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Showing posts from February, 2016

Intel sets out its plans for 5G mobile push

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Intel has used Mobile World Congress 2016 to attempt to position itself as a big player in the push towards 5G and the Internet of Things with a raft of product and partnership announcements. Intel said it will work with Ericsson, Nokia, LG and Verizon in order to speed up development, testing and ultimately deployment of 5G wireless networks in an effort to provide greater connectivity for computers, Internet of Things and mobile devices and even connected cities and driverless vehicles. "5G represents a significant shift for these networks and we think it's essential to get ready ahead of the curve," said corporate vice president and general manager of the Intel communication and services group, Aicha Evans, speaking in the run up to MWC in Barcelona. Intel will work with Ericsson and engage in joint trials surrounding 5G, while it will also work with Nokia to collaborate on 5G radio technologies "to meet the device connectivity requirements for future ...

Microsoft rolls out Windows 10 'Redstone' Build 14267 to Fast Ring testers

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Microsoft rolled out a new preview build of Windows 10 'Redstone' on February 18 which includes a few new, externally visible features. Among the new features in this build are improvements for searching for music in Cortana; some UI improvements to the Favorites bar in Microsoft Edge; the ability to clear browsing data when exiting Microsoft Edge, plus improved Edge Download prompts; and the ability to attach photos to Skype messages. No, Edge extension support still isn't there in this build, for those wondering. Windows 10 preview Build 14267 , unlike a number of recent Fast Ring Windows 10 test builds, isn't just about under-the-covers Core work and fixes. There are some fixes in this build, too, including ones that allow recovery after reset to work as expected. Microsoft also has made it so users with PCs with Intel RealSense cameras can again use their front-facing cameras. And an incorrect storage capacity issue also is now fixed with Build 14267, acco...

VMware updates Virtual SAN, converged infrastructure stack

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VMware launched a new release of its Virtual SAN platform as it rounds out its software-defined stack for private and public cloud infrastructure. The VMware Virtual SAN is the company's software defined storage play and is primarily aimed at Nutanix. The company said that it has more than 3,000 hyper-converged infrastructure customers since VMware Virtual SAN launched 21 months ago. VMware Virtual SAN 6.2 will be available in the first quarter with a starting price of $2,495 per CPU. Software defined storage is shifting the landscape for vendors. More storage is being consumed, but the traditional system vendors in the market are seeing slowing growth. The cloud is partly to blame, but there's also the hardware end of the equation. Software defined storage means that arrays can be built with commodity x86 servers. As a result, those sales that were once recognized by storage vendors shows up as a server sale. VMware is using the trend to work both the storage and network...

Facebook tweaks News Feed algorithm to make content more appealing

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Facebook has once again made changes to its News Feed algorithm as part of its ongoing effort to keep users happy with the kinds of content they see on the site. The social networking giant said the latest changes are based off of qualitative feedback from a sampling of Facebook users who were asked to share their daily experiences with News Feed content. Based on this research, Facebook said it was able to rank which stories users would be interested in seeing near the top of News Feed even if they choose not to actually engage with it.Instead of using engagement actions, Facebook focused on two particular signals: The probability that users want to see a particular story at the top of their feed, and the probability they'll like, share or comment on it. "We saw through our research that people reported having a better News Feed experience when the stories they see at the top are stories they are both likely to rate highly if asked and likely to engage with," s...