Sony, Microsoft may face same Google Glass challenges

While Google has put the prototypes of its Glass wearable back under wraps, the market is getting a bit more crowded.Japanese electronics manufacturer Sony announced Tuesday that it is developing an Android-compatible pair of computerized eyeglasses designed to show users low-resolution imagery, as well as text. The device is also equipped with a camera.At least one industry analyst said he doubts the new competition will put any added heat on Google, since every company trying to pursue computerized eyeglasses is facing the same challenges.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How a university’s data center overhaul makes a green impact

To say that University of Cambridge deployed disparate and diverse data storage and data center infrastructure would be a vast understatement. In a 2013 IT review, data center manager Ian Tasker and his team discovered almost 200 servers across the University's 120 departments. These installations ranged from single servers housed in closets to larger rooms containing 20 to 30 servers, but all contributing to a major drain on power and cooling resources, as well as creating one heck of a management headache."Our IT review is a periodic way for us to look at how we're carrying out the responsibilities of IT, and how to best align IT with the work of the university. What we found was everything was fragmented and each department was doing their own thing when it came to provisioning, storage and management. Where we had a small number of racks, they weren't powered or cooled efficiently, and that was our other mission: to reduce our carbon footprint as a university by about 34 percent by the year 2020," Tasker says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Thinking about buying a refurbished smartphone? You’re not alone

Buying refurbished smartphones will become increasingly popular in the next couple of years, with consumers benefiting from increased competition.That more consumers are considering getting a refurbished smartphone isn’t a surprise. With product innovation slowing down, smartphones that are a generation or two old look increasingly attractive compared to their new counterparts.This will help the worldwide market for refurbished phones that are sold to end users more than double from 56 million units last year to 120 million in 2017, according to market research company Gartner. That’s much more impressive than the anticipated 60 percent growth in sales of new smartphones in the same time period.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Budget smartphones to get 4K video, faster LTE with new Qualcomm chips

Qualcomm is planting the seeds for 4K video and faster LTE speeds in more affordable smartphones with its new Snapdragon 620 and 618 processors, which will reach devices in the second half of this year.The new chips could be in smartphones priced at US$300 and above, and some performance and 4K features are being cascaded from the Snapdragon 810 chip, which goes into premium smartphones priced above $500.Previous Snapdragon 600 series chips have appeared in a few handsets and phablets from HTC, Samsung and LG. Amazon’s Fire TV also uses a Snapdragon 600 chip and is able to deliver full high-definition video to TV sets.The new 600 series chips are built to support Android and Windows, said Tim McDonough , vice president of marketing at the company.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Budget smartphones to get 4K video, faster LTE with new Qualcomm chips

Qualcomm is planting the seeds for 4K video and faster LTE speeds in more affordable smartphones with its new Snapdragon 620 and 618 processors, which will reach devices in the second half of this year.The new chips could be in smartphones priced at US$300 and above, and some performance and 4K features are being cascaded from the Snapdragon 810 chip, which goes into premium smartphones priced above $500.Previous Snapdragon 600 series chips have appeared in a few handsets and phablets from HTC, Samsung and LG. Amazon’s Fire TV also uses a Snapdragon 600 chip and is able to deliver full high-definition video to TV sets.The new 600 series chips are built to support Android and Windows, said Tim McDonough , vice president of marketing at the company.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Upload: Your tech news briefing for Wednesday, February 18

Facebook wants us all to create VR contentFacebook is actively looking at ways to make its $2 billion acquisition of virtual reality headset maker Oculus Rift part of the social media experience. At a re/code conference Tuesday, Chief Product Officer Chris Cox said the company is working on VR apps, and he also said he expected users to one day upload and share VR content. As re/code pointed out, creating that content is currently a nontrivial affair; Cox also told the publication that “We’re probably a long way from everyone having these headsets.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Upload: Your tech news briefing for Wednesday, February 18

Facebook wants us all to create VR contentFacebook is actively looking at ways to make its $2 billion acquisition of virtual reality headset maker Oculus Rift part of the social media experience. At a re/code conference Tuesday, Chief Product Officer Chris Cox said the company is working on VR apps, and he also said he expected users to one day upload and share VR content. As re/code pointed out, creating that content is currently a nontrivial affair; Cox also told the publication that “We’re probably a long way from everyone having these headsets.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Show 224 – HTTP2. Its The Biggest (Network) Thing Happening on the Internet Today

HTTP/2 is now submitted to the RFC Editor and will bring major changes to networking. Efficient design means smaller firewalls, less bandwidth and faster response times for users. And the default to encryption means that transparent caches, proxies, IDS/IPS and other network security systems will be seriously impacted.

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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 Show 224 – HTTP2. Its The Biggest (Network) Thing Happening on the Internet Today appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Greg Ferro.

BlackBerry sues Typo again over latest version of add-on keyboard

BlackBerry has filed another lawsuit against the makers of the Typo keyboard, claiming that the new version of the iPhone accessory also copies its designs and patents.Judge William Orrick of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California last year agreed to BlackBerry’s request to temporarily block sales of the first version of the Typo add-on keyboard, which BlackBerry claimed was a knock-off of keyboards on its phones.BlackBerry believes that there is still demand for phones with physical keyboards, despite the introduction by most vendors like Apple of smartphones with only touchscreen interfaces. It announced, for example, the Q10 in January 2013 and the Classic in February last year, which combine a touchscreen and a physical keyboard.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Free-Form Discussion at CLEUR

I was fortunate enough to be invited out to Milan, Italy for Cisco Live Europe, and we had a few interesting discussions about a multitude of topics. One of them was more free-form than the others, and focused on defining SDN, what it’s value is, and where that value is most realized.

Check out this video recording of the session; it was good to get a few perspectives from non-networkers, since I’m sure their perspective is different from the network administrator’s as it pertains to the ongoing shift in this industry:

For the record, it’s not fair to say that VLAN provisioning takes two weeks, even after change approval. What the server administrator is usually asking for is an entirely new logical network, and there’s much that has to happen in order to do this, the easiest of which is tagging the server port on the ToR. These networks have dependencies, like IP space, firewall and load balancer contexts. Sometimes, routing configurations have to be changed. Is the current provisioning model optimal, or even acceptable? Of course not - that’s why I’m focusing on the newer, more automated methods. However, there’s more than meets the eye here.

I also want Continue reading

Free-Form Discussion at CLEUR

I was fortunate enough to be invited out to Milan, Italy for Cisco Live Europe, and we had a few interesting discussions about a multitude of topics. One of them was more free-form than the others, and focused on defining SDN, what it’s value is, and where that value is most realized.

Check out this video recording of the session; it was good to get a few perspectives from non-networkers, since I’m sure their perspective is different from the network administrator’s as it pertains to the ongoing shift in this industry:

For the record, it’s not fair to say that VLAN provisioning takes two weeks, even after change approval. What the server administrator is usually asking for is an entirely new logical network, and there’s much that has to happen in order to do this, the easiest of which is tagging the server port on the ToR. These networks have dependencies, like IP space, firewall and load balancer contexts. Sometimes, routing configurations have to be changed. Is the current provisioning model optimal, or even acceptable? Of course not – that’s why I’m focusing on the newer, more automated methods. However, there’s more than meets the eye here.

I also want Continue reading

Israel targeted by malware packaged with pornographic video

Israeli institutions have been targeted by an Arab-speaking hacker group that sought to extract sensitive documents, according to Trend Micro.The campaign, which Trend called Operation Arid Viper, focused on sending phishing emails to targets. Those emails came with malware packaged with a short pornographic video, according to the company’s report.The phishing emails were sent to targets including a government office, infrastructure providers, a military organization and academic institutions in Israel and Kuwait.The attacks “targeted professionals who might be receiving very inappropriate content at work and so would hesitate to report the incident,” Trend wrote. “These victims’ failure to act on the threat could have then allowed the main malware to remain undiscovered.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

NASA probing contest for spacecraft that capture, manipulate small orbiting objects

NASA NASA this week began exploring a Centennial Challenge program that would require contestants to build spacecraft capable of catching, capturing, and manipulating small objects in space at high speeds.The idea is such spacecraft could take part in Mars, moon, asteroid or other missions that require sample gathering.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

What’s in a typo? More evidence tying North Korea to the Sony hack

A security company in the U.S. has provided further evidence that last year’s devastating hacking attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment was carried out by a group with ties to North Korea.The FBI has already named North Korea as the source of the attack, but some security experts have been skeptical, in part because the FBI didn’t disclose all the details of its investigation.Security firm CrowdStrike is among those who believe North Korea was the culprit, and on Tuesday it presented another piece of evidence to support that claim.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Yahoo has reasons of its own to help mobile developers

Yahoo, one of Silicon Valley’s aging giants, wants to show it’s got the goods for today’s mobile app developers.On Thursday, the company will hold its first-ever mobile developer conference. The daylong event in San Francisco shows the company wants to develop lucrative relationships with developers and put mobile at the center of its turnaround effort.The event will feature talks by top Yahoo executives, including CEO Marissa Mayer, and deep dives into Yahoo’s technology services for mobile apps. A critical part of those services is Flurry, a mobile analytics and advertising company Yahoo acquired last year. Flurry tracks more than 600,000 apps worldwide, providing information on app performance and users that can aid in ad targeting.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Free-Form Discussion at CLEUR

I was fortunate enough to be invited out to Milan, Italy for Cisco Live Europe, and we had a few interesting discussions about a multitude of topics. One of them was more free-form than the others, and focused on defining SDN, what it’s value is, and where that value is most realized. Check out this video recording of the session; it was good to get a few perspectives from non-networkers, since I’m sure their perspective is different from the network administrator’s as it pertains to the ongoing shift in this industry:

Free-Form Discussion at CLEUR

I was fortunate enough to be invited out to Milan, Italy for Cisco Live Europe, and we had a few interesting discussions about a multitude of topics. One of them was more free-form than the others, and focused on defining SDN, what it’s value is, and where that value is most realized. Check out this video recording of the session; it was good to get a few perspectives from non-networkers, since I’m sure their perspective is different from the network administrator’s as it pertains to the ongoing shift in this industry:
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