sign in sign up
<<
Home , BigQuery, BioShock, Psyonix

Announcement

Total 100 articles, created at 2016-03-15 18:01 1 PCIe SSD roundup 2016: Some stall while others progress The PCIe SSD market is still important but PCIE flash drive makers are split between those that continue to develop their products and those for whom product evolution has stalled 2016-03-15 18:00 2KB www.computerweekly.com 2 Seven steps to becoming a digital business leader Developing employees to embrace a digital-first approach can bring significant personal and organisational benefits. 2016-03-15 18:00 2KB www.computerweekly.com 3 Q&A: Dinsmore sees open source Apache Spark moving to new stage Contradictory information on open source Apache Spark performance is giving way to more reasonable assessments, according to analytics expert Thomas Dinsmore. 2016-03-15 18:00 5KB searchdatamanagement.techtarget.com 4 CW@50: 1966 - Computer Weekly goes to bat for the British computer industry Launched in 1966 as part of a modernising wave to change British society, Computer Weekly battled for the nation’s industry against the US, and saw IT as an entry ticket to the Common Market 2016-03-15 18:00 2KB www.computerweekly.com 5 CW@50: The heyday of British computing - how the Brits ruled IT We investigate how the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s became an age of great innovation for the British computer industry. 2016-03-15 18:00 2KB www.computerweekly.com 6 HSCIC appoints director of data science Informatics specialist Daniel Ray appointed to head up Centre of Excellence for big data and data science,Big Data and Analytics,Careers and Skills,Health ,Big Data 2016-03-15 18:00 2KB www.computing.co.uk 7 Tor is 'brilliant' but highlights the dangers of encryption, claims GCHQ chief "Those who do harm are hiding in the noise of the by using what the rest of us use" - GCHQ's Robert Hannigan,Security ,encryption,GCHQ 2016-03-15 18:00 3KB www.v3.co.uk 8 Half of organisations would struggle to get mission-critical systems up-and-running in hours following a disaster - UPDATED Computing research: organisations fear terrorism almost as much as flooding,Security,Leadership ,security,Disaster Recovery,Business Continuity,Fujitsu 2016-03-15 18:00 969Bytes www.computing.co.uk 9 CSC Lorenzo system partly to blame for Sheffield NHS Trust £12m deficit Sheffield NHS Trust beset by "data issues" attributed to Lorenzo,Health ,CSC,NHS 2016-03-15 18:00 2KB www.computing.co.uk 10 100,000 people report phishing scams in the UK in 2015, say police Action Fraud and National Fraud Intelligence Bureau say that they received an average of 8,000 reports per month in 2015,Security ,security,phishing 2016-03-15 18:00 2KB www.computing.co.uk

11 Scottish Borders Council awards £92m digital services contract to CGI Contract will create 200 new jobs and inject £100m into local economy, claims council,Public Sector,Services and Outsourcing ,CGI 2016-03-15 18:00 2KB www.computing.co.uk 12 Email pioneer and man behind the @ symbol Ray Tomlinson dies aged 74 Invented email by mistake when slacking off,Leadership ,internet 2016-03-15 18:00 2KB www.theinquirer.net 13 Cisco is to acquire hybrid cloud management firm CliQr for £260m CliQr was founded in 2010 and has raised about $38m from investors including Ventures,Mergers and Acquisitions,Cloud and Infrastructure ,Cisco 2016-03-15 18:00 2KB www.computing.co.uk 14 Privacy and security in the cloud are not the same thing 'Companies claim they have world-class security and therefore privacy, but you can have world-class security and have no privacy whatsoever' ,Cloud and Infrastructure,Security Technology ,GDPR,EU Data Protection Regulation,NetApp,Safe harbour,Privacy By Design,AWS,,Cyber security 2016-03-15 18:00 1KB www.computing.co.uk 15 Surface Book review 's Surface Book is a clever piece of kit but does that make it worthy of the "ultimate laptop" crown?,Laptops,Portable,Tablets ,Microsoft,Surface Book,laptop,tablet,Windows 10,Surface Pen,Surface,Microsoft Surface 2016-03-15 18:00 910Bytes www.v3.co.uk 16 Hundreds of cloud companies still vulnerable to DROWN security flaw Companies ignoring threat posed by DROWN SSL vulnerability – as well as FREAK, Logjam, OpenSSL and Poodle,Security,Internet ,Heartbleed,security,Cloud and Infrastructure,,Skyhigh Networks 2016-03-15 18:00 3KB www.computing.co.uk 17 Virgin Media wins Met Office networking contract Met Office's £97m supercomputer needs a very high-speed network connection,Networks,Communications,Cloud and Infrastructure ,Met Office,Virgin Media 2016-03-15 18:00 2KB www.computing.co.uk 18 Microsoft tempts Oracle customers with free SQL Server 2016 licences Microsoft says firms can save by switching, but they must be signed up for Software Assurance licensing,Applications,Licensing,Big Data and Analytics ,Microsoft,Oracle,SQL Server,databases,SQL,licence 2016-03-15 18:00 4KB www.computing.co.uk 19 CityFibre CEO Greg Mensch's ambitious plan to bring FTTP to 100 UK towns and cities - and beat BT in the process Firm's £90m acquisition of Kcom in December has made it a force to be reckoned with in the broadband space,Telecoms ,BT 2016-03-15 18:00 749Bytes www.v3.co.uk 20 Microsoft releases 13 security bulletins in latest Patch Tuesday Patch now or be vulnerable as hackers get to work on coding exploits,Security ,Microsoft,patch Tuesday 2016-03-15 18:00 2KB www.theinquirer.net

21 Microsoft accused of bundling new Windows 10 nagware into latest Patch Tuesday updates More Windows 10 nagware being sneaked into Microsoft updates,Operating Systems,Software,Security ,Microsoft,operating system,Windows Update,security,patch Tuesday 2016-03-15 18:00 3KB www.theinquirer.net 22 Rural Payments Agency chief: GDS and Defra didn't listen to warnings that CAP project was failing 'I was not in a position to have my opinion prevail,' says RPA's Mark Grimshaw,Government,Leadership ,Government,Agriculture,Public sector 2016-03-15 18:00 2KB www.computing.co.uk 23 Five things to expect from Apple's imminent iPhone launch All the rumours about Apple's 21 March launch in one handy place,Hardware,Mobile Phones,Communications ,Apple,iPhone 2016-03-15 18:00 2KB www.v3.co.uk 24 Post Office to hire a 'head of IT vendor management’ Post Office wants someone with strong negotiation, relationship and inter-personal skills for newly created role,Leadership,Careers and Skills ,CIO 2016-03-15 18:00 2KB www.computing.co.uk 25 IT contractors set for new tax crackdown in this week's Budget IT contractors the 'collateral damage' in Chancellor George Osborne's attack on stars' and civil servants' tax avoidance,Strategy,Leadership ,tax,IR35,George Osborne,Budget 2016-03-15 18:00 3KB www.computing.co.uk 26 If you have less than a petabyte of data you don't need Hadoop 'Use it when you need it but when you don't, don't bother,' says Vincent de Lagabbe, CTO of bitcoin analysis firm Kaiko ,Big Data and Analytics ,Cassandra,Apache Software,Apache Spark,Hadoop,Bitcoin 2016-03-15 18:00 3KB www.computing.co.uk 27 Windows 10 Redstone update delayed for another year Microsoft needs more time to make its first major update to Windows 10,Cloud and Infrastructure ,Microsoft,Windows 10 2016-03-15 18:00 2KB www.v3.co.uk 28 Osborne to green light driverless-car motorway trials In 2017, the car in front may well be driverless,Big Data and Analytics,Internet of Things ,Driverless cars,Big Data,Internet of Things 2016-03-15 18:00 2KB www.v3.co.uk 29 Intel shoots for 3D broadcasting with Replay Technologies acquisition The acquisition is indicative of growing digital transformation across industries ,Strategy,Hardware,Business Software ,Intel,Data,IBM,Digital 2016-03-15 18:00 2KB www.computing.co.uk 30 You'll never be a captain of industry with Computer Science, says MP Conservative MP David Davis says Computer Science will only get you so far, but those with degrees in PPE get right to the top,Careers and Skills,Security ,Leadership,skills,Education,CIO,GCHQ 2016-03-15 18:00 3KB www.computing.co.uk 31 Opera to add native ad blocker to desktop web browser Need for speed? Opera's web browser will come with a built-in speedometer ,Software,Internet,Internet of Things,Cloud and Infrastructure ,Opera,Opera Software,Browsers 2016-03-15 18:00 2KB www.theinquirer.net

32 Bill Gates calls for tighter safeguards on bulk data collection Gates discusses the iPhone case, AI and the Microsoft Surface Book in his latest Reddit chat,Business Software,Privacy ,Microsoft,Bill Gates,Windows 10,Artificial Intelligence 2016-03-15 18:00 2KB www.computing.co.uk 33 API management – what's the business case? Computing discusses the merits of API management with top UK IT leaders and CA Technologies,DevOps ,DevOps,in-depth 2016-03-15 18:00 673Bytes www.computing.co.uk 34 The entrepreneurial Powa of Dan Wagner How the company that was going to be bigger than Google burned through $225m and crashed in just three years,Mobile,Cloud and Infrastructure ,Dan Wagner,Google 2016-03-15 18:00 3KB www.computing.co.uk 35 Google's AlphaGo AI smashes top professional at ancient game of Go First Chess, now Go. What next? Buckaroo? Ker-Plunk?,Software,Internet of Things ,Artificial Intelligence,Google,AlphaGo,DeepMind 2016-03-15 18:00 2KB www.theinquirer.net 36 DevOps not a silver bullet, but does have some merit, says Specsavers global CIO Phil Pavitt was sceptical that DevOps was "just another Gartner gimmick",DevOps,Leadership ,Specsavers,DevOps,Puppet Labs 2016-03-15 18:00 3KB www.computing.co.uk 37 Hilton installs IBM Watson-powered 'robot concierge' Concierge 'Connie' named after hotel chain's founder Conrad Hilton,Internet of Things ,IBM,IBM Watson,Hilton 2016-03-15 18:00 2KB www.v3.co.uk 38 Snowden calls 'bullshit' on FBI claim that only Apple can unlock phone Investigators “wouldn’t need phone” to learn what they need, echoes David Davis MP,Public Sector,Security ,FBI,Apple,Edward Snowden 2016-03-15 18:00 3KB www.computing.co.uk 39 Investigatory Powers Bill set to breeze through parliament despite protests The latest iteration of Theresa May's 'Snoopers' Charter', labelled undemocratic by David Davis, seems likely to pass through the Commons today without hitch,Legislation and Regulation,Privacy,Government ,David Davis MP,Privacy,snoopers charter,Theresa May,Government 2016-03-15 18:00 4KB www.computing.co.uk 40 App Annie Acquires Application Analyst AppScotch With San Francisco-headquartered AppScotch, this marks App Annie's third acquisition in two years following the acquisition of Distimo and Mobidia. 2016-03-15 17:55 3KB www.eweek.com 41 Reviewing and testing multiple smartphones at one time for eWEEK means giving up the idea of traveling light. Reviewing and testing multiple smartphones at one time for eWEEK means giving up the idea of traveling light. 2016-03-15 17:51 3KB www.eweek.com 42 PlayStation GDC 2016 LIVE: PlayStation VR launch live blog - PlayStation VR UK release date, price, specs Sony will today make a PlayStation VR announcement at GDC 2016, and with no PlayStation VR live stream to watch we bring you real-time commentary in our PlayStation VR live blog. Plus, everything we know and think we know so far about the PlayStation VR UK release date, price and... 2016-03-15 15:12 11KB www.pcadvisor.co.uk

43 Currys PC World to open VR demo rooms, employee claims Currys PC World to open VR demo rooms, employee claims. HTC Vive selected for in- store use. 2016-03-15 00:00 2KB www.bit-tech.net 44 Here's what's inside Microsoft's private preview of Visual Studio next Microsoft is privately testing its next major version of Visual Studio, which ultimately may be christened 'Visual Studio 2016.' 2016-03-15 14:29 2KB www.zdnet.com 45 AMD announces Pro Duo graphics card AMD announces Radeon Pro Duo graphics card. Outlines new GPU roadmap, too. 2016-03-15 13:00 2KB www.bit-tech.net

46 How do multi-device consumers really behave? Google thinks Analytics 360 Suite will tell you Google wants to give businesses a clear picture of consumer habits both online and offline with its new Analytics 360 Suite. 2016-03-15 13:49 3KB www.zdnet.com 47 How much will the 4-inch iPhone 5se cost? While Apple will undoubtedly be hoping that we "oooh" and "ahhh" during the unveiling of the 4 much-anticipated-inch iPhone 5se next week, the question on many people's lips will be "how much? " 2016-03-15 13:47 3KB www.zdnet.com 48 Google to US: Driverless cars will cut public transport costs Self-driving cars could help government put the brake on spending for highways and infrastructure, says Google. 2016-03-15 12:57 3KB www.zdnet.com 49 This is what happens when a bird blasts into a plane Technically Incorrect: An Egyptair 737 lands safely at London's Heathrow Airport, but with a gaping hole in its nose. 2016-03-15 12:55 1KB www.cnet.com 50 Here's one way to preview the next iPad: Print a 3D model of it Take one leaked iPad case, reverse-engineer an iPad design and what do you get? Just maybe: A glimpse into the hardware that Apple plans to introduce on March 21. 2016-03-15 12:28 2KB www.zdnet.com 51 The Internet of dangerous, broken things Security expert Matthew Garrett found himself in a hotel recently with Android tablet based light-switches and a few hours he could have had control of the electronics in every hotel room. 2016-03-15 12:18 4KB www.zdnet.com 52 Looking for a good keyboard replacement? Here's our top recommendations! Having a keyboard that fits your needs helps with overall productivity, gaming experience and even aids certain PC functionalities is essential. Here's our top recommendations! 2016-03-15 12:06 6KB www.pcadvisor.co.uk 53 Mission: Possible! Your cognitive future in government Cognitive-based systems can build knowledge, understand natural language and provide confidence-weighted responses. And these systems can quickly find the proverbial needle in 2016-03-15 12:59 1KB www.itworldcanada.com 54 Is this the end of the API economy? Does the sudden closure of popular APIs mean the end of the API boom? Or is it time for a shift to a more mature and sustainable future? 2016-03-15 11:50 6KB www.zdnet.com 55 Apple's rumored smaller iPhone 5SE: Does size matter? (The 3:59, Ep. 9) We weigh in on whether "5SE" is too much of a mouthful, what's up with Napster and Facebook exec Sean Parker's newest venture and why artificial intelligence may be getting too smart for us. 2016-03-15 12:55 869Bytes www.cnet.com 56 Here are the best VR headsets available to buy in the UK in 2016 2016 is set to be the year of virtual reality, with a myriad of VR headsets available to buy in the UK. Here, we list a few of the best virtual reality headsets on the market at the moment, along with those coming this year. 2016-03-15 11:39 9KB www.pcadvisor.co.uk 57 Why Apple went to war with the FBI The Justice Dept. was poised to launch a public relations campaign to pull at the public heartstrings of those who suffered as a result of the San Bernardino shootings. 2016-03-15 11:32 5KB www.zdnet.com 58 Data traffic jam? Top performance requires worldwide Internet intelligence If you want to know how to keep your Internet service running as fast as possible, you need to know where the accidents and traffic jams are on the network. 2016-03-15 11:30 4KB www.zdnet.com 59 Best kids' apps 2016: 58 best free and cheap apps for kids, toddlers and teens - best Android, iPhone and iPad apps for children that your kids will love The best kids' apps of 2016. Great free apps for children of all ages. Best fun apps, best educational apps. Best apps for kids. Great apps for babies, apps for toddlers, apps for school kids and apps for teens. It's, quite simply, the best apps for kids. 2016-03-15 11:30 20KB www.pcadvisor.co.uk 60 Amazon Easter Deals Week: Cheap TVs, tablets, headphones, speakers & more tech Amazon is kicking off a huge Easter Deals Week and Lightning Deals have begun early. Here are the best Amazon tech deals. 2016-03-15 11:12 1KB www.pcadvisor.co.uk 61 Altiscale Insight Cloud goes up the Hadoop stack Altiscale adds a basic ingest, transformation and analysis UI to its Hadoop offering, and wires it up for easy connection from major BI tools. 2016-03-15 11:00 2KB www.zdnet.com 62 Schmidt says robots will take our jobs: Rise of AI is a natural progression But he insists AI will make the world a better place for everyone 2016-03-15 10:58 2KB www.techradar.com 63 Bangladesh Bank chief throws in the towel after cyberattack The Finance Minister only found out about the fraud through the media, it seems. 2016-03-15 10:57 2KB www.zdnet.com 64 Wii U's Star Fox Zero has invincible mode for novice players At the same time, Shigeru Miyamoto promises game will offer a challenge and even a ship that does extra damage. 2016-03-15 12:55 2KB www..com

65 Tesla co-founder joins Clearpath Robotics Canadian company getting attention for its ingenious industrial solutions. 2016-03-15 10:51 2KB www.zdnet.com 66 Google: We'll pay $100k if you can hack a remotely Google has doubled its reward for hackers who can breach in a locked- down state known as Guest Mode. 2016-03-15 10:51 3KB www.zdnet.com 67 Hyperloop could add augmented reality windows to ease your travel boredom Better than the inside of a tube 2016-03-15 10:50 2KB www.techradar.com 68 Sinclair ZX Spectrum Vega+ console with 1000 retro games smashes crowdfunding target Gaming geeks with a hankering to play the retro games of their youth are flocking to fund the ZX Spectrum Vega+ preloaded with over 1000 retro games. 2016-03-15 10:43 3KB www.zdnet.com 69 Can DevOps and ITIL co-exist? A story of two IT service philosophies Is ITIL, first formulated more than two decades ago to promote service-thinking within IT ranks, a good fit within emerging DevOps cultures? 2016-03-15 10:35 5KB www.zdnet.com 70 How to disable Windows 10 notifications Avoid distractions on your computer 2016-03-15 10:35 3KB www.techradar.com 71 Locus Robotics brings this Amazon solution to small retailers Welcome to e-commerce in the age of the robots. 2016-03-15 10:30 3KB www.zdnet.com 72 Raspberry Pi 3 review Bakes more computing power in than ever before 2016-03-15 10:23 4KB www.techradar.com 73 It's official: Google's robot AI is better than human beings at Go Google's DeepMind AlphaBot takes series 4-1 2016-03-15 10:08 1KB www.techradar.com 74 Qualcomm throws hat into the VR ring with launch of SDK for Snapdragon 820 chips Becomes latest chipmaker to throw hat into the virtual reality ring 2016-03-15 10:04 3KB www.theinquirer.net 75 SAP HANA Vora goes GA SAP's Spark-based interactive analytics tool releases to general availability. 2016-03-15 10:00 1KB www.zdnet.com 76 ​Google AlphaGo caps victory by winning final historic Go match DeepMind's Artificial Intelligence (AI) AlphaGo won the final match in the five-game Go series against South Korean champion Lee Se-dol to end with a 4-1 victory in the landmark battle between man and machine. 2016-03-15 09:58 3KB www.zdnet.com

77 Scientists invent glass that can turn from clear to opaque in less than a second The glass, developed at Harvard, can transition between transparent, translucent and opaque with the application of an electric current. 2016-03-15 09:16 2KB www.cnet.com 78 Yahoo patches sender spoofing email vulnerability The flaw allowed attackers to spoof Yahoo addresses for use in phishing campaigns. 2016-03-15 09:54 2KB www.zdnet.com 79 Lyft teams up with GM on car-rental program to recruit new drivers Short-term program will provide a free rental vehicle when drivers log at least 65 rides a week for the ride-hailing service. 2016-03-15 09:16 2KB www.cnet.com 80 TomTom Golfer 2 promises your wrist can make you a better golfer Swing when you're losing 2016-03-15 09:45 1KB www.techradar.com 81 Microsoft will allow One users to play with PS4 and PC gamers In other news, hell has frozen over 2016-03-15 09:38 2KB www.theinquirer.net 82 'Trials on Tatooine' announced as first game for HTC Vive If there's a bright center to the universe, you're on the planet that it's farthest from. 2016-03-15 09:34 1KB www.techradar.com 83 Remastered emerges from the dark side of gaming We're officially scared of space... again 2016-03-15 09:21 1KB www.techradar.com 84 AMD-powered Sulon Q is a VR-ready wearable Windows 10 PC Your move, 2016-03-15 09:10 2KB www.theinquirer.net 85 Africa’s Talking partners with CMS Africa Summit to sponsor developers The 2016 CMS Africa Summit has partnered with Africa’s Talking to sponsor selected developers to this year’s summit. The sponsorship will help cover part of the cost of attendance for eligible developers to the Summit. The 48 hour event has already attracted many partners and sponsors and has lined up over... 2016-03-15 09:07 2KB pctechmag.com 86 UK government to target IT contractors in tax crackdown George Osborne to set sights on freelancers to raise £400m 2016-03-15 08:26 3KB www.theinquirer.net 87 11 Tech Jobs That Pay The Most: Glassdoor IT positions account for 11 of the 25 top-paying jobs in Glassdoor's annual ranking. See which positions made the grade, and how your salary stacks up. 2016-03-15 07:06 2KB www.informationweek.com 88 Mahindra Comviva Strengthens its Leadership Position in Digital Music Portfolio in Africa, partners with Mondial Multimedia Mahindra Comviva, one of the global leaders in providing mobility solutions, has today announced that it has partnered with Mondial Multimedia, a leading partner of mobile media platforms in Africa. This tie-up with Mondial Multimedia will further strengthen Mahindra Comviva’s digital music content portfolio in the continent. With this partnership, Mondial... 2016-03-15 06:44 3KB pctechmag.com

89 Will Samsung’s “Waffle” Make You Hungry? Samsung has rolled out a new platform (they are not calling it a social network, but we leave that to you to figure.) An app they are calling "Waffle" on National Pi day. The name instantly makes one hungry but let's see why the app makes you even hungrier. Waffle,... 2016-03-15 06:43 1KB pctechmag.com 90 House of Reps committee recommends smart infrastructure task force The government should appoint a national task force to look into deploying IT systems for smart cities, transport, communications, energy, health, water, and natural disaster prediction, the committee said. 2016-03-15 06:36 9KB www.zdnet.com 91 Smile launches its VoLTE service in Tanzania Hardly a week after launching its VoLTE service known as SmileVoice in Uganda, Smile Communications Tanzania has announced the introduction of SmileVoice and SmileUnlimited. This makes Smile the first operator in East Africa to offer its customers Voice over LTE services. Just like in Uganda, SmileVoice comes in two forms; using a... 2016-03-15 06:33 3KB pctechmag.com 92 Panasonic Australia confident 2-in-1 will drive Toughbook business The company believes that the local availability of the Toughbook 20 will drive further growth for its B2B business. 2016-03-15 06:24 2KB www.zdnet.com 93 WhatsApp to expand encryption to Voice soon A number of tech companies are set to make security improvements as a result of the ongoing battle between Apple and the FBI. Reports indicate that Facebook-owned WhatsApp is set to expand encryption to voice calls "within weeks," while Facebook itself is also considering how it might improve security in its Messenger... 2016-03-15 06:24 1KB pctechmag.com 94 Now try out your Android game before you buy Google as of yesterday, announced a number of new services for game developers at its annual Developer Day at the Game Developers Conference. They include tools for managing virtual goods and currencies. According to TechCrunch, Google launched a Video Recording API so developers can make it easier for players to... 2016-03-15 06:14 2KB pctechmag.com 95 Online tax software roundup: H&R Block, TaxAct, and TurboTax compared It's tax season. Which online tax app should you use? You might be surprised with our pick. 2016-03-15 06:00 9KB www.macworld.com 96 CorelDraw Graphics Suite X8: The un-Adobe choice steps up to Windows 10 and 4K displays CorelDraw Graphics Suite X8 welcomes Windows 10 with a new Font Manager app, variable screen resolution, and an other additions and enhancements. Best of all: No subscription required. 2016-03-15 06:00 5KB www.pcworld.com 97 Razer's refreshed Blade gaming laptop adds more power for far less cash New processor, new keyboard, new price. Hot on the heels of its smaller Stealth cousin, the 14-inch Razer Blade is refreshed for 2016. 2016-03-15 06:00 2KB www.pcworld.com

98 Turnbull unveils Innovation and Science Australia board The federal government has announced its new Innovation and Science Australia statutory board which will be tasked with placing innovation and science at the centre of government policy making. 2016-03-15 06:00 6KB www.zdnet.com 99 Project management glossary CIO.com’s project management glossary provides definitions and information for many common – and not so common – terms used in the complex field of project leadership and management. 2016-03-15 05:17 6KB www.cio.com 100 5 lessons the DOD can teach you about innovation While it might not always seem like it, Washington, D. C., is no stranger to cutting costs. At one of the branches of the Department of Defense, in fact, lowering the costs of failure can bring innovation, even in times of budgetary belt-tightening. 2016-03-15 05:03 5KB www.cio.com Articles

Total 100 articles, created at 2016-03-15 18:01

1 PCIe SSD roundup 2016: Some stall while others progress Computer Weekly’s 2015 review of PCIe SSD products focused on consolidation in the market. At the time, a range of acquisitions had taken place and some suppliers left the market altogether. In 2016, we see a divide between suppliers that continually evolve their server flash products and those that appear to have stalled in provision of updates to their offerings. HGST, SanDisk and Micron appear to have slowed their product releases and instead focused on other product ranges – such as traditional flash drives – or on developing base technology for their products, which is the case for Micron with 3D Nand and 3D XPoint on the horizon. The other suppliers in our survey have pushed on with products that deliver increased capacity and performance. Only Samsung appears to have evolved to use new technology, with the PM1725 and PM953 based on 3D TLC Nand. NVMe support isn’t consistent. Typically, only suppliers releasing products have moved to support the NVMe standard. There do, however, seem to be more products available using the M.2 format, including Sandisk’s X400 M.2 2280 at only 1.5mm thick. The PCIe SSD market doesn’t seem to have evolved as fast as the traditional drive-format market. This is presumably because PCIe SSD hardware had a significant price mark-up over their SAS / Sata -format counterparts. Therefore, customers are more likely to push these products until the end of their useful lifetime. The more widespread adoption of TLC flash may see this change, as it offers suppliers the ability to deliver products to a lower price/capacity point. This refresh may coincide with more suppliers releasing NVMe supported products, as they play catch-up with leaders such as Intel and Samsung.

2016-03-15 18:00 Chris Evans www.computerweekly.com

2 Seven steps to becoming a digital business leader For more than a decade, business and IT have become increasingly inseparable and started co- evolving, and this unstoppable integration is altering the very nature of companies, competition and work. Along with globalisation, it is the defining economic transition of our time. To succeed in this world, senior executives must increasingly think digital first , while professionals and employees at every level must learn new skills and adopt new ways of working. Those who embrace this future will enjoy exciting career opportunities, but those who resist it will be increasingly marginalised. We see both patterns in many large organisations today. Nowhere is the impact of these forces greater than in the enterprise IT function. IT has always been among the most “ inside-out ” parts of the firm because developing and managing internal information systems has required – and still requires – a deep and sustained focus on the detailed nature of individual company operations and processes. This heads-down culture is so strong that companies often appoint dedicated business relationship managers (BRMs) who have the communications and consulting skills needed to keep IT’s efforts aligned with the overall goals of their firm. Although the need for traditional BRMs remains, to ensure their future relevance, they must become more than just effective internal business partners; they must also emerge as externally engaged digital business leaders (DBLs). The difference is one of orientation – while BRMs focus mostly on internal systems, processes and applications, DBLs primarily engage with the wider digital ecosystem: the startups, technologies, platforms and disruptive business models coming out of Silicon Valley and elsewhere. Finding the time, budgets, skills and bandwidth to make this inside-out to outside-in transition while still taking care of demanding internal work is the biggest and most difficult strategic challenge facing enterprise IT today. The following seven recommendations can help.

2016-03-15 18:00 David Moschella www.computerweekly.com

3 Q&A: Dinsmore sees open source Apache Spark moving to new stage Analytics software vet Thomas Dinsmore has tracked open source Apache Spark since it first emerged. In this Q&A, the independent consultant, based in Newton, Mass., sees a new level of maturity for the often-hyped data analytics platform. Spark may not be as fast as early benchmarks suggested, but it still bears attention, according to Dinsmore. He spoke to TechTarget shortly after the recent Spark Summit East 2016. You have followed Spark from the get-go. What is the take-away from this latest event? Thomas Dinsmore: There's an overall maturation of the Spark community. There is a greater sense that Spark has arrived, as opposed to "it's the next thing. " Whether it was last year's announcement that it would support Spark, or Hadoop distribution providers like Cloudera announcing that they would make it the default selection in their distribution, there is no need anymore to take a position that Spark is overhyped. Now, I think, it is a given that Spark is going to be a part of the future. Spark does seem to be entering another stage. Discussions have evolved from how fast it is to how to make open source Apache Spark faster yet. Dinsmore: Yes, you get a lot of contradictory information regarding speed. For example, a couple of years, ago folks were talking about Spark being "100-times" faster than MapReduce. But at Spark Summit East, IBM's Anjul Bhambhri [vice president, big data and analytics] said they are getting five- and six-times faster operations when IBM SPSS pushes down to Spark rather than MapReduce. Now, five-times faster is still a good thing, but it is not 100-times faster. When people talk about performance, you always have to frame it in terms of workload. Are we talking about a sort? A logistic regression problem? What is it we are comparing? I think you hear these numbers floating around -- but in terms of rigorous studies , I am seeing more along the lines of five- and six- times improvement versus "100 times" on MapReduce, in terms of, say, a sort. And we've recently seen from Hortonworks and the folks from HPE [Hewlett Packard Enterprise] that they have rewritten the [Spark] shuffle , and they are claiming "15-times" speedup. This is reasonable, given they are rewriting it in C++, but we will see. But all this is a sign of maturing. Instead of wild-eyed claims, we are seeing thoughtful benchmarks. In several ways, Hadoop greased the skids for Spark. Certainly, recent data analytics platforms tend to support open source, as Hadoop does. Dinsmore: First of all, there is no question that open source is becoming more pervasive in the enterprise stacks. And open source is part of the DNA of Hadoop. It is an essential part of the business model of Hadoop. Thinkers on disruptive technology will tell you it's not actually technology per se that disrupts industries, it's disruptive business models. Companies like Teradata aren't hurting because Hadoop is a new technology -- it's because Hadoop is a new business model, and it's a completely disruptive way for software to be developed and delivered. Because it is open source you have a much more rapid cadence of enhancements -- particularly when you have a community of the type that open source Spark has. It's grown rapidly because it has attracted contributors. IT organizations like open source partly because open source is easier to integrate. They can open it up, look at it, inspect it -- but also, if you've grown up in the Hadoop ecosystem, you simply expect open source. It's just the way it is. It is a completely different ecosystem from the data warehousing ecosystem where everything was strictly commercial. The freely available software means more people can download it and learn it. It goes beyond Hadoop and Spark. In the advanced analytics world, the reason the R language has become so popular is that in colleges, where they used to primarily use SAS, in the last 10 years colleges, universities, academic researchers and so forth have switched over to open source R. If you're a student, you can teach yourself R without having to pay out a lot of money. It does seem that SAS has realized this and has increased its support of college programs for analytics, at the same time, making its software more widely available. Dinsmore: It's true that SAS has introduced a university edition; it's a virtualized version of their software that is offered for free. But it is too little, too late. It's something that would have been good if they had done it 10 years ago. A community has grown up around R, and that community is very sticky. Once people get involved in an open source community, they have an almost negative reaction to commercial software. If you are a commercial software vendor, you are really going to have to prove that you are delivering something that is otherwise unavailable.

2016-03-15 18:00 Jack Vaughan searchdatamanagement.techtarget.com

4 CW@50: 1966 - Computer Weekly goes to bat for the British computer industry Computer Weekly is marking its 50th anniversary this year with a series of articles celebrating 50 years of British technology innovation. In this article, we look back to 1966 when the first issue was published, to give the technology and cultural context that led to the launch of the world's first weekly technology newspaper. The year 1966 saw England win the World Cup, Eleanor Rigby pick up the rice where a wedding had been, and the launch of Computer Weekly. Looking back at those England footballers – with their short haircuts and blazers – it is tempting to think of the period as a black and white time steeped in nostalgia. And indeed the working class and provincial footballers of the time do look like throwbacks to 1950s “austerity Britain” – to borrow historian David Kynaston’s term. In the World Cup final, England played what was back then a modern 4-4-2 formation and secured a victory that would be echoed by the European Cup-winning exploits of Celtic in 1967 and Manchester United in 1968. In those days, British football teams were too modern and fit – thanks to a wartime diet free of junk food – for their hitherto dominant Latin opponents. It was, though, only a brief period of relative success for native footballers. British pop music enjoyed an international prominence that still continues. The Beatles and the Stones incarnated a musical revolution that was part of a youth rebellion that would encompass the anti-Vietnam war campaign , the May 68 civil strife that shook France and the sexual permissiveness of Swinging London. Rarely was one generation so sharply differentiated from another as in the 1960s. And what of Computer Weekly, first published in that year of “they think it’s all over – it is now”?

2016-03-15 18:00 Brian McKenna www.computerweekly.com

5 CW@50: The heyday of British computing - how the Brits ruled IT Computer Weekly is marking its 50th anniversary this year with a series of articles celebrating 50 years of British technology innovation. In this article, we look back at the years before 1966, when Computer Weekly was first published. The story of modern computing is tied intricately to wartime technology. In fact, one of the seminal papers, First draft of a report on the EDVAC, which set in concrete the definition of a modern computer, was written by mathematician John von Neumann , who worked on a way to process the vast numbers of calculations for the Manhattan project in Los Alamos, which was needed to design an atomic bomb. In the UK, putting aside Colossus, Bletchley Park’s ingenious cypher-breaking machine that was bound for many years by the Official Secrets Act, there was plenty coming out of wartime technology. “A lot of wartime tech put us on the road to computing,” says computer scientist Andrew Herbert, a trustee at The National Museum of Computing. Much of this work came from British wartime effort on radar. As Simon Lavington, author and digital archivist at the Computer Conservation Society , explains: “During World War Two, high-speed pulse electronics had been developed to a high state of expertise for radar.” Many of those working on radar had studied maths or physics degrees before the Second World War, and went back to their universities afterwards, which enabled the technology developed in wartime to be utilised in academia. The big issue was how to design memory. “They didn’t know how to store data economically ,” says Andrew Herbert, leader of the EDSAC reconstruction project at The National Museum of Computing. “For the first decade of computing, memory was the Achilles heel. It takes five to six valves to store just one bit.”

2016-03-15 18:00 Cliff Saran www.computerweekly.com

6 HSCIC appoints director of data science The Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) has hired a director of data science to head up its Centre of Excellence. Last month, HSCIC revealed that it was setting up a Centre of Excellence for big data and data science with the Department of Health and the Cabinet Office. The idea was initiated under the government's Data Science Programme, which was set up in 2014 to help the government make better use of data science in policy-making and service delivery. Although it is unclear how the centre will run or how it fits in with HSCIC's overall strategy, the organisation has hired informatics specialist Daniel Ray to be its director of data science. Ray has worked in the NHS for 17 years, during which time he has led informatics teams in all sectors of healthcare and completed a number of international healthcare data projects. His most recent role was director of informatics at University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust (UHB), where he co-founded the university's Quality and Outcomes Research Unit (QuORU). Ray, who will join HSCIC on March 14, said he was "very excited" about his new role, which would involve "further unlocking national health datasets to help underpin evidence-based policy making". He said that in his new role he would also "be able to create an enabling secure environment to catapult world-class research on the unique data holding the NHS". Professor Martin Severs, HSCIC's lead clinician and interim director of information and analytics, said that Ray brought with him "knowledge and perspective of three key arenas that support high-quality patient care - the NHS, the independent sector, and academia". "His digital transformational work at University Hospital Birmingham is well known, while his appointment as a professor with the Farr Institute is testament to the regard in which he is held in the world of big data," he said. Computing 's Big Data and Analytics Summit 2016 is NEXT WEEK. To find out more, and to reserve one of the few remaining places, please see Computing 's Events website.

2016-03-15 18:00 www.computing.co.uk

7 Tor is 'brilliant' but highlights the dangers of encryption, claims GCHQ chief GCHQ chief Robert Hannigan has described the Tor network, which enables people to surf the net anonymously using encryption, as a “brilliant invention” - but one that highlights the growing problem of encrypted services. During a long speech at MIT, Hannigan covered many aspects of the current technology landscape, touching on encryption, surveillance and the balance between civil liberties and data access that government security agencies, such as GCHQ, have to strike. He cited Tor as an example of “the ethical problem” that encryption presents. "Tor is... a brilliant invention that is still invaluable to those who need high degrees of anonymity, notably dissidents, human rights advocates and journalists. But [it is] an invention that is these days dominated in volume by criminality of one sort or another," he said. However, despite the difficulties caused by encryption, or that of the iPhone owned by one of the San Bernardino shooters the FBI is trying to unlock , Hannigan maintained that encryption is still important. “I am not in favour of banning encryption. Nor am I asking for mandatory backdoors. I am puzzled by the caricatures in the current debate, where almost every attempt to tackle the misuse of encryption by criminals and terrorists is seen as a ‘backdoor'," he said. "It is an over-used metaphor, or at least misapplied in many cases, and I think it illustrates the confusion of the ethical debate in what is a highly charged and technically complex area. " Instead, Hannigan said that governments need to start tackling the encryption problem with more nuanced legislation, something he claims that the UK is pursuing with the Investigatory Powers Bill (IPB). "In the UK, we have just embarked on a new discussion of these broad issues and powers," he said, adding that the new Bill is not an attempt to gain new powers, but more a move to codify the powers that already exist in a single statute. “It does not give the intelligence agencies new powers, but tries to put in one place powers that were spread across numerous statutes,” he said. Hannigan also denied claims that there is any intention to ban or weaken encryption. “On encryption, it simply repeats the position of earlier legislation. Where access to data is legally warranted companies should provide data in clear where it is practicable or technically feasible to do so. No one in the UK government is advocating the banning or weakening of encryption,” he said. Hannigan countered the argument of those who claim that large-scale monitoring of major web channels will do nothing to stop terrorists communicating, arguing that it will make it easier to track them on lesser-used platforms. “Our problem at the moment, in short, is that those who do harm are hiding in the noise of the internet by using what the rest of us use. Pushing them off these channels is surely a shared goal for consumers, industry and government,” he said. “We do not expect to reach perfection in this, but we need to clear some ground and know where to focus our efforts.” Despite Hannigan's comments, many are wary of the government's attempt to rush through the IP Bill , noting numerous concerns relating to data protection, privacy and monitoring , especially given the speed at which the government wants to make the Bill law.

2016-03-15 18:00 www.v3.co.uk

8 Half of organisations would struggle to get mission-critical systems up-and-running in hours following a disaster - UPDATED The mission critical systems of the typical organisation in the UK would be down for hours in the event of a disaster, while recovering lost data would take a similar amount of time. But many admit that... computing.co.uk 2016-03-15 18:00 www.computing.co.uk

9 9 CSC Lorenzo system partly to blame for Sheffield NHS Trust £12m deficit CSC's electronic patient record system Lorenzo is partly to blame for a £12m shortfall at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, according to an integrated performance report by the trust's board of directors published last month. The Trust went live with Lorenzo in September last year but, according to the report, it is one of the main reasons that Sheffield Teaching Hospitals had underperformed. "The under-performance remains largely in respect of elective activity, out-patients, critical care and a larger than expected deduction for emergency re-admissions within 30 days," the report claims. "There are still data issues following the implementation of the new Lorenzo PAS [patient administration system] towards the end of September, which are creating challenges in reporting complete and accurate income figures. " But the bigger issue, according to the report, is the operational impact of the new system on booking and scheduling processes - particularly in out-patient services. Since the implementation of Lorenzo, the trust has seen a rise in did not attend (DNA) rates for outpatient appointments, with an analysis of the issues has shown that for some patients the DNA status was recorded incorrectly. The new system has also led to delays in administrative processes affecting pathway management, while administration tasks around outpatient booking have been more time- consuming too. It said that Lorenzo experts were visiting outpatient areas to assess the issues and recommend changes to processes where appropriate. The report said that the position the trust is in after nine months of the financial year "remains of concern". It added that action was being pursued to improve the delivery of activity, efficiency and financial plans and to mitigate risks and to maximise contingencies. "Resolving the issues following the Lorenzo implementation and getting activity back to normal levels is critical," it said.

2016-03-15 18:00 www.computing.co.uk

10 100,000 people report phishing scams in the UK in 2015, say police Nearly 100,000 people in the UK have reported receiving phishing scam-emails in 2015, according to the City of London Police's Action Fraud and National Fraud Intelligence Bureau. Phishing - the attempt to acquire sensitive information or access to systems by sending people misleading emails or text with malicious links or payloads - is increasingly being used as a means to defraud people across the UK. Spear-phishing refers to targeted phishing. The police said the exact number of reported cases between January 2015 and December 2015 was 96,699 - with an average of 8,000 reports per month. The majority of people (68 per cent) who reported a phishing scam said it came in the form of an email, while 12.5 per cent said they were contacted by phone, 8.9 per cent said they were contacted by text, and the rest were contacted in another way. According to the Action Fraud team, the most common phishing scam in December came from fraudsters purporting to be a bank or from HMRC - with the Self-Assessment tax deadline at the end of January - followed by online payment merchants such as PayPal and utility companies. In one month, the police said that 31 per cent of all phishing scams reported had contained a potentially malicious hyperlink which would install onto the victim's PC or phone or trick them into providing sensitive information. The police found that the most common message title for phishing emails was ‘Attention' followed by other titles such as ‘Your account has been revoked', ‘Hello' and ‘Important Notification', while the top email addresses that people reported to have received came from ‘[email protected], [email protected] and [email protected]. Want to find out more about phishing and 'whaling' (the same process, only with higher profile enterprise targets)? Then tune in to our web seminar at 2pm on 16th March 2016 - register free! We will be discussing the 'dark tricks' of the phishing trade so that you can more easily recognise them, and protect your organisation, and we'll be discussing whether impending changes in data protection legislation may affect the ways you can establish your organisation's security policies to continue staying safe.

2016-03-15 18:00 www.computing.co.uk

11 Scottish Borders Council awards £92m digital services contract to CGI Scottish Borders Council has awarded a £92m digital services contract to global IT and business process services provider CGI, in a move that it says will create 200 new jobs and inject £100m into the local economy. As part of the 13-year contract, CGI will provide the council with new technology in a bid to improve customer services and streamline existing systems. CGI will also establish a Scottish ICT Delivery Centre of Excellence, which is where the 200 new jobs will be created and where the Scottish Borders' 49 existing ICT staff will be located. The council said that apprenticeships will be offered to young people from the area. In addition, CGI is to "unbundle" six telephone exchanges in the Borders in a bid to provide new high-speed broadband initiatives for schools, businesses and the local community. CGI will also deploy a new ERP system to replace the council's existing finance and HR systems, and implement a digital platform with the intention of making it simpler for residents to interact with the council and provide feedback. Council leader David Parker suggested that the award of the contract was a "landmark deal" for the Scottish Borders. "For CGI to choose the Scottish Borders to base their second UK service centre is a genuinely exciting opportunity. Not only does it mean our existing ICT staff will remain in the Borders, but it will also bring a wide range of benefits and opportunities," he said. The contract comes on the back of CGI winning a £186m contract with the City of Edinburgh last year to provide "transformational" outsourced ICT services to help the local authority make a shift to digital services. Scottish Borders said it was the first local authority to use the new public-sector partner procurement process, which was agreed to help save public bodies across Scotland time and money by streamlining the tender and awarding of contracts. The council was named as a public-sector partner by the City of Edinburgh Council throughout their ICT service re-procurement exercise, which meant it had the opportunity to contract directly with CGI as the winning bidder on the City of Edinburgh Council tender.

2016-03-15 18:00 www.computing.co.uk

12 Email pioneer and man behind the @ symbol Ray Tomlinson dies aged 74 The inventor of email and the internet's @ symbol, Ray Tomlinson, has died at the age of 74. Tomlinson is credited with inventing email as we know it today in a programme for internet predecessor Arpanet. The invention of email came about as Tomlinson looked for something useful to do with the Arpanet. He conducted much of his work as unsanctioned side-projects, the equivalent of Google's '20 percent' time today. A Forbes profile even quotes him telling a contemporary colleague: "Don’t tell anyone! This isn’t what we’re supposed to be working on. " His lasting legacy is the @ or 'at' symbol, which was fast becoming an archaic leftover from the days of pre-computer book-keeping. Tomlinson is said to have chosen it because it was doing nothing and its original meaning of 'at the rate of' was transferrable to 'at the server'. The symbol has gone on to be used in a wide variety of contexts from programming to instant messaging. Tomlinson (pictured above) worked at Raytheon in Cambridge , Massachusetts. He received a variety of plaudits for his work, including a George R Stibitz Computer Pioneer Award from the American Computer Museum, and an Eduard-Rhein Cultural Award, to name but two. In later years, he lived in Lincoln where he raised miniature sheep. So far his family has released no statement and no cause of death has been announced. , biggest email service in the world , gave its own tribute via Twitter, itself a huge beneficiary of the @ sign. The @ sign, which still has no official single word for it, will forever act as a lasting memory to his subtle but vast influence on the world. Perhaps it's time it was named a 'Ray' sign. µ

2016-03-15 18:00 www.theinquirer.net

13 13 Cisco is to acquire hybrid cloud management firm CliQr for £260m Cisco is to buy CliQr, a provider of application management solutions for hybrid cloud environments, for $260m. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter of this year. The networking hardware giant is buying the San Jose-based cloud company in a bid to strengthen its hybrid cloud management offerings. Cisco claimed that the acquisition would help its customers simplify and accelerate their private, public and hybrid cloud deployments. CliQr was founded in 2010 and had raised about $38m from investors that include Google Ventures and Foundation Capital. CliQr's technology is already being used by Cisco in a number of switching and cloud offerings, including Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) and Unified Computing System (UCS). "Customers today have to manage a massive number of complex and different applications across many clouds," said Rob Salvagno, vice president of corporate development at Cisco. "With CliQr, Cisco will be able to help our customers realise the promise of the cloud and easily manage the lifecycle of their applications on any hybrid cloud environment," he added. Cisco suggested that CliQr would provide its customers with a single platform dubbed the CloudCenter, which would give end users the ability to move application by application into a cloud environment. Cisco said that CliQr would integrate with the firm's existing data centre products, and CliQr employees would join Cisco's Insieme Business Unit, reporting to Prem Jain, who is the senior vice president and general manager of the division. Cisco has been on an acquisition trail of late; last month it announced its intention to acquire Internet of Things specialist Jasper for $1.4bn, while it has also acquired a host of cloud computing firms such as 1 Mainstream, OpenDNS, Piston Cloud Computing and Tropo. Computing's Cloud & Infrastructure Summit will take place in London, once again, in September. For more information, and to register, please check out the Cloud & Infrastructure Summit 2016 website

2016-03-15 18:00 www.computing.co.uk

14 Privacy and security in the cloud are not the same thing The new European data protection regulations mean that customers of cloud companies, and the cloud firms themselves, must increasingly focus on privacy as well as security. Traditionally, cloud firms have...

2016-03-15 18:00 www.computing.co.uk

15 Surface Book review The Surface Book is Microsoft's first attempt at a laptop proper. It has been painted as a device that will blur the lines between laptop and tablet. But is it more first-generation Surface, or has...

2016-03-15 18:00 www.v3.co.uk

16 Hundreds of cloud companies still vulnerable to DROWN security flaw

One week after critical security flaws in SSL/TLS security were uncovered, some 620 cloud services remain vulnerable to DROWN - with just a handful having taken action over the past seven days. That is the warning of security company Skyhigh Networks, which follows an analysis of cloud services. Other cloud security companies have warned that many providers still remain unpatched against a slew of other security flaws. " Skyhigh Cloud Security Labs has found that 620 cloud services remain vulnerable to [DROWN] compromise. That's not much lower than the 653 services that were vulnerable a week ago," claimed Skyhigh Networks' co-founder and vice president of engineering Sekhar Sarukkai. He continued: "What's troubling about this critical vulnerability is how slow cloud providers have been in responding to patch their services against DROWN [simply] by disabling SSLv2 support. While more cloud services overall were vulnerable to Heartbleed compared with DROWN, cloud providers quickly patched their systems to close their Heartbleed vulnerabilities. " He added: "That's bad news for the 98.9 per cent of enterprises who use at least one vulnerable service. As of today, the average organisation uses 56 vulnerable services. " Researchers at another security vendor, cloud access security broker Netskope, has drawn similar conclusions. " We have been monitoring SaaS apps to check whether they are vulnerable to DROWN. As part of our research, we have identified 676 software-as-a-service (SaaS) apps that are vulnerable to the attack," warned Swapnil Pathak, a member of technical staff at Netskope. According to Netskope, 676 software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications are vulnerable to DROWN. Two of those apps are considered as "high" risk in Netskope's "Cloud Confidence Index", 42 apps are rated "medium" and the remainder "low". Netskope also claimed that a number of the cloud SaaS applications that it monitors also remain vulnerable to a slew of other recent critical security flaws: 73 apps are still vulnerable to FREAK attack; 42 apps to Logjam; 38 apps to OpenSSL CCS attack; and, seven apps remain vulnerable to Poodle. Netskope accused SaaS application providers of poor patch-management practices, which could leave clients' data at risk. DROWN, which stands for "Decrypting RSA with Obsolete and Weakened eNcryption", is a cross-protocol vulnerability that affects any server that supports obsolete SSLv2 connections, as well as any other servers (including SMTP and IMAP) that share the same certificate with an SSLv2 server. Computing 's Enterprise Security & Risk Management Summit 2016 will be on 24 November 2016 in Central London. It is free to attend for qualified end users. The Cloud & Infrastructure Summit from Computing 's sister title V3 will be held from April 20-21 online .

2016-03-15 18:00 www.computing.co.uk

17 Virgin Media wins Met Office networking contract Virgin Media Business has won a contract to provide connectivity to the Met Office's next- generation Cray supercomputer - one of the world's fastest high-performance computers. The computer is capable of more than 23,000 trillion calculations per second and will enable scientists to provide more accurate weather forecasting and help countries become more resilient to high impact weather. Computing interviewed Met Office CIO Charles Ewen last month to find out more. Virgin Media Business claims that it has created a bespoke service to meet the unique connectivity needs of the Met Office. It will supply two diverse, high capacity, optical circuits to move large volumes of data between the Met Office HQ and the building that will house the new super computer at the Exeter Science Park, two kilometres away. Specifically, says Virgin Media, it will be providing two diverse, high-capacity optical circuits, with each circuit carrying six one gigabits per second (Gbps), one 10Gbps and one 100Gbps Ethernet services. The new Met Office HPC Complex at the Science Park will house both the IT Hall and a "collaboration space" where a wide range of industry organisations, research establishments and start-ups can come to collaborate. "To power some of the world's most intelligent technology we need a robust network that can weather all kinds of storms," said Dave Underwood, deputy director of the high-performance computing programme at the Met Office. He continued: "Virgin Media created a bespoke solution for us, which meets the complex needs of this supercomputer and will ensure we can sustain quality weather and climate services. " Rob Orr, executive director of sales, Virgin Media Business, said: "The Met Office provides such a crucial service to this country. It is essential they have the right technology and infrastructure in place to fulfil their needs now and into the future. " The contract was procured through the government's Network Service Framework (NSF), of which Virgin Media Business is a preferred supplier.

2016-03-15 18:00 www.computing.co.uk

18 Microsoft tempts Oracle customers with free SQL Server 2016 licences Microsoft is hoping to convince enterprise firms to migrate from other database platforms to SQL Server 2016 by offering free licenses as part of a new promotion. The catch is that they need to be signed up to Microsoft's Software Assurance licensing scheme to qualify. The new programme was disclosed at the firm's Data Driven event in New York this week, which kicked off a series of activities intended to build customer interest around SQL Server 2016 ahead of its general availability sometime later this year. Microsoft's new scheme, which aims to help more customers adopt SQL Server 2016, is billed as a programme for organisations currently running applications or workloads on 'non- Microsoft paid commercial relational database management systems' but is clearly targeted at Oracle database customers. The web page where customers can claim their free licences is headed "Break free from Oracle" and invites organisations to "Follow the leader and migrate from Oracle to SQL Server - with free licenses". On the surface, this could be a tempting proposal for many organisations, with Microsoft offering support services to kick-start their migration, plus access to its SQL Server Essentials for the Oracle Database Administrator training. Oracle's licensing has long been a bone of contention for many of its customers, not just because of high costs but with some customers claiming that licensing is often so complex that it is difficult to understand how many licenses they require. The firm is also often accused of strong-arm tactics, with Specsavers global CIO describing it as a "gun-to-the-head methodology". However, firms considering such a migration need to carefully weigh up the implications before signing up. Microsoft is making a condition of the offer that organisations must have signed up for its Software Assurance subscription licensing, under which customers pay an annual fee in exchange for the rights to new software releases and support services. Software Assurance has itself been criticised for offering poor value in some cases, especially as Microsoft does not guarantee that new versions of products will be delivered in the period covered by the subscription agreement. There are also additional restrictions, with Microsoft warning that to qualify for this offer, customers must have an SCE (Server and Cloud Enrollment) license for SQL Server. In other words, any customer that meets the criteria for free SQL Server licences will be an organisation that is already deeply committed to volume licensing of Microsoft products. It is also questionable whether the licenses are really 'free' in this case, although customers with Oracle license agreements may be able to save by switching. Meanwhile, SQL Server 2016 is expected to be a significant upgrade, bringing capabilities such as always encrypted data, expanded support for in-memory database operation, and the ability to take advantage of the increasing prevalence of cloud services in today's IT environment. "We built SQL Server 2016 for this new world, and to help businesses get ahead of today's disruptions," said the corporate vice president of Microsoft's Data Group Joseph Sirosh. "It supports hybrid transactional/analytical processing, advanced analytics and , mobile BI, data integration, always encrypted query processing capabilities and in-memory transactions with persistence. It is also perhaps the world's only relational database to be ‘born cloud-first,' with the majority of features first deployed and tested in Azure, across 22 global data centres and billions of requests per day. It is customer tested and battle ready," he added. Microsoft also disclosed this week that it is developing a version of SQL Server for Linux. This is due for availability sometime next year, after SQL Server 2016 for Windows ships. 2016-03-15 18:00 www.computing.co.uk

19 CityFibre CEO Greg Mensch's ambitious plan to bring FTTP to 100 UK towns and cities - and beat BT in the process The telecoms landscape has been dominated in the past few months by calls from the likes of Sky, TalkTalk and Vodafone for Ofcom to force BT to turn its wholesale Openreach division into a separate entity....

2016-03-15 18:00 www.v3.co.uk

20 Microsoft releases 13 security bulletins in latest Patch Tuesday Microsoft has released a total of 13 security bulletins in its latest slew of Patch Tuesday updates. The good news is that there are no obvious exploits or vulnerabilities in the wild at this stage, according to security company Shavlik. Product manager Chris Goettl suggests that this month is much like previous months, including a lot of updates, but nothing targeting widely publicised critical vulnerabilities. "March Patch Tuesday has a great deal of updates, but no public disclosures or exploited vulnerabilities as yet. Let's start with what we know for sure: Microsoft has released 13 bulletins, five of which are 'critical' and eight 'important'. With these bulletins, Microsoft is resolving 39 vulnerabilities this month," said Goettl. "On the non-Microsoft front, Adobe is releasing two bulletins, rated as Priority 2 and 3, that resolve four vulnerabilities. Additionally, Mozilla Firefox 45 has been released and is rated 'critical' as it resolves 22 vulnerabilities. " Goettl is not the only one quick off the mark with advice. Qualys CTO Wolfgang Kandek said in a blog post that Apple joins the party with a fix for the Transmission bug, and that Microsoft and Adobe are providing fixes for (yet more) PDF flaws. Although there are no exploits for these security flaws currently known about in the wild, they will inevitably come soon. "Apple has a first this month. The popular bit-torrent client Transmission was Trojaned with a ransomware version. Fortunately, it was available for download for less than 12 hours and Apple quickly revoked its signing certificate and updated the signatures in xprotect. Nevertheless, check for Transmission 2.90 in your network and isolate it if found," said Kandek. "That's it for March. No zero-days or immediately exploitable vulnerabilities this month, but apply these patches as quickly as possible anyway. We have seen attackers convert vulnerabilities into exploits quickly, particularly on Adobe Flash. " Adobe has issued a new version of Acrobat Reader with three critical fixes , which Kandek reckons you should consider a priority. To hear more about security challenges, the threats they pose and how to combat them, sign up for Computing's Enterprise Security and Risk Management conference , taking place in November. Attendance is free for qualifying end-users, so sign-up early.

2016-03-15 18:00 www.theinquirer.net

21 Microsoft accused of bundling new Windows 10 nagware into latest Patch Tuesday updates Microsoft has been accused of sneaking new Windows 10 nagware into its latest slew of Patch Tuesday updates. First discovered by Woody Leonhard at InfoWorld , this month's KB3139929 security fix issued as part of Patch Tuesday has an unexpected surprise inside - KB3146449 - under the rather vague explanation of "several non- security-related fixes for Internet Explorer". It is the lastest in a growing number of updates from Microsoft masquerading as security patches, but which in reality amount to little more than nagware intended to badger users into upgrading to Windows 10 . The latest Windows-10-related update makes Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser display a blue banner on the new tab page, which says: 'Microsoft recommends upgrading to Windows 10'. What makes it even more worrying, especially from a security point of view, is that it is not separated from a genuine Internet Explorer security patch - users have no choice except to uninstall the security patch or keep the ad-generating payload. Furthermore, KB3146449 doesn't appear in users' update history. The only way users can tell if they have got it is the banner appearing on IE and the only way of preventing it is not to install the security patch. However, only home users are affected. Corporate licences are exempt from the latest Windows 10 nagware. When Windows 10 was launched, with the offer of a free upgrade to users of existing Microsoft operating systems from Windows 7 and later, some commentators questioned the business model. Indeed, they labelled it "unsettling and Orwellian". In addition to bundling Windows 10 software and nagware into updates for Windows 7, 8 and 8.1, the company has also increasingly failed to disclose to users the nature of its patches and updates. Instead, it has provided only vague and, often, inaccurate summaries. Windows 10 itself also sends back vastly more telemetry data on users' PCs back to Microsoft. The company claims that it is anonymised, used purely for technical purposes and that no personal data is disclosed. However, many suspect that it is part of the business model for Windows 10. Computing has asked Microsoft for comment and will update the story accordingly when we get a response. Computing 's Enterprise Security & Risk Management Summit 2016 will be on 24 November 2016 in Central London. It is free to attend for qualified end users. The Cloud & Infrastructure Summit from Computing 's sister title V3 will be held from April 20-21 online . 2016-03-15 18:00 www.theinquirer.net

22 Rural Payments Agency chief: GDS and Defra didn't listen to warnings that CAP project was failing The chief executive of the Rural Payments Agency (RPA), Mark Grimshaw, has suggested that senior chiefs at the Government Digital Service (GDS) and Defra did not listen to his fears about failings in its Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) programme. The CAP programme was aimed at developing new systems and processes to support the implementation of the Common Agricultural Policy in England. It was established in 2012 to address previous failings in how CAP payments were delivered by the Agency. Earlier this month, MPs slammed senior leaders at the RPA, GDS and Defra for what they described as a "childish turf war" , which involved "dysfunctional and inappropriate behaviours" that were "inexcusable and deeply damaging" to the £154m programme. It led Public Accounts Committee chair Meg Hillier to say that it was "frankly embarrassing to learn of senior and highly paid civil servants arguing to the detriment of hard-pressed farmers". RPA chief Grimshaw gave evidence on the scheme to the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. He suggested that there was an element of truth in the PAC report, but claimed that the language used had been sensationalised. "I am certainly not in the position of accusing the committee of being inaccurate and if those are the words I used then I will recant them here and now," he said. Grimshaw said he regretted being unable "to get over to the programme the requirements of the business from a delivery and functional perspective" - claiming that this was "a concern that will live for me for many years". "As a personal failing I was not able to communicate, and not able to get senior people to recognise, that the programme was in difficulty," he said. "I was not in a position to have my opinion prevail," he added. Grimshaw suggested that "all four senior officers" who had been given responsibility for the programme should share the blame for its failings. He also claimed that "almost all" outstanding 2015 payments will be made by the end of the month.

2016-03-15 18:00 www.computing.co.uk

23 Five things to expect from Apple's imminent iPhone launch On 21 March Apple is expected to launch its long-rumoured iPhone 5SE - as well as unveiling a host of other new products and product updates. Taking place at a grand unveiling in Cupertino, California, not far from the technology giant's HQ, there's also expected to be a new iPad and refreshed Apple Watch models on offer, following months of speculation surrounding Apple's rumoured smaller, cheaper iPhone. We've rounded up five features you can expect from the incoming handset. Metal design Apple's last 'mid-range' iPhone, the iPhone 5C, was encased in brightly coloured plastic, but the iPhone 5SE is expected to look more like the iPhone 5S. It'll also have a bit of iPhone 6S about it, according to leaks showing that the iPhone 5SE will feature a curved glass front similar to that seen on Apple's latest smartphones. Apple's event invitation ( above ) also suggests that the handset will be available in the same colour options as the iPhone 6S. Four-inch screen Of course, the iPhone 5SE's standout feature will be a pint-sized 4in display, similar to that seen on the iPhone 5C before it. There's no word yet as to whether it will feature a boost in resolution, but speculation points to a "2.5D" display with curved edges that improves the tactile sensitivity of finger swipes. However, it apparently won't offer 3D Touch functionality. A9 processor Early rumours pointed to the iPhone 5SE having an A8 processor, but more recent leaks suggest that it will have the same A9 internals as the iPhone 6S. This means, in theory, that the smartphone will support Apple's Live Photos feature, and should match the firm's flagship devices when it comes to overall performance. Beefy battery The iPhone 5C had a fairly lacklustre 1,500mAh battery, but the iPhone 5SE will reportedly up the ante with a 1,715mAh unit. Affordable-ish price Apple will never make a cheap smartphone, but the iPhone 5SE, much like the iPhone 5C, will be more affordable than its iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus siblings. Prices for the iPhone 5SE will start at $450 for a 16GB model, the same as the iPhone 5, according to reports.

2016-03-15 18:00 www.v3.co.uk

24 Post Office to hire a 'head of IT vendor management’ The Post Office is looking for a head of IT vendor management to develop, formalise and direct relationships with IT vendors. The new role has been created as a part of the Post Office's 2020 strategic vision, which will transform every aspect of the organisation - people, systems, infrastructure, processes and customers, the Post Office claims in its job ad . The successful candidate will have to establish internal policies and approve external policies, standards, processes and templates for working with IT vendors. They will facilitate and maintain relationships between vendors and internal resources, including IT stakeholders and executive leadership. He or she will also have to develop a framework for interactions between vendors and the business. The head of IT vendor management will have to develop and lead an IT vendor management strategy, and ensure that IT vendors deliver maximum value. They will have to understand IT vendor spending by category, cost centre and SIAM tower, while managing staff that are part of the vendor-management team. The Post Office is looking for someone with strong negotiation, relationship and interpersonal skills, as well as basic understanding of the technology or services delivered by IT vendors. The right candidate will have to understand internal decision making and the decision making that occurs among vendors; understanding their motivations, strategic plans and market challenges. In addition, he or she will have to have strong dispute resolution and mediation skills, knowledge of market trends in contract and pricing models, service delivery and performance management, and the ability to bridge communication between IT and the business. According to the job ad, the head of IT vendor management will report to the IT service director and be located in London. Computing has filed questions with the Post Office to get more information and will update the story in due course.

2016-03-15 18:00 www.computing.co.uk

25 IT contractors set for new tax crackdown in this week's Budget IT contractors are set to be hit in another tax crackdown in the Budget this week with the news, leaked over the weekend, of plans for a clampdown on the number of people using personal service companies. The clampdown is being pitched as an attack on a tax loophole used by top stars and senior mandarins, but much of the £400m that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, expects to raise as a result of the measure will come from ordinary freelancers, including IT contractors, rather than millionaire television stars. The clampdown is expected to affect as many as 100,000 people, including IT contractors. Under the leaked proposal, employers will be required to determine whether their staff are full- time employees, and not temporary workers, and put on the payroll accordingly. A government source reportedly told the Daily Mail : " You have situations where someone working in a public body pays thousands of pounds less in tax than someone doing exactly the same job alongside them who's taxed as an employee. That can't be fair - either on the taxpayer or their fellow workers. We are going to put a stop to it. " The focus on contractors follows a Conservative backbench revolt over Osborne's plans to slash pension tax relief, with the Chancellor casting around for various ways in which he can raise money from taxpayers to close the stubbornly high budget deficit. As many as 20,000 people in the public sector alone - many of them freelance IT contractors on short-term contracts - are believed to be paid via personal service companies. In 2010 in the run-up to the election, the Conservatives had promised to review the IR35 rules should they be elected in May 2010. However, the coalition government made few changes to the rules, while Osborne is set to effectively expand them and enforce them even more rigorously. In 1999, the-then Chancellor Gordon Brown introduced IR35 in a bid to crackdown on people either effectively being employed full-time or spending a year or more in the same employment. The aim of IR35 was to increase the level of tax and national insurance paid by people being paid via personal service companies. IR35 - named after the 35th budget press release that year - came into force in April 2000. It was introduced to prevent workers from setting up limited companies through which they would work and be paid, avoiding national insurance and pay reduced taxes. The IR35 measure was intended to "look through" this contractual arrangement and to apply the law to the actualite of the relationship between employer and contractor. However, its introduction caused a storm of protest among IT contractors, who pointed out that they do not benefit from holiday pay and a slew of other benefits enjoyed by the full-time employed. Other tax-raising measures on Osborne's agenda that will affect contractors includes plans to increase insurance premium tax on car insurance from 9.5 per cent to 12.5 per cent. Osborne is also planning to raise the threshold for the 40 per cent tax rate. More and more people have been drawn-in to this tax band as successive governments have failed to raise it in line with rising wages. Stay tuned for Computing's analysis of the proposed clampdown on contractors and for our Budget coverage on Wednesday. computing.co.uk 2016-03-15 18:00 www.computing.co.uk

26 If you have less than a petabyte of data you don't need Hadoop Hadoop is unnecessary for smaller projects, and most firms should avoid using it unless they have to. That's according to Vincent de Lagabbe, CTO of Kaiko, a company that offers real-time tracking of bitcoin exchanges. "Considering the volume that we are dealing with Hadoop would be overkill. It was fancy technology for the time and people started using it for everything, but most things you can do without it. From experience, it's better to try to do without Hadoop - I mean use it when you need it but when you don't, don't bother," he said. Kaiko pulls in transaction data from the Bitcoin blockchain and also monitors the major exchanges to see who is buying the crypto-currency in order to track its price in real-time and provide additional information about the market. While speed and being able to handle unstructured data is important, volume is less of an issue for the firm. "If you've got less that a petabyte of data Hadoop is probably overkill," de Lagabbe said. Instead of Hadoop, the company is deploying DataStax Enterprise (DSE), a commercial distribution of the Apache Cassandra NoSQL database, to perform storage duties. "We didn't know what we were going to be putting into the database and we wanted something that could be flexible. Cassandra seemed like a pretty good solution to our requirements. We tried several other things but they weren't as stable for our usage. So Cassandra is our main data store. We store everything in it - blockchain data, exchanges data, everything else. " So why not opt for the free community version? "We chose DSE because we found it was more stable than the version we were using before, maybe because the builds are more carefully monitored, but I don't know," de Lagabbe said. "Then there's the extensibility, so you can easily have a Spark cluster on it to do further analysis. We have not deployed such cluster yet but we plan to do that for real-time streaming and in- memory map reduce jobs. "The support from DataStax has been helpful," he added. Recent research from Computing has found that Spark is catching up with Hadoop as a primary general-purpose big data platform - although the two are most frequently used together. Join us for Computing's Big Data & Analytics Summit on March 17th. Attendance is free to qualifying end-users, so book your place now before they all go

2016-03-15 18:00 www.computing.co.uk

27 Windows 10 Redstone update delayed for another year The Redstone update for Windows 10 is to be delayed by another year in order to cash in on the next wave of devices, according to reports. Redstone was originally expected this summer, and will be a significant update to Windows 10 - somewhere between a Windows 10.1 and a Windows 11. However, Microsoft "expert" Mary Jo Foley has reported that the company is now planning to wait until spring next year to take advantage of the devices likely to make up the bulk of the CES class of 2017. These devices will more than likely use Intel's next-generation Kaby Lake microprocessors, which will be announced later this year. Microsoft has a new policy of withdrawing support for specific chipsets after a set period, in a classic case of built-in obsolescence, so waiting for the next generation of Intel chips ought to maximise their lifespan and reduce Microsoft's support costs. Behind the headlines, it may be that Redstone needs more time to refine. The recent Fast Ring version has caused problems with freezing on Microsoft Surface devices , which is a small glitch, but such glitches can add up and all need to be ironed out before public release, so more time can only be a good thing. Speculatively, it could also give Microsoft a neat line in the sand to have one last stab at getting Windows 10 Mobile, and therefore Continuum, right. The mobile platform has been dogged by problems and is still available only on a handful of devices eight months after the launch of the desktop platform. Engineers will want to iron out all these bugs before releasing Redstone. As such, some sort of soft relaunch around Redstone could be a smart move. It could even be the point when we quietly lose the numbering altogether, as Windows-as-a-service reaches the next stage of simply becoming Windows.

2016-03-15 18:00 www.v3.co.uk

28 Osborne to green light driverless-car motorway trials The government is to back trials of driverless cars on UK motorways as early as next year, in a bid to make the UK a centre of driverless car research and technology. Chancellor George Osborne is expected to announce where and when driverless cars will hit the motorway network in his Budget speech this week. “Driverless cars could represent the most fundamental change to transport since the invention of the internal combustion engine. Naturally, we need to ensure safety and that’s what the trials we are introducing will test,” said Osborne. Clearly, Osborne has his eye on securing a slice of the driverless car market, which has been estimated will be worth about £51bn in overall social and economic benefits by 2030, as well as having the potential to provide 320,000 new jobs by the same date . For some time the government has been championing driverless cars, with trials on public roads given the go-ahead last year. Trials have been happening in Bristol, Greenwich, Milton Keynes and Coventry, with the government also announcing plans to trial driverless lorries on UK roads as well. Earlier in the year the government committed £20m to research communication between vehicles and infrastructure , after announcing a similar sum for research last year. So it comes as little surprise that the Chancellor is to reinforced the government’s commitment to the technology. The UK is in a good position to advance driverless car technology, particularly given it is the home of Jaguar Land Rover, a company at the forefront of high-tech motoring. The car maker recently revealed it wants to create driverless cars that behave like human-controlled vehicles as part of its research into understanding how people drive cars. However, before 'autonomous vehicles' can start to fill Britain's roads, the government will need to address several challenges, such as the safety, liability and licensing of driverless cars . Computing's Internet of Things Business Summit 2016 takes place on 12 May. Hear experts from across British industry reveal the latest technology and research - places are free to qualifying end users

2016-03-15 18:00 www.v3.co.uk

29 Intel shoots for 3D broadcasting with Replay Technologies acquisition Intel is pushing into digital broadcasting, having acquired Israeli 3D video specialist Replay Technologies. The purchase is a natural extension of Intel's partnership with Replay, which began in 2013, and involved the two working on various 3D video projects. Their most recent project involved 360-degree broadcasts of the NBA All-Star Weekend, specifically in the Slam Dunk contest where basketball players pull off spectacular shots. The company's proprietary freeD 3D video rendering format uses 28 ultra high-definition cameras and computational power from Intel's servers to broadcast the contest in a way that provides a 360-degree view of the dunks. Wendell Brooks, president of Intel Capital, explained that the purchase of Replay will see Intel scale up the use of freeD to create what it call "immersive sports" for broadcasters and fans. "Immersive sports requires the high-performance computing Intel is known for, and it's also data driven, fuelling the continued build out of the cloud. For athletes, coaches, broadcasters and fans, the ability to capture, analyse and share data adds compelling new dimensions to the game," he said. "As part of Intel, the team will focus on growing their existing business and advancing their technology with Intel to deliver faster freeD processing and new features like the ability to manipulate and edit personalised content. " Intel's acquisition of Replay, for an undisclosed sum, is an attempt to further develop 3D broadcasting, and shows how companies are exploring the use of new digital technology and related hardware to provide enhanced services to customers and audiences. 360-degree broadcasts could, for example, provide web broadcasts in documentaries or travel programmes, while companies could showcase products, designs and even financial results in a more interactive and engaging way. The Amba Hotel in London's Marble Arch already does something similar with a virtual reality app and headset that allows potential clients to get an interactive tour of the hotel's facilities even if they are in a different country. IBM is another company exploring the use of cutting-edge digital technologies in traditional industries, and has created a Watson-powered robot concierge for a Hilton hotel .

2016-03-15 18:00 www.computing.co.uk

30 You'll never be a captain of industry with Computer Science, says MP Even the best computer science graduates can forget about one day heading up GCHQ, or a large technology firm if they remain in the UK, a prominent Conservative MP has told Computing. Instead, the qualification most likely to land the top management roles even in the technology industry is Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE), said David Davis, MP for Haltemprice and Howden. Davis explained that these concerns were voiced by Ross Anderson, Professor of Security Engineering at the Computer Laboratory, Cambridge University, as he gave evidence to the committee for the original Snoopers' Charter (the Draft Communications Data Bill , much of which now forms part of the current Investigatory Powers Bill). "The committee asked him what he thought of GCHQ. He said they're all right, but that when his PhD students graduate, they have two choices. They can go to California and get paid a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year. Or they can go to GCHQ and get paid £25,000 per year. "But that isn't the reason the best ones don't go to GCHQ. The reason the best ones go to California, is because there they can end up running or owning the company. In GCHQ they've got the wrong qualifications to run it. That will be done by somebody with PPE. " Davis argued that it's part of the British mentality that those with "liberal arts degrees", as Davis put it, get to the top, irrespective of the function of the organisation. He explained that this creates problems in that leaders even at organisations like GCHQ and the FBI can be misled by technical experts who may have their own agenda. Davis added that the plea from FBI director James Comey in July 2015 to stop or limit commercially available encryption is a symptom of this trend. "It's idiotic," said Davis, of the idea that intelligence agencies are thoroughly defeated by encryption. "I expect the FBI head was a liberal arts specialist who'd been told this [that encryption in uncrackable] by someone who wanted to make a point. It's a demonstration of the weakness of our system of education in the West and of our promotion systems. " He continued: "They don't understand some of the problems they're dealing with. Some of the technicians will, but the heads won't necessarily in great detail. The problem is you can't just write a half-baked summary for the boss and expect him to understand it, because it actually involves understanding a whole series of things, like the mathematics of how databases work, and how search and sift routines work. "

2016-03-15 18:00 www.computing.co.uk

31 Opera to add native ad blocker to desktop web browser Opera Software - currently the subject of a $1.2bn takeover bid by a consortium of Chinese investors - is including an ad blocker in the latest version of its desktop web browser that, it claims, will speed-up page loading times by up to 90 per cent. The browser pioneer presented a series of comparisons with other ad blocker and browser combinations, finding that even the next best result, Firefox with Adblock Plus enabled, is still 21 per cent slower than Opera's integrated offering. “Advertising fuels the internet, allowing many services to be free for users. But, as our new research shows, most web pages today are significantly slowed down by bloated ads and heavy tracking. We don’t accept it. We want the web to be a better place for us all as users,” said Krystian Kolondra, senior vice president of engineering at the company and head of Opera for computers. The speed boost is achievable because ads are blocked at a web-engine level, meaning that it's the browser itself that controls page loading without having to make outside calls to plug-ins or extensions for each element. To really rub it in, Opera also includes a benchmarking tool to show users and developers just how much difference the tool makes. The debate over ad blocking is currently raging as people sick of unwieldy and performance- reducing advertisements are flocking to block, leaving webmasters struggling to find a business model that works. Ad blocking has increased 41 per cent year on year worldwide, and 98 per cent of blockers are used on PCs. Three announced recently that it is to become the first UK carrier to block adverts at a network level, while Apple has allowed ad blocker apps in the App Store for a year. Opera announced a new version of its mobile browser earlier this week that brings many of the 49 features, such as physical beacon recognition and Bluetooth interaction, bringing it into line with the current Chrome mobile edition.

2016-03-15 18:00 www.theinquirer.net

32 Bill Gates calls for tighter safeguards on bulk data collection Microsoft founder Bill Gates has demanded more public debate around bulk data collection, stating that there are currently insufficient safeguards in place to ensure that the information is only used for the proper reasons. Gates made his comments in his third 'Ask Me Anything' session on web forum service Reddit . "I think there needs to be a discussion about when the government should be able to gather information. What if we had never had wiretapping? Also the government needs to talk openly about safeguards," he said. "Right now a lot of people don't think the government has the right checks to make sure information is only used in criminal situations. So this case will be viewed as the start of a discussion. "I think very few people take the extreme view that the government should be blind to financial and communication data, but very few people think giving the government carte blanche without safeguards makes sense. "A lot of countries like the UK and France are also going through this debate. For tech companies there needs to be some consistency, including how governments work with each other. The sooner we modernise the laws the better," he said. Gates also called for improved regulation around artificial intelligence, a hot topic given that a computer has recently beaten the world champion at board game 'Go' . "I think it is worth discussing [regulation] because I share the view of Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking that when a few people control a platform with extreme intelligence it creates dangers in terms of power and eventually control," he said. He also discussed his unsurprising use of the Microsoft Surface Book and Windows 10. "I just recently switched to the Surface Book. I only detach the screen a few times a week and I like the keyboard better than my previous Surface [and] I use the latest version of Windows - always updated Windows 10," he said. 2016-03-15 18:00 www.computing.co.uk

33 API management – what's the business case? API management - or the idea of publishing application programming interfaces in a secure, scalable environment to the internet - has been touted as the next big thing for a few years now, but what, exactly...

2016-03-15 18:00 www.computing.co.uk

34 The entrepreneurial Powa of Dan Wagner Less than 18 months ago, entrepreneur Dan Wagner was boasting that Powa Technologies, his mobile payments and e-commerce company, was worth almost £2bn. Powa was not only going to compete against Square, Shopify and others, but would be bigger than Google and Alibaba, according to Wagner. Somehow, he managed to nab an estimated $225m in funding, including more than $150m from Wellington Management - which he burnt through in just three years, before Powa crashed into administration last month with just $250,000 in the bank and net debts of $16.4m. Bentley driver Wagner, though, seems to have done all right - his previous company Venda racked up pre-tax losses of £53m on revenues of just £92m, yet still managed to pay-out £6m to directors before NetSuite, bafflingly, snapped it up . Steven Prowse, who had been acting CFO for three months in 2014, described Wagner as " just a salesman obsessed with image - mainly his own ", in a blog post on LinkedIn. He accused Wagner of using his parents' permit to park his Bentley in the disabled spot, and of employing his best mate from school, Ant Sharp, who he described as "Andrew Ridgely to Dan's George Michael". It was Sharp who was largely responsible for the company's terrible reviews on the employment website Glassdoor. Indeed, the management he adds, "were the worst I've seen in over 30 years. Breathtakingly immature and bipolar". Prowse then went on to describe an accounting system that would appear to have been an open invitation to fraud (although there is no suggestion of any fraud at the company). "The main accountant not only put the invoices into the system, but could also make payments by themselves. The amount had no limit. So not only could they sneak through a small invoice and pay themselves, they could have taken the full amount from [investors] Wellington, tens of millions of pounds, and transferred it to their own account," said Prowse. It took a lot of persuading to convince Wagner to tighten such practices, Prowse added, before he was abruptly fired when he criticised Sharp's management skills to Wagner. He wasn't the only one. In response to a blog by Julie Meyer, the mysteriously successful founder of First Tuesday and Ariadne Capital, defending Wagner and Powa , a number of former employees descended to the comments section to have their say. "I always loved the company-wide emails Dan would send out criticising people's work," wrote marketing manager Jacques Corby-Tuech, while software engineer Emma Burrows commented: "I particularly liked the bit where I was recruited as part of a development team that had 19 devs on it by the start of May 2014 and was the only developer left on the 'team' by the end of the year. " Others have suggested that Powa made staff redundant one year by leaving them a voice mail on new year's eve. Of course, the real proof that Wagner has really made it as a tech failure is that he has his very own parody Twitter account, which can't be edited by "admirers" nearly as easily as his Wikipedia entry.

2016-03-15 18:00 www.computing.co.uk

35 Google's AlphaGo AI smashes top professional at ancient game of Go Google's AlphaGo artificial intelligence computer program has claimed its top human scalp at the ancient game of Go by beating challenger Lee Sedol in the first of five bouts. It follows a win in October last year for AlphaGo against Fan Hui, a lower ranked player, which was only publicised in January. While IBM's DeepThought beat a human at chess back in 1997, the wider range of branching moves makes Go a harder proposition for AI to master. Sedol had initially been confident of wiping the floor with his silicon challenger, although he seemed more apprehensive as the date approached. It was a close match, according to those who tuned-in to the live webcast, and many were surprised by the result, including Sedol himself. " I was very surprised because I did not think that I would lose the game. A mistake I made at the very beginning lasted until the very last ," he said, according to a report in The Guardian. Sedol conceded that AlphaGo played a very good game tactically. The latest four-hour contest was streamed on YouTube (see below) although it was, by all accounts a bit dull unless you're really into Go. AlphaGo may, perhaps, have been motivated by money. The winner will scoop a $1m prize. It's not known whether AlphaGo has been told that if it wins, the pot will be donated to charity. DeepMind, the unit of Google that developed AlphaGo, is based in London. Demis Hassabis, the founder and CEO of DeepMind, was full of praise for Sedol before the start of the match but very pleased with the win for artificial intelligence. Google has provided a short write-up of its victory, allowing some praise for the human. "AlphaGo takes the first game against Lee Sedol. They were neck-and-neck for its entirety in a game filled with complex fighting," said the firm in a Google Asia Pacific blog post. "Lee Sedol made very aggressive moves but AlphaGo did not back down from the fight. AlphaGo took almost all of its time compared to Lee Sedol who had almost 30 minutes left on the clock. " They may beat us at Chess and now Go, but the machines still have some way to go before they can challenge humans at football.

2016-03-15 18:00 www.theinquirer.net

36 DevOps not a silver bullet, but does have some merit, says Specsavers global CIO DevOps, the integration of developers who build and test IT services, and the teams that are responsible for deploying and maintaining IT operations, is not a "silver bullet" approach but does have some merit, according to Specsavers global CIO Phil Pavitt. Pavitt told Computing that he was "suspicious" when he first heard of the term, believing it to be "just another Gartner gimmick". "Was there any really heavy DevOps usage? There wasn't really. I mean it was just the next generation of agile, because companies who were selling stuff had run out of things to sell and were repackaging the same products," he said. But after the initial scepticism, Pavitt admitted that he now does see some merit in the approach. "Is it a silver bullet? Absolutely not. Does it improve margin? Marginally. We're dramatically increasing the amount of agile delivery that we do; we have organisations that have been training our staff and we have four or five hour projects which are agile that we have just commissioned and they'll be ready very soon," he explained. Specsavers has also put together small, agile project stand-up spaces and 'Kanban boards', all of which are contributing to the company becoming increasingly agile, said Pavitt. "I think in one or two cases we may have what people would call DevOps, but I don't think we do [just] because it's called DevOps, but because it makes some sense there," he said. "I think it's a bit of a fashion statement. I haven't seen many organisations taking it so seriously as if it is the only way to go, but [I am] certainly seeing some cases where it can enhance how agile teams can deliver," he added. Pavitt is not the only IT leader to have previously been sceptical about DevOps. In 2013, a CA Technologies poll found that 45 per cent of respondents didn't even know what DevOps was, and another 17 per cent thought it was all hype. While in 2014, nearly a quarter (23 per cent) of IT decision-makers claimed that they were not familiar with the term. But last year, a 2015 State of DevOps Report , conducted by Vanson Bourne for "data-as-a- service" company Delphix, found that DevOps was becoming increasingly prevalent in UK organisations, with 77 per cent having introduced dedicated budgets and support teams for DevOps, and more than a third (35 per cent) spending £1m or more on DevOps per year . However, on a live Computing webcast, Puppet Labs founder and CEO Luke Kanies has warned many organisations not to approach DevOps in the same way they had approached cloud computing just a couple of years ago. A couple of years ago, he said "every company had to have a cloud strategy. What we found was that most organisations' private cloud strategies was to rename their VMware vSphere infrastructure to be their private cloud. "In the same way, a lot of organisations have been implementing DevOps by taking all their ops teams and just calling them DevOps engineers. Or, hiring a slightly more senior ops engineer and giving them a different title, but with fundamentally the same role and the same dynamic - that's not the right way to implement DevOps," he said. Want to get the best out of DevOps? Come to Computing's DevOps Summit 2016 on 5 July in London - it's free for qualifying end users. More details here.

2016-03-15 18:00 www.computing.co.uk

37 Hilton installs IBM Watson-powered 'robot concierge' The Hilton hotels chain is working with IBM to create a Watson-powered robot concierge that can provide information to guests. The machine is called Connie after the hotel chain’s founder, Conrad Hilton, and is stationed at the Hilton McLean hotel in Virginia. It uses IBM Watson to understand natural language and answer questions about the hotel, local attractions, restaurants and services. Connie is effectively powered by a suite of Watson APIs that help it make sense of questions posed by humans, as well as greet guests when they enter the hotel. The robot also draws on information from WayBlazer, a company in the IBM Watson ecosystem , and specialises in providing travel information that can be parsed by cognitive computing techniques to provide travellers with specific information during the travel booking process. Access to WayBlazer’s pool of travel information enables Connie to recommend attractions well beyond the perimeter of the Hilton hotel. The machine learning capabilities of Watson mean that Connie ought to get smarter each time it responds to a query, adapting and improving its recommendations as it goes about its day-to- day duties. Connie is intended to work alongside Hilton’s customer-facing workforce rather than replace hotel staff with artificial intelligence, according to the hotel chain. However, the robot will undoubtedly be seen as a potential threat to jobs in the future , particularly as it is getting smarter, but it is not the "rise of the machines" that many technology industry luminaries forecast . Connie illustrates how even traditional companies are delving into digital technologies to augment and drive business growth or reputation rather than simply providing supporting infrastructure. Examples of this tend to be in the hospitality industry. The Amba Hotel in Marble Arch, for example, uses a virtual reality app with Google’s Cardboard and Samsung’s Gear VR headsets to show 360-degree tours of its hotels to potential clients looking at booking a conference venue. Connie is also arguably the pinnacle of the Internet of Things as it merges big data, APIs derived from cloud-powered analytics and smart machines. This area is one of the key drivers in the digital transformation of enterprises and industrial companies.

2016-03-15 18:00 www.v3.co.uk

38 38 Snowden calls 'bullshit' on FBI claim that only Apple can unlock phone Edward Snowden has described the FBI's claim that only Apple can unlock an iPhone to help it investigate the communications of the San Bernardino shooters as "bullshit". Snowden joins a growing number of commentators ( excluding Microsoft founder Bill Gates ) questioning the FBI's true intentions behind its demands on Apple , which have been rebuffed by CEO Tim Cook, who argues that the agency is in effect demanding that his firm make obsolete security technology it has spent considerable time and effort creating. Speaking by video feed at pro-democracy organisation Common Cause's Blueprint for a Great Democracy conference in Washington DC yesterday, Snowden stated that he believes "we have to use the technical community to enforce our rights", instead of allowing government to force co-operation that may be unethical or undemocratic. "We do have some evidence today of methods that do work," he continued. "The Apple versus the FBI case is a good example of this," said Snowden , adding that "the FBI would not be as pissed off as they are" if Apple wasn't setting an important precedent by flatly refusing to co-operate. Snowden, like others, disputes that the FBI's demands on Apple are about simply getting to the bottom of one case. "The FBI has said in court that Apple has the ‘exclusive technical means' - these are their words - the ‘exclusive technical means' [to access the device]," said Snowden, before adding: "Respectfully, that's bullshit. " Snowden said that there have been similar attacks since the 1990s that the FBI has investigsted without calling for any specific assistance from technology vendors. David Davis, MP for Haltemprice and Howden and a former Shadow Home Secretary, agreed with Snowden in a recent conversation with Computing , stating that the FBI's argument for forcing Apple to develop a security bypassing tool seems unfounded: "The truth is, terrorist encryption is often in the form of agreed phrases," Davis told Computing . "The Omagh bombing in Northern Ireland, when the signal was given back by the bombers that the thing was placed, [the perpetrator] said ‘The brick is in the wall', he didn't say ‘I've placed the bomb'. "It's rather obviously a code phrase, but you might use a more mundane code phrase. So even if you did away with encryption, all you'd do is make them move on to something more sophisticated. So generally speaking I'm on Apple's side in this argument. It sounds hard, but the truth is, [we must ask] ‘What are they going to learn from these two [perpetrators]?' They already will know who they talk to, they get that through metadata, they wouldn't need the phone for that. "

2016-03-15 18:00 www.computing.co.uk

39 Investigatory Powers Bill set to breeze through parliament despite protests The Investigatory Powers Bill looks set to pass through its second reading in the House of Commons today despite a storm of protest from government figures and various industry bodies. The bill, which if passed into law will give the government the ability to force telecommunications firms to store the internet and mobile phone records of their customers, has endured criticism both for its content, and the speed with which the Conservative government is rushing it through parliament. Conservative MP David Davis, who in July 2015 won a High Court ruling stating that sections 1 and 2 of the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act 2014 (DRIPA) were unlawful , told Computing recently that the legislation should be given more time for its second reading . "We are supposed to debate [the bill], and each of us will have six minutes [to comment on the bill and suggest amendments] in a speech. It's undemocratic. We ought to have a couple of days on the floor of the House for the second reading, that's the 'in principle' debate. "You can't even deal with one of the subjects in this bill - and there are probably five or six big subjects - in six minutes," said Davis. Meanwhile, Jim Killock, executive director of campaign organisation the Open Rights Group, said: "MPs of any political party who value democracy must resist the Government's attempts to rush the Investigatory Powers Bill through Parliament. "The UK's senior lawyers, its journalists and the tech industry have lambasted the Bill. Parliament's own committees have called for significant changes to its powers. But the Government is intent on forcing it into law. MPs must act before it's too late. " Many corporations have also come out against the bill, including encryption firm Echoworx. Jacob Ginsberg, senior director at the firm encouraged MPs to abstain from the vote. "It is surprising more government parties aren't following Labour's lead in abstaining to vote on the impending Investigatory Powers Bill. The speed at which this bill has been rushed through parliament surely highlights key concerns about the level of research and lack of commitment to consumer privacy. "There are very real costs, both tangible and intangible, to the UK if this bill is not implemented properly from the get go. In the short term, I cannot see how security-conscious cloud and hosting companies can continue business in the UK. In the longer term, as new technologies and means of communication arise, UK citizens need to know that their rights and safety are top of mind for the government. I think that the committee who reviewed the first draft shared some understandable fears - and it looks like too few of those have been addressed in this revision. "Having the power to sweep up someone's browsing history without a warrant is just wrong. Moves to rush the bill through do little to reassure the public that their government is looking out for their best interests, especially when the government's exercise of these powers will not be subject to a meaningful judicial authorisation process. If this bill passes, we're going to see a tidal wave of other European countries look to impose similar legislation as well. It's important that not only the Labour party, but also the British public seize the opportunitry to question this bill before the powers the UK government seeks are granted. " With most Conservative MPs likely to vote in the bill's favour, and Labour and the SNP suggesting that they will abstain, only the Liberal Democrats look likely to attempt to delay its passage into the statute books. 2016-03-15 18:00 www.computing.co.uk

40 App Annie Acquires Application Analyst AppScotch With San Francisco-headquartered AppScotch, this marks App Annie's third acquisition in two years following the acquisition of Distimo and Mobidia. Application data and insights specialist App Annie announced the acquisition of AppScotch, a company that allows advertisers, publishers, and agencies to make data backed decisions on competitive analysis and market intelligence. With San Francisco-headquartered AppScotch, this marks App Annie's third acquisition in two years following the acquisition of Dutch firm Distimo in 2014 and the Canadian firm Mobidia in 2015. "AppScotch’s team and product are aligned with App Annie's long term vision to build out a comprehensive suite of products for app businesses and this announcement is another milestone in achieving this reality," App Annie CEO, Bertrand Schmitt told eWEEK. "AppScotch's expertise is in bringing transparency to mobile paid advertising. " Schmitt said AppScotch's San Francisco based team started working out of App Annie's headquarters this week, and noted App Annie will use the newly acquired company's innovative products to help its customers find invaluable ways of planning and growing their app businesses. Research indicates the app economy is accelerating, with global mobile app store downloads projected to reach 284 billion in 2020. "App Scotch's technology will be integrated into new products that will enhance App Annie's paid-for intelligence offerings," he explained. "This is App Annie's third acquisition in three years, and alongside their recent funding news, will help solidify the company as the most trusted provider of app data and insights in the app economy. " Currently, App Annie’s Intelligence product includes granular app download, revenue, demographic, usage and engagement estimates for every major mobile app. The next major release will be Marketing Intelligence, the company’s solution aimed to inform all aspects of a mobile advertising, marketing and monetization strategy. A December report from App Annie found the focus of consumer app development is expected to shift toward vertical-specific contexts that don’t overlap with smartphone usage or where the phone is not the optimal choice, particularly fitness and health monitoring. With developer resources already stretched across mobile OS platforms, App Annie’s report said it expects competition for developer attention to increase through 2016. This will be one of the key areas that App Annie’s industry analysis team will be regularly assessing throughout 2016, given the impact competing platform priorities will likely have on slowing down these platforms’ adoption. App Annie has currently raised $157 million in funding from investors such as e. Ventures, Greycroft Partners, IDG Capital Partners, Institutional Venture Partners and Sequoia Capital. The company, which is headquartered in San Francisco, has more than 425 employees across 15 global offices and claims more than half a million mobile app professionals use its products. 2016-03-15 17:55 Nathan Eddy www.eweek.com

41 Reviewing and testing multiple smartphones at one time for eWEEK means giving up the idea of traveling light. Smartphones are small, portable and easy to carry—as long as you limit yourself to one at a time. But as the mobile reporter for eWEEK , carrying just one smartphone has been impossible lately. Right now, I'm carrying five handsets that are literally filling my front pants pockets. The idea is to carry them daily, use them, try their features, test out their cameras, examine their interfaces and see what I like and don't like. The differences and similarities appear pretty quickly. I end up carrying a small paper notebook as well so I can jot down my comments and impressions and keep things straight between five handsets. So what am I carrying right now? There's a new Samsung Galaxy S7, and a fresh Galaxy S7 Edge; an LG V10 (pictured) ; a pre- production LG G5 handset that I'm just trying out without any actual head-to-head testing at the moment; and my own personal two-year-old Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone. Please don't send me any snarky comments because I'm still carrying a Galaxy S4. I have to live with it, and that's enough snarkiness for my own sake. Here's what I can tell you about carrying five smartphones at once. It's borderline ridiculous, but it is a conversation starter. When I go out with friends or with my girlfriend, I slide the phones out of my pockets and stack them on the table or in the car center pocket or wherever else I am spending time. Rolling eyes often accompany the facial expressions of those around me as the shiny and glass hardware glistens in the light of the room or the moon, depending on the environment. Strangers ask why I am carrying so many phones or alternatively think it is cool to finally see one of the handsets they might have read about recently that haven't yet been released. Showing off the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge before they hit the stores on March 11 was fun as people wanted to take a look and see the new features that Samsung added. And besides filling one's pockets, carrying five phones at once also means carrying five phone cords and chargers, which can be unwieldy, as well. I've even adopted a five-plugs-in-one mini surge protector outlet device from Accell so I can plug them all into one outlet at a time. That's particularly useful on Amtrak trains, where outlets are at a premium. Sure, carrying five handsets at once is a bit ridiculous, but it's part of my job and it's actually fun, too. I like taking the same photo with multiple phone cameras to see how they perform. It's cool to see how phone calls sound different on different devices and how Android really performs differently from one vendor to another. Like test-driving multiple cars when car shopping, filling one's pockets with smartphones is an intriguing way to find out what phone might be the best for your own use. I'll let you know what I discover. Now if only I had bigger pockets.

2016-03-15 17:51 Todd R. www.eweek.com

42 42 PlayStation GDC 2016 LIVE: PlayStation VR launch live blog - PlayStation VR UK release date, price, specs Today we'll hear more about the PlayStation VR as Sony holds its GDC 2016 press conference. With no PlayStation VR live stream to watch we bring you real-time commentary in our PlayStation VR live blog. Plus, everything we know and think we know so far about the PlayStation VR UK release date, price and specifications. Also see: Hands-on with the HTC Vive Pre VR headset Stay tuned to PC Advisor's PlayStation VR page - we'll update all sections as we know more. (See also: Oculus Rift release date, specs and features .) Sony is set to make an appearance at Game Developers Conference (or GDC for short) today to make a PlayStation VR-related announcement. While the company has been tight-lipped about what it'll be talking about, many believe that we'll finally find out just how much Sony's VR offering will cost, and when we're likely to see it shipped. This is partly because many PlayStation VR announcements have taken place at GDC, but also because both the HTC Vive Pre and Oculus Rift are available for pre-order with delivery commencing in a number of weeks. If Sony doesn't announce pricing and a release date, it risks losing out to its high-end counterparts. The event is due to start at 2pm PT in San Francisco, California today, Tuesday 15 March, which is 9pm GMT. Sadly, it doesn't look as though Sony will be hosting its own live video stream as it has done at prior events, but don't worry - we'll be in the room and live blogging the whole event and (hopefully, Wi-Fi allowing) posting photos. You can find the live blog below, which will automatically update with new information as it's announced. Make sure you head back here tonight at 9pm GMT to find out all the latest PlayStation VR news. PlayStation VR is a virtual reality headset from Sony, previously known as Project Morpheus. It works with both the Sony PS4 and the PlayStation Vita, and utilises the PlayStation Camera to track what the user is doing, and give them a VR experience in PlayStation games. (See also: Samsung Gear VR vs Oculus Rift comparison .) On 15 September at the SCEJA Press Conference 2015 in Tokyo, Sony announced the official name for the system previously known as Project Morpheus: PlayStation VR. “The name ‘PlayStation VR’ not only directly expresses an entirely new experience from PlayStation that allows players to feel as if they are physically inside the virtual world of a game, but it also reflects our hopes that we want our users to feel a sense of familiarity as they enjoy this amazing experience,” said PlayStation's Masayasu Ito. See also: Best Blu-ray players 2016 While Sony has yet to officially announce the release date for its virtual reality headset, VRSE - the production company that produces VR content for the likes of Apple - may give us some idea. The company has a list of upcoming virtual reality platforms that the service will be available to, along with its release date in brackets. Oculus Rift, Samsung Gear VR and HTC Vive Pre are all listed along with Sony's PlayStaion VR, although the PSVR listing seems to have a release date of April 2016. We're almost sure that this is a mistake on VRSE's end (although it is quite exciting to think that the PlayStation VR could be with us much sooner than we'd originally thought), and indeed, GameStop's CEO Paul Raines has since suggested it will arrive in the fall (Autumn). "We will launch the Sony product this fall," Raines told Fox News, although he has since clarified to IGN that Sony has not announced an official release date for PlayStation VR. Update (01/03/2016): However, it seems like Sony may be sticking to its "first half of 2016" release date window, as the company has sent out invites to a PlayStation VR-focused event on 15 March 2016 in San Francisco, California. It's interesting because the event will take place just before the annual Game Developers Conference, which saw Sony announcing the VR project back in 2014, then announcing its release window and upgraded internals in 2015. With timings so close to the show, it seems likely that we'll get a specific release date and possibly pricing for the Sony-branded virtual reality headset. There is no news as yet on what the Sony headset will cost, although rumours suggest that it may be cheaper than expected. Expect it to be considerably cheaper than current builds of rival products such as the Oculus Rift, which recently went up for pre-order at £499. Recently, Swiss retailer Microspot may have accidentally announced the pricing for the headset before Sony had a chance to. If the listing is true, we should expect a price of around 498 Swiss Francs (around £360) for Sony's virtual reality headset. It's worth noting that this may just be an estimation for the headset as Sony hasn't yet announced pricing. Plus, Switzerland is a pretty pricey country to live in at the best of times, so it may be a little cheaper for us here in the UK. We'll update this story as we know more. Update (10/03/2016): Although the VR battle has largely been considered to be between the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive Pre and PlayStation VR, Sony's own vice president Masayasu Ito suggests that Sony's offering may not be able to compete with premium headsets. " If you just talk about the high-end quality, yes, I would admit that Oculus may have better VR, " Ito said, talking to . " However, it requires a very expensive and very fast PC. The biggest advantage for Sony is our headset works with PS4. It's more for everyday use, so it has to be easy to use and it has to be affordable. This is not for the person who uses a high-end PC. It's for the mass market ". While the Oculus Rift costs £499 and the HTC Vive Pre costs £689, it's rumoured that Sony's virtual reality offering will cost considerably less, possibly around the same amount as the PS4 itself. Plus, the Rift and Vive Pre require powerful PCs to run VR content while the PlayStation VR headset will be compatible with any of the 36 million PS4 consoles on the market. With a PlayStation VR focused press event taking place in a matter of days, we're sure we won't have long to find out either way. -- The PlayStation VR headset demoed at 2015 and featured on the PlayStation website features some pretty impressive specs, which should get prospective VR gamers excited. For one, it boasts a 5.7in 1920x1080 full-HD OLED display, which is said to expand the field of view and enable low persistence, removing motion blur (and the sickness, too). Sony's virtual reality headset has a 120Hz refresh rate and can render games at 120fps, which is notably higher than Oculus’ and HTC’s 90Hz offering. Combined with a powerful PS4 console and the OLED screen's high refresh rate, Sony says PlayStation VR will offer "amazingly smooth visuals". Although what the firm forgot to mention was that the VR headset won’t be powered by the PS4 – not by itself, anyway. Instead, PSVR owners will have to make some room for an additional that’ll connect to the PS4 and provide most of the processing power for the virtual reality headset. The box will also provide a ‘standard’ output for the TV, giving your friends a good idea of what’s going on inside the headset, as if you were playing a normal PS4 game. It has also been said that the PS4 will be used to follow the position and movement of the PlayStation VR headset, thanks to both built-in accelerometers and LED side lights detectable by a connected PlayStation camera. Sony claims that the PlayStation Camera can track the PSVR headset up to 1,000 times per second, which should provide gamers with a beautifully seamless experience. It also allows users to turn their heads 360 degrees in-game, allowing gamers to look behind them when inevitably being chased by a weapon-wielding enemy. This is possible thanks to sensors on the back of the headset, which let the system know when you’re looking behind you. With regards to controls, the PlayStation VR will primarily use the DualShock 4 controller as it’s a familiar controller for PS4 gamers, allowing them to game without looking at which buttons to press (which is even harder with a headset on!). It’s also because DualShock 4 controllers feature motion sensors, and can be tracked by the PlayStation camera. This gives developers more creativity when developing ways for gamers to interact with the game, and should bring something new and interesting to the table. It’s not the only way to interact with the virtual world, though. Sony is also planning to utilize the PlayStation Move Batons, accessories from Sony’s earlier motion-control system that many had written off. The Batons allow players to control both their characters and environments via gestures rather than traditional button presses. It is reported that the final product will feature a 2560 x 1440 resolution, which will translate into a retina-busting 1280x1140 display for each eye, although this is yet to be confirmed. Update (01/03/2016): It seems that Sony may have another trick up its sleeve, if recent patents are anything to go by anyway. According to patents published by the US Patent and Trademark Office, Sony has plans for sensor-clad gloves that could be used to track your hand movement in a virtual space. Both HTC and Oculus are working on bespoke handheld controllers for their virtual reality systems, while Sony (up until now) is only offering DualShock 4 & PlayStation Move support. Sony's VR gloves can be used to measure not only position but movement and pressure too, according to submitted documents. While it's worth noting that not all technology described in patents will ever see the light of day, this at least demonstrates that Sony is willing to develop new ways to interact with the virtual world around you. It's not only for gaming either - according to the patent, the gloves could be used to navigate menus in a similar way to Tom Cruise in Minority Report - cool, eh? (See also: Samsung Gear VR release date, price and specs.) See PlayStation VR in action below. Current PS4 games that are PlayStation VR compatible, and in-development games expected to be compatible with PlayStation VR (via IGN ). Atom Universe; Adrift; ARK: Survival Evolved; Among the Sleep; The Assembly; Battlezone; The Deep; Dreams; EVE: Valkyrie; Futuridium; Get Even; GNOG; Godling; Harmonix Music VR; Headmaster; Jurassic Encounter; Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes; Kitchen (demo); Loading Human; The London Heist; Mind: Path to Talamus; Omega Agent; Paranormal Activity VR; The Playroom VR; Project CARS; Q. U. B. E.²; RIGS: Mechanized Combat League; Summer Lesson; Superhypercube; Surgeon Simulator; Synthesis Universe; Technolust; Trackmania Turbo; Vanguard V; VizionEck; War Thunder; Wayward Sky; World War Toons. See also: PS4 vs review : Next-gen games console comparison . pcadvisor.co.uk 2016-03-15 15:12 Lewis Painter www.pcadvisor.co.uk

43 Currys PC World to open VR demo rooms, employee claims HTC's Vive virtual reality headset is heading into in-store demo rooms in at least three Currys PC World stores, an employee has claimed. High-street electronics giant Currys PC World is reportedly to open HTC Vive demo rooms in selected stores, allowing punters a chance to play with virtual reality hardware before splashing their cash on a headset of their own. While there is much excitement surrounding the impending launch of commercial VR headsets from HTC and Oculus VR, it is tampered with caution: previous generations of virtual reality hardware have failed to catch on and quickly died, and while the technology today is considerably more advanced that's no guarantee of success. One particular barrier, unsurprising given the first-generation nature of the devices, is price: buyers can expect to pay as much as £750 for the virtual reality hardware itself, and will need a PC costing at least another £600 on top in order to drive the device. To help ease people into such a major purchase decision, Currys PC World is reportedly opening demonstration rooms in at least three of its flagship shops. In a since-removed post for StartReply, spotted prior to its deletion by PCR Online , employee Joshua Ball claimed that HTC Vive hardware was due to arrive in-store on the 17th of March. Including his own, three stores were named as participating in the programme: Leeds, Tottenham Court Road, and Reading. Currys PC World has neither confirmed nor denied Ball's claim, which joins rumours that Overclockers UK may open its own Vive-powered virtual reality demonstration area.

2016-03-15 00:00 Published on www.bit-tech.net

44 Here's what's inside Microsoft's private preview of Visual Studio next Microsoft's next major version of Visual Studio -- codenamed Visual Studio "15" and likely to be christened Visual Studio 2016 -- is on its way toward a first public preview. Microsoft is privately testing Visual Studio 15, according to sources. My bet is the company is planning to release a first public preview of its tool suite at its Build 2016 show at the end of March. Microsoft looks to be making the VS'15 installation experience more lightweight and fast , according to The Walking Cat (a k a @h0x0d) on Twitter. The new installer is a Node app, the Cat says. From his screen shot (embedded above in this post from his Tweet), there are options for just the Visual Studio core editor; game development with Unity;. NET development (Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Forms and console apps using C#) and Python. There's new Open Folder functionality in the Visual Studio Integrated Development Environment (IDE) in VS'15, my contacts say. This will allow developers to navigate code bases that don't have projects and solutions. MSBuild-based projects inside the folder get full C# and VB Intellisense, plus the ability to build and debut from the file shortcut menu in Solution Explorer. There's also a feature called "AnyCode" in the new VS release. AnyCode allows developers to use Visual Studio with source code that hasn't been organized into projects and solutions. ​Why CIOs and developers are seldom on the same page - and why that's a good thing They may want different things but ultimately the dynamic between CIOs and developers can be highly beneficial for the businesses that employ them. A blog post providing more information briefly showed up by developer Igal Tabachnik who got his hands on the test bits, but it has since been removed. In that removed post, Tabachnik noted that AnyCode "is exiting news for people who want to quickly edit their code without using a solution/csproj files. " The private preview of VS'15 also includes TypeScript 1.8, and NuGet 3.4. NuGet 3.4 adds support for running NuGet in Linux and Apple environments, among other features. The preview also adds support for SQL Server 2016 and the most recent Azure SQL Database features in SQL Data Tools and Server Explorer. The VS'15 preview can be installed side-by-side with Visual Studio 2015. Microsoft made available Visual Studio 2015 in July 2015 and is working on finalizing its second update to that product.

2016-03-15 14:29 Mary Jo www.zdnet.com

45 AMD announces Radeon Pro Duo graphics card AMD's new Radeon Pro Duo card, due to launch Q2 2016, packs two Fury X GPUs on to a single, top-end board. AMD has nailed its colours to the mast in the battle for a slice of the virtual reality market with the announcement of the Radeon Pro Duo graphics card, boasting of having made the ' fastest gaming card in the world.' Designed both for gamers who demand the highest possible performance and for content creators working in virtual reality and ultra-high-definition, the Radeon Pro Duo is a beast: AMD claims the card is capable of 16 teraflops of single-precision compute performance, more than double that of rival Nvidia's Titan X. A quick look at the name of the card reveals the trick, though: while it's a single board, it hosts two GPUs each the equivalent of AMD's Fury X card. The Radeon Pro Duo will be AMD's top-end card for use with the LiquidVR API, though it won't be the only device to support it: the already-released R9 290 family, R9 390 family, R9 Nano, and R9 Fury boards all feature LiquidVR support for low-latency VR rendering on compatible headsets - of which both the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive have been confirmed as compatible - albeit at lower performance than its flagship card. Given the presence of two top-end GPUs, it's no surprise that AMD has once again turned to an all-in-one sealed-loop liquid cooler to keep the heat of the Radeon Pro Duo in check. With a confirmed typical 350W thermal design profile (TDP) but power connectors for up to 500W draw, that's more of a necessity than a bonus. Specifications for the Radeon Pro Duo are, unsurprisingly, basically a doubling of the R9 Fury X with a drop from 1,050MHz boost clock to 1,000MHz: there are two GPUs each with 4,096 stream processors, 256 texture units, and 64 ROPS, while each has access to its own bank of 4GB high-bandwidth memory (HBM) running at 1Gb/s across a pair of 4,096-bit buses. The price, however, has more than doubled: AMD has confirmed that when the device launches this summer it will fetch a premium figure of $1,499 - matching the launch price of the last- generation Radeon R9 295X2 while offering significantly improved performance at a lower TDP. At the same event, AMD outlined its GPU technology roadmap: Polaris, its 14nm fourth- generation Graphics Core Next architecture, is scheduled for mid-2016 with a claimed 2.5-fold increase in performance per watt; Vega will follow in early 2017 with a switch to HBM2 memory; then a year later Navi will launch with improved scalability using what AMD has mysteriously called ' nexgen memory .'

2016-03-15 13:00 Published on www.bit-tech.net

46 46 How do multi-device consumers really behave? Google thinks Analytics 360 Suite will tell you New visualization tool Data Studio 360 is one of six components in Google's Analytics 360 Suite. Google has unveiled its Analytics 360 Suite, a new integrated set of tools for businesses to make sense of data in a world where consumers use multiple devices to make immediate purchasing decisions. The Analytics 360 Suite consists of six products, including Premium, its main measurement tool for exploring customer data, which has been renamed Google Analytics 360. It also integrates Adometry, now known as 360, which helps firms analyze performance across channels, devices, and systems to optimize marketing decisions. Data analytics grows but firms still put their trust in gut instinct The increase in the use of data analytics tools is failing to snuff out the role of the traditional management hunch when it comes to business decisions. The suite aims to help enterprise marketers exploit the so-called 'micro-moments' when consumers pick up the nearest device to find stores, buy products, or look for answers -- essentially when they decide to take action. The suite promises to help firms understand customer habits online and offline. It will offer the ability to take data from a range of sources, such as CRM, devices, PoS systems, and IoT devices, and move it into Analytics 360 or export it to BigQuery. "Several years ago, Google engineers set out to simplify marketing analytics in the same way we simplified web search with Google.com. With infrastructure that allows us to handle billions and billions of daily search queries -- generating answers before users even finish typing -- we set out to give enterprise marketers the same utility," said Paul Muret, Google vice president of analytics, display, and video products, in a statement announcing the new suite. The four remaining products in the suite are new, including the Google Audience Centre 360, a data-management platform (DMP) that's integrated with Google and DoubleClick and is open to third-party data providers. The 360 beta lets marketers create A/B tests to find out what customers prefer in an online experience. Markets can use its editor to adjust text and images during the tests and then analyze the results to pick a winner. 360, also in beta, is a new visualization tool that melds data from across the suite to generate interactive reports and dashboards. This product's real-time collaboration and sharing features are based on technology, according to Muret. Finally, there's Google Tag Manager 360, which helps track user behavior on a site as well as manage and add new tags. Google has launched all four new products under a limited beta while existing customers of Google Analytics Premium and Adometry should see the name changes appear in coming months.

2016-03-15 13:49 Liam Tung www.zdnet.com

47 How much will the 4-inch iPhone 5se cost? You like the iPhone. You currently own one with a 4-inch display, but you haven't upgraded because you find the jump to 4.7-inches to be too much for your pocket (literally, or metaphorically). You're excited about the fact that Apple is expected to unveil a new iPhone with a 4-inch display. How much is it worth to you? When it comes to any new Apple product, it's the question on everyone's minds. And while Apple might want to avoid the pricetaggery as much as possible, it always comes down to the dollars and cents. First, the landscape into which the new iPhone will be born into. A 16BG iPhone 6s retails for $649 and costs Apple an estimated $211 to manufacture, while a 16GB iPhone 6s Plus retails for $749 and costs an estimated $236 to manufacture. Put that another way, consumers pay a $100 premium for the bigger display and battery, while the components only cost Apple some $25. Now, all the rumors suggest that the new iPhone - let's carry on calling it the iPhone 5se until we know different - is going to feature the gusts on an iPhone 6/6s in a smaller shell. The smaller shell means a smaller display and smaller battery, but don't expect those savings to amount to much compared to what it costs Apple to make the iPhone 6s with a 4.7-inch display. Thinking it might cost $100 less to make? Get real. The saving is probably closer to $25, and may be less than that. So what does Apple write on the price tag? Analysts are expecting the new 4-inch iPhone to retail for anything between $350 and $450. At even $450 (which is what Apple currently charges for an iPhone 5s), a 4-inch iPhone with the guts out of an iPhone 6/6s would represent tremendous value for money. At $350 the thing would be a total steal. Pricing the new 4-inch iPhone is going to be tricky. Price it too low and Apple risks hammering its average selling price, while pricing it too high might put a roadblock in the way of users pulling the trigger on the upgrade. Another dilemma facing Apple is good to make the iPhone 5se. Make it too good and people will buy it over the more expensive versions. Make it too much of a poor relation and it'll wither and die on the vine much like the iPhone 5c did. Remember the iPhone 5c? This was Apple's attempt at convincing consumers to get excited over old hardware in a shiny polycarbonate shell. It didn't work out, and Apple will be keen not to repeat this mistake with the iPhone 5se. It's also important to remember who Apple is selling this iPhone to. It's not at people who have made the jump to the iPhone 6 or iPhone 6s. This 4-inch iPhone is being aimed at upgrade laggards who are holding on to their old hardware for one reason or another, whether that be the size increase, price, or whatever. My bet is that Apple isn't expecting the 4-inch iPhone to cannibalize sales of the higher-priced units. Instead it's a way to sell a device to existing iPhone users who aren't showing any interest in buying a new one. Better they buy an iPhone and put money into Apple's coffers than buy an Android device.

2016-03-15 13:47 Adrian www.zdnet.com

48 Google to US: Driverless cars will cut public transport costs Google argues that driverless cars improve highway safety while enabling lower federal spending on roads, buses, and trains. The government should support driverless cars because they will allow it to spend less on roads, public transport, and parking, Google will tell US law makers on Tuesday. A month after Google recorded its first own-fault accident in a self-driving car, Chris Urmson, head of the project at Google, will urge senators to allow the US Department of Transport to clear a path for the vehicles because they're safer and will ultimately cost the government less. Exactly what impact driverless cars will have on roads is still being debated. Some believe they will cut congestion due to the potential for car-sharing. Others forecast more cars will be on the road as people shun public transport, although automation that enables cars to drive closer to each other will help reduce traffic jams. Driverless cars get green light for UK roads Starting in January, autonomous vehicles will be tested on UK roads in up to three cities. Google has always maintained its computer-driven cars are safer than their human-controlled counterparts, but has caused unease by designing vehicles without a steering wheel and brake pedal. "Over the next three decades, the US Department of Transportation expects that self-driving cars will play a key role in reducing transit operating costs, improving highway efficiency, and freeing up existing parking infrastructure, which currently takes up a total area of 3,000 square miles in the US, equivalent to the size of Connecticut," Urmson said. He is testifying alongside execs from GM and ride-hailing startup Lyft, which are planning to jointly develop a network of on-demand autonomous vehicles. Also testifying will be Dr Mary Louise Cummings, director of the Humans and Autonomy Lab and Duke Robotics at Duke University. Cummings will caution against rushing to deploy systems that are "absolutely not ready for widespread deployment, and certainly not ready for humans to be completely taken out of the driver's seat". Google's first accident in which its driverless vehicle was to blame involved a minor crash with a bus in Mountain View, California. The robot car wrongly judged that the bus would give way. The accident occurred just a month before Google was granted a patent for a system to detect school buses and adjust behavior at an intersection to conform with road rules. However, the patent was applied for in March 2014.

2016-03-15 12:57 Liam Tung www.zdnet.com

49 This is what happens when a bird blasts into a plane Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives. Birds are such gentle things. When we see a flock of them flying in perfect formation across the sky, we wonder: "Why can't humans find that sort of harmony? " For pilots, however, birds can be trouble. Your plane is going quickly. They might not see you coming soon enough. You might not see them either. They might fly into your engine. Or, as happened to an Egyptair 737-866 approaching London's Heathrow airport on Friday, they might smack straight into the nose of your plane. Egyptair didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Birds can cause considerable structural damage to plane without necessarily having dangerous effects. It isn't just bird strikes that can impact a plane's structure. The pilots can't do much about these sorts of incidents. They have to have faith in the plane's design. I wonder, though, what passengers on the Eqyptair flight might have thought when they looked back at the plane from which they'd just disembarked.

2016-03-15 12:55 Chris Matyszczyk www.cnet.com

50 Here's one way to preview the next iPad: Print a 3D model of it What will the next iPad have? Apple is expected to show new products at the March 21st press event, and a new iPad Air is thought to be one of them. The firm skipped showing off an upgrade to the current 9.7-inch iPad late last year and focused all attention on the big iPad Pro. It's time for a new iPad Air and it seems logical that we'll see the next one at the event. Rumors of what we might see in the iPad Air 3 (or whatever Apple plans to call it) have been swirling around for a while, but the folks at Techsmart used 3D printing to show the next iPad. Getting its hands early on a case for what it's been told is the next iPad, Techsmart carefully 3D scanned it. Then they developed a model of the next iPad using scanning of the case to get exact dimensions and used the cutouts for the iPad to get it as accurate as they could. Taking the final 3D model of what very well may be the next iPad, a 3D printer was fired up and they created a physical model of the next iPad. The dimensions and controls are accurately produced in the model. Based on this long process, it appears the next iPad will have the following hardware features: Otherwise, the 3D model created shows the next iPad Air will be much like the current iPad Air 2. The model looks to be much the same size as the 9.7-inch iPad Air 2. Techsmart shot a video showing the features on the 3D printed model. Apple is known to give information to case makers in advance so there are third-party case options when a new device is launched, so this case the Techsmart folks got hold of may be real. It's important to remember it may not be, however, so Apple may still have a few surprises up its sleeve at the press event.

2016-03-15 12:28 James Kendrick www.zdnet.com

51 The Internet of dangerous, broken things Matthew Garrett, the well-known Linux and security expert who works at CoreOS , was in a London hotel recently where the light switches had been replaced by Android tablets. Garrett, a hacker's hacker, decided to see what they were doing. A few hours later Garrett had access to the electronics in every room. Security? In the Internet of Things? Surely you jest! Oh boy. While Garrett is a security expert , this feat didn't require any elite cracker skills. Garrett explained he unplugged a tablet and put his laptop into the link. He then set up a transparent bridge. That's trivial for any Linux network administrator. He then used the popular network protocol analyzer WireShark to analyze the traffic. He quickly found that the devices were using the Modbus protocol. This is an, ancient, serial protocol used to control program logic controllers (PLC)s, aka simple electronic devices. "Modbus is a pretty trivial protocol, and notably has no authentication whatsoever," observed Garrett. I'll add that it has no security whatsoever. Tcpdump revealed that the traffic was being directed to the IPV4 address 172.16.207.14. A little bit later, with pymodbus , an open-source Python implementation, Garrett was happily "controlling my lights, turning the TV on and off and even making my curtains open and close. What fun! " Then he noticed that his room number was 714 and his IP address ended in 7.104. Could it be? Could it possibly be? Yes! Yes, it was "It's basically as bad as it could be - once I'd figured out the gateway, I could access the control systems on every floor and query other rooms to figure out whether the lights were on or not, which strongly implies that I could control them as well. " He resisted the temptation to set room lights to full and open curtains at 3AM. And he didn't check to see if he might "open door room 614. " Surely, that's on a different, more secure system. ... I hope. In a related, but far sillier episode, a recent NPR episode on Amazon Echo caused several Echo devices to start responding to its default attention word "Alexa" during the broadcast. Do you think that Echoes should use programmable wake words? I, and, my fellow ZDNet writer, David Gewirtz do. What do these episodes have in common? In both cases two early model Internet of Things (IoT) devices showed that they have no security to speak of. Internet of things: Sillier and scarier and coming your way How many software updates does it take to change a light bulb? What happens when a blast furnace gets hacked? Seriously: Security looms as the elephant in all of our IoT rooms. Yes, Garrett is a security professional, but he didn't need any of those skills. Anyone with some network savvy could have done the same. As for the Echo incidents, the gadgets "hacked" themselves. This is only the latest of a long series of trivial IoT security exploits. There was the live Internet baby monitor feed and the remotely hackable Nissan Leaf car. The Internet of Things has sounded cool to me ever since I saw Star Trek where computers were everywhere and you could work with them by simply speaking into thin air. The reality's not nearly as much fun. The US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper recently warned us that "Devices, designed and fielded with minimal security requirements and testing, and an ever-increasing complexity of networks could lead to widespread vulnerabilities in civilian infrastructures and US government systems. " Minimal? Minimal!? We're already living with IoT devices with no built-in security. Unless we require our IoT devices to have real security now -- not tomorrow, today -- we are going to see a crime wave like none we've ever seen before.

2016-03-15 12:18 Steven J. www.zdnet.com

52 Looking for a good keyboard replacement? Here's our top recommendations! Price : £95-185 from Amazon (depending on variant). Looking for an all-in-one keyboard that has a fantastic build quality and one of the best mechanical switches you can find on the market? Cherry MX, the legendary German manufacturers of mechanical switches have teamed up with Corsair to provide a fully customisable RGB lightshow. Now there are other keyboards out there which offer full RGB lighting, such as the Logitech G910 Orion Spark and the SteelSeries Apex M800 , among others – but neither of these keyboards houses the fantastic Cherry MX switches. Ever since Cherry’s patent expired , a lot of companies such as Razer have used third-party switch manufacturers such as Kaihua, who produce the Kailh switch that is known on the market as the Razer switch. Cherry then signed an exclusive deal with Corsair to provide us with RGB lit switches. The Ducky Channel Shine 5 is another keyboard that has since been granted access to the Cherry MX RGB switch. The reason we chose the K95 and the K70 keyboards is simply due to their versatility. They can be found in both the Cherry MX Brown (tactile) and MX Red (soft) variants and if you’re not a fan of the RGB colour scheme, you can save yourself some money and buy the non-RGB variant. The K95 offers additional buttons on the left-hand side of the keyboard which will be a delight for those gamers looking for a host of dedicated macro keys. Both the K70 and K95 come with a wrist rest, dedicated media controls, profile switching and a USB port at the front of the keyboard, which comes in handy for quickly plugging in a flash drive. As a note: The only difference we have seen from the different generations, is the logo change – which was something that caught the internet by storm as there was a massive backlash about Corsair's rebrand. Read next: Best gaming keyboards. Price : £80 from Amazon . Looking for the holy grail of typing? Well you guessed it – a mechanical switch is what you’re looking for. As they’re not only more accurate with each key press, but can also provide a unique typewriter-feel. This is what the Cherry MX Blue switch brings to the plate: a loud, clicky-by- nature switch which is super light (50g to actuation) to type on. The Cherry MX Blue switches can be found on a whole host of different keyboard and we just happen to have chosen the Perixx PX-5200. This is because of the white LED backlighting (which can be fully disabled), the dedicated macro keys and media keys, the Perixx PX-5200 is hard to beat at its price point. There is also a MX Brown and MX Red variant of the keyboard, but that comes in a US layout, whereas the MX Blue version comes in both US and UK layout. On a separate note, if you’re going to be typing in an office environment, make sure your work colleagues don’t mind the loud nature of the MX Blue switches! Read next: Desktop PCs Test Centre . Price: £30 from Amazon . Having the ability to type away at distance is always useful, but what if you could have a compact little keyboard, that’s light, has a long battery life and better still has a small trackpad integrated on it so that you can browse around without a mouse? This is where the Logitech K400 Plus (and K400 ) offers a full host of functionalities on multiple different platforms. Through its small USB dongle, the keyboard can be used on Windows operating systems, Android TV, Chrome OS and even through USB-OTG with an Android phone (extremely useful if you want to take notes on a phone). The keyboard’s versatility and price is a great way to navigate a media PC, especially due to its customisable controls through its trackpad. We also like the discrete look of the keyboard and the silent-typing experience – a great asset when you’re browsing your media PC in the living room and don’t want to disturb your partner or friends. Read next: Best media streamers. Price : £15 from Amazon . Some of us don’t have £80 to spend on a mechanical keyboard, nor do we want a small wireless version which lacks a numeric pad. This is where the cheap and cheerful Sumvision Wraith keyboard offers a fantastic gaming and media experience. Despite it being aimed at gamers, the keyboard can be used for a whole host of different users. Over your standard keyboard, the Wraith offers dedicated media keys, quick-shortcut buttons to your default email and browser and offer 7 single-LED colour choices! The keyboard is wired by a braided cable, has a mini-wrist rest and most importantly is easy to type on through its membrane keys. We also found the keyboard to be soft on-touch, which made it easy to type on and also great for gaming. Given the keyboard’s price and overall build quality, it’s hard to find another keyboard that can offer such a host of functionalities at a ridiculously cheap price! Read next: How to build a budget gaming PC . Price : £13 from Amazon . This mini keyboard is really aimed at those looking for portability, where you literally pocket the keyboard. The TeckNet X340 connects through Bluetooth and works on Android, Mac (and iOS), Linux and Windows. This keyboard is obviously designed for those looking for a portable keyboard solution and don’t want to carry around a bag. We wouldn’t recommend it for a desktop PC, but given that PC’s are becoming increasingly portable now and we think it’s a worthy option for those in the market for a truly portable keyboard solution. It also offers a mini trackpad, which can be useful for browsing purposes and has media function keys that allow you to quickly control your music. Do bear in mind that the keyboard is extremely tiny! With a dimension of 11.5x4.3x18.3 cm, don’t expect to be rapidly typing essays or being able to type without any inaccuracies. Read next: Best ultraportable laptops.

2016-03-15 12:06 Christopher Minasians www.pcadvisor.co.uk

53 Mission: Possible! Your cognitive future in government Cognitive-based systems can build knowledge, understand natural language and provide confidence-weighted responses. And these systems can quickly find the proverbial needle in a haystack, identifying new patterns and insights — something particularly relevant in complex government information environments. Download this report as it examines current and future applications across various government mission areas and provide recommendations for those seeking a cognitive journey. It also offers insights from government leaders who understand how cognitive capabilities can help push the current boundaries of innovation and transformation in government organizations. These leaders recognize the potential to transform government — and are set to exploit cognitive capabilities to do so.

2016-03-15 12:59 www.itworldcanada.com

54 Is this the end of the API economy? Could we be reaching the end of the road for the API economy? We've grown used to the idea of open, public APIs. It's easy to quickly bring a Swagger definition or a REST endpoint into an IDE, and quickly start using code someone else has provided. Those APIs are incredibly useful, giving us access to services that would have taken months or so to build. That's a good thing, but it's also dangerous: what happens when that public API suddenly stops working? We don't have a direct relationship with the service provider, so can't really complain. Instead we're left holding the proverbial baby, shut out of a key element of our application, and struggling to fill the gaps in our code. There's also a nagging feeling that we've just been an experiment, our ideas and applications just fuel for someone else's platform -- to be duplicated and copied and turned into someone else's revenue streams. It's a story that's increasingly common, as once public APIs disappear behind paywalls or are only offered to a provider's trusted partners. Applications that relied on them get a few weeks warning that they need to change, if they're lucky; in some cases popular APIs have been turned off without warning. Why APIs are eating the world If we're to build a software-powered world, what should we be thinking about? It's time to rethink our building blocks. To a certain extent, these changes are a validation of the idea of an API economy. Closing off free access to popular APIs is a sign that companies see that they have value, that they're something that can be sold to developers as services. Public APIs are no longer loss leaders, they're part of a software and services offering. It's a change that sadly makes sense. But by closing off access completely, and by limiting access only to trusted partners, companies are closing off a possibly rich avenue of innovation. So what can they do? The answer is relatively simple: use an API management gateway. API gateways are part of any well-designed cloud service. They're used to route calls to the appropriate service instance, handling both geographic routing and load-balancing, as well as responding to scaling. In a recent presentation at QCon in London , Microsoft's Azure team described how it uses a single API gateway to handle its many cloud services -- from storage to directory services and beyond, routing calls to appropriate service endpoints and handling complex payloads. A gateway like this is an important element in API-focused service strategy. You can use it to handle user authentication, and then once user tokens have been exchanged, route calls to an appropriately provisioned endpoint. Is a user a subscriber, and at what level? If they're paying for a service, check how many calls they've made from their allocation, and deliver an appropriate error message if they've used their allocation so they can purchase more or upgrade a subscription to account for changes in user patterns. That doesn't mean returning a 200 OK message, it means delivering an appropriate and documented JSON response to ensure that applications are able to report errors to users. That same gateway is also part of any API service provider's management tooling. It needs to be able to monitor calls, reporting on response rates and errors, as well as ensuring that throughput is maintained. A well designed API gateway should also be part of service automation, triggering scale-out deployments where necessary. There's a lot that can done be with API gateways, whether you build or buy. They allow service providers to produce different classes of service for different types of users: throttling or limiting responses for free users, providing a fast channel for premium partners, even managing access to different APIs with different features for different groups of user, or for different apps. They're also able to provide a richer experience for developers, using tools like Swagger and other parts of the OpenAPI Initiative to make it easier for developers to use APIs in their apps, providing tools for IDEs to work with APIs. With Swagger, a machine readable API description can import API endpoints into your code, providing documentation -- and links to any subscription information. Do open APIs mean more complexity for mainstream businesses? Open APIs transfer programming burdens to consuming enterprises who may not be ready for it, a noted computer scientist argues. While OAI might promise a better future, it's only part of the story. It's no protection against the sudden withdrawal of service. That's a problem that's better solved by policy rather than technology, for example by policies like Google's two-year depreciation for obsolete APIs. As CTO Ed Anuff points out: "Changes need to be messaged properly, and care needs to be taken in how you communicate. " After all, we don't want a repeat of what happened when Twitter closed off access to many of its APIs, when it realised that its revenue model was based on advertising. Suddenly a service that had become popular on the back of third-party apps and services was repudiating its original model, a change that upset many developers -- and closed down many innovative apps and services. The problem is, of course, people. We're stumbling into a distributed computing API-driven world. In this realm, though the computer science and design patterns may be a done deal, the complexities of business models and developer relations are still issues. Technological solutions like OAI and API gateways are only part of the answer; at its heart we need to find a way of helping business decision makers and a whole wide world of developers sit down together and build policies that work for both constituencies -- letting us build apps, and letting APIs and cloud services make money. Let's hope that this isn't the end of the API economy, just an inelegant transition to a new phase. After all, evolution has always been messy.

2016-03-15 11:50 Simon Bisson www.zdnet.com

55 Apple's rumored smaller iPhone 5SE: Does size matter? (The 3:59, Ep. 9) Time to spin up the Apple hype. Another event is right around the corner. The 3:59 gives you bite-size news and analysis about the top stories of the day, brought to you by CNET Executive Editor Roger Cheng and CNET Senior Writer Ben Fox Rubin. Subscribe:

2016-03-15 12:55 Roger Cheng www.cnet.com

56 Here are the best VR headsets available to buy in the UK in 2016 2016 is set to be the year of virtual reality, with many manufacturers set to release their headsets at some point this year, including the likes of Oculus, HTC and Sony. Although with this being said, there is already a myriad of VR headsets available to buy in the UK. Here, we list a few of the best virtual reality headsets on the market at the moment, along with those coming this year. is, essentially, a virtual reality starter kit for those that are unsure of VR and want to experience it without having to fork out a lot of money. In fact, you don’t really have to part with any money to get a Google Cardboard as, as the name suggests, it’s made from Cardboard and Google has provided instructions on how to build it yourself , at home. It uses your existing smartphone as the display and brains of the VR system, allowing the company to cut the cost and enable users to use existing VR apps available for iOS and Android. If building the Google Cardboard seems like an effort to you, then you can buy one for around £10-15. It should fit any smartphone up to 6in, so if you’re interested in VR on a budget, it’s an ideal option. See also: 12 best Google Cardboard apps Price: Free - £15 Of course, the most popular virtual reality headset at the moment is the Oculus Rift , a headset that has spent years in development and even got bought by Facebook for $2bn (which shows that VR is for more than just gaming). Oculus worked directly with Microsoft during development and offers plug-and-play support for Windows 10 users, something no other headset can offer. It connects to your computer via DVI and USB ports, and features built-in headphones, although these can be removed if you’d prefer to use your own. Oculus is developing controllers for its Rift headset, although these won’t be available at launch. To combat this issue, Oculus provides everyone that buys a headset with an Xbox One controller to use with it, providing you with a (rather mundane) way to interact with the virtual world around you in-game. It’s not as intuitive as we’d like, but we imagine the experience will be improved once the official controllers are released. Price: £499, shipping from March 2016 Valve, arguably one of the biggest names in PC gaming (creators of Half-Life, Portal & DOTA 2 and operators of Steam, the online marketplace) paired up with HTC to create two products; console-esque boxes that run PC games, along with the Vive Pre, a fully fledged virtual reality headset that lets you do more than any other headset in this roundup. The Vive Pre separates itself because it comes with two trackers that monitor your position within your physical space, and recreates this movement in-game. Simply put, it allows you to walk around and interact with the virtual world, in the same way you would in real life. The headset features two 1080x1200 screens, the highest quality of any VR display at the moment, along with two touch-and-button enabled controllers that can simulate anything from a gun to a paintbrush. Unfortunately, all this comes at a price, and judging by the price of the Oculus Rift, we imagine this will cost upwards of £500 when available for pre-order although there is no confirmed pricing at the moment. Read about our experience with the HTC Vive here: Hands-on with the HTC Vive VR headset Price: TBC Interestingly, the PlayStation VR headset is the only VR headset for console gamers – Microsoft offers a way for gamers to play Xbox One games through the Oculus Rift, but it isn’t VR-enabled. Sony’s virtual reality offering is set to launch at some point in the first half of 2016 according to Sony, and features a 5.7in OLED display that’ll provide gamers with low persistence and, consequently, less motion blur when being used. It also boasts ultra low latency (18ms) and a 120Hz refresh rate, which is better than the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive Pre’s 90Hz offering. It means that, theoretically, beautiful 120fps gameplay is possible, although we’re not sure the PS4 could handle it. It seems that Sony had the same thought, and provide an additional box (smaller than the PS4) that’ll handle the brunt of the graphics processing. It’ll track the position of your head, and can also be used with Sony’s (failed) Move controllers, giving the old controllers a new lease of life. Price: TBC Visus VR is an interesting headset because it sits between the cheaper headsets that use your smartphone as the brains of the headset and the premium headsets that work with PCs. Why? It offers an affordable way for PC gamers to experience PC-level virtual reality similar to the Oculus Rift and is completely wireless. Unlike other headsets, the Visus VR uses your smartphone as a display – but instead of using the phone to power the headset, its used as a ‘middle man’ to communicate with your PC and stream live virtual content to the headset, with your PC doing the brunt of the work. It uses Nvidia’s GameStream technology to transmit the video stream to the headset, so a Nvidia GTX graphics card is required to use the headset. The headset boasts a 9-axis head- tracking motion system to provide accurate tracking and communicates with your PC via a tiny USB powered by 2.4GHz Wi-Fi. Price: $149 (shipping from April 2016) While Max Cohen, VP of Oculus, claims that wireless VR headsets that match the quality of the Oculus Rift are a long way away, new guys on the block Sulon aim to prove him wrong. Announced at GDC 2016, the Sulon Q claims to be "tether-free" and unlike its mobile VR- powered counterparts, the company claims that it's powerful enough to run "console-quality" graphics as well as powerful applications. This is down to the Sulon Q featuring the PC and processing hardware inside the headset, enabling it to be completely wireless with no need to be near a PC to be used. It features an AMD FX-8800P processor combined with Radeon R7 Graphics which utilise AMD's Graphics Core Next architecture. It's capable of running DirectX 12 and Vulkan graphics APIs, meaning it is more than capable of delivering high-performance graphics. Coupled with a 2560 x 1440 OLED display, a built-in mic, earbuds with 3D spatial audio processing and lenses for AR applications, the Sulon Q looks to be an "all in one" VR headset. Price: TBA, available from late Spring The Homido virtual reality headset aims to bring Virtual Reality to your smartphone while offering something a little more premium than Google’s Cardboard VR headset. The Homido VR headset boasts some pretty interesting features including custom-made VR lenses that offer a 100-degree Field of View and an adjustable IPD (distance between the lenses) as the gap between the eyes isn’t the same for everyone and can affect the overall experience. You also have the option of buying a Bluetooth controller along with the headset to bring true VR gaming to your iPhone, as touch-based games won’t work in Homido as you can’t tap the display while it's being used in the headset. Price: £48.95 The Carl Zeiss VR One headset is another VR headset that utilises the technology in your smartphone to provide you with a virtual experience. The headset comes with a tray that you slot your phone into, and that slots into the headset itself – you can choose from either the iPhone 6, Galaxy S5 or S6 phone tray when ordering, with the company providing CAD files for you to design and 3D print your own for use with other phones. The headset includes vents that stop the lenses from fogging up and provides an FOV of around 100 degrees. The VR One also features a see-through front shield, allowing the use of smartphone cameras in augmented reality (AR) apps available for iOS and Android. The performance and graphics vary depending on the power and resolution of your smartphone, so take that into consideration before handing over your money. Read our review of the Carl Zeiss VR One headset here . Price: £129 Samsung’s Gear VR is another smartphone-powered VR headset, although this one is slightly different. For one, it features Oculus Rift technology for a great overall VR experience, although this comes at a cost – it can only be used with specific Samsung Galaxy handsets (namely the Note 4, S6 and S6 Edge). Simply slot the Galaxy smartphone into the slot in the side of the headset, and plug in the supplied MicroUSB cable. Then you’ll be using a 2560 x 1440 Super AMOLED display as your VR screen – not too bad for the price (although this relies on you already having an AMOLED display-powered smartphone). Samsung also boasts a marketplace of VR-ready content named Milk VR including apps and 360-degree videos, ready for users once they take the plunge and buy the Gear VR. Price: £80

2016-03-15 11:39 Lewis Painter www.pcadvisor.co.uk

57 Why Apple went to war with the FBI (Image: Stephen Lam/Getty Images) It took just a few hours for the Justice Dept. to gauge how its legal action against Apple would be perceived by the public. Not long after a California court released an order compelling Apple to help the FBI unlock an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters, there was an outpouring of support in Apple's favor, and little compassion for the government's case. FBI could demand Apple source code and keys if iPhone backdoor too 'burdensome' The FBI could create "ghost" iPhone updates that imitate legitimate Apple software. Within hours of reading headlines with words like "backdoor," Apple responded to the growing public empathy with a letter on its website stating that the company will "oppose this order. " Apple had made iOS 8, which debuted in September 2014, impossible for anyone other than the phone's owner to unlock -- including law enforcement and Apple itself. But in the days running up to the judge signing the court order, the Justice Dept. had "stacked the deck" against the iPhone maker, according to a person with direct knowledge of the case. It was a move to thrust the long-standing debate over encryption between tech companies and law enforcement into the public eye -- one that the government reportedly ended up regretting. Over the weekend, a report in highlighted the rift between some in government, who have begun to believe that the Justice Dept. may have "made a major strategic error by pushing the case into the public consciousness. " According to the paper, senior officials said a public conflict "is exactly what [senior officials] have been trying to avoid," particularly given that some government departments have wanted tech firms to help fight propaganda laid out by the so-called Islamic State regime. That conflict was blown wide open when the Justice Dept.'s motion to compel Apple's help was approved by a California judge -- a move that prosecutors pushed to make public. Two sources speaking on the condition of anonymity said Apple had reached out to Justice Dept. prosecutors in Washington DC to ask for the motion to be filed under seal to prevent a circus-like media environment that Apple could not control. The iPhone maker is known for its carefully-crafted public message and works relentlessly to prevent its image from being tarnished. With the case already in the hands of local prosecutors, Justice Dept. officials in the capital said it was up to the US Attorney's Office in Los Angeles, Calif., which had jurisdiction. When Apple reached out to the the US Attorney's Office in Los Angeles, prosecutors were already preparing to move ex-parte -- effectively pushing the case in front of a "friendly" judge, Sheri Pym, a former federal prosecutor for almost a decade, in order to get a swift resolution. Pym issued the order without giving Apple a formal chance to respond. With the Justice Dept. pushing for an unprecedented kind of order, the government was poised to launch a public relations campaign, said a source, in an effort to pull at the public heartstrings of those who suffered as a result of the shootings. Apple CEO Tim Cook is seen in Milan, Italy late last year. (Image: Luca Bruno/AP Images) Given that it's a Californian judge fighting a case against a Californian company in a Californian court, miles away from San Bernardino where 14 people were killed in the worst terrorist attack suffered on US soil since the September 11 attacks, prosecutors wanted to make this local case affect an entire nation. The Justice Dept. wanted to draw outrage, painting Apple as the criminal. With a public relations battle about to explode in its hands, Apple knew it would have to alter its usual muted position and composed demeanor to counter the government's rhetoric. Ready for a fight, Apple did not make the request for Los Angeles prosecutors to file the motion under seal. Apple's bid to have the case filed under seal drew some private criticism, accusing Apple of trying to maintain its public image in the face of a case that, if lost, would likely have a devastating effect on its products, its revenue, and its public image. But one person close to Apple argued that the company wanted to craft a more dignified path to resolve the case by proceeding through the courts in private, without dragging its executives -- who normally shy from the spotlight -- as well as its carefully-managed public perception through the mud. Had the case proceeded under seal, neither Apple or the Justice Dept. would be able to guarantee that the case could be unsealed and made public. Apple and the Justice Dept. declined to comment on the record. (If that changes, we will update the post.)

2016-03-15 11:32 Zack Whittaker www.zdnet.com

58 Data traffic jam? Top performance requires worldwide Internet intelligence We've all come to know and rely on traffic maps like the one below and mapping software like to send us on the best route to where we want to go. There's a surprisingly apt analogy to this for Internet traffic. If you're a service provider on the Internet and you need to maintain a certain level of performance for your users; you need to know where there are accidents, traffic congestion, construction. Basically, where are the fastest routes between you and your users? Dyn (pronounced "dine") provides this sort of "Internet Intelligence" information. The company has sensors and reporting systems on ISPs, hosts, CDNs and cloud providers all over the world. These actively report back to Dyn on availability (the ability to connect to the resource from around the world), performance (measurement of latency) and market reachability (the ability to communicate from the resource to the outside world). If your customers in Berlin are experiencing performance problems with your service it could be an issue at a local ISP or CDN you are using. It could be a more general problem in Berlin. It could be a lot of things. You can then use Dyn's information on where the problems actually are to direct your traffic through alternatives until the trouble passes. IoT: The Security Challenge The Internet of Things is creating serious new security risks. We examine the possibilities and the dangers. Obviously such problems occur all the time, some from mistakes, some from equipment failure, some from malicious action like a DDOS. In all cases, the first action to take is to route around the problem. Very often, existing services and practices use geolocation and hops as a proxy for latency in order to determine best route. But what if you actually had the latency numbers? That would be much more accurate, and Dyn gets those numbers. There are many other measurements of performance and quality, such as bit loss in Internet routing. The second thing you do is to identify the true source of the problem, or at least as close to it as you can get. Even if your information is only as coarse as "Level 3 in Boston" you have enough to avoid and report the problem. But often you can get much more precise, which allows you to be more precise and less disruptive in routing around the problem. If you are a large enough site you will have load balancing between providers along the way, so you could make this adjustment by changing the priorities of the load balancing. At a lower level, you might be able to make a change just by changing DNS addresses for servers being affected to those which are not. You may even find out, through an alert from Dyn, before your users complain. This is all live data, not collected from clearinghouses as some other services do. This means they need an actual presence on systems all over the world. In some cases they say they need to measure performance at an IXP (Internet Exchange Point) but no further. Because of their extensive worldwide reach they can see problems, like route hijacking, that are invisible to most entities. Of course Dyn also offers managed DNS and traffic management services to utilize this intelligence. Old-timers like me remember Dyn as a DNS service, and I was a small-time paying customer of theirs many years ago. They discontinued their free host-name service in 2014. Dyn has many competitors in various markets such as managed DNS, managed security services and traffic management. For the sort of world-wide intelligence described here, ThousandEyes has similar offerings. I haven't compared them. At this point, the market's more than big enough for the both of them. I asked Dyn about pricing and they declined to answer the question directly. Pricing for a service like this is likely to be complicated and not cheap, but at a certain point your business is big enough and your Internet services crucial enough that you need this kind of intelligence in order to keep your systems running as best they can as much as possible. Are you an Internet service offering an SLA (Service-Level Agreement) to your customers? You need this kind of intelligence.

2016-03-15 11:30 Larry Seltzer www.zdnet.com

59 Best kids' apps 2016: 58 best free and cheap apps for kids, toddlers and teens - best Android, iPhone and iPad apps for children that your kids will love Entertaining children isn't easy in these days in which you are not allowed to let kids get bored. Entertaining children so that you can slack off and watch the telly even harder. And the hardest thing of all is to entertain and educate, whilst grabbing back a bit of time for yourself. I have good news for you reader: your smartphone and tablet are your friends. Kids love playing good apps on smartphone and tablet. There are literally thousands of kids' apps for Android, iPhone , smartphone, tablet and iPad. But not all apps are equal. Some will entertain your kids for only a short while. Others will push them to make expensive in-app purchases. And there are some 'kids' apps that aren't really appropriate for young people. We've spent time trawling through many popular apps, and present here the best of what we found. But this is where you come in: we'd love to know which apps your kids love. Let us know in the comments below what great apps your kids love to play with and we'll keep updating this story with your additions. Indeed, we start with 12 great apps for kids recommended by readers. You can jump straight into the other sections too. For each entry there is a link to download the app in the app's name heading: There are aroun 100 further recommendations in the comments at the bottom of this story. Why not add your own favourite kids app? Recommended by dynoshaa. Animals for Kids is a funny educational game for all ages. Besides watching beautiful cartoon animals your task will be to clean the habitats from trash and see how funny animals rewards you. Hien Quang Tran and Vicky A both recommended Alphabet Flashcards - an educational app to help your child learn the alphabet using flash cards. Recommended by Kalpesh Makwana Math on the Farm is a creative maths learning tool based on stories. Armen Dashtoyan recommends Zoo Alphabet for Kids. This app for all platforms is a way to teach toddlers and preschoolers their basic alphabets in an educational yet fun-filled manner. Recommended by Pablo Mobimind , Learn Movies for Kids is a wonderful way for kids to learn as they explore and enjoy music. LeonidK recommends aMath Numbers Eng, a fun maths-learning game that will be familiar to fans of Tetris. Pablo Mobimind recommends Learn to Spell - Free a game that... well, you know what it costs and what it does. A really cure game, the Yossi recommended What's The Sound? is a fun way to get small people identifying animals and more by the noises they make. Recommended by Jacek , Colouring Pages for Kids is a great (and clean) way for your kids to express their creativity. And it won't require you to redecorate. Recommended by an anonymous guest check this beautiful family-friendly book 'A Parcel of Courage'. This interactive reading adventure loaded with educational activities has four unique learning games enhancing logic, spatial cognition, photographic memory and more. Tomek Milek recommends LapsoBOX Cartoon Puzzle as a great game for kids aged five and over. Featuring amazing jumping puzzles, the app helps to develop brain power in your kids. Those are our favourite reader recommended apps. Don't forget to scroll down to the comments at the bottom of the story for around 100 more. And do let us know of any kids apps you love. Now, on with the show. And next is apps for babies. if you're doing pre-speech Sing & Sign with your baby, this offers a visual dictionary. Great fun for parent and child and it helps with development, too. See also: Best Android apps for new smartphones and tablets. This 69p iPad app by Gabaduck for younger learners is based on the traditional learning tune 'Jenny Jenkins' that teaches kids about different colours using song, games and great animal graphics. As it’s for younger children we wouldn’t expect them to sing along to the karaoke-style lyrics but they’d soon pick up the words if a parent sings along with them. If you can’t sing, don’t worry as the app includes vocals by Grammy-nominated Lisa Loeb. Alongside the sing-along songs are fun memory and colouring games and activities, making it great value for money. There’s a free memory game version (Music Matching with Lisa Loeb) to try out first. Toca Boca has a couple of app bundles available including Toca Life Bundle which includes City, School and Town for £4.49. If you want even more, there's a bundle of 10 apps in the Toca Gift Box for £14.99. That's a big saving over buying all 10 apps individually. For a freebie, try Toca Salon Christmas. Although we've included Toca Boca apps in this section, many primary school kids will love them too (indeed, our 8 year old tester loves pretty much all of them). Toca Dance has proven an instant hit with our testers, 4 and 8. And plenty of adults have enjoyed a play, too. In the £2.49 game you get to pick up to three dancers and dress them as you like from the wide range of outfits. Then you teach them routines by dragging your finger on the various body parts. You can move the arms and head independently, and drag the body to make the dancers jump and crouch. Different routines can be assigned to various coloured dots, and the system is brilliantly designed that even young children can use it. There's a variety of music to choose between and once you're done, you can watch the final performance. Even this is interactive - you can cheer, set off fireworks, throw flowers (or tomatoes) and save the video to your camera roll afterwards. It's not yet available on Android - just iOS. In City, which costs a very reasonable £2.49, kids can visit different locations around the city and interact with practically everything. From the apartment to the food stalls and clothes shop, kids can decide which people to 'invite' and - depending on the location - give them different clothes, hair styles, food and more. Our three- and seven-year-old testers couldn't get enough of Toca Life: City. It's also available on Android and the Amazon app store now, which means just about everyone can get it. The most recent entry in the Life series is School. There are five locations: School, Youth Club, Home, Cafe and Playground. As with Life: City, kids can interact with everything and our testers called it "the best game ever" after playing it on an iPad for half an hour. It's certainly a great way to spend £2.49, as there's no in-app purchases or ads, but it would be nice to see more classrooms added in a future update. However, there's still hours of fun to be had playing with the rock band, putting stuff in lockers, setting off fire alarms in the cafe and much, much more. An interactive children’s story app, currently available for free download on iPad from the App Store. Little Big Foot tells the story of a young Big Foot as he travels from the safety of his home in search of an adventure, with dozens of engaging interactions, beautiful illustrations and animations. It's a great, magical world for kids up to five years old. If your children like Peppa Pig, you have little option but to get them this app, even though it costs a couple of quid. And although we're not entirely enamoured of it, at £1.99 you won't be disappointed. All of the P2 Games apps featuring Peppa Pig- and Fireman Sam are good, and as there is a lot of over-priced rubbish bearing the names of Peppa and Sam it is worth looking out for that publisher. In Fun for Kids - Puzzles, your child gets to lay puzzles in four different ways. Every time a puzzle is completed or a piece is placed a fitting and fun sound is played. With loads of puzzles, cute graphics and different difficulty levels, your little one gets to practice problem solving and motor skills - and they should enjoy it too. There is 4 types of puzzles and a total of 40 fun challenges that awaits the child, and it is a super cheap app. Playing funny and educational mini-games, in iOS-only app Forestry your child will help forest dwellers to build a house, gather food stuffs, pick up berries, go swimming and, of course, prepare for sleep. A fascinating and useful game Forestry can also serve as great memory and attention trainer for your kid. (And it can help at bed time.) It is free, but with in-app purchases, so keep an eye out. Sago Mini Road Trip Designed specifically for toddlers and young children from 2-5, Mini Road trip is made by Sago (the sister company of Toca Boca). Kids can enjoy the fun of a whole road trip from packing a suitcase (complete with wacky items such as a chocolate cake), choosing a car (there are lots, including a shoe and a gherkin) and stopping en route for petrol and at a car wash. There are six destinations, although only three appear at any one time, which is a little confusing. There are no rules for driving, so kids can pick up the car and fly through the air if they like. It's great value at £1.99 with no ads, but it's only for iOS at the moment. All the Toca Boca games for kids are great (except Toca Band, which will drive parents round the bend), but Toca Hair Salon is seriously a must-have on any family's phone or tablet. Toca Boca games are great - hey have the design aesthetic of Swedish wooden toys and 'feel' a lot like real world toys that encourage imagination. Critically, they are great fun too. Kids love messy play, but you probably don't like clearing up afterwards. With the second version of Toca Kitchen, kids can chop, fry, bake and now blend food and force-feed it to the new Kitchen characters. Our three-year old tester particularly like blending up pears and Monster Beets, laughing out loud when the sour flavour made the characters spit it out on the screen. A recent update added peaches, strawberries, watermelon, onions, spaghetti, rice and octopus legs along with ketchup, soy sauce and a deep fryer appliance. You can enable a 'vegetarian mode' and there are no annoying links (as you get in some freemium games) which take you away from the app to the app store. Well worth the £2.49 price. Toca Boca's newest game is Blocks. It's a little like Toca Builders, but instead of 3D, this is a 2D world. You still navigate around using a central ball, but as well as building with different blocks you get three different characters which you can pick to explore the worlds you make. It's not quite as intuitive as some of Toca's other apps, but once you show your kids how to place and remove blocks, and how they change when you put different blocks on top of each other, they'll have a lot of fun. A game that is fun and captures the imagination, but is slow enough for younger children to play succesfully. Snail Bob is a physics-based strategy game, your goal is to guide the snail to the exit. Press buttons to control various mechanisms and the snail Bob, try to get to the exit as quick as possible. Rinse and repeat (hopefully long enough for Mum and Dad to have a break). Simple, charming identify-an-animal games. Younger kids love these, especially as the developers release updates each Christmas that Christmas-ify them. If you want to teach your kids the phonic pronunciation of letters and how to write them PocketPhonics is the only app you need, but only when you're not near pen, paper and a flat writing surface. A similar plea. There are so many rubbish Thomas games it's good to know that those by Callaway Digital Arts are good and to be trusted. A great free app that turns any iPad into a colourful drawing pad, without ruining the wallpaper or table. Good times. A fun and colourful to help develop children's motor skills and imagination. A game of imagination and ingenuity for tablet users. Your child plays by helping out a company of funny animals. Your toddler will love to drive a colourful LEGO DUPLO Train from station to station. Choosing and loading wagons, building bridges, stopping at crossings, refueling and laying new tracks around pesky rocks. A toddler's dream. See also: Best maths apps for children . You're have to forgive Monster Math for lacking the 's' we would expect in the UK. It is, simply, one of the best maths apps we have seen - much better than your average flash-card based app. It takes the player through the adventure of a monster called Maxx. As Maxx explores new worlds, battles enemies and so on, your kids have to help him through the power of mathematics. It's fun and engaging, and - after an initial purchase - there are no nasty in-app surprises so you can let your kids play on their own. If you have kids you will be aware of the phenomenon of 'talking' apps, in which children can interact with and talk to an animated animal. Talking Magic Rabbit is one of the best with disco dance and night time scenes, and a total of 18 different fully coloured outfits. It will drive you crazy, but keep the kids entertained. Just be careful of the in-app purchases. A game of imagination and building skill, LEGO App4+ is aimed at children from ages four to seven years. Build your own truck, then use it to bring your cargo to its right destination, and collect coins to earn more LEGO parts. fun, educational and satisfying. And that's just for the parents. Hairy Letters is helpful in learning to write letters, and Alphabetic is sort of educational as you have to spot the each letter of the alphabet in increasingly hard animated patterns. An interesting app that focuses on history over religion. App maker Quelle Histoire creates apps that help six- and seven-year-olds learn about the lives of famous people - this case the Buddha. Your children will likely enjoy this app - and they will learn something too. Through 10 illustrated images, the children will follow Buddha from his first steps under the great tree at Lumbini to his Enlightenment near to the sacred town of Uruvela. And the kids stay focused because of games on each. A challenging and fun hidden object game via which you can teach your child letters without them realising. Stealth education is the best, right? Find things in shapes made up of thousands of objects with this beautiful and addictive free app for children. A free game enjoyed by children from a surprisingly young age. You suit up with a selection of jetpacks and take to the skies on an exciting adventure. What child doesn't love trains? Train Conductor 2 lets them guide trains to their destination while avoiding disastrous collisions (or not, depending on the child in question). To play kids must simply drag each train to the correct track with the swipe of a finger. The free version of the game is no more, sadly. Featuring artwork by illustrator Christoph Niemann, this is very silly but fun. And great to look at. You pet cartoon animals, they do funny things. What's not to like? Wombi Treasures is a basic but fun and graphically rich treasure hunt game for kids, available as iPad, iPhone and Android apps. It engages young children in scouring locations to find hidden artifacts, rewarding perseverance, and keeping kids gripped with their challenge. While the graphics are rich the gameplay is relatively basic but keps children excited to keep playing again and again. A geography quiz (countries, flags, cities, landmarks) combined with a game to try to stack scale country outlines on top of each other without the pile falling over. Surprisingly good fun. Hoopa City developer TribePlay creates games with fun and interactive educational values, letting kids role-play and use their imaginations. Hoopa City is a character game for primary school children. It features Hoopa the Hippo. Kids must combine together elements to help construct cities. Children must build roads, houses, and more. It also features pioneering new mechanics so kids can combine elements to find secret combinations to unlock different building. Burst more bubbles than your competitors before the balloons will block your screen. Mars Pop is a variation of the classic bubble shooter game, an app beloved by kids of all ages. Set in a futuristic planet, Mars Pop permits your children to race simultaneously with each other. Let colourful bubbles and cute characters guide your kids through this entertaining app, while developing their logical thinking. An interactive game that lets kids role-play and use their imaginations. Children drive around two different cities, exploring the roads and discovering hidden surprises. Kids can explore by driving a fire truck, police car or even a boat. Available on practically every platform, this addictive - and great-sounding - game lets you play well-known tunes without actually having any musical talent. You just have to tap vaguely in the right area of the screen at the right time to a) make it sound right and b) get a high score. A useful free tool for music study/practice. Our teenage app fan told us she finds this app useful for finding a specific note, before auditioning for a drama or music performance. And for the post-Glee generation that is high praise indeed. Providing you can wrestle your phone or tablet from your kids, here's an app that you can enjoy just as much as they do. It won't teach you how to become a real potter but Let's create! Pottery HD is a great-looking and surprisingly fun game which everyone can enjoy. The full gaem costs £2.99, but if you're not convinced, try the free Lite version first. You know that bit in every adventure film where the hero or heroine gets their hands on the treasure but has to navigate a maze of booby traps to get out alive? That's this game in a nutshell. It's free, and according to our panel enjoyed by kids aged from four upwards. Enough with the education. Let's finish with some fun. Bike Baron is the ultimate motorbike game for iPhone and iPad, and a firm favourite with children of all ages. One of the most beautiful and captivating games ever released Monument Valley isn't cheap (for an app) at £2.49 but it will keep children and adults engaged for hours working our how to help the silent princess Ida through mysterious and mind-bending, fantastical architecture, uncovering hidden paths, unfolding Escher-like optical illusions of impossible geometry, and outsmarting the barking Crow People. Monument Valley is both surreal and serene exploration through and will surely go down in game history as one of the unique greats. Originally conceived as a public safety animation for an Australian metro company Dumbs Ways To Die morphed from a brilliant cartoon and maddeningly catchy tune that kids love to sing into an equally fun game of 15 potentially lethal possibilities. Kids love it and learn how not to get themselves killed at the same time. All together now: “Set fire to your hair, Poke a stick at a grizzly bear. Eat medicine that's out of date, Use your private parts as piranha bait.” You love Despicable Me, right? Minion Rush is a great action arcade game where the little yellow Minions jump, fly, dodge obstacles, collect bananas, ride the Fluffy Unicorn, and defeat villains in a variety of different missions. You can customise your Minion with costumes, weapons, and power-ups. Earning new locations and different Minions makes this free game a lot of fun for Despicable Me fans and anyone who likes bananas. There are in-app purchases available but not buying any doesn’t affect game play in any way. Letting your kids have fun running around on train tracks doesn’t sound like safe advice but Subway Surfers is great fun when restricted to phone or tablet, and not real life. The aim is to help Jake, Tricky & Fresh escape from the grumpy Inspector and his dog. There’s hoverboard surfing (think Back To The Future) and paint-powered jetpacks to speed around on. Addictive.

2016-03-15 11:30 Matt Egan www.pcadvisor.co.uk

60 Amazon Easter Deals Week: Cheap TVs, tablets, headphones, speakers & more tech Amazon is preparing to kick off an Easter Deals Week promotion with thousands of deals available from 17 March to 24 March. But ahead of that, Amazon is warming up with some Lightning Deals already. Here, we pick out the best of the tech deals available ahead of and throughout Amazon Easter Deals week to help you make sure that you don't miss out, including TV deals, tablet deals , headphone deals and much more. You can get access to deals 30 minutes early if you are an Amazon Prime member, and in most cases you'll get free next day delivery. You can sign up to the free trial of Amazon Prime here , or find out everything you need to know about Amazon Prime in our article: What is Amazon Prime? Best tablets | Best smartwatches | Best budget laptops | Best power banks | Best iPhone cases | Best activity trackers | Which is best to buy? | Best games consoles | Best Samsung Galaxy S7 deals | Best SIM-only deals 2016

2016-03-15 11:12 Ashleigh Allsopp www.pcadvisor.co.uk

61 Altiscale Insight Cloud goes up the Hadoop stack Hadoop-as-a-Service (HaaS) vendor Altiscale is moving up the stack with a new service called Altiscale Insight Cloud. The offering sits atop Altiscale Data Cloud, the company's existing service that features on-demand, burst-able Hadoop and Spark resources on a subscription basis. Whereas Data Cloud offers Big Data infrastructure, Insight cloud offers a Web UI supporting lightweight data ingest, transformation and analysis services. More on-point, however, is that Altiscale says Insight Cloud is a Hadoop/Spark offering that is very BI tool-ready, so that users of Tableau, Excel or other common self-service tools can more readily attach to and analyze Big Data. Analysis functionality is provided by an OEM'd implementation of Alation , a product which acts as a data catalog and which features a SQL query user interface. Underneath Alation, Altiscale has configured the Hadoop cluster such that Hive and Spark SQL point to exactly the same data files, and either technology be used to satisfy queries. Between Hive and Spark SQL, Insight Cloud covers both batch and interactive workloads. In addition, Altiscale is working on a streaming data ingest capability. The feature, which under the covers uses Apache Kafka and Spark Streaming for ingest and HBase for query/analysis, is still an Alpha-level preview. Customers looking for even more in the way of turnkey solutions can engage Altiscale Professional Services to help them build custom data connectors, author ETL assets and build out fully developed dashboard solutions. Pricing is consumption driven, and at $9,000/month for 20TB of storage and 10,000 "task hours" (a unit of compute that Altiscale uses and defines), Insight Cloud is definitely an Enterprise offering. So be it; the TCO of rolling your own Hadoop solution is likely comparable to the $108K/year that this subscription pricing works out to. Having Insight Cloud in-market makes Altiscale more competitive with fellow HaaS provider Qubole. It may well also stoke the Big Data market in a way that benefits a number of vendors in the space.

2016-03-15 11:00 Andrew Brust www.zdnet.com

62 Schmidt says robots will take our jobs: Rise of AI is a natural progression Lately we've been hearing a lot about artificial intelligence and robots pinching jobs from us humans, and , executive chairman of Alphabet (parent company of Google) is the latest to chime in on the topic. And his thoughts, revealed in an interview with the Telegraph , were prompted by the recent well- publicised games of Go between top-level human player Lee Se-dol and Google's AI AlphaBot, in which the latter resoundingly triumphed to an unexpected degree, leading Schmidt to observe: "Now there is a sense that AI has finally arrived. " Given this sterling Go success , the interviewer raised the prospect of AI-driven robots becoming better than humans in all sorts of avenues of work, thus threatening jobs. And Schmidt openly admitted that more routine, manual roles will indeed be in danger of being taken over by robots. Schmidt said: "There's no question that as [AI] becomes more pervasive, people doing routine, repetitive tasks will be at risk. " He added: "I understand the economic arguments, but this technology benefits everyone on the planet, from the rich to the poor, the educated to uneducated, high IQ to low IQ, every conceivable human being. It genuinely makes us all smarter, so this is a natural next step. " This is a rather vague statement, though, and it feels a little like being told not to stand in the way of progression – Schmidt is saying this is win-win for everyone, but not even remotely touching on the actual subject of what will happen to those whose jobs are threatened. Of course, progress is inevitable – particularly when AI is going to drive more efficient business and cost-effectiveness – but as Dave Coplin, Microsoft's futurologist in the UK observed, the best thing to do to combat any job uncertainty is to become good at what machines can't do well. For the full details on his thoughts, check out our recent interview with Coplin ; it's an illuminating little read. Article continues below 2016-03-15 10:58 By Darren www.techradar.com

63 Bangladesh Bank chief throws in the towel after cyberattack The head of the Bangladeshi central bank has resigned following a devastating cyberattack which rinsed the country's federal reserve account of at least $80 million. Atiur Rahman, who served as Governor of the Bangladesh Bank, the central financial institution for the country, submitted his resignation to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina this week according to the BBC . Despite the attack taking place in early February, the 64-year-old executive did not tell the Bangladeshi Finance Minister, A M A Muhith, who only learned of the theft through the global press. The group of hackers managed to steal at least $80 million from Bangladesh's New York-based Federal Reserve account. The criminals infected the Bangladesh Bank's computer systems with surveillance-based malware, and after watching transactions and learning how the banks operated for a few weeks, decided to strike. In a flurry of transactions requests using Bangladesh's stolen SWIFT code, the cyberattackers sent requests for cash to be sent to entities across Asia. It was only thanks to a spelling mistake in one of the requests that bank officials became suspicious, querying the transfers and blocking others in the list. If no-one had noticed, the criminals could have gotten away with up to $1 billion. It is not yet known who is behind the cyberattack, but media has pointed towards the possibility of the Chinese. Bangladeshi authorities have managed to claw back a portion of the funds, but an amount has been laundered through casinos in the Philippines, which will make the stolen cash difficult to track and recover. The Federal reserve has been blamed for not stopping the fraud, and Bangladeshi officials are mulling the prospect of suing to recover the remainder if need be. On Monday, Muhith told local reporters:

2016-03-15 10:57 Charlie Osborne www.zdnet.com

64 Wii U's Star Fox Zero has invincible mode for novice players "I think that's a very good question," Miyamoto said. "One thing that I think is a misunderstanding, is that I'm not very supportive of simply making a game easy so that people who don't play games can play the game themselves. Obviously part of the fun of taking on a challenge is that the challenge has to be a hurdle that you overcome. Simply lowering the hurdle doesn't necessarily mean that the challenge will be fun. What's fun is you mastering the skill and having that sense of accomplishment -- of achieving something that's difficult. " Miyamoto went on to say that action games like Star Fox Zero must have a "certain level of difficulty" in order for players to feel a sense of satisfaction. This will be true for Star Fox Zero (there is even a ship that does more damage than normal for players looking for an extra challenge), but the game will also offer methods of play for newcomers who are not up to the challenge. "Particularly with Star Fox Zero, if you try to complete this game, I think you're going to find it to be quite challenging," he explained. "But it's because of that, that we have things like Star Fox Guard and the cooperative mode in this game. What those do, is allow people who maybe can't deal with that level of challenge or difficulty to easily be a part of the gameplay and enjoy this universe. " He added: "And then beyond those modes, we have additional ones for people who like the game but find it too hard to get past certain levels. So for instance there'll be a way for them to get an invincible Arwing, so that they can fly through and see the levels. But at the same time, we're also preparing modes for Star Fox fans looking for an even harder challenge, such as a ship that does more damage, but which also takes more damage. "

2016-03-15 12:55 GameSpot Staff www.gamespot.com

65 Tesla co-founder joins Clearpath Robotics Marc Tarpenning, co-founder of Tesla Motors, is the newest member of Clearpath Robotics ' advisory board, the company announced. Tarpenning was tapped for his entrepreneurial and technical insight. It's a nice win for a surging robotics company. Clearpath, which h elped ease warehouse and logistics pressures during Black Friday, develops self-driving vehicles for industry, which is why Tarpenning makes sense. But Clearpath's vehicles don't look anything like Tesla's. These microscopic robots swim in blood to diagnose disease Fifty years after Raquel Welch took her Fantastic Voyage, nanomachines are a reality. The Canadian company has made a name providing hardware, software, and services to enable self-driving vehicle development, deployment, and fleet operation for over 500 brands in more than 40 countries. It's robots work in materials handling, mining, military applications, and agriculture, to name a few relevant industries. "We're thrilled to have Marc on our advisory board and work with him on a regular basis," said Matt Rendall, chief executive officer at Clearpath Robotics. "Marc brings experience and insight that will help to guide our team as we accelerate the growth of our business and enter new markets with self-driving vehicle technology. " Tarpenning has a history on the leading edge of technologies, though until now he's worked mostly on the consumer side. He co-founded NuvoMedia in 1998, which developed the Rocket ebook - one of the first handheld devices for digital books. In 2003 he co-founded Tesla Motors to build electric cars and led the development of the Tesla Roadster - the first production automobile to use lithium-ion battery cells. Tarpenning is now an active board member and advisor with numerous esteemed organizations and resides in Portola Valley, California. "Self-driving technology is clearly on the cusp of a major breakthrough. I'm happy to offer my assistance to Clearpath who, much like Tesla, has ambitious goals for making a meaningful impact on society," said Tarpenning.

2016-03-15 10:51 Greg Nichols www.zdnet.com

66 Google: We'll pay $100k if you can hack a Chromebook remotely Google paid out more than $2m to researchers for reporting security bugs last year, but still no one has been able to successfully hack a Chromebook. Google has put up a $100,000 reward for anyone who can find a way to hack its Chromebook over the web. The move doubles last year's top reward of $50,000, available exclusively for attacks that achieve a persistent compromise on a Chromebook in 'guest mode', meaning the attacker's code sticks around on the device even after a reboot and affects subsequent guest- mode sessions. In the context of a Chromebook, guest mode is a locked-down state designed to support device sharing, which protects the owner's Chrome profile from tampering, and is meant to ensure browser data and cookies vanish at the end of a session. But as Google outlined on Monday, in the year since it dangled the $50,000 Chromebook reward under its Chrome Reward Program, it hasn't received a single successful submission. Google increases rewards for bug bounty programs Even though it only recently increased its rewards for researchers who collaboratively disclose vulnerabilities with the company, Google has again increased its bug bounties, particularly around cross-site scripting flaws. "That said, great research deserves great awards, so we're putting up a standing six-figure sum, available all year round with no quotas and no maximum reward pool," Google security team members said . According to Google's rewards page : "We have a standing $100,000 reward for participants who can compromise a Chromebook or with device persistence in guest mode, ie, guest-to-guest persistence with interim reboot, delivered via a web page. " Google has previously offered more for the same attacks on Chromebooks at the Pwnium hacking contest but that was a one-day prize under competition rules rather than a year-round offer. With attacks on Chromebooks accounting for none of the more than $2m Google paid out to researchers for reporting security bugs last year, the new top reward is designed to encourage more activity in this area. Google has also broadened its bounty program to include attacks on its Safe Browsing technology, which protects Chrome users from known malicious URLs on the web and potentially unwanted applications. The new bounty, Download Protection Bypass, offers up to $1,000 for reports that bypass the feature , which is meant to flag when a user attempts to download a malicious file and provide an option to keep or discard the file. Google is more likely to reward those who can sneak a binary into a location such as the Downloads folder where a user is more likely to execute it.

2016-03-15 10:51 Liam Tung www.zdnet.com

67 Hyperloop could add augmented reality windows to ease your travel boredom We've heard plenty of excited hype about the Hyperloop transport system in recent years, but we're still some way off being able to shoot down a metal tube at 760 mph: designs need to be finalised, testing needs to be done, regulations need to be approved, and so on. When the Hyperloop does arrive, probably on the west coast of the US to begin with, it's likely you won't be able to see much out of the windows: that's one of the consequences of travelling inside a sealed and pressurised pipeline. However, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) chief Dirk Ahlborn has a plan, and it involves augmented reality. Digital projections could be used to show passengers the outside world, Ahlborn said at a presentation during the South by Southwest event in Texas. It's not a revolutionary idea - many modern cruise liners make use of digital displays and video feeds inside rooms that don't have a balcony - but the Hyperloop implementation would use head tracking to give you a more natural feeling of looking out at the passing scenery. These "augmented windows" could also show entertainment, passenger information and, of course, advertising. "Psychologically, it's really important to have the possibility to look out of the window, but also it's an experience," explained Ahlborn, Mashable reports. "Imagine, you can be in a virtual world and travel through Jurassic World, Terminator Land and maybe your trip is sponsored by those companies through the advertising," Ahlborn added. The only downside is you wouldn't have that long to enjoy the view. Article continues below

2016-03-15 10:50 By David www.techradar.com

68 Sinclair ZX Spectrum Vega+ console with 1000 retro games smashes crowdfunding target The Vega+ is a new low cost hand-held games console with a colour LCD screen and 1,000 licensed games already installed. The Sinclair ZX Spectrum Vega+ crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo is based on Sir Clive Sinclair's hugely successful Spectrum products from the early 1980s. It incorporates all the features of the ZX Vega, including stereo output for reproduction of gaming sounds and music. The team claims that the Vega+ is the only games console that exists with 1,000 licensed games already included. It has an LCD screen for use on the go and the capability to connect to a TV for home use. The Vega+ was developed by Chris Smith, expert on Sinclair Spectrum technology and author of "The ZX Spectrum ULA: How to design a microcomputer". The Year's Best Tech for Work and Play ZDNet takes a look back at very best tech stories and features of 2014. The design concept of the Vega+ is by Rick Dickinson , who designed of all of Sinclair's ZX computers in the 1980s. The Vega+ has raised over 320 percent of its original campaign target in three weeks. With another two weeks left of its campaign, it looks set to become one of the most successful Indiegogo campaigns to date. A new Indiegogo referral scheme awards prizes to those backers whose referrals bring in the most new pledges for the Vega+ perks. Backers promote the campaign to friends with Indiegogo's share tools while logged into their Indiegogo account. Vega+ takes advantage of major advances in technology to achieve big cost savings by replacing most of the electronics in earlier computer products. The Vega+ uses a low cost micro-controller and software to enable the Vega+ to run all of the games. There are over 14,000 available games, developed during the years when around million of the original Sinclair Spectrum were being sold. The Sinclair ZX Spectrum Vega+ is as simple to use as any of the popular games consoles, but less expensive. The user will also be able to download additional games free of charge from the thousands that are available on the web. There is no need for users to pay any more than the cost of the basic product, which will be in the region of $150 from the company's web site and from various online retailers and outlets. Sir Clive Sinclair says that the success of the original Spectrum was due to the fact that: "it was adaptable, approachable, very easy to program, and simple to use". Of the Vega+ Sir Clive said: "The present surge of interest in retro products inspired me to plan the Vega+ as a handy games console which can be played anywhere. " If the synthesised 'mini moog' sounds of retro games fill you with nostalgia, then you will love the new Vega+. Related content:

2016-03-15 10:43 Eileen Brown www.zdnet.com

69 Can DevOps and ITIL co-exist? A story of two IT service philosophies Can ITIL and DevOps co-exist? That's the question recently put forth by Gareth Daine, who quizzed some 25 industry experts and observers on whether the two methodologies clash, or are compatible. ITIL , originally known as Information Technology Infrastructure Library, is a set of best practices which recognize and certify that IT functions are delivered as tangible services to organizations. DevOps seeks to align the output of development shops with the teams charged with putting software into production, thereby assuring continuous releases as businesses need them. The argument against peaceful co-existence suggests that ITIL, first launched in the late 1980s, may not be current enough for the realities of the 2016 organization, which requires a DevOps culture to be responsive in hyper-competitive markets. Terminology has changed, and, as Daine posits, "there's a lot of planning and documenting involved in the various processes outlined throughout the ITIL framework, with little mention, if any, of iterative or agile/lean thinking and approaches. " However, perusing the various views Daine gathered in his post, the general consensus appears to be yes, while there is a tension between the two approaches, the worst-case scenario is they don't interfere with one another, and many suggest the two need each other in the long run. (I was one of those who contributed thoughts to this question.) "I absolutely believe that ITIL and DevOps are compatible," said Karen Ferris, director and IT Service Management Expert at Macanta Consulting, reflecting the views of many. "Since day one of conception, ITIL has stated that it needs to be 'adopted and adapted' and in the world of DevOps that is still the case. The language used may be different but the outcomes are the same - delivering value to the business where it is needed. " Others point out that while ITIL and DevOps come from two different parts of the brain, both serve to keep IT aligned with the business, which is ultimately all that matters, "ITIL, a service management framework, is not the same as Agile," says Roy Atkinson - support and service industry analyst, writer and speaker with HDI. "If we go back to the Agile Manifesto , some elements appear to completely contradict tenets of ITIL, such as valuing 'responding to change over following a plan.'" Still, he adds, "Agile methodologies do not advocate for knee-jerk responses and Wild West behavior; the goal is always to produce value through iteration and focus. A well-tended service management road, leveled by responsive change management practices, can help to expedite the goals of Agile methods. " Steve Whelan, ITIL expert and trainer at Purple Griffon, feels that DevOps is an actual extension of ITIL-based thinking. "As far as processes go DevOps is really a subset of ITIL, so which processes map well - all of them that DevOps actually talks about. There basically isn't anything in DevOps which isn't in ITIL. DevOps is basically more about how-to-do, ITIL more about what- to-do. " Julian Simpson, software engineer at Neo Technology, says the interplay between ITIL and DevOps depends on what type of organization you have. "Not following ITIL at all would have very few consequences in a two-person start-up that writes mobile apps. That same decision could have terrible consequences for a 1000-person insurance company," he observes. Ultimately, in any organization of any size or type, "what matters is that the organization is designed in such a way that all the departments and groups have aligned goals, and that there's trust between people. " Daniel Breston, chief of DevOps transformation at Ranger4 Limited, suggests that ITIL and DevOps should be brought together -- a hybrid "AgileITSM" that actively promotes cultures of collaboration, communication, metrics, and, yes, fun. Ultimately, the focus is on the customer -- internal or external -- and both ITIL and DevOps help IT shops maintain that focus, says Kaimar Karu, head of ITSM at Axelos. "The trick with getting the most out of ITIL is to make sure the service management mindset is adopted, and the guidance itself is adapted to the specific needs of the organisation. DevOps helps to make it happen and provides additional support for the 'how' on the core concepts of service management -- creating value through collaboration, with a focus on the customer. " The observation I added to the mix is that every business is becoming a software business, and thus will be looking to move solutions, updates and capabilities to internal and external customers quickly and with the highest possible quality. DevOps paves the way, but it takes a radical re-thinking of IT workflows and management. ITIL opened the doors to such a re- alignment. Of course, both philosophies often get more lip service than actuial results, Atkinson states. "DevOps and ITIL can dwell in the same house, but the commitment must be to producing value, not advancing an adopted philosophy. Too often, we see organizations wrap themselves in the name but follow neither the spirit nor the letter. "

2016-03-15 10:35 Joe McKendrick www.zdnet.com

70 How to disable Windows 10 notifications Windows 10 notifications can be very useful sometimes – they warn us of upcoming events, such as appointments in the calendar, new emails that arrive throughout the day and it even tells us if our Windows machine needs some kind of maintenance or app action that we may have forgotten to carry out. But other times you just want to focus your attention on one task, and when you've got Windows reminding you of dozens of emails that need checking or some other event, it can get in the way of what you want to do. Luckily, it's easy to take care of notifications and minimise their impact on your life. When you receive a notification, a pop-up window will appear above the Taskbar at the bottom of the screen. If you miss the alert, opening the Action Centre will allow you to view all notifications that you've received at any time by clicking the message bubble icon on the Taskbar. All notifications are displayed in a list, in order of when they appeared. With the Action Centre still open, you can quickly deal with all open notifications by clicking the 'Clear all' link above. If you want to be a little more methodical with your approach, you can view individual notifications by clicking on each one – doing this will show you what exactly needs addressing, such as a pending system update or a forthcoming calendar event. To quickly deal with events that you don't need to open for further information, you can hover your mouse cursor over them to reveal more notification controls. If you're happy you don't need to know any more, click the cross next to it to dismiss it. If you want to quickly find out more without actually opening the notification, click the down-facing arrow. If you want to control when notifications appear, you can alter this in the settings. Type Notifications and action settings in the search bar on the Taskbar, and click on this heading from the list that appears. Here you'll see options that you can toggle on or off, such as showing tips on using Windows, app notifications and even being able to hide notifications during a presentation. If turning off all notifications bothers you, turn off notifications just on individual apps, keeping the ones you want to see. Once again in Notifications and action settings, scroll down and you'll see individual apps with a toggle switch next to each one, allowing you to turn them off individually. Or, click on one to turn on specific features, such as a notification noise. The easiest way to avoid distracting notifications is to use the Quiet Hours function. This one- click feature silences everything in an instant. Turn it on or off by right-clicking the notifications icon in the right-hand side of the Taskbar and selecting 'Turn on quiet hours' from the menu that appears. When you want to turn this feature off, just do the same thing again. If you're using a touchscreen PC there's a more touch-friendly way to turn Quiet Hours on or off. To find this, simply tap (or left-click) the notifications icon in the Taskbar to open the Action Centre. At the bottom of this pane is a Quiet Hours tile – tap this to turn it on or off. If the tile doesn't show, just tap the 'Expand' setting above and to the right of the tiles. You should now be able to take control of the way you view notifications on your PC! You can easily view and deal with notifications in the Action Centre, or turn them off in the notifications settings or in individual apps. Finally, Quiet Hours allows you to quickly turn off notifications altogether, ideal if you're in a meeting or going to sleep at night.

2016-03-15 10:35 By Nick www.techradar.com

71 Locus Robotics brings this Amazon solution to small retailers These microscopic robots swim in blood to diagnose disease Fifty years after Raquel Welch took her Fantastic Voyage, nanomachines are a reality. In 2012, Amazon acquired a company called Kiva, which makes automation solutions for the logistics industry. Not long after, you could order a pair of Hanes boxer-briefs in the morning and get them the same afternoon. The acquisition, Amazon's second-biggest at the time, came with a $775M price tag, and I've read very few credible experts who suggest that it wasn't worth every penny. The ability to process orders with a heavily automated warehouse has given Amazon a massive competitive advantage over rivals like Wal-Mart. All of which serves to underscore the importance of warehouse logistics, as well as to give some background on the growing importance of the space. That importance is underscored by the recent announcement that Robotics Business Review, a robotics trade publication, recently named Massachusetts-based warehouse robotics company Locus Robotics to its 2016 RBR50, an annual list of the fifty most innovative, noteworthy robotics companies in the world. "We are honored that Locus Robotics has been chosen as one of the 2016 RBR50," said Bruce Welty, CEO and co-founder of Locus Robotics. "This accolade represents a major milestone for Locus. We are thrilled at the feedback we've received since our launch in November 2015, and look forward to delivering dramatic productivity benefits for warehouse operators around the world. " What's incredible, and a testament to how game-changing Kiva has been for online retail, is that Locus essentially stepped into the vacuum that Kiva left behind when Amazon scooped them up for its own logistics needs. "If you've been standing anywhere near a warehouse the last few years, you know the story," says Locus's website. "Kiva builds something great. We all love it and use it. Then Amazon buys it. "We started looking for an alternative. The more we looked, the more obvious it became: if we wanted the right solution we'd have to build it ourselves. "So we got to work. " Locus Robotics will present its collaborative process, where humans and LocusBots™ work side by side in the same space, at the forthcoming MODEX 2016 in Atlanta (April 4-7). The company estimates its robotic warehouse will bring a 5-8 times improvement in user productivity, an ability to support different types of operations ranging from eCommerce to wholesale to store replenishment, and an approach that "uses existing infrastructure to drive down solution cost and speed time to deployment. " In other words, Kiva-like solutions in a post-Amazon world. Soon you may have some options for same-day boxer-briefs.

2016-03-15 10:30 Greg Nichols www.zdnet.com

72 Raspberry Pi 3 review Has it really been four years since the Raspberry Pi blasted onto the single-board computer scene? Well, it has and to celebrate the Raspberry Pi Foundation has released its latest version, Raspberry Pi 3, which is more of an evolution than a revolution. The latest Raspberry Pi from the Raspberry Pi Foundation is here. Following the Raspberry Pi 2 from one year ago, it has new wireless connectivity and an improved processor that lowers the cost of having a desktop computer and opens the door board to exciting new projects from simple servers to complex sensor networks and much more. Powered by a BCM2837 SoC (System on a Chip) and featuring a 64-bit ARM Cortex A53 quad core processor running at 1.2GHz, the Pi 3 has quite a powerful processor. However, there's no RAM upgrade this time, which leaves it with 1GB of RAM. There is a subtle upgrade on Pi 3 is the VideoCore IV which handles video and graphics now clocking in at 400MHz compared to earlier models at 250Mhz. Physically the Raspberry Pi 3 looks very similar to the Pi 2; the only noticeable changes are the locations of the status LEDs and a new chip on the underside of the Pi. This chip is the BCM43438, which provides Wi-Fi b/g/n and Bluetooth on the board, and removes the need for USB dongles. Bluetooth 4.1 provides both a classic and low energy (LE) method of connecting to devices. Bluetooth LE is an exciting prospect as it enables low-power hardware applications, such as beacons, that can interact with devices such as smartphones and tablets. Cleverly, the antenna used for wireless communications is located on the outer edge of the board, just out of the way of any add-on boards that may interfere with the signal. In our tests we found the Wi-Fi to be as sensitive as the official Wi-Fi dongle and just as easy to use. Built-in wireless communications is a big deal for the Raspberry Pi and enables the Pi to be used as a an IoT (Internet of Things) platform for very little outlay. To use these new wireless components you'll need to update your Raspbian image to the latest version or download and flash the latest image to an 8GB or larger micro SD card. The latest Raspbian image also comes with refinements needed for the Pi 3, such as new firmware that will enable the Pi 3 to run at full capacity. These new wireless devices do come at a cost, with the Pi 3 consuming nearly one and half times more power than the Pi 2. This means that the Pi 3 needs a reliable power supply, with a recommendation being a 2.5A power supply when being used with add-on boards that use motors or neopixels. The Pi 3 comes with four USB ports and an Ethernet port, which provides Fast Ethernet, 100Mbit/s, and is routed via the LAN9514 chip, which has been the standard since the Model B+ Pi was released in mid 2014. Many have criticised this decision as it prevents the use of Gigabit Ethernet, but adding that to the board would have increased the cost above the magic $35 price point. The Pi 3 provides an incremental speed increase when compared to the Pi 2, figures quoted by the Foundation state around 50-60% when running 32-bit code on the new processor. Currently, OSes do not yet use the chip's 64-bit mode; the speed boost is mainly due to a series of architectural enhancements. The Raspberry Pi 3 is a remarkable piece of technology. True, it may not be the most revolutionary upgrade from the Pi 2, but it builds upon a rich community of support and maintains a level of backwards compatibility to boards and projects created for earlier models of Pi to be used. The arrival of wireless communications on the board enables IoT projects at a lower price point and helps further the goal of the Raspberry Pi, providing a platform for tinkering and experimentation that's low cost and well supported. This review of the Raspberry Pi 3 was taken from Linux Format. Click here to subscribe.

2016-03-15 10:23 By Les www.techradar.com

73 It's official: Google's robot AI is better than human beings at Go Google's AI-powered Go player AlphaBot has beaten flesh-and-blood professional Lee Se-dol for the fourth time, wrapping up the series of matches 4-1 and proving that we don't stand a chance at board games when the robot revolution comes. Lee Se-dol managed a consolation win over the weekend but really it was one-way traffic: the AI bot rushed into a 3-0 lead after the competition began, surprising even its own developers at its Go-playing prowess. For the uninitiated, Go is an ancient Chinese board game considered something of a high watermark for artificial intelligence to tackle: it needs an advanced level of intuition to play, not just a big bank of possible moves (there are more potential positions than there are atoms in the universe). The fact that AlphaBot has won so comprehensively is a sign of another significant step forward for the AI tech. It's been programmed by Google's DeepMind company, dedicated to researching how neural networks can allow computers to mimic the way human beings think. The victory means AlphaBot takes home the US$1 million prize fund, but as an AI-powered computer program doesn't have anything to spend money on (not yet anyway), the cash will be donated to charity. If you want to relive the action move-by-move, all five games are available on YouTube. "One of the most incredible games ever," tweeted DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis after the fifth match. "To come back from the initial big mistake against Lee Se-dol was mind-blowing! " Article continues below

2016-03-15 10:08 By David www.techradar.com

74 Qualcomm throws hat into the VR ring with launch of SDK for Snapdragon 820 chips CHIPMAKER Qualcomm has thrown its hat into the virtual reality (VR) ring with the launch of the Snapdragon VR SDK for Snapdragon-based smartphones and VR headsets. The SDK gives developers access to advanced VR features, according to Qualcomm , allowing them to simplify development and attain improved performance and power efficiency with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 processor, found in Android smartphones such as the Galaxy S7 and tipped to feature in upcoming VR headsets. In terms of features, the development kit offers tools such as digital signal processing (DSP) sensor fusion, which allows devs to use the "full breadth" of technologies built into the Snapdragon 820 chip to create more responsive and immersive experiences. It will help developers combine high-frequency inertial data from gyroscopes and accelerometers, and there's what the company calls "predictive head position processing" based on its Hexagon DSP, while Qualcomm's Symphony System Manager makes easier access to power and performance management for more stable frame rates in VR applications running on less-powerful devices. Fast motion to photon will offer single buffer rendering to reduce latency by up to 50 percent, while stereoscopic rendering with lens correction offers support for 3D binocular vision with color correction and barrel distortion for improved visual quality of graphics and video, enhancing the overall VR experience. Stereoscopic rendering with lens correction supports 3D binocular vision with color correction and barrel distortion for improved visual quality of graphics and video, enhancing the overall VR experience. Rounding off the features is VR layering, which improves overlays in a virtual world to reduce distortion. David Durnil, senior director of engineering at Qualcomm, said: "We're providing advanced tools and technologies to help developers significantly improve the virtual reality experience for applications like games, 360 degree VR videos and a variety of interactive education and entertainment applications. "VR represents a new paradigm for how we interact with the world, and we're excited to help mobile VR developers more efficiently deliver compelling and high-quality experiences on upcoming Snapdragon 820 VR-capable Android smartphones and headsets. " The Snapdragon VR SDK will be available to developers in the second quarter through the Qualcomm Developer Network. The launch of Qualcomm's VR SDK comes just moments after AMD also entered the VR arena with the launch of the Sulon Q, a VR-ready wearable Windows 10 PC . µ

2016-03-15 10:04 Carly Page www.theinquirer.net

75 SAP HANA Vora goes GA SAP HANA Vora, a product announced, and which I covered , back in September, is now being released for general availability (GA). Despite the branding, the product is based on Apache Spark rather than SAP HANA , although it can be nicely integrated with the latter. It allows for interactive query and analysis of data. But it's much more than a Spark SQL front end. The product, which takes its name from the word "voracious," is correspondingly hungry for data. To aid in this, HANA Vora includes extensions to the Spark data sources API that support "push down" operations, in order to delegate some of the query work to the original data source engine itself. The GA release of HANA Vora also supports connectivity to Amazon S3 file/blob storage, and includes a Beta-level OLAP (online analysis processing) modeler. The modeler allows for the definition of hierarchies to support drill-down analysis and SAP has implemented extensions to Spark SQL that support querying of hierarchical data. Vora looks like a nice Spark-based analytics solution that will especially help in analysis of data coming from HANA, SAP's ERP software and/or SAP BW. And it helps Spark go mainstream, that much more and that much faster.

2016-03-15 10:00 Andrew Brust www.zdnet.com

76 Google AlphaGo caps victory by winning final historic Go match DeepMind's Artificial Intelligence (AI) AlphaGo put its final stamp on its victory by beating Lee Se-dol in the final game in the historic match between man and machine. It concludes the five-game series that kicked off last week at the Four Seasons Hotel in Seoul between Google's AI and the Korean grandmaster, with the final score of 4-1. The AI already won the series when it clinched a hat trick by beating Lee on Saturday. But the grandmaster rallied in the fourth match to secure his first victory against the computer , much to the surprise and welcome of commentators and Korean viewers. "I feel sorry because I lost... and because the challenge match came to and end," said Lee after the match. "I think it showed the lack of skills in my part. " "Thank you for all the people who cheered for me and I will show a more advanced Lee Se-dol in the future," he said to applause from reporters. "I do not believe AlphaGo is a superior than I am. [However] I have come to question more of Go and study [the game more]. " "I am speechless... it was the most mind-blowing so far," said DeepMind CEO Denis Hassabis said. "It seemed AlphaGo made quiet a big mistake but in the end AlphaGo came back in the game... we are stunned really. " The 33-year-old showed grit and looked visibly calmer throughout than the previous four matches. The match lasted the longest out of the five by going an hour overtime and taking up 280 turns. Lee avoided mistakes in the beginning and maintained a strong play throughout, until near the end. Korean commentators said the champion seemed to be attempting to test AlphaGo as black -- which opens the game -- and seemed to have successfully adapted to the AI's style. After the four match, where he played white, he said he wanted to try out AlphaGo with black because it seemed to be better as white. DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis tweeted mid-game: "#AlphaGo made a bad mistake early in the game (it didnt know a known tesuji) but now it is trying hard to claw it back... nail-biting. " But the tide turned near the end when the game seemed to be heading for score count; where neither player resigns and the game is determined by how much points they secure. However, AlphaGo calmly secured more points and blocked Lee's attempts to change the tide of the game. The champion resigned at an hour overtime. English and Korean commentators praised both for bringing their top form. The Go association of Korea, the KBA, awarded AlphaGo an honorary 9-dan , the highest rank possible in the game, for contributing to the global promotion of the East Asian board game. The series has been compared to IBM's Deep Blue victory against chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997 that shocked the world. But Go, an ancient Chinese board game where two players place black or white playing pieces, called stones, to secure more territory, has more variables than chess and was considered difficult to teach computers, until now. The winning million dollar purse will be donated Unicef and STEM for research. Google founder Sergei Brin and Alphabet executive chairman Eric Schmidt visited Seoul to watch the game.

2016-03-15 09:58 Cho www.zdnet.com

77 Scientists invent glass that can turn from clear to opaque in less than a second Do drapes make you angry, and blinds fill you with moroseness? What you need is a window that offers clear views or privacy with the touch of a switch. It consists of a sheet of glass sandwiched between two sheets of clear, soft elastomer. These have been sprayed with a coating of silver nanowires. This is what makes the manufacture so simple. Previous methods of creating tunable windows are manufactured using a technique called vacuum deposition, which painstakingly deposits molecular layers of material. "Because this is a physical phenomenon rather than based on a chemical reaction, it is a simpler and potentially cheaper way to achieve commercial tunable windows," Clarke said in a statement. On their own, the nanowires are too small to catch the light in a way that makes them visible to humans. However, if you run an electric current through the window, the nanowires will all move, trying to get closer to each other. This causes the elastomer sheet to deform in such a way that it scatters the light, rendering the surface cloudy in less than a second. With a strong enough current, the window becomes completely opaque, the researchers said. Shian compared the deformed elastomer surface to a coating of ice on a pond. "If the frozen pond is smooth, you can see through the ice," he explained. "But if the ice is heavily scratched, you can't see through. " The university has filed a patent on the technology, and Clarke and Shian are working towards developing an even thinner elastomer films, which would lower the voltage needed to make the glass opaque.

2016-03-15 09:16 Michelle Starr www.cnet.com

78 Yahoo patches sender spoofing email vulnerability Yahoo has patched a vulnerability in the firm's email service which allowed cyberattackers to spoof Yahoo email addresses. The bug was discovered by independent researcher Lawrence Amer and published through Vulnerability Lab on Full Disclosure. On Monday, the security researcher released details of the flaw publicly, saying the sender spoofing vulnerability affected the Yahoo webmail application. Cyberattackers are able to remotely spoof the sender names of Yahoo email users through a vulnerability found within the "compose message" module of the web service. A weakness in the system permits users to inject or intercept traffic in the POST/GET parameters, spoofing the email address to whatever sender name they wish. This vulnerability is problematic as spoofed email addresses are often used in spear phishing campaigns -- fraudulent emails which are sent for the purposes of information theft or in order to dupe a victim into installing malware on their systems. If a user receives an email from a spoofed Yahoo address which then seems legitimate, they may be more likely to fall for such a campaign. The exploit is considered a medium severity issue. The researcher's proof of concept (PoC) video is below. Yahoo was made aware of the flaw in October last year, and the company's developers were able to create a patch to fix the issue at the end of February 2016. Amer submitted the email security flaw through Yahoo's Bug Bounty program, hosted on HackerOne. The vulnerability has now been fixed, but it is not known how much the researcher earned for his work.

2016-03-15 09:54 Charlie Osborne www.zdnet.com

79 Lyft teams up with GM on car-rental program to recruit new drivers Ride-hailing service Lyft will rent cars to prospective drivers whose vehicles are not up to snuff as part of a program with General Motors that aims to lure new drivers. "Launching Express Drive is another way we treat drivers better, in addition to Power Driver Bonus, tips and same day payouts," Lyft co- founder and President John Simmer said in a statement. "We're making sure everyone who wants to be a Lyft driver can be, by providing ultimate flexibility at incredible rates. " Lyft, which pairs passengers with drivers via a smartphone app, currently operates in 150 cities in the US and provides more than 1 million rides per week. It's small compared with rival Uber, which is in 60 countries around the world. To keep up, Lyft has been developing incentive programs to lure drivers from Uber. With more Lyft drivers on the road, people using the smartphone app to get a ride could see shorter wait times. One of the biggest obstacles to getting more drivers on the ride is finding applicants with qualified vehicles, Lyft said. The company said that in Chicago alone, it had 60,000 applicants who wanted to drive for Lyft but couldn't because their cars didn't pass muster. Uber also has incentives for its drivers, including a car rental pilot program with Cox automotive company Flexdrive and a discount fuel card for drivers who carry out at least 200 trips per month in which they can save 1.5 percent every time they fill their tank. Lyft drivers who sign up for the program in Chicago can expect a Chevrolet Equinox crossover, Lyft said. The program is expected to expand soon to other US cities, including Boston, Baltimore, and Washington, DC, among others.

2016-03-15 09:16 Steven Musil www.cnet.com

80 TomTom Golfer 2 promises your wrist can make you a better golfer Suddenly noticed that your regular golfing partner is much better at the game, but seems in a rush to get away? Then they might be sneaking a look at the new TomTom Golfer 2, giving him detailed info on where they're messing up. The watch doesn't do anything particularly new when playing the game, giving yardages to the green, impending hazards and the distances to decent lay-up points. It'll also monitor the game for you, keeping score electronically – so you'll need to be ready to throw it in the lake at a moment's if you really, really need to cheat and are challenged. But TomTom is claiming the strength of this GPS watch is in the post-game analysis – by monitoring players on over 40,000 holes, the brand has put together the 'ultimate' round that you could be playing, showing shot patterns from the best / flukiest players out there, letting you see how you could mimic the same thing. The data is all stored on the water-resistant watch, which will sync automatically to the TomTom MySports app – which will also sync daily updates to courses for you, should things change terribly overnight. The TomTom Golfer 2 will cost £199 (around $285 / AU$380) when it launches worldwide in May. Article continues below

2016-03-15 09:45 By Gareth www.techradar.com

81 Microsoft will allow Xbox One users to play with PS4 and PC gamers MICROSOFT HAS ANNOUNCED that it is enabling cross-network play for developers in a move that could allow Xbox One users to play against PS4 and PC gamers. In other news, hell has frozen over. In a post on the Microsoft blog , ID@Xbox Director Chris Charla announced that the company is offering up a bunch of new tools for developers, one of which could finally pave the way for online multiplayer with PS4 players. Developers building games for Xbox One and Windows 10 will be able to support the feature, but it will require Sony and others to "participate" in order for cross-compatibility between the two consoles. "First, in addition to natively supporting cross-platform play between Xbox One and Windows 10 games that use Xbox Live, we’re enabling developers to support cross-network play as well," Charla said. "This means players on Xbox One and Windows 10 using Xbox Live will be able to play with players on different online multiplayer networks – including other console and PC networks. " Charla notes that Xbox Live gamers will have the option to disable the feature, but, if activated, users will be able to play against PC players when searching for matches, and potentially PS4 gamers in the future. will be the first title to support the feature, and given that this game is only otherwise available on Sony's console, it's clear Microsoft is hoping that Sony will play ball. "We’re thrilled to confirm that Psyonix’s Rocket League will be one of the first games to take advantage of this new capability by enabling cross-network play between Xbox One and PC players, with an open invitation for other networks to participate as well," Charla said. Although Charla heads up indie games at Xbox, he clarified via Twitter that cross-network play isn’t just for indie titles and can include AAA retail games as well. Your move, Sony. µ

2016-03-15 09:38 Carly Page www.theinquirer.net

82 'Trials on Tatooine' announced as first Star Wars game for HTC Vive Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) has revealed a short trailer for an experimental new game for HTC's Vive Virtual Reality headset. The company is calling it a "cinematic virtual reality experiment", and it is coming directly from the company's "ILMxLab" - a skunkworks designed to experiment with new immersive technologies. In other words, it appears that Trials on Tatooine will essentially be a proof-of- concept tech demo dressed up as a game. But that isn't to say we shouldn't be excited. As VentureBeat reports , in the game you'll get to interact with R2D2, swing your lightsaber, and do battle with stormtroopers. Saber combat should be particularly intriguing, as it will make use of the Vive's widely praised motion controllers - so fingers crossed it will actually feel like you're in the midst of battle. The move is also potentially indicative of how developers will be taking sides in the forthcoming VR war. Winning the support of ILM, and thus the Star Wars Universe is sure to be a boon to HTC's offering when it goes up against the Oculus Rift, which also launches imminently. The news also couldn't be better timed, with the Vive due to hit on the 5th April - though at launch it will cost an eye-watering £689 ($799 US/$899 AU). Article continues below

2016-03-15 09:34 By James www.techradar.com

83 System Shock Remastered emerges from the dark side of gaming System Shock is coming back. Night Dive Studios has just release pre-Alpha gameplay footage of the re-mastered 1994 game and we're excited and simultaneously terrified about space all over again. Released originally by and produced by games maven Warren Spector, the first-person shooter set aboard a spaceship somewhere in the future, was an atmospheric success long before Alien Isolation came to be. The game was one of the first cyberpunk-themed shooters, introducing a malevolent AI and hacking mechanics, and went on to influence the likes of Deus Ex and BioShock as well as countless others up to the present day. While the game may look a little low-res still, it's good to remember it's still in pre-Alpha. The studio are re-mastering the original in Unity to give it a massive world feel, and there's no doubt there'll be shocks a-plenty to enjoy on release. Night Dive Studios recently acquired the rights to the entire System Shock series, and plan on making a third part to the franchise. For now, kick back and enjoy the video...preferably in the dark. System Shock will be released some time in 2017. Article continues below

2016-03-15 09:21 By SJ www.techradar.com

84 AMD-powered Sulon Q is a VR-ready wearable Windows 10 PC ANOTHER VIRTUAL REALITY (VR) headset is throwing itself into the ring to fight with the likes of the Oculus Rift , HTC Vive and Samsung Gear VR. The latest bit of VR kit to enter the arena comes in the form of the Sulon Q, a headset built by startup Sulon Technologies in partnership with graphics giant AMD. This tie-up sees the Sulon Q make use of the AMD FX-8800P processor and the company’s Radeon R7 GPU. It also takes advantage of AMD's LiquidVR technology, which gives developers the tools to create graphics-rich games, applications and experiences. Further graphical wizardry is provided through the latest graphics application programming interface (API) tech, including DirectX 12 and the AMD Mantle-based Vulkan , currently found in the #mce_temp_url# Samsung Galaxy S7. For spec hounds, the Sulon Q has access to four compute cores and eight GPU cores, which help fire visuals onto a 2560x1440 OLED display. 3D sound is also present, courtesy of AstoundSound technology and ear buds optimised for spatial audio. A built-in 256GB SSD and 8GB of RAM makes the Sulon Q effectively a lower-end wearable PC running Windows 10. With that in mind, AMD has understandably been a bit coy about how much it weights; we reckon it could crick a few necks. The combination of this hardware and software has the two companies claiming that the Sulon Q can deliver console-quality graphics; a bold claim for a gadget that can be popped on your bonce. Separating the Sulon Q from other headsets in the VR world is its ability to also do augmented reality and spatial computing. Through the use of a sci-fi sounding Spatial Processing Unit, the Sulon Q can generate a 3D map of a person’s surroundings using two front-facing cameras. This allows for Sulon Q users to have their movements tracked without the need for the external sensors that the HTC Vive relies on. All this means the Sulon Q is being championed as having a self-contained “wear and play” design that cuts out the need for wires, minimum PC specs, or a VR-ready smartphone. That could spell some serious competition for other headsets in the VR space, but at the same time AMD is also a partner of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, so we could end up with one big VR tech threesome. AMD and Sulon Technologies said they are putting the final touches on the headset and will have it ready by the nebulous date of late spring. Somewhere we reckon Nvidia is plotting its VR riposte. µ

2016-03-15 09:10 Roland www.theinquirer.net

85 Africa’s Talking partners with CMS Africa Summit to sponsor developers The 2016 CMS Africa Summit has partnered with Africa’s Talking to sponsor selected developers to this year’s summit. The sponsorship will help cover part of the cost of attendance for eligible developers to the Summit. The 48 hour event has already attracted many partners and sponsors and has lined up over 30 speakers in 40 sessions. The first 30 developers who have previously signed up and have accounts on Africastalking.com will be selected and sponsored to the event. Nicholas Kamanzi , the Developer Relations Manager at Africa’s Talking said they are doing this because they love their developers and they want them to partake of the opportunities at the CMS Africa Summit. “We love developers at Africa’s Talking, that’s why we provide them with APIs to make it easy to build web and mobile apps that reach millions of mobile subscribers. Whether it’s reminding a patient to take their medication via SMS or building IVR solutions with our voice APIs we give developers connections to the telecoms without them (developers) leaving their coding stations to go to these telecoms,” Nicholas Kamanzi said. “CMS Africa Summit brings together developers who are building products that we use every day and we are partnering with them to make it easy for our developers to meet and network with other developers from across the globe, and for us to educate other developers on how they can benefit from using our APIs,” he added. Other sponsors include Automattic, Hostalite, SnowDog, Infinity Computers, Webstar, PC Tech Magazine among others. Tickets to the summit scheduled to take place on 1 st – 2 nd April cost UGX 60,000 for both days or UGX 40,000 for one day. Visit the 2016 CMS Africa Summit website for details or install the Summit app on Android .

2016-03-15 09:07 Joshua Twinamasiko pctechmag.com

86 UK government to target IT contractors in tax crackdown THE UK GOVERNMENT is reportedly planning to announce a tax crackdown for IT contractors during Wednesday's Budget. The clampdown is being pitched as an attack on a tax loophole used by the rich and famous, but much of the £400m that George Osborne expects to raise as a result of the measure will come from ordinary freelancers. The move is expected to affect as many as 100,000 people, including IT contractors. Under the leaked proposal, employers will be required to determine whether their staff are full-time employees, not temporary workers, and put on the payroll accordingly. A government source reportedly told the Daily Mail : "You have situations where someone working in a public body pays thousands of pounds less in tax than someone doing exactly the same job alongside them who's taxed as an employee. That can't be fair - either on the taxpayer or their fellow workers. We are going to put a stop to it. " The focus on contractors follows a Conservative backbench revolt over Osborne's plans to slash pension tax relief, with the Chancellor casting around for various ways in which he can raise money from taxpayers to close the stubbornly high budget deficit. As many as 20,000 people in the public sector alone, many of them freelance IT contractors on short-term contracts, are believed to be paid via personal service companies. In 2010 in the run-up to the election, the Conservatives had promised to review the IR35 rules should they be elected in May 2010. However, the coalition government made few changes to the rules, while Osborne is set to effectively expand them and enforce them even more rigorously. In 1999, the-then Chancellor Gordon Brown introduced IR35 in a bid to crackdown on people either effectively being employed full-time or spending a year or more in the same employment. The aim of IR35 was to increase the level of tax and national insurance paid by people being paid via personal service companies. IR35, named after the 35th budget press release that year, came into force in April 2000. It was introduced to prevent workers from setting up limited companies through which they would work and be paid, avoiding national insurance and pay reduced taxes. The IR35 measure was intended to "look through" this contractual arrangement and to apply the law to the actualite of the relationship between employer and contractor. However, its introduction caused a storm of protest among IT contractors, who pointed out that they do not benefit from holiday pay and a slew of other benefits enjoyed by the full-time employed. Other tax-raising measures on Osborne's agenda that will affect contractors includes plans to increase insurance premium tax on car insurance from 9.5 per cent to 12.5 per cent. Osborne is also planning to raise the threshold for the 40 per cent tax rate. More and more people have been drawn-in to this tax band as successive governments have failed to raise it in line with rising wages. µ

2016-03-15 08:26 Graeme Burton www.theinquirer.net

87 11 Tech Jobs That Pay The Most: Glassdoor IT-related jobs make up 44% of Glassdoor's annual ranking of the top 25 highest paid jobs in America. While physician still holds the No. 1 spot, 11 of the 25 top-paying jobs on this year's list are in IT. Glassdoor's annual list is based on salary reports from its 30 million unique visitors. Positions that received fewer than 75 salary reports between January 24, 2015, and January 23, 2016, were excluded from the list. Some job titles were "normalized" in order to achieve consistency across titles, and C-level titles were excluded from the list. In addition to providing median base salaries for each position, Glassdoor also provides the number of active job listings on on its site for each title as of Feb. 23, 2016. Jobs all along the IT spectrum are represented in the ranking, both in terms of the level of expertise required, and in the range of managerial and non-managerial roles. Create a culture where technology advances truly empower your business. Attend the Leadership Track at Interop Las Vegas, May 2-6. Register now! There are software- and hardware-oriented jobs listed, not to mention data science positions. If your skillset is one of the ones most in demand, you won't have to rise too high in the ranks to make a decent living. Check out the list of the highest paid IT jobs to see which positions pay the most, as well as a snapshot of the number of job listings for each position. To check out Glassdoor's complete ranking of the top 25 highest-paying jobs, click here. Are you lucky enough to be in one of the higest-paying positions? If so, tell us how your experiences line up with the Glassdoor rankings. If you're not in one of these positions, will this ranking compel you to consider your options? Tell us all about it in the comments section below.

2016-03-15 07:06 David Wagner www.informationweek.com

88 Mahindra Comviva Strengthens its Leadership Position in Digital Music Portfolio in Africa, partners with Mondial Multimedia Mahindra Comviva , one of the global leaders in providing mobility solutions, has today announced that it has partnered with Mondial Multimedia, a leading partner of mobile media platforms in Africa. This tie-up with Mondial Multimedia will further strengthen Mahindra Comviva’s digital music content portfolio in the continent. With this partnership, Mondial Multimedia will provide the most popular content from local artists like Josey, Serge Beynaud, Force One, Arafat DJ, Zouglou Makers, Abou Nidal, Rico Amaj, TNT, DJ Leo, Molare. With over 300,000 tracks on board and over 200 Content Providers, Mahindra Comviva is one of the largest Content aggregator in Africa, Middle East and Asia. In Africa alone, the company has collaborated with over 150 content partners including local and international content providers/copyright bodies/ local artists and production houses in the region. Speaking on the partnership, Atul Madan, Head of Digital Services, Mahindra Comviva said, “We are constantly working towards revolutionizing the music market in Africa by providing localized content, identifying independent artists and labels, and disseminating music across the region.” “Our partnership with Mondial Multimedia is a testament of our efforts in emerging as the leader in the digital music space. Mondial Multimedia works closely with a number of local artists to source an extensive selection of digital music content that cater to the diverse tastes of consumer’s in the region.” He further added “This partnership coupled with our proven expertise in deploying and managing music services for operators across multiple growth markets, will further drive the success of managed music services and infotainment services in Africa.” Olivia Sandrine A. BRAUD – Mensah, Excutive Director, Mondial Multimedia said “We are pleased to partner with Mahindra Comviva in bringing a platform to empower the youth. Mahindra Comviva’s unrivalled expertise in digital music, VAS Technologies and deep understanding of the African market helped us bring this initiative to life. We bring a diverse range of content from Africa that will allow mobile operators to drive the quantity of users on their networks and meet the growing needs of subscribers across markets.”

2016-03-15 06:44 Ephraim Batambuze pctechmag.com

89 Will Samsung’s “Waffle” Make You Hungry? Samsung has rolled out a new platform (they are not calling it a social network, but we leave that to you to figure.) An app they are calling “Waffle” on National Pi day. The name instantly makes one hungry but let’s see why the app makes you even hungrier. Waffle, a grid-like app for users to add pictures and videos attributed to a certain occasion, say birthday or trip, also allows other friends to contribute content in video and picture formats to that particular occasion, forming a collaborative story in form of a grid. These grids keep growing with the contributions made by several users. Which also raises privacy concerns. However Samsung is providing users an option of connecting with friends only through a layer of privacy. Take a look at the working of “Waffle” and decide what you’ll be having for lunch! Samsung has not had much luck with their food or drink applications in the past but continues to test these waters with “Waffle”, now available on Android in beta and we wait to see where this goes.

2016-03-15 06:43 PC Tech pctechmag.com

90 House of Reps committee recommends smart infrastructure task force An Australian House of Representatives committee inquiry has recommended that a Smart Infrastructure Task Force be developed to coordinate, plan, develop, maintain, and optimise infrastructure and national policy on IT. Making use of new technologies and systems could boost the nation's economy; enable smart cities; enhance communications, public transport, energy, health, and water; increase productivity; improve quality of life; and better predict the effects of natural disasters, the committee said. The Smart ICT Report on the inquiry into the role of smart ICT in the design and planning of infrastructure , tabled on Tuesday by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Infrastructure, Transport, and Cities, found that using smart IT systems is critical to the economy. "The more evidence that was received about the role of smart ICT in infrastructure, the more the committee recognised the possibilities inherent in new technologies and systems. These technologies, if used effectively, have the capacity to transform the design, construction, and management of infrastructure assets; the management and use of existing assets; and the operation of transport, communications, energy, and utility systems," the report says. "These technologies are transformational, with the capacity to increase the productivity of the Australian economy. In order to achieve this, however, governments and industry must be aware of the potential of smart ICT, and must invest in the technologies, skills, and systems to make the transformation a reality. " The committee labelled as its "central recommendation" the establishment of the Smart Infrastructure Task Force, to be based on the model used in the United Kingdom. "The committee recommends that the Australian government leads the formation of a suitably qualified and resourced Smart Infrastructure Task Force, led by Infrastructure Australia, on the model of the UK BIM Task Group, representing governments at all levels, academia, and industry to provide for the coordination and implementation of smart ICT in the design, planning, and development of infrastructure, and in the maintenance and optimisation of existing infrastructure," the report says. "The Task Force will act as a coordinator and conduit for the development and implementation of policy nationally, including the development of industry and product standards and training and education. The Task Force will have responsibility for the development of a national strategy to accelerate the adoption of new technologies and innovations; and engage Australia with international experience and global best practice. " This task force should also develop protocols and mechanisms for the release or sale of infrastructure data for both the government and the private sector, develop metadata standards , and form an objects library for asset classification. The House of Representatives committee called on the government to deem public safety communications as critical infrastructure, and provide support for their research, development, implementation, and national coordination. It added that the government should likewise continue supporting the research, development, implementation, and national coordination of disaster planning and emergency response systems. In regards to developing smart emergency response systems, however, the committee stopped short of extending its vision into examining how this could be done -- despite recognising that private companies have already developed systems for predicting the effect of floods and fires, for instance. "It is not possible for the committee to consider all the many variables in the deployment of such technologies to emergency management and disaster planning and remediation," the report says. "The evidence presented to the committee, however, makes it clear that smart ICT has an important role to play in the development of systems which will allow better planning for and responses to emergencies and disasters. "The capacity to anticipate the impacts of flood and fire through modelling of scenarios, to map the predicted and actual course of events, to create systems which allow access to granular data in real time, and determine the allocation of resources in minutes, is already a reality. What is required is the coordinated development and dissemination of technology and systems. " It did, however, urge the government to take a "holistic approach" when developing its public safety communications systems to account for existing communications infrastructure. In addition, the committee made six other recommendations, including that the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development, the Department of Communications, and Geoscience Australia build smart ICT capacity in collaboration with private sector companies "where appropriate", and share knowledge gained through this exercise with local and state governments. The National Archives of Australia should develop a strategy for the entire government for collecting, managing, storing, and securing any data associated with the planning, design, management, and operation of smart infrastructure, the committee said. As such, the use of open data -- which the government last month said could generate up to AU$25 billion per year for the economy -- was encouraged. "Open data allows researchers and entrepreneurs to interrogate data from diverse sources, finding innovative solutions to new problems -- often in ways unforeseen ... the information potentially available to researchers and business is a solution looking for a problem to solve. The committee supports the concept of open data as a default. " It did, however, recognise that open data has security and privacy limitations. "Security is a critical consideration. Infrastructure needs to be protected, as does the infrastructure related data itself. This should be a primary consideration in the development of all infrastructure related smart ICT and in the release of data. "Asset and data protection should be part of the development of every infrastructure project. " The remaining recommendations were for all major infrastructure projects exceeding AU$50 million either fully or partially funded by the government provide the highest level of detail of building information modelling, with tendering processes to be encouraged; the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development to look into leveraging existing smart IT assets rather than replacing or upgrading them; the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) to assist the federal government to combine with state and territory governments to devise a nationwide system for designing and planning infrastructure, especially in regards to public transport, utilities, and land management; and for Infrastructure Australia to use smart IT infrastructure to save money in the short term. The report also lauded the usage of new technologies and applications, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning, geospatial technology, building information modelling, and mobile laser scanning, saying they could improve quality of life in regional and remote areas. The City of Melbourne had in September told the House of Representatives committee that it had already established a "smart city" office for research into using the IoT for integrated parking, design, mapping, modelling, data-based public tools, and asset management. "We work with industry, the [Melbourne] university, and community centres to encourage experimentation and a generation of ideas and solutions to infrastructure management issues," City of Melbourne representative Austin Ley told the committee. "Our priority areas are open data; engagement with, and the involvement of, external plans; development of urban spaces which are IT enabled; high-bandwidth connectivity -- both wired and wireless; using IT to enhance performance; and responding to both positive and negative disruptive impacts. " Both Singapore and Hong Kong have for years been focused on using the IoT to transform themselves into smart regions. The Australian government unveiled its AU$1.1 billion National Innovation and Science Agenda in December to encourage technological innovation and entrepreneurship, incentivise risk taking, and promote science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in schools. "Australia is falling behind on measures of commercialisation and collaboration, consistently ranking last or second last among OECD countries for business-research collaboration," Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said at the time. Turnbull earlier on Tuesday unveiled the Innovation and Science Australia board , which has been tasked with putting technological innovation at the centre of government policy making.

2016-03-15 06:36 Corinne Reichert www.zdnet.com

91 Smile launches its VoLTE service in Tanzania Hardly a week after launching its VoLTE service known as SmileVoice in Uganda, Smile Communications Tanzania has announced the introduction of SmileVoice and SmileUnlimited. This makes Smile the first operator in East Africa to offer its customers Voice over LTE services. Just like in Uganda, SmileVoice comes in two forms; using a downloadable free mobile App that affords customers with Android and Apple iPhone devices the ability to make SuperClear voice calls over Smile’s 4G LTE network, or through the use of a VoLTE-capable handset plus a Smile SIM card. SmileUnlimited offers customers 30 days of unlimited access to Smile’s SuperFast 4G LTE mobile broadband service. Mr Eric Behner, Country Manager, Smile Tanzania said, “Smile is the first mobile operator in East Africa to develop and introduce Voice over LTE, plus a world first to develop and introduce a free Voice over LTE mobile application that enables all our customers in Tanzania, with Android and iPhone devices, to experience high-quality voice calls over Smile’s network.” “We are committed to improving the quality of voice and data services in Tanzania, and with SmileVoice our customers can call anyone locally and internationally, just like on any other mobile.” “With our recently announced funding Smile has expanded its existing 4G LTE network in Tanzania to 7 cities, and now provides 30-days of unlimited access to SuperFast mobile broadband – there is no other provider that is offering its customers such value and convenience,” says Mr Behner. Elaborating on the SmileUnlimited offering, Mr Behner explained that any unlimited offering is subject to a fair usage policy (FUP). Smile’s Fair Usage Policy is very generous and ensures that connectivity will be maintained throughout the 30-day period. Not only is Smile’s pricing more affordable than that of competitor narrowband offerings, but the superior quality of true broadband also makes SmileUnlimited a fitting application of Smile’s value proposition of speed, quality, reliability and simplicity. The free SmileVoice App is a world-first, enabling customers that don’t have VoLTE-capable handsets the ability to make reliable Voice over LTE calls when connected to Smile’s mobile broadband. “In the Tanzanian market Android is the leading handset and together with the free SmileVoice App, we are ensuring that all our registered customers have a way to experience high-quality voice calls from their mobiles,” says Mr Behner. To use SmileVoice, customers will be required to have a registered Smile SIM card and active SmileData service. When out of range of the Smile network, the SmileVoice App will enable calls from any device that is connected to the Internet via 3G or Wi-Fi at home or abroad. Customers who make calls when travelling abroad will be charged their local call rates, as if they were calling from home.

2016-03-15 06:33 PC Tech pctechmag.com

92 Panasonic Australia confident 2-in-1 will drive Toughbook business Panasonic Australia is confident the momentum for its Toughbook division will remain solid, after announcing that it managed to double the size of its business in the market over the last two years. Marc Amelung, Panasonic Toughbook group manager, said the Australian market is proof the company's Toughbook business, which has been operating in Australia for the last 11 years, has been nothing but successful. He attributed growth to the company's strong relationship with long-standing repeat customers, such as Telstra, NSW Transport Roads and Maritime, Department of Defence, and police and emergency services. Amelung added that in the last 12 months, the company has gained new customers in the oil and gas industry, saying they are among some of the country's top gas and exploration companies without disclosing any specific names. As part of plans to drive further growth for its Toughbook division, which Amelung told ZDNet makes up the largest part of Panasonic's B2B business, the company will launch the Toughbook 20 in May for a recommended retail price starting from AU$5,399. The Toughbook 20 is a rugged 2-in-1 device, which Panasonic claims is the "slimmest and lightest device of its kind". According to the company, it will feature the 6th generation Intel Core vPro processor, a 128GB solid state drive, 8GB RAM, and Windows 10 Professional. Hugh Ujhazy, IDC Australia associate VP, said IDC has predicted in Australia that 2-in-1 devices will exceed tablet revenue by 2019. He said two key reasons for the uptake of 2-in-1 devices will be the 24/7 workplace, and quality connectivity such as LTE and the expansion of the national broadband network becoming ubiquitous. Panasonic's plan to drive further growth in the enterprise division reiterates what the company had announced during the Consumer Electronics Show at the start of the year. Richard Hsu, vice president for Panasonic's Innovation Center North America, told ZDNet at the time that while the company has long been known as a consumer brand, Panasonic executives are confident about attracting corporate customers to its emerging portfolio of B2B solutions.

2016-03-15 06:24 Aimee Chanthadavong www.zdnet.com

93 WhatsApp to expand encryption to Voice soon A number of tech companies are set to make security improvements as a result of the ongoing battle between Apple and the FBI. Reports indicate that Facebook-owned WhatsApp is set to expand encryption to voice calls “within weeks,” while Facebook itself is also considering how it might improve security in its Messenger service. The encryption has been accelerated by the the debate which happened over the weekend, with the Justice Department was debating how to deal with problems of accessing encrypted WhatsApp data. WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum has openly come out in support of Apple. A number of other companies are reportedly looking for ways to expand encryption services.

2016-03-15 06:24 Ephraim Batambuze pctechmag.com

94 Now try out your Android game before you buy Google as of yesterday, announced a number of new services for game developers at its annual Developer Day at the Game Developers Conference. They include tools for managing virtual goods and currencies. According to TechCrunch , Google launched a Video Recording API so developers can make it easier for players to stream and share videos to YouTube, and a new ad type that allows new players to try a game for 10 minutes right from the mobile search results page before deciding to make their purchase for the game. Google pointed out that the number of games reaching more than a million installs grew by 50%. The most interesting of these new features is probably the announcement of Google’s new “ Search Trial Run Ads ” which will be rolled out to all Android users for the coming weeks. The new Ad will allow users to stream a game right from the search results page without having to first install it on their phones. While searching for any game in the Play Store , and perhaps you find one that you seem to like, simply click on the “Try Now” button and the game will stream onto your phone straight from the Google’s servers. However, the trial period only lasts for 10 minutes. After then, you will be prompted to either install the game or pay for it. “Streaming content from games, though, is obviously a tougher challenge.” As a Google spokesperson told TechCrunch, “the new feature will only appear for users who are connected to Wi-Fi.”s With this new feature, game developers will soon be able to allow players to stream their gaming session’s right on YouTube. They can, of course, also record their games offline and share them later on via YouTube. TechCrunch who did attend the GDC, also reports that some of the other new features Google announced included: the ability to update gameplay and game economy parameters in games in real time without having to upload a new version of an app to .

2016-03-15 06:14 Nathan Ernest pctechmag.com

95 Online tax software roundup: H&R Block, TaxAct, and TurboTax compared Use commas to separate multiple email addresses Your message has been sent. There was an error emailing this page. By ITNews Staff Macworld | Mar 15, 2016 6:00 AM PT Here we go again. The glorious comeback of the tax return. Our yearly reminder that your first financial overlords await your annual offering. This year I looked at three apps, all of which are Web-based. In addition to these Web apps you’ll find that each of these companies offer desktop versions with similar features. Truth is, the online versions of these apps are near, if not exact, mirrors of their desktop counterparts. All offer the same features, the only difference being that your data is stored on the Web rather than on your local hard drive. iOS versions, where offered, are linked to the same Web data you access using these apps. And, it’s important to note that no matter what application you use, unless you print and mail a paper return, at some point in time your data will be travelling securely across the Web, through one of these companies to the IRS’s servers. Which three online apps will we look at? All of these tax tools work really well. They make gathering and entering information easy, and, if your have all your paperwork ducks in one place, will help you knock out fairly complex tax filings in 90 minutes or less. These apps are clear about why you are or aren’t getting a refund, and they all make the filing process simple. Let’s cut to the chase: TaxAct pretty well bowled me over with its simplicity, but even more with the breadth of its online offerings; from the most basic to corporate tax filings, Tax Act offers it all, leaving H&R Block and TurboTax in the dust. Free tax filing: How to e-file your 2015 tax returns for free TaxAct ($0 to $30 plus $20 for state taxes) is stunningly simple from the start and, after only having used it for a few minutes, left me in wonder at how pleasant it was to work with. While every tax app walks you through an interview process, TaxAct first asks if you’ve filed taxes before and, if you have, lets you import your prior year’s tax return. And, while this seems and sounds obvious, TaxAct pulls your personal info from a PDF of last year’s return, minimizing the amount of manual data entry you have to do. (PDFs have to have been created using either TurboTax or H&R Block software. No scans of paper returns.) TaxAct Once you’ve imported your prior year’s tax return, you’re asked to verify information to ensure it imported correctly. This includes checking your social security numbers and any dependent information, adjusting whether or not you or anyone else in your family is still in college, and otherwise making sure that your information is accurate. TaxAct imported my 2014 return without flaw, including holdover losses from last year and educational information related to children in college, all of which was pulled off my prior year’s tax forms. At minimum this feature saved me 30 minutes of manual data entry, if not more. After the initial import and double-check TaxAct’s interview process runs the usual gamut. Did you: If you’ve received a K-1 from a corporation you own and you completed your corporate taxes using TaxAct’s 1120 return, you can import that K-1 data from your business return directly into TaxAct’s 1040. Which is, yet again, an added benefit of the app and highlights the fact that, unlike TurboTax and H&R Block’s tax offerings, TaxAct can handle all your tax needs. Once you complete the interview process, you review your file, verify that all your information has been entered correctly, pay the piper and file. All really quite simple. TurboTax ($0 to $105 plus $40 for state taxes) has long been the king of the tax prep hill, with apps that run on all your devices and, if you’re like most people who prepare their taxes at home, you’ve probably used some version of their software to file your taxes in the past. Which is why I find it odd that, for me, TurboTax provided the most frustrating experience. This frustration arose mostly from the app’s inability to automatically enter any kind of information, whether you’ve used previous versions of the app or not. TurboTax While TaxAct allows you to import data from a PDF of last year’s tax returns, TurboTax won’t let you import anything from anywhere. So, even though I used the App Store version of TurboTax on my Mac last year, I couldn’t use that as a starting point for this year’s return, which meant that I had to manually enter all of my personal data from scratch. What’s odd about this is that the desktop version of the app does let you import data from last year’s return. But, as anyone who has ever used Intuit applications knows, this kind of inconsistency across platforms is par for the course. While TurboTax wasn’t great at importing personal data it does offer options for importing interest income and mortgage interest data directly from your bank. This requires that you have login information for your bank’s website, but once you provide that information TurboTax automatically imports and applies it to the proper tax documents. This isn’t a feature offered by either of the other tax apps. The TurboTax interview process is straightforward and consistent across all the Intuit tax applications, with a side benefit if you use an iOS device: Both TurboTax for iOS and the Web app use the same data, so you can start on the Web and finish on your iOS device. I have one complaint about the H&R Block ($0 to $35 plus $10 to $37 for state taxes) tax app that has nothing to do with the way the app works: It’s just not obvious how much you’re going to have to pay to file taxes before you start using the app. The H&R Block site displays comparison information indicating that it is by far the least expensive of these three apps. But as soon as you start preparing your return, it’s clear that the $10 fee displayed in the “comparison” on their splash page is what you pay when filing basic federal and state returns. As soon as your tax situation gets mildy complicated you’ll need to upgrade to a more expensive version. And $10 for a basic return is actually more expensive than either TurboTax or TaxAct, both of which are free for state and federal filings. H&R Block That said, unlike the other two, H&R Block offers free audit representation and lets you transfer your return from the online app to a local H&R Block office if you want a more personal experience than the Web can offer. As was the case with TurboTax, H&R Block offers no options for importing data from a prior year’s tax return, whether that return is in PDF or H&R Block’s desktop app format. You’ll be entering all your basic data by hand if you’re using this app for the first time. While there’s no difference in the questions you’re asked in any of these apps, H&R Block offers an interface that I think is the best of the three. The text is clear, the color scheme is easy on the eyes, and everything is sized in such a way that your eyes aren’t searching edge-to-edge in the browser window and you aren’t continuously scrolling up and down to find what you need. I mentioned at the beginning of this review that I was bowled over by TaxAct: it offers the most options for filing taxes, including corporation taxes. That fact alone marks it as a standout, because the only way to file corporate taxes using a Mac is to purchase the Windows version of TurboTax for business and run it in a virtual machine or Bootcamp. There isn’t another offering on the Web for filing your business taxes, period. When it comes to filing personal taxes, in terms of questions asked and the ease and confidence with which you’re able to file them, there is no substantial difference between any of these apps. They will all walk you though the process with aplomb. But, TaxAct will do it with the least damage to your bottom line and the least manual data entry. This story, "Online tax software roundup: H&R Block, TaxAct, and TurboTax compared" was originally published by Macworld . It’s becoming harder to find, but we’ll show you where you can get music for free without raising the... Which graphics card is best for your money? We test over a dozen AMD and Nvidia GPUs to help find the... If you're looking for a good time but don't have a dime to spare, these 16 free PC games will leave you... Some Skype credit and a web browser is all you need now to save money on international calls. Fox's Assassin's Creed VR experience wants to put you in the shoes of a parkour-obsessed killer. Microsoft announced Tuesday that it is on track to land a series of key certifications in its...

2016-03-15 06:00 ITNews Staff www.macworld.com

96 CorelDraw Graphics Suite X8: The un-Adobe choice steps up to Windows 10 and 4K displays With the release of CorelDraw Graphics Suite X8, Corel has unleashed a coordinated update to its multi-app creative flagship targeted to businesses, entrepreneurs, graphics pros, and hobbyists. The suite welcomes Windows 10 with a new Font Manager app, variable screen resolution, and an array of additions and enhancements to ensure that users stay focused and productive. Major updates to Corel’s two main apps—CorelDraw and Photo-Paint—provide advanced object editing options, including improved Knife and Shape tools, new font handling and filtering, Healing Clone and Gaussian Blur lens tools, enhanced interface customization, and more. If that sounds intimidating for newcomers and past users, it doesn’t have to be. Corel’s new built- in interactive Startup tours help mitigate the learning curve, while the apps’ user guides are now available as e-books. CorelDraw X8’s updated interface now supports Ultra HD 4K monitors, letting you view apps on the highest-resolution screens available. New multi-monitor support and individual monitor interface scaling let you use a range of higher-resolution monitors and laptops while offering flexibility and optimal scaling for those with lower-resolution displays, even when used side by side. I was able to open a X8 window on my HP Spectre x360 laptop at native resolution alongside my 27-inch HD monitor. I could adjust them independently via the Workspace Appearance control. Multi-monitor interface supports lets you adjust each screen independently. Corel is already compatible with Wacom tablets, however, the new X8 version also supports Windows Real-Time Stylus, with no-driver pressure sensitivity and tilt that gives you full stroke control in the drawing and image editing apps. You can now use different pen-compatible tablets and styluses (such as the Microsoft Surface Pro 4, Surface Book, or any other RTS-compatible tools) with the software to tailor them to your own stroke strength. For the font-obsessed, a new Font List Box in both CorelDraw and Photo-Paint lets you find, filter, and view specific fonts while streamlining the selection process. You can sort fonts by weight, width, scripts, and more or use keywords to find new fonts. Corel’s new Font Manager—a standalone utility—lets you access online fonts from the company’s Content Exchange as well as your own system. You can browse, search, and preview glyph sets and add customized collections. When you add folders and collections, all fonts—even ones that aren’t installed—are accessible and usable from the apps’ Font List Box. CorelDraw X8 implements a multitude of new vector drawing features, from letting you hide objects and groups of objects so only needed ones are displayed, to an improved Knife tool that lets you split vector objects, groups of objects, bitmaps, and text with straight, freehand, or Bézier lines. An enhanced node selection feature lets you shift-click to select adjacent nodes with the Shape tool. Then, you can copy or cut specific parts of a curve segment and paste it as an object, making it easy to create similar new shapes. A new Feathering Direction button on the property bar helps to create natural-looking drop shadows, complete with Gaussian Blurs. Photo-Paint, the other major tool in the suite, has its share of new visual treats. The new Healing Clone tool—great for anything from landscapes to faces—removes unwanted items from images by painting with a sampled color or texture. ...and now the silver ball is gone. A slider-based Straighten Image dialog lets you correct perspective distortions and tilt, especially for photos with straight lines and flat surfaces. The Gaussian Blur special effect is now available as a lens, so you can blur images non- destructively (without overwriting the original). The lens is created as a separate object on a layer above the background, so you can edit it separately. CorelDraw Graphics Suite X8 continues to offer extensive interface customization options. In addition to the scaling discussed earlier, you can also choose among light and dark themes and any background and window border colors you want. You can expand your creative tools by downloading applications, plug-ins, and extensions directly from within CorelDraw and Photo-Paint—as well as obtain a free license for the company’s Website Creator. The new version is available for download now (boxes ship on April 5) for $499, with upgrades at $199. Subscription pricing is $30 per month or $198 per year. Like Adobe’s Creative Cloud, subscribers get early access to updated features as they emerge. An upgrade program is available for perpetual license holders for $99 per year. Commercial and educational volume licenses are also available. In addition to Windows 10, it’s compatible with Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 in 32- and 64-bit versions.

2016-03-15 06:00 Jackie Dove www.pcworld.com

97 Razer's refreshed Blade gaming laptop adds more power for far less cash If you saw our review of the Razer Blade Stealth earlier this week and thought you’d abdicated to an alternate dimension where the black-and-green gaming mavens at Razer no longer made gaming hardware, fear not: The 14-inch Razer Blade (no surname) still exists, and it’s getting an update for 2016. For the most part it’s the usual incremental hardware advances. Last year’s i7-4720HQ is now an i7-6700HQ. SATA M.2 drives have given way to speedier PCIe drives. The old Intel wireless card has been replaced with a Killer Wireless card. The Nvidia GeForce 970M graphics chip is...still a 970M, though now with 6GB of onboard VRAM. And Razer’s sticking with the same 16GB of RAM configuration introduced last year, but now it's using DDR4 memory. The other changes are pretty predictable, too. The new and improved Razer Blade sports per- key Chroma (RGB) lighting, and if you didn’t see that one coming then you’re probably too blind to appreciate those 16.8 million colors anyway. As always, the usual disclaimer: Is RGB lighting necessary? No. Do people love it? Some do! Do people buy it? Yes. The Blade will also charge by way of USB-C, the same as the Blade Stealth. And following logically from that, it will be compatible with Razer’s new Thunderbolt 3 graphics amplifier, the Razer Core, whenever it’s released. Pair the two and you could run a powerful desktop graphics card at home for enhancing gaming performance and still have the decently robust 970M as a fallback on the road. In other words, the Blade is still a damn luxurious gaming laptop. Slightly better specs and a cheaper price? Sounds like 2016’s update is an all-around improvement. Orders start today and ship in April. We’ll hopefully have a corresponding review soon. Until then, stay tuned to PCWorld for more news out of this week’s Game Developers Conference.

2016-03-15 06:00 Hayden Dingman www.pcworld.com

98 Turnbull unveils Innovation and Science Australia board Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has on Tuesday announced the remaining Innovation and Science Australia (ISA) board members that will oversee the nation's innovation agenda. Joining Bill Ferris, who was appointed in November as the chair of the board, is Australia's Chief Scientist Dr Alan Finkel, who will take on the role of deputy chair. Joining Ferris and Finkel on the board will be departing CEO of Google Australia & New Zealand and soon to be ANZ group executive digital banking Maile Carnegie, co-founder and CEO of Australian startup success story Atlassian Scott Farquhar, Daniel Petre from AirTree capital ventures, co-founder of SEEK and Square Peg Capital Paul Bassat, and Dr Chris Roberts from ResMed, along with Dr Michele Allan, Chancellor of Charles Sturt University, who has been reappointed. According to Turnbull, the talent on the ISA board represents innovators and entrepreneurs with a proven record of success. The government said the new board will have broader functions than its predecessor Innovation Australia, including advising the government on strategies, priorities, and investments. "[The board] is going to be a very important element in our continuing project of ensuring that Australia -- innovative, competitive, productive -- is able to prosper in this exciting time in which we live, in this time of unprecedented global economic growth and change," Turnbull said. "We believe we have some of the best minds in Australia to advise us as we chart that journey. " The board will be tasked with placing innovation and science at the centre of government policy making, playing a key role in the delivery of its National Innovation and Science Agenda. In December, the Australian government unveiled its AU$1.1 billion National Innovation and Science Agenda , which covered more than 20 measures centred on its "Ideas Boom" rhetoric. Turnbull reiterated on Tuesday that the innovation agenda is absolutely critical for Australia's continued success following the mining boom. "What comes next is innovation, open markets, investment, entrepreneurship, enterprise. Every level of our government is focused on a more innovative, enterprising Australia -- and a more innovative and enterprising government," he said. "The National Innovation and Science Australia board is going to be critical in providing us with that advice. You will see that it has got a number of leading business men and women on it, and the reason for that is that it is vital that we work closely with industry, academia, business, and venture capital to ensure that we get the right inspiration and the right stimulation for investment. " The prime minister also said the government will be introducing legislation into Parliament on Wednesday that would provide tax incentives and capital gains tax (CGT) exemptions for investments in early stage startups. "Investors will receive a 20 percent tax offset based on the amount that they invest in these early stage startups, as well as a CGT exemption," he said. "So what we're doing is encouraging people to invest and we're doing that by taking taxes off. Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science Christopher Pyne said today was just another one of the stepping stones along the way for the implementation of the innovation agenda. "We've already announced people who will be rolling out our programs for science, technology, engineering, and maths in preschools and the people who will be supporting digital literacy for teachers in the national curriculum -- they have already been announced and are already underway," Pyne said. " Landing pads have been announced in Shanghai, Tel Aviv, and San Francisco and opened, or in the process of being opened, and two more will be soon announced. " Additionally, in the wake of the National Innovation and Science Agenda, Pyne said that various other measures have already kicked off. He said the consultation process for creating a new visa for entrepreneurs has already begun, as has the process for implementing an Incubator Support Programme , with Pyne, alongside Assistant Minister for Innovation Wyatt Roy, publishing a discussion paper on Friday describing the draft program parameters. After a new draft was released in late December, Pyne said the new crowdsourced equity funding laws [PDF] have already made their way through the House of Representatives and are waiting in the Senate for their passage. "We aren't just talking about jobs and employment, we're actually getting on with the job of creating employment and growth in our economy and that's the difference between us and our Labor opponents who do much talking about things as though they are new things -- we're a long way down the track," he said. "This team is helping the economy transition to a new place and certainly this is the team that can be trusted to do so whereas Labor will simply take us back. " Turnbull echoed much the same as his innovation minister, saying the Bill Shorten-led opposition is discouraging investment at every turn. "Without introducing an unduly partisan note to this otherwise inspiring media event, let me just note that the Labor party are doing the exact opposite," Turnbull said. "They're actually increasing the tax on capital gains, and of course if you want people to do less of something, you put more tax on it so they clearly want there to be less investment -- we want there to be more. Particularly more innovative investment and that's what our whole innovation agenda is all about. "

2016-03-15 06:00 Asha Barbaschow www.zdnet.com

99 Project management glossary As in many specialized fields, there is a host of terms that hold a specific meaning, and the world of project management (PM) is no exception. Although project management professionals have an understanding of these specific complex PM terms, the vernacular may not be as intuitive for professionals in other fields. These PM terms define not only what is being done, but also provide some very specific guidelines for how, where and/or when these terms are applicable. The field of PM is highly complex with skillsets that are employed widely within almost all industries; exposing the field to a global audience. The project management field spans 10 interconnected knowledge areas and incorporates the use of 47 processes organized into five process groups (initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling and close-out) -- making it a complex field to understand and navigate. As project management is applied within small businesses to large multi-national organizations and to virtually any industry in some form, anyone from the CEO of a large international organization to employees within a small business can benefit from understanding these PM terms. Since project management involves careful planning, execution and management of people, processes, timelines, deliverables, technologies and other resources in a way that aligns with overall strategic objectives, successfully executing a project, can be almost impossible absent the understanding of these PM terms. The terms outlined in this glossary hold a specific meaning, but may be applied somewhat differently and at different times depending on the industry and project nature. This glossary serves to provide professionals at all levels with a foundational knowledge of the project management terms and how they are generally applied within the field. The five project management phases are: initiating, planning, executing, monitoring/controlling and close-out. The term “phase” and “process group” are used interchangeably and cover all processes and activities within a project from start to finish. In project management, knowledge areas illustrate a set of concepts, terms and actions that encompass professional and project management field specializations. In total there are 10 knowledge areas that overlay within the five project management phases. The 10 knowledge areas are: project integration management, project scope management, project time management, project cost management, project quality management, project human resource management, project communications management, project risk management, project procurement management and project stakeholder management. These could be finished products, documents, services, or any results that are approved by the project initiator/owner, or authorized individual. This could also refer to partial products, documents or services within a phase or project that has been canceled. The key here is that it has been approved. This can be created when internal or external factors like changes in regulation, legal requirements, technological advances or limitations, changes in the market, or competition shifts. It influences business decisions and creates a need to take action. The business need is considered an input within the project statement of work (SOW) document. A group formally formed to review, evaluate, approve, schedule or reject, and communicate project change requests submitted by the project team. These are formal requests scheduled and submitted by the project team to the change control Board (CCB) to either prevent or correct an action, repair some sort of deficiency or make changes to a policy plan procedure or even costs/budgets or revise a schedule. These change requests are considered an output within the integrated change control process. In project management, this is the final phase/process group where processes are performed at the end of a project to formally conclude project activities. It involves confirming and documenting the customer is satisfied with, and accepts the project outcome(s). It also releases all resources/ stakeholders, concludes project activities, terminates all agreements, insurers updates to any project documents are complete, formally closes the project, and documents any lessons learned throughout the project. Usually refers to organizations that involve a combination of the previous structures and may have some middle-management, strategic and operational management that interact with project managers on all levels. This measures the costs at a point in time against a cost baseline and is used to calculate the estimate to complete (ETC). It is usually expressed as a cost variance (CV) and cost performance index (CPI). These are typically tangible products or results of the project that are distinctive and verifiable, needed for the purpose of completing the project or a part of the project. This measures how much work has been completed in comparison to the approved budget for the work. An organization’s internal factors that can influence/impact the outcome of a project and can include government/legislative changes, internal processes and practices, technologies, staff, and management and stakeholder risk tolerance, communication practices, and even corporate culture. A more strategic PMO that focuses all efforts on executing projects in alignment with overall business strategy. All projects and related activities are undertaken with the goal of supporting business objectives; ensuring projects are not initiated if they do not provide sufficient value to the business overall. The processes involved in this phase/process group involve actually performing the work defined in the project management plan required to complete the project. Throughout this phase, there may be changes to the cost, quality, time, resources etc. that may trigger change requests that need to be approved, and this may in turn require a need to revisit and update the project management plan and associated documents. This is the phase where a significant amount of the financial budget is spent as the actual work occurs here. This can refer to the judgment of the organization’s internal project managers, a project management office, other professionals, technical associations, or other sources, and relates to administrative activities required to close a project.

2016-03-15 05:17 Moira Alexander www.cio.com

100 5 lessons the DOD can teach you about innovation The Intelligence Community’s (IC) IT budget is flat-lining. Like most other federal organizations facing successive years of budget constraints, the IC has been continuously challenged to do more with less. One former IC executive quietly implemented innovative solutions that yielded millions of dollars in government savings by basing his strategy on Joi Ito’s maxim: “If you want to be innovative, lower the cost of failure.” In just two years as the Defense Intelligence Agency’s CIO, Dan Doney spearheaded a number of initiatives revolutionizing rickety processes and tech. He explains that enabling the government to be innovative was not about bright shiny objects, but streamlining processes to discover, evaluate, integrate and acquire emerging ideas – big or small. The secret, he says, is to be “systematically opportunistic.” Using simple platforms that could be adopted by most federal offices, he optimized how innovators interface with government, and how the workforce surfaced needs and solutions to mission problems. Here’s how: In order for outside developers to address IT needs, they have to be able to find and understand them. The cumbersome online federal IT bidding system is its own worst enemy, keeping new solutions from getting in, and cutting-edge startups from even trying. Proposal and business development often introduces years of technical diligence, compete periods, government review and funding allocation. Typically, these delays are only financially feasible for large companies with a robust commercial client base. Doney established the more user-friendly acquisition interface, NeedipeDIA, enabling outside developers and small businesses to easily discover and address DIA needs. He also launched the Open Innovation Gateway – an online environment simulating DOD IT environments so that companies could develop to DOD specifications and allow DIA to rapidly test and field the most promising capabilities. Quick decisive action is required to onboard transformative ideas, Doney says. Multi-year government budget cycles and planning prohibit this approach, so he developed an internal venture capital mechanism at DIA to provide in-execution-year fiscal agility and crisp decision making to respond to new opportunities or mission needs. The process aimed to induce agency decisions within one month and 6 month pilot delivery timelines. “Agencies abhor a decision as nature abhors a vacuum,” he says. His “Ideas to Action” process designed to move quickly from idea, to decision, to execution, short circuited normal agency decision making consisting of over 140 agency boards. One such pilot delivered a workforce idea simplifying the transfer of unclassified material to classified networks, resulting in an estimated savings of $40 million and costing just $325,000 to execute. This process helped launch the IC’s first operational Top Secret wireless network and set the stage for broader adoption across the IC and DOD. Though difficult to imagine now, there was a time when nobody knew who Microsoft or Apple was. Distrust of outside ideas and not always knowing what to ask for are also endemic in centralized institutions. Doney says that innovators submitting unsolicited proposals and disruptive technologies often fall through the cracks. “Evaluating emerging technologies through a paper proposal process is a fool errand’” he says. He gave the example of an obscure business that approached DIA through NeedipeDIA claiming it could process data faster than IC systems. Doney recalls many dismissed it (including himself), but proffered them access to the Open Innovation Gateway. Sure enough, the company outperformed government tech. Top-down government acquisition processes run the risk of spending millions of dollars on multi- year contracts for tools the workforce does not want or need. So Doney helped launch the “Nerd Brigade,” a nod to the Geek Squad, composed of coders and technicians to streamline and automate workflows for what he calls “the disenfranchised end-user” with tasks not viewed sexy or important enough to receive funding. Together technologists and end-users could ideate and iterate unique tools. He recalled that the Nerd Brigade built a solution in just two weeks for a group of analysts burdened with manual data entry that saved 65 percent of an analyst’s day. “The problem was never that there were not enough ideas,” Doney explains. “There are plenty of ideas, but no mechanisms in government to enable them to surface.” With low costs to execute and low risk if they fail, lean IT solutions should be an attractive option across government; however, each of Doney’s initiatives met resistance. Some argued that securing funding and in-house-expertise to maintain custom IT solutions would be too problematic given tenuous budgets. Doney proposes the need for a new delivery model disrupting this mentality – disposable IT. With an IT landscape that transforms every couple years, federal processes that require years to plan and deliver cannot succeed. “We must learn to deliver capabilities in weeks that aren’t intended to last years – by design.” Any organization is capable of democratizing processes to execute “crisp decisions,” as Doney refers to it, and give voice to the mundane and unsexy workflows. Empowering the government workforce may be

2016-03-15 05:03 Jackie Burns www.cio.com

Total 100 articles. Created at 2016-03-15 18:01