Akamai Opens Office in Canada, OnApp Launches Disaster Recovery-As-A-Service (DRaaS) and more news

Akamai Opens A Sales And Services Office In Toronto, Canada

Akamai Technologies, the provider of Content Delivery Networks and web optimization services and solutions, announced that the Company would be opening a new sales and services office in Toronto, Canada. Canada has been growing rapidly in Internet usage and the Company’s customer base in the country is also rapidly growing. In addition, Akamai not only supports and protects the online properties of Canada’s 6 largest banks. The new office will not only support sales but also will support the Company’s services, engineering and security divisions.

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Read more at Akamai.

Google and Mozilla decide to ban Chinese certificate authority CNNIC from Chrome and Firefox

Google and Mozilla have announced that their browsers will stop trusting all digital certificates issued by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), China’s main digital certificate authority. hrome users will get security warnings for new sites authenticated by CNNIC, particularly those that require entering login information. Some pages, such as those involving monetary transactions, will simply stop working . If Chrome and Firefox were to stop recognizing all website certificates issued by CNNIC, the impact could be huge in China; millions of users would suddenly not be able to connect to various websites. It’s not clear whether CNNIC plans to do something specific in regards to the second point. The firm is likely still weighing its options.
Full story at VentureBeat.

OnApp Launches Disaster Recovery-As-A-Service (DRaaS) Solution For Cloud Providers

OnApp, the provider of cloud platform and Federated Content Delivery Network solutions, announced the availability of its new Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service capability for the OnApp cloud platform that adds real-time data replication and restore features the OnApp clouds. The OnApp DRaaS will allow customers to select specific multiple locations where the backup and replication happens. There are two disaster recovery modes set: during the first, OnApp will manage multiple remote replication sites across different region and in the second, cloud providers having multiple data centers of their own will be able to host their own disaster recovery sites.

You can read more at CDN Advisor.

Gallium nitride chips are taking over

Silicon chips have had a decades-long run as the foundation for modern electronics. But a new kind of chip, based on the compound material gallium nitride (GaN), promises to unseat silicon because it has higher performance, less power consumption, and lower cost. Gallium nitride’s assault on silicon is just in time for the 50th anniversary of Moore’s Law, the prediction by Intel chairman emeritus Gordon Moore that chips would double the number of transistors every two years. GaN (Gallium Nitride) will soon dominate the $31 billion power management semiconductor market.

Full article at VentureBeat.

Jay Z’s Tidal Claims To Respect Artists, But Rips Off Spotify’s Design

Jay Z’s recently re-launched streaming service, Tidal. The serivce’s business model remains unclear, but there’s just one problem with their project — Tidal looks an awful lot like Spotify.Tidal’s “Playlists” section is a point-by-point reproduction of Spotify’s “Genres & Moods”: square photos are overlayed with black and illustrated with white icon.

As for the overall design of the service? All-black interface, sans-serif typeface, left-hand navigation, bottom play button — check, check, check and check. The similarities between Spotify and Tidal call into question the true integrity of the new streaming service. Aren’t designers artists too, Jay Z? Shouldn’t we respect all forms of artistic pursuit, including user interface and branding?

Read more at PasteMagazine.