West Virginia auditor blasts Cisco, state for “oversized” router buy

The auditor also found Cisco “showed a wanton indifference to the interests of the public” in recommending the investment in its model 3945 branch routers, the majority of which were “oversized” for the requirements of the state agencies using them, the report stated.

via West Virginia auditor blasts Cisco, state for “oversized” router buy – Network World.

SSD onslaught: Hard drives poised for double-digit revenue drop

According to a market report from research firm IHS iSuppli, HDD revenue is set to drop to about $32.7 billion this year, down 11.8% from $37.1 billion last year.

via SSD onslaught: Hard drives poised for double-digit revenue drop – Computerworld.

Much of this has to do with newer devices sold being those that do not use standard hard drives like smartphones and tablets.  Perhaps we’re seeing the start of another computing technology headed for the museum.

Intel to leave desktop motherboard business by 2016

Intel will continue rolling out desktop motherboards that are currently in production, in addition to the fourth-generation Haswell desktop boards that are in the design and development phase and due to be released later this year. These products will have a typical lifecycle of about 18 months, said the Intel spokeswoman, adding that Intel customers will continue to be supported with a full warranty during that time.

via Intel to leave desktop motherboard business by 2016 | ZDNet.

The way I read this it’s just the motherboards themselves, not the chips included in desktop motherboards.

Cisco Exits The Consumer Market As It Sells Linksys To Belkin

This should be a relatively smooth transition that won’t affect current customers: Belkin says it will honor all valid warranties for current and future Linksys products. After the transaction closes, Belkin will account for approximately 30 percent of the US retail home and small business networking market.

via Cisco Exits The Consumer Market As It Sells Linksys To Belkin.

These cheap home routers have become commodities.  As far as I know Belkin makes a decent product.  Cisco tried to require its home router users to be managed by its cloud platform and after that debacle it seemed all downhill from there for them.   If possible I prefer to use a real Linux box running real iptables as a gateway  using these wifi home routers as access points.

Internet TV Startup Aereo Could Help Cord-Cutting Catch On

Aereo began a year ago in New York City and is now expanding into 22 markets. It is going after the growing contingent of TV “cord-cutters” who would rather watch on-demand content online than pay for cable or satellite packages. Aereo charges a minimum of $8 a month for a subscription.

via Internet TV Startup Aereo Could Help Cord-Cutting Catch On | MIT Technology Review.

The interesting thing about this idea is that they somehow figured out how to associate a single antenna to each subscriber.   Content delivery networks, which this seems to be, are difficult to implement on a large scale.

Yammer Competitor Jostle.me Raises $3.1M For Enterprise Sharing Platform Anchored By Pictures, Not Text

Visualization is what binds Jostle.me. You can view activities that are popular across the organization and how people relate to each other.

via Yammer Competitor Jostle.me Raises $3.1M For Enterprise Sharing Platform Anchored By Pictures, Not Text | TechCrunch.

I find it interesting the different ideas people come up with.  This might be useful in certain situations.

Telco Analytics Firm Raises $30M

Scranage also notes that, unlike other data collection and analysis systems, Guavus’s software screens the vast volumes of data created constantly by networks, devices and subscribers for particular data types, stripping out vast quantities of data that provide no insight and feeding only “useful” data into analytics engines.

via Light Reading – Telco Analytics Firm Raises $30M.