Carl Weinschenk

Smartphones remain a mammoth and growing category. The bloom is a bit off the rose, however: A common thought is that the introductions of a few years ago that generated excitement and buzz are a thing of the past simply because all the cool features that people really want have been introduced. It’s hard to […]

The rise of telecommuting has been one of the more important IT trends of the past decade. More companies are open to it, and mobile technology that has grown by orders of magnitude and concepts such as the cloud has made the idea of decentralized employment far more accepted. Telecommuting was in the news last […]

IDC today released research that predicts that cognitive and artificial intelligence will generate $12.5 billion in revenue this year, an increase of 59.3 percent over 2016. Indeed, the growth shows no sign of slowing. The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) will be 54.4 percent through 2020, with revenue exceeding $46 billion. A particularly interesting conclusion […]

There is some confusion in the Carrier Ethernet (CE) sector. Experts agree that it is continuing to expand. The Vertical Systems Group (VSG) suggests the pace has cooled a bit, while The Dell’Oro Group found that the category has hit an all-time high. The VSG study concluded that incumbent carrier sales grew 7 percent in […]

The Senate, as expected, has voted to cancel changes to rules concerning use of personal data collected online. This is an important issue for consumers and for the companies that are trying to use that data for sales and marketing. The law, if signed by President Trump, will kill legislation that, as of now, is […]

The cable industry grew to be a giant for one reason: People wanted their MTV. Along the way, its networks became major providers of voice and data. They have changed how people are entertained, communicate and do business. But it is a world that is gradually changing. Most obviously, video is now transmitted to mobile […]

There are great expectations for augmented reality and virtual reality (AR and VR). Earlier this month, IDC released research that projects that 99.4 million augmented and virtual reality headsets will ship in 2021, which is almost a tenfold increase from the 10.1 million that it said shipped last year. That constitutes a compound annual growth […]

The Senate this week voted to void privacy rules that were promulgated at the end of the Obama Administration by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The Senate used the Congressional Review Act, which allows late date rules of one administration to be rolled back by the next. The FCC has already voted to stay privacy […]

One of the basic landscape issues in mobility is the security of Google’s Android operating system. The reason is simple: The confusing maze of versions of the OS and the need to somewhat differently configure each for the variety of device manufacturers and networks upon which they run creates cracks and crevices through which clever, […]

The United States and the United Kingdom have curtailed the use of most electronic devices in the cabin during flights from a number of nations. This obvious inconvenience for business travelers should be worked into corporate travel policies. This week, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security banned people from carrying on personal electronic devices larger […]

Faster and more efficient connectivity are always the evolutionary aims of networking vendors. If anything, however, those goals are even more in the limelight as the Optical Networking and Communications Conference & Exhibition (OFC) convenes this week in Los Angeles. Much of what is new revolves around 100 Gigabit per second and 400 Gbps networking […]

The introduction of a new technology never means the end of what is already in use for a couple of reasons: It takes a long time for the new standard or protocol to work its way through the system and the latest technology is often beyond the needs of most users. The same will be […]