Category: What’s On

Three months ago, after 10 months of negotiations, Canadian tech giant Mitel Networks Corp. announced that it would buy video conferencing solutions provider Polycom Inc. for close to $1.9 billion. Now, it appears that Polycom has had a huge change of heart. Today, private equity firm Siris Capital Group LLC said it has agreed to acquire Polycom for $2 billion in cash and take the company private. Previously, the plan was to consolidate the enterprise communications businesses of Mitel and Polycom.The

Three months ago, after 10 months of negotiations, Canadian tech giant Mitel Networks Corp. announced that it would buy video conferencing solutions provider Polycom Inc. for close to $1.9 billion. Now it appears that Polycom has had a huge change of heart. Today private equity firm Siris Capital Group LLC said it has agreed to acquire Polycom for $2 billion in cash and take it private. Previously, the plan was to consolidate the enterprise communications businesses of Mitel and Polycom.The deal

Quantum computers promise to enable faster, far more complex calculations than today's silicon chip-based computers. But they also raise the possibility that future computers could retroactively break the security of any digital communications that exist today, which is why Google is experimenting with something called "post-quantum cryptography." While quantum computer development remains in its early stages, some such computers are already in operation. In theory, future generations of quantum computers could "decrypt any Internet communication that was recorded today, and many

Tech giant Google made a bid to expand its cloud services offerings to big media companies yesterday with the announcement that it has acquired Anvato. The company provides a software platform that automates the encoding, editing, publishing, and distribution of video content across multiple platforms. The Mountain View, Calif. startup has already won over some major media companies on its own, including NBC Universal, Fox Sports, and Univision. Anvato will now become part of the Google Cloud Platform, a group that

iPhone and Mac fans who want to test out Apple's latest operating systems can now download the public beta versions of both iOS 10 and macOS Sierra. Both were released today, a few months before the final versions are launched in the fall. Apple has described iOS 10 as the "biggest release ever" of its mobile operating system. New features arriving with this update include expanded capabilities for Siri, Apple's intelligent digital assistant, as well as "differential privacy," a new technology

Pivotal, the developer of the Cloud Foundry open source cloud development platform, is teaming up with Canonical, the company behind the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution. Announced today, the partnership means that Ubuntu is now the preferred operating system for Cloud Foundry. Cloud Foundry was originally developed by VMware and is now owned by Pivotal Software, a joint venture by EMC, VMware and General Electric. Canonical and Pivotal have worked together over the years, so today's news formalized the long-standing relationship between

Despite some setbacks with an earlier program aimed at getting more people online, Facebook is pushing ahead with a new effort to provide wireless Internet access to remote parts of the world: the OpenCellular wireless access platform. Designed to support a variety of connection options from 2G to LTE, the OpenCellular system will be open sourced so telecom operators and other organizations can more easily build locally appropriate infrastructure to work with the platform, according to Facebook engineer Kashif Ali.The system

Enterprises that depend on Symantec’s antivirus products to protect their networks may want to rethink their strategies. According to Google’s Project Zero, Symantec’s flagship enterprise security product is riddled with vulnerabilities that could be putting millions of companies at risk. The bugs affect all Symantec and Norton branded antivirus products, the Google team said. “These vulnerabilities are as bad as it gets,” Google researcher Tavis Ormandy wrote on Project Zero’s Web site yesterday. “They don’t require any user interaction, they affect

Chipmaker Qualcomm is expanding its support for Google’s new mobile virtual reality technology, Project Tango, with today’s announcement that the technology will be supported on its popular Snapdragon 820 processor, along with future processors in the Snapdragon 600 and 800 tier. “Tango is an excellent example of the innovative thinking that delivers valuable next-generation mobile experiences today,” Brent Sammons, senior marketing manager at Qualcomm, wrote on the company’s blog today. “It has the potential of becoming ubiquitous within mobile devices.”Leveraging a

Two days after reporting that 655,000 healthcare records were found for sale on the dark web, the site DeepDotWeb said today that another insurance database with at least 9.3 million patient records is being shopped around by an anonymous hacker. Over the weekend, a hacker using the name "thedarkoverlord" was offering for sale records taken from databases managed by three healthcare organizations in Missouri, Georgia and the Midwest, according to the site. The hacker, who was seeking payment in Bitcoins with

A lot of people love Uber, the San Francisco-based vehicles-for-hire company. What they don't love is being uncertain about how much they will have to pay to hire those vehicles. Uber has come under fire for its so-called surge pricing, which jacks up the amount of users' fares when demand for rides exceeds the number of drivers available. Now, the company is modifying its app to make it easier for users to see upfront how much their rides will cost. On

With just weeks to go before it launches its one-year Anniversary Update of Windows 10, Microsoft has been rolling out a series of preview builds aimed at fixing various bugs. The most recent build, announced yesterday, resolves a number of issues found in the PC and mobile versions of Microsoft's operating system. The updates come on the heels of last week's "Bug Bash," during which Microsoft gave developers a variety of "quests" to test Windows 10 for glitches and problems. Thousands

Backed by the wide-scale social influence of Facebook, WhatsApp appears poised to have an even greater impact on the global communications market, including voice calling as well as text messaging services. Yesterday, the Facebook-owned mobile messaging service announced it is now supporting more than 100 million voice calls every day, a service it began offering just 18 months ago. WhatsApp also rolled out a desktop version of its application this week, mirroring recent moves by Facebook's other communication app, Messenger.What Is

Security experts regularly urge people to make their online accounts safer with two-factor authentication. Now Google has introduced new settings designed to make that easier for Google Apps administrators and users. By changing their Google sign-in and security settings, users can now opt for an alternative to the six-digit codes Google usually sends out to enable identity verification via mobile devices. Instead, Google Apps users can choose to receive automated prompts on their smartphones that lets them verify sign-in requests with

What’s being called a sophisticated but possibly futile cyberattack on GoToMyPC, a British remote PC access provider, has caused its parent company to reset the passwords of all its clients. GoToMyPC is owned by Citrix, the American software company that provides server, application and desktop virtualization, networking and other services. Citrix bought GoToMyPC from ExpertCity in 2004. The attackers apparently used login names and passwords found in other data breaches to get at the GoToMyPC accounts. The global password reset ordered

It may seem like the number of hacking attempts increases every year, but the number of attacks originating from within the borders of at least one country have declined in the past year, according to a new study by network security firm FireEye. In its "Red Line Drawn: China Recalculates Its Use of Cyber Espionage," report, FireEye said that the number of hacks coming from the Chinese has fallen dramatically in the last year. But while the overall number of Chinese

During its annual SugarCon conference last week, customer relationship management (CRM) firm SugarCRM unveiled a new machine learning-based offering that's currently in development: Sugar Intelligence Service. The service, which will be delivered through a Siri- or Cortana-like artificial intelligence (AI) agent called "Candace," will combine companies' in-house data with other outside sources to provide predictive analytics and a more 360-degree view of customers.No release date or pricing information has been announced at this time. The intelligence service will function as a

A new enterprise offering introduced by Oracle today is designed to enable independent software vendors (ISVs) to transition their businesses to the cloud, the company said. The new platform, called the Oracle Cloud Platform Ready for Independent Software Vendors, will allow ISVs to quickly register and publish their Oracle Cloud-compatible applications on the Oracle Cloud Marketplace, allowing them to fast-track new business opportunities in the cloud. Oracle's new cloud platform is part of its Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN), a partnership program designed

Beijing's patent regulator has ordered Apple to stop selling its iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus in the city because their design too closely resembles that of a Chinese phone. Apple is appealing the ruling, which marks the latest challenge to the tech company in its second-largest market.The two iPhone models violated design patents held by Chinese device maker Shenzhen Baili because of similarities in external design with the company's 100C phone, the Beijing Intellectual Property Office wrote in a statement

By the end of this week, Facebook expects to complete a "major" update to Messenger for Android that will enable people to use the app to send and receive standard SMS text messages. Vice president of messaging products David Marcus announced the update yesterday in a post on his Facebook page. Rolling out to "most countries," the latest version of Messenger for Android will be a fully integrated app that supports a variety of other features on top of standard texting,

Adobe’s Flash browser plug-in has been suffering a slow death by a thousand cuts, and today it learned of yet another. A blog post by a member of Apple’s Safari development team has revealed that the version of Safari due out this fall -- Safari 10, set to ship with macOS Sierra -- will arrive on users’ Macs with Flash deactivated by default. The aging and vulnerable plug-in has received little love from browsers lately, with Mozilla announcing that its Firefox

Google has already brought its Fiber high-speed Internet service to six cities across the U.S., but it may soon add Dallas, the home turf of AT&T, to its list of deployment targets. In a blog post earlier today, Google announced that is "exploring the possibility" of rolling out its Fiber service in Dallas. AT&T, which is headquartered in Dallas, is already offering its high-speed GigaPower Internet service across several major cities in Texas, and has plans to expand the service to

At its Tech World event in San Francisco yesterday, Lenovo unveiled a prototype of a phone that can bend around your wrist, as well as a concept tablet that can fold to act as a regular smartphone. The devices, not yet ready for market but rather "a sign of things to come," add Lenovo to the small but growing list of companies, led by LG and Samsung, that are building new flexible electronic devices for consumers, according to Lenovo CTO Peter

Global IP traffic is expected to triple over the next five years, as a result of more than 1 billion new Internet users coming online before 2020, according to Cisco. As many as 10 billion new devices may join the Internet in that time, bringing the total number of connected devices up to 26.3 billion from the 16.3 billion that were connected in 2015. The study is part of Cisco Visual Network Index, which conducts IP traffic and service production forecasts

Tech giant Google's Maps feature lets users find and view the exterior of virtually any building. Are you ready to look inside? Google’s Tango, previously known as Project Tango, aims to map the indoor world just as Google Maps has charted the outdoor world. Tango is meant to help users find everything inside a building, including hallways and offices. What might interest Google and its advertisers even more could be Tango’s ability to find things like products in stores.This week device

Introduced with the release of Google's Android Marshmallow operating system last year, the Now on Tap feature has just been made a bit smarter. A one-touch tool for accessing information about what's displayed on a device's screen, Now on Tap has just been updated to provide users with even more specific details they might find helpful. While reading an article, for example, a user can now select a specific word or phrase, and then tap and hold the home button to

The tiny Core pocket computer from Pebble Technology will have a very big friend on its side once it reaches the marketplace: Amazon. Pebble announced this week that Pebble Core will be the first standalone wearable device to integrate Alexa, Amazon's voice assistant technology. Alexa is currently used in only a handful of Amazon’s own products, including the Amazon Echo voice-enabled wireless speaker. So far, developers have released more than 1,000 skills for Alexa, according to Amazon. The digital personal assistant

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced a new suite of applications and services yesterday to help businesses comprehensively manage, govern and extract actionable insights from enterprise information. The new suite, called HPE Verity, aims to offer companies a set of tools that are both integrated and modular. The objective of HPE Verity is to address the problem enterprises have trying to manage a wide variety of data types, including social media, instant messages, video, and voice, using soloed on-premise solutions. Verity, in

Online abuse, harassment and trolling have proven to be stubborn problems for many social networking sites, but Periscope believes users might find help through a jury of their peers. The Twitter-owned video-streaming app announced yesterday that it was introducing a new and "community-led" tool to let users report comments they find spammy or abusive. Following such reports, a random group of viewers will be asked to vote on what they think about the comment in question. If a majority agrees the

A lawsuit filed last week in U.S. District Court in California has alleged that Apple, Broadcom and Avago Technologies, a Broadcom subsidiary, have infringed on several Wi-Fi-related patents held by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Filed Thursday in the Central District of California, the complaint claimed that the companies are wrongfully using intellectual property protected by four U.S. patents awarded to Caltech between 2006 and 2012. The patents are for a new and simpler type of error correction code that

A new line of chips from Qualcomm aim to be the go-to hardware to power the growing wearables market. Over the weekend, the chipmaker announced a new line of processors called the Snapdragon Wear 1100, containing numerous functions and complex usage capabilities. The new chipsets will be integrated into smart watches, smart headsets and various accessories. The new chips, which are meant to complement Qualcomm’s recently introduced Snapdragon Wear 2100 chip, were announced at the Computex trade show in Taipei.The Snapdragon

A new 10-core processor from Intel debuted at Computex yesterday, one of four new CPUs the company unveiled. While ostensibly designed for the desktop market, the chips might have more in common with their server-level cousins, both in terms of price and computing power. The 10-core model alone will set you back a cool $1,723, more than enough to buy your own system. The company is promoting the four new chips, which come with 10, eight, or six cores, as an

An ultrathin high-end laptop, a new line of smartphones and a "home robot" named Zenbo helped Taiwan-based Asus grab numerous headlines ahead of today's launch of the Computex 2016 ICT expo and conference in Taipei. During a preview "Zenvolution" press event at Computex yesterday, Asus introduced a new family of ZenFone 3 smartphones, as well as a number of new devices developed in collaboration with Intel. It also took the wraps off its first-ever robotic assistant, which is designed to provide

This summer, Acer will begin releasing a number of new devices aimed at different types of users, including a new series of notebooks for business users and two new 2-in-1s for students and budget-conscious buyers. Taiwan-based Acer plans to showcase its latest releases at next week's Computex expo in Taipei. It also plans to unveil its BeingWare vision for smart city and Internet of Things (IoT) applications.Computex, which highlights IoT, startup, business and gaming technology, has already named Acer as a