IT Executive news

• Intel looks to replace headphone jacks with Type-C connector

  27-04-2016 23:46
  
  Intel this week revealed plans to create an upgraded USB Type-C connector that would enable audio input and output, potentially replacing the long-standard 3.5 millimeter headphone jack used in today's electronic devices.
  Intel, which revealed its plans during a lecture at its Intel Developers Forum (IDF) in Shenzhen, China, also believes USB Type-C would simplify connections of multi-channel audio equipment to various devices.
  Unlike the traditional 3.5mm analogue audio jack, a USB Type-C inte
  
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• iPhone sales drop in Q1 reflect a market that remains flat

  27-04-2016 23:38
  
  Apple iPhone sales declined 16% in the first quarter, but it's important to remember that the overall smartphone market has also flatlined, largely due to market saturation.
  IDC said Wednesday that smartphone shipments in the quarter increased just 0.2% compared to the first quarter of 2015, marking the smallest year-over-year growth on record. IDC recorded 334.9 million smartphones shipped worldwide during the quarter.
  Even Samsung, the world's biggest smartphone maker with a 25% market share,
  
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• Facebook proposal will keep Mark Zuckerberg in control for many years to come

  27-04-2016 23:26
  
  Facebook is taking steps to ensure that founder Mark Zuckerberg stays connected and in control at the social network even as he pursues other goals related to charity and research.Facebook is asking shareholders to approve the creation of a new class of stock that's intended to "encourage Mr. Zuckerberg to remain in an active leadership role at Facebook," the company said in a statement.If shareholders approve it, Zuckerberg is likely to remain the central force behind Facebook for many yea
  
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• Mac + iPad revenue nosedives, adds to Apple's woes

  27-04-2016 22:30
  
  Although weaker iPhone sales were certainly the biggest contributor to Apple's downturn in the March quarter, the Mac and iPad also failed to hold up their ends, an analyst contended today.
  "The trend line in Mac sales has been worsening consistently over the past year, and [the growth rate] has now been below zero for the past two quarters," said Jan Dawson, principal analyst at Jackdaw Research, in an analysis posted to the firm's website Wednesday. "That's significant, because for a time the
  
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• In rare unanimous move, House passes bill to protect email and cloud privacy

  27-04-2016 21:50
  The U.S. House of Representatives, in a rare unanimous vote, has approved a bill to strengthen privacy protections for email and other data stored in the cloud.The Email Privacy Act would require law enforcement agencies to get court-ordered warrants to search email and other data stored with third parties for longer than six months. The House on Wednesday voted 419-0 to pass the legislation and send it to the Senate.The bill, with 314 cosponsors in the House, would update a 30-year-ol
  
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• 59% off StarTech SATA to USB 3.0 Converter Adapter - Deal Alert

  27-04-2016 21:33
  
  Who doesn't love a good adapter? The USB3S2SAT3CB USB 3.0 to SATA adapter cable lets you connect a 2.5" SATA hard drive or solid state drive to your computer through an available USB port. This is one of those geeky adapters you're going to want to keep on hand. Swap between hard drives without installing in the enclosure. Clone or back up HDD drives as if they were external. It's likely you'll find many more applications once you have this in your tool box. It currently averages 4.5 out of
  
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• The Texas woman on fire about H-1B visa use

  27-04-2016 21:14
  
  The use of H-1B visas has emerged as a significant issue in this presidential contest. That might be due, in part, to a Fort Worth, Texas, woman, Jennifer Wedel.
  In 2012, Wedel, the wife of an unemployed semiconductor engineer who earned a patent, was selected by Google out of thousands of requests to ask President Barack Obama a question during an online town hall.
  Wedel's husband, Darin Wedel, was laid off from Texas Instruments in 2009. Ms. Wedel believed H-1B visa use played a role in the l
  
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• Intel's Edison board now links up to IBM's Bluemix cloud service

  27-04-2016 21:04
  Intel is making it easier to create smarter and more functional gadgets, robots, drones, and wearables using its Edison developer board.The company has made a series of improvements to its latest IoT Developer Kit 3.0, which is used to program functionality into devices.The developer kit adds support for a wider range of sensors and adds connectivity to IBM's Bluemix cloud service. The kit also has improved programming tools and integration with Google's Brillo and Android.Edison has been u
  
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• CIO banks on bots to bolster customer experience

  27-04-2016 21:03
  
  USAA plans to add messaging capabilities to its mobile software that will automate financial transactions, says new CIO Jennifer Sepull. The move is another example of how companies are making digital services easier to navigateby using emerging natural language processing and machine-learning technologies.USAA CIO Jennifer Sepull.Sepull, who joined the company in February from Kimberly-Clark, says the new messaging tools will help USAA connect with "our members in ways that may be unexpected bu
  
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• Save 69% on Dell XPS 13 13.3" Full HD Signature Edition Laptop - Deal Alert

  27-04-2016 21:01
  
  The Dell XPS 13 9343-2727SLV 13.3" Full HD Signature Edition Laptop is powerful, feature-packed, and currently discounted over $1,600 on Amazon, making this a very good option for the money if you're considering a new machine for home or school. With the current 69% discount you can order it for just $719 via Amazon.It's 13-inch screen display is virtually borderless, and at 1920 x 1080 resolution it delivers twice as many pixels as standard HD (720p). It's CPU is an Intel Core i5
  
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• Microsoft enhances Office 2016 collaboration with tools that track team input

  27-04-2016 20:23
  
  Collaboration has been a central focus of Office 2016, and this month’s updates really take it up a notch: You can find out about anyone who’s working on your document, and even call an all-hands virtual meeting to discuss new changes.The Office 2016 Activity hub.
  The Activity feed presents a slightly different tweak on the familiar Track Changes function. While Track Changes allows you to see what edits have been made to a particular document, the Activity feed reports who saved a
  
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• Almost two-thirds of software companies contributing to open source

  27-04-2016 19:48
  
  Open source’s march toward preeminence in business software continued over the past year, according to a survey released today by open source management provider Black Duck Software and venture capital firm North Bridge.
  Roughly two-thirds of respondents to the survey – which was administered online and drew 1,300 respondents – said that their companies encouraged developers to contribute to open-source projects, and a similar proportion said that they were actively engaged in
  
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• Samsung's smart robot can answer questions and be a security guard

  27-04-2016 19:30
  
  Creativity is alive and well at Samsung, which is developing several cool devices in its labs, including a home companion robot called Otto.The multi-talented robot can answer questions and double as a part-time security system when needed. It is expected to be demonstrated at the Samsung Developer Conference this week in San Francisco.Functionally, Otto is similar in some ways to Amazon Echo, featuring an interactive speaker that can answer questions, order products and play musi
  
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• Samsung's Artik Cloud to challenge Microsoft's Azure in IoT

  27-04-2016 19:30
  
  Samsung and Microsoft have crossed paths in the smartphone and tablet markets, and will now do battle in the cloud. Samsung on Wednesday announced the Artik Cloud service for businesses, which the company hopes will give it a strong position in the emerging Internet of Things market. In IoT, it will take on cloud services like Microsoft's Azure and IBM's Bluemix.Simply put, the Artik Cloud provides the tools needed for companies to securely collect, store and analyze telemetry data collecte
  
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• Samsung's Artik 10, a challenger to Raspberry Pi 3, will ship next month

  27-04-2016 19:30
  
  Samsung will start shipping its eight-core Artik 10 board computer next month, a challenger to the Raspberry Pi 3.The Artik 10 was first announced last year and could be a PC replacement if you don't mind building out your own system. It could also spawn the development of smart appliances, drones, robots and other gadgets. Like the Raspberry Pi, its components are crammed onto a small circuit board.The Artik 10 will be available from online retailer Digi-Key starting in May, Samsung officials s
  
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• Mac sales tumble 12% in second-biggest downturn since '07

  27-04-2016 19:29
  
  Apple yesterday said it sold 4 million Macs in the March quarter, a 12% decline from the same period the year before, and a larger contraction than for the personal computer business as a whole.
  The year-over-year downturn in Mac sales was the second straight down quarter, and excepting a brutal 22% drop at the end of 2012, the largest since Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007.
  Analysts at IDC and Gartner earlier this month pegged the continued contraction of the PC industry at 11.5% and 9.6%,
  
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• Startup brings together OLTP, OLAP and Spark

  27-04-2016 18:59
  
  The three principles behind the creation of the Pivotal GemFire in-memory data grid today announced that their new startup has secured $3.65 million in series A funding, led by Pivotal, GE Ventures and GTD Capital.The startup, SnappyData, has developed an in-memory hybrid transactional analytics database that brings together OLTP, OLAP and Apache Spark to ease the pain of customers that until now have had to custom-stitch streaming, transactional and analytical environments together.SnappyData's
  
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• BI review: Tableau, QlikView, MicroStrategy and Oracle OBIEE

  27-04-2016 18:40
  
  Among the most important buying criteria for BI tools are scalability and performance, usability and UI, ease of development, and mobile/cloud based customization. An effective BI solution should be able to access any data source and provide capabilities for internal and external users from the same platform, as well as provide better integration with other systems (e.g. CRM, ERP).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• Google Calendar takes the headache out of scheduling work meetings

  27-04-2016 17:30
  
  Google wants to take some of the pain out of scheduling work meetings with a new feature the company launched for its Calendar product on Wednesday.
  The new "Find a Time" feature in the Google Calendar Android app helps users pick out a time that works for everyone invited to a meeting without requiring them to spend ages going back and forth over email.
  Here's how it works: when a user sets up a meeting and adds people to the event, Find a Time will pick out a list of suggested times, along wi
  
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• FBI discloses iOS security flaw, but not the one used to crack the San Bernardino iPhone

  27-04-2016 17:29
  The FBI still won’t tell Apple how the third-party hackers it hired to crack the iPhone 5c used by the San Bernardino mass shooter managed to get into the device, but the agency has shared another security vulnerability with Cupertino. That’s real nice of them and all, but Apple had already fixed that particular flaw.
  According to Reuters, the FBI told Apple about the security hole affecting iPhones and Macs on April 14. This was the first time the agency had shared information with
  
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• How ServiceNow aims to manage every workflow in your company

  27-04-2016 17:24
  
  ServiceNow is one of the rare cloud companies to have reached the $1 billion annual revenue milestone – a success story built on delivering next-generation IT service management capabilities. Now, the Santa Clara, Calif., company is aiming far beyond IT shops and wants to change how virtually every other corporate department does business.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• Pizza Hut turns to algorithms and GPS tracking to increase sales

  27-04-2016 17:02
  In lieu of making better food, the chain restaurant industry continues to embrace technology as the solution to its problems. The latest example is Pizza Hut, which is drawing comparisons to Uber as it updates its pizza delivery mechanisms.
  According to Nation’s Restaurant News, Pizza Hut will now tell customers what time to expect their pizza even before they place an order, using algorithms that factor in the volume of orders and the location and availability of drivers. The company say
  
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• Cyberespionage group abuses Windows hotpatching mechanism for malware stealth

  27-04-2016 15:16
  A cyberespionage group active in Asia has been leveraging a Windows feature known as hotpatching in order to better hide its malware from security products.The group, which malware researchers from Microsoft call Platinum, has been active since at least 2009 and has primarily targeted government organizations, defense institutes, intelligence agencies and telecommunications providers in South and Southeast Asia, especially from Malaysia, Indonesia and China.So far the group has used spear phishi
  
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• 5 years into the ‘cloud-first policy’ CIOs still struggling

  27-04-2016 14:41
  
  For half a decade, the federal government has operated under a policy to prioritize cloud computing as agency CIOs embark on new technology initiatives, but in such a vast and varied IT environment, it's not been a quick transition.[ Related: Government cloud adoption efforts lag as security concerns persist ]Five years into the so-called cloud-first policy, federal CIOs say they continue to struggle with procurement and management challenges, while security concerns about the safeguards around
  
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• Tech Titans Talk: The IDG Enterprise Interview Series

  27-04-2016 14:13
  
  Why Microsoft is your best strategic partner for the futureAvanade CEO Adam Warby details how a $2 billion IT services company is capitalizing on new Microsoft cloud and collaboration capabilities to power digital transformation projects.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• What really motivates workers? (It's not always money)

  27-04-2016 13:54
  
  If you think that all employees would jump at the chance to take a bonus over simple recognition of a job well done, you'd be wrong. Money continues to be a driving force in feeling appreciated at work, but other types of recognition can be just as-or more-important.
  According to new research from BambooHR that polled 1,174 full-time, U.S.-based workers in March 2016, simple employee recognition, or promotion to a higher title without a corresponding salary increase and employee perks can be jus
  
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• India makes it compulsory for phones to have 'panic buttons'

  27-04-2016 13:48
  
  India has prescribed that starting next year mobile phones in the country should have buttons that can be quickly used by women to alert the police and close relatives if they are in distress.The measure is one of several responses by the Indian government to the growing problem of rape attacks on women in the country.Pressing the panic button will alert "police & designated friends/relatives, for immediate response in case of distress or security related issues," said Minister of Communicat
  
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• 4 password managers that make online security effortless

  27-04-2016 13:45
  
  There’s a reason “123456” remains the most popular password. We tend to use passwords we can easily recall. And that means they’re easy to hack.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• 10 essential pen-friendly Windows apps

  27-04-2016 13:42
  
  Get your pen readyForget about limiting yourself to typing and touchpads alone. Microsoft’s Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book, as well as the legion of touch-enabled Windows laptops now available, are built to do far more than your standard run-of-the-mill notebooks. Whether it’s sketching out illustrations, signing documents on the fly, or jotting down quick notes, embracing the Surface Pen and Windows 10’s deep-rooted inking features truly opens another door to enhance
  
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• How to fix cross-cultural communication issues

  27-04-2016 13:40
  
  MIT doesn't cater to only full-time students -- the university has also established career development programs to empower business leaders and their employees. In a new course titled "Culture Matters: Communicating Effectively in a Global Workplace," that is set to run from June 13 to June 15, Bhaskar Pant and Jane Dunphy will lead participants in a two-day course that addresses issues that can arise from cross-cultural communication at work. The course is piloted by Pant and his colleague, Dun
  
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• First look: Microsoft's Windows 10 Anniversary Update preview

  27-04-2016 13:39
  
  The first big update to Windows 10 will come this summer, a year after the operating system's initial launch, with the release of what Microsoft is calling the Windows 10 Anniversary Update.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: 2 things that determine your project’s strategic potential

  27-04-2016 13:35
  
  Any significant project that an organization invests in must have strategic potential to begin with. Most technology projects are “significant” because they might not only have a positive impact, but cost a lot of money. From C-suite perspective, the technology project must contribute to business strategy directly or indirectly, in a big way or in a small way – as needed.That's why it's critical to know up front whether or not a project being considered would eventually contrib
  
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• Has public Wi-Fi outlived its usefulness?

  27-04-2016 13:25
  
  Over the last few years, public restaurants, coffee shops and other places people gather have added the luxury feature of free Wi-Fi. This has turned many a Starbucks into an unofficial office for workers and college students alike who might otherwise not have Internet access. These days, though, that luxury is becoming more and more useless. Many access points installed in a Starbucks, Subway, McDonald's or perhaps public library haven't been updated and are still offering 802.11g performa
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: How to select a development agency for a replatforming project

  27-04-2016 13:19
  
  Replatforming an ecommerce website or Web application must rank as one of the most significant technology processes a company is likely to face, and understandably it is viewed with much apprehension by many organizations. Yet, with a strong internal team, some careful initial planning and a reliable development agency in partnership, the transfer to a new platform can go smoothly and bring major benefits in the mid to long term. Finding the right development agency for your project is critical
  
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• Why Tim Cook is still optimistic after Apple's growth stalled in Q2 2016

  27-04-2016 13:11
  
  So, that was quite a quarter Apple had–and not in a good way. But just after the raw financial results, Apple gets a chance to tell its story, to add “more color” to the proceedings, in an hourlong conference call with financial analysts. Here are the highlights from this quarter’s party line with Apple CEO Tim Cook and CFO Luca Maestri.Tim Cook: Cockeyed optimistIf I had to describe Tim Cook’s attitude during the call, it would be “optimistic.” But onl
  
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• Microsoft's Word Flow a surprisingly solid iOS keyboard — with one caveat

  27-04-2016 13:10
  
  Microsoft just made Apple's iPhone easier to use.
  Yes, you read that correctly. In the past, Microsoft, for those with long memories, was rarely inclined to help make Apple products shine. However, the desktop software wars are passé in this mobile-first era. Microsoft's free Word Flow app for iPhone is a keyboard from Microsoft Garage, the company's experimental apps division, that greatly improves the iPhone typing experience.
  Word Flow has been available for Windows phones, but i
  
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• How to keep your small business safe from data breaches and hacks

  27-04-2016 13:06
  
  Cybersecurity – and security breaches – continues to be a hot topic. And small ecommerce businesses, especially ones using an open source platform, are particularly susceptible to hacks and breaches. So what can small ecommerce shops do to protect their sites as well as any sensitive (customer) data? Following are 10 suggestions from ecommerce security experts.[Related: 5 tips for defending against advanced persistent threats ]1. Educate employees. “Cyberattacks are becoming mo
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Blockchain health record bank replaces EHRs and EMRs

  27-04-2016 13:02
  
  User facing applications, purchase decisions, and infrastructure never have aligned for healthcare. The patient is still waiting, and the experience of care is disjoint. Sure, many of us dreamers have tried to achieve alignment, but ultimately, the seamless integration of health has yet to be fully discovered. Interoperability, audibility, cost-efficiency, real-time and agile enrollments, public transparency and guaranteed continuity (removal of the central operator) is what blockchain offers he
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: I'm sick of the Apple Watch whiners

  27-04-2016 13:00
  There seems to be a technology scourge going around a lot lately, some users and bloggers have gotten a really bad case of the Apple Watch whiner's flu. You know these people, they’ve been bitching and complaining non-stop for the last year about the Apple Watch.The most recent example of this is a column written by a writer at Gizmodo where he details the sheer hell that Apple put him through by holding a gun to his head and forcing him to buy the Apple Watch.Smosh I’m going to go t
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: How to get your project noticed

  27-04-2016 12:57
  
  This may sound foolish to you -- get my project noticed?!? Why would I want to do that? Project managers often live in obscurity for years. Accolades go to the team, not often to the project manager. Blame maybe, but usually not big rewards. Success is expected, though sometimes hard to achieve. Usually, it sounds pretty good to be flying under the radar. Less involvement from senior management. Fewer meetings to interrupt the project workflow. Fewer eyes on everything that is going on.So, why w
  
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• Ubuntu 16.04: A desktop for Linux diehards

  27-04-2016 12:00
  
  Every two years a release of Ubuntu is designated Long-Term Support (LTS). Ubuntu 16.04, code-named Xenial Xerus, is the latest in that line. LTS releases are supported for five years instead of the usual nine months, but they also have less obvious implications. LTS releases are usually geared toward the enterprise, which means they generally include fewer new features and more testing. Both qualities are attractive to risk-averse companies running production software on Ubuntu servers, but pr
  
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• HTC doubles down on virtual reality with new Vive X accelerator

  27-04-2016 12:00
  
  HTC on Tuesday announcedit will lead a $100 million virtual reality accelerator fund to cultivate the VR ecosystem by supporting startups.
  The move could be another boost to the development of enterprise applications and uses for VR, analysts said. VR is already being used in areas such as the training of surgeons, astronauts and combat troops who can use VR to simulate conditions and challenges they will face in thefuture.
  Last week, HTC announced a partnership with Dassault Systemes, which th
  
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• OpenStack users talk benefits, challenges of open source clouds

  27-04-2016 11:03
  
  A couple of years ago tech executives at FICO wanted to update their infrastructure. “OpenStack seems to be the wave of the future, so we gave it a run,” says Donald Talton, senior manager of platform operations and cloud engineering at the credit rating agency.SolidFireDonald Talton
  FICO considered using VMware, but felt that the “momentum” of OpenStack was stronger, Talton says. And so began FICO’s use of OpenStack’s IaaS open source private cloud software.
  
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• Google’s EU antitrust problems could get compounded by Getty Images' complaint

  27-04-2016 07:20
  Getty Images, a long-time critic of Google’s image search functionality, plans on Wednesday to file a competition law complaint against the search giant with the European Commission.The key allegation by Getty is that Google profits from scraping third-party images that it does not generate, while affecting artists whose work can as a result be easily pirated.Google is already being investigated by the commission for allegedly favoring its own comparison shopping product in general se
  
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• IBM lines up all-flash storage to help power cognitive computing

  27-04-2016 06:05
  
  IBM is expanding its flash storage lineup to power cloud data centers that carry out so-called cognitive computing.The company’s newest FlashSystem arrays, introduced Wednesday, combine its fast and relatively affordable FlashCore technology with a scale-out architecture designed to be easy to expand.Cognitive computing, which IBM defines as real-time data analysis for immediate, automated decision-making, is at the heart of much of IBM’s current technology push for enterprises and s
  
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• Apple stumbles in the world's biggest smartphone market

  27-04-2016 02:43
  
  Last year, Apple was on a gravy train in China. Sales of the iPhone were booming, and the country looked poised to overtake the U.S. in its contribution to Apple’s business. Suddenly, things don't look so rosy.
  Apple reported Tuesday that its first quarter revenue from Greater China declined 26 percent from the same period in 2015, a turnaround that contributed to Apple's first year-over-year revenue decline in more than a decade.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: CoreOS aims to make OpenStack deployment easier with Stackanetes

  27-04-2016 02:39
  
  Stackanetes is a CoreOS initiative to deploy and manage OpenStack as an application on Kubernetes, the open source container cluster manager from Google. It is a "fully containerized OpenStack running on top of Kubernetes," said Alex Polvi, co-founder and CEO of CoreOS.
  Speaking at the OpenStack Summit in Austin, Texas today, Polvi asked the audience to ‘free their mind.’ and not think of OpenStack as some complex piece of software that needs a complex way to manage it. Polvi said t
  
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• Google, carmakers join forces to speed self-driving car adoption

  27-04-2016 02:35
  
  Google's self-driving vehicle division has joined forces with major carmakers and ride-sharing services to form a coalition to lobby lawmakers and regulators for faster adoption of self-driving car technology.
  In all, five companies -- Google's Alphabet, Ford, Lyft, Volvo, and Uber -- formed the Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets coalition. Its mission: to spur the federal government to usurp a "patchwork" of state driving laws that could hinder autonomous vehicle acceptance.To read this
  
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• Report says criminals are better communicators than IT staffers

  27-04-2016 02:33
  
  The potential of connected devices to create damage, injury and mayhem is an ongoing security concern. But so far, the Internet of Things is not being linked, in a significant way, to security problems, says a new study.Verizon, in its just-released annual report of report of cyber incidents, identifies phishing as the major problem. Of the over 65,200 incidents it gathered data about, about 2,250 resulted in a breach, or confirmed disclosure of data to a third party. (In Verizon's parlance, a s
  
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• FBI won't share its iPhone hack with Apple because it's unfamiliar with the code

  27-04-2016 00:14
  The FBI claims that being forced to share its iPhone-hacking tool with Apple wouldn’t be worth it–because the government agency doesn’t actually know how it works.
  This week, the FBI will notify the White House that it doesn’t actually know the underlying code that facilitated hacking into the iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters. Because of this, the FBI claims that it doesn’t make sense to launch an internal government investigation to decide wh
  
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