UNLIMITED INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

I am just back from speaking at the  Doha Forum, an intellectual space for ideas about the economic future of the Middle East region. Was quite impressed by the inclusion of  social media  as a core discussion. Governments world over claim they are grappling with information free-flow and what I call 'expression extremism'. The notion of digital democracy has meant views percolate freely and allow for movements to begin. And this has put both civil society and states at two ends of a table to discuss 'the limits.' While the rift isn't new, the rapidly multiplying communities online and their ability to quickly garner unified support is a phenomenon now snowballing more than ever before. From last year Thai coup and the upheaval online, the Arab Spring to the social-invasion of Mongolia by Narendra Modi all gripped our discussions. Asians are increasingly more confident to express themselves in engaging, witty and socially aware conversations. Further, tolerance for ...

Dmail Makes Gmail Vanish You can make Gmail messages self-destruct with a Chrome browser extension. Delicious Science, which last year acquired social bookmarking service Delicio.us, has released a  Chrome extension  that provides Gmail messages with the ability to self-destruct. After installing the extension, Gmail users can send a message to anyone, whether or not that person uses the Dmail extension, and configure the message to deny access after a period of an hour, a day, a week, or never. In addition, a "Revoke Access" button provides a way to immediately disable access to a protected message. If the recipient has the Dmail extension, he or she can read the message in Gmail until it expires or is revoked. If the recipient does not use Dmail, he or she receives a message that says, "This secure message was sent using Dmail. To view this message, simply click the button below." (Image: Delicious Science) Clicking on the View Message link calls out to a server o...

Scientists and mathematicians have long loved Python as a vehicle for working with data and automation. Python has not lacked for libraries such as  Hadoopy  or  Pydoop  to work with Hadoop, but those libraries are designed more with Hadoop users in mind than data scientists proper. Cloudera's new project, Ibis, is an open source (Apache licensed) data analysis framework meant to span the gap. It provides "comprehensive support for the built-in analytic capabilities in Impala for simplified ETL, data wrangling, and data analysis," as Cloudera puts it. [  Harness the power of Hadoop  -- find out how in InfoWorld's Deep Dive report. |  18 essential Hadoop tools for crunching big data . | Get a digest of the day's top tech stories in the  InfoWorld Daily newsletter . ] To that end, IBIS seems as much about providing data-science Pythonistas with an automated avenue into Cloudera's Impala framework (a  SQL-querying system  for Hadoop) a...

Cisco Drops Invicta All-Flash Storage Arrays Cisco's troubled venture into storage with its 2013 acquisition of Whiptail ends. Cisco announced on Friday that it's halting production of its Invicta all-flash storage product line, giving up on the storage business it acquired in 2013. "Cisco is prioritizing the elements of our portfolio to drive the most value for our customers both now and in the future, and today we are announcing the End of Life (EoL) for the Invicta Appliance and Scaling System products," the company said in an email statement. Cisco will continue to support existing customers who have deployed Invicta products. Cisco made a big splash when it moved to acquire all-solid-state array vendor Whiptail for $415 million about two years ago.  In a blog post at the time , Deepstorage Chief Scientist and Network Computing Contributor Howard Marks wrote that the storage deal put Cisco one step closer to becoming a one-stop IT shop. In January 2014, Cisco laun...

UC Platforms: Setting Standards Standardizing on communications platforms across the enterprise starts with getting employee feedback on the tools they use and prefer. In my job, I spend a great deal of time in front of IT leaders. These are the people who are not only responsible for keeping the lights on (so to speak), but for enabling their whole organization to break into new frontiers through the power of technology. With so many new technologies coming out all the time, and so many tools already at our disposal, getting everyone in the company standardized on the same ones can be a daunting task.  In a recent meeting, a VP of IT for a midsize retailer told me that an internal business partner of hers once asked if UC really stood for "utterly confused," as that was his view of unified communications. He was overwhelmed with all technology choices available to him and others in the organization, and he wanted IT to set clear standards on what tools to use and when. This ...

5 Annoyingly Addictive iPhone, Android Apps These deceitfully simple games for iPhones and Android smartphones will thwart all attempts at productivity and communication. Proceed with caution. (Image:  Jeshoots  via Pixabay) In a perfectly distraction-free world, our iPhones and Android smartphones would be pure productivity machines. On top of enabling global communication, most provide access to hundreds of apps designed to  help you get things done . However, anyone who has downloaded Candy Crush can attest to the fact that smartphones are capable of both maximizing and destroying productivity. Smartphones have quickly transitioned from nice-to-have to must-have devices. It's nearly impossible to get through the day without calling, texting, emailing, scrolling through social networks, or playing games.  [It's time to call it a day, Adobe. See  9 Reasons Flash Must Die, And Soon .] Your smartphone can be great for helping you make the most of your time, but i...

WiFi Best Practices For Quality Assurance Today's WiFi networks require a more strategic approach than just dropping APs everywhere in order to ensure quality of service. From smart watches to smartphones, tablets and sensors, more and more devices within your organization are clamoring for Internet access every day. Many of these products support multiple radios for access to both WiFi and cellular LTE. This forces users to choose between them, weighing factors such as the benefits of cost, quality of service, and ease of use. The increased proliferation of new communication methods in the workplace, such as Voice over WiFi and video calling and messaging, has spurred the jump to fixed WiFi networks when available rather than relying on LTE. If employees used cellular LTE for these applications, monthly data costs would skyrocket along with complaints about poor performance and reliability. This is especially true for bandwidth-sensitive needs such as video. In fact,  46% of globa...

Citizen Data Scientists: 5 Ways To Harness Talent A new role is emerging to deal with the ongoing shortage of data scientists. Learn more about these new power users and find out how organizations can cultivate more of them. (Image:  RyanMcGuire  via Pixabay) The worldwide shortage of  data scientists  won't end anytime soon. To try to compensate for the shortage, data discovery solutions are automating tasks that have traditionally been done manually by a data scientist, statistician, or other analytics expert. The confluence of trends is giving rise to a new role that Gartner calls a "citizen data scientist." A  recent Gartner report  defines a citizen data scientist as "a person who creates or generates models that leverage predictive or prescriptive analytics but whose primary job function is outside of the field of statistics and analytics." It could be a line-of-business role, a business analyst, or a member of the business intelligence or IT team. Th...