IT Executive news

• Audi, Lexus show hydrogen car concepts in Detroit

  11-01-2016 23:41
  
  Audi unveiled a sporty SUV concept powered by a hydrogen fuel cell at the North American International Auto Show on Monday.Hydrogen fuel cells convert hydrogen gas into electricity, harnessing the most abundant element in the universe to power a vehicle with the only byproduct being water vapor.The technology is in its infancy, but concepts like Audi's show that automakers believe hydrogen has a serious chance to replace gasoline in hybrid cars of the future.The Audi h-tron quattro has two elect
  
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• Feds say only Chryslers were vulnerable to hacks via radio, not Audi or Volkswagen

  11-01-2016 23:16
  
  U.S. auto safety regulators have determined that only infotainment centers from Fiat-Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) had a security flaw that could allow hackers to take control of Jeeps and several other model cars and trucks.
  Last summer, Fiat-Chrysler recalled 1.4 million Jeep, Chrysler, Dodge and Ram vehicles that had the security flaw.
  After a five-month investigation into cyberhacking vulnerabilities, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said only FCA vehicles, and no oth
  
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• Yo, CIOs: Don't think your role is mostly operational

  11-01-2016 22:38
  CIOs who cling to an operational role could find themselves marginalized in the coming years, whereas those who focus on innovation could attain new heights.That's one conclusion from "The Changing Role of IT Leadership: CIO Perspectives for 2016," a new study published Monday by market researcher IDC.A particularly striking finding is that more than 40 percent of the line-of-business executives surveyed said they view the CIO as an innovation officer responsible for leading their company's digi
  
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• Tableau partners for BI on Hadoop

  11-01-2016 22:29
  
  For some time, companies have increasingly been looking to the Hadoop ecosystem as a way to scale their data warehouses and power business intelligence (BI). But while Hadoop can handle the scale, getting performance out of BI tools on Hadoop has been an issue."When they test Hadoop out and try to make that move, they're seeing that it's not performing at all like their Teradata or Netezza," says Dave Mariani, CEO and founder of AtScale, a startup that specializes in BI on Hadoop, with backing f
  
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• Short on data-science know-how? Booz Allen's Sailfish platform aims to help

  11-01-2016 21:12
  
  All the world may revolve around data, but if you can't make sense of it, all the data in the world won't do you much good.Booz Allen Hamilton hopes to help with a new platform called Sailfish that's aimed specifically at companies short on the high-level data-science skills that have traditionally been required to get the job done.Billed as the first end-to-end data-science platform, Sailfish is designed to make analytics easier to use.Included in the suite is Sailfish Exchange, a highly visual
  
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• Microsoft's plan for Windows 10 world domination

  11-01-2016 20:47
  
  In hindsight, it's now apparent that Microsoft's plan last year for promoting Windows 10 on PCs had less to do with the single decision to give away upgrades than with a radical scheme that relied on an unprecedented distribution strategy.
  In the last 12 months, Microsoft has carefully unveiled several steps to boost Windows 10's adoption. At each step, Microsoft touted customer benefits, even as it took measures that no operating system vendor had used to boost adoption, even as some of those
  
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• Spherical video will shape your reality in 2016

  11-01-2016 20:15
  
  New developments in spherical video shown at last week's CES may have given the format, which blurs the line between real and virtual worlds, the push it needed.
  Next generation 360-degree cameras will have higher resolutions and better audio quality, according to Jim Malcolm, president of Ricoh Imaging Americas, maker of the Theta S. The Theta S can shoot 360 video, but the video quality needs improvement. 
  360 or spherical video began to go mainstream starting around the middle of last y
  
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• Containers, hyperconvergence and disaggregation are hot

  11-01-2016 19:13
  
  The way some vendors see 2016 shaping up, disaggregation, hyperconvergence, container networking and consolidation of the roster of SDN players will be key touchpoints.
  Big Switch Networks believes two more major vendors will announce disaggregation and white box networking strategies this year. Disaggregation involves decoupling hardware and software dependencies so that commodity switches can run network operating systems from multiple vendors, and those OSes can run on different switching ha
  
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• Why one real estate CIO is sold on agile

  11-01-2016 19:02
  
  It didn't take long for Ken Sayward to begin tackling one of his strategic priorities for 2016. The Marcus & Millichap CIO joined his application development team in Redmond, Wash., last week to participate in an agile development workshop, the purpose of which is two-fold: To create a common framework for developing software in a rapid, iterative fashion and to apply that method for a high-priority rewrite of a core application on which the real estate company's brokers rely heavily.“
  
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• Smart appliances at CES: Fancy fridges and robot butlers

  11-01-2016 18:58
  
  Every January, appliance companies head to Las Vegas to show off their most audacious attempts to make your house smarter and more high-tech. Some of these crazy home innovations, like Samsung’s Family Hub refrigerator, are due out this year, while others, like Whirlpool’s interactive kitchen backsplash and in-sink dishwasher, are more concept than reality. While some of these products might seem a little ridiculous, just wait a few years. A fridge that orders groceries for you will
  
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• Ford takes its autonomous car for a drive in snow

  11-01-2016 18:30
  
  Ford is giving its autonomous cars a challenge not yet faced by Google's self-driving car fleet in Silicon Valley: snow.Seeing where you are going in the snow is challenging for humans but more so for computers, which lack intuition and rely solely on their digital inputs. If the radar and laser imaging sensors can't see lane markings or road signs, how's a car to figure out where it is?Ford's solution, which it calls "snowtonomy," relies on high-definition maps that can fill in the gaps when ro
  
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• Forget Google Glass: Carl Zeiss's smart lens prototype proves smart glasses can be subtle

  11-01-2016 18:28
  
  Two weeks before CES began, the engineers at Carl Zeiss internal Smart Optics lab were putting the finishing touches on a prototype that will give Google Glass a run for its money.
  Despite tons of hype, Google’s first attempt at putting technology on your face never went mainstream, because it was incredibly obvious that you were wearing Google Glass (and no one wants to be labeled a “Glasshole”). Zeiss has created an unobtrusive curved smart lens that puts data directly insid
  
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• Intel to ship $99 3D RealSense camera that will also support Android

  11-01-2016 17:51
  
  Intel is adding Android OS support to its latest RealSense R200 webcam, which will sell for US$99.The RealSense R200 camera follows Intel's first RealSense F200 camera, which supported Windows 8.1 and 10. The new 3D camera is already being built into some upcoming tablets and laptops, but is now being made available as an external webcam.Users can order the camera on Intel's Web site, though it's unclear when it will ship.  The company didn't respond to questions about availabilit
  
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• Upgrade now! Microsoft cuts off Windows 8's security updates on January 12

  11-01-2016 17:20
  Windows 8 is about to get a lot less secure.
  After January 12, Microsoft will stop offering security patches for the three-year-old operating system. Users will have to upgrade to either Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 to keep receiving updates.
  As Ed Bott notes over at ZDNet, Windows 8 is an exception to Microsoft’s typical support lifecycle policy, which provides 10 years of security fixes after the initial launch date. That’s because Microsoft considers Windows 8.1—a meaty update
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: The secret to successful projects: Peer reviews

  11-01-2016 17:04
  
  A project has a high probability of success when the project manager understands the key factors that determine success or failure and has the authority to make adjustments when needed. Unfortunately, this is difficult, because even the best project managers encounter situations that are foreign to them, and even when they do identify a situation that needs attention, there can be political or other reasons that prevent them from making adjustments.In addition, project managers are often too clo
  
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• Audi's lunar rover lands in Detroit

  11-01-2016 16:55
  
  It’s not the usual type of vehicle you expect to see unveiled at the Detroit Auto Show, but on Monday Audi showed off a lunar rover developed with its assistance by a team of private scientists in pursuit of Google’s Lunar Xprize.The Audi Lunar Quattro rolled onto the stage at the beginning of the German automaker’s news conference.The Google Lunar Xprize is a $30 million competition to develop and launch a vehicle that can be placed on the moon, successfully explore at least 5
  
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• Shakeup at Citrix continues: CloudStack products sold off

  11-01-2016 16:46
  
  When Citrix announced in November that it would spin off its popular GoToMeeting and affiliated products into an independent publicly traded company, some questioned if other parts of the company may be destined for change as well.
  Today, Citrix announced it has sold its two cloud infrastructure management products: CloudPlatform and CloudPortal Business Manager, both of which are based on open source CloudStack.
  + MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: What’s going on at Citrix? | Best of CES in picture
  
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• Scammers target Dell customers after apparent data breach

  11-01-2016 16:32
  
  As you likely know, online scammers often contact Windows users and pretend to be support techs. They say they have detected a problem with the person's computer and want to fix it. Consumers naive enough to grant access to their computers via remote software are presented with large bills for the service — though the bogus techs don't actually fix anything — and in some cases their PCs are infected with ransomware that locks them out of their computers until they pay ransom.
  Shortl
  
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• AT&T brings back unlimited wireless data plans, but only for TV subscribers

  11-01-2016 16:17
  
  AT&T is bringing back an unlimited data plan—but not for all wireless subscribers. Starting Tuesday, DirecTV and U-Verse customers will have the opportunity to pay $100 per month for a single line of unlimited data, talk, and text on AT&T’s network. Additional phones will cost $40 per line, and if you add four smartphones you’ll get the fourth line for free after the first two months.
  You can add a tablet as well for $40 per month, or you can opt for a $10 monthly char
  
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• CIO’s in VS zien zichzelf in meerderheid als operationeel

  11-01-2016 16:12
  Een meerderheid (ruim 40%) van CIO’s in de VS vindt dat zijn positie vooral op het operationele vlak ligt, terwijl ruim een derde zichzelf als service manager ziet. Het overgebleven kwart acht zich innovation officer. Andere beslissers in de organisatie denken hier echter anders over: zij hechten meer... lees meer
  
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• Meet Alto Tech's 'Cool Glass,' a vastly cheaper alternative to Google Glass

  11-01-2016 16:00
  
  Not surprisingly, no one at the Alto Tech booth at CES wanted to call its Cool Glass a knockoff of Google Glass.
  Sure, it looks almost identical. The name’s nearly the same. But Alto Tech representatives said that it developed a custom fork of Android to power it, and that the applications it developed were proprietary. (There’s an SDK for developers to tap into, too.)
  But I’ve used Glass, and unless my memory deceives me, Cool Glass offers nearly the same experience at a frac
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Who cares about Facebook Messenger for the Mac?

  11-01-2016 15:57
  Facebook seems to be everywhere these days, but strangely enough it has never had much of an app presence on the Mac desktop. But that might be changing very soon since a report from TechCrunch seems to indicate that Facebook is quietly working on a Messenger client for the Mac.Josh Constine reports for TechCrunch:
  TechCrunch has obtained photographic evidence and an eyewitness report that Facebook has built an as-yet-unreleased Facebook Messenger For Mac desktop app. The photo below shows a Fac
  
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• Why the customer is not always right

  11-01-2016 15:30
  
  In a consulting project – particularly when implementing custom software –customers feel that they should be in charge.  They are paying the bills, and only they know what “the right outcome” needs to be.  So the consultant should be following client directives throughout the project, unless there’s a valid technical or “best practices” reason to do otherwise.  And that all works out just fine, as long as the client is willing to pay all
  
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• Why customer is not always right

  11-01-2016 15:30
  
  In a consulting project – particularly when implementing custom software –customers feel that they should be in charge.  They are paying the bills, and only they know what “the right outcome” needs to be.  So the consultant should be following client directives throughout the project, unless there’s a valid technical or “best practices” reason to do otherwise.  And that all works out just fine, as long as the client is willing to pay all t
  
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• This lithium-ion battery of the future won't overheat

  11-01-2016 15:00
  
  Researchers at Stanford University have developed a lithium-ion battery that shuts down as it begins to overheat, potentially meaning the types of catastrophic fires seen in hoverboards, laptops and airliners could become a thing of the past.Lithium-ion batteries are used in just about all portable electronics. They're light, can store a lot of energy and are easily recharged, but they are also susceptible to overheating if damaged. A short circuit in the battery often leads to fi
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: What are we afraid of?

  11-01-2016 13:10
  
  Why is this misconception so common? Invoked by nearly everyone business, including engineers, developers, system architects, designers, even project managers when called upon to give a presentation anywhere outside their scrum, "the work speaks for itself" along with "it's what I say, not how I say it" can be reflexive attempts to avoid giving a presentation altogether or to simply discount expectations for success.They may be preceded or followed by further entreaties to “Just let me cod
  
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• 5 things we know about millennials in 2015

  11-01-2016 13:02
  
  Hiring and retaining millennials continues to be a hot topic as the generation finds its way into the workplace and leadership roles. But there are a lot of misconceptions out there about what millennials want from their careers. The Hartford surveyed millennials aged 18 to 34 to find out what the generation wants at work, and you might be surprised by the answers. Here are five truths about millennials in the workplace.
  Millennials want to lead
  Millennials are entering the workforce in droves,
  
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• Your license plate: Window to your life

  11-01-2016 12:34
  
  Big Brother watching you is bad enough. But Big Brother allowing hackers to watch you as well is worse.
  And that is increasingly the case, thanks to the indiscriminate, and insecure, collection of vehicle license plate data, according to recent reports from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the alt-weekly DigBoston.
  The technology at issue is Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR) – cameras mounted on patrol cars or stationary roadside structures like utility poles that record
  
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• IT careers: How to get a fair performance review

  11-01-2016 12:30
  
  Ian Raloff still remembers the sting of bad timing that sabotaged one of his performance reviews earlier in his career, when he held a job at a telecom company.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• Finally: Smart glasses that don't look dumb

  11-01-2016 12:15
  
  Smart glasses are coming to a face near you.
  Negative Nancy naysayers in the tech press thoroughly stigmatized Google Glass during Google's experimental Explorer program. And when Google closed its R&D program and opened its product development effort, the tech press falsely claimed that Google killed glass -- and with it, the nascent smart glass industry.
  In fact, smart glasses are already gaining traction in vertical enterprise, medical and military circles.
  More importantly, the mainstre
  
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• The CSO IoT Survival Guide

  11-01-2016 12:09
  
  The Internet of Things, or IoT, is expected to grow to become a $1.7 trillion market by 2020, up from $655.8 billion it reached in 2014, according to research firm IDC. Many of these devices will be consumer devices, to be sure, but many more will be enterprise and business devices. Gartner estimates that there are more than 1.6 billion business-connected IoT devices. And the growth is just getting started, and will reach 8 billion by 2020.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, ple
  
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• 11 tips for spotting insider threats

  11-01-2016 12:04
  
  Security pros are constantly being warned about insider threats. We’re told our companies need next-generation software, integrated threat intelligence, and the ability to correlate massive amounts of event logs and context to arm ourselves against these threats.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• The Exchange Server settings you must get right

  11-01-2016 12:00
  
  Microsoft has invested millions of dollars into Azure and Office 365, and their competitors are following suit with bona fide public cloud offerings of their own. But public cloud solutions are not for everyone. Organizations of many stripes have legitimate reasons for not wanting their restricted data on systems beyond their total control.For many of these entities, on-premises Exchange Server is a messaging must. Microsoft continues to update the software with the assurance that any improvemen
  
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• Taxpayer demand for human help soars, despite IRS automation

  11-01-2016 12:00
  
  In the past decade, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service has invested heavily in online self-service technology, including programs such as "Where's my Refund?" But, almost paradoxically, taxpayer demand for personal service via telephone has increased dramatically over this same period.
  In 2006, the IRS received 64 million calls from taxpayers, but last year the volume reached 102 million, a 59% increase.
  Many of those calls are handled by people, not by self-service systems. In 2006, the IRS rou
  
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• Q&A: Why Syncsort introduced the mainframe to Hadoop

  11-01-2016 12:00
  
  When you think of leaders in big data and analytics, you’d be forgiven for not listing Syncsort among them. But this nearly 50-year-old company, which began selling software for the decidedly unglamorous job of optimizing mainframe sorting, has refashioned itself into a critical conduit by which core corporate data flows into Hadoop and other key big data platforms. Syncsort labels itself "a freedom fighter" liberating data and dollars -- sometimes millions of dollars -- from the strangle
  
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• Best open source email security products

  11-01-2016 12:00
  
  Email securityEmail security is of paramount concern in any organization. A significant percentage of malware is delivered via email, on the premise that an unsuspecting user will open the message, allowing the malware payload onto the user’s machine. From there, malware can worm its way into the network and wreak various kinds of havoc, often undetected, sometimes for months or even years. We decided to review four open source products to see if they could deliver enterprise-grade securit
  
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• Consultantybureau breidt wan uit en kiest opnieuw voor Orange

  11-01-2016 10:43
  Detacheerder en recruitment consultancy Brunel International breidt uit met de globale netwerkdiensten en geïntegreerde communicatie van Orange Business Services. Het bedrijf, had al een langer lopend contract met Orange.
   
  Orange heeft voor Brunel een wereldwijd WAN uitgerold gebaseerd op een vpn. Het... lees meer
  
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• FCC: 10 percent of Americans still lack access to proper broadband

  11-01-2016 01:58
  Last week, we reported on the strides Internet services providers in the United States have made to improve broadband connection speeds, but noted how ISPs still have a lot of catching up to do. 
  Case in point: As Endgadget reported Friday, a new Federal Communications Comission report shows that as of 2014, roughly 10 percent of Americans still didn’t have access to a broadband Internet connection that meets the FCC’s minimum definition of broadband (25 megabits per second dow
  
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• Malware alone didn't cause Ukraine power station outage

  11-01-2016 00:21
  A new study of a cyberattack last month against Ukrainian power companies suggests malware didn't directly cause the outages that affected at least 80,000 customers.
  Instead, the malware provided a foothold for key access to networks that allowed the hackers to then open circuit breakers that cut power, according to information published Saturday by the SANS Industrial Control Systems (ICS) team.
  Experts have warned for years that industrial control systems used by utilities are vulnerable to c
  
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