Новости за 26.02.2016

Barcelona, Mobile World Congress 2016—IoT success isn’t about device features, like long-life batteries, factory-floor sensors and snazzy designer wristbands. The real power, the real value, of the IoT is in the data being transmitted from devices to remote servers, and from those remote servers back to the devices.

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.

Apparently IBM’s Watson isn’t all that popular amongst the robot community – at least that’s how it looks in a new IBM commercial "Coping with Humans": A Support Group for Bots.”

The Internet is fragile. Many of its protocols were designed at a time when the goal was rapid network expansion based on trust among operators. Today, the Internet's open nature is what makes it so great for business, education and communication, but the absence of security mechanisms at its core is something that criminals are eager to exploit.

Neural networks are often used for image recognition, but it turns out they can create some pretty incredible images as well.

IT and business process outsourcing deals have been getting smaller in dollar value and shorter in duration for some time. And, according to analysis of 2015’s deal activity, enterprise digitization is strengthening that trend. The number of outsourcing contracts signed last year hit an all-time high, but annual contract values were down 8 percent, according to outsourcing consultancy Information Services Group (ISG).

Microsoft recently confirmed that it's pulling the plug on Project Astoria, the company’s effort to easily bring Android apps to the Universal Windows Platform (UWP). Astoria was one of the fabled “bridges” that Microsoft introduced during Build 2015. Each bridge is designed to help developers port their apps to UWP, with bridges for iOS, Web, and traditional Win32 desktop apps also announced.

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is almost certainly the future technology for indoor navigation. This is not due to any technological superiority: rather, it stems from the design choices of one device maker. But BLE implementations are already diverging into two competing camps, splitting the market and forcing difficult choices on app and infrastructure developers.

David Kaczynski has lived the unimaginable: His brother Ted, the Unabomber, did more than merely kill and maim those who were victims of his attacks, he exacted a terrible toll on his own family, as is always the case with those who commit evil acts.

As IDG News Service colleague Stephen Lawson reported from Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, product vendors and service providers are going as fast as they can to get 5G wireless delivered. And while demonstrated speeds of 20Gbps to 70Gbps blow away today's top of LTE speeds of maybe 1Gbps, keep in mind that all of today's 5G stuff is pre-standard.

This column is available in a weekly newsletter called IT Best Practices.  Click here to subscribe.  

In case you missed it this week, a couple of the big cloud vendors had some big news this week.

With Apple gearing up to release a 4-inch iPhone dubbed the iPhone 5se next month, it's easy to forget that Apple is also planning to release a brand new iPad model. Over the past few months, it's been widely assumed that the device would be an iPad Air 3; but now comes word via 9to5Mac that Apple's next-gen iPad will, in fact, be a smaller version of the iPad Pro rather than an iPad Air 3.

Tablet-driven Internet traffic is collapsing, and in one country it’s off by a quarter compared to the same time period a year ago. That’s despite mobile Internet traffic growing overall, says a report.

Microsoft may be spinning its wheels with Windows Phone, but that's not stopping it from supporting Android and iOS. The company has just made a pair of announcements around the two platforms regarding new and improved apps.

Next month in Orlando, the business communications industry will be holding it’s largest show, Enterprise Connect. One of the big topics of the show has always been and will likely continue to be how we get all of these disparate unified communications (UC) solutions to work with each other. Often the integration is done at the user level where the worker needs to use multiple tools to collaborate effectively.

At a congressional hearing today on the H-1B visa's impact on high-skilled workers, the first person to testify was Leo Perrero, a former Disney IT worker. He was overcome with emotion for parts of it, pausing to gather himself as he told the story of how he was replaced by a foreign visa holder.

The FBI’s inability to crack a terrorist’s iPhone 5c shows the strong protection you can get for your private information on a mobile device. That same encryption is also available on your computer, at least in some cases.

Basic HTML is fine if all you want to do is make a superminimalist website. For enhanced functionality, you can turn to the myriad JavaScript libraries, but wouldn't it be better to have those functions directly in the browser?

Frustrated by social networks' efforts to keep them at bay, the terrorist group ISIS has made direct threats against the CEOs of Facebook and Twitter.

The State of Connecticut, like many others, had to create a way for residents to buy health insurance under the federal Affordable Care Act of 2010, better known as ObamaCare. Peter B. Nichol was one of the leaders who helped make that happen.

Bringing out the big guns

Image by Melissa Riofrio

The world’s biggest mobile-focused tradeshow just wrapped up in Barcelona, and if there was a theme for this year’s Mobile World Congress, it was virtual reality. Sure, there were the usual flagship smartphone announcements from heavy-hitters like LG and Samsung, but VR gear was the biggest star at MWC. HTC announced a price for the Vive platform, while LG and Samsung came out with competing 360-degree cameras. LG also introduced a VR headset to compete with Gear VR. Читать дальше...

On Thursday, Apple filed a motion to vacate the court order compelling the iPhone-maker to create a hackable version of iOS that the FBI can use to break into the iPhone of San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook.

Call it the security conundrum.

Business leaders are racing to adopt new IT systems like cloud computing, big data and Internet of things (IoT), and yet at the same time express mounting concerns about the security of sensitive information in those environments.

A new survey of more than 1,000 enterprise leaders conducted by 451 Research on behalf of the security vendor Vormetric helps quantify the situation.

[ Related: Cybersecurity much more than a compliance exercise ]

To... Читать дальше...

They say the year doesn’t truly begin until the first round of smartphones are released. (OK, nobody actually says that, but everyone’s thinking it.) While it may seem like the tech year begins with January’s Consumer Electronic Show (CES), things don’t really get rolling until Mobile World Congress, where the industry’s heaviest hitters not named Apple or Google showcase all of the latest tricks and innovations that can fit inside a five-and-a-half-inch rectangle.