Peep this: Google Glass for eyeglass wearers revealed.

Hey four eyes! How about a fifth? A special, prototype version of Google Glass for eyeglass wearers was spied on the faces of at least three engineers and developers at the Google I/O conference, CNET’s Seth Rosenblatt reported. Rosenblatt said he saw Mark Shand, a Google Glass engineer with a long history in tech that stretches back to Xerox PARC, wearing a prototype model fitted for prescription glasses. And two other Google employees...

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Supercomputer Watson's future revealed

IBM's CEO told Fortune what the future holds for the talking supercomputer. FORTUNE -- On May 15, Fortune senior writer Jessi Hempel interviewed IBM (IBM) CEO Ginni Rometty as a keynote for the National Venture Capital Association's 40th anniversary conference, Venturescape. What follows is an edited version of their conversation.  Fortune: IBM was once about mainframes, and then PCs and printers. Now IBM is about services,...

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Call centre menu options catalogued by frustrated man

The BBC's Mark Norman meets Nigel Clarke to find out about his one-man mission against call centre menus Retired IT manager Nigel Clarke, from Kent in the UK, has launched a website listing the call centre menu sequences for accessing thousands of services. He started the project after growing frustrated about the number of options and amount of recorded information on call centre menus. Mr Clarke discovered that some automated menus have nearly 80 options. It can take over four minutes to get to the service required if the caller listens...

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US politicians quiz Google on Glass privacy

US politicians are seeking reassurances from Google that its smart spectacles will respect personal privacy. A letter has been sent to Google signed by eight members of a Congressional caucus seeking answers about Google Glass. The letter poses eight questions for Google about the data the gadget will collect about users and non-users. The group said it was "uncertain" about the privacy protections Google plans to build in to the device. "We are curious whether this new technology could infringe on the privacy of the average American," says...

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Google says you'll know when Glass is sketchy

What you need to know about Google Glass NEW YORK (CNNMoney) Privacy concerns surrounding Google Glass are growing rampant. Eight Congressmen even joined in on the conversation on Thursday, fearing that the cyborg-like technology could be too invasive. Google's response: You'll know when someone wearing Glass is being sketchy. Google's response: You'll know when someone wearing Glass is being sketchy. In one of the most provocative moments of this week's Google I/O developers conference, Glass engineers fielded audience questions regarding...

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Parallel File Systems for 'Extreme' Enterprise Applications

Money, Money, Money… In the financial sector, revenue is all about numbers, speed and making the best decision at the right time while controlling risk. We are seeing that in financial services firms, data capture, algorithm development, testing and risk management projects are all pushing the performance boundaries of traditional storage. Hedge funds and trading firms are starting to take advantage of parallelism in order to analyze more positions faster and deploy competitive trading strategies. Using scalable systems that support massively...

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Extreme Enterprise Applications Drive Parallel File System Adoption

With the advent of big data and cloud-scale delivery, companies are racing to deploy cutting-edge services. “Extreme” applications like massive voice and image processing or complex financial analysis modeling that can push storage systems to their limits. Examples of some high visibility solutions include large-scale image pattern recognition applications and financial risk management based on high-speed decision-making. These ground-breaking solutions, made up of very different activities but with similar data storage challenges, create incredible...

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EMC ViPR Adds More Bite to Software-Defined Storage

At EMC World this week in Las Vegas, EMC just threw its weight behind the much hyped software-defined storage movement. "Our customers today have data centers which are increasingly going software defined,” said Amitabh Srivastava, president of EMC’s newly created Advanced Software Division. He said that the company has announced ViPR, which is said to provide the ability to manage storage infrastructure and the data residing within it. The ViPR controller uses the underlying storage infrastructure for traditional workloads, but can also provision...

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StorageQuest Launches All-Flash Archiving Appliance

While the data storage industry rushes to incorporate solid-state drive (SSD) technologies into their appliances and arrays, Ottawa-based StorageQuest is taking a slightly different tack. The company announced that its Flash Storage Appliance (FSA), a headless, iSCSI-compatible unit that uses a type of flash memory typically associated with digital cameras, is publicly available. StorageQuest director of Product Development revealed in a statement that what sets FSA apart is its use of CompactFlash cards. "This new product leverages the popularity,...

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Say What? Top Five IT Quotes of the Week

"We want to obliterate passwords within a few years" Paypal Chief Information Security Officer Michael Barrett (eSecurity Planet) "Openness always wins." Facebook's Frank Frankovsky launching the new Open Compute Networking project (Enterprise Networking Planet) "When we asked about SDN, thirty-four percent said they were more likely to see Elvis, Bigfoot, or the Loch Ness Monster than an actual SDN deployment" Inbar Lasser-Raab, senior director of marketing for enterprise networking at Cisco, (Enterprise Networking Planet). "I'm not...

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Interop Panel Tackles SDN

LAS VEGAS - A Broadcom chip guy, a Microsoft software guy, and a VMware virtualization guy walk onto a stage. What do you get? That's what the capacity crowd at Interop found out in a keynote session on Wednesday. Martin Casado, chief architect for networking at VMware; Rajiv Ramaswami, executive vice president and general manager of the infrastructure and networking group at Broadcom; and Rajeev Nagar, group program manager for Windows core networking at Microsoft, took the stage to discuss and debate SDN's present and future. One of the questions...

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What's Realer, SDN or the Loch Ness Monster?

LAS VEGAS - On a good day in this town, you're likely to see Elvis on many a street corner. Outside of Las Vegas, Elvis sightings aren't as likely, and neither are sightings of real Software Defined Networking (SDN) deployment, according to Cisco research. Today at Interop, Cisco is unveiling a new global IT study that surveys the attitudes of 1,300 IT decision makers in 13 countries. The study provides some interesting insights.  Attitudes toward SDN: Skepticism, interest  While real-world deployment of SDN is the focus of...

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HP 2920 Ethernet Switches: Flexibility, Scalability, Value

As Ethernet switches rapidly approach commodity status, switch vendors strive for relevance in an ever-evolving landscape. Industry giant HP looks to maintain its market leadership with the introduction of the HP 2920 Switch Series. The 2920 family combines flexibility with value while maintaining scalability for even the largest of enterprises. The HP 2920 Switch Series consists of four switches. The HP 2920-24G and 2920-24G-PoE+ (Power over...

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IDC Puts a Number on the Networking Market

LAS VEGAS - At its annual Interop breakfast meeting today, analyst firm IDC revealed its forecast for the SDN market and enterprise networking in general. Rohit Mehra, vice president of network infrastructure at IDC, said that his firm predicts the total enterprise networking market for 2013 to come in at $42.4 billion. The Layer 2-3 switch market represents the lion's share of that figure at 46.9 percent. The market for Layer 4-7 devices, including application delivery controllers, is growing, though Mehra is more impressed by the pace of WLAN...

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Interop Video Exclusive: Don't Bet Against Ethernet

LAS VEGAS - In a town built on gambling, your safest bet this week is likely on Ethernet. After 40 years, Ethernet has come to dominate network connectivity. This is in part thanks to John D'Ambrosia, a key figure in today's Ethernet world. Currently the chairman of the Ethernet Alliance, D'Ambrosia has done much to advance IEEE standards, in particular the 40 and 100 Gigabit Ethernet specifications. D'Ambrosia is also set to be confirmed as chair of the new IEEE group that will define 400 Gigabit Ethernet. In an exclusive video interview at...

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Enterprise Networking Week in Review: SDN, Interop, BYOD, and Ethernet

It's been a big week for networking and a big week for Enterprise Networking Planet. This week, the enterprise IT world descended on Las Vegas for the Interop IT conference and expo, which featured keynote speakers from tech heavyweights like Cisco, VMware, Facebook, and Microsoft; exhibitions from Brocade, Dell, Huawei, and Juniper, among hundreds of others; and enough news, analysis, discussion, and debate to keep an industry watcher busy until...

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Open Season on Proprietary Networks

pen source is everywhere these days, even in networking. In fact, reaping the full benefits of virtualized, or software-defined, architectures may require networking to embrace open source technology to an even greater degree than server or storage infrastructure. The distributed networks of the future will require extensive interoperability to maintain end-to-end connectivity, after all. In pursuit of that interoperability, many vendors are looking to open frameworks. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, even Cisco Systems, which has quite a legacy...

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How to Choose the Best Software for Your Enterprise Needs

The movement in networking towards virtualization, cloud platforms, and SDN is shaking up the enterprise software market and will continue to do so for some time. Change can be good. But how can buyers get ahead in our brave new software-defined world? Last month, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) released a new report, Experience Radar 2013: Lessons from the U.S. Software Industry, which details findings about the enterprise software market from the customers' point of view. Patrick Pugh, PwC U.S. Software and Internet Leader, and Shaivali Shah,...

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BlackBerry Brings BBM To Android, iOS

ATERLOO, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - May 14, 2013) - BlackBerry® (NASDAQ:BBRY)(TSX:BB) today announced plans to make its ground-breaking mobile social network, BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™), available to iOS® and Android™ users this summer, with support planned for iOS6, and Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) or higher, all subject to approval by the Apple App Store and Google Play. BBM sets the standard for mobile instant messaging with a fast, reliable, engaging experience that includes delivered and read statuses, and personalized profiles and avatars....

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