VMware to take on IBM, Microsoft with new products

SAN FRANCISCO: Enterprise software major VMware has announced a slew of products for the data centre market to take on bigger rivals, including Microsoft and IBM, at its annual conference here. The Palo Alto-based company said it will be launching new virtualization, cloud management and integrated OpenStack solutions for implementing a software-defined data center, and supporting the needs of businesses.

The $5-billion software company, which specializes in providing cloud and virtualization software and services, said that these new products will help organizations reduce capital expense and increase staff productivity. 

"In an ever changing business environment, IT leaders need to have confidence that they can be brave and act with conviction in response to market opportunities," said Pat Gelsinger, CEO, VMware. "Empowered by software-defined technologies, businesses are now able to move with dramatic speed. This ability to drive real impact has made the software-defined data center mainstream among leading businesses. VMware continues to innovate making the software-defined data center more open, secure and agile." 

VMware's Integrated OpenStack is expected to be available globally in the first half of next year. It also announced partnerships with Google, Docker and Pivotal to help simplify enterprise adoption of containerbased applications on a common platform in private, public and hybrid clouds. 

VMware's hybrid cloud platform, VMware vCloud Air, also saw new services being launched. 

Sanjay Mirchandani, head of VMware's Apac and Japan region, said "India, which is a huge growth market for the company , will see the impact of these announcements going forward. India houses over 2,700 out of the company's overall employee strength of 17,000 between its centres in Bangalore and Pune." 

(The writer is in San Francisco on an invitation from VMware) 

Indian-origin scientists aim to teach robots to behave like humans

WASHINGTON: Two Indian-origin researchers have created "Robo Brain" — a large-scale computational system that learns from publicly available internet — to teach robots how humans naturally behave. 

The exclusive data bank for robots will help the machines how to find keys, pour a drink, put away dishes and when not to interrupt two people having a conversation. 

"Our laptops and cell phones have access to all the information we want. If a robot encounters a situation it has not seen before, it can query 'Robo Brain' in the cloud," explained lead researcher Ashutosh Saxena, an assistant professor of computer science at Cornell University in New York. 

"Robo Brain" is currently downloading and processing about one billion images, 120,000 YouTube videos and 100 million how-to documents and appliance manuals. 

"The information is being translated and stored in a robot-friendly format that robots will be able to draw on when they need it," Saxena added. 

According to him, "Robo Brain" will process images to pick out the objects in them and by connecting images and video with text, it will learn to recognize objects and how they are used, along with human language and behaviour. 

For example, if a robot sees a coffee mug, it can learn from "Robo Brain" not only that it is a coffee mug but also that liquids can be poured into or out of it, that it can be grasped by the handle, and that it must be carried upright when it is full. 

"The 'Robo Brain' will look like a gigantic, branching graph with abilities for multi-dimensional queries," explained Aditya Jami, a visiting researcher at Cornell who designed the large-scale database for the brain. 

Like a human learner, "Robo Brain" will have teachers thanks to crowdsourcing, concluded Saxena who described the project at the "2014 Robotics: Science and Systems Conference" in Berkeley recently.

4 ways to add backlight ambient lighting to TVs, PCs ( 'cool looks' )

Nights are always the best time to curl up on your couch for movie marathons or long gaming sessions. However, these sessions are also a marathon strain for your eyes, especially for those with smaller TVs. That's where ambient backlight comes in, which not only reduces eyestrain but also adds a supercool accent lighting to your setup. 

Why ambient lighting?
Why do people say watching in the dark is bad for your eyes? Well, keeping it simple, the pupil of your eye increases or decreases in size to let certain amounts of light in. When the light is bright, your pupils will narrow in about 5 seconds flat; however, to adjust to the dark, the pupils have to increase in size to let in more light, but it happens very slowly, taking about 5 minutes.

When you watch in the dark, you have one rectangle of bright LED lights, but the rest is dark. This causes eye-strain, as the pupil is adjusting at microlevels, while your head is moving in reaction to the movie you're watching.

READ ALSO: 8 tips to save eyes from computer vision syndrome

Having ambient light around your TV throws an even hue, allowing your eyes to remain focused without that strain.

Here are four ways you can add ambient light to your life, for all types of budgets and all types of purposes.

Method 1: Budget
The simplest method is to go out to the hardware shop and get LED strips. They cost less than Rs 70 per metre, and a metre and a half would suffice for, let's say, a 40-inch TV to go all round. If you want a slightly lower light radius, you can just put one-metre strip in a line, somewhere at the centre of the TV. Whichever way you want it, just make sure you measure your TV first.

Here's a step by step guide.

1. Buy a LED strip. Usually it comes in singular colours, so you can get white light, warm white, yellow, red and other single colours. Warm white is the best bet.

Note: Double check that the strip has a 3M tape on the other side.

2. Once you get the wire, you have to purchase a 12V adapter with it. Usually the LED will be cut at the connector nodes, but you will need a soldering iron to stick the adapter on to it. This is done by the electric shop themselves. You can save some money if you have an adapter of your own and soldering skills.

3. Now that you have your LED strips and connector, you can connect the + and - wires to a plug, or map them to a switch if you want. However, if you are doing the latter, make sure not to interchange the poles when you connect the wires into the socket. It could damage your lights.

4. This step is fun. Remove the 3M tape and start sticking the LEDs in whatever way you want it to be around your TV. By putting it in a line, you get a dimmer light, but you get light distributed evenly around your TV.

5. When you've finally stuck the light, you can use regular black insulation tape to tape over the exposed contacts if you reach around your TV to plug in stuff often. You can also tape the adapter to the back, so you don't have any visible wires. If there's any overlap of LED, you can cover it up with the insulation tape too. Just make sure the tape is opaque.

Voila, you're done. You have your very own backlight to show off.

Method 2: Budget with changing colours
This is the same as above, but a bit more expensive. You will have to pick up good quality RGB LED strips. In addition to your adapter, you will also need to pick up a driver and a remote. The whole shebang would cost you about Rs 300 for a metre, including driver and adapter.

The procedure is the same as Method 1, except you will need to position the driver in such a way that the remote control works with it. Usually these things need direct infrared. If you have a slightly bigger budget, you can get better options with better remotes.

The best part about the system is that you control which colour your LEDs will show. Set the mood of your house, from warm oranges of a hearth to the cold blues and purples of a party night to romantic pink or yellow. You choose the glow.

Method 3: LightPack
If you don't want to get your hands dirty in connecting wires and going through reams of research. LightPack provides an out of the box solution to your dynamic backlight needs.

Now, there's still a bit of DIY (do-it-yourself) element to Lightpack. The first is that you will have a setup on the back of your TV that looks like the spider like facehugger from the Aliens movies. Thankfully it's out of view.

The second is that LightPack does not work alone, you will need an Android device with USB, PC, Mac, Linux or Raspberry Pi connected to your TV. Though Android is the easiest, especially if you have an Android phone lying around unused, then install the Prismatic app and connect your phone to a USB dongle. Lightpack does the rest.

Unfortunately LightPack is only available online off its website, It costs a pretty penny ($100) with about $20 for shipping to India, which makes it an expensive proposition, especially to get it up and running. However, support for this device is growing, especially amongst the modder community. With enough research, you can get it to work with your PS4 and other consoles.

Method 4: AmbX, a plug and play option for gamers
Another alternative to LightPack is the refined AmbX from Mad Catz Cyborg, a company known for its excellent gaming peripherals. Ambx consists of two simple round RGB light pads on adjustable stands. The lights point to the wall, the connectors go into the USB. Compatible with a wide variety of games, the AmbX software is impressive and the light radius is softer and better looking that the sharper open LED strips.

AmbX is super easy to set up, but only works on PCs or HTPCs if you have one connected. Hopefully, console support will come in a few months. AmbX costs $100 on Amazon.com, not including standard shipping to India.

Well, there you have it. We've provided you with the options for every budget as well as a convenient excuse to make your setup look awesome with a superb ambient light of your choosing. Good luck and may the LED's always be in your favour.

Casio's newest G-Shock has a giant dial for (complicated) music control

Casio continues to inch its G-Shock series toward something a little smarter, while holding onto a simple monochrome LCD display and that distinctly G-Shock styling. The "G'Mix" GBA-400 improves on the typical digital watch feature list through Bluetooth, a pair of dedicated apps (one for the watch part, one for the music-playing part) and your smartphone, whether it's iOS or Android. Oh and there's a giant dial control on the side and it's really satisfying to play with.

g

Casio's G-Shock G'Mix watch hands-on

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
  + See all 7

See? Once you've linked the G-Shock to your smartphone, the dial can be set up to adjust volume, skip tracks and even cycle through several different equalizer settings. You can also make your own custom equalizer profiles within the companion music app -- and even decide which modes get added to the watch-based selector. To cycle through those menus, however, you need to depress another button. Bluetooth syncing is assigned to yet another button, while the third button does illumination and the fourth cycles through digital watch features like stopwatch and alarm.

For a digital watch with a few tricks up its sleeve, it's unfortunately not all that intuitive. There are a lot of buttons, and you'll need to do a lot of scrolling to get what you want done -- we had to ask multiple times for driving instructions, inadvertently changing equalizer settings when we simply wanted to skip a track. We also don't quite get the reasoning for two mandatory app downloads: Surely Casio could integrate the watch features into the music app?

The G'Mix's best trick is its music-recognition integration, courtesy of SoundHound. With two scrolls upwards on the rotary switch, it'll kick your smartphone into action, listening to the music. While it'll offer up artist and purchase details within the phone app, it'll also send a basic line of song information to the watch face itself -- it all works without you having to touch the phone at all. From our brief testing with Casio's team, it had no problem picking up a couple of '80s hits -- and it was all relatively easy to initiate.

Through the same Bluetooth connection, the new G-Shock can also sniff out your phone and ring it, when it's somehow hidden itself. (Last year's models apparently packed the same skill.) Unlike a lot of Casio's watches, there's no solar charging here, but the battery is rated for two years, which factors in using the mobile link feature for about two hours a day. Obviously, two years per battery change sounds much better than current smartwatch mileages -- even if the skill set of the Casio model is a severely reduced one. The watch goes on sale in Japan first, priced at 23,000 yen (roughly $220), but it'll roll out globally after that -- Casio expects to offer the model in the West later this year.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 Nook review: good for reading, but hardly the best budget tablet

Samsung Galaxy Tab 4

There was a time when Barnes & Noble was so big, so dominating, that even Tom Hanks managed to look like a jerk when he played a book-chain executive. But times have changed, and as people began to order their books online -- or even download them -- B&N found itself struggling to keep up. After losing a lot of money last year, the company decided it was time for a change: It vowed to stop making its own tablets, and instead team up with some third-party company to better take on Amazon and its Kindle Fire line. Turns out, that third party was none other than Samsung, and the fruits of their partnership, the $179 Galaxy Tab 4 Nook, is basically a repackaged version of the existing Galaxy Tab 4 7.0. Well, almost, anyway. The 7-inch slate comes pre-loaded with $200 worth of free content, and the core Nook app has been redesigned to the point that it actually offers a better reading experience than the regular Nook Android app. But is that a good enough reason to buy this instead of a Kindle Fire? Or any other Android tablet, for that matter?

HARDWARE

As you've already gathered, this is the same hardware you'll find on the 7-inch Galaxy Tab 4, which came out four months ago. Since we never got around to reviewing that, though, I'll do a thorough walk-through here as if it were a brand-new device. What's funny is that depending on how you look at it, you actually have seen this tablet before: The Nook(available in black and white) has the same textured plastic backing as other recent Samsung devices. As I've said about other products, like the Chromebook 2, the leathery plastic and chrome accents go a long way in making an otherwise generic device look more expensive than it is. As a bonus, the textured plastic doesn't pick up fingerprints, and it's pretty scratch-resistant, too. During my testing, I routinely tossed the tablet in a bag with pointy items like pens and keys, and it never emerged worse for wear.

The Galaxy Tab 4 Nook is a 7-inch device, so of course it's small, lightweight and easy to hold. At 0.35 inch thick, it's a little chubby compared to other small-screen slates, like the 8-inch Galaxy Tab S. Even so, it weighs just 0.6 pound, so let's not nitpick to the point where we're calling this thing "heavy." It's not. And besides, you might even find that those wide, flat edges make the tablet easier to hold.

For a budget device, the screen is actually quite lovely. Sure, the 1,280 x 800 resolution translates to a not-so-great pixel density of 216 ppi, but then again, what more did you expect on a $179 tablet? For the money, you get a bright panel with good viewing angles that's well-suited for reading and movie-watching. Even at half-brightness, I had no problems using it on a long rail trip, with daylight streaming in through the window next to me.

Flip the device around and you'll find the usual spate of ports: a headphone jack up top, a micro-USB charging socket on the bottom, a speaker and 3-megapixel camera around back and a 1.3MP one up front. The right edge, meanwhile, is home to a volume rocker, power button and IR blaster -- a fairly uncommon feature on a budget tablet. Nearby, you'll also find a microSD slot supporting cards up to 32GB. It's a shame, that -- you'll need every last bit of storage space to augment the device's skimpy 8GB of built-in memory, only 2GB of which is user-accessible.

SOFTWARE

The way Samsung and Barnes & Noble pitched the device, this is Samsung hardware mixed with B&N's Nook software. That's a little misleading: This is a Samsung tablet, with Samsung's user interface, but with some Nook apps sprinkled in, too. What we have here is the same TouchWiz experience -- everything from the icons to the onscreen keyboard to the settings menu is the same as on other Samsung tablets. Likewise, there's Samsung's signature Multi Window feature, allowing you to view two apps side by side. It even has Google Play access, so you can download all the apps you'd install on any other Android device -- yes, including Amazon Kindle. What's nice, though, is that unlike other Samsung tablets, this one doesn't include Sammy's intrusive My Magazine -- big panels that sit to the left of the home screen and can't be removed. I don't really like the Galaxy Tab 4 Nook, as you'll see, but I do wish other Samsung products had this scaled-back UI.

Other than that, the biggest difference is that Sammy pre-loaded the Nook tablet with some key Barnes & Noble applications, including Nook Apps, Nook Library, Nook Search, Nook Settings, Nook Shop, Nook Today (a personalized recommendation engine) and Nook Highlights (useful if you choose to underline stuff as you're reading). You'll also find (removable) widgets for your library and the Nook Store -- in fact, both were waiting for me on the home screen when I booted up the device.

Additionally, Samsung and Barnes & Noble tossed in some free content -- a motley collection of books, magazines, movies and TV shows said to be worth $200. There's something for everyone here; the flip side is that much of it will probably register as junk. On your bookshelf, To Kill a Mockingbird sits alongside a Danielle Steel romance and the kid's title Pete the Cat. For film and TV, there's the pilot episode of Veep, among other shows, as well as The Lego Movie. (Fortunately, the Nook has a parental control feature allowing for different user profiles.) If it's magazines you're after, you have a choice of three: Us Weekly, National Geographic and Sports Illustrated. Finally, you'll get $5 in Nook Store credit. It's a nice gesture, but it won't go far: Five bucks isn't enough to buy most e-books in B&N's catalog. Again, I'm sure the two companies meant well, but if it were a choice between extra content and a tablet with faster performance and longer battery life, I'd choose the latter in a heartbeat.

PERFORMANCE AND BATTERY LIFE

	SAMSUNG GALAXY TAB 4 NOOK	ASUS MEMO PAD 7 AND 8 **	NEXUS 7 (2013)	SAMSUNG GALAXY TAB S ***	AMAZON KINDLE FIRE HDX (7-INCH)
Quadrant 2.0	4,224	19,495	6,133	18,591	19,655
Vellamo 2.0	1,058	1,933	1,597	1,672	N/A
SunSpider1.0.2(ms)*	1,636	607	602	1,109	554
3DMark IS Unlimited	2,659	14,171	N/A	12,431	N/A
CF-Bench	11,474	22,284	15,366	31,695	N/A
*SunSpider: Lower scores are better. **Average score for the 7- and 8-inch models. ***Average score for the 8.4- and 10.5-inch models.

I only saw the Galaxy Tab 4 Nook for the first time last week, but already I've heard Barnes & Noble reps say several times that the tablet is built for reading. To some extent, they're just stating the obvious: Samsung and Barnes & Noble built a tablet together, and it's supposed to offer a great reading experience, because that's what B&N is good at. Duh. But I also suspect the two companies have been trying to keep our expectations in check. Even for a budget tablet, this thing is kinda slow, and I think Samsung and Barnes & Noble both know it. Under the hood, it has the same internals as the regular Galaxy Tab 4 7.0 -- a 1.2GHz quad-core Marvell PXA 1088 processor and 1.5GB of RAM, a combination that sorely trails the competition in benchmark tests. The results were so bad, in fact, that I thought at first the numbers might be flukes. Indeed, I ran the tests many, many times, and the results were always far below other tablets, even the similarly priced ASUS MeMO Pad 7, last year's Nexus 7 and the 7-inch Amazon Fire HDX.

That sluggishness rears its head in real-word use, too. The accelerometer was often slow to catch up as I flipped the device from portrait to landscape mode and back. Web browsing is smooth enough, though the benchmarks suggest you'd have an even snappier experience on competing devices. Cold-booting the device takes a long 24 seconds, forcing you to wait through animated splash screens for both Samsung and Nook. Multi Window mode works, but it can take a second or two for a new app to load if you decide to replace one of the two panes. Even the Nook library -- the app that matters most -- was often slow to load up my bookshelf. Like other Samsung devices, the Nook was initially slow to minimize apps when I pressed the home button. Luckily, there's a solution, and it actually has to do with S Voice, of all things: Just go into S Voice settings and uncheck the box "open via the home key." That way, when you press the home button, the device won't wait to see if you'll do a double-press to launch the voice assistant. With that issue, at least, I was able to improve the performance.

The problem, too, is that for the folks buying this, the Galaxy Tab 4 Nook isn't just for reading. If it were, they'd get a standalone e-reader and call it a day. But if you're going to get an Android tablet, particularly one with multi-window support and access to the Google Play store, you probably want to do more than just read e-books. You want to download apps. Stream movies. Browse the web. Maybe play the occasional game. The Galaxy Tab 4 Nook can do most of that, but not always smoothly. Another device -- even a competing budget tablet -- will probably feel faster.

TABLET	BATTERY LIFE
Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 Nook	7:34
Microsoft Surface 2	14:22 (LTE)
Apple iPad Air	13:45 (LTE)
Samsung Galaxy Tab S (10-inch)	12:30
Samsung Galaxy Tab S (8-inch)	12:22
Apple iPad mini with Retina display	11:55 (LTE)
Amazon Kindle Fire HDX (7-inch)	10:41 (WiFi)
Nexus 7 (2012)	9:49
ASUS MeMO Pad 8	9:21
Kindle Fire HD (8.9-inch)	9:01
ASUS MeMO Pad 7	8:36
NVIDIA Shield tablet	8:23
Sony Xperia Z2 Tablet (2012)	7:57
Nexus 7 (2013)	7:15

Samsung says the Galaxy Tab 4 Nook's battery can last up to 10 hours. With light usage, that might well be true. But in our (admittedly taxing) video rundown test, the battery died out a few hours sooner. All in all, the tablet was able to last through about seven and a half hours of looping a 1080p video at fixed brightness, with social networks periodically refreshing in the background. Again, your mileage will vary, but it's worth noting that other devices can do better. ASUS' MeMO Pad 7 also got about an hour more than the Nook. Meanwhile, the 7-inch Amazon Kindle Fire HDX managed nearly 11 hours in the same grueling test. Even the 2013 Nexus 7 gets about the same runtime as the Galaxy Tab 4 Nook -- and the performance is slightly better, too.

THE COMPETITION

When the original Nook Tablet came out, it was easy to forgive some of its shortcomings, just because the price was fairly low. At the time, $249 was cheap for an Android tablet, especially when flagships routinely sold for $500 and up. This is a different time, though, and while $170 isn't bad for this new Nook device, it also faces stiffer competition. The ASUS MeMO Pad 7, for instance, has a lower price of $150, complete with an IPS display, double the internal storage, longer battery life, a microSDXC slot supporting higher-capacity cards and a quad-core processor that creams the Galaxy Tab 4 Nook in benchmarks.

Meanwhile, Dell sells the $160 Venue 7, which has a 1,280 x 800 IPS screen and a higher-resolution 5MP rear camera. (I haven't tested that, so I can't vouch for the performance.) Finally, it comes with 16GB of storage, and can accommodate memory cards as large as 64GB. It goes without saying, too, that any Android tablet is capable of running the standard Nook app. So far as I can tell, then, the one thing the Galaxy Tab 4 Nook has going for it is Multi Window support, but what good is that if the processor is too weak to handle it?

If you're willing to spend more, the 7-inch Amazon Kindle Fire HDX starts at $229 with 16GB of storage ($244 without ads on the lock screen). For the money, almost everything is better: The battery life is several hours longer, and the performance is stronger, thanks to a fairly up-to-date Snapdragon 800 processor and 2GB of RAM. The screen is sharper too, with 1,920 x 1,200 resolution and a tight pixel density of 323 ppi. You won't get Google Play access, unfortunately, but Amazon's own app store has grown steadily over the years, and its digital content selection is just as diverse as Barnes & Noble's.

Amazon even basically matches B&N on technical support: Whereas Barnes & Noble offers lifetime in-store service for its Nook tablets, Amazon's built-in "Mayday" feature lets you access live help anytime. Other than the fact that Amazon's tablet costs $50 more, it's hard to say why you'd get the Galaxy Tab 4 Nook instead. Because even if having access to Google Play is important to you, you'd still be better off with last year's Nexus 7. It costs $229, just like the Kindle Fire HDX, and it too has a 1,920 x 1,200 screen. The performance won't be quite as brisk as the HDX, but it should still be snappier than the new Nook tablet. The battery life is similar to the Nook as well, so you're not giving up anything in the way of endurance.

PROS

• Good-looking design
• Bright screen
• The Nook app here is an improvement over the regular Nook for Android
• Price includes some free books, magazines and TV shows

SUMMARY

With an improved reading app, the Galaxy Tab 4 Nook could be a compelling choice for loyal Barnes & Noble customers. But if all you want is a budget Android tablet, you can do better, even at this price.

CONS

• Short battery life compared to competing devices
• Sluggish performance
• Skimpy built-in storage

10 Skills IT Pros Need for Cloud Computing

IT professionals have to work constantly to ensure that their skills are up to date. Today, IT pros must guarantee that their cloud-focused skills are resume-ready. And just what are those skills? 

1. Business and financial skills

The intersection of business and technology is always an overarching concern, but it is especially so when it comes to cloud-based computing.

2. Technical skills

With the cloud, organizations can streamline their IT resources, offloading much of day-to-day systems and application management. But that doesn’t mean IT abdicates all responsibility. There’s a need for language skills to build applications that can run quickly on the Internet.

3. Enterprise architecture and business needs analysis

Cloud computing requires that IT pros cross disciplines, especially where service-oriented architecture comes into play.

4. Project management skills

Organizations must not let the flexibility of the cloud lead to missed deadlines or amorphous goals. That could negate the cloud cost advantage.

5. Contract and vendor negotiation skills

To deal with service-level agreements—and the problems involved when those SLAs are breached—IT pros need experience with contract and vendor negotiations.

6. Security and compliance

IT professionals dealing with the cloud must have a firm grasp of security protocols and the regulatory mandates related to their industries, both within and without the United States.

7. Data integration and analysis skills

IT pros may not be data scientists, but to take advantage of big data, they do need to help data scientists hook up big data, internal ERP, data warehouse and other data systems, and work with the business side to make effective use of big data.

8. Mobile app development and management

Organizations need to think about what kind of mobile experience they are offering to customers via the cloud and how they would like to improve that down the line.

As enterprise cloud computing evolves, it is important to add two more skills to the list:

9. Knowledge of open hybrid clouds

IT is not homogeneous, and neither should your cloud computing model be. IT pros need to understand how to build and extend their companies’ cloud computing infrastructure in a way that is open.

10. Understanding of OpenStack

In order to build the kind of flexible, secure, interoperable cloud infrastructure mentioned above, IT pros must have a strong understanding of the technology required to make it so. OpenStack is a key component. OpenStack, a collaboration of developers and cloud computing technologists, comprises a series of projects delivering various components for a cloud infrastructure solution.

What other skills do IT professionals need to have in order to enable their organizations to successfully tap into the benefits of cloud computing? Are there any IT skills that the cloud is making obsolete? We welcome your insight in the comments section.