Category: What’s On

Facebook is launching another Snapchat clone, a standalone ephemeral picture and video messaging app -- complete with face-distorting masks-- that looks almost identical to Snapchat. We've seen this play out before. Twice, in fact. In both instances -- first with Poke, then with Slingshot -- Facebook's attempt to create a legitimate Snapchat competitor flopped.But this time Facebook is trying something different: Its new app, Flash, was built by Facebook's growth team specifically for emerging markets where Wi-Fi is scarce and connectivity

Tech behemoth Dell EMC launched a new service to protect enterprise applications running on Amazon Web Services (AWS) yesterday called NetWorker. The company said the service will provide a complete enterprise-grade backup solution for those apps. In addition, NetWorker will run completely self-contained within an AWS environment and it will include client-side optimized backups, inline de-duplication, encryption, and compression with backup directly to Amazon S3.“The availability of Dell EMC NetWorker with CloudBoost on AWS is a particularly exciting announcement for all

Thanks to a new deep learning system called Caffe2Go, Facebook now lets users of its mobile app transform videos with artwork-inspired special effects in real time. The platform enables such on-the-fly style transfers by dramatically improving how efficiently artificial intelligence (AI) processes images and videos. With the help of Caffe2Go, users of Facebook's iOS or Android app can quickly change the look of their photos or videos in the style of Van Gogh's paintings, for example (pictured above). Facebook engineers took

Print newspapers may be disappearing like the home telephone, but not after Election Day. Remembering the frenzy for old-fashioned papers the morning after Barack Obama's historic win in 2008, newspapers are printing extra copies and setting up temporary retail stands this year, regardless of whether the nation elects the first woman or reality TV star as president. The Los Angeles Times is also selling a commemorative printing-press plate of the front page. Many people now rely on Facebook and apps for

Tech giant Oracle announced the completion of its deal to acquire cloud company NetSuite for $9.3 billion in cash today. Oracle said that enough NetSuite shares -- 53 percent -- had been tendered in favor of the vote as of midnight Friday. The completion of the deal caps off a dizzying few weeks of mergers and acquisitions activity in the enterprise tech sector. For example, semiconductor-maker Broadcom announced last month that it had agreed to acquire Brocade Communications Systems, the enterprise

The next flagship phone from Samsung, the Galaxy S8, is expected to arrive early next year with a major new feature: a built-in intelligent digital assistant. The artificial intelligence will be made possible by Samsung's acquisition of Viv Labs, which was announced last month. Founded by two of the creators of Siri, Apple's signature digital assistant, Viv Labs said its technology represents a "new paradigm" for how people interact with computers. The Viv AI uses something called dynamic program generation that

Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) subsidiary Google has revised its search engine rules so that it can prioritize mobile searches. Google has launched an initiative called “mobile first” whose aim is to rank websites based on whether they are mobile-friendly. However, it does not mean that support for desktop sites will be thrown out the window. Google will still support desktop orientation but it plans to shift towards a mobile-based approach.Google is also working on making sure that the changes will not have

Tech behemoth Dell EMC launched a torrent of new products and services for enterprise client at its Dell EMC World Austin event that wrapped up yesterday. Among the announcements were the new Endpoint Data Security and Management portfolio, new payment solutions for IT procurement, new versions of its Data Domain protection tool, and new analytics suites. Security Is the WordDigital security was one of the biggest focuses of the conference, which might have been expected given recent headlines of enterprise network

Major DDoS Attack Causes U.S. Outages on Twitter, Reddit, OthersEarly this morning, a large distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) directed at the Internet performance management company Dyn caused Web site outages for a number of its customers, including Twitter, Reddit, Spotify and SoundCloud. Services were restored to normal by 9:20 a.m. Eastern Time, the company said. In a status update shortly after 7 a.m., New Hampshire-based Dyn reported that it was monitoring and working to mitigate a DDoS attack against

AT&T Trying To Buy Time Warner Inc.After its acquisition of satellite television service DirecTV, telephone giant AT&T Inc. might be setting its sights on an even bigger prize, Time Warner Inc. Bloomberg News reported Thursday afternoon that AT&T and Time Warner executives have engaged in preliminary talks about a potential merger or other partnerships. [Update: Friday evening, The Wall Street Journal reported that AT&T is in "advanced talks" to acquire Time Warner, stating "a deal valuing Time Warner at more than $80

A new partnership between long-time rivals Amazon Web Services (AWS), part of Amazon.com, and VMware could prove to be a major deal for enterprise hybrid cloud users as well as the competitive landscape that services them. Yesterday, the companies announced that they will be cooperating on a new hybrid service, dubbed VMware Cloud on AWS, designed to make it easier for enterprises to run VMware applications on data centers managed by AWS. VMware said the strategic alliance will “deliver a seamlessly

Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and IBM are among nine tech giants coming together to promote a new standard for data center servers. Designed to speed up server performance, the OpenCAPI specification is aimed at helping businesses better handle today's increasingly data-intensive workloads. Working together as part of the new OpenCAPI Consortium, the industry partners said they expect that the first products based on the new standards will hit the market in the second half of 2017.By applying new data-centric standards to

HP Inc. expects to lay off between 3,000 and 4,000 employees in the next three years amid slumping demand for its products, the company said Thursday. The layoffs come one year after HP Inc., the manufacturer of printers, laptops and personal computers, was spun off from Hewlett-Packard in Silicon Valley's biggest corporate breakup. The other company in the split, HP Enterprise, provides data center technology and business services.HP Inc. CEO Dion Weisler said the cuts would allow the company to remain

The Supreme Court is raising serious doubts about a $399 million judgment against smartphone maker Samsung for illegally copying parts of the patented design of Apple's iPhone. Justices hearing arguments Tuesday in the long-running dispute seemed troubled that Samsung was ordered to pay all the profits it earned from 11 phone models even though the features at issue are just a tiny part of the devices.But some justices struggled over how a jury should be instructed if the case is sent

In just over two months, Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 has gone from smartphone star to epic failure, with the South Korean firm confirming today that it is permanently halting production of the device. Linked to numerous battery-related fires, the Galaxy Note 7 could end up costing Samsung many billions of dollars. Launched in early August, the Galaxy Note 7 appears to have had a flaw that caused the battery's positive and negative poles to come into contact, generating enough heat to

Breaking up can be hard to do, especially when one party is unwilling to let go. Users of Yahoo’s email service are learning that lesson the hard way, as the company has discontinued its email forwarding functionality, at least for the time being. Since the beginning of this month, several account holders have reported that they can no longer activate mail forwarding. As for Yahoo, the company is staying quiet about the development, other than issuing a tersely worded statement on

Four States Sue To Stop U.S. from Ceding Internet ControlFour states -- Arizona, Oklahoma, Nevada, and Texas -- are suing to stop the U.S. government from transferring control of the Internet to an international body on Saturday. A U.S. Department of Commerce contract with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, is set to expire Friday. ICANN, formed in 1998, manages domain names and assigns Internet service provider numbers. In June, the Department of Commerce and the National Telecommunications

Apple Inc. is reportedly planning to open its first research and development center in China, allowing the tech giant to extend its reach in a vital market and maintain goodwill with the Chinese government. The Cupertino tech giant will eventually invest 300 million yuan, or $45 million, in the facility, which will have 500 employees, according to the state-run China Daily newspaper.Zhongguancun Science Park, a Beijing tech hub that the Wall Street Journal and CNBC described as Apple's future landlord, posted

Enterprises will soon be able to speed their Ethernet networks by up to five times their current speeds without having to replace their existing infrastructures thanks to a new networking standard announced this week. The standard, officially known as IEEE 802.3bz, defines 2.5 and 5 Gigabit Ethernet speeds over the existing installed base of twisted pair copper cabling. The new networking protocol will help companies continue to use their older 1000BASE-T networks while still significantly boosting speeds for their Ethernet infrastructures.

The European Union's law enforcement agency, Europol, issued a warning today regarding the cybercrime threat landscape, particularly threats emanating from the so-called “Darknet." Produced by Europol, the “2016 Internet Organized Crime Threat Assessment” report, outlines the biggest threats online. The annual report concluded that techniques that have normally been associated with cybercrime are now extending into other crime and threat areas, said Rob Wainwright, director of Europol.“A growing range of threats, from trafficking in human beings to terrorism, are becoming increasingly

Fourteen months after Microsoft released Windows 10, its "last" Windows version ever, the company said the new operating system is now running on more than 400 million devices around the world. That's an increase of more than 50 million since Microsoft last updated its usage figures earlier this year. Calling the OS "the most secure Windows," Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Windows and Devices Group, said on Monday that enterprises are moving faster than ever to adopt Windows 10.

BlackBerry plans to stop making its signature smartphones internally, signaling a strategic shift for a company that built its reputation on innovative smartphone technology. Rather, all development for BlackBerry-branded phones will be left to BlackBerry's partners, which will license BlackBerry's technology and brand, while the Canadian company concentrates on growing its software business."We believe that this is the best way to drive profitability in the device business," BlackBerry chairman and CEO John Chen [pictured above] said in a statement Wednesday. He said

Unveiled at Apple's special event in San Francisco today, the new iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus can be ordered starting this Friday and are set to hit the market on September 16. The latest generation of Apple's smartphones (pictured above) will introduce a number of new features, including water and dust resistance, an advanced 12-megapixel camera and an A10 Fusion chip architecture billed as twice as fast as the processor in the iPhone 6. As many had expected, the new phones

Apple announced its newest iPhones, the 7 and 7 plus, which are water and dust resistant. Analysts say the new iPhones could help Apple recover modestly from a recent dip in sales. But with few expected dramatic changes from previous models, Apple watchers aren't expecting the kind of big spikes in consumer demand that the company saw two years ago, when it introduced larger screens. Apple sold nearly 92 million iPhones during the first six months of this year, about 15

The 53-year-old driver of a Tesla Model S electric car died Wednesday when the vehicle smashed into a tree in the central Dutch town of Baarn and burst into flames, police and firefighters said. Police are investigating the cause of the early morning accident in the town 40 kilometers (25 miles) southeast of Amsterdam and Tesla said in a statement it is helping."Technical personnel are on the scene, and we are working with the authorities to establish the facts of the

Any Dropbox users who haven't updated their passwords over the past four years should do so immediately because more than 68 million records from Dropbox accounts hacked in 2012 have now appeared online, the file sharing and online storage company said. First reported by Motherboard yesterday, the Dropbox files showing up online included both user email addresses and hashed passwords. The information appears to have stemmed from a breach reported by Dropbox in 2012, the publication said. This latest development indicates that

Apple Says Several Billion Dollars Set Aside for U.S. TaxesApple's chief executive says the company has put aside "several billion dollars" to pay tax liabilities in the United States as it repatriates some of its huge overseas earnings. Tim Cook told Irish state network RTE in an interview broadcast Thursday that the money, part of profits from 2014, should be brought back to the U.S. next year. He did not specify how much would be repatriated. Apple holds nearly $215 billion in

Two new desktop PCs launched by HP today aim to fundamentally change the way users interact with their desktop devices. The Elite Slice is aimed squarely at the enterprise market and seems designed to function primarily as a tool for Skype meetings, while the Pavilion Wave appears to target Amazon’s Echo speaker system. "Today's desktop customers want sleek, innovative and powerful designs that enable new experiences," Mike Nash, vice president, customer experience and portfolio strategy, HP Inc., said in a statememt.

A new speech analytics tool announced yesterday by Verint Systems is designed to help customer service professionals get real-time guidance for better managing calls. The software-based system can alert service reps to caller insights as they happen as well as help companies ensure compliance with important policies and regulations, the company said. The Melville, New York-based Verint said the new real-time speech analytics capabilities are natively embedded in its software-based recording system for call centers, contact centers and other types of

Printers are down, but PCs are up -- for now. That's the scenario presented by Hewlett-Packard when it discussed its third quarter earnings with analysts this week. HP reported a quarterly profit of 49 cents per share, on revenue of $11.9 billion, compared with earnings of 39 cents a share on revenue of $12.4 billion for the same quarter last year. The company said its outlook for the current quarter is weaker than expected because of declining demand in the printer

Two years after being acquired by Facebook, the messaging service WhatsApp said it will coordinate more with its parent company to make it easier for businesses to communicate with its users. However, WhatsApp said it's rolling out those changes in a way that doesn't expose users to third-party banner ads and spam. WhatsApp revealed the coming changes in a blog post today centered around updating its terms and privacy policy for users. It said those updates are needed to begin testing

Set to arrive on September 30, iOS 10, the latest update of Apple's mobile operating system, will offer a number of new features, including a redesigned lock screen, a more intelligent Siri digital assistant and new looks for other apps. One improvement to Siri will be especially welcome for at least one famous iPhone user: Barbra Streisand. In an interview over the weekend, the singer told NPR that she called Apple CEO Tim Cook to request that the next update for

Beginning "as early as next year," Samsung may start selling refurbished smartphones directly to consumers. The new resale program is aimed at strengthening Samsung's earnings as global phone sales slow down, according to report today citing "a person with direct knowledge of the matter." Offering lower-cost refurbished phones could also help Samsung better compete against Chinese manufacturers whose cheap devices have cut into its sales, especially in developing markets.The report from Reuters from comes on the heels of Samsung's latest smartphone

T-Mobile and Sprint began yet another duel yesterday by unveiling rival wireless plans with unlimited data usage. Their announcements came just one day after AT&T unveiled new wireless service plans it said will eliminate data overage charges for customers. Starting at $70 per month for one line, the new T-Mobile One plan comes with several caveats, including slower data speeds after customers exceed 26 GB in a month. The new offering is set to become available for new postpaid customers starting