Homes need better Wi-Fi. Is Eero the answer?, and more for Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Homes need better Wi-Fi. Is Eero the answer? Stacey Higginbotham Feb 3 2015, 6:00am PDT Bad Wi-Fi isn’t just a problem that forces people to move from a comfortable chair in search of a better connection so they can stream their favorite TV show. Increasingly as we connect Wi-Fi-connected appliances or door locks, having bad coverage in an area of the […] Read More » Sponsored post: The new digital workplace: how to bring clarity to a cloudy enterprise harmon.ie Feb 3 2015, 5:55am PDT Information overload is not new; it is simply getting a lot worse. As businesses embrace cloud services, they create a new daily challenge for their employees and partners – it’s virtually impossible for business users to make sense of all the data streaming in from disparate systems. Read More » Internap expands OpenStack public cloud push Barb Darrow Feb 3 2015, 5:46am PDT Internap is now offering OpenStack-based public cloud services for the enterprise-rich New York metropolitan area from its Secaucus, New Jersey data center. Atlanta-based Internap paints its OpenStack-based AgileCLOUD as a “scalable public cloud” with dedicated CPU options and all-SSD storage. The OpenStack option is already available from Internap’s Dallas, Montreal and Amsterdam facilities. […] Read More » Magisto’s desktop app wants to edit all your photos and videos Janko Roettgers Feb 3 2015, 5:00am PDT The average smart phone user captures 150 photos every month. That’s 1,800 photos a year. Add a DSLR camera or maybe a GoPro to the mix, and you’ve got a whole lot of personal media. With any luck, it’s all getting backed up and archived on […] Read More » The whole world is sucking down mobile data like it’s water Stacey Higginbotham Feb 3 2015, 5:00am PDT We may be pushing more of our cellular activity over to Wi-Fi, but we’re still guzzling mobile data like it’s going out of style, according to the latest estimates from Cisco’s Mobile Visual Networking Index. The telecommunications equipment vendor puts out its Visual Networking Index twice […] Read More » DataStax’s first acquisition is a graph-database company Jonathan Vanian Feb 3 2015, 5:00am PDT DataStax, the rising NoSQL database vendor that hawks a commercial version of the open-source Apache Cassandra distributed database, plans to announce on Tuesday that it has acquired graph-database specialist Aurelius, which maintains the open-source graph database Titan. All of Aurelius’s eight-person engineering staff will be joining […] Read More » Web inventor warns against zero-rating net neutrality threat David Meyer Feb 3 2015, 3:52am PDT Zero-rating – where carriers charge nothing or very little for the data used by specific apps and web services – is a threat to net neutrality, web inventor Tim Berners-Lee has warned. The practice is becoming very popular, with mobile operators in particular making special offers […] Read More » It’s on! FCC plans strong net neutrality for mobile and broadband Jeff John Roberts Feb 2 2015, 1:59pm PDT The Federal Communications Commission plans to reclassify broadband internet providers so they can’t favor some websites over others, which is the outcome that has been urged by net neutrality advocates, and which would amount to a victory for the open internet. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has yet to release a […] Read More » This $6 app turns your Android into a PlayStation Portable Kevin C. Tofel Feb 2 2015, 1:50pm PDT Sony sold an estimated 80 million PlayStation Portable devices before discontinuing the hardware last year. But PSP fans can still get their game on with PPSPP, a PlayStation Portable emulator app for Android phones and tablets. Liliputing spotlighted the software on Monday, noting that there’s both […] Read More » TeraDeep wants to bring deep learning to your dumb devices Derrick Harris Feb 2 2015, 1:00pm PDT Open the closet of any gadget geek or computer nerd, and you’re likely to find a lot of skeletons. Stacked deep in a cardboard box or Tupperware tub, there they are: The remains of webcams, routers, phones and other devices deemed too obsolete to keep using […] Read More » The Moto X is a hit in China, with 1M bookings in just 5 days Kevin C. Tofel Feb 2 2015, 12:39pm PDT Lenovo’s $2.91 billion purchase of Motorola from Google is starting to look like a smart move, particularly in its home country of China. The official Motorola account on Weibo announced one million online bookings for the second edition Moto X on Monday, just days after the […] Read More » Apple to build $2B solar-powered “command center” data center at Arizona factory site Katie Fehrenbacher Feb 2 2015, 12:19pm PDT The question of what Apple plans to do with its factory in Mesa, Arizona, which it was going to lease to now-bankrupt former partner and sapphire glass maker GT Advanced Technologies, is now answered. On Monday Apple and the Governor of Arizona, Doug Ducey, announced that […] Read More » Behind the scenes of Otherlab & its soft robots, exoskeletons & intestine tanks Katie Fehrenbacher Feb 2 2015, 11:27am PDT In the 1890s, a former gold miner and inventor set up shop in a building on 19th Street in San Francisco to manufacture a next-generation ultra efficient water wheel. Lester Pelton, whose device is called the Pelton water wheel, is now recognized as one of the fathers […] Read More » HTC explains why the Android 5.0 update is late to its phones Kevin C. Tofel Feb 2 2015, 7:05am PDT HTC isn’t making good on its promise to get the Lollipop update on all of its phones within 90 days of the software’s availability from Google and it wants customers to know why. In a statement on the company’s website, Mo Versi, HTC VP, product management, offered […] Read More » Qualcomm confirms a Microsoft Lumia flagship phone is on the way Kif Leswing Feb 2 2015, 6:43am PDT Qualcomm is feeling the heat regarding its latest flagship mobile chip, the Snapdragon 810. The chip reportedly has thermal issues, and Samsung is apparently dropping it for its own processors, which led to a bad week for Qualcomm’s stock price. The company put out a press release on […] Read More » With 1M watches shipped, Pebble plans new hardware and software Kevin C. Tofel Feb 2 2015, 6:36am PDT Don’t look now, but Pebble is about to build upon the successes of its current smartwatch with a new product and completely different software. Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky shared the high-level plans with The Verge, adding that the company shipped its one millionth Pebble smartwatch on the final […] Read More » Google, gag orders and WikiLeaks: who’s lying? Jeff John Roberts Feb 2 2015, 6:26am PDT The political fallout of WikiLeaks has passed, but the fury of law enforcement has not. More than four years after the organization published a trove of U.S. diplomatic cables, federal agents continue to wage a secret legal campaign to put the screws to those responsible. This month, […] Read More » Surveys say: It takes two years to recoup the cost of a Nest Stacey Higginbotham Feb 2 2015, 6:00am PDT If you’re thinking about paying $250 for the Nest thermostat, know that the resplendent regulator saves customers average of $131-$145 a year, according to a series of studies done by Nest and two other organizations. The studies were performed by Nest in 41 states with 1,500 […] Read More » Here’s how GE plans to make your older appliances smart Stacey Higginbotham Feb 2 2015, 5:16am PDT GE Appliance is sending out 20,000 Wi-Fi modules to let customers connect older refrigerators to the Wink smart home system, according to a Wink executive who will work with the appliance maker. In an interview last month Brett Worthington, VP and general manager at Wink, let […] Read More » Windows 10 and Ubuntu prepare for IoT battle on Raspberry Pi 2 David Meyer Feb 2 2015, 3:47am PDT The Raspberry Pi 2, announced Monday, looks set to be a focal point for the internet-of-things (IoT) development efforts of both Microsoft and Canonical – both will be providing free operating systems for the low-cost device. Because the $35 quad-core computer is based on the ARMv7 […] Read More »