So your attic is the only place where real work happens, Junior is hooked on Angry Birds Transformers, and the router is in the basement. What to do? TRENDnet seeks to keep you productive in any of your home's Wi-Fi-free corners with its new THA-101 Home Smart Switch with Wireless Extender, a combination smart electrical outlet and powerful N300 wireless extender. Simply place the THA-101 in a location where you get at least two bars worth of home wireless signal from an existing wireless network. Next, plug in the THA-101 and follow a quick app-based installation. The powerful built-in N300 wireless extender then broadcasts a strong wireless signal to an area of your home with low or no wireless coverage. Then, plug anything in to the THA-101's electrical outlet and use the free mobile app to control the outlet from a mobile device with an Internet connection, including an on/off schedule. The app also displays a delicious feast of geek-friendly data, namely real-time current, voltage, power and total energy consumption.
The Ada programming language is geared toward industries where software is mission-critical and often safety- or security-critical as well. Ergo, quality assurance monitoring in Ada, which is what AdaCore's new GNATdashboard is all about, is of utmost importance. GNATdashboard is AdaCore's new tool that serves as a control panel for monitoring and improving the quality of Ada software. The new tool feeds code-quality information from AdaCore's tools to the open-source SonarQube code quality management platform and Squoring Technologies' SQUORE quality and performance decision support solution. This helps quality assurance managers and project leaders understand or reduce their software's technical debt, eliminating the need for manual input. GNATdashboard fits naturally into a continuous integration environment, says AdaCore, providing users with metrics on code complexity, code coverage, conformance to coding standards and more.
Poor database and application performance easily can result in lost revenue, extra IT and database manpower expenses, and unacceptable operational and capital expenses. Solving this bundle of challenges is the inspiration for Violin Memory's new Oracle Performance Analysis Service, or O-PAS, a free tool designed to remove the complexity of reporting, analyzing and decision-making around Oracle databases. The goal with O-PAS is to assist database administrators, application owners, IT executives and resellers in making informed decisions and selecting the right solution for achieving significant performance improvements and cost savings. The Violin O-PAS identifies core performance bottlenecks in end users' Oracle environments and determines the suitability of Flash-based storage solutions to increase IOPS, reduce latency and lower overall costs substantially. The tool generates comprehensive reports that identify areas in Oracle implementations where massive performance improvements can be gained by using all-Flash arrays and the associated cost savings that they enable.
NX-OS is an embedded Linux-based network OS from Cisco Systems that is designed to support the high-performance, high-reliability server-access switches found in data centers. Network engineers or operators who want to gain a solid understanding of NX-OS technologies would be wise to investigate a new video training product called NX-OS Configuration Fundamentals LiveLessons from Cisco Press. Authors Ron Fuller, David Jansen and Matthew McPherson offer 12 hours of instruction on NX-OS technologies and configuration, covering 13 individual video lessons, which are in turn subdivided into 88 sub-lessons. The lessons guide students from an introduction to the product families and operating system to Layer 2 and 3 capabilities before moving on to multicast and security. High availability, unique embedded serviceability features, and Unified Fabric and the Nexus 1000v are covered as well, followed by QoS, OTV, MPLS and LISP.
Problems like server breakdowns, errors related to hardware and software management and typical technical issues that stymie everyday business operations can all add unplanned costs. To help businesses minimize these costs, system and network solution provider DigLinks created the Configuration and Identity Management, or CIMT, a new open-source IT management solution that allows for central, user-friendly management of the entire IT infrastructure in small- to large-scale enterprises. DigLinks states that CIMT can be integrated into IT landscapes easily and with minimal effort—irrespective of the number of systems, types of operating systems, hardware components or network connections. In addition, a customized, scalable service package is available, which frees companies from time-consuming routine work on their technical operations and focuses on their core business. CIMT is written in Java for portability and covers all aspects of IT management—users, workstations, IPs, network devices or servers, hardware and software—from a single application.
Whether you are operating on spinning magnetic disk or solid-state drives or hosting data for your company or for the cloud, Inverness Data invites you to utilize the new stable release of its flagship product RapidStor. RapidStor is a complete fault-tolerant and high-performance data storage infrastructure. The solution is software-defined and capable of maintaining and managing data volumes and virtual machines from a single node to an entire cluster of multiple nodes. RapidStor is designed to meet constantly evolving requirements by scaling both up and out, all of which runs transparently to the user under a single management interface. Because RapidStor runs on commodity hardware, Inverness notes the advantage of freedom from hardware vendor lock-in.
The only things you'll need to take advantage of Ron Jeffries' The Nature of Software Development are “your Standard Issue Brain, a bit of curiosity and a desire to build your own understanding”. Subtitled Keep It Simple, Make It Valuable, Build It Piece by Piece, Jeffries' book is intended to help you get value from your software project, perhaps not “free, now and perfect” as you wish but at least “cheaper, sooner and better”. Jeffries leads readers from the desire for value down to the specific activities that help good Agile projects deliver better software sooner and at a lower cost. Using simple sketches and a few words, Jeffries invites readers to follow his path of learning and understanding from his engagement with Agile methods from their very beginning. Jeffries also illustrates why Agile methods ask for what they do, as well as why a shallow implementation of Agile can lead to only limited improvement. The ultimate goal is to embark on a long-term journey to make a project a bit more perfect each day and ultimately end up with a deep understanding of the nature of software development done well.
Companies currently are exposed to massive liability when employees use uncontrolled consumer services like Dropbox to share and store sensitive company information. Breathe a sigh of relief ye IT departments and developers, knowing that solutions like the new-and-improved Pydio 6.0 exist, a controlled, open-source alternative to consumer cloud services. Formerly called AjaXplorer, Pydio 6.0 is described as “the first open-source file sharing solution to deliver tight control of information on the scale demanded by enterprises and service providers, and to combine this with the same intuitive ease of use found in modern consumer apps and cloud services”. The platform's wealth of deeper, enterprise-focused features still are available for power users and system administrators, but these have been moved to a second level to avoid confusing the majority of users. The company also touts Pydio as the perfect solution for developers looking to build intuitive multiplatform file sharing into their own products or cloud service offerings. Finally, Pydio enables the integration of different client applications (Linux, Android, Windows, MacOS, iOS and so on) into a unified, multidevice platform.
