Satya Nadella says Microsoft's next big thing will have 'as profound an impact' as touchscreens and the web

On stage at this week's Microsoft Build event, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that chatbots, which it sees as the next big thing, will have "as profound an impact as previous shifts we've had."

Nadella elaborates that this will put chatbots - which he calls "conversations as a platform" - in the same category as past paradigm shifts like the graphical user interface, the web browser and the iPhone-driven adoption of the touchscreen.

Companies including Facebook, Slack, and Microsoft have begun investing heavily in these so-called "conversations as a platform," with the promise of making booking a flight or buying a new shirt as easy as sending a text message. It's an important shift, as these interfaces have the potential to make computing accessible to non-technical users.

"It's a simple concept, yet it's very powerful in its impact. It is about taking the power of human language and applying it more pervasively to our computing," Nadella says.

According to a recent Bloomberg Businessweek story, Nadella has made chatbots his first big initiative since taking over Microsoft two years ago. In many ways, it makes sense: As Nadella himself notes at Build, it combines Microsoft cutting-edge speech research with the power of its Azure cloud to make it all possible.

Microsoft has been playing with this a lot recently. In China, Microsoft's Xioaice is a well-loved chatbot with 40 million users. But more recently, the Microsoft Tay chatbot made headlines in America and beyond for all the wrong reasons, after going rogue with terrible, racist tweets.

Nadella promises we'll hear more about chatbots and conversations as a platform.

Source : www.techgignews.com

Soon, phone landline from WhatsApp

NEW DELHI: You may soon be able to dial landline or mobile phone numbers from popular internet apps such as Skype, WhatsApp or Viber, following clearance for inter-connect agreements between internet service providers and telecom operators by an inter-ministerial panel of the government on Monday.

The move may result in substantially lower charges for voice calls (which would be billed as per data usage), though poor quality of internet networks - a general irritant with broadband services in many parts of the country - could be a dampener.

A part from being a consumer-friendly move, the decision to allow inter-connect agreements between ISPs and telecom operators will be a shot in the arm or Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Jio Infocomm, which will soon begin services across the country . Reliance Jio plans to offer voice over its 4G network. Following the panel's clearance, its subscribers will be able to terminate calls on the landline or mobile networks of any service provider ranging from MTNL or BSNL's fixed lines o the mobile numbers on Air el, Vodafone or Idea Cellular.

"The move has been cleared by the inter-ministerial elecom commission and groundwork to get it going will start soon," an official source said.

Sector regulator Trai had already recommended the measure to allow inter-connect for voice over internet protocol (or VoIP) services, and this had been pending with the telecom ministry .Changes will be made to licence conditions to allow inter-connection of IP (internet protocol) networks.

Source : The Times Of India - Tech News.

Internet speeds are improving, but more people are relying on smartphones

Internet speeds in Wisconsin have improved considerably in recent years, although they're still slow in places and, nationwide, more people are using smartphones as their only Internet device.

Wisconsin ranks 17th among states in average broadband speed, up from 22nd three years ago.

The average connection speed of 15 megabits per second is more than three times faster than it was eight years ago, according to Akamai Technologies, a Cambridge, Mass., firm that tracks broadband trends.

Nationwide, Washington, D.C., has the fastest average speed, about 21 mbps, while Alaska and Kentucky have the slowest average speeds, less than 10 mbps, Akamai said.

Wisconsin's average peak connection speed, 60 mbps, is now six times faster than it was in 2007, according to Akamai.

There's been consistent improvement, said David Belson, senior director of industry and data intelligence at Akamai.

"Is Wisconsin number one? No. But are things improving? Absolutely," Belson said.

Broadband is a high-speed Internet connection capable of handling data through fiber-optic cable or other means.

Many rural areas are limited to a slow-speed connection that is unsuitable for certain purposes, such as watching videos or operating a business.

There are various rankings of how states compare, and while not everyone agrees on the numbers, few would say broadband service isn't important.

Still, the percentage of U.S. homes with broadband access seems to have slipped, according to a Pew Research Center study.

It now stands at 67%, down from 70% in 2013 — a small but statistically significant difference, according to Pew.

"We are not sure if this is a trend or an aberration," said Bill Esbeck, executive director of the Wisconsin State Telecommunications Association, which represents telecom providers.

The downtick has taken place at the same time as there's been an increase in "smartphone only" adults — those who have a smartphone for accessing the Internet and don't have traditional broadband service at home, Pew said.

Thirteen percent of Americans are now in the smartphone only category, up from 8% in 2013. Some of the most significant changes have taken place among African-Americans, those with relatively low household incomes and people living in rural areas, according to Pew.

There's also more competition now between wired and wireless Internet providers, with some wireless firms marketing products as a substitute for a wired connection.

"We are watching these trends very closely. ... But I think the user experience of a wired option at home is still superior," Esbeck said.

Barry Orton, a recently retired University of Wisconsin-Madison telecommunications professor, said he's not convinced that demand for home broadband service has fallen much.

"The one thing I can say for sure (from the Pew research) is that dial-up Internet service is disappearing. There's almost no more dial-up, which I don't think is a surprise but, historically, is interesting," Orton said.

Overall, 33% of American adults do not have broadband at home, according to Pew.

Within this group of non-adopters, 36% had a subscription in the past, while 59% say they have never had a broadband subscription plan at home.

In addition, just 25% of non-adopters are interested in subscribing to broadband service in the future, while 70% say they're not interested, the Pew report says.

For some people, a wired Internet connection isn't available even if they want it, and a smartphone connection isn't very good either.

That's the case for Paul Ohlrogge, who lives 20 miles west of Madison in a rural area that has weak wireless phone signals and few Internet options.

"I live in a dead zone for cellphone reception. And while there are good Internet connections in Dodgeville, a couple of miles out of town there are people still on dial-up," he said.

Ohlrogge does economic development work at the University of Wisconsin Extension in Dodgeville. Without adequate broadband, he said, rural areas can't attract businesses and encourage company start-ups.

"If people find that Internet service is spotty, they won't even consider starting a business," he said.

Six years ago, Ohlrogge was in Rwanda working on a dairy cow artificial insemination project in remote areas of the mountainous country.

In the "middle of nowhere," he said, a woman used a smartphone to sell beans in a marketplace.

"I couldn't do that at my house," he said.

As more people use a smartphone as their only Internet-access device, they encounter challenges including data caps in their service plans, according to Pew.

"They also more frequently have to cancel or suspend service due to financial constraints," the research noted.

As smartphone traffic increases, the industry needs to increase its network capacity, said Jeff Roznowski, past president of the Wisconsin Wireless Association.

That, he said, would help relieve data caps.

The Pew report also says 15% of Americans have become "cord cutters," meaning they have abandoned paid cable or satellite television service. Many of these people say the availability of televised content from the Internet is a factor in dropping subscription television service, according to Pew.

Internet providers are taking market share from cable companies that have been in the marketplace for a long time, said Andrew Petersen, vice president of TDS Telecom in Madison.

TDS is one of the largest broadband providers in rural Wisconsin. Petersen said the company is pursuing "skinny 

bundles" of television channel offerings that have fewer choices and lower prices.

"Certainly our customers would like to see a more tailored package of channels where they can pick and choose," Petersen said.

Source : www.techgignews.com

The 6 Things You Should Never Sacrifice for Your Job—No Matter What

1. Your Health

It’s difficult to know when to set boundaries around your health at work because the decline is so gradual. Allowing stress to build up, losing sleep, and sitting all day without exercising all add up. Before you know it, you’re rubbing your aching back with one hand and your zombie-like eyes with the other, and you’re looking down at your newly acquired belly. The key here is to not let things sneak up on you, and the way you do that is by keeping a consistent routine. Think about what you need to do to keep yourself healthy (taking walks during lunch, not working weekends, taking your vacations as scheduled), make a plan, and stick to it no matter what. If you don’t, you’re allowing your work to overstep its bounds.

2. Your Family

It’s easy to let your family suffer for your work. Many of us do this because we see our jobs as a means of maintaining our families. We have thoughts such as “I need to make more money so that my kids can go to college debt-free.” Though these thoughts are well-intentioned, they can burden your family with the biggest debt of all—a lack of quality time with you. When you’re on your deathbed, you won’t remember how much money you made for your spouse and kids. You’ll remember the memories you created with them.

3. Your Sanity

While we all have our own levels of this to begin with, you don’t owe a shred of it to your employer. A job that takes even a small portion of your sanity is taking more than it’s entitled to. Your sanity is something that’s difficult for your boss to keep track of. You have to monitor it on your own and set good limits to keep yourself healthy. Often, it’s your life outside of work that keeps you sane. When you’ve already put in a good day’s (or week’s) worth of work and your boss wants more, the most productive thing you can do is say no, and then go and enjoy your friends and hobbies. This way, you return to work refreshed and de-stressed. You certainly can work extra hours if you want to, but it’s important to be able to say no to your boss when you need time away from work.

4. Your Identity

While your work is an important part of your identity, it’s dangerous to allow your work to become your whole identity. You know you’ve allowed this to go too far when you reflect on what’s important to you and work is all that (or most of what) comes to mind. Having an identity outside of work is about more than just having fun. It also helps you relieve stress, grow as a person, and avoid burnout.

5. Your Contacts

While you do owe your employer your best effort, you certainly don’t owe him or her the contacts you’ve developed over the course of your career. Your contacts are a product of your hard work and effort, and while you might share them with your company, they belong to you.

6. Your Integrity

Sacrificing your integrity causes you to experience massive amounts of stress. Once you realize that your actions and beliefs are no longer in alignment, it’s time to make it clear to your employer that you’re not willing to do things his or her way. If that’s a problem for your boss, it might be time to part ways.

Bringing it All Together

Success and fulfillment often depend upon your ability to set good boundaries. Once you can do this, everything else just falls into place.

Source : www.techgignews.com

What is it like to startup after 50?

Investors, too, are open to funding a startup run by entrepreneurs who are above 50 if the idea and the team click.

LR Sridhar, CEO of Connect India, is an entrepreneur with a mission to create a logistics pipeline connecting every single village in all of India's 688 districts.

It is a humongous vision given the length and breadth of the country. But the 61-year-old is up for the challenge.

At a time when the word 'startup' conjures up images of bustling youngsters wanting to change the world, age is just a number for several 'young-at-heart' entrepreneurs like Sridhar, who co-founded Connect India two years ago.

"Normally, there's a preconceived notion that somebody who is doing a startup is 27. That's not true," said Prem Kumar, a mid-50s entrepreneur who started retail-technology firm SnapBizz three years ago. "In a global ecosystem, people with a lot of experience are doing startups. They are leveraging their experience pretty well. In my opinion, it is never too late if you have the passion and the zeal to do it."

But if you are in your fifties and want to take the plunge, you need to accept that startup life will be a lot different from the corporate world. "Nobody will pick your call - who are you, why should I talk with you?" said Sanjay Bhargava, CEO of the 10-month-old Bharosa Club and one of the founding employees of PayPal.

"Before PayPal, I was in a senior position in Citibank. I would call and say I'd like to talk you to and people would be delighted. In the early days at PayPal, if I called someone... I had to tell about our model and say that we were funded by Sequoia, and it'd get easier. That is a big challenge in India than in the US, because India is still a hierarchy-conscious place," said Bhargava, 59.

If adjusting to the non-hierarchical life is one ask, ensuring financial security is another, especially as the safety net for your family and you would be smaller. You need to make sure that you have enough to bank on, just in case your startup goes through a rough patch or fails.

"Life will not continue to be the same. Some aspects will be better and nice, some aspects are probably going to be worse. You are embarking on a journey. The financial safety net you have created for yourself... you should have the courage to play with that safety net," said Kumar.

Once your mind and pocket are in place, the next is to find the right team to transform your idea into reality. This is crucial because while you might be experienced at running great teams you could be lacking in new-age skills. The key here is to find a balance between experienced folks and youngsters.

"You have to build a like-minded team, preferably a mix across ages. It's hard to do," said Pradeep Singh, CEO of Vidyanext, an education-technology startup that connects students to tutors.

"One of the things is, as you get older you have a tendency to hire people in the team who look like you. Focus on getting people who are younger. Startup journey is hard. You need the risk-taking, the brashness, the willingness to put in 18 hours a day, the intensity that youth brings to the table," said Singh, also 59.

During the course of this journey, your family will have a big role to play. Being empty nesters might be an advantage.

"You go back to being more preoccupied and intensely engaged with what you are doing. You start compromising on family time. But maybe the difference is that now the kids have grown up and are doing their own thing. I think it is hardest for the spouse," said Hemachandra Javeri, chairman of sports apparel startup Zeven, which he officially launched with tennis ace Mahesh Bhupathi in February. Javeri, 53, is also a co-founder of Forum Synergies (India) PE Fund.

The common thread connecting this myriad bunch of senior entrepreneurs is their ambition to bring about a social change. The underlying cause of their startup is what drives these entrepreneurs to work their hearts out.

"After 50-60 one does not start up for money. They want to give back something to the society, something like a corporate social responsibility," said Sridhar of Connect India. So, if you have plans to startup, do it in a field you are passionate about.

Singh of Vidyanext is of the same view. "When you are moderately successful, you have numerous choices as to where you can spend your time... financial needs are relatively met. The question is before I call it a day and hang up my boots can I do something that can have an impact?" said Singh.

Investors, too, are open to funding a startup run by entrepreneurs who are above 50 if the idea and the team click.

"These entrepreneurs are more mature and collected. Experience brings stability during a crisis. Even in personal lives, they would have gone through ups and downs. They know how to handle situations," said Padmaja Ruparel, President of Indian Angel Network.

"Age has its importance," said Vineet Rai, CEO of Aavishkar Fund, which has funded Connect India, among other ventures. "We focus on the team. We see these entrepreneurs as mentors to the team."

Source : www.techgignews.com

what were the best business books in 2015?

A Work in Progress: A Memoir -- Connor Franta

Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice -- Bill Browder

Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win -- Jocko Willink, Leif Babin

You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) -- Felicia Day

Elon Musk: Inventing the Future -- Ashlee Vance

Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few -- Robert B. Reich

How Music Got Free: The End of an Industry, the Turn of the Century, and the Patient Zero of Piracy -- Stephen Witt

The School of Greatness: A Real-World Guide to Living Bigger, Loving Deeper, and Leaving a Legacy -- Lewis Howes

The Crossroads of Should and Must: Find and Follow Your Passion -- Elle Luna

Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction -- Philip E. Tetlock, Dan Gardner

Rising Strong: The Reckoning, the Rumble, the Revolution -- Brene Brown

Do Over: Everything You Need to Get Unstuck at Work -- Jon Acuff

Work Rules! Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead -- Laszlo Bock

Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics -- Richard H. Thaler

Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World -- General Stanley McChrystal

Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World -- Peter H. Diamandis, Steven Kotler

Unfinished Business: Women Men Work Family -- Anne-Marie Slaughter

Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear -- Elizabeth Gilbert

Fail, Fail Again, Fail Better -- Pema Chodron

The Dorito Effect: The Surprising New Truth About Food and Flavor -- Mark Schatzker

The End of Jobs: Money, Meaning and Freedom Without the 9-to-5 -- Taylor Pearson

America's Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve -- Roger Lowenstein

The Steal Like an Artist Journal: A Notebook for Creative Kleptomaniacs -- Austin Kleon

The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory -- John Seabrook

Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World -- Bruce Schneier

Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry -- Jacquie McNish, Sean Silcoff

Above the Line: Lessons in Leadership and Life from a Championship Season -- Urban Meyer

Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It -- Marc Goodman

America's Bitter Pill: Money, Politics, Backroom Deals, and the Fight to Fix Our Broken Healthcare System -- Steven Brill

The Art of the Start 2.0: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything -- Guy Kawasaki

Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money -- Nathaniel Popper

What to Do When It's Your Turn (and It's Always Your Turn) -- Seth Godin

Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives -- Gretchen Rubin

The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge -- Matt Ridley

Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future -- Martin Ford

Triggers: Creating Behavior That Lasts--Becoming the Person You Want to Be -- Marshall Goldsmith, Mark Reiter

Friend & Foe: When to Cooperate, When to Compete, and How to Succeed at Both -- Adam Galinsky, Maurice Schweitzer

The Opposite of Spoiled: Raising Kids Who Are Grounded, Generous, and Smart About Money -- Ron Lieber

The Road to Character - David Brooks

Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective -- Thomas Sowell

How to Fly a Horse: The Secret History of Creation, Invention, and Discovery -- Kevin Ashton

Rejection Proof: How I Beat Fear and Became Invincible Through 100 Days of Rejection -- Jia Jiang

How to Make a Living With Your Writing: Books, Blogging and More -- Joanna Penn

Leave Your Mark: Land Your Dream Job. Kill It in Your Career. Rock Social Media. -- Aliza Licht

Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age -- Sherry Turkle

Move Your Bus: An Extraordinary New Approach to Accelerating Success in Work and Life -- Ron Clark

Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future -- Paul Mason

Who Gets What--and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design -- Alvin E. Roth

People Over Profit: Break the System, Live with Purpose, Be More Successful -- Dale Partridge

Meaningful: The Story of Ideas That Fly -- Bernadette Jiwa

Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo! -Nicholas Carlson

6 Months to 6 Figures -- Peter Voogd

Life Is Good: The Book -- Bert Jacobs, John Jacobs

Most Likely to Succeed: Preparing Our Kids for the Innovation Era -- Tony Wagner, Ted Dintersmith

The Fringe Hours: Making Time for You - Jessica N. Turner

Living Well, Spending Less: 12 Secrets of the Good Life -- Ruth Soukup

Why We Work -- Barry Schwartz

The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users -- Guy Kawasaki, Peg Fitzpatrick

A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life -- Brian Grazer, Charles Fishman

I Know How She Does It: How Successful Women Make the Most of Their Time -- Laura Vanderkam

Get What's Yours: The Secrets to Maxing Out Your Social Security -- Laurence J. Kotlikoff, Philip Moeller, Paul Solman

God's Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican -- Gerald Posner

Flashpoints: The Emerging Crisis in Europe -- George Friedman

You Win in the Locker Room First: The 7 C's to Build a Winning Team in Business, Sports, and Life -- Jon Gordon, Mike Smith

The Automatic Customer: Creating a Subscription Business in Any Industry -- John Warrillow

The Upward Spiral: Using Neuroscience to Reverse the Course of Depression, One Small Change at a Time -- Alex Korb

The Introvert Entrepreneur: Amplify Your Strengths and Create Success on Your Own Terms -- Beth Buelow

The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World -- Pedro Domingos

13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do: Take Back Your Power, Embrace Change, Face Your Fears, and Train Your Brain for Happiness and Success -- Amy Morin

Leadership BS: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time -- Jeffrey Pfeffer

Louder Than Words: Harness the Power of Your Authentic Voice -- Todd Henry

The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World's Favorite Board Game -- Mary Pilon

15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management: The Productivity Habits of 7 Billionaires, 13 Olympic Athletes, 29 Straight-A Students, and 239 Entrepreneurs -- Kevin Kruse

Black Box Thinking: The Surprising Truth About Success -- Matthew Syed

Good Profit: How Creating Value for Others Built One of the World's Most Successful Companies -- Charles G. Koch

Happy Habits: Energize Your Career and Life in 4 Minutes a Day -- Vicki Morris

Are You Fully Charged?: The 3 Keys to Energizing Your Work and Life -- Tom Rath

Other People's Money: The Real Business of Finance -- John Kay

Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock 'n' Roll -- Peter Guralnick

Get Backed: Craft Your Story, Build the Perfect Pitch Deck, and Launch the Venture of Your Dreams -- Evan Baehr, Evan Loomis

The Heart-Led Leader: How Living and Leading From the Heart Will Change Your Organization and Your Life -- Tommy Spaulding

The Best Place to Work: The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace -- Ron Friedman

The Achievement Habit: Stop Wishing, Start Doing, and Take Command of Your Life -- Bernard Roth

Stand Out: How to Find Your Breakthrough Idea and Build a Following Around It -- Dorie Clark

Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work -- Whitney Johnson

Lean Out: The Struggle for Gender Equality in Tech and Start-Up Culture -- Elissa Shevinsky

Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Shared Prosperity -Joseph E. Stiglitz

Activate Your Brain: How Understanding Your Brain Can Improve Your Work -- and Your Life -- Scott G. Halford

Serial Winner: 5 Actions to Create Your Cycle of Success -- Larry Weidel

Zillow Talk: The New Rules of Real Estate -- Spencer Rascoff, Stan Humphries

Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception -- George A. Akerlof, Robert J. Shiller

Mindware: Tools for Smart Thinking -- Richard E. Nisbett

Works Well With Others: An Outsider's Guide to Shaking Hands, Shutting Up, Handling Jerks, and Other Crucial Skills in Business That No One Ever Teaches You -- Ross McCammon

The Silo Effect: The Peril of Expertise and the Promise of Breaking Down Barriers -- Gillian Tett

Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World -- Donald Sull, Kathleen M. Eisenhardt

Boss Life: Surviving My Own Small Business -- Paul Downs

Grit to Great: How Perseverance, Passion, and Pluck Take You From Ordinary to Extraordinary -- Linda Kaplan Thaler, Robin Koval

Content Inc.: How Entrepreneurs Use Content to Build Massive Audiences and Create Radically Successful Businesses -- Joe Pulizzi

Steal the Show: From Speeches to Job Interviews to Deal-Closing Pitches, How to Guarantee a Standing Ovation for All the Performances in Your Life -- Michael Port

Rich Bitch: A Simple 12-Step Plan for Getting Your Financial Life Together... Finally -- Nicole Lapin

The Methodology

Jurgen's team collected titles of business books throughout the year and augmented that list with books found in other "best of 2015" lists.

They then determined the earliest publication dates on Amazon and GoodReads and removed titles released before December, 1 2014, and after November 31, 2015.

Then they collected votes and ratings on GoodReads and created rankings based on the average number of votes per day, the average number of points per day, and the average rating. They then averaged those three ratings to determine a final ranking.

Source : techgignews.com

India fifth largest country with domain name hijacks in 2015

NEW DELHI: India has emerged as the fifth highest country that witnessed infections via DNS Hijacks in 2015, F-Secure Threat Round up Report said, adding DNS Hijacks brought bots, downloaders and information stealers last year.

The report details the trends and events in global cyber threats that hit consumers and companies last year and said the majority of the observed hijacks in 2015 occurred in Italy and Poland, followed by Egypt, Sweden, and India.

It said although domain name system (DNS) hijacks are a frequent type of attack in today's threat landscape, a significant spike in these hijacks was observed during the spring and summer months of 2015, specifically April through August.

DNS hijacks' basic aim is to alter the DNS configurations of their targets in order to monitor or manipulate internet traffic.

The report said various security flaws can lead to these DNS hijacks, including weak passwords, software vulnerabilities or malware.

DNS hijacks are an effective way for attackers to make contact with a large number of potential targets at once, as it provides them with the opportunity to compromise all of the devices connected to a particular network.

F-Secure is a Finland-based online security and privacy company that recently warned parents to become more aware of the threats posed by new Internet of Things (IoT) toys designed for kids.

Source : etcio.com

MongoDB as a service on cloud using Node.JS

Cloud computing  emerges as one of the hottest topic in field of information technology. Cloud computing is based on several other computing  research areas such as HPC, virtualization, utility computing and grid computing. In order to make clear the essential of cloud computing, we propose the characteristics of this area which make cloud computing being cloud computing and distinguish it from other research areas. Our work uses a NoSQL database, MongoDB. There are several advantages and disadvantages for both SQL and NoSQL databases. Developers often wonder which database is better and which they should use on their project.

There is no easy or straightforward answer for this question and there is not one database that will work for every project. MongoDB has both strengths and weaknesses, but overall it performs quite well and it doesn’t have as many restrictions and limitations as other NoSQL databases. The server being Node.JS, provides an event-driven architecture and a non-blocking I/O API that optimizes an application's throughput and stability. It is a cross-platform runtime environment

THE LITERATURE SURVEY

Now minute and average business organization are realizing that simply exchange to the cloud can get access to excellent business claims and increase up their infrastructure assets in a very low-cost, Internet on an as-needed basis . This new and exciting paradigm has generated significant interest in the marketplace and the academic world [6], resulting in a number of notable commercial and individual cloud computing services, e.g., form Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Sales force. Also, top database vendors, like Oracle, are adding cloud support to their databases.

Most of the web application cannot achieve good performance and scalability due to unnecessary waiting time of server on I/O tasks. Traditional programming languages which works on synchronous way cannot provide good response for web application as they have to wait for an I/O task to complete before proceeding to other task. For example, the web server needs to wait for the response from database before it can proceed to next task which needs the server to allocate resources for the single task. But with event oriented and asynchronous approach of programming, node.JS solves this problem of supporting large number of concurrent users with good performance without blocking all server resources on single I/O operation.

There is a noticeable lack of reputable articles that discuss performance issues and solutions for Node JS itself. There are only few academic articles on the performance testing of specific web applications. Most have to do with the theories behind testing. For example, Dr. Kumar Ramakanth wrote an article published by the International Journal on Computer Science and Engineering (IJCSE) . In which he defined criteria for testing web applications.

JavaScript Most Popular Language: Stack Overflow Report

According to the latest Stack Overflow developer survey, JavaScript is the most popular programming language and Rust is most loved.

Stack Overflow, the popular question-and-answer community site for developers, today released the results of its annual developer survey, which indicates, among other things, that JavaScript is the most popular programming language among respondents.

More than 50,000 developers—56,033 to be exact—in 173 countries around the world responded to the survey. Stack Overflow is so popular among developers that every eight seconds, a developer asks a question on the site. In January alone, 46 million people visited Stack Overflow to get help or give help to a fellow developer.

"This is a highly impressive survey and one of its kind," said Al Hilwa, an analyst at IDC. "Stack Overflow has an incredible user base and it is great to see them survey them with such a fairly extensive survey. While I think we can learn a lot from such surveys, we have to realize that there are always limits to what can be intuited. They asked 45 questions, which is at the high-end of the scale of survey length that people—especially developers—are willing to answer."

While the 2016 Stack Overflow survey only reached .4 percent of the estimated 15 million developers worldwide, a large majority of respondents (85.3 percent of full-stack developers) cited JavaScript as the programming language they most commonly use. Meanwhile, 32.2 percent of respondents cited Angular as the most important technology to them and 27.1 cited Node.js—giving JavaScript and JavaScript based technologies three of the top 10 slots among the most popular technologies used by developers. Angular was number five and Node.js came in at number eight.

Source : eweek.com

Tuning DSE Search – Indexing latency and query latency (cassandra)

DSE offers out of the box search indexing for your Cassandra data. The days of double writes or ETL’s between separate DBMS and Search clusters are gone.

I have my cql table, I execute the following API call, and (boom) my cassandra data is available for:

1) full text/fuzzy search
2) ad hoc lucene secondary index powered filtering, and
3) geospatial search

Here is my API call:

$ bin/dsetool create_core <keyspace>.<table> generateResources=true reindex=true
or if you prefer curl (or are using basic auth) use the following:

$ curl "http://localhost:8983/solr/admin/cores?action=CREATE&name=<keyspace>.<table>&generateResources=true"
Rejoice! we are in inverted index, single cluster, operational simplicity bliss!

The remainder of this post will be focused on advanced tuning for DSE Search both for a) search indexing latency (the time it takes for data to be searchable after it has been inserted through cql), and b) search query latency (timings for your search requests).

Indexing latency
In this section I’ll talk about the kinds of things we can do in order to

1) instrument and monitor DSE Search indexing and

2) tune indexing for lower latencies and increased performance.

Source : www.datastax.com

The Powerful Technology That Will Sell A Million Smartphones

I don’t mean the speed of the chipsets (although that plays a part in this). I don’t mean the ever-increasing levels of memory or storage (but they are also involved). Nor am I thinking about at the extra connectivity, antennas, or protocols to shift data onto a handset. I’m talking about battery power, endurance, and the ability to keep doing my mobile thing for a full day (and night) away from the hotel room.

Hand me a smartphone with a battery that can get me through the day without worrying about running out by 8pm and I would be a happy reporter. Like any good member of the geekerati I have a few handsets with me, and none of them can make it through the Texan day without a top-up charge of some description. Be they Android, iOS, or Windows 10, the requirement for an additional battery is almost mandatory for the modern smartphone.

Looking around the conference floor, and I see a lot of battery cases in use. Glance into the press room and every mobile phone is plugged into the wall or connected to a portable battery charger. To be fair, some of that might be defensive charging (I always recommend practicing the ABC of conferences – Always Be Charging), but even the people doing that are already in the mind-set that their phone will not make it through the day without help.

Yet what are we sold at every opportunity? Thin is in. That everyone wants a tenth of a millimetre shaved off the design, everyone wants a phone that is harder to hold and everyone wants a phone that will only work until 3 pm before giving out. When every other specification gets a little bigger with each launch event, the battery gets smaller, the endurance of the smartphone attempts to stay steady through smart coding, and the peripheral manufacturers breath a sigh of relief that they still have a business.

Source : forbes.com

What are the numbers, facts and figures behind big data?

In Gartner’s hype cycle, the term ‘big data’ was once a staple of the yearly report.  It moved swiftly into the peak of inflated expectations, weathered its way through the trough of disillusionment, and is now prevalent – somewhere between the slope of enlightenment and the plateau of productivity.

Expectations of the technology are high, a Gartner survey in September 2015 showed more that 75% of companies are investing or planning to invest in big data in the next two years, and 37% of those projects are being driven from board level.

But as a term, ‘big data’ still has no clear definition. For some, a dataset over a terabyte is big data – for others, it might be a million rows, and others still may have smaller datasets that is changing many times a second.

In the era of Google, Facebook, Amazon and web-scale data, no dataset should be too difficult to analyse. It is all about having the right tool for the job.

So instead of defining big data as a number or a size, it is more interesting and relevant to define it in terms of history, growth, compute and value.

History

29 million

That’s the size, in number of records, of the world’s first big data project in 1937. At that time, the administration in America were looking to keep track of social security contributions from some 26 million Americans, and 3 million employers and partners were sought.

IBM, with its giant punch-card machines of the time, got the contract – simultaneously setting the foundations for the Big Blue known now and setting in motion the start of automatic record keeping and data analysis on a massive scale.

Growth

Zettabyte

For the first time since its conception, global internet traffic will surpass 1 zettabyte (1 billion terabytes) in 2016, according to a Cisco research paper, having risen fivefold in the past five years.

A separate study estimates that 90% of the world’s data was generated in the past two years. Not only are we clicking, emailing, chatting and taking photos or videos more than ever, companies have cottoned onto the fact that data is valuable so are storing more and more data. Datasets such as website access logs and click data are no longer being thrown away – they are being archived and mined to generate valuable insights.

Compute

24 months

That’s the period that Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, observed was the amount of time it took the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit to double. Similar observations have been found in other areas – it has been estimated that the amount of data transmittable through an optical fibre doubles every nine months and storage density doubles roughly every 13 months.

Organisations can process, transmit and store more data than ever, and all three are exponentially increasing commodities. Companies are better placed than ever before to deal with data.

Value

$59 billion

That is the estimated value of the big data market in 2015 and it is expected to roughly double to $102 billion by 2019, according to IDC. Big data is big bucks, a 21st century gold rush – and to extend the metaphor, big data analytics is the modern-day equivalent of panning for gold. 

For data-first companies, monetisation comes in the form of advertising – and big data analytics helps them to show an appropriate advert as well as analyse the results. For other companies it is often about increasing sales (the ‘I see you bought this, what about this?’ offers), automating decisions (big data gives the proof that an option is the correct one to take) and decreasing costs (driving efficiencies in the supply chain).

It’s clear big data is growing – it’s here to stay and, right up to board level, companies have woken up to its potential. 

Companies see that with big data analytics they can find insights that enable them to outperform their competitors and reduce costs. With the right tools, these insights are easier to obtain than ever.

Source : techgignews.com