networks

The new 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard can't get more official than this.

The Wi-Fi Alliance today launched its Wi-Fi Certified ac certification program, paving the way for the new standard to be easily adopted and interoperate among different hardware vendors.

This is significant since the new standard offers up to three times the wireless speed of the existing and ever-popular Wireless-N (802.11n) standard, enabling support for even the most demanding applications such as Ultra HD, 4K video, multimedia, and fast file data transfer within the wireless home network.

According to the Wi-Fi Alliance's recent poll, the number … Read more

Even though Twitter has been Apple's pick of social networks to be integrated into iOS 7, it's looking like LinkedIn could also make it to the chosen circle.

Developers have found code-based references to deep LinkedIn integration in the beta version of iOS 7, which was supplied by Apple, according to 9to5Mac. This code shows that a single sign-on system is in the works for the professional social network -- much like how iOS currently works with Facebook and Twitter.

The developer that supplied 9to5Mac with the code sheets said that certain bits of code are missing for … Read more

Nvidia, trying to move its graphics chips into the supercomputing market, has found a niche helping engineers build brain-like systems called neural networks.

For years, the company has advocated the idea of offloading processing tasks from general-purposes central processing units (CPUs) to its own graphics processing units (GPUs). That approach has won over some researchers and companies involved with neural networks, which reproduce some of the electrical behavior of real-world nerve cells inside a computer.

Neurons in the real world work by sending electrical signals around the brain, but much of the actual functioning of the brain remains a mystery. … Read more

Satellite TV provider Dish Network plans to take on cable and DSL broadband service with a new fixed wireless service that it's recently begun testing. But the success of its new business could depend on its ambitions to acquire more spectrum.

Last week, Dish announced that it has already begun testing the new wireless broadband network that uses 4G LTE technology in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Waynesboro and Afton, Va.

Unlike other 4G LTE services from carriers, such as AT&T and Verizon Wireless, the 4G LTE service that Dish is building is for in-home broadband service … Read more

The big news today for Google+ is that the service is getting some notable improvements to its notifications system, the biggest of which is syncing across all devices. With this improvement, when you read or dismiss a notification on one device, the same action will be reflected across all of your devices, so you won't be bothered with repeat clicks and swipes.

Other updates include a new bell icon for notifications and an updated notifications tray, which separates new items from previously read items. According to Google's Vic Gundotra, the notifications improvements will be rolling out gradually starting … Read more

If there were a clock speed war going on, AMD would win again.

The chip maker unveiled today the most powerful member of the AMD FX family of CPUs, the eight-core AMD FX-9590, which it claims to be world's first commercially available 5GHz processor.

Back in 2000, AMD was the first to break the 1GHz barrier by delivering its 1GHz Athlon chip to the general public in May of that year. The FX-9590 will be available this summer and Intel has until then to unveil its own 5GHz CPU. Currently the fastest CPU from Intel is the 3.5GHz … Read more

The Apple Filing Protocol (AFP) was Apple's default networking protocol in the classic Mac OS as well as in OS X, but it has fallen out of favor with the advent of SMB2 in the upcoming OS X Mavericks.

Server Message Block (SMB) is a file transfer protocol that has been the main networking protocol for Windows-based systems. Having different default protocols has made the use of both Windows and Mac systems on the same network frustrating, since until Apple introduced native SMB support in OS X, users had to rely on third-party SMB support for sharing files with … Read more

The Department of Justice has given the Federal Communications Commission the go-ahead to issue a decision on Softbank's proposed buyout of Sprint.

In a letter to the FCC on Friday (PDF), the department said the Justice Department -- including the FBI -- along with the Department of Homeland Security had no problem with the deal proceeding.

"The agencies have reviewed the information provided by the applicants and analyzed the measures undertaken by the applicants to address potential national security, law enforcement, and public safety issues, including supply chain issues," the letter said. "Based on this review, … Read more

Spy on Ask.fm's public stream and you'll feel like you've been transported back to middle school, dumped in the center of he-said, she-said dramas -- sometimes innocuous, sometimes not. Here, hormone-crazed young boys and girls banter about their after-school plans, tease their peers, boast about their most recent hookups, and try to appear cool with expletives and graphic language.

Ask.fm is a 3-year-old question-and-answer app that's wracked up 57 million users and is adding members at a rate of 200,000 a day. It's spreading from kid to kid, infiltrating middle schools and … Read more