Stanford startup’s new radio can send and receive information on the same frequency
by david talbot

startup spun out of Stanford says it has solved an age-old problem in radio communications with a new circuit and algorithm that allow data to be sent and received on the same radio frequency—thus doubling wireless capacity, at least in theory.

The company, Kumu Networks, has demonstrated the feat in a prototype and says it has agreed to run trials of the technology with unspecified major wireless carriers early next year.

The underlying technology, known as full-duplex radio, tackles a problem known as “self-interference.” As radios send and receive signals, the ones they send are billions of times stronger than the ones they receive. Any attempt to receive data on any given frequency is thwarted by the fact that the radio’s receiver is also picking up its own outgoing signal. continued…

first published week of:   11/04/2013

10 Biggest Tech Gambles Ever Made: The Winners And Losers
 techradar.com · by gary marshall

Without risk-takers, we wouldn’t have the technologies we love today: the history of technology is littered with great leaps forward that could all too easily have been massive disasters.

There’s a flipside to that, of course: the history of technology is also littered with massive disasters that could all too easily have been great leaps forward.

So which were the smartest bets, and the stupidest? Whose leaps of faith ended in applause while others ended in ignominy? Let’s discover the tech firms that bet the farm - not just the big winners, but the ones that lost more than their shirts. continued…

first published week of:   09/02/2013

10 Quotes on Cloud Computing That Really Say it All
by joe mckendrick

Plenty has been said or written on cloud computing in recent years — pro, con and somewhere in between. Periodically throughout the rise of cloud computing, there have been some real gems put out there, aptly describing what’s on people’s minds — and maybe what was needed to be said.  Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s famous “fashion-driven” analogy back in 2008 is the stuff of legend, and makes this list, compiled below. Here are some memorable quotes and apropos quotes about cloud that that have surfaced over the years:

1) “First to mind when asked what ‘the cloud’ is, a majority respond it’s either an actual cloud, the sky, or something related to weather.” - Citrix Cloud Survey Guide (August 2012)

2) “Ultimately, the cloud is the latest example of Schumpeterian creative destruction: creating wealth for those who exploit it; and leading to the demise of those that don’t.” - Joe Weinman, Senior VP at Telx and author of Cloudonomics: The Business Value of Cloud Computing

3) “Cloud computing is often far more secure than traditional computing, because companies like Google and Amazon can attract and retain cyber-security personnel of a higher quality than many governmental agencies.” - Vivek Kundra, former federal CIO of the United States continued…

first published week of:   04/08/2013

10 Steps to Ensure Your IT Outsourcing Deal Fails
by stephanie overby

Happy families are all alike;" Leo Tolstoy wrote in Anna Karenina, "every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

One might be inclined to think the same is true for outsourcing -- the successful relationships share the same best practices while the failed arrangements are uniquely flawed. But, in fact, the most disappointing deals do share common characteristics.

Diane Carco, president of IT consultancy Swingtide, has been studying the facets of flawed deals for nearly two decades. Even as the state of IT outsourcing has matured, the same issues come up again and again in failing IT services relationships. "Mistakes are often repeated," says Carco, who had to terminate a $2 billion outsourcing deal when she was CIO of CNA Insurance in 1999. "Awareness of why things failed is not necessarily propagated into the next generation of management and the next deal." continued…

first published week of:   09/30/2013

100 DIY Tech Projects
by laura mcquarrie

Even if you're not the most savvy when it comes to putting gadgets together, these DIY tech projects should be a piece of cake to make.

These useful homemade gadgets range from cameras to solar phone chargers and even basic cell phones that are capable of making calls and sending texts. In addition to being extremely practical items that you could actually use on a regular basis in your daily life, successfully making any of these DIY tech projects certainly earns some serious bragging rights.  continued…

first published week of:   10/28/2013

12 tech trends higher education cannot afford to ignore
by davide savenije

Higher education faces an onslaught of disruptive forces right now—and ?no one should be surprised to hear that news. Burgeoning technologies such as MOOCs and mobile devices are disrupting institutional structures from the classroom and across entire campuses. As tech transforms these learning environments, universities must decide whether to resist the change or get out in front of it. To choose the latter option, however, we need to envision what universities of the future will look like—?if they exist at all.

Lev Gonick, the VP for information technology services and CIO at Case Western Reserve University and CEO of OneCommunity, isn’t afraid of gazing into the proverbial crystal ball.

In his keynote address … at the Campus Technology 2013 conference in Boston, Mass., Gonick laid out his vision for the future higher ed and campus IT. continued…

first published week of:   08/05/2013

15 Online HTML5 Tools to Speed Up Coding
by gavin mcleod

HTML5 is one of the most popular language amongst developers and designers as it provides number of functionality and assists developers to easily design web applications. HTML5 has many attributes such as modern browser support (like Firefox 6, Google Chrome, IE9 etc.), structure specific tags, visual elements like rounded corners are now built in, drag and drop interactive, new video, audio and canvas elements and many more.
In this article I have compiled 15 Online HTML5 tools to simplify and speed up your HTML5 coding, I hope you will find the list handy and useful for your development tasks. Enjoy!

If you like the article you might be interested in our other article on 10 Best HTMl5 Tools for Accelerated Development continued…

first published week of:   08/12/2013

2012 in Hacking, by the Numbers
by nicole perlroth

Security experts like to say that there are now only two types of companies left in the United States: those that have been hacked and those that don’t know they’ve been hacked.

Their latest supporting evidence comes in the form of an annual Verizon report, which counted 621 confirmed data breaches last year, and more than 47,000 reported “security incidents.” Those include distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks, in which hackers flood a site with traffic until it falls offline, but do not necessarily break into a company’s network.

The victims spanned a wide range of industries. Thirty-seven percent of breached companies were financial firms; 24 percent were retailers and restaurants; 20 percent involved manufacturing, transportation and utility industries; and 20 percent of the breaches affected organizations that Verizon qualified as “information and professional services firms.” (The totals exceed 100 percent because of rounding.) continued…

first published week of:   04/29/2013

2012 Patent Rankings: IBM on Top (Again), Google and Apple Surging
by steve lohr

In the yearly count of patents granted in the United States, the corporate front-runner for 2012 is scarcely a surprise.

I.B.M. was granted more patents in 2012 than any other company, the 20th consecutive year in the top spot, according to the annual tally by IFI Claims Patent Services, published on Thursday.

The technology giant is flush these days, so its patent pre-eminence in recent years seems routine. What is more impressive is that the winning streak was just under way when I.B.M. went into a tailspin in the early 1990s. Despite sharp cutbacks elsewhere in the company, I.B.M. kept investing in its research engine.

Google and Apple, rivals in the smartphone patent wars, were the big movers. Google posted a 170 percent jump in patents granted, with 1,151 patents. In 2012, Google ranked 21st in the corporate patent sweepstakes. A year earlier, it had placed 65th.

Last year, Apple was awarded 1,236 patents, or 68 percent more than in 2011. With that performance, Apple’s rank jumped to 22nd, up from 39th in 2011.

“Google and Apple are clearly taking intellectual property very seriously, and playing to win,” said Mike Baycroft, chief executive of IFI, a patent research firm.

But another Apple rival, Samsung Electronics, was granted 5,081 patents, second only to I.B.M.

Details Here

first published week of:   01/14/2013

2013 Predictions: Eight far-out predictions for mobile tech in 2013
by  bzur haun, president and ceo, visage mobile

Gazing into our crystal ball – or crystal-ball app, rather – we’re taking a peek into what the state of mobile tech will look like a year from now. What will IT departments be focused on – or will they exist at all? What devices will we be using? Who will be the game changer for the enterprise?

As we know, the tech world is a rapidly changing landscape. But there are a few ideas and trends we’re looking forward to in the next year. Herewith, a roundup of predictions for 2013:

Details Here

first published week of:   01/07/2013