Tag Archives: CiscoSystems
Verizon’s Connected Athlete adds sensors / data to your gear, tracks habits and more (hands-on)
When most people think of Verizon and sports, the company's NFL Mobile app usually comes to mind. However, this may soon be changing thanks in part to a collaboration between the carrier and Cisco. A project referred to as the "Connected Athlete" will soon allow people to track an athlete's step-by-step performance in real-time. Here's how it works: a user's gear (helmet, shoes and gloves) is outfitted with sets of motion and pressure detecting sensors that track information based on its wearer's motions. Using Verizon's wireless network to transmit data, the information is fed to the cloud through Cisco's 819 Integrated Services Router.
Aside from counting how many steps a running back took in a game, the Connected Athlete may also be able to prevent injuries by tracking an athlete's performance habits, such as favoring a specific foot over another. The demonstration that Verizon had on hand was connected to a football helmet that would ideally monitor the impact a player absorbed during a collision. If used properly, Verizon hopes that this type of data will help coaches and athletes catch a progressing injury before it happens.
Filed under: Wearables, Networking, Verizon
Source: Cisco
Cisco acquires WiFi data firm ThinkSmart Technologies
Networking kingpin Cisco announced on Wednesday that it had acquired ThinkSmart Technologies, a company that analyzes location data by using WiFi technology. ThinkSmart's tech reviews a network's infrastructure by evaluating the movement of its users, traffic patterns and hours of operation. The firm then uses these analytics to help companies optimize network and staffing configurations for business operations -- a long way of saying that it's smart enough to tell a company how to better manage information flows through a network. The terms of this deal have yet to be released, but Cisco seems to think this was a smart pick up.
Filed under: Wireless, Networking
Cisco acquires WiFi data firm ThinkSmart Technologies originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Sep 2012 17:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | | Email this | CommentsSwitched On: Cisco’s hard-luck hardware
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.
When you think about companies that dominate specific technology markets, alongside names such as Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Intel. SAP and Oracle, you would no doubt include Cisco Systems. Founded in 1984, the networking giant, which has grown largely via acquisition over the years, earned $43 billion of revenue in 2011. That placed it at #64 on the 2011 Fortune 500. Cisco has a current market value of about $113 billion.
Linksys, acquired in 2003, has remained among the top-selling home networking brands, and Cisco recently moved to bolster its TV service provider business -- formerly known as Scientific Atlanta -- with the acquisition of NDS. But for all the success that Cisco has had building connections among network endpoints, the company has had a tough road when it's come to selling end-user devices directly to end-users over the last few years.
Continue reading Switched On: Cisco's hard-luck hardware
Switched On: Cisco's hard-luck hardware originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 03 Jun 2012 16:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | | Email this | CommentsExploit uses firewalls to hijack smartphones, turns friends into foes
Normally, firewalls at cellular carriers are your best friends, screening out malware before it ever touches your phone. University of Michigan computer science researchers have found that those first lines of defense could be your enemy through a new exploit. As long as a small piece of malware sits on a device, that handset can infer TCP data packet sequence numbers coming from the firewall and hijack a phone's internet traffic with phishing sites, fake messages or other rogue code. The trick works on at least 48 carriers that use firewalls from Check Point, Cisco, Juniper and other networking heavy hitters -- AT&T being one of those providers. Carriers can turn the sequences off, although there are consequences to that as well. The only surefire solution is to either run antivirus apps if you're on a mobile OS like Android or else to run a platform that doesn't allow running unsigned apps at all, like iOS or Windows Phone. Whether or not the exploit is a serious threat is still far from certain, but we'll get a better sense of the risk on May 22nd, when Z. Morley Mao and Zhiyun Qian step up to the podium at an IEEE security symposium and deliver their findings.
Exploit uses firewalls to hijack smartphones, turns friends into foes originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 May 2012 03:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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