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  • JavaScript Browser Hacks

    Recently during one of my client side scripting classes, I was trying to show my students some basic examples of JavaScript as an introduction to the language.  My first basic example was to show an alert box using JavaScript via the address bar. The student’s reaction to my browser hack example really caught me off guard in a good way. After programming with a language for close to 10 years you start to lose the "Awe Cool!" effect that new learners of a language experience when writing code. New learns of JavaScript are the reason why I created this post. Please enjoy. Note: Place JavaScript in to address bar and then press the enter key. Example 1: JavaScript Alert box displaying My name: John Doe Javascript:alert('My name: \n John Doe') ; Example 2: JavaScript alert box displaying name entered by user. javascript:alert('My name: \n ' + prompt('Enter Name','Name')) ; Example 3: JavaScript alert box displaying name entered by user, and then displays the length of the name. javascript:var name= prompt('Enter Name','Name'); alert('My name: \n ' + name); alert(name.length); If you notice, the address bar will execute JavaScript on the current page loaded in the browser using the Document Object Model (DOM). Additionally, the address bar will allow multiple lines to be executed sequentially even though all of the code is contained within one line due to the fact that the JavaScript interpreter uses the “;” to indicate where a line of ends and a new one begins. After doing a little more research on the topic of JavaScript Browser Hacks I found a few other cool JavaScript hacks which I will list below. Example 4: Make any webpage editableSource: http://www.openjason.com/2008/09/02/browser-hack-make-any-web-page-editable/ javascript:document.body.contentEditable='true'; document.designMode='on'; void 0; Example 5: CHINESE DRAGON DANCING Source: http://nzeyi.wordpress.com/2009/06/01/dwrajaxjavascript-hacks-the-secrets-of-javascript-in-the-adress-bar/ javascript:R=0;x1=0.1;y1=0.05;x2=0.25;y2=0.24;x3=1.6; y3=0.24;x4=300;y4=200;x5=300;y5=200;DI=document.links; DIL=DI.length;A=function(){for(i=0;i-DIL;i++){DI[i].style. position='absolute';DI[i].style.left=Math.sin(R*x1+i*x2+x3)*x4+ x5;DI[i].style.top=Math.cos(R*y1+i*y2+y3)*y4+y5}R++;}; setInterval('A()',5);void(0); Example 6: Reveal content stored in password protected fields javascript:(function(){var s,F,j,f,i; s = “”; F = document.forms; for(j=0; j Example 7: Force user to close browser windowSource: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=767053 javascript:while(1){alert('Restart your brower to close this box!')} Learn more about JavaScript Browser Hacks.

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  • JustMock and Moles – A short overview for TDD alpha geeks

    - by RoyOsherove
    People have been lurking near my house, asking me to write something about Moles and JustMock, so I’ll try to be as objective as possible, taking in the fact that I work at Typemock. If I were NOT working at Typemock I’d write: JustMock JustMock tries to be Typemock at so many levels it’s not even funny. Technically they work the same and the API almost looks like it’s a search and replace work based on the Isolator API (awesome compliment!), but JustMock still has too many growing pains and bugs to be usable. Also, JustMock is missing alot of the legacy abilities such as Non public faking, faking all types and various other things that are really needed in real legacy code. Biggest thing (in terms of isolation integration) is that it does not integrate with other profilers such as coverage, NCover etc.) When JustMock comes out of beta, I feel that it should cost about half as Isolator costs, as it currently provides about half the abilities. Moles Moles is an addon of Pex and was originally only intended to work within the Pex environment. It started as a research project and now it’s a power-tool for VS (so it’s a separate install) Now it’s it’s own little stubbing framework. It’s not really an Isolation framework in the classic sense, because it does not provide any kind of API built in to verify object interactions. You have to use manual flags all on your own to do that. It generates two types of classes per assembly: Manual Stubs(just like you’d hand code them) and Mole classes. Each Mole class is a special API to change and break the behavior that the corresponding type. so MDateTime is how you change behavior for DateTime. In that sense the API is al over the place, and it can become highly unreadable and unmentionable over time in your test. Also, the Moles API isn’t really designed to deal with real Legacy code. It only deals with public types and methods. anything internal or private is ignored and you can’t change its behavior. You also can’t control static constructors. That takes about 95% of legacy scenarios out of the picture if that’s what you’re trying to use it for. Personally, I found it hard to get used to the idea of two parallel APIs for different abilities, and when to choose which. and I know this stuff. I would expect more usability from the API to make it more widely used. I don’t think that Moles in planning to go that route. Publishing it as an Isolation framework is really an afterthought of a tool that was design with a specific task in mind, and generic Isolation isn’t it. it’s only hope is DEQ – a simple code example that shows a simple Isolation API built on the Moles generic engine. Moles can and should be used for very simple cases of detouring functionality such a simple static methods or interfaces and virtual functions (like rhinomock and MOQ do).   Oh, Wait. Ah, good thing I work at Typemock. I won’t write all that. I’ll just write: JustMock and Moles are great tools that enlarge the market space for isolation related technologies, and they prove that the idea of productivity and unit testing can go hand in hand and get people hooked. I look forward to compete with them at this growing market.

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  • Making a Job Change That's Easy Why Not Try a Career Change

    - by david.talamelli
    A few nights ago I received a comment on one of our blog posts that reminded me of a statistic that I heard a while back. The statistic reflected the change in our views towards work and showed how while people in past generations would stay in one role for their working career - now with so much choice people not only change jobs often but also change careers 4-5 times in their working life. To differentiate between a job change and a career change: when I say job change this could be an IT Sales person moving from one IT Sales role to another IT Sales role. A Career change for example would be that same IT Sales person moving from IT Sales to something outside the scope of their industry - maybe to something like an Engineer or Scuba Dive Instructor. The reason for Career changes can be as varied as the people who make them. Someone's motivation could be to pursue a passion or maybe there is a change in their personal circumstances forcing the change or it could be any other number of reasons. I think it takes courage to make a Career change - it can be easy to stay in your comfort zone and do what you know, but to really push yourself sometimes you need to try something new, it is a matter of making that career transition as smooth as possible for yourself. The comment that was posted is here below (thanks Dean for the kind words they are appreciated). Hi David, I just wanted to let you know that I work for a company called Milestone Search in Melbourne, Victoria Australia. (www.mstone.com.au) We subscribe to your feed on a daily basis and find your blogs both interesting and insightful. Not to mention extremely entertaining. I wonder if you have missed out on getting in journalism as this seems to be something you'd be great at ?: ) Anyways back to my point about changing careers. This could be anything from going from I.T. to Journalism, Engineering to Teaching or any combination of career you can think of. I don't think there ever has been a time where we have had so many opportunities to do so many different things in our working life. While this idea sounds great in theory, putting it into practice would be much harder to do I think. First, in an increasingly competitive job market, employers tend to look for specialists in their field. You may want to make a change but your options may be limited by the number of employers willing to take a chance on someone new to an industry that will likely require a significant investment in time to get brought up to speed. Also, using myself as an example if I was given the opportunity to move into Journalism/Communication/Marketing career from my career as an IT Recruiter - realistically I would have to take a significant pay cut to make this change as my current salary reflects the expertise I have in my current career. I would not immediately be up to speed moving into a new career and would not be able to justify a similar salary. Yes there are transferable skills in any career change, but even though you may have transferable skills you must realise that you will also have a large amount of learning to do which would take time. These are two initial hurdles that I immediately think of, there may be more but nothing is insurmountable. If you work out what you want to do with your working career whatever that may be, you then need to just need to work out the steps to get to your end goal. This is where utilising the power of your networks and using Social Media can come in handy. If you are interested in working somewhere why not proactively take the opportunity to research the industry or company - find out who it is you need to speak to and get in touch with them. We spend so much time working, we should enjoy the work we do and not be afraid to try new things. Waiting for your dream job to fall into your lap or be handed to you on a silver platter is not likely going to happen, so if there is something you do want to do, work out a plan to make it happen and chase after it. This article was originally posted on David Talamelli's Blog - David's Journal on Tap

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  • Introducing .NET 4.0 with Visual Studio 2010 by Alex Mackey - Book review

    - by Malisa L. Ncube
    Alex (http://simpleisbest.co.uk/) does a very good job in covering the new features of .NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010. His focus is on the developers that have experience in development using previous versions of Visual Studio, more specifically Visual Studio 2008.     The following are my views towards his book. 1. Scope / Coverage Even as the book is labeled as introduction, it is covers a broad spectrum of technologies, features and references that are focused into helping a developer quickly decide what to use in the new .NET framework. a. Content The content included covers as much as possible the new additions that are included in the new .NET version 4.0. He shows the Visual Studio 2010 new features and quickly shows how to extend it using Managed Extensibility Framework. Some of my favorites are parallel debugging enhancements. The author delves into JQuery, which Microsoft has decided to support. Some of the very interesting content is on the out-of-band releases including ASP.NET MVC, Windows Azure Silverlight 3 and WCF Data Services. b. What is not included? Windows Phone 7 Series. This was only talked about in the MIX10. The data may not have been available at the time of writing. Microsoft Pinpoint (Microsoft code name "Dallas") Windows Embedded development. c. Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Visual Studio IDE and MEF Chapter 3: Language and Dynamic Changes Chapter 4: CLR and BCL Changes Chapter 5: Parallelization and Threading Enhancements Chapter 6: Windows Workflow Foundation 4 Chapter 7: Windows Communication Foundation Chapter 8: Entity Framework Chapter 9: WCF Data Services Chapter 10: ASPNET Chapter 11: Microsoft AJAX Library Chapter 12: jQuery Chapter 13: ASPNET MVC Chapter 14: Silverlight Introduction Chapter 15: WPF 4.0 and Silverlight 3.0 Chapter 16: Windows Azure 2. Depth Avoids getting into depth on the topics presented, to present the new concepts in assumption of the developer’s existing knowledge. Code samples are on book and exist mostly as snippets and very easy to follow. There are no downloadable examples. 3. Complexity The book is written in a very simple way and easy to follow. There are no irrelevant intimidating details. So it’s a book that you can grab and never put down until you’ve finished reading the entire book. 4. References The author includes reference links to blogs, Wikis and a lot of online resources including the MSDN documentation, which is a very convenient strategy to avoid flooding the reader with details which may not be of interest to them. Most sites do not use url routing and that is really not nice. There are notes from interviews between the author and people behind the new technologies, in which they explain what some specific areas that need clarifications and what their future views are in relation to the features they are working on. 5. Target The author targets experts that want to make a transition from .NET 3.5 to 4.0. Some obvious 3.5 features have been purposely excluded from the text 6. Overrall It is evident that the author has made extensive research into the breadth of what MS is working on, in relation to .NET and Visual Studio and has also been watching the online community. What I would like to see in the next edition are some details on OData protocol, Expression Blend 4 and Embedded development and Windows Phone development. I should say I’m one of the beneficiaries of this book. Excellent work Alex.   Technorati Tags: .NET,Book-Review,Visual Studio

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  • “I could use a little help here” or “I can do it myself, thank you” for Cloud Projects

    - by BuckWoody
    Windows Azure allows you to write code in languages within the .NET stack, you can use Java, C++, PHP, NodeJS and others. Code is code - other than keeping things stateless, using a Web or Worker Role in Azure is not all that different from working with an on-premises system. However…. Working in a scalable, component-based stateless architecture that can use federated security is not all that common for many developers. Some are used to owning the server, scaling up, and state-full paradigms that have a single security domain. Making the transition whilst trying to create a new software application or even port a previous one can be daunting. Sure, we have absolutely tons of free training, kits, videos, online books and more to learn on your own, but some things like architecture can be pivotal as you move along. So the question is, should you just strike out on your own for a Cloud project, or get Microsoft Consulting Services or another partner to work with you on your first one? I use a few decision points to help guide the projects I assist in. Note: I’m a huge fan of having help that ends up giving you training and leaves you in charge. If you do engage with someone to help you, make sure you keep this clear and take more and more ownership yourself as the project progresses. How much time do you have? Usually the first thing I ask is about the timeline for the project. It doesn’t matter how skilled you are, if you have a short window to get things done it’s better to get help - especially if this is your first cloud project. Having someone that knows the platform well can save you amazing amounts of time. If you have longer, then start with the training in the link above and once you feel confident, jump in. How complex is the project? If there are a lot of moving parts, it’s best to engage a partner. The reason is that certain interactions - particularly things like Service Bus or Data Integration  - can be quite different than what you may have encountered before. How many people do you have? I have a “pizza rule” about projects I’ve used in my career - if it takes over two pizzas to feed everyone on the project, it’s too big and will fail. That being said, one developer and a one-week deadline does not a good project make, usually. It’s best to have at least one architect (or someone in that role) guiding the project along, and at least two developers to work on a cloud project. That’s a generalization of course, since I’ve seen great software on Azure with one developer writing code all by herself, but for more complex projects, more (to a point) is better. The nice thing about bringing on a partner is that you don’t have to hire them full time - they help you and then they go away. How critical is the project? There’s no shame in using some help. If the platform is new, if the project is large and complex, and if it is critical to the business, you should engage a partner. That’s regardless of Cloud or anything else - get some help. You don’t want to hit your company’s bottom line in a negative way, but you have to innovate and get them a competitive advantage. Do your research, make sure the partner is qualified to help you, and get it done. Don’t let these questions scare you off. There are lots of projects you can implement on Windows and SQL Azure with nothing other than the Software Development Kit (SDK) that you get for free with Windows Azure. And assistance comes in many forms - sometimes just phone support, a friend you can ask. Microsoft Consulting Services or any of our great partners. You can get help on just the architecture piece or have them show you how to write the code. They’ll get involved as little or as much as you like.

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  • Oracle BI and XS Energy Drinks – Don’t Miss the Amway Presentation!

    - by Maria Forney
    Amway is a global leader in the direct sales industry with $10.9B in annual sales in more than 100 countries and territories. The company has implemented a global BI framework that provides accurate, consistent, and timely insights to support global, regional and local analytical research, business planning, performance measurement and assessment. Oracle BI EE is used by 1500 employees across Amway sales, marketing, finance, and supply chain business units as well as Amway affiliates in Europe, Russia, South Africa, Japan, Australia, Latin America, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Indonesia. Last week, I spoke with Lead Data Analyst with Amway Global Sales, Dan Arganbright, and IT Manager with Amway BI Competency Center, Mike Olson, about their upcoming presentation at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco. Scheduled during a prime speaking slot on Monday, October 1 at 12:15pm in Moscone West, 2007, Dan and Mike will discuss their experience building Amway’s Distributor Consulting solution, powered by Oracle BI EE. You can find more information here. As background, Amway offers people an opportunity to own their own businesses and consumers exclusive products in health and wellness, beauty and home care.  The Amway internal Sales organization is charged with consulting leadership-level Distributors to help them with data insights and ultimately grow their business. Until recently, this was a resource-intense process of gathering and formatting data. In some markets, it took over 40 hours to collect the data and produce the analysis needed for one consultation session. Amway began its global BI journey in 2006 and since then the company has migrated from having multiple technology providers and integration points to an integrated strategic vendor approach. Today, the company has standardized on Oracle technology for BI.  Amway has achieved cost savings through the retirement of redundant technology platforms. In addition, Mike’s organization has led the charge to align disparate BI organizations into a BI Competency Center.  The following diagram highlights the simplicity of the standardized architecture of Amway today. Dubbed Distributor Consulting, Amway has developed a BI solution using the Oracle technology stack to help Distributor leaders grow their businesses. The Distributor Consulting solution provides over 40 metrics for Sales staff to provide data-driven insights on the Distributors and organizations they support.  Using Oracle BI EE, Exadata, and Oracle Data Integrator, Amway provides customized and personalized business intelligence, and the Oracle BI EE dashboards were developed by the Amway Sales organization, which demonstrates business empowerment of the technology. Amway is also leveraging the power of BI to drive business growth in all of its markets.  A new set of Distributor Segmentation metrics are enabling a better understanding of distributor behaviors. A Global Scorecard that Amway developed provides key metrics at a market and global level for executive-level discussions. Product Analysis teams can now highlight repeat purchase rates, product penetration and the success of CRM campaigns. In the words of Dan and Mike, the addition of Exadata 11 months ago has been “a game changer.”  Amway has been able to dramatically reduce complexity, improve performance and increase business productivity and cost savings. For example, the number of indexes on the global data warehouse was reduced from more than 1,000 to less than 20.  Pulling data for the highest level distributors or the largest markets in the company now can be done in minutes instead of hours.  As a result, IT has shifted from performance tuning and keeping the system operational to higher-value business-focused activities. •       “The distributors that have been introduced to the BI reports have found them extremely helpful. Because they have never had this kind of information before, when they were presented with the reports, they wanted to take action immediately!”  -     Sales Development Manager in Latin America Without giving away more, the Amway case study presentation will be one of the unique customer sessions at OpenWorld this year. Speakers Dan Arganbright and Mike Olson have planned an interactive and entertaining session on Monday October 1 at 12:15pm in Moscone West, 2007. I’ll see you there!

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  • Oracle BI and XS Energy Drinks – Don’t Miss the Amway Presentation!

    - by Michelle Kimihira
    By Maria Forney Amway is a global leader in the direct sales industry with $10.9B in annual sales in more than 100 countries and territories. The company has implemented a global BI framework that provides accurate, consistent, and timely insights to support global, regional and local analytical research, business planning, performance measurement and assessment. Oracle BI EE is used by 1500 employees across Amway sales, marketing, finance, and supply chain business units as well as Amway affiliates in Europe, Russia, South Africa, Japan, Australia, Latin America, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Indonesia. Last week, I spoke with Lead Data Analyst with Amway Global Sales, Dan Arganbright, and IT Manager with Amway BI Competency Center, Mike Olson, about their upcoming presentation at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco. Scheduled during a prime speaking slot on Monday, October 1 at 12:15pm in Moscone West, 2007, Dan and Mike will discuss their experience building Amway’s Distributor Consulting solution, powered by Oracle BI EE. You can find more information here. As background, Amway offers people an opportunity to own their own businesses and consumers exclusive products in health and wellness, beauty and home care.  The Amway internal Sales organization is charged with consulting leadership-level Distributors to help them with data insights and ultimately grow their business. Until recently, this was a resource-intense process of gathering and formatting data. In some markets, it took over 40 hours to collect the data and produce the analysis needed for one consultation session. Amway began its global BI journey in 2006 and since then the company has migrated from having multiple technology providers and integration points to an integrated strategic vendor approach. Today, the company has standardized on Oracle technology for BI.  Amway has achieved cost savings through the retirement of redundant technology platforms. In addition, Mike’s organization has led the charge to align disparate BI organizations into a BI Competency Center.  The following diagram highlights the simplicity of the standardized architecture of Amway today. Dubbed Distributor Consulting, Amway has developed a BI solution using the Oracle technology stack to help Distributor leaders grow their businesses. The Distributor Consulting solution provides over 40 metrics for Sales staff to provide data-driven insights on the Distributors and organizations they support.  Using Oracle BI EE, Exadata, and Oracle Data Integrator, Amway provides customized and personalized business intelligence, and the Oracle BI EE dashboards were developed by the Amway Sales organization, which demonstrates business empowerment of the technology. Amway is also leveraging the power of BI to drive business growth in all of its markets.  A new set of Distributor Segmentation metrics are enabling a better understanding of distributor behaviors. A Global Scorecard that Amway developed provides key metrics at a market and global level for executive-level discussions. Product Analysis teams can now highlight repeat purchase rates, product penetration and the success of CRM campaigns. In the words of Dan and Mike, the addition of Exadata 11 months ago has been “a game changer.”  Amway has been able to dramatically reduce complexity, improve performance and increase business productivity and cost savings. For example, the number of indexes on the global data warehouse was reduced from more than 1,000 to less than 20.  Pulling data for the highest level distributors or the largest markets in the company now can be done in minutes instead of hours.  As a result, IT has shifted from performance tuning and keeping the system operational to higher-value business-focused activities. •       “The distributors that have been introduced to the BI reports have found them extremely helpful. Because they have never had this kind of information before, when they were presented with the reports, they wanted to take action immediately!”  -     Sales Development Manager in Latin America Without giving away more, the Amway case study presentation will be one of the unique customer sessions at OpenWorld this year. Speakers Dan Arganbright and Mike Olson have planned an interactive and entertaining session on Monday October 1 at 12:15pm in Moscone West, 2007. I’ll see you there!

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  • Book Reviews: Art of Community and Eyetracking Web Usability

    - by ultan o'broin
    Holidays time offers a chance to catch up on some user experience and user assistance related material. So, two short book reviews (which I considered using my new Tumblr blog for. More about that another time) coming up. The Art of Community by Jono Bacon Excellent starting point for anyone wanting to get going in the community software (FLOSS, for example) space or understand how to set up, manage, and leverage the collective intelligence of communities for whatever ends. The book is a little too long in my opinion, and of course, usage of what Jono is recommending needs to be nuanced and adapted for enterprise applications space (hardly surprising there is a lot about Ubuntu, Lug Radio, and so on given Jono's interests). Shame there wasn't more information on international, non-English community considerations too. Still, some great ideas and insight into setting up and managing communities that I will leverage (watch out for the results on this blog, later in 2011). One section, on collaborative writing really jumped out. It reinforced the whole idea that to successful community initiatives are based on instigators knowing what makes the community tick in the first place. How about this for insight into user profiles for people who write community user assistance (OK then, "doc") and what tools they might use (in this case, we're talking about Jokosher): "Most people who write documentation for open source software projects would fall into the category of power user. They are technology enthusiasts who are not interested in the super-technical avenues of programming, but want to help out. Many of these people have good writing skills and a good knowledge of using the software, so the documentation fit is natural. With Jokosher we wanted to acknowledge this profile of user. As such, instead of focussing on complex text processing tools, we encouraged our documentation contributors to use a wiki." The book is available for free here, and well as being available from usual sources. Eyetracking Web Usability by Jakob Nielsen and Kara Prentice Another fine book by established experts. I have some field experience of eyetracking studies myself --in the user assistance for enterprise applications space--though Jakob and Kara concentrate on websites for their research here. I would caution how much about websites transfers easily to the applications space, especially enterprise applications, as claimed in the book too. However, Jakob and Kara do make the case very well that understanding design goals (for example, productivity improvement in the case of applications) and the context of the software use is critical. Executing a study using eyetracking technology requires that you know what you want to test, can set up realistic tasks for testing by representative testers, and then analyze the results. Be precise, as lots of data will be generated (I think the authors underplay the effort in analyzing data too). What I found disappointing was the lack of emphasis on eyetracking as only part of the usability solution. It's really for fine-tuning designs in my opinion, and should be used after other design reviews. I also wasn't that crazy about the level of disengagement between the qualitative and quantitative side of this kind of testing that the book indicated. I think it is useful to have testers verbalize their thoughts and for test engineers to prompt, intervene, or guide as necessary. More on cultural or international aspects to usability testing might have been included too (websites are available to everyone). To conclude, I enjoyed the book, took on board some key takeaways about methodologies and found the recommendations sensible and easy to follow (for example about Forms layouts). Applying enterprise applications requirements such as those relating to user profiles, design goals, and overall context of use in conjunction with what's in this book would be the way to go here. It also made me think of how interesting it would be to compare eyetracking findings between website and enterprise applications usage.

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  • Drupal Modules for SEO & Content

    - by Aditi
    When we talk about Drupal SEO, there are two things to consider one is about the relevant SEO practices and about appropriate Drupal Modules available. Optimizing your website for search engines is one of the most important aspect of launching & promoting your website especially if ranking matters to you. Understanding SEO For starters, you have begin with Keyword research and then optimize your content according to your findings by tagging, meta tags etc, Drupal modules once installed help you manage a lot of such parameters. Identifying the target keywords Using the Page Title and Token modules PathAuto configuration <H1> heading tags Optimizing Drupal’s default robots.txt file Etc. While Drupal gives you a lot of ability to make your website content worthy & search engine friendly it is important for you to make sure you are not crossing the line or you could get penalized. Modules Overview Drupal Power is at its best when you have these modules & great brain working together. The basic SEO improvements can be achieved easily with the modules enlisted below, but you can win magical rankings if you use them logically & wisely. Understanding your keyword competition & enhancing your content is the basic key to success and ofcourse the modules: Pathauto Automatically create search enging friendly readable URLS from tokens. A token is a piece of data from content, say the author’s username, or the content’s title. For example mysite.com/an-article, rather than mysite.com/node/114 for every node you make. NodeWords Amazingly useful drupal module that allows you to create custom meta tags and descriptions for your nodes, which gives you the ability to target specific keywords and phrases. Page Title Enables you to set an alternative title for the <title></title> tags and for the <h1></h1> tags on a node. Global Redirect Manage content duplication, 301 redirects, and URL validation with this small, but powerful module. Taxonomy manager Make large additions, or changes to taxonomy very easy. This module provides a powerful interface for managing taxonomies. A vocabulary gets displayed in a dynamic tree view, where parent terms can be expanded to list their nested child terms or can be collapsed. robotstxt A robots.txt file is vital for ensuring that search engine spiders don’t index the unwanted areas of your site. This Drupal module gives you the ability to manage your robots.txt file through the CMS admin. xmlsitemap An XML Sitemap lets the search engines index your website content. This module helps in generating and maintaining a complete sitemap for your website and gives you control over exactly which parts of the site you want to be included in the index. It even gives you the ability to automatically submit your sitemap to Google, Yahoo!, Ask.com and Windows Live every time you update a node or at specific interval. Node Import This module allows you to import a set of nodes from a Comma Seperated Values (CSV) or Tab Seperated Values (TSV) text file. Makes it easy to import hundreds-thousands of csv rows and you get to tie up these rows to CCK fields (or locations), and it can file it under the right taxonomy hierarchy. This is Super life saver module.

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  • Backing up my Windows Home Server to the Cloud&hellip;

    - by eddraper
    Ok, here’s my scenario: Windows Home Server with a little over 3TB of storage.  This includes many years of our home network’s PC backups, music, videos, etcetera. I’d like to get a backup off-site, and the existing APIs and apps such as CloudBerry Labs WHS Backup service are making it easy.  Now, all it’s down to is vendor and the cost of the actual storage.   So,  I thought I’d take a lazy Saturday morning and do some research on this and get the ball rolling.  What I discovered stunned me…   First off, the pricing for just about everything was loaded with complexity.  I learned that it wasn’t just about storage… it was about network usage, requests, sites, replication, and on and on. I really don’t see this as rocket science.  I have a disk image.  I want to put it in the cloud.  I’m not going to be be using it but once daily for incremental backups.  Sounds like a common scenario.  Yes, if “things get real” and my server goes down, I will need to bring down a lot of data and utilize a fair amount of vendor infrastructure.  However, this may never happen.  Offsite storage is an insurance policy.   The complexity of the cost structures, perhaps by design, create an environment where it’s incredibly hard to model bottom line costs and compare vendor all-up pricing.  As it is a “lazy Saturday morning,” I’m not in the mood for such antics and I decide to shirk the endeavor entirely.  Thus, I decided to simply fire up calc.exe and do some a simple arithmetic model based on price per GB.  I shuddered at the results.  Certainly something was wrong… did I misplace a decimal point?  Then I discovered CloudBerry’s own calculator.   Nope, I hadn’t misplaced those decimals after all.  Check it out (pricing based on 3174 GB):   Amazon S3 $398.00 per month $4761 per year Azure $396.75 per month $4761 per year Google $380.88 per month $4570.56 per year   Conclusion: Rampant crack smoking at vendors.  Seriously.  Out. Of. Their. Minds. Now, to Amazon’s credit, vision, and outright common sense, they had one offering which directly addresses my scenario:   Amazon Glacier $31.74 per month $380.88 per year   hmmm… It’s on the table.  Let’s see what it would cost to just buy some drives, an enclosure and cart them over to a friend’s house.   2 x 2TB Drives from NewEgg.com $199.99   Enclosure $39.99     $239.98   Carting data to back and forth to friend’s within walking distance pain   Leave drive unplugged at friend’s $0 for electricity   Possible data loss No way I can come and go every day.     I think I’ll think on this a bit more…

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  • SQL SERVER – MSQL_XP – Wait Type – Day 20 of 28

    - by pinaldave
    In this blog post, I am going to discuss something from my field experience. While consultation, I have seen various wait typed, but one of my customers who has been using SQL Server for all his operations had an interesting issue with a particular wait type. Our customer had more than 100+ SQL Server instances running and the whole server had MSSQL_XP wait type as the most number of wait types. While running sp_who2 and other diagnosis queries, I could not immediately figure out what the issue was because the query with that kind of wait type was nowhere to be found. After a day of research, I was relieved that the solution was very easy to figure out. Let us continue discussing this wait type. From Book On-Line: ?MSQL_XP occurs when a task is waiting for an extended stored procedure to end. SQL Server uses this wait state to detect potential MARS application deadlocks. The wait stops when the extended stored procedure call ends. MSQL_XP Explanation: This wait type is created because of the extended stored procedure. Extended Stored Procedures are executed within SQL Server; however, SQL Server has no control over them. Unless you know what the code for the extended stored procedure is and what it is doing, it is impossible to understand why this wait type is coming up. Reducing MSQL_XP wait: As discussed, it is hard to understand the Extended Stored Procedure if the code for it is not available. In the scenario described at the beginning of this post, our client was using third-party backup tool. The third-party backup tool was using Extended Stored Procedure. After we learned that this wait type was coming from the extended stored procedure of the backup tool they were using, we contacted the tech team of its vendor. The vendor admitted that the code was not optimal at some places, and within that day they had provided the patch. Once the updated version was installed, the issue on this wait type disappeared. As viewed in the wait statistics of all the 100+ SQL Server, there was no more MSSQL_XP wait type found. In simpler terms, you must first identify which Extended Stored Procedure is creating the wait type of MSSQL_XP and see if you can get in touch with the creator of the SP so you can help them optimize the code. If you have encountered this MSSQL_XP wait type, I encourage all of you to write how you managed it. Please do not mention the name of the vendor in your comment as I will not approve it. The focus of this blog post is to understand the wait types; not talk about others. Read all the post in the Wait Types and Queue series. Note: The information presented here is from my experience and there is no way that I claim it to be accurate. I suggest reading Book OnLine for further clarification. All the discussion of Wait Stats in this blog is generic and varies from system to system. It is recommended that you test this on a development server before implementing it to a production server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL, Technology

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  • Many Stack Overflow users' pages have no Google PageRank and they are not indexed, why?

    - by Marco Demaio
    If you go to my user page on Stack Overflow and you check it with the Google Toolbar, you can see it has no PageRank at all (this does happen for almost any user page, even people with much higher reputation, the only exceptions seem to be the users in page 1, and some other users they have PR). My user page's Page Rank is not only zero, but not calculated at all. When PR is 0 or less than 1, but calculated the Google bar shows white, but when the PR is not even calculated like in my user page the Google bar shows in grey. I further more discovered that my user page is NOT EVEN INDEXED on Google, simple test is searching on Google for the exact page url: "http://stackoverflow.com/users/260080/marco-demaio" and you will see no result. The question is how can this be??? This is really weird to me because of the following reason: If you search on Google for "Marco Demaio" on Stack Overflow only (you can do this by searching "site:stackoverflow.com Marco Demaio") the search result shows hundreds of 'asking/answering questions' pages where I was 'tagged'!!! Let's check one of these: the 1st one that appears now (shows one of the question I asked). We can be sure this page is indexed in Google because comes out in a search. Moreover, its PR is calculated. It's probably nearly zero. Still, some PR flows there, the PR bar is not grey, but white: The page shown above has got links to my own user page. I checked the source code of the page shown above and the links are not hidden or set with a rel="nofollow", moreover I can't see any meta character excluding the links on the page from being followed. So what's happening? Why Google does not see my user page at all. Did Stack Overflow do something to achieve this? If yes what did they do? Any explanation really appreciates (as always). P.S. obviously I checked also the code of my user page, but I could not find meta tags excluding Google search for the page. P.S. 2 in a desperate adventure I also checked Stack Overflow's robots.txt but it does not seem to exclude user pages. UPDATE 1 following up on some answers, I did some more research. Excluding for a while the PR problem (since PR is not science), and looking only at the user page on Stack Overflow NOT BEING INDEXED problem: pages do not seem to be indexed by Google because of the user reputation, this user for instance has got NOW 200 points less reputation than me and his page is indexed (while mine not). It does not seem even to be connected with months you have been on Stack Overflow, this user (almost my same reputation) has been there for 3 months only and his page is indexed (while mine not and I have been a user for 7 months). It's bizarre! UPDATE February/2011 As of today, the page got indexed by Google at least when you search for "site:stackoverflow.com Marco Demaio" it's the 1st page. The amazing thing is that it has still got NO PageRank at all: Google toolbar states loud and clear "No PageRank information available". It's odd!

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  • Google, typography, and cognitive fluency for persuasion

    - by Roger Hart
    Cognitive fluency is - roughly - how easy it is to think about something. Mere Exposure (or familiarity) effects are basically about reacting more favourably to things you see a lot. Which is part of why marketers in generic spaces like insipid mass-market lager will spend quite so much money on getting their logo daubed about the place; or that guy at the bus stop starts to look like a dating prospect after a month or two. Recent thinking suggests that exposure effects likely spin off cognitive fluency. We react favourably to things that are easier to think about. I had to give tech support to an older relative recently, and suggested they Google the problem. They were confused. They could not, apparently, Google the problem, because part of it was that their Google toolbar had mysteriously vanished. Once I'd finished trying not to laugh, I started thinking about typography. This is going somewhere, I promise. Google is a ubiquitous brand. Heck, it's a verb, and their recent, jaw-droppingly well constructed Paris advert is more or less about that ubiquity. It trades on Google's integration into any information-seeking behaviour. But, as my tech support encounter suggests, people settle into comfortable patterns of thinking about things. They build schemas, and altering them can take work. Maybe the ubiquity even works to cement that. Alongside their online effort, Google is running billboard campaigns to advertise Chrome, a free product in a crowded space. They are running these ads in some kind of kooky Calibri / Comic Sans hybrid. Now, at first it seems odd that one of the world's more ubiquitous brands needs to run a big print campaign in public places - surely they have all the fluency they need? Well, not so much. Chrome, after all, is not the same as their core product, so there's some basic awareness work to do, and maybe a whole new batch of exposure effect to try and grab. But why the typeface? It's heavily foregrounded, and the ads are extremely textual. Plus, don't we all know that jovial, off-beat fonts look unprofessional, or something? There's a whole bunch of people who want (often rightly) to ban Comic Sans I wonder, though. Are Google trying to subtly disrupt cognitive fluency? There's an interesting paper (pdf) about - among other things - the effects of typography on they way people answer survey questions. Participants given the slightly harder to read question gave more abstract answers. The paper references other work suggesting that generally speaking, less-fluent question framing elicits more considered answers. The Chrome ad typeface is less fluent for print. Reactions may therefore be more considered, abstract, and disruptive. Is that, in fact, what Google need? They have brand ubiquity, but they want here to change accustomed behaviour, to get people to think about changing their browser. Is this actually a very elegant piece of persuasive information design? If you think about their "what is a browser?" vox pop research video, there's certainly a perceptual barrier they're going to have to tackle somehow.

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  • Who should ‘own’ the Enterprise Architecture?

    - by Michael Glas
    I recently had a discussion around who should own an organization’s Enterprise Architecture. It was spawned by an article titled “Busting CIO Myths” in CIO magazine1 where the author interviewed Jeanne Ross, director of MIT's Center for Information Systems Research and co-author of books on enterprise architecture, governance and IT value.In the article Jeanne states that companies need to acknowledge that "architecture says everything about how the company is going to function, operate, and grow; the only person who can own that is the CEO". "If the CEO doesn't accept that role, there really can be no architecture."The first question that came up when talking about ownership was whether you are talking about a person, role, or organization (there are pros and cons to each, but in general, I like to assign accountability to as few people as possible). After much thought and discussion, I came to the conclusion that we were answering the wrong question. Instead of talking about ownership we were talking about responsibility and accountability, and the answer varies depending on the particular role of the organization’s Enterprise Architecture and the activities of the enterprise architect(s).Instead of looking at just who owns the architecture, think about what the person/role/organization should do. This is one possible scenario (thanks to Bob Covington): The CEO should own the Enterprise Strategy which guides the business architecture. The Business units should own the business processes and information which guide the business, application and information architectures. The CIO should own the technology, IT Governance and the management of the application and information architectures/implementations. The EA Governance Team owns the EA process.  If EA is done well, the governance team consists of both IT and the business. While there are many more roles and responsibilities than listed here, it starts to provide a clearer understanding of ‘ownership’. Now back to Jeanne’s statement that the CEO should own the architecture. If you agree with the statement about what the architecture is (and I do agree), then ultimately the CEO does need to own it. However, what we ended up with was not really ownership, but more statements around roles and responsibilities tied to aspects of the enterprise architecture. You can debate the semantics of ownership vs. responsibility and accountability, but in the end the important thing is to come to a clearer understanding that is easily communicated (and hopefully measured) around the question “Who owns the Enterprise Architecture”.The next logical step . . . create a RACI matrix that details the findings . . . but that is a step that each organization needs to do on their own as it will vary based on current EA maturity, company culture, and a variety of other factors. Who ‘owns’ the Enterprise Architecture in your organization? 1 CIO Magazine Article (Busting CIO Myths): http://www.cio.com/article/704943/Busting_CIO_Myths Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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  • How to detect and configure an output with xrandr?

    - by ysap
    I have a DELL U2410 monitor connected to a Compaq 100B desktop equipped with an integrated AMD/ATI graphics card (AMD E-350). The installed O/S is Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. The computer is connected to the monitor via the DVI connection. The problem is that I cannot set the desktop resolution to the native 1920x1200. The maximum allowed resolution is 1600x1200. Doing some research I found about the xrandr utility. Unfortunately, when trying to use it I cannot configure it to the required resolution. First, it does not report the output name (which supposed to be DVI-0), saying default instead. Without it I cannot use the --fb option. The EDID utility seems to identify the monitor well. Here's the output from get-edid: # EDID version 1 revision 3 Section "Monitor" # Block type: 2:0 3:ff # Block type: 2:0 3:fc Identifier "DELL U2410" VendorName "DEL" ModelName "DELL U2410" # Block type: 2:0 3:ff # Block type: 2:0 3:fc # Block type: 2:0 3:fd HorizSync 30-81 VertRefresh 56-76 # Max dot clock (video bandwidth) 170 MHz # DPMS capabilities: Active off:yes Suspend:yes Standby:yes Mode "1920x1200" # vfreq 59.950Hz, hfreq 74.038kHz DotClock 154.000000 HTimings 1920 1968 2000 2080 VTimings 1200 1203 1209 1235 Flags "-HSync" "+VSync" EndMode # Block type: 2:0 3:ff # Block type: 2:0 3:fc # Block type: 2:0 3:fd EndSection but the xrandr -q command returns: Screen 0: minimum 640 x 400, current 1600 x 1200, maximum 1600 x 1200 default connected 1600x1200+0+0 0mm x 0mm 1600x1200 0.0* 1280x1024 0.0 1152x864 0.0 1024x768 0.0 800x600 0.0 640x480 0.0 720x400 0.0 When I try to set the resolution, I get: $ xrandr --fb 1920x1200 xrandr: screen cannot be larger than 1600x1200 (desired size 1920x1200) $ xrandr --output DVI-0 --auto warning: output DVI-0 not found; ignoring How can I set the screen resolution to 1920x1200? Why doesn't xrandr identify the DVI-0 output? Note that the same computer running Ubuntu version higher than 10.04 detects the correct resolution with no problems. On this machine I cannot upgrade due to some legacy hardware compatibility problems. Also, I don't see any optional screen drivers available in the Hardware Drivers dialog. ---- UPDATE: following the answer to this question, I got some advance. Now the required mode is listed in the xrandr -q list, but I can't switch to that mode. Using the Monitors applet (which now shows the new mode), I get the response that: The selected configuration for displays could not be applied. Could not set the configuration to CRTC 262. From the command line it looks like this: $ cvt 1920 1200 60 # 1920x1200 59.88 Hz (CVT 2.30MA) hsync: 74.56 kHz; pclk: 193.25 MHz Modeline "1920x1200_60.00" 193.25 1920 2056 2256 2592 1200 1203 1209 1245 -hsync +vsync $ xrandr --newmode "1920x1200_60.00" 193.25 1920 2056 2256 2592 1200 1203 1209 1245 -hsync +vsync $ xrandr -q Screen 0: minimum 640 x 400, current 1600 x 1200, maximum 1600 x 1200 default connected 1600x1200+0+0 0mm x 0mm 1600x1200 0.0* 1280x1024 0.0 1152x864 0.0 1024x768 0.0 800x600 0.0 640x480 0.0 720x400 0.0 1920x1200_60.00 (0x120) 193.0MHz h: width 1920 start 2056 end 2256 total 2592 skew 0 clock 74.5KHz v: height 1200 start 1203 end 1209 total 1245 clock 59.8Hz $ xrandr --addmode default 1920x1200_60.00 $ xrandr -q Screen 0: minimum 640 x 400, current 1600 x 1200, maximum 1600 x 1200 default connected 1600x1200+0+0 0mm x 0mm 1600x1200 0.0* 1280x1024 0.0 1152x864 0.0 1024x768 0.0 800x600 0.0 640x480 0.0 720x400 0.0 1920x1200_60.00 59.8 $ xrandr --output default --mode 1920x1200_60.00 xrandr: Configure crtc 0 failed Another piece of info (if it helps anyone): $ sudo lshw -c video *-display UNCLAIMED description: VGA compatible controller product: ATI Technologies Inc vendor: ATI Technologies Inc physical id: 1 bus info: pci@0000:00:01.0 version: 00 width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm pciexpress msi bus_master cap_list configuration: latency=0 resources: memory:c0000000-cfffffff(prefetchable) ioport:f000(size=256) memory:feb00000-feb3ffff

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  • How to Set Up Your Enterprise Social Organization

    - by Mike Stiles
    The rush for business organizations to establish, grow, and adopt social was driven out of necessity and inevitability. The result, however, was a sudden, booming social presence creating touch points with customers, partners and influencers, but without any corporate social organization or structure in place to effectively manage it. Even today, many business leaders remain uncertain as to how to corral this social media thing so that it makes sense for their enterprise. Imagine their panic when they hear one of the most beneficial approaches to corporate use of social involves giving up at least some hierarchical control and empowering employees to publicly engage customers. And beyond that, they should also be empowered, regardless of their corporate status, to engage and collaborate internally, spurring “off the grid” innovation. An HBR blog points out that traditionally, enterprise organizations function from the top down, and employees work end-to-end, structured around business processes. But the social enterprise opens up structures that up to now have not exactly been embraced by turf-protecting executives and managers. The blog asks, “What if leaders could create a future where customers, associates and suppliers are no longer seen as objects in the system but as valued sources of innovation, ideas and energy?” What if indeed? The social enterprise activates internal resources without the usual obsession with position. It is the dawn of mass collaboration. That does not, however, mean this mass collaboration has to lead to uncontrolled chaos. In an extended interview with Oracle, Altimeter Group analyst Jeremiah Owyang and Oracle SVP Reggie Bradford paint a complete picture of today’s social enterprise, including internal organizational structures Altimeter Group has seen emerge. One sign of a mature social enterprise is the establishing of a social Center of Excellence (CoE), which serves as a hub for high-level social strategy, training and education, research, measurement and accountability, and vendor selection. This CoE is led by a corporate Social Strategist, most likely from a Marketing or Corporate Communications background. Reporting to them are the Community Managers, the front lines of customer interaction and engagement; business unit liaisons that coordinate the enterprise; and social media campaign/product managers, social analysts, and developers. With content rising as the defining factor for social success, Altimeter also sees a Content Strategist position emerging. Across the enterprise, Altimeter has seen 5 organizational patterns. Watching the video will give you the pros and cons of each. Decentralized - Anyone can do anything at any time on any social channel. Centralized – One central groups controls all social communication for the company. Hub and Spoke – A centralized group, but business units can operate their own social under the hub’s guidance and execution. Most enterprises are using this model. Dandelion – Each business unit develops their own social strategy & staff, has its own ability to deploy, and its own ability to engage under the central policies of the CoE. Honeycomb – Every employee can do social, but as opposed to the decentralized model, it’s coordinated and monitored on one platform. The average enterprise has a whopping 178 social accounts, nearly ¼ of which are usually semi-idle and need to be scrapped. The last thing any C-suite needs is to cope with fragmented technologies, solutions and platforms. It’s neither scalable nor strategic. The prepared, effective social enterprise has a technology partner that can quickly and holistically integrate emerging platforms and technologies, such that whatever internal social command structure you’ve set up can continue efficiently executing strategy without skipping a beat. @mikestiles

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  • SEO: many stackoverflow users' pages have got no Google PR and they are not indexed, why?

    - by Marco Demaio
    If you go to my user page on Stack Overflow and you check it with the Gogle bar you can see has got no PR at all (this does happen for almost any user page, even people with much higher reputation, the only exceptions seem to be the users in page 1, and some other users they have PR). My user page's Page Rank is not only zero, but not calculated at all. When PR is 0 or less than 1, but calculated the Google bar shows white, but when the PR is not even calculated like in my user page the Google bar shows in grey. I further more discovered that my user page is NOT EVEN INDEXED on Google, simple test is searching on Google for the exact page url: "http://stackoverflow.com/users/260080/marco-demaio" and you will see no result. The question is how can this be??? This is really weird to me because of the following reason: If you search on Google for "Marco Demaio" on stackoverflow site only (you can do this by searching "site:stackoverflow.com Marco Demaio") the search result shows hundreds of 'asking/answering questions' pages where I was 'tagged'!!! Let's check one of these: the 1st one that appears now (shows one of the question I asked). We can be sure this page is indexed in Google because comes out in a search moreover its PR is calculated, it's probably nearly zero, but still some PR flows there, the PR bar is not grey, but white: The page shown above has got links to my own user page. I checked the source code of the page shown above and the links are not hidden or set with a rel="nofollow", moreover I can't see any meta character excluding the links on the page from being followed. So what's happening? Why Google does not see my user page at all. Did stackoverflow do something to achieve this? If yes what did they do? Any explantion really appreciates (as always). P.S. obviously I checked also the code of my user page, but I could not find meta tags excluding Google search for the page. P.S. 2 in a desperate adventure I also checked StackOverflow robots but it does not seem to exclude user pages. UPDATE 1 following up on some answers, I did some more research. Excluding for a while the PR problem (since PR is not science), and looking only at the user page on StackOverflow NOT BEING INDEXED problem: pages do not seem to be indexed by Google because of the user reputation, this user for instance has got NOW 200 points less reputation than me and his page is indexed (while mine not). It does not seem even to be connected with months you have been on Stackoverflow, this user (almost my same reputation) has been there for 3 months only and his page is indexed (while mine not and I have been a user for 7 months). It's bizzarre! UPDATE February/2011 As of today the page got indexed by Google at least when you search for "site:stackoverflow.com Marco Demaio" it's the 1st page. The amazing thing is that it has still got NO PageRank at all: Google toolbar states loud and clear "No PageRank information available". It's odd!

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  • Book review (Book 6) - Wikinomics

    - by BuckWoody
    This is a continuation of the books I challenged myself to read to help my career - one a month, for year. You can read my first book review here. The book I chose for November 2011 was: Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, by Don Tapscott   Why I chose this Book: I’ve heard a lot about this book - was one of the “must read” kind of business books (many of which are very “fluffy”) and supposedly deals with collaborating using technology - so I want to see what it says about collaborative efforts and how I can leverage them. What I learned: I really disliked this book. I’ve never been a fan of the latest “business book”, and sadly that’s what this felt like to me. A “business book” is what I call a work that has a fairly simple concept to get across, and then proceeds to use various made-up terms, analogies and other mechanisms to fill hundreds of pages doing it. This perception is at my own – the book is pretty old, and these things go stale quickly. The author’s general point (at least what I took away from it) was: Open Source is good, proprietary is bad. Collaboration is the hallmark of successful companies. In my mind, you can save yourself the trouble of reading this work if you get these two concepts down. Don’t get me wrong – open source is awesome, and collaboration is a good thing, especially in places where it fits. But it’s not a panacea as the author seems to indicate. For instance, he continuously uses the example of MySpace to show a “2.0” company, which I think means that you can enter text as well as read it on a web page. All well and good. But we all know what happened to MySpace, and of course he missed the point entirely about this new web environment: low barriers to entry often mean low barriers to exit. And the open, collaborative company being the best model – well, I think we all know a certain computer company famous for phones and music that is arguably quite successful, and is probably one of the most closed, non-collaborative (at least with its customers) on the planet. So that sort of takes away that argument. The reality of business is far more complicated. Collaboration is an amazing tool, and should be leveraged heavily. However, at the end of the day, after you do your research you need to pick a strategy and stick with it. Asking thousands of people to assist you in building your product probably will not work well. Open Source is great – but some proprietary products are quite functional as well, have a long track record, are well supported, and will probably be upgraded. Everything has its place, so use what works where it is needed. There is no single answer, sadly. So did I waste my time reading the book? Did I make a bad choice? Not at all! Reading the opinions and thoughts of others is almost always useful, and it’s important to consider opinions other than your own. If nothing else, thinking through the process either convinces you that you are wrong, or helps you understand better why you are right.

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  • How to Set Up Your Enterprise Social Organization?

    - by Richard Lefebvre
    By Mike Stiles on Dec 04, 2012 The rush for business organizations to establish, grow, and adopt social was driven out of necessity and inevitability. The result, however, was a sudden, booming social presence creating touch points with customers, partners and influencers, but without any corporate social organization or structure in place to effectively manage it. Even today, many business leaders remain uncertain as to how to corral this social media thing so that it makes sense for their enterprise. Imagine their panic when they hear one of the most beneficial approaches to corporate use of social involves giving up at least some hierarchical control and empowering employees to publicly engage customers. And beyond that, they should also be empowered, regardless of their corporate status, to engage and collaborate internally, spurring “off the grid” innovation. An HBR blog points out that traditionally, enterprise organizations function from the top down, and employees work end-to-end, structured around business processes. But the social enterprise opens up structures that up to now have not exactly been embraced by turf-protecting executives and managers. The blog asks, “What if leaders could create a future where customers, associates and suppliers are no longer seen as objects in the system but as valued sources of innovation, ideas and energy?” What if indeed? The social enterprise activates internal resources without the usual obsession with position. It is the dawn of mass collaboration. That does not, however, mean this mass collaboration has to lead to uncontrolled chaos. In an extended interview with Oracle, Altimeter Group analyst Jeremiah Owyang and Oracle SVP Reggie Bradford paint a complete picture of today’s social enterprise, including internal organizational structures Altimeter Group has seen emerge. One sign of a mature social enterprise is the establishing of a social Center of Excellence (CoE), which serves as a hub for high-level social strategy, training and education, research, measurement and accountability, and vendor selection. This CoE is led by a corporate Social Strategist, most likely from a Marketing or Corporate Communications background. Reporting to them are the Community Managers, the front lines of customer interaction and engagement; business unit liaisons that coordinate the enterprise; and social media campaign/product managers, social analysts, and developers. With content rising as the defining factor for social success, Altimeter also sees a Content Strategist position emerging. Across the enterprise, Altimeter has seen 5 organizational patterns. Watching the video will give you the pros and cons of each. Decentralized - Anyone can do anything at any time on any social channel. Centralized – One central groups controls all social communication for the company. Hub and Spoke – A centralized group, but business units can operate their own social under the hub’s guidance and execution. Most enterprises are using this model. Dandelion – Each business unit develops their own social strategy & staff, has its own ability to deploy, and its own ability to engage under the central policies of the CoE. Honeycomb – Every employee can do social, but as opposed to the decentralized model, it’s coordinated and monitored on one platform. The average enterprise has a whopping 178 social accounts, nearly ¼ of which are usually semi-idle and need to be scrapped. The last thing any C-suite needs is to cope with fragmented technologies, solutions and platforms. It’s neither scalable nor strategic. The prepared, effective social enterprise has a technology partner that can quickly and holistically integrate emerging platforms and technologies, such that whatever internal social command structure you’ve set up can continue efficiently executing strategy without skipping a beat. @mikestiles

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  • How to future-proof my touch-enabled web application?

    - by Rice Flour Cookies
    I recently went out and purchased a touch-screen monitor with the intention of learning how to program touch-enabled web applications. I had reviewed the MDN documentation about touch events, as well as the W3C specification. To get started, I wrote a very short test page with two event handlers: one for the mousedown event and one for the touchstart event. I fired up the web page in IE and touched the document and found that only the mousedown event fired. I saw the same behavior with Firefox, only to find out later that Firefox can be set to enable the touchstart event using about:config. When touch events are enabled, the touchstart event fires, but not mousedown. Chrome was even stranger: it fired both events when I touched the document: touchstart and mousedown, in that order. Only on my Android phone does it appear to be the case that only the touchstart event fires when I touch the document. I did a a Google search and ended up on two interesting pages. First, I found the page on CanIUse for touch events: http://caniuse.com/#feat=touch Can I Use clearly indicates that IE does not support touch events as of this writing, and Firefox only supports touch events if they are manually enabled. Furthermore, all four browsers I mentioned treat the touch in a completely different way. It boils down to this: IE: simulated mouse click Firefox with touch disabled: simulated mouse click Firefox with touch enabled: touch event Chrome: touch event and simulated mouse click Android: touch event What is more frustrating is that Google also found a Microsoft page called RethinkIE. RethinkIE brags about touch support in IE; as a matter of fact, one of their slogans is "Touch the Web". It links to a number of touch-based application. I followed some of these links, and as best I can tell, it's just like CanIUse described; no proper touch support; just simulated mouse clicks. The MDN (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Touch) and W3C (http://www.w3.org/TR/touch-events/) documentation describe a far richer interface; an interface that doesn't just simulate mouse clicks, but keeps track of multiple touches at once, the contact area, rotation, and force of each touch, and unique identifiers for each touch so that they can be tracked individually. I don't see how simulated mouse clicks can ever touch the above described functionality, which, once again, is part of the W3C specification, although it is listed as "non-normative", meaning that a browser can claim to be standards-compliant without implementing it. (Why bother making it part of the standard, then?) What motivated my research is that I've written an HTML5 application that doesn't work on Android because Android doesn't fire mouse events. I'm now afraid to try to implement touch for my application because the browsers all behave so differently. I imagine that at some time in the future, the browsers might start handling touch similarly, but how can I tell how they might be handled in the future short of writing code to handle the behavior of each individual browser? Is it possible to write code today that will work with touch-enabled browsers for years to come? If so, how?

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  • My Doors - Why Standards Matter to Business

    - by Brian Dayton
    "Standards save money." "Standards accelerate projects." "Standards make better solutions."   What do these statements mean to you? You buy technology solutions like Oracle Applications but you're a business person--trying to close the quarter, get performance reviews processed, negotiate a new sourcing contract, etc.   When "standards" come up in presentations and discussions do you: -          Nod your head politely -          Tune out and check your smart phone -          Turn to your IT counterpart and say "Bob's all over this standards thing, right Bob?"   Here's why standards matter. My wife wants new external doors downstairs, ones that would get more light into the rooms. Am I OK with that? "Uhh, sure...it's a little dark in the kitchen."   -          24 hours ago - wife calls to tell me that she's going to the hardware store and may look at doors -          20 hours ago - wife pulls into driveway, informs me that two doors are in the back of her station wagon, ready for me to carry -          19 hours ago - I re-discovered the fact that it's not fun to carry a solid wood door by myself -          5 hours ago - Local handyman, who was at our house anyway, tells me that the doors we bought will likely cost 2-3x the material cost in installation time and labor...the doors are standard but our doorways aren't   We could have done more research. I could be more handy. Sure. But the fact is, my 1951 house wasn't built with me in mind. They built what worked and called it a day.   The same holds true with a lot of business applications. They were designed and architected for one-time use with one use-case in mind. Today's business climate is different. If you're going to use your processes and technology to differentiate your business you should have at least a working knowledge of: -          How standards can benefit your business -          Your IT organization's philosophy around standards -          Your vendor's track-record around standards...and watch for those who pay lip-service to standards but don't follow through   The rallying cry in most IT organizations today is "learn more about the business, drop the acronyms." I'm not advocating that you go out and learn how to code in Java. But I do believe it will help your business and your decision-making process if you meet IT ½...even ¼ of the way there.   Epilogue: The door project has been put on hold and yours truly has to return the doors to the hardware store tomorrow.

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  • F# and the rose-tinted reflection

    - by CliveT
    We're already seeing increasing use of many cores on client desktops. It is a change that has been long predicted. It is not just a change in architecture, but our notions of efficiency in a program. No longer can we focus on the asymptotic complexity of an algorithm by counting the steps that a single core processor would take to execute it. Instead we'll soon be more concerned about the scalability of the algorithm and how well we can increase the performance as we increase the number of cores. This may even lead us to throw away our most efficient algorithms, and switch to less efficient algorithms that scale better. We might even be willing to waste cycles in order to speculatively execute at the algorithm rather than the hardware level. State is the big headache in this parallel world. At the hardware level, main memory doesn't necessarily contain the definitive value corresponding to a particular address. An update to a location might still be held in a CPU's local cache and it might be some time before the value gets propagated. To get the latest value, and the notion of "latest" takes a lot of defining in this world of rapidly mutating state, the CPUs may well need to communicate to decide who has the definitive value of a particular address in order to avoid lost updates. At the user program level, this means programmers will need to lock objects before modifying them, or attempt to avoid the overhead of locking by understanding the memory models at a very deep level. I think it's this need to avoid statefulness that has led to the recent resurgence of interest in functional languages. In the 1980s, functional languages started getting traction when research was carried out into how programs in such languages could be auto-parallelised. Sadly, the impracticality of some of the languages, the overheads of communication during this parallel execution, and rapid improvements in compiler technology on stock hardware meant that the functional languages fell by the wayside. The one thing that these languages were good at was getting rid of implicit state, and this single idea seems like a solution to the problems we are going to face in the coming years. Whether these languages will catch on is hard to predict. The mindset for writing a program in a functional language is really very different from the way that object-oriented problem decomposition happens - one has to focus on the verbs instead of the nouns, which takes some getting used to. There are a number of hybrid functional/object languages that have been becoming more popular in recent times. These half-way houses make it easy to use functional ideas for some parts of the program while still allowing access to the underlying object-focused platform without a great deal of impedance mismatch. One example is F# running on the CLR which, in Visual Studio 2010, has because a first class member of the pack. Inside Visual Studio 2010, the tooling for F# has improved to the point where it is easy to set breakpoints and watch values change while debugging at the source level. In my opinion, it is the tooling support that will enable the widespread adoption of functional languages - without this support, people will put off any transition into the functional world for as long as they possibly can. Without tool support it will make it hard to learn these languages. One tool that doesn't currently support F# is Reflector. The idea of decompiling IL to a functional language is daunting, but F# is potentially so important I couldn't dismiss the idea. As I'm currently developing Reflector 6.5, I thought it wise to take four days just to see how far I could get in doing so, even if it achieved little more than to be clearer on how much was possible, and how long it might take. You can read what happened here, and of the insights it gave us on ways to improve the tool.

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  • Attend Onsite Product Usability Testing or Tour Oracle HQ Usability Labs during Oracle OpenWorld 2014

    - by gaamoth-Oracle
     By Gozel Aamoth, Oracle Applications User Experience Oracle OpenWorld  is the world’s largest business and technology event, featuring thousands of sessions, including keynotes, technical sessions, demos, and hands-on labs. Hundreds of exhibitors will be sharing what they’re bringing to Oracle technology at this year’s conference, held in downtown  San Francisco from Sept. 29-Oct. 2. If you are an Oracle customer or partner planning to attend this  annual event, there are several ways to  meet face-to-face with members of the Oracle Applications  User Experience (UX) team. We’d like  to invite you to sign up for a usability feedback session, or  hop on one of our special chartered buses  to tour Oracle HQ’s usability labs. Here’s more  information about these exclusive events. Onsite product usability testing: Give us your feedback! Product usability testing is in progress at Oracle OpenWorld 2013. The Oracle Applications User Experience team will host an onsite usability lab, where Oracle customers and partners can participate in a usability feedback session, at Oracle OpenWorld 2014. Usability experts, product managers, and user interface designers have teamed up to provide Oracle customers and partners with the opportunity to contribute to and influence application design and direction while test-driving Oracle’s next-generation applications. Your feedback will affect the existing and future usability of Oracle applications, and help us develop applications that are intuitive and easy to use. What will we test? Participants will get a preview of proposed Oracle product designs for Oracle Human Capital Management Cloud and Oracle Sales Cloud, Oracle Fusion applications for Procurement and Supply Chain, Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft applications, Social Relationship Management, BI applications, Fusion Middleware, and more. Who can participate*? Regardless of your current job title, we have a session that might interest you. These one-on-one feedback sessions are popular, and space is very limited, so contact us  today to learn more. Dates: Sept. 29 – Oct. 1, 2014  Location: InterContinental Hotel, San Francisco, CA  Time: Advance sign-up is required for this event. RSVP now. If you have questions about this event, please contact Angela Johnston.  Take a tour of the Oracle HQ Usability Lab during OpenWorld 2014Members of Applications UX team lead Oracle OpenWorld lab tour attendeesto the usability labs at Oracle headquarters in Redwood City, CA. The Applications User Experience team will be offering a limited number of usability lab tours  at Oracle Headquarters in Redwood City, Calif., during Oracle OpenWorld 2014. Come take a look behind the scenes of Oracle’s research and development work on Thursday, Oct. 2, or Friday, Oct. 3. Receive an exclusive look into how Oracle tests applications designs, and see the direction that Oracle’s enterprise applications are heading, including demos of designs for devices such as the tablet and smartphone. Round-trip transportation will be provided. Pick-up and drop-off is at the InterContinental Hotel in San Francisco, next to Moscone West. Spots are limited, so sign up today! How to reserve your spot To RSVP, sign up here. For additional questions, send an e-mail to Jeannette Chadwick. To learn more about our team’s presence at Oracle OpenWorld this year, please visit our website, UsableApps. *Participation requires that your company or organization has a Customer Participation Confidentiality Agreement (CPCA) on file. If your company or organization does not have a CPCA on file, we will start this process.

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  • Organizational characteristics that impact the selection of Development Methodology concepts applied to a project

    Based on my experience, no one really follows a specific methodology exactly as it is formally designed. In fact, the key concepts of a few methodologies are usually combined to form a hybrid methodology for each project based on the current organizational makeup and the project need/requirements to be accomplished. Organizational characteristics that impact the selection of methodology concepts applied to a project. Prior subject knowledge pertaining to a project can be critical when deciding on what methodology or combination of methodologies to apply to a project. For example, if a project is very straight forward, and the development staff has experience in developing  that are similar, then the waterfall method could possibly be the best choice because little to no research is needed  in order to complete the project tasks and there is very little need for changes to occur.  On the other hand, if the development staff has limited subject knowledge or the requirements/specification of the project could possibly change as the project progresses then the use of spiral, iterative, incremental, agile, or any combination would be preferred. The previous methodologies used by an organization typically do not change much from project to project unless the needs of a project dictate differently. For example, if the waterfall method is the preferred development methodology then most projects will be developed by the waterfall method. Depending on the time allotted to a project each day can impact the selection of a development methodology. In one example, if the staff can only devote a few hours a day to a project then the incremental methodology might be ideal because modules can be added to the final project as they are developed. On the other hand, if daily time allocation is not an issue, then a multitude of methodologies could work well for a project. Project characteristics that impact the selection of methodology concepts applied to a project. The type of project being developed can often dictate the type of methodology used for the project. Based on my experience, projects that tend to have a lot of user interaction, follow a more iterative, incremental, or agile approach typically using a prototype that develops into a final project. These methodologies desire back and forth communication between users, clients, and developers to allow for requirements to change and functionality to be enhanced. Conversely, limited interaction applications or automated services can still sometimes get away with using the waterfall or transactional approach. The timeline of a project can also force an organization to prefer a particular methodology over the rest. For instance, if the project must be completed within 24 hours, then there is very little time for discussions back and forth between clients, users and the development team. In this scenario, the waterfall method would be perfect because the only interaction with the client occurs prior to a development project to outline the system requirements, and the development team can quickly move through the software development stages in order to complete the project within the deadline. If the team had more time, then the other methodologies could also be considered because there is more time for client and users to review the project and make changes as they see fit, and/or allow for more time to review the project in order to enhance the business performance and functionality. Sometimes the client and or user involvement can dictate the selection of methodologies applied to a project. One example of this is if a client is highly motivated to get a project completed and desires to play an active part in the development process then the agile development approach would work perfectly with this client because it allows for frequent interaction between clients, users and the development team. The inverse of this situation is a client that just wants to provide the project requirements and only wants to get involved when the project is to be delivered. In this case the waterfall method would work well because there is no room for changes and no back and forth between the users, clients or the development team.

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  • Are there too many qualified software development engineers chasing too few jobs?

    - by T Gregory
    I am trying to write this question in a non-argumentative way, but it is quite emotionally charged for some, so please bear with me. In the U.S., we hear constantly from CEOs that they cannot find enough qualified software engineers. In fact, it is the position of the U.S. government that demand for software engineering talent outpaces supply. This position can be clearly seen in the granting of tens of thousands of H1B visas, but also in the following excerpt from the official 2010-11 Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook: Employment of computer software engineers is expected to increase by 32 percent from 2008-2018, which is much faster than the average for all occupations. In addition, this occupation will see a large number of new jobs, with more than 295,000 created between 2008 and 2018. Demand for computer software engineers will increase as computer networking continues to grow. For example, expanding Internet technologies have spurred demand for computer software engineers who can develop Internet, intranet, and World Wide Web applications. Likewise, electronic data-processing systems in business, telecommunications, healthcare, government, and other settings continue to become more sophisticated and complex. Implementing, safeguarding, and updating computer systems and resolving problems will fuel the demand for growing numbers of systems software engineers. New growth areas will also continue to arise from rapidly evolving technologies. The increasing uses of the Internet, the proliferation of Web sites, and mobile technology such as the wireless Internet have created a demand for a wide variety of new products. As more software is offered over the Internet, and as businesses demand customized software to meet their specific needs, applications and systems software engineers will be needed in greater numbers. In addition, the growing use of handheld computers will create demand for new mobile applications and software systems. As these devices become a larger part of the business environment, it will be necessary to integrate current computer systems with this new, more mobile technology. However, from the the employee side of the equation, we often hear the opposite. Many of the stories of SDEs with graduate degrees and decades of experience on the unemployment line, or the big tech interview war stories, are anecdotal, for sure. But, there is one piece of data that is neither anecdotal nor transitory, and that is the aggregate decisions of millions of undergraduates of what degree to pursue. Here, a different picture emerges from the data, and that picture is not good for the software profession. According the most recent Taulbee Survey from Computer Research Association, undergrad degree production in CS and CE has fallen nearly 60% since 2004. (Undergrad enrollments have ticked up in the past two years, but only modestly). Here we see that a basic disconnect between what corporate CEOs and the US government are saying and what potential employees really think about job prospects in software engineering. So my questions are these. Who are we to believe? Is there an acute talent shortage, or is there a long-term structural oversupply in the SDE labor market? Can anyone provide reliable data on long-term unemployment among SDEs? How many are leaving the profession due to lack of work? Real data is most helpful. Thanks.

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