IT Executive news

• The sights and sounds of Intel: A dazzling CES booth tour

  07-01-2016 23:51
  
  CES can be an overwhelming experience. If you want to cut through the clutter and get straight to where the next-generation-computing action is, just make a beeline for Intel's booth. Not surprisingly, the chip maker goes all-out for this annual event, with demos of the cutting-edge technologies it's currently focused on. It's a pretty good bellwether for the sorts of products we can expect to see in the near future. Because more so than with many of the exhibitors here, you can safely bet that
  
  Read more

• Microsoft, Google, Facebook to U.K.: Don’t weaken encryption

  07-01-2016 23:35
  
  Microsoft, Google and Facebook are urging U.K. officials not to undermine encryption as they work on laws that would authorize forcing communications service providers to decrypt customer traffic.
  In a joint written submission to the U.K. Parliament the three U.S.-based companies lay down several areas of concern, which, if not addressed, they say could damage their businesses and leave them caught in legal crossfires among the many countries where they do business.To read this article in full
  
  Read more

• An iPhone that can 'feel' your pain? Apple's latest acquisition could make it happen

  07-01-2016 22:24
  
  Apple has reportedly acquired artificial-intelligence startup Emotient, giving it access to technology that could one day imbue its devices with the ability to "read" people's emotions through their facial expressions.Emotient's emotion-recognition technology derives from the Machine Perception Lab at the University of California at San Diego and has focused primarily on helping advertisers understand viewer reactions to their ads.The acquisition was first reported Thursday in The Wall Street Jo
  
  Read more

• And the cloud provider with the best uptime in 2015 is…

  07-01-2016 22:09
  
  An analysis of downtime at IaaS public cloud providers in 2015 by CloudHarmony reveals that despite having the largest cloud offering on the market, Amazon Web Services had the least amount of outages among major vendors.
  CloudHarmony, which is owned by Gartner, monitors the health status of providers by spinning up workload instances in the public cloud and constantly pinging them.
  Through 365 days of monitoring last year, CloudHarmony recorded 56 outages at AWS across four major services &nda
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Hands on: Panasonic's Toughbook 20 is a 2-in-1 that's ready for war

  07-01-2016 21:50
  
  Windows 2-in-1s are growing increasingly popular, and Panasonic is joining the fray in its own particular way with the Toughbook 20, a device that's designed to take advantage of popular consumer trends while still being able to handle a hardcore environment.Like other 2-in-1s, the Toughbook sports a detachable screen that can be used as a tablet away from the device's keyboard, with support for running Windows applications in tablet mode. The device was first announced in November, but I got a
  
  Read more

• Intel again promises cool devices with Curie, but will they come?

  07-01-2016 21:30
  
  Ever seen voice-activated, fitness-tracking sunglasses? Or musicians creating music with smartwatch-like devices? They were all on show during Intel's keynote at this year's CES.The devices run on Intel's Curie chip, which the company hopes to put in a wide range of wearables, sports equipment, fabrics, electronics and IoT sensors. Intel also showed a BMX bike and snowboard that had Curie inside, and which could provide real-time information like the height, angle, distance and speed of jumps.Bu
  
  Read more

• How to disable impending IE nag notices

  07-01-2016 21:15
  
  Next week, Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser (IE) will begin displaying nag notices to users who have not upgraded to the latest available for their operating system.
  Users can disable those notices and continue running retired editions without the disruption of the in-browser warnings.
  On Jan. 12, Microsoft will deliver the final security updates for IE8, IE9 and IE10 on Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) to make good on an August 2014 announcement that it would shut off patches and other supp
  
  Read more

• Tribune Media rebuilds IT from the ground up and is living the dream

  07-01-2016 21:13
  
  To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Raspberry Pi-based home AI project open-sources key components

  07-01-2016 21:11
  
  Mycroft.ai, which is working to create a home AI platform based on Raspberry Pi, Arduino and an extensive in-house software stack, has opened an important part of that stack to developers everywhere as of Wednesday.
  The project’s Adapt intent parser library, now available under LGPL 3.0, is designed to be a powerful tool for converting human speech into machine data – smoothly translating a verbal command into a usable set of instructions for a program.
  +ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: 
  
  Read more

• AMD's Lisa Su explains how AMD will survive and yes, even thrive in 2016

  07-01-2016 21:03
  
  Talk all you want about AMD’s fairly well-regarded products, its struggling financials, and its emerging, stable semi-custom business that’s helping keep the company afloat. But what it all boils down to for AMD chief executive Lisa Su is AMD’s corporate reputation.
  “The idea that AMD is a cheap solution has to be replaced with the idea that AMD is a very competitive solution,” Su said in a roundtable with reporters here at CES.
  That’s not news. AMD has wrest
  
  Read more

• Will the European Union's new General Data Protection Regulation impact your business?  

  07-01-2016 20:22
  
  This column is available in a weekly newsletter called IT Best Practices.  Click here to subscribe.  
  Does your company do business internationally, and especially with customers within the European Union (EU)? If so, then you need to pay attention to what's happening in the areas of data privacy and data sovereignty. Big changes are underway and they could have an impact on how you manage customer information.
  At the end of December, the European Commission (EC) approved the final ve
  
  Read more

• IDG Contributor Network: WD and ownCloud team up on consumer cloud device

  07-01-2016 20:12
  
  ownCloud started off as a humble ‘free software’ file syncing project from Germany. But that project has evolved into an open source company that is now headquartered in Boston, Mass. And ownCloud has become a platform that does much more than just file syncing: It has an online collaborative document like Office 365, it has apps like mail, it has calendar, and much more.
  And things are about to get more interesting.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click he
  
  Read more

• CDOs in scarce supply at large global companies

  07-01-2016 19:20
  
  Despite some reports that chief digital officers would replace CIOs as innovators of corporate products, only 6 percent, or 86, of 1,500 largest global companies have installed a CDO, according to recent PwC research. While 31 of those CDOs were hired last year, suggesting that more companies are assigning importance to the notion of a dedicated digital leader figure, the CDO role will ultimately fade as companies complete their digital transformations, PwC reports.PwC CTO Chris Curran says it&r
  
  Read more

• Amazon to sell Wi-Fi, IoT chips

  07-01-2016 19:16
  
  Annapurna Labs Inc., a company quietly bought by Amazon last year, announced this week that it will expand efforts to sell chips for use in next-generation Wi-Fi and Internet of Things devices.+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: What you need to know about HaLow, or 802.11ah WiFi | CES 2016 Coverage +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
  Read more

• T-Mobile adds 14 new services to Binge On while pushing back against net neutrality criticism

  07-01-2016 18:36
  
  T-Mobile is tacking on 14 new streaming services to its popular, yet controversial, Binge On program. The nation’s third-largest carrier now has a total of 38 apps on board, including powerhouses like Netflix, Hulu, and WatchESPN. The new members are:A&E
  Lifetime
  History
  PlayStation Vue
  Tennis Channel Anywhere
  FuboTV
  Kidoodle TV
  Curiosity Stream
  Fandorli>
  Newsy
  ODK Media
  Lifetime Movie Club
  FYI
  The program, which allows you to stream from the approved services without eating in
  
  Read more

• Watch what you do with that big data, FTC warns businesses

  07-01-2016 18:02
  
  If your company uses big data, be aware: the FTC is watching, and it's concerned.For all its potential benefits, big data can lead to discrimination and worsen economic disparity, the Federal Trade Commission warned in a new report that includes caveats and guidelines for businesses. Entitled "Big Data: A Tool for Inclusion or Exclusion?" the report stems from a 2014 FTC workshop by the same name and incorporates the public comments that followed.Among the report's conclusions is that big data c
  
  Read more

• Crossroads for OpenFlow?

  07-01-2016 17:52
  
  In SDN’s early days, possibility abounded. The thought of what could be excited practitioners and tantalized developers. OpenFlow was an early SDN star, a proof of concept from Stanford that demonstrated a new way to program a network. Many even conflated SDN and OpenFlow, as if one could not exist without the other.
  That’s not the case, but early in the SDN hype cycle, it was an understandable perception. OpenFlow progressed quickly, as the Open Networking Foundation drove OpenFlow
  
  Read more

• Controller consolidation moves SDN closer to your network

  07-01-2016 17:50
  
  In Software Defined Networking the controller is the focal point of network architecture, sitting between applications that will make demands of the network and the network devices themselves. For network professionals, the centralized controller takes on the role of the control-plane, where distributed routing protocols such as BGP and OSPF have traditionally sat.
  We are still in early days of SDN with groups and vendors jockeying for position and dominance, and as such there are an abundance
  
  Read more

• Survey shows growing interest in SDN, where and how companies might deploy the tech

  07-01-2016 17:48
  
  Software Defined Networking has been a hot subject for a few years now, and from the beginning the discussion correctly pointed out that a key characteristic of SDN is the separation of at least some of the data control plane from the data forwarding plane. At other times, however, the discussion seemed to mistakenly equate SDN and OpenFlow or SDN and network virtualization. And, as so often happens in this industry, the initial SDN articles were flagrantly optimistic in terms of when the tech
  
  Read more

• Continued support for MD5 endangers widely used cryptographic protocols

  07-01-2016 17:40
  The old and insecure MD5 hashing function hasn't been used to sign SSL/TLS server certificates in many years, but continues to be used in other parts of encrypted communications protocols, including TLS, therefore weakening their security.Researchers from the INRIA institute in France have devised several attacks which prove that the continued support for MD5 in cryptographic protocols is much more dangerous than previously believed.They showed that man-in-the-middle attackers can impersonate cl
  
  Read more

• Tim Cook's 2015 pay package climbs 12% to $10.3M

  07-01-2016 16:39
  
  Apple CEO Tim Cook's 2015 compensation reached nearly $10.3 million, up 12% from the year before, a filing Wednesday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) showed.
  In the filing, Apple also said Cook's base salary had been increased by 50% for 2016, climbing from $2 million to $3 million for the current fiscal year.
  As was the case in 2014, Cook's compensation last year was considerably lower than the lieutenants named in the preliminary proxy statement submitted to the SEC yest
  
  Read more

• IDG Contributor Network: Angry luddites file petition to keep the 3.5mm headphone jack in the iPhone 7

  07-01-2016 16:28
  Apple has always pushed the envelope in terms of adopting new technologies, and discarding ones that have been around forever. And it looks like that might happen again with the standard 3.5mm headphone jack.
  Rumors are swirling that the company might remove the headphone jack in the iPhone 7 to make the phone thinner and free up more internal space for a larger battery or other enhancements.
  Of course, no good deed goes unpunished. And there are always luddites that try to desperately hang ont
  
  Read more

• GE talks marketing automation at CES

  07-01-2016 16:27
  
  LAS VEGAS — No silver bullet exists to solve the online marketing industry's many ongoing challenges. Despite recent advancements in advertising technology, it will face new and different hurdles in the future, according to Andy Markowitz, general manager of GE's performance marketing labs, who spoke during a panel discussion at CES 2016.Regulators continue to put additional pressure on marketers as they draft new guidelines to help protect consumer data. Meanwhile, consumers create more r
  
  Read more

• IDG Contributor Network: Nvidia Shield Android TV review: Linux conquers the living room

  07-01-2016 16:03
  
  Google has been trying to get into our living rooms for quite some time. As much as they dominate search, mobile phones, and now are making a serious dent in the PC space with Chrome OS, they have been virtually missing from our living rooms, losing out to the likes of Roku and Apple TV.
  In 2010 the company launched Google TV, which turned out to be a massive disappointment and Google ultimately killed the platform. In 2013, Google released Chromecast, which revolutionized the market for digita
  
  Read more

• Is this the worst Internet law ever?

  07-01-2016 16:00
  
  Donald Trump’s suggestion to ask for Bill Gates’ help in “closing that Internet up” as a way to combat terrorism was widely derided, as was his contention that people who worry about the loss of freedom of speech should parts of the Internet be closed are “foolish people.”But saner, more sober voices than Trump’s are calling for actions even more frightening than that to fight terrorism — notably, prosecuting citizens for merely viewing websites th
  
  Read more

• 3 ways Fitbit missed the mark with its new Blaze fitness watch

  07-01-2016 15:55
  
  Quite frankly, I feel blasé about Blaze ($200), Fitbit's just-announced fitness watch. Scratch that: I'm downright disappointed, and I'm not alone. Fitbit's stock price dropped 18 percent the day Blaze was unveiled at CES 2016. William Power, an R.W. Baird analyst, hit the nail on the head:"Judging from the initial stock reaction, we suspect investors are concerned 1) with the ability to battle Apple and others in smartwatches; and 2) the lack of updates for Charge and Charge HR, th
  
  Read more

• BlackBerry is all about Android in 2016

  07-01-2016 15:30
  
  BlackBerry anticipates launching at least one—and possibly two—new smartphones for 2016, but neither of them will run the company’s own BlackBerry 10 software. Instead, CEO John Chen says the company will focus on producing new Android-based devices over the next 12 months, the BlackBerry chief told CNET during CES in Las Vegas.
  After BlackBerry released its first Android phone—the Priv—in November, it seemed only a matter of time before the company would dump Blac
  
  Read more

• This liquid cooling rig keeps crazy-fast Intel SSDs from getting too hot

  07-01-2016 15:00
  
  Solid-state drives are getting absurdly fast—so much so that they're starting to outpace the interfaces they're supposed to plug into. And that trend doesn't appear to be slowing down anytime soon.
  At this year's CES, Intel showed off a massive liquid-cooling rig for its SSDs that featured two of its blazingly speedy PCI-E 750-series solid-state drives. and while you don't need a liquid cooling system to keep your drives from overheating just yet, those days might be closer than you think
  
  Read more

• IDG Contributor Network: Windows 10 New Year's resolution – It’s a trap!

  07-01-2016 14:51
  
  January: The moment when we’ve all finished thinking about last year and are focused on the new. Resolutions, plans and twelve months ahead of us to progress and achieve new successes. In this fresh atmosphere one of the questions many CIOs are asking themselves is if this is the year to the upgrade to Windows 10.The bait
  Giving away Windows 10 as a free upgrade has proven to be a very strong bait to get people to adopt the new Redmond operating system. According to Yusuf Mehdi, of Microso
  
  Read more

• IDG Contributor Network: 3 ways to better train your team for success

  07-01-2016 14:44
  
  It was 1999, and I was awakened during the middle of the night by the buzzing of my pager.As I rolled out of bed and tried to shake the sleep out of my brain, I noticed that the number paging me was that of the transmitter of my radio station. It only did this when five minutes of “dead air” occurred, or if there was a power outage. We were off the air. So, I called my on-duty operator.“Why are we off the air?,” I asked, with a bit of annoyance.“Hey, boss. Sorry abo
  
  Read more

• IDG Contributor Network: 3 things strategic plans and New Year's resolutions have in common

  07-01-2016 14:07
  
  It is that time again, a new year is upon us and people worldwide are making New Year’s resolutions, at the same time leaders of organizations are making strategic plans. Here are three ways in which your New Year’s resolutions and strategic plans are similar and why/how you need to change them.1. You won’t keep them
  The reason that people laugh at jokes about New Year’s resolutions is that we can all relate. The same is true of your strategic plans.2. You need to make th
  
  Read more

• The 10 biggest startup opportunities in 2016

  07-01-2016 14:00
  
  The year 2015 was all about drones, virtual reality, 3D printing, and the Internet of Things (IoT).This year, venture capitalists and industry observers say the tech world should expect more of the same. "Most hot startups in 2016 won't be trying to lead revolutions or usher in whole new industries," says Igor Shoifot, an investment partner with TMT Investments. "Instead, they'll be enhancing existing technologies, products, services, or transactional ecosystems by saving users time, money, effo
  
  Read more

• The best auto tech of CES 2016

  07-01-2016 13:51
  
  The best auto tech of CES 2016Image by Martyn WilliamsCars are big at CES this year. Whether it's self-driving technology, advanced safety systems, smartphone-linked entertainment or cool concepts, the show has something for everyone. Here's our pick of the best.The dashboard of the futureImage by Martyn WilliamsTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
  Read more

• How the Treasury Department looks to use big data

  07-01-2016 13:46
  
  As the helm of the Treasury Department, Jacob Lew has been wading into a variety of initiatives outside of the commonly understood scope of the job, including counter-terrorism measures and efforts to tap into big data to improve Americans' access to the financial system.[ Related: CIO role is crucial to federal data governance ]Secretary Lew spoke this week at the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley, where he affirmed the administration's commitment to press ahead with needed reforms and
  
  Read more

• Overcoming stubborn execs for security sake

  07-01-2016 13:45
  
  Even with the greater awareness for strong security within organizations—and the high-profile hacks that have contributed to that increased awareness—security executives still encounter significant hurdles in doing their jobs to protect data and systems.
  Clashes with senior business executives as well as those at lower levels of organizations make it more challenging for CSOs and CISOs to create a secure environment, and yet they continue to happen.
  Many of the conflicts that occur
  
  Read more

• IDG Contributor Network: 5 tech trends that will drive the next wave of mobile innovation in the enterprise

  07-01-2016 13:27
  
  Mobile continues to be an important point on the agenda of most CIOs. While some trends like mobile device management (MDM) have seen mainstream adoption within business applications, the adoption of mobile technology platforms have been considerably slower in the enterprise than in the consumer market. However, innovation in the mobile space hasn’t stopped. In recent months, the industry has produced a series of technologies that will play an important role in the next successful generati
  
  Read more

• IDG Contributor Network: Shark Tank in the C-suite

  07-01-2016 13:00
  
  Odds are you don’t work for a company that was born digital. As your executives and board adopt an evolving vocabulary, using words like “modernization” and “transformation,” in staff meetings and employee town halls, they’re still approving huge investments in core product development and legacy systems. When the word “innovation” is mentioned, heads nod in unison but nothing seems to change.Disruptive change is in the eye of the beholder. Effecti
  
  Read more

• How workplace distractions can actually boost productivity

  07-01-2016 13:00
  
  What are your employees up to when they're not actively on task? Chances are, you're thinking they're surfing the Web, doing some online shopping or banking, or posting cat videos on Facebook. But research suggests that more "traditional" distractions, like trips to the break room, watercooler chat and trading gossip with their colleagues, are actually consuming more of workers' time -- and that's not necessarily a bad thing.A recent study from human resources information systems company BambooH
  
  Read more

• Evolution of the CIO: The real story

  07-01-2016 13:00
  
  The conversations swirling today about the evolving role of the CIO typically start from a flawed historical premise. Many contemporary writers and analysts simply do not understand what a CIO was meant to be when the role was first created in the early 1980s.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
  Read more

• 4 ways OneNote’s mobile app bests Evernote (and 4 ways it doesn't)

  07-01-2016 13:00
  
  Microsoft OneNote mobile app vs. Evernote's appImage by Steve TraynorIs Evernote or Microsoft OneNote a better mobile application for taking and organizing notes? The question isn't easy to answer, because the two options have many similarities. Both apps work on and sync across multiple devices, for example, and both support voice input.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
  Read more

• 5 trends that will transform project management

  07-01-2016 12:56
  
  A transformation is taking place in the project management field as the result of changes to business practices, requirements and expectations. It’s putting a sharper focus on the people, processes and technologies needed to successfully execute projects. It may no longer make sense for companies to use limited resources as they have in the past. Here are five trends that could reshape project management in 2016.Trend 1: The laser-focus on strategy over projects
  Competition, limited resour
  
  Read more

• Does a data breach really affect your firm’s reputation?

  07-01-2016 12:55
  
  The long-held view is that breached companies are cast aside by consumers, investors and shareholders. A breach isn’t just a temporary glitch – it’s a mistake, a faux pas, which you can’t just shake off.
  This warning that has been used by information security professionals over the course of the last five years and for good reason; nothing gets a CEO or CFO’s attention on security matters more than "this is losing us money".
  However, on closer inspection, it could
  
  Read more

• CIO says community service builds team bonds

  07-01-2016 12:30
  
  As CIO of DHL Express Americas, Pablo Ciano's work impacts employees and customers around the globe. A recent example is his effort to implement and maintain a global process standard. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
  Read more

• ’s Werelds grootste bloemenveiling gaat de cloud in

  07-01-2016 12:01
  Royal FloraHolland gaat verschillende van haar applicaties migreren naar Microsoft Azure, waarvoor het samenwerkt met QNH Consulting, dat ook het beheer op zich gaat nemen. De keuze voor QNH is gemaakt met behulp van best value procurement.De veiling wil zich effectiever kunnen wijden aan het vermarkten van bloemen... lees meer
  
  Read more

• Security eureka moments in New York taxicabs

  07-01-2016 12:00
  
  During a short business trip to New York City this week, it dawned on me that I’ve often gotten practical security lessons in New York taxicabs.In the late 1990s, I frequently went to New York for consulting engagements. I generally took one of the air shuttle services that operated hourly flights between Washington and New York, like winged buses. Upon arrival, almost without fail, I’d find that I had received dozens of texts, emails, voicemails, etc. In the taxi to Manhattan, I&rsq
  
  Read more

• 5 ways to beef up your indie dev business

  07-01-2016 12:00
  
  Perhaps the only thing harder than establishing an independent software development business is figuring out how to make that business grow.
  After all, that client or two you had in hand to springboard yourself into being your own boss can sustain your business for only so long. Then the overhead of maintaining past client projects, filing paperwork, and chasing down unpaid invoices soon has you spinning your wheels with little idea of how to move forward.[ Find out how to handle the real-world
  
  Read more

• Snelle opmars van HCIS en SDS in datacenters

  07-01-2016 11:37
  Zeven op de tien datacenter-managers maken gebruik van hyper converged infrastructure (HCIS) of software defined storage (SDS) of zijn van plan om dit in de nabije toekomst te doen. Daarop duidt een enquête door analistenbureau ActualTech Media en Atlantis Computing, leverancier van SDS-platformen.Driekwart van... lees meer
  
  Read more

• Uber to pay $20,000 in settlement on privacy issues with New York attorney general

  07-01-2016 05:39
  
  Uber has agreed to pay a penalty of US$20,000 in a settlement with New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman for delaying in reporting to drivers the data breach of their personal information in 2014.The ride-hailing company has also agreed to tighten employee access to geo-location data of passengers, following reports that the company's executives had an aerial "God View" of such data, the office of the attorney general said in a statement Wednesday.Uber notified Schneiderman's office on
  
  Read more

• IBM cuts new Watson deals that push it deeper into health

  07-01-2016 05:25
  
  When you think of IBM you probably don't think of consumer electronics, but the company's CEO came to Las Vegas on Wednesday to push IBM's Watson technology deeper into wearables and health.Ginni Rometti announced two partnerships around Watson, one with medical device maker Medtronic and the other with Under Armour, which is known for sportswear but now also sells connected fitness gadgets.Rometti is the first CEO of IBM to give a keynote at CES. She was there to promote Watson's artificia
  
  Read more

• Smartwheel reminds you to keep your hands at 10 and 2

  07-01-2016 03:15
  
  Most states have laws against distracted driving on the books, but that doesn’t stop us from answering a call or responding to a text while behind the wheel. Although the Smartwheel isn’t the first device designed to combat distracted driving, it takes a novel approach to addressing the problem.
  The Smartwheel is a steering wheel cover that detects the placement of your hands on the wheel. Take a hand off the wheel and the Smartwheel plays a high-pitched tone and its indicator light
  
  Read more

Follow @ITExecutiveNews on Twitter!