Are you ready for some football? Because Microsoft most certainly is. To go along with the introduction of a new NFL app for Xbox One and Windows 8, the software giant has also revealed how it plans to help professional coaches and players during games. As part of an ongoing partnership with the National Football League, which began last year and was reportedly worth $400 million over five years, Microsoft created what it calls a Sideline Viewing System. Naturally, the company’s own hardware is a key component to this; the new system is powered by Surface Pro…

HP found 25 vulnerabilities per device including everything from TVs to thermostats to home alarms and scales About 70 percent of Internet of things devices—including sensors and connected infrastructure—have vulnerabilities that could be exploited, according to Hewlett-Packard. HP’s data is based on it Fortify division and a scan of 10 of the most popular Internet of things devices. HP found 25 vulnerabilities per device. These devices included TVs, Webcams, thermostats, remote power outlets, sprinklers, door  locks, home alarms, scales and garage openers. The findings, assessed based on the OWASP Internet…

The logo is designed to make it clear to consumers when the goods they’re carrying contain an RFID smart chip, and to bring retailers and healthcare and banking companies out of a legal “gray zone” when it comes to data protection. The European Commission has revealed a new logo for items that include radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, to keep them compliant with EU data protection rules. The scheme is voluntary, but technology trade organizations like Germany’s BITKOM have signed up to promote its use. RFID tags, used in everything…

Cost, data ownership, security, and other factors can complicate the SaaS decision. Software-as-a-service has moved well beyond the tidy world created by Salesforce.com. While there are now hundreds of successful SaaS vendors, customers have paid scant attention to the complexity this proliferation is having on their companies and end users. The first impact is cost. Subscription, per-user SaaS fees, payable monthly or quarterly, seemingly provide a low entry point. But this “cheap road in” overlooks the other infrastructure investments SaaS customers must make, including redundant connectivity from multiple ISPs to…

In-memory computing (IMC) used to be an option only for larger companies with deep pockets. But, because the price of RAM has decreased significantly, companies of all sizes can now use this platform to process real-time data. The main advantage of IMC is the storage of data in the RAM on multiple computers, which decreases the impact of the data on performance. By storing data in RAM instead of on a disk, the speed increases exponentially. Without IMC, companies do not have access to the full capabilities of technologies such as big…