Manufacturing Snapshot: Does Social Media Matter?

Social media continues to play a pivotal role in day-to-day commerce. It offers shoppers valuable resources, from product evaluations and opinions to advice and trends to watch, but what about social media's influence in the manufacturing sector, the source of consumer satisfaction? According to a recent survey by the Manufacturing Leadership Council, 13 percent of manufacturing executives plan ..

The Network Week in Review and Look Ahead: May 13-17

1.)Behind the Scenes of a MOOC Don't know what a MOOC is? You're about to find out. We take a look at the technology and collaboration needed to create the new breed of open, online classes in higher education. 2.)Network Trailblazer: A Conversation With Chris Anderson Five years ago he was playing legos with his son, now he's competing in the aerospace industry. In our newest Network ...

Network Trailblazer: A Conversation With Chris Anderson, Co-Founder & CEO of 3D Robotics and Former Wired Magazine Editor

As editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine for most of the 21st century, Chris Anderson has had a front row seat to the technological changes that continue to transform our world. He's explored some of these changes in his books, The Long Tail, about the rise of niche markets, and Free, about the seemingly counter-intuitive strategy of giving away goods and services for free.  His latest, Makers: ...

The Network Week in Review and Look Ahead: May 6-10th

1.)Leadership@Cisco: John Chambers Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers, shares thoughts about his family, his love of adventure, and how technology will change our lives in the future. 2.)Sports Analytics Goes High School: Small-budget Coaches Get Big-league Capabilities See how high school teams are using apps to analyze video footage, giving them advantage over their competitors. 3.)Get ...

Get Off of My Cloud: Why CIOs Must Accept and Integrate Personal Clouds into the Enterprise

Sports Analytics Goes High School: Small-budget Coaches Get Big-league Capabilities

National Basketball Association teams have long wielded big budgets for data analytics that can break down tendencies of rival teams. But this year, a disruptively cheap web-based version of the technology helped the high school boys on the Fort Bend Travis Tigers basketball team storm to the Class 5A Texas state championship. The technology was pioneered by New York start-up Krossover ...

The Network Week in Review and Look Ahead: April 29-May 3

Healthcare and The Cloud Can't quite remember everything about your medical history? A former RN says the cloud can help. Find out what else she says as we take a look at the benefits and challenges of cloud computing in healthcare for patients and caregivers. Engineering at Cisco = Hard Work Sprinkled with Lots of Fun Riding a train across Canada, and driving remote ...

Healthcare and The Cloud

If ever there was an industry in need of higher quality for less money, it's the healthcare sector. In addition to the demand to improve operational efficiency, healthcare service providers are increasingly facing competition, which is putting the pressure on to do more for less. This is where cloud computing proves to be beneficial. According to the "Healthcare Cloud Computing" forecast, the ...

Mobility in Retail: How Technology Lets Consumers Track Products

In mid-January European consumers were shocked to discover that many of their favorite frozen beef products had been made using horsemeat. Over the following weeks Europe's press unfolded the story of a complex pan-European purchasing and supply chain scandal that shook consumer confidence in the traceability of ingredients in frozen meat-based products. The levels of outrage expressed across ...

Mobility Set to Transform Retail Industry

A bevy of tech startups are helping retailers use mobile devices to change the way offline stores interact with customers—and make them a lot smarter, too. "Mobility is set to trigger a business transformation across retail," Leslie Hand, research director for IDC Retail Insights, wrote in a recent report. Here's a look at three such companies: Behavioral Modification for Sales Associates ...

Tech Challenge 2013: The Next Generation Of Engineers Is Here...And They're Having Fun!

3D On the Small Screen: Advertising Gets a New Dimension

You could call it a struggle between different dimensions. Today's video devices, from Apple iPads to flat-screen TVs, are slimmer than ever before; the upcoming Sony Xperia Tablet Z, for example, is just 0.26 inches (6.6 millimeters) thick. Yet gaze into the screens of these slim-line devices and 'flat' is the last thing you will think. Thanks to advances in visual technology, video now has a ...

GenerationNow@Cisco: An Engineer's Take on What Cisco Makes Possible

Turning five years old is legendary. You're walking and talking and smiling and exploring. You've got an imagination that laughs at the thought of rules and boundaries. And look at that face. Five-year-olds have the cutest faces. Lucky for me, I just turned five again – and this time, it's in Cisco years. My name is Shraddha Chaplot and I am a hardware test engineer in Cisco's Energy ...

Big Data Analytics: You Have The Right To Remain Private. Or Do You?

Increasing numbers of companies are employing Predictive Analytics technology to better understand their customers, and then capitalize on that information. Organizations want to use this wealth of customer data to create 360-degree portraits of their customers' shopping habits and purchasing patterns. These predictive analytics tools are not only for specialized analysts. Marketers are using ...

The Network Week in Review and Look Ahead: April 8-12

Coming, Ready or Not: Cell Phones as Sensors

In the Mexican city of Tuxtla Gutiérrez in Chiapas state, an interesting experiment is unfolding that could be an early forerunner of a future trend—the use of cell phones as sensors. Under the city's "Vigilante Taxi Driver" program, cab drivers use GPS-enabled cell phones to send messages and photographs about everything from accidents and potholes to burst water mains, downed ...

The Network Week in Review and Look Ahead: April 1-5

Mobile Technology for Mobile Education

As Air Force bases go, aircraft carriers are mobile.  In the 1980s, civilian employees of the University of Maryland University College, which now offers many online courses, served tours on U.S. aircraft carriers, under contract to the U.S. Department of Defense, during which they offered accredited, college-level courses to the crew.  Over the span of a long military career, personnel ...

Health Check: Technology in Healthcare

What's Hot About Next-Generation Hotspots

Coming soon to a street corner near you: the next-generation Wi-Fi hotspot. One where you do not have to bother with passwords or signup pages,or even finding out whether it is there. You will be using it before you even know it. The idea behind next-generation hotspots is simple: to make their use as seamless as the experience you currently have on the cellular network with your mobile phone. So

Securing the Internet of Things

First, the good news: The Internet of Things is here, and with it vast quantities of convenience, pleasure and benefits. And the bad news? The Internet of Things is here, and with it a variety of security concerns. Apparently, both types of news are true. On the upside, things like pervasive sensor networks promise a brave new world of helpful applications, from smart lighting and heating ...

The Network Week in Review and Look Ahead: March 18-22

Click the video to the right to get The Network team's take on this week's top stories. Also: it's March Madness, a time when millions of people tune in to watch their teams. Cisco CTO of video and collaboration, Kip Compton talks to CNN about how IT managers can prepare their networks as employees are expected to use their mobile devices to watch the games and check brackets. And, ...

Video Conferencing Offers Insight To E-Health

It's well known that we're moving into a "perfect storm" of healthcare-related issues: an aging population, reforms such as the Affordable Health Care Act and an increasing premium on healthcare workers. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), the U.S. demand for physicians will intensify with a predicted shortage of over 130,000 physicians by 2025. Yet medical advances .

Health Check: The Rise of Telecare in Europe

Streets of half-timbered houses with steeply sloping red-tiled roofs suggest change comes slowly to Colmar, the city at the heart of France's Alsace wine region. But when it comes to providing healthcare its authorities are breaking with tradition. Since January, residents of Colmar's care homes for the elderly have been trialing an ambulatory video-conferencing service that links doctors via a ..

The Network Week in Review and Look Ahead: March 11-15

Cisco's 2013 Editors Conference

How the Mobile Phone Can Help Keep Your Children Safe

If you are a parent it is hard not to stress about what might be happening to your kids when they are out of sight. With missing children featured regularly and prominently in the media, every time a youngster steps unaccompanied out onto the street, it can drive a mom or dad to despair. Thankfully, the digital age has delivered a handy solution to the dilemma of how to grant kids a degree of ...

Time-Crunched Lifestyles and Appetite for Variety Fuel Demand for Mobile Businesses

Photos: International Women's Day Panel

Productive and Profitable: Taking the Telework Pledge

Turn off the alarm and get out of bed, check. Crank up the coffee pot, check. Sit in traffic for an hour on the way to work? Not this week. Thousands of people across the country are giving up the commute, and working from home as part of their pledge to telecommute this week. It's part of Telework Week 2013, promoted by The Mobile Work Exchange and sponsored by Cisco, which champions the work ...