Carl Weinschenk

5G is a revolutionary technology for a couple of reasons. One is simply that it is based on a lot of new technology. Another is that the speeds attained will make wireless more or less the equal of wired connections in many implementations. Throughput equalization is a key. It makes it financially viable for an […]

An interesting paradox has emerged during the past few years. Ever more computing infrastructure is embedded in the cloud, which tends to put the computing smarts further away from users. At the same time, however, an increasing portion of services and applications that consumers and businesses use requires instantaneous reactions that can’t be handled in […]

An initial reaction to a Broadcom offer to buy Qualcomm in a transaction valued at $105 billion is that the deal has enough enemies to give it less than an even chance of being consummated. eWeek’s Wayne Rash refers to reports that Qualcomm thinks it is being undervalued by Broadcom. Of course, $105 billion is […]

Last month, a particularly frightening Wi-Fi vulnerability became public. The vulnerability, which was discovered by two researchers at Universiteit Leuven in Belgium, is key reinstallation attacks (KRACK). The scary thing about KRACK is that it attacks the WPA2 security standard itself, not any particular device or system. Thus, large parts of the Wi-Fi landscape are […]

Digital transformation is a very vague and inaccurate phrase. The second word implies a complete makeover. Things that are transformed start as one thing and end up as another. The first word implies that that change will be technical. Digital transformation, of course, actually refers to leveraging the massive amounts of data generated by the […]

AT&T made two significant and related announcements this week. The carrier launched a microservices supplier program that it says will enable businesses to upgrade their functionality far more quickly and in a more targeted manner than in the past. The new service is in collaboration with IBM. Big Blue will help the carrier design, develop […]

The Internet of Things (IoT) and virtualization are combining in a very interesting way. The idea, which Forbes explains well, is called device twins. The basic concept is to create a virtual replica of a device. This replicate holds the static data about the device, such as serial number and make, and links to sensors […]

In general, collaborative tools are growing more sophisticated. This was a big week for this evolution. Facebook, Slack and Google all enhanced their platforms. Facebook launched a standalone desktop app for Workplace Chat, its enterprise messaging app, according to Computerworld. Facebook said that more than 30,000 organizations are using Workplace, which is more than double […]

There has been a lot of news during the past months about the growth of FirstNet, the first responder network being created by AT&T and the U.S. government, and similar initiatives vying for a piece of the pie. These networks hope to leverage emerging technology to help first responders communicate more effectively in order to […]

One of the overriding questions driving the ongoing battle over net neutrality and the general direction of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is how to bridge the digital divide. That term, it should be pointed out, can refer to many disparities in access to telecommunications: between urban and suburban groups, age groups, groups that have […]

The differences between robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) will become less important as time passes. Soon, it will only be a sematic distinction: The more sophisticated tools will be driven by AI and machine learning. Mobility will be an as-needed feature. The latest evidence that robotics is growing quickly was contained in a report released […]

The use of the Internet of Things in industrial scenarios, the Industrial Internet of Things or IIoT, will change that world as radically, or perhaps even more so, than the consumer IoT. It just won’t be as obvious. Definitions are loose. In addition to the IoT, enterprise and commercial use of the internet is part […]