IT Executive news

• Intel's new SSDs are advance scouts for NVMe

  01-04-2016 22:03
  
  With its latest SSDs, Intel is paving the way for fast, standard NVMe connections in storage systems for both more and less adventurous users.Intel is one of the biggest boosters of NVMe (non-volatile memory express), designed as a standard controller technology for PCI-Express interfaces between CPUs and flash storage. It wants to help create a large ecosystem around NVMe and other high-speed storage technologies that could, in turn, help to drive demand for more powerful CPUs. While SSDs (soli
  
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• Google predicts Angular 2 is 'not too far away'

  01-04-2016 21:40
  
  The general release of Angular 2.0, the much-anticipated follow-up to the first major version of Google’s popular JavaScript framework, is “not too far away,” a Google official said.
  “We’ll probably [offer] a release candidate next month and then fix a bunch of bugs in the following month,” Brad Green, Google engineering director, said Thursday afternoon at Microsoft’s Build conference in San Francisco. A release candidate is the last stage before a gen
  
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• Why Tesla's Model 3 should frighten Audi, Mercedes and BMW

  01-04-2016 21:27
  
  Tesla CEO Elon Musk last night unveiled the long-anticipated Model 3, a four-door mid-size sedan that takes aim at the mass market in ways unlike the all-electric vehicles (EVs) Tesla has released to date.
  The Model 3, which won't ship until mid-to-late 2017, has a starting price of around $35,000. That contrasts starkly with other Tesla sedans, which have a starting price of about $70,000. And, Musk said, it will be one of the safest cars in the world. That's because the Model 3 will include T
  
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• BrandPost: Three Ways Low-Cost Technology is Transforming the Plant Floor

  01-04-2016 20:53
  
  The plant floors of today are filled with a variety of different pieces of equipment, some more expensive than others. Many times, smaller, lower-cost tools can deliver more value than their higher priced counterparts. Low-cost sensors and smart tools are helping manufacturers produce higher-quality products.  Here are three ways this inexpensive technology is transforming the plant floor.
  Traceability
  In recent years, traceability has been transformed by low-power Bluetooth, smart tags an
  
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• BrandPost: SQL Server 2005 End of Life: What's Next?

  01-04-2016 20:44
  With just a short amount of time to go until Microsoft officially kills off SQL Server 2005—i.e., no more hotfixes or security updates—the installed base of 800,000 to more than 2 million servers running the venerable relational database management system will need a replacement. The question is which way to go: SQL Server 20XX, cloud, hybrid, or something else?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• Nordstrom CIO hires former Amazon exec as CTO

  01-04-2016 20:03
  
  Nordstrom has hired as CTO former entrepreneur and Amazon.com manager Kumar Srinivasan, who will work to improve technology operations for a fashion retailer whose profits have plunged recently. Nordstrom said Srinivasan's experience cultivating agile development and implementing cloud software will help shape its "technology agenda."Nordstrom CTO Kumar Srinivasan."We're bringing Kumar to Nordstrom at an important time as we are positioning our technology organization to better support our long-
  
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• Why Microsoft wants to help developers build bots

  01-04-2016 19:56
  
  Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is pushing developers to create virtual assistants and intelligent chatbots to help users do everything from managing their calendars to booking hotel reservations.To that end, Microsoft has published a new Bot Framework, which makes it easier to build chatbots using either C# or Node.js. Working with the tools isn't so easy that anyone could do it, but they can help reduce some of the difficulties of conversing with a computer.To read this article in full or to
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: 7 adaptive enterprise qualities

  01-04-2016 19:49
  
  Evolution is slow. Period.Don’t tell me that my company needs to evolve to survive when really you’re telling me it’s already too late and I’m only hanging on by a single thread. Bring in the swarms of consultants to help optimize and plan multi-year transformations. That may have worked a decade or more ago, but not anymore.In today’s world, taking the time to evolve leads to extinction of your business. What do many businesses attempt to do? They try to become mor
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: The future of sports predicts the future of healthcare

  01-04-2016 19:44
  
  The divergence from TV networks and the convergence toward live streaming is a symbol of the 2020 sports fan. The development of new state-of-the-art stadiums will radically shift how fan's experience sports games. Sony and Oculus will revolutionize game day with virtual reality (VR) in 2016 and by 2018, the game experience of today will be unrecognizable to the 2020 sports fan. The fans, players, and coaches are beginning to grasp how disruptive this will be to sports and smile at the enormous
  
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• All hyper-converged solutions are not created equal

  01-04-2016 19:33
  
  I’ve just completed a review of hyper-converged solutions (in essence a software-defined system with tightly integrated storage, networking and compute resources) and spoken with a number of companies that have either deployed or are trying to deploy them and it is very clear there is little in common with the solutions offered from individual enterprise class vendors.  Even the content of the solutions isn’t very consistent. I’m not going to call out the differences
  
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• Microsoft is putting Windows 10, Cortana at the center of smart homes

  01-04-2016 19:21
  
  Are you too lazy to open the door or switch on a light? Let Windows 10 and its Cortana voice-activated digital assistant do the job for you.Microsoft's vision is to make home automation a breeze in Windows 10, and the company featured several related Internet-of-things announcements at its ongoing Build conference.Windows 10 will work with a wider range of devices and appliances by integrating new Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF) protocols, scheduled to be released in 2017. Addi
  
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• FBI takes heat for keeping iPhone hack details under wraps

  01-04-2016 19:20
  The FBI doesn’t have to tell Apple how it cracked the iPhone 5c in the San Bernardino terrorism case, and now the American Civil Liberties Union is taking the agency to task.
  According to the Wall Street Journal, a White House review group will determine which of three avenues the FBI can take: publicly announce the security flaw, disclose the flaw to Apple, or keep it under wraps so it can use the flaw to crack more iPhones. For now, it looks like the FBI is keeping it a secret. Not even
  
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• Terrible computer pranks that could get you fired

  01-04-2016 18:29
  Office pranksI know, I know – that jerk from sales deserves it. That snippy attitude last time you showed up to fix his “slowdown problem,” which was obviously just him having like 150 Chrome windows open at once. Still, as tempting as it might be, you can’t just take revenge on the guy’s computer. Please, just go and read something else now. You’ll feel like a better person.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• EU looks to autonomous vehicles to restart stalled road safety program

  01-04-2016 17:30
  The European Union is looking to connected vehicles and autonomous driving to reduce traffic fatalities, after a disappointing year for road safety.Last year, 26,000 died on European roads, up 1 percent on the previous year."The latest figures are disappointing. For the second year in a row, we have not managed to reduce the number of victims on our roads," said European Commissioner for Transport Violeta Bulc, presenting the EU's latest study of traffic accident statistics in Brussels on Thursd
  
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• FCC votes to expand Lifeline program to include broadband subsidy

  01-04-2016 17:18
  
  The Federal Communications Commission voted 3-to-2 along party lines Thursday to expand the Lifeline telephone subsidy for low-income Americans to include Internet access.
  The decision generally follows an earlier proposal by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, a Democrat, to expand Lifeline's current $9.25 monthly phone subsidy to include broadband Internet access or bundled voice and data service plans. The fixed speed of the service will be based on what a "substantial majority of consumers receive,"
  
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• Critics of DMCA takedowns flood Copyright Office with thousands of comments

  01-04-2016 17:13
  
  Critics of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act have flooded the U.S. Copyright Office with tens of thousands of comments complaining about a process that often forces websites to kill user-generated content when faced with a copyright complaint.
  Before Thursday, the Copyright Office had received only about 80 public comments about potential changes to the DMCA's notice-and-takedown provisions, with the comment period scheduled to close Friday.But another 55,000 people had filed comme
  
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• Google’s April Fools’ hijinks: Graded

  01-04-2016 17:01
  
  The unexamined jokes are not worth laughing atAt least, we’re pretty sure that was the quote, anyway. Here’s a look at Google’s annual array of April Fools’ related merriment, with each prank humorlessly assigned a letter grade. Enjoy!Mic DropSo that you can at least feel like you’ve had the last word, Mic Drop was a Gmail option that allowed you to reply to a conversation and immediately archive it, so that it would disappear from your inbox. It’s been a litt
  
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• For Windows 10, March goes out like a lion

  01-04-2016 16:42
  
  After a slow February, Windows 10 boosted its growth in users during March, data published today showed.
  According to U.S.-based analytics vendor Net Applications, Windows 10 powered 15.6% of all Windows PCs in March, a 1.4-point increase from the month prior. Net Applications measures user share -- a proxy for the percentage of the global PC population running a particular operating system -- by tallying unique visitors to clients' websites.
  Net Applications' Windows 10 growth last month was 2
  
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• The best April Fools' Day tech pranks of 2016

  01-04-2016 16:38
  Hardy, har, harIt's that time of year again when tech journalists everywhere fear to write anything in case it turns out to be an elaborate prank. Did a product-discovery website really buy a struggling Internet giant? Are parachutes the future of delivery? Just how powerful is the battery in that ZenFone Max?Nope, these aren't real stories—just some of the top April Fools' pranks in tech for 2016.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• Fitbit data spolights common periods of inactivity

  01-04-2016 15:47
  
  By now, you no doubt received the memo: Sitting so much is killing you.Plenty of research on the topic exists. One such study released in March 2015 found that every hour of sedentary time per day, on average, is associated with a 14 percent rise in heart disease. Another study from earlier this year showed that extensive sitting time could be attributed to 3.8 percent of all deaths.After crunching its anonymous user data, Fitbit, which offers a new activity tracker called Alta th
  
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• IT’ers actiever op arbeidsmarkt

  01-04-2016 15:18
  IT’ers waren vorig jaar actiever op de arbeidsmarkt; vacatures worden vaker bekeken dan in 2014.  Daarop duidt het zesde Monster Year Report, het arbeidsmarktrapport van Monsterboard.IT-vacatures werden op Monsterboard in totaal bijna 10 miljoen keer bekeken, wat neerkomt op een gemiddelde van bijna 250... lees meer
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: The augmented project manager

  01-04-2016 15:11
  
  After seeing recent industry presentations on bots, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), I see the application of these technologies changing the practice of project management. The question is, is this future desirable or will we have a choice?The project manager role
  Much of the daily work of a project manager has not dramatically changed over the last 30 years. We may use different management methodologies, but we spend a great deal of time manually collecting and disseminating
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: How technology-enabled partnerships empower consumers battling healthcare costs

  01-04-2016 15:06
  
  Health insurance premiums have far outpaced income growth in the past year, and new reports point to several reasons, including the high medical costs of the newly insured under the ACA, which have necessitated premium increases by health insurance carriers. In addition to these premium increases, there have also been increases in out of pocket expenses, including copays and deductibles. Faced with this, the American consumer has had no choice but to start looking for choices. The rise of c
  
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• Everything you need to know about T-Mobile's data-only plans

  01-04-2016 14:56
  
  When is a phone not a phone? When you can't use it to place voice calls. Such a phone that's incapable of making calls sounds like an oxymoron. But it is not. T-Mobile offers a sharply discounted plan for consumers who want to use their smartphones only for data and text messages.T-Mobile's data-only plans costs $20 a month per line for 2GB of data, or $30 a month for 6GB of data — well below the $50 a month customers pay for a conventional T-Mobile plans with 2GB of data, plus v
  
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• Starbucks' CTO brews personalized experiences

  01-04-2016 14:53
  
  Despite its strong reputation for customer service, it's no longer enough that Starbucks baristas know your name and what pastry you like to pair with your favorite brewed beverage. The Seattle coffee purveyor wants to use its software to learn more about you -- and boost sales, too.That's the gist of a presentation new Starbucks CTO Gerri Martin-Flickinger gave last week at the company's annual shareholder's meeting, where she said the company will tailor experiences to consumer preferences reg
  
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• 8 ways to get the most out of your ERP system

  01-04-2016 14:50
  
  Implementing an ERP system is an expensive proposition that can cost millions of dollars (with the software licenses, consulting fees, integration costs, training and upgrades factored in) and take months, even years, to fully deploy. And, according to a report commissioned by Panorama Consulting, one in five ERP implementation projects (21 percent) end in failure.[ Related: 8 Enterprise Software Predictions for 2015 ]To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• Aantal fusies en overnames IT-markt groeit

  01-04-2016 14:40
  Er bestaat een bovengemiddelde interesse in overnames en fusies binnen de IT-sector. Verwacht wordt dat het aantal fusies en overnames dit jaar het langjarig gemiddelde (256) zal overtreffen. Dat komt door het gunstige overnameklimaat: stijgende investeringen en lage rente. Dat concludeert ABN AMRO in een deze week... lees meer
  
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• Is the blockchain good for security?

  01-04-2016 13:58
  
  Overstock was one of the first online retailers to adopt Bitcoin in a big way. Now it's become the first major company to issue stock on a trading platform powered by the blockchain.
  The blockchain is a distributed file system where participants keep copies of the file and agree on changes by consensus. The file is composed of blocks, where each block includes a cryptographic signature of the previous block, creating an immutable record.
  "Blockchain trading is much more secure than the current
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Big data and machine learning – is the glass half empty?

  01-04-2016 13:56
  
  Artificial intelligence is currently making a resurgence since the 1990s. Today, the focus is on machine learning and statistical algorithms. This shift has served AI well. Since machine learning and statistics provide effective algorithm solutions to certain kinds of problems, such as board games, spam detection, voice and image recognition, etc.How is AI different today from 20 years ago? AI 20 years ago was focused on what is known as logic based AI or Knowledge Representation (KR). As any em
  
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• Why it’s time to learn COBOL

  01-04-2016 13:40
  
  "When I was in college 30 years ago COBOL was declared dead, but it's still going strong and it's still a very good language."So says Leon Kappelman, a professor of information systems at the University of North Texas (UNT). And he certainly appears right about the half-century old programming language going strong: There are still hundreds of billions of lines of COBOL code in use today by banks, insurance companies and other organizations, and COBOL is still used somewhere in a large proportio
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Some iPhone 6s owners are bitter about the iPhone SE

  01-04-2016 13:00
  From various media reports it seems that the launch of Apple’s new 4-inch iPhone SE is already a success. The revamped version of the iPhone 5s has already sold almost 4 million units in China, and it’s fair to think that it might be one of Apple’s biggest sleeper hits.But some owners of the iPhone 6s are feeling a little irritated that the iPhone SE has stolen some of their phone’s thunder. Even worse, some are regretting their purchase of the iPhone 6s after finding out
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Ubuntu on Windows: What it means and who it's for

  01-04-2016 12:58
  
  Soon you will be able to run some of the best open source tools that are available for Linux on Windows system, natively. The move is a natural progression of the way Microsoft is bringing the Windows and Linux world closer to each other.
  If you are on a Windows 10 system you will be able to open ‘bash’ from the start menu that will open Windows command prompt running Ubuntu’s /bin/bash. It’s more or less like running Ubuntu terminal ‘in’ Windows.
  Before you
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Red Hat offers no-cost RHEL subscription to developers

  01-04-2016 12:02
  
  Developers can now get access to a Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) subscription free of cost as part of the Red Hat Developer Program.
  Under the program, the company is offering RHEL Developer Suite, which includes RHEL Server, Red Hat Software Collections, Red Hat Developer Toolset and many additional RHEL add-ons.
  “The Red Hat Developer Program is already quite robust, encompassing Red Hat Enterprise Linux and a significant number of Red Hat Enterprise Linux add-ons, as well as the Red
  
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• Reddit's removal of ‘warrant canary’ could hint at US demand for its user data

  01-04-2016 05:08
  Reddit has removed a notice, known as a warrant canary, from its transparency report for 2015, suggesting that it may have received a secret national security order for user data.The removal of the warrant canary is a reminder to users that their online communications could be the target of investigators.The most controversial of the orders is the National Security Letter, which gives the government the authority to compel the production of customer records held by telephone companies, Internet
  
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• Edge browser edges Chrome in early adoption sweepstakes

  01-04-2016 03:31
  
  Microsoft yesterday claimed that its newest browser, Edge, had increased its usage faster than did Google's Chrome after its 2008 launch.
  "[Edge is] ahead right now of even the start of Google Chrome, a very successful browser, has gotten off to," said Charles Morris, a program manager on the Edge team, during a Wednesday session at Build, Microsoft's annual developer conference.
  Morris used that to illustrate Microsoft's belief that Edge has been doing fine in attracting users, a counter to so
  
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• How SunEdison went from No. 1 to the edge of bankruptcy

  01-04-2016 03:28
  
  The world's largest renewable energy developer, SunEdison, may be on the verge of filing for bankruptcy protection; its stock has fallen from a high of $30 per share in June last year to 36 cents today.
  A Wall Street Journal report this week revealed that SunEdison is being investigated for overstating its cash position. SunEdison's shares have fallen drastically since then.
  A SunEdison spokesperson declined comment.
  Today, SunEdison is $11 billion in debt, according to Reuters. By contrast, in
  
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• Microsoft, Google make their pitches to unseat Amazon in the cloud

  01-04-2016 03:27
  
  The past two weeks have been a bonanza of cloud conferences and they provide useful insight into the ongoing IaaS cloud wars between Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform.Google makes its case in the cloud
  Last week Google attempted to attract developers to its cloud with the inaugural GCP NEXT Conference in San Francisco.
  +MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: 10 Biggest announcements from Google’s cloud conference | Hottest products at Hadoop World conference +To read this art
  
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• Meet Robocar, the driverless racing car for the AI-powered Roborace

  01-04-2016 00:32
  
  Formula E has unveiled the AI-powered race car that will be used in its Roborace competition for driverless vehicles.
  Ten teams, each with two cars, will compete in a series of one-hour races over the Formula E championship season, which starts later this year. All teams will have the same driverless cars; what sets them apart will be the artificial intelligence they use to control them.
  Formula E announced the Roborace series last year, calling it a "battle of algorithms." The driverless
  
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