Remote network management via Facebook and Twitter?? ….. wow!
Enterasys Networks is offering a new technology that enables remote network management via consumer and enterprise social media services, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Salesforce.com's Chatter.
Administrators can not only receive tweets and messages about port usage and oversubscription from devices on their network, they can tweet commands back to the devices in natural human language rather than via command line interface (CLI).
Enterasys' project "isaac" is software that integrates with the company's Network Management System (NMS) and allows network managers to create profiles on consumer and enterprise social media services for their Enterasys network switches, routers and wireless infrastructure. The devices can then send messages through those services to a whitelist of network administrators about any number of preprogrammed events, such as port usage changes, access point oversubscription and device failures. Network managers can also program isaac to relay commands from those admins back to the devices via the same consumer and enterprise social media.
"We allow the end user in natural human language to create the commands and map those commands to existing SNMP and Syslogging," said Vala Afshar, chief customer officer for Enterasys. "So we can have a command [via Twitter] that says to find top talkers for a switch: five top talkers, switch second floor, port 5. You get a list of IP addresses connected to that port along with which ones are the top talkers." 
Faster, easier remote network management
Today network administrators are always on call and often carry several devices with them just so they can respond to network problems quickly. Being able to monitor and manage the network via consumer or enterprise social media right on a smartphone could streamline the whole process, according to Chance Irvine, director of IT operations and infrastructure at Proxibid, an online marketplace for auctioneers.
"Today our admins carry smartphones, laptops and iPads. They have to be able to VPN into the system, bring up the client and deal with [remote network management] that way. Most of them are carrying a full laptop with a data card," Irvine said. "I imagine at times a person who is on call may be able to simply use this on their smartphone and not have to carry a laptop or even an iPad. They'll be able to do most management just on the phone, or just use a home PC [without using a VPN].
Can remote network management via social media be secure?
The notion of putting switches and routers on Facebook or Twitter will make many network managers nervous because of security concerns. But Enterasys says it has devoted lots of research to securing the platform.
As part of Enterasys' security strategy, consumers and enterprise social media services will not have direct access to network devices. Instead, isaac, in cooperation with Enterasys' NMS, will serve as a broker between the devices and Facebook, Twitter et al. Also, customers can set up whitelists of administrators to be the only people who can actually receive alerts and send commands through isaac. What's more, Enterasys offers a second layer of authentication above the whitelist with single-use pins that can be sent via SMS or email whenever an administrator wants to issue a command that an enterprise deems highly sensitive.
"By adding that external security layer and having that sitting on our NMS, you would have to penetrate several layers to reach a piece of hardware," said Ram Appalaraju, Enterasys' vice president of marketing.
Microsoft loses Word patent battle
Software giant Microsoft finally lost its battle over Word patent with Toronto's i4i Inc.
Rejecting Microsoft's appeal, the US supreme court upheld the 2009 lower court order against Microsoft to pay $290 million in damages to the Toronto firm for infringing its patent.
The Canadian company had taken the software giant to court in the US in 2007 over violations of its patent in Word applications and won the case and got $290 million in damages in December 2009.
In its lawsuit, i4i had claimed that the world's biggest software company infringed on a patent granted to it in 1998.
The patent pertained to i4i's technology that can open documents using the XML computer programming language and manipulate complex data in electronic documents. The technology allows users to sort out and manage tons of information by turning complex documents into more accessible databases.
Low-cost laptops set to roll out after 6 years
Six years after it was conceived, the first lot of 10,000 laptops – the HRD ministry
The announcement was made on Wednesday at the state education ministers' conference. Ministry officials said once the supply of one lakh devices is made, each state would be given 3,000 pieces. The Centre would subsidize 50% of the cost. Effectively, a student would have to pay Rs 1,100 for the gadget. Officials said manufacturing of one lakh laptops has been done in India.
As for the cost escalation from the earlier promised price of Rs 1,500, officials said it is due to increase in input cost. "But once more orders are placed, the price would be renegotiated and brought down to Rs 1, 500," an official said. IIT-Rajasthan is the nodal institute for conceiving and monitoring the progress of manufacturing of these gadgets.
The delay in rolling out the laptops, officials explained, took place as the first company, which was given the contract to manufacture one lakh pieces, was bought over. "Now, we've built enough safeguards in the contract with new manufacturer," the official said.
The low-cost device has a seven-inch touch screen, two USB ports, battery that runs for three hours, external hard drive or solid state memory support up to 32 GB
Facebook extends facial recognition tech
Facebook has rolled out facial recognition technology which moni
The social networking site is now searching its servers for photos that look like UK Facebook users, and asking friends of those users to tag the photos, according to Sophos senior technology consultant Graham Cluley.
"Facebook not only gathers information about what you do, but also what you look like," Cluley told ZDNet UK on Tuesday.
Users have found that Facebook had enabled photo recognition outside of the US in the last few days, said Cluley, who criticized the company for enabling photo recognition by default.
"Unfortunately, once again, Facebook has added a new feature to share additional information about its users, and turned it on by default," said Cluley. "Most Facebook users still don't know how to set their privacy options safely, finding the whole system confusing. It's even harder though to keep control when Facebook changes the settings without your knowledge."
Facebook uses an algorithm to compare new photos with people in old photos, and suggest tags.
A Facebook spokeswoman told ZDNet UK on Tuesday that automatic tagging was "just making the whole process easier".
"Only your friends can tag you in photos so nothing has changed to the way photo tagging works," said the spokeswoman. "Previously, you had to tag each photo individually which could be very time-consuming."
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged in May that users were worried about Facebook privacy when new services were rolled out, but said that people get used to the services.
Cyber Crime–Are you safe?
Pictures, PowerPoint slides, PDFs, even innocuous ads on legitimate sites can carry malware that will install itself on your PC by exploiting flaws in the browser you use. Undetected by anti-virus software, robot software can piggy-back on bank transactions, avoid anti-fraud detections systems, and send money to "mule" accounts operated by criminals in Eastern Europe. That's exactly what happened to 3,000 bank customers when online thieves stole $1 million dollars before they were caught last July by M86, a networking security firm.
Unsuspecting customers visited legitimate-looking websites to download, say, a screen saver. Others received an email with pictures of cute animals or a PowerPoint presentation with a patriotic theme and, responding to heartfelt exhortations to forward it or risk a lifetime of bad luck, they obediently sent it to friends.
How To Protect Your Company's Passwords
It’s almost impossible to understate the importance of having and using strong, secure online passwords. As important as it is for consumers to heed this advice, it can be even more important for businesses to use and secure the passwords of their various accounts. As tools like Firesheep have shown, gaining access to an e-mail or Facebook account can be alarmingly simple.
Fortunately, there are tools and precautions companies can take that will help simplify the process of keeping passwords safe and protected.
Use unique passwords for different accounts
No matter how often we’ve been warned, the reality is that most of us use the same password or group of passwords for all of our major accounts. At first, this doesn’t seem too bad—especially if that password is a unique and long mix of numbers, letters and cases. The problem with using the same password or group of passwords, however, is that if one account is compromised, other accounts can follow.
This is especially true for users that associate an e-mail address with an account. When Gawker Media’s Web servers were breached last year, thousands of commenters had their usernames, passwords and e-mail addresses exposed. As a result, some of these users had their e-mail, Facebook and Twitter accounts compromised as well.
Hackers attack another Sony network, post data
BOSTON/NEW YORK: Hackers broke into Sony Corp's computer networks and accessed the information of more than 1 million customers to show the vulnerability of the electronic giant's systems, the latest of several security breaches undermining confidence in the company.
LulzSec, a group that claims attacks on US PBS television and Fox.com, said it broke into servers that run Sony Pictures Entertainment websites. It published the names, birth dates, addresses, emails, phone numbers and passwords of thousands of people who had entered contests promoted by Sony.
"From a single injection, we accessed EVERYTHING," the hacking group said in a statement. "Why do you put such faith in a company that allows itself to become open to these simple attacks?"
The security breach is the latest cyber attack against high-profile firms, including defense contractor Lockheed Martin and Google Inc. LulzSec's claims came as Sony executives were trying to reassure US lawmakers at a hearing on data security in Washington about their efforts to safeguard the company's computer networks, which suffered the biggest security breach in history in April.
Windows 8 – Seems another experiment!
Microsoft has earlier previewed Windows 8 build 7867, today at the Computex 2011, build 7985 was demoed.
Windows 8—a name that may not last until the anticipated 2012 launch—made its public debut this week and stunned many pundits who've grown accustomed to Microsoft showing the engine before the interface and not the other way around. My first experience with Internet Explorer 9, for example, was at a developers preview where the company showed only the engine and an interface that lacked virtually all interface accoutrements.
Windows 8, by contrast, looked surprisingly polished for a pre-developer's build. As most people know by now, it looks remarkably like Windows Phone 7, complete with tiles, a gesture-driven interface and few boundaries. This is almost exactly what I asked Microsoft to do last year, but they did me one better. Windows 8 is not a blown-up version of the Windows Phone 7 mobile OS. It is Windows proper with a completely new, Windows-phone-influenced interface. Not a shell or layer, mind you, but a new interface that takes the best of the touch, and gesture-based ideas from Microsoft's relatively young mobile interface.
Android Users Now the Biggest Data Hogs
The Nielsen Company has released the details from its latest mobile survey, which reveals that Android not only leads in U.S. marketshare, it also dominates when it comes to data usage.
The survey, which was carried out in April 2011, indicates that Android now makes up 36% of the smartphone market. That’s a whopping 10% lead over Apple and a 13% lead over RIM. Android has been leading the U.S. mobile marketshare for several months now, its lead widening since Nielsen first reported Android’s dominance in March 2011.
It’s notable that Android has not only sustained, but increased its lead in the smartphone market. However, the more interesting part of Nielsen’s report concerns how users are actually using their smartphones.
Nielsen broke down data usage into various categories, including app downloads, video/mobile TV, streaming music/radio, full track music downloads and online games.
Skype: from start-up to $8.5bn sale
Spring 2003: Skype is founded by Niklas Zennstr̦m and Janus Friis, two technology developers and entrepreneurs. The pair had already made their name by creating Kazaa, a peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing program which Рrather like Napster Рproved highly popular with PC users but provoked the wrath of the entertainment industry.
Zennstr̦m and Friis used P2P technology developed during their Kazaa days to create a free piece of software that allowed people to make voice calls to each other over the internet Рwithout charge. At this time, voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) services were already being bought by early adopters. Skype, though, grew rapidly in popularity because it was easy to set up and use, required only a microphone and headset, and often offered better quality for long-distance calls than a normal phone line.
Zennstr̦m was bullish about Skype's prospects as a disruptive technology from the start Рtelling News.com in an early interview: "The telephony market is characterized both by what we think is rip-off pricing and a reliance on heavily centralized infrastructure. We just couldn't resist the opportunity to help shake this up a bit."
July 2004: Skype launches SkypeOut, a new service that allows Skype users to call a landline or mobile phone. Charges began at just two euro cents a minute to landlines within Europe, the US, Australia and New Zealand. The next month an Apple-compatible version of Skype was offered.
January 2005: With Skype attracting 23 million registered users during its first 18 months, analysts calculate that its popularity will soon eat into the profitability of traditional telecoms companies.
April 2005: Skype hits the 100-million downloads mark, fuelled by rapid take-up of broadband.
August 2005: Google wades into the VoIP market with its own application, Google Talk. Skype hits back immediately through an alliance with Intel, which invested an undisclosed sum in the company. Microsoft was also investing in VoIP that month, snapping up a small internet calling start-up called Teleo in an attempt to improve its MSN Messenger app.
September 2005: After weeks of rumors, eBay agrees to buy Skype for $2.6bn in cash and stock. The merger of an internet telephony company with an online auction house is hailed by some analysts as a breakthrough moment, with some arguing that eBay was well positioned to monetize Skype's user base – which has doubled to 52 million since the start of the year. Others, though, suggest that the deal might prevent Skype from ever truly challenging the traditional telephone industry.
December 2005: Skype launches video calling, a service already offered by several other VoIP companies.
May 2006: SkypeCasts, which allow up to 100 people to join a single call, are created to capitalize on the boom in social networking.
January 2007: US court rejects a $4bn (£2.4bn) lawsuit which claimed Skype's underlying technology violated various patents.
October 2007: Two years on, and with little sign of integration between the pair, eBay admits that its acquisition of Skype has not been a runaway success. It takes a $900m impairment write-down Рeffectively admitting that it overpaid for the company. While the number of registered users has grown to 220 million, eBay chief executive Meg Whitman admits that usage levels are not high enough. Zennstr̦m also steps down from Skype, having formed a new P2P video company called Joltid.
April 2009: eBay announces plans to float Skype on the stock market. "Skype is a great standalone business, with strong fundamentals and accelerating momentum. But it's clear that Skype has limited synergies with eBay and PayPal," says John Donahoe, eBay's chief executive.
June 2009: Plans for a Skype IPO are thrown into confusion as it emerges that Zennström and Friis still own some of the key technologies which Skype is built on, despite selling the company to eBay in 2005. Their threat to withdraw Skype's right to use this code could sink the flotation, analysts warn. Both sides begin legal action.
September 2009: eBay abandons the planned IPO, and instead sells a 65% stake in Skype to a group of investors for $2bn. This includes a venture capital firm owned by Marc Andreessen, the technology pioneer who created the Netscape browser in the 1990s. But the legal problems linger Рinstead, Zennstr̦m's Joltid launches fresh legal action against both eBay and Skype claiming copyright violation.
November 2009: Joltid takes a 14% stake in Skype, in return for dropping its lawsuits and injecting a substantial amount of capital into the firm. This left Skype's new owners holding 56%, with eBay still owning 30%.
August 2010: Skype announces plans to float on the US stock market. It also faces opposition from BSkyB over the trademark for 'Skype' in Europe.
May 2011: Skype is rumored to be changing hands again, with Facebook and Google both reportedly holding talks with the company. Then, on 10 May, Microsoft announces its $8.5bn takeover.
Data Center Container
I saw this video 4 days back (3-May) and really liked the concept…Not sure how well it go..only the DC experts can comment more ;)
Google Matrix
Google arguably tracks more online users than any other entity. The Web search giant not only owns and runs the DoubleClick ad serving system but also partners with millions of sites to serve Google ads next to content.
In other words, Google has been following you for a while. But, in recent years, Google initiated a way for its users to see exactly how the site profiles them in order to target advertising. This is called Google Ad Preferences (www.google.com/ads/preferences). The site will show you the content categories Google has tagged you with.
It even lets you remove or add interest categories. You can also just opt-out altogether. Microsoft and Yahoo! offer similar capabilities. Yahoo! calls its tool Ad Interest Manager (info.yahoo.com/privacy/us/yahoo/opt_out/targeting/details.html). And Microsoft Advertising’s controls are located at choice.live.com/advertisement choice.
ISRO builds India's fastest supercomputer
BANGALORE: Indian Space Research Organisation has built a super
The supercomputer "SAGA-220", built by the Satish Dhawan Supercomputing Facility located at Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), Thiruvananthapuram at a cost of about Rs 14 crore was inaugurated by K Radhakrishnan, Chairman ISRO at VSSC today, ISRO said in a statement.
The new Graphic Processing Unit (GPU) based supercomputer, "SAGA-220" (Supercomputer for Aerospace with GPU Architecture-220 TeraFLOPS) is being used by space scientists for solving complex aerospace problems.
"SAGA-220" is fully designed and built by Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre using commercially available hardware, open source software components and in house developments.
The system uses 400 NVIDIA Tesla 2070 GPUs and 400 Intel Quad Core Xeon CPUs supplied by WIPRO with a high speed interconnect.
With each GPU and CPU providing a performance of 500 GigaFLOPS and 50 GigaFLOPS respectively, the theoretical peak performance of the system amounts to 220 TeraFLOPS, the statement said.
The present GPU system offers significant advantage over the conventional CPU based system in terms of cost, power and space requirements, it said.
The system is environmentally green and consumes a power of only 150 KW. This system can also be easily scaled to many PetaFLOPS (1000 TeraFLOPS).
Source:- EconomicTimes
Security risks mean IE6 must go
Determined to see the end of IE6, Microsoft is pouring resources into awareness campaigns as part of efforts to educate and encourage online citizens, particularly those in Asia, to ditch the 10-year-old Web browser or risk exposure to security attacks.
Redmond this week launched its latest and much-hyped Internet Explorer 9 (IE9), which plays a key role in Microsoft's plan to regain browser dominance.
Click the banner below to download IE9
Cisco Cius
Cisco CEO John Chambers demos the Cisco Cius, a First-of-its- kind HD Video-Capable Business Tablet, at Cisco Live in Las Vegas, NV on June 29, 2010. The New Android-based Computing Device Uses Cisco Collaboration Architecture and Virtual Desktop Integration to Deliver Mobile Computing, Collaboration and Communication Services.
Part 1
Part 2
Android Market Security
On Tuesday evening, the Android team was made aware of a number of malicious applications published to Android Market. Within minutes of becoming aware, we identified and removed the malicious applications. The applications took advantage of known vulnerabilities which don’t affect Android versions 2.2.2 or higher. For affected devices, we believe that the only information the attacker(s) were able to gather was device-specific (IMEI/IMSI, unique codes which are used to identify mobile devices, and the version of Android running on your device). But given the nature of the exploits, the attacker(s) could access other data, which is why we’ve taken a number of steps to protect those who downloaded a malicious application……More
Facebook and Samaritans team up to help the suicidal
The charity Samaritans has announced a new collaboration with Facebook which will enable the social networking site's 30 million UK users to access help for suicidal friends.
Read more – Source
Cisco Virtualization Experience
Learn how the Cisco Virtualization Experience Client endpoints allow you to move to desktop virtualization without compromising a rich collaborative user experience. Cisco Virtualization Experience Client endpoints help you to: choose from industry-leading desktop virtualization clients, deliver a better user experience with virtualized desktops, extend your investment in Power over Ethernet, and conserve desktop real estate.
Source : Cisco
Apple iPad 2: a first look
The second-generation iPad from Apple, iPad 2, is thinner, faster, lighter and whiter, but not a radical departure from the original. Pricing (only US pricing has been announced so far) is also holding steady, starting at $499 for a 16GB Wi-Fi-only model, rising to $829 for 64GB with 3G and Wi-Fi.
You can't blame Apple for going easy on new features. Apple's original recipe for the iPad single-handedly created and captured the demand for tablets last year. By any measure, it's not a product in need of fixing: it has the market share, it has the developers and it has the momentum.
Read more – Click for the source
The Possible Consequences Of Voip Misuse
As in everything else in life, the fast-evolving VoIP technology brings about both opportunities and challenges that users must face in equal measure. Most of the opportunities that can be gained from VoIP are well-discussed, as these relate mostly to improvements in business processes that lead to minimized telephone expenses, heightened productivity and ultimately, increased income.
On the other side of the coin are challenges and windows for abuse in VoIP systems that could get one in real trouble. These matters are less talked about, often because most people are not aware of these things. Those who are familiar also generally avoid discussing these, as they don't want to unduly raise alarms and make people wary of VoIP. Among these issues are:
Free VoIP
First, VoIP is usually not free. Free VoIP service is available if both the caller and receiver are calling via the Internet using SIP, XMPP or a third party application like Skype.
Related Coverage...
Read the Full Article Here
On the other side of the coin are challenges and windows for abuse in VoIP systems that could get one in real trouble. These matters are less talked about, often because most people are not aware of these things. Those who are familiar also generally avoid discussing these, as they don't want to unduly raise alarms and make people wary of VoIP. Among these issues are:
Free VoIP
First, VoIP is usually not free. Free VoIP service is available if both the caller and receiver are calling via the Internet using SIP, XMPP or a third party application like Skype.
Related Coverage...
Read the Full Article Here
BetterPrivacy
Better Privacy serves to protect against not deletable longterm cookies, a new generation of 'Super-Cookie', which silently conquered the internet. This new cookie generation offers unlimited user tracking to industry and market research. Concerning privacy Flash- and DOM Storage objects are most critical.
This addon was made to make users aware of those hidden, never expiring objects and to offer an easy way to get rid of them - since browsers are unable to do that for you.
Flash-cookies (Local Shared Objects, LSO) are pieces of information placed on your computer by a Flash plugin. Those Super-Cookies are placed in central system folders and so protected from deletion. They are frequently used like standard browser cookies. Although their thread potential is much higher as of conventional cookies, only few users began to take notice of them. It is of frequent occurrence that -after a time- hundreds of those Flash-cookies reside in special folders. And they won't be deleted - never.
Read More
This addon was made to make users aware of those hidden, never expiring objects and to offer an easy way to get rid of them - since browsers are unable to do that for you.
Flash-cookies (Local Shared Objects, LSO) are pieces of information placed on your computer by a Flash plugin. Those Super-Cookies are placed in central system folders and so protected from deletion. They are frequently used like standard browser cookies. Although their thread potential is much higher as of conventional cookies, only few users began to take notice of them. It is of frequent occurrence that -after a time- hundreds of those Flash-cookies reside in special folders. And they won't be deleted - never.
Read More