Open Internet Advisory Committee. The work of that committee played a role in guiding today's vote. So there is a large part of us that is celebrating today.

At the same time, I have deep concerns that proponents of a free and open Internet may look back on today not as a great victory, but as the first step in what may turn out to be a devastating loss. The Internet has largely been governed from the bottom up by technologists seeking rough consensus and running code. Today's action by the FCC may mark the beginning of a new era where the Internet is regulated by lawyers from the top down. As a technologist and recovering lawyer, that worries me.

The Threat to the Network

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Twitter adds more reporting tools to curb abuse and improve safety

Twitter has added new reporting tools to help it fight abuse and protect users on its site.The company took some steps in this direction late last year, when it made it easier to report harassment in tweets. Now it’s making it easier to report other behaviors including impersonation, self-harm and the sharing of private or confidential information. The changes will begin rolling out Thursday and should reach all users in the coming weeks.As a result of the changes it made already, Twitter now reviews five times as many user reports as it did previously, the company said, and it has tripled the number of people who handle such reports at the company. It has also reduced its response time to a fraction of what it once was, the company says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here