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• Business Insight, IT Execution: 9 Project Management Tips

  - by Sylvie MacKenzie, PMP

  Excerpt from Profit Magazine - by David Rosenbaum When Marcos Baccetto was first asked to be the business-side project lead on Eaton Corporation’s Vehicle Group South America (VGSA) Oracle project, the operations services manager responsible for running manufacturing was, he confesses, “a little afraid” because of his lack of IT experience. Today, Baccetto calls the project “a fantastic experience,” and he is a true believer in the benefits of a close relationship between IT implementers and their line-of-business peers. Through his partnership with Jesiele Lima, then VGSA IT manager, Baccetto and Eaton’s South American operations team came to understand several important principles of business and IT. Here he shares nine tips managers should consider when working on an enterprise technology project. 1. Make it a business project, not an IT project. All levels of functional management must have ownership, responsibility, and accountability for the success of the implementation. 2. Share responsibility. Business owners should sign off on tests and data conversion. 3. Clean your data. Dedicating a team to improve core data quality prior to project launch can be a significant time-saver. 4. Select resources properly. Have functional people who can translate business needs to IT and can influence organizational change. 5. Manage scope. Follow project management methodologies and disciplines. 6. Adopt common processes, global solutions. Avoid customized, local solutions. The big-picture business goals can get lost in the details. 7. Implement processes prior to the go-live date. Change management can be key. Keep the workforce informed and train users in advance. 8. Define metrics milestones. Assume there will be a crisis during deployment. Having baseline metrics to compare against will help implementers keep their cool—and the project moving forward. 9. The sponsor’s commitment is critical. It is needed to support the truly difficult decisions.

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• Do we need to adopt a black-box asset our project is inheriting from its predecessor?

  - by Tom Anderson

  Our client has an eCommerce site which was developed by an in-house team, and is now showing its age. I work for a firm brought in as external contractors to build a replacement. Part of the current site is a Flash viewer applet which displays media about the product - zoom-able images, 360-degree views, movies, and so on. We need to show the same media the current site does, so we are simply reusing the viewer. The viewer is embedded on a page in the usual way, and told what media to show by means of an XML file it loads from our server, which is pretty simple for us to generate. We've got this working; it was pretty straightforward. But what else do we need to do? The thing is, as far as we're concerned, the viewer is a binary blob which is served from the client's content-distribution network. We embed it, feed it some XML, and it does its job, but we have no power over its internals. It's completely opaque to us - a black box. We can use it to do what it does, but we can't change it, so if we ever need to do something different, we're stuffed. We're building this site for the client, and when we're done, we'll hand it over for them to maintain. We won't be doing the maintenance ourselves. There's a small team within the client who are working as part of our team, and who will be the ones doing the maintenance. That team only includes one person from the team that built the old site, and it's not someone who knows the image viewer. The people who do know the image viewer are not slated to join our team when our system replaces theirs - they'll be moved to other projects. The documentation on the viewer is extremely thin, and as far as i know doesn't cover the internals at all. My worry is that if someone doesn't take some positive action, all knowledge of the internal workings of the viewer - even down to where the source code for it is - will be lost. It's possible it already has been. Is this something to worry about? If so, whose job is it to worry about it? What should they do about it once they've got worried?

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• Vostro 3560 Wireless on Ubuntu 12.10

  - by ngille

  I have been using Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS on a Dell Vostro 3560 for some time now. At first I had issues with the wireless but I was pointed to a driver from Ubuntu 11.xx for a Broadcom BCM43142 and that did work! however with the upgrade to 12.10 I find myself at a lost because the driver will not work anymore. When trying to reinstall it I get "Driver of bad quality" I still install it but it just wont work. I cant seem to find anything on this issue for 12.10 and didn't know if anyone had any advice or if someone could point me in the right direction on resources to write my own driver for it. As I know C/C++ but have never written a driver for a Linux machine before. Thanks for any help! To be more clear I installed Ubuntu 12.10 Desktop on my Dell Vostro 3560 laptop. When I log in, my wireless card isn't visible in the Network Manager popup menu, although the wired network shows up there. I installed the driver mentioned below and that did help me on 12.04 but is now broken due to "Poor quality" a sudo lspci -nn command brings up: 00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor DRAM Controller [8086:0154] (rev 09) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0166] (rev 09) 00:14.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family USB xHCI Host Controller [8086:1e31] (rev 04) 00:16.0 Communication controller [0780]: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller #1 [8086:1e3a] (rev 04) 00:1a.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 [8086:1e2d] (rev 04) 00:1b.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller [8086:1e20] (rev 04) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 1 [8086:1e10] (rev c4) 00:1c.1 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 2 [8086:1e12] (rev c4) 00:1c.2 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 3 [8086:1e14] (rev c4) 00:1d.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 [8086:1e26] (rev 04) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge [0601]: Intel Corporation HM77 Express Chipset LPC Controller [8086:1e57] (rev 04) 00:1f.2 SATA controller [0106]: Intel Corporation 7 Series Chipset Family 6-port SATA Controller [AHCI mode] [8086:1e03] (rev 04) 00:1f.3 SMBus [0c05]: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller [8086:1e22] (rev 04) 01:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller [10ec:8168] (rev 07) **02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM43142 802.11b/g/n [14e4:4365] (rev 01)**

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• What to do when opensource project starts to tear apart? (or a manager tries to write code and than shouts at the team)

  - by Kabumbus

  Imagine there is an open source cross-platform project on Google code. It has lots of revisions (1000). It concentrates in itself lots technological stuff - rare stuff - it mixes top tech. It contains server, and more than one client. The project was created by a well-connected team of developers (friends) and a manager that was sponsoring project at its start up during its first few months (project now is more than a year old-sponsoring oss project is a big good deal- also gave the idea of project to developers). The project was growing in complexity and effort reqiered to continue development. Once upon a time a manager - team leader started trying to write code (he was a programmer in some other projects - not the best, but he felt like he was one). He started because one of the developers suggested an idea at the team meeting and he felt he just needed to do it on his own. He failed, and he told the dev team about it. The dev team did what he failed to do in a few days. After that, the manager feels that team codes with out him perfectly and gets the job done in short time. He felt sorry and lost and he started to crash like an old bad PC. Firstly, he started to scream (in forms of messages not in voice) he tried to tell developers that what they were doing was a bad, not-needed thing - developers kindly told him that his "beginnings" were not compilable while dev team product worked as needed. He told the developers that all work they do should be firstly discussed with him. Here is the part where we need to mention that all team members are "project owners" and logically have equal rights. The team leader suggested to the developers these options: change their dev process to go through him, or be moved from project owners to contributers. So what are our options as developers? What arguments we can provide to the team leader/manager for him to calm down? Is it possible to save the project or is it better to fork out now? An important issue is that lately we had no active ticket system, and I personally think that this was the reason the mess appeared. So... any ideas?

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• Learn programming backwards, or "so I failed the FizzBuzz test. Now what?"

  - by moraleida

  A Little Background I'm 28 today, and I've never had any formal training in software development, but I do have two higher education degrees equivalent to a B.A in Public Relations and an Executive MBA focused on Project Management. I've worked on those fields for about 6 years total an then, 2,5 years ago I quit/lost my job and decided to shift directions. After a month thinking things through I decided to start freelancing developing small websites in WordPress. I self-learned my way into it and today I can say I run a humble but successful career developing themes and plugins from scratch for my clients - mostly agencies outsourcing some of their dev work for medium/large websites. But sometimes I just feel that not having studied enough math, or not having a formal understanding of things really holds me behind when I have to compete or work with more experienced developers. I'm constantly looking for ways to learn more but I seem to lack the basics. Unfortunately, spending 4 more years in Computer Science is not an option right now, so I'm trying to learn all I can from books and online resources. This method is never going to have NASA employ me but I really don't care right now. My goal is to first pass the bar and to be able to call myself a real programmer. I'm currently spending my spare time studying Java For Programmers (to get a hold on a language everyone says is difficult/demanding), reading excerpts of Code Complete (to get hold of best practices) and also Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software (to grasp the inner workings of computers). TL;DR So, my current situation is this: I'm basically capable of writing any complete system in PHP (with the help of Google and a few books), integrating Ajax, SQL and whatnot, and maybe a little slower than an experienced dev would expect due to all the research involved. But I was stranded yesterday trying to figure out (not Google) a solution for the FizzBuzz test because I didn't have the if($n1 % $n2 == 0) method modulus operator memorized. What would you suggest as a good way to solve this dilemma? What subjects/books should I study that would get me solving problems faster and maybe more "in a programmers way"? EDIT - Seems that there was some confusion about what did I not know to solve FizzBuzz. Maybe I didn't express myself right: I knew the steps needed to solve the problem. What I didn't memorize was the modulus operator. The problem was in transposing basic math to the program, not in knowing basic math. I took the test for fun, after reading about it on Coding Horror. I just decided it was a good base-comparison line between me and formally-trained devs. I just used this as an example of how not having dealt with math in a computer environment before makes me lose time looking up basic things like modulus operators to be able to solve simple problems.

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• Advice for how to handle company pride

  - by user17971

  We have this "amazing" little product using the latest development methodologies, components with all the bells and whistles. I took over this product maybe 6 months ago and struggled with it from day one. Even though it is supposedly is state of the art because of all its amazing structure, using dependency injections, inversion of control from the unity framework, hibernation and is domain driven in a .net mvvm xaml application to make it streamlined and modular. I knew from the moment I saw the monolith that it was going to be an uphill struggle for me. A lot of little code-bits scattered all around in neatly organized paradigms. Debugging is difficult, tracing the code is difficult, making new code is difficult, although some modifications is surprisinly easy but it doesn't out weight the problems I have with the code by a long shot. When I took over the project I was told that the new management console was ready for delivery and all I had to do was compile it and drop it. This was the beginning of a uphill struggle, our customer didn't agree at all that this was the functionality they had asked for so I had to do modifications to the program to their specifications. Since the project pretty much has been overdue since I took over it it has always been important that we didn't add or change much to the original system. I could modify the existing bits. fast forward until today where I finally completed all their comments and issues with the program but now I think that the users has opened their eyes (even though they saw this program many times) that they will be going backwards with this new system, that it will be much worse than the tool they got today (for a long time due to the fact that I'm the only resource on the project, project manager, tester, developer, integration specialist etc) My problem is that I lost faith in this system quite early due to the nature of the program. Although I made many changes and improvements to the system I wholeheartedly sympathize with the poor users who are going to start using this system. Its not nearly doing all the things it should do. I had this conversation internally with my boss where I told him what I thought about it, that if I were the customer I wouldn't have spent money developing it. So what do I do now? The system in ready, on a staging system and nobody likes it, its too slow and boring and does maybe do 50% of what they need it to do. Despite how much energy and working around the clock I've done to this project: I won't mind scrapping the system but we've spent much money (well my salaries) developing it and my company wants us to be proud of everything we do and advocate it. How will I tackle the contractor when he asks for advice? Surely I can tell him, this is what we agreed upon based on your use case scenarios, and be done with it? How will I inform my boss about this progress? He knows what I feel about it but I always get the feeling he let my criticism pass him by as just hot air, gone tomorrow,.

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• Memories about Tadeusz Golonka

  - by Damian

  Today at 10:55 AM, Tadeusz Golonka - my greatest  Mentor and Teacher  passed away. I had te opportunity to met Tadek in person several times last years. It was always a great experience to see how he shared his energy and passion. I was always impressed and had a lot of new ideas after such meeting or lecture. I can remember the meeting  in early 2009 and his briliant speech he did for us, the MVP community in Poland. We spent two days together and he talked to us all the time. He gave us examples how to share IT passion to other people and how to be better person for others. He was the greates Mentor I have ever met - I realized this during that meeting. My greates dream was and still is to be "like Tadek". Many Times I just went to events to see / hear him on stage ("in action"). I always wanted to have his energy, empathy and passion. Now I have to live without his good words and advices....Let me put here the words that Adam Cogan wrote on Tadek's profile on Facebook. I just can't write about that fatal accident. "The circumstances of Tadeusz Golonka death are too tragic. Tad stood up to offer his seat to an elderly lady, he lost his balance and then he slipped and hit the tram door hard. He then fell out of the tram and hit the metal barriers that separate the tram rails from the street. It was a severe accident...... So horrible.  At first it was a miracle is that he survived... he fought for several days.  My thoughts are with his lovely family. The family have asked for blood donations as a symbolic gift. Tad received a lot of blood.  Thank you Tad, you were a wonderful person. I will remember you as a kind man, a gentleman. "RIP Tadeusz- You will never ever be forgotten. You are with us all the time  

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• How to discriminate from two nodes with identical frequencies in a Huffman's tree?

  - by Omega

  Still on my quest to compress/decompress files with a Java implementation of Huffman's coding (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huffman_coding) for a school assignment. From the Wikipedia page, I quote: Create a leaf node for each symbol and add it to the priority queue. While there is more than one node in the queue: Remove the two nodes of highest priority (lowest probability) from the queue Create a new internal node with these two nodes as children and with probability equal to the sum of the two nodes' probabilities. Add the new node to the queue. The remaining node is the root node and the tree is complete. Now, emphasis: Remove the two nodes of highest priority (lowest probability) from the queue Create a new internal node with these two nodes as children and with probability equal to the sum of the two nodes' probabilities. So I have to take two nodes with the lowest frequency. What if there are multiple nodes with the same low frequency? How do I discriminate which one to use? The reason I ask this is because Wikipedia has this image: And I wanted to see if my Huffman's tree was the same. I created a file with the following content: aaaaeeee nnttmmiihhssfffouxprl And this was the result: Doesn't look so bad. But there clearly are some differences when multiple nodes have the same frequency. My questions are the following: What is Wikipedia's image doing to discriminate the nodes with the same frequency? Is my tree wrong? (Is Wikipedia's image method the one and only answer?) I guess there is one specific and strict way to do this, because for our school assignment, files that have been compressed by my program should be able to be decompressed by other classmate's programs - so there must be a "standard" or "unique" way to do it. But I'm a bit lost with that. My code is rather straightforward. It literally just follows Wikipedia's listed steps. The way my code extracts the two nodes with the lowest frequency from the queue is to iterate all nodes and if the current node has a lower frequency than any of the two "smallest" known nodes so far, then it replaces the highest one. Just like that.

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• ITT Corporation Goes Live on Oracle Sales and Marketing Cloud Service (Fusion CRM)!

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  Back in Q2 of FY12, a division of ITT invited Oracle to demo our CRM On Demand product while the group was considering Salesforce.com. Chris Porter, our Oracle Direct sales representative learned the players and their needs and began to develop relationships. We lost that deal, but not Chris's persistence. A few months passed and Chris called on the ITT Shape Cutting Division's Director of Sales to see how things were going. Chris was told that the plan was for the division to buy more Salesforce.com. In fact, he informed Chris that he had just sent his team to Salesforce.com training. During the conversation, Chris mentioned that our new Oracle Sales Cloud Service could run with Outlook. This caused the ITT Sales Director to reconsider the plan to move forward with our competition. Oracle was invited back to demo the Oracle Sales and Marketing Cloud Service (Fusion CRM) and after it concluded, the Director stated, "That just blew your competition away." The deal closed on June 5th , 2012 Our Oracle Platinum Partner, Intelenex, began the implementation with ITT on July 30th. We are happy to report that on September 18th, the ITT Shape Cutting Division successfully went live on Oracle Sales and Marketing Cloud Service (Fusion CRM). About: ITT is a diversified leading manufacturer of highly engineered critical components and customized technology solutions for growing industrial end-markets in energy infrastructure, electronics, aerospace and transportation. Building on its heritage of innovation, ITT partners with its customers to deliver enduring solutions to the key industries that underpin our modern way of life. Founded in 1920, ITT is headquartered in White Plains, NY, with 8,500 employees in more than 30 countries and sales in more than 125 countries. The ITT Shape Cutting Division provides plasma lasers and controls with the Burny, Kaliburn, and AMC brands. Oracle Fusion Products: Oracle Sales and Marketing Cloud Service (Fusion CRM) including: • Fusion CRM Base • Fusion Sales Cloud • Fusion Mobile and Desktop Integration • Automated Forecasting Adoption Model: SaaS Partner: Intelenex Business Drivers: The ITT Shape Cutting Division wanted to: better enable its Sales Force with email and mobile CRM capabilities simplify and automate its complex sales processes centrally manage and maintain customer contact information Why We Won: ITT was impressed with the feature-rich capabilities of Oracle Sales and Marketing Cloud Service (Fusion CRM), including sales performance management and integration. The company also liked the product's flexibility and scalability for future growth. Expected Benefits: Streamlined accurate forecasting Increased customer manageability Improved sales performance Better visibility to customer information

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• Exalogic 2.0.1 Tea Break Snippets - Creating and using Distribution Groups

  - by The Old Toxophilist

  By default running your Exalogic in a Virtual provides you with, what to Cloud Users, is a single large resource and they can just create vServers and not care about how they are laid down on the the underlying infrastructure. All the Cloud Users will know is that they can create vServers. For example if we have a Quarter Rack (8 Nodes) and our Cloud User creates 8 vServers those 8 vServers may run on 8 distinct nodes or may all run on the same node. Although in many cases we, as Cloud Users, may not be to worried how the Virtualisation Algorithm decides where to place our vServers there are cases where it is extremely important that vServers run on distinct physical compute nodes. For example if we have a Weblogic Cluster we will want the Servers with in the cluster to run on distinct physical node to cover for the situation where one physical node is lost. To achieve this the Exalogic Virtualised implementation provides Distribution Groups that define and anti-aliasing policy that the underlying Virtualisation Algorithm will take into account when placing vServers. It should be noted that Distribution Groups must be created before you create vServers because a vServer can only be added to a Distribution Group at creation time. Creating A Distribution Group To create a Distribution Groups we will first need to select the Account in which we want the Distribution Group to be created. Once we have selected the account we will see the Interface update and Account specific Actions will be displayed within the Action Panes. From the Action pane (or Right-Click on the Account) select the "Create Distribution Group" action. This will initiate the create wizard as follows. Distribution Group Details Within the first Step of the Wizard we can specify the name of the distribution group and this should be unique. In addition we can provide a detailed description of the group. Distribution Group Configuration The second step of the configuration wizard allows you to specify the number of elements that are required within this group and will specify a maximum of the number of nodes within you Exalogic. At this point it is always better to specify a group with spare capacity allowing for future expansion. As vServers are added to group the available slots decrease. Summary Finally the last step of the wizard display a summary of the information entered.

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• 5 ways to stop code thrashing&hellip;

  - by MarkPearl

  A few days ago I was programming on a personal project and hit a roadblock. I was applying the MVVM pattern and for some reason my view model was not updating the view when the state changed??? I had applied this pattern many times before and had never had this problem. It just didn’t make sense. So what did I do… I did what anyone would have done in my situation and looked to pass the blame to someone or something else. I tried to blame one of the inherited base classes, but it looked fine, then to Visual Studio, but it seemed to be fine and eventually to any random segment of code I came across. My elementary problem had now mushroomed into one that had lost any logical basis and I was in thrashing mode! So what to do when you begin to thrash? 1) Do a general code cleanup – Now there is a difference between cleaning code and changing code . When you thrash you change code and you want to avoid this. What you really want to do is things like rename variables to have better meaning and go over your comments. 2) Do a proof of concept – if cleaning code doesn’t help. The  you want to isolate the problem and identify the key concepts. When you isolate code you ideally want it to be in a totally separate project with as little complexity as possible. Make the building blocks and try and replicate the functionality that you are getting in your current application. 3) Phone a friend – I have found speaking to someone else about the problem generally helps me solve any thrashing issues I am having. Usually they don’t even have to say anything to solve the problem, just you talking them through the problem helps you get clarity of mind. 4) Let the dust settle – Sometimes time is the best solution. I have had a few problems that no matter who I discussed them with and no matter how much code cleaning I had done I just couldn’t seem to fix it. My brain just seemed to be going in circles. A good nights rest has always helped and often just the break away from the problem has helped me find a solution. 5) Stack overflow it – So similar to phone a friend. I am really surprised to see what a melting pot stack overflow has been and what a help it has been in solving technology specific problems. Just be considerate to those using the site and explain clearly exactly what problem you are having and the technologies you are using or else you will probably not get any useful help…

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• Java JRE 1.6.0_37 Certified with Oracle E-Business Suite

  - by Steven Chan (Oracle Development)

  My apologies: this certification announcement got lost in the OpenWorld maelstorm.  Better late than never. The section below entitled, "All JRE 1.6 releases are certified with EBS upon release" should obviate the need for these announcements, but I know that people have gotten used to seeing these certifications referenced explicitly.  The latest Java Runtime Environment 1.6.0_37 (a.k.a. JRE 6u37-b06) is now certified with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i and 12 desktop clients.   What's new in Java 1.6.0_37?See the 1.6.0_37 Update Release Notes for details about what has changed in this release.  This release is available for download from the usual Sun channels and through the 'Java Automatic Update' mechanism. 32-bit and 64-bit versions certified This certification includes both the 32-bit and 64-bit JRE versions. 32-bit JREs are certified on: Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Service Pack 2 (SP2) Windows 7 and Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) 64-bit JREs are certified only on 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1). Worried about the 'mismanaged session cookie' issue? No need to worry -- it's fixed.  To recap: JRE releases 1.6.0_18 through 1.6.0_22 had issues with mismanaging session cookies that affected some users in some circumstances. The fix for those issues was first included in JRE 1.6.0_23. These fixes will carry forward and continue to be fixed in all future JRE releases.  In other words, if you wish to avoid the mismanaged session cookie issue, you should apply any release after JRE 1.6.0_22.All JRE 1.6 releases are certified with EBS upon release Our standard policy is that all E-Business Suite customers can apply all JRE updates to end-user desktops from JRE 1.6.0_03 and later updates on the 1.6 codeline.  We test all new JRE 1.6 releases in parallel with the JRE development process, so all new JRE 1.6 releases are considered certified with the E-Business Suite on the same day that they're released by our Java team.  You do not need to wait for a certification announcement before applying new JRE 1.6 releases to your EBS users' desktops. Important For important guidance about the impact of the JRE Auto Update feature on JRE 1.6 desktops, see: Planning Bulletin for JRE 7: What EBS Customers Can Do Today References Recommended Browsers for Oracle Applications 11i (Metalink Note 285218.1) Upgrading Sun JRE (Native Plug-in) with Oracle Applications 11i for Windows Clients (Metalink Note 290807.1) Recommended Browsers for Oracle Applications 12 (MetaLink Note 389422.1) Upgrading JRE Plugin with Oracle Applications R12 (MetaLink Note 393931.1) Related Articles Mismanaged Session Cookie Issue Fixed for EBS in JRE 1.6.0_23 Roundup: Oracle JInitiator 1.3 Desupported for EBS Customers in July 2009

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• Nvidia GT218 repository drivers don't work

  - by user1042840

  I upgraded all packages with sudo apt-get upgrade command on my Ubuntu 10.04 box and I have Ubuntu 12.04 3.2.0-29-generic-pae now. I have two monitors and the following GPU: 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GT218 [NVS 300] (rev a2) After upgrading to 12.04, I somehow lost my previous setup with one common workspace stretched across two monitors. When Ubuntu starts only one monitor is on. I can see the message on the active monitor: Not optimum mode. Recommended mode: 1680x1050 60Hz I used Nvidia proprietary drivers on 10.04 but now jockey-text --list shows: xorg:nvidia_current - NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (Proprietary, Disabled, Not in use) xorg:nvidia_current_updates - NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (post-release updates) (Proprietary, Enabled, Not in use) When I run sudo nvidia-settings it says You do not appear to be using the NVIDIA X driver. Please edit your X configuration file (just run `nvidia-xconfig` as root), and restart the X server.' I typed nvidia-xconfig and rebooted, but jockey-text --list says the same after the reboot: Not in use. The same with nvidia-current - Enabled but Not in use. I also tried nvidia-173 but I ended up in tty immediately at startup so I removed it. I used to have some problems with Nvidia proprietary drivers on 10.04, I had to put paths to EDID files in /etc/X11/xorg.conf explicitly, but the resolution was as recommended and both monitors were working. If I understand correctly, nouveau drivers are used now by default because the resolution is still quite high, definitely not 800x600, xrandr showed: xrandr: Failed to get size of gamma for output default Screen 0: minimum 320 x 400, current 1600 x 1200, maximum 1600 x 1200 default connected 1600x1200+0+0 0mm x 0mm 1600x1200 66.0* 1280x1024 76.0 1024x768 76.0 800x600 73.0 640x480 73.0 640x400 0.0 320x400 0.0 1680x1050_60.00 (0x4f) 146.2MHz h: width 1680 start 1784 end 1960 total 2240 skew 0 clock 65.3KHz v: height 1050 start 1053 end 1059 total 1089 clock 60.0Hz However, colors seem a bit faded and blurry with nouveau drivers. Mouse cursor is invisible if it's placed inside Firefox window, and only one monitor is working. I like open source and if it's possible I'd prefer to use nouveau drivers but a few things should be fixed. I'm curious why nvidia-current drivers from the repository don't work now. I read it has something to do with the new X11 server in Ubuntu 12.04, is it true? How can I get it back to work?

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• Why does my ID3DXSprite appear to be incorrectly scaled?

  - by Bjoern

  I am using D3D9 for rendering some simple things (a movie) as the backmost layer, then on top of that some text messages, and now wanted to add some buttons to that. Before adding the buttons everything seemed to have worked fine, and I was using a ID3DXSprite for the text as well (ID3DXFont), now I am loading some graphics for the buttons, but they seem to be scaled to something like 1.2 times their original size. In my test window I centered the graphic, but it being too big it just doesnt fit well, for example the client area is 640x360, the graphic is 440, so I expect 100 pixel on left and right, left side is fine [I took screenshot and "counted" the pixels in photoshop], but on the right there is only about 20 pixels) My rendering code is very simple (I am omitting error checks, et cetera, for brevity) // initially viewport was set to width/height of client area // clear device m_d3dDevice->Clear( 0, NULL, D3DCLEAR_TARGET|D3DCLEAR_STENCIL|D3DCLEAR_ZBUFFER, D3DCOLOR_ARGB(0,0,0,0), 1.0f, 0 ); // begin scene m_d3dDevice->BeginScene(); // render movie surface (just two triangles to which the movie is rendered) m_d3dDevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_ALPHABLENDENABLE,false); m_d3dDevice->SetSamplerState( 0, D3DSAMP_MAGFILTER, D3DTEXF_LINEAR ); // bilinear filtering m_d3dDevice->SetSamplerState( 0, D3DSAMP_MINFILTER, D3DTEXF_LINEAR ); // bilinear filtering m_d3dDevice->SetTextureStageState( 0, D3DTSS_COLORARG1, D3DTA_TEXTURE ); m_d3dDevice->SetTextureStageState( 0, D3DTSS_COLORARG2, D3DTA_DIFFUSE ); //Ignored m_d3dDevice->SetTextureStageState( 0, D3DTSS_COLOROP, D3DTOP_SELECTARG1 ); m_d3dDevice->SetTexture( 0, m_movieTexture ); m_d3dDevice->SetStreamSource(0, m_displayPlaneVertexBuffer, 0, sizeof(Vertex)); m_d3dDevice->SetFVF(Vertex::FVF_Flags); m_d3dDevice->DrawPrimitive(D3DPT_TRIANGLELIST, 0, 2); // render sprites m_sprite->Begin(D3DXSPRITE_ALPHABLEND | D3DXSPRITE_SORT_TEXTURE | D3DXSPRITE_DO_NOT_ADDREF_TEXTURE); // text drop shadow m_font->DrawText( m_playerSprite, m_currentMessage.c_str(), m_currentMessage.size(), &m_playerFontRectDropShadow, DT_RIGHT|DT_TOP|DT_NOCLIP, m_playerFontColorDropShadow ); // text m_font->DrawText( m_playerSprite, m_currentMessage.c_str(), m_currentMessage.size(), &m_playerFontRect, DT_RIGHT|DT_TOP|DT_NOCLIP, m_playerFontColorMessage ) ); // control object m_sprite->Draw( m_texture, 0, 0, &m_vecPos, 0xFFFFFFFF ); // draws a few objects like this m_sprite->End() // end scene m_d3dDevice->EndScene(); What did I forget to do here? Except for the control objects (play button, pause button etc which are placed on a "panel" which is about 440 pixels wide) everything seems fine, the objects are positioned where I expect them, but just too big. By the way I loaded the images using D3DXCreateTextureFromFileEx (resizing wnidow, and reacting to lost device, etc, works fine too). For experimenting, I added some code to take an identity matrix and scale is down on the x/y axis to 0.75f, which then gave me the expected result for the controls (but also made the text smaller and out of position), but I don't know why I would need to scale anything. My rendering code is so simple, I just wanted to draw my 2D objects 1;1 the size they came from the file... I am really very inexperienced in D3D, so the answer might be very simple...

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• JSR 355 Final Release, and moves JCP to version 2.9

  - by heathervc

  JSR 355, JCP EC Merge, passed the JCP EC Final Approval Ballot on 13 August 2012, with 14 Yes votes, 1 abstain (1 member did not vote) on the SE/EE EC, and 12 yes votes (2 members were not eligible to vote) on the ME EC.  JSR 355 posted a Final Release this week, moving the JCP program version to JCP 2.9.  The transition to a merged EC will happen after the 2012 EC Elections, as defined in the Appendix B of the JCP (pasted below), and the EC will operate under the new EC Standing Rules. In the previous version (2.8) of this Process Document there were two separate Executive Committees, one for Java ME and one for Java SE and Java EE combined. The single Executive Committee described in this version of the Process Document will be implemented through the following process: The 2012 annual elections will be held as defined in JCP 2.8, but candidates will be informed that if they are elected their term will be for only a single year, since all candidates must stand for re-election in 2013. Immediately after the 2012 election the two ECs will be merged. Oracle and IBM's second seats will be eliminated, resulting in a single EC with 30 members. All subsequent JSR ballots (even for in-progress JSRs) will then be voted on by the merged EC. For the 2013 annual elections three Ratified and two Elected Seats will be eliminated, thereby reducing the EC to 25 members. All 25 seats will be up for re-election in 2013. Members elected in 2013 will be ranked to determine whether their initial term will be one or two years. The 50% of Ratified and 50% of Elected members who receive the most votes will serve an initial two-year term, while all others will serve an initial one year term. All members elected in 2014 and subsequently will serve a two-year term. For clarity, note that the provisions specified in this version of the Process Document regarding a merged EC will apply to subsequent ballots on all existing JSRs, whether or not the Spec Leads of those JSRs chose to adopt this version of the Process Document in its entirety. <end of Appendix> Also of note:  the materials and minutes from the July EC meeting and the June EC Meeting are now available--following the July EC Meeting, Samsung and SK Telecom lost their EC seats. The June EC meeting also had a public portion--the audio from the public portion of the EC meeting are now posted online.  For Spec Leads there is also the recording of the EG Nominations call.

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• Some Problems Can't Be Outsourced

  - by mikef

  More and more companies are becoming attracted to the idea of Infrastructure as a Service (or IaaS). It would seem that you can outsource the provisioning and management of your services, encompassing everything from Email, through to your servers, workstations and software, all the way down to your LAN and internet services. This type of outsourcing can be a very attractive option for companies who have tight budgets who are short of technical skills or don't have the means to provide long-term IT support. Essentially, they can outsource your services at low short-term costs that are knowable and controllable, are quickly and easily scalable, and generate a minimum of hassle for your internal staff. If you want to get a sophisticated IT infrastructure set up in a hurry without the usual high buy-in costs, or the task of finding and hiring the right specialists. It would seem the way to go, particularly when their salesmen are hypnotizing you with oleaginous phrases such as "we are closely aligned with our client organization's core business requirements, providing agile services". It sounds too good to be true, and so it is. Whereas the costs will have initially been calculated on the annual renewal fees and service fees for ongoing support, there are other charges too which aren't so obvious. It can end up costing far more than the conventional solution once you take into account the extra costs, the fees for customization and upgrades. The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) only becomes apparent when it is too late to extract the company easily from the arrangement. After a few years, these annual fees can add up to more than the initial cost of implementing a traditional in-house system. Worse than that is that you can then lose your power to determine your priorities: When you become reliant on this company, with its own schedule of priorities, to implement every change, however simple, you have effectively lost control of your technical infrastructure. This will make senior management very nervous. There is definitely a requirement for this sort of service. If you urgently need an exceptionally high class of service or more expertise than you currently possess, then outsourcing is probably for you. You and your IT colleagues will always have something to do, be it user assistance, smoothing out integrations with an external provider, or working on something entirely new. Heck, if you outsource to IBM, the SysAdmins can go along for the ride and polish their expertise. What you need to figure out is how much your time is worth, because time is ultimately all that outsourcing will buy you and your organization. Now you just need to convince your nervous CEO. Cheers, Michael

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• Avoiding the Black Hole of Leads

  - by Charles Knapp

  Sales says, "Marketing doesn’t deliver enough qualified leads. So, we generate 90% of our own leads." Meanwhile, Marketing says, "We generate most of the leads. But, Sales doesn’t contact them quickly enough, while the lead is still interested." According to Sirius Decisions: Up to 90% of leads never make it to closure Sales works on only 11% of the leads supplied by Marketing Only 18% of the leads Sales accepts convert to opportunities Yet, 45% of prospects typically buy a product from someone within 12 months The root cause of these commonplace complaints is a disconnect between the funnels of marketing and sales. Unfortunately, we often see companies with an assortment of poorly integrated marketing tools. It takes too long and too many people to move the data around, scrub it, upload it from one system to another, and get it routed to the right sales teams. As a result, leads fall through the cracks, contextual information is lost, and by the time sales actually contacts a customer it may be too late. Sales automation alone is not enough. Marketing automation (including social) is not enough. Sales and Marketing must work together. It’s time to connect the silos of marketing and sales pipelines and analytics. It’s time for integrated Sales and Marketing automation. Integrated pipelines improve lead quality and timeliness. Marketing systems can track a rich set of contextual information about a prospect–self-disclosed information about interests, content viewed, and so on. This insight can equip the sales rep with rich information to make a face-to-face conversation more relevant and more likely to convert to the next stage in the sales process. Integrated lead to revenue (LTR) management provides end-to-end visibility, enabling the company to measure what is working. Marketing can measure its impact on revenue and other business outcomes, and sales can harness and redirect marketing investments to areas where they most help achieve sales objectives. It’s a win-win play. Marketing delivers more leads that are qualified, cuts cost per lead, and demonstrates a strong Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI). Sales spends more time with warm leads and less time on cold calls, achieves higher close rates, and delivers more revenue. Learn more by attending our Integrated Sales and Marketing session at the upcoming CloudWorld conferences. Or, visit our Sales and Marketing Cloud Service site for videos and other learning resources.

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• Can a 10-bit monitor connection preserve all tones in 8-bit sRGB gradients on a wide-gamut monitor?

  - by hjb981

  This question is about color management and the use of a higher color depth, 10 bits per channel (30 bits in total, resulting in 1.07 billion colors, or 1024 shades of gray, sometimes referred to as "deep color") compared to the standard of 8 bits per channel (24 bits in total, 16.7 million colors, 256 shades of gray, sometimes referred to as "true color"). Do not confuse with "32 bit color", which usually refers to standard 8 bit color with an extra channel ("alpha channel") for transparency (used to achieve effects like semi-transparent windows etc). The following can be assumed to be in place: 1: A wide-gamut monitor that supports 10-bit input. Further, it can be assumed that the monitor has been calibrated to its native gamut and that an ICC color profile has been created. 2: A graphics card that supports 10-bit output (and is connected to the monitor via DisplayPort). 3: Drivers for the graphics card that support 10-bit output. If applications that support 10-bit output and color profiles would be used, I would expect them to display images that were saved using different color spaces correctly. For example, both an sRGB and an adobeRGB image should be displayed correctly. If an sRGB image was saved using 8 bits per channel (almost always the case), then the 10-bit signal path would ensure that no tonal gradients were lost in the conversion from the sRGB of the image to the native color space of the monitor. For example: If the image contains a pixel that is pure red in 8 bits (255,0,0), the corresponding value in 10 bits would be (1023,0,0). However, since the monitor has a larger color space than sRGB, sending the signal (1023,0,0) to the monitor would result in a red that was too saturated. Therefore, according to the ICC color profile, the signal would be transformed into a different value with less red saturation, for example (987,0,0). Since there are still plenty of levels left between 0 and 987, all 256 values (0-255) for red in the sRGB color space of the file could be uniquely mapped to color-corrected 10-bit values in the monitor's native color space. However, if the conversion was done in 8 bits, (255,0,0) would be translated to (246,0,0), and there would now only be 247 available levels for the red channel instead of 256, degrading the displayed image quality. My question is: how does this work on Ubuntu? Let's say that I use Firefox (which is color-aware and uses ICC color profiles). Would I get 10-bit processing, thus preserving all levels of an 8-bit picture? What is the situation like for other applications, especially photo applications like Shotwell, Rawtherapee, Darktable, RawStudio, Photivo etc? Does Ubuntu differ from other operating systems (Linux and others) on this point?

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• Got Samba, Got PyNeighbourhood but still no connection. What else do I need?

  - by Frank A

  I am sure I had already hit post before but then could only find it by backing through browser. Was it deleted? is the question too dumb, sorry that I do not know the right jargon just trying to get answers to my problem anyway have reworded stuff a bit This seems to be a number one requirement for lots of people and 2 months on from setting up my Ubuntu pc, I am still unable to get a lasting connection in either direction. Adding a windows pc to a network is so easy... just a few clicks and get on with using it all. Using all command approaches and modifying configuration files is hardly user friendly. Googling brings up thousands of solutions but mostly they are too techy or assume the user is fully aware of how to use Linux. I do realise that their must be a lot of flavours for connecting to networks. So far I have installed Samba and fiddled with its config file. The day I did all that it worked from XP to Ubuntu. When I came back two days later to transfer my data over it would not connect. Although the the share does show up in Windows (XP) My Network Places. Today I installed PyNeighbourhood and this shows the Ubuntu box and all of the shares I had created at some point on Ubuntu and it even shows this under the XP workgroup name. But instructions on setting the connection up seem to relate to an earlier version and nothing seems to work there either. (I unshared most of those test folders but they still show up her but that is another question. When I click on mount- I can only click on one on the Ubuntu machine, there is one with no name so I assume this to be my attempt to add one XP Shared drive using ipaddress, I get errors. (gksu:9767): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "pixmap", (gksu:9767): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "pixmap", (gksu:9767): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "pixmap", (gksu:9767): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "pixmap", mount error(6): No such device or address Refer to the mount.cifs(8) manual page (e.g. man mount.cifs) OK tried to find the manual referred to... only an old comment that manual would be produced for future versions. I saw in another thread that Winbind is needed as well or at least I assume as well? Totally lost again? Please help, what else needs to be installed to connect to win pcs on the network.

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• The partition table is corrupt

  - by Tim

  I have a corrupt the partition table on the laptop that is running Ubunutu 10.4. Before the partition table was corrupt I had the following partitions: 2 primary partitions: 1st - NTFS 2nd - Extended 4 logical partitons that are built within 2nd extended: 1st NTFS (68 Gib) 2nd Linux (19 Gib) 3rd Swap (1.4 Gib) 4th Linux (24 Gib) The physical order of these partitions was the following: ( 4th Linux ) - ( 1st NTFS ) - ( 2nd Linux ) - ( 3rd Swap ) The logical order of the partition was different: ( 1st NTFS ) - ( 2nd Linux ) - ( 3rd Swap ) ( 4th Linux ) NTFS partition was big and it resided between 2 Linux partitions, neither of these partitions had enough space to install Oracle 11g. Therefore, I decided to a) either move the NTFS partion to the left or b) remove it completely and extend partition where Linux resides. As I tool I have chosen GParted. But unfortunately it was not able to move the partition because he found that in NTFS partition there are some blocks that are referenced multiple times. Also it was not able to remove the partition neither, because in this case the partitions that follow it ( 2nd Linux ) - ( 3rd Swap ) have to be in his opinion also removed, because the organization of extended partition is a linked list. Since GParted was not able to do such thing I was trying to find another tool. I found diskdrake tool on PSLinuxOS distribution of linux. That tool silently deleted ( 1st NTFS ) partition and I thought that everything was fine. But diskdrake has damaged the partition in a way that I am not able either to boot from the hard disk nor to see the partitions with GParted and even with diskdrake itself! Fortunately I have a live CD of Ubuntu 8.10 and I am able to boot and see hard disk. I have 2 ideas how I can solve the problem: 1) Manually change disk partitions and point them to the correct partitions. 2) Create partition table with GParted that as much as possible is the same with the previous one I find the 2nd approach less time consuming but some data will be lost because of it is not possible to place borders of the partitions exactly how it was before. And moreover I am not sure if such approach would work, for example, if the OS is able to locate files after repartitioning. I feel like that it will but not 100% sure. Are there some ideas how the problem may be solved?

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• Link instead of Attaching

  - by Daniel Moth

  With email storage not being an issue in many companies (I think I currently have 25GB of storage on my email account, I don’t even think about storage), this encourages bad behaviors such as liberally attaching office documents to emails instead of sharing a link to the document in SharePoint or SkyDrive or some file share etc. Attaching a file admittedly has its usage scenarios too, but it should not be the default. I thought I'd list the reasons why sharing a link can be better than attaching files directly. In no particular order: Better Review. It allows multiple recipients to review the file and their comments are aggregated into a single document. The alternative is everyone having to detach the document, add their comments, then send back to you, and then you have to collate. Wirth the alternative, you also potentially miss out on recipients reading comments from other recipients. Always up to date. The attachment becomes a fork instead of an always up to date document. For example, you send the email on Thursday, I only open it on Tuesday: between those days you could have made updates that now I am missing because you decided to share a link instead of an attachment. Better bookmarking. When I need to find that document you shared, you are forcing me to search through my email (I may not even be running outlook), instead of opening the link which I have bookmarked in my browser or my collection of links in my OneNote or from the recent/pinned links of the office app on my task bar, etc. Can control access. If someone accidentally or naively forwards your link to someone outside your group/org who you’d prefer not to have access to it, the location of the document can be protected with specific access control. Can add more recipients. If someone adds people to the email thread in outlook, your attachment doesn't get re-attached - instead, the person added is left without the attachment unless someone remembers to re-attach it. If it was a link, they are immediately caught up without further actions. Enable Discovery. If you put it on a share, I may be able to discover other cool stuff that lives alongside that document. Save on storage. So this doesn't apply to me given my opening statement, but if in your company you do have such limitations, attaching files eats up storage on all recipients accounts and will also get "lost" when those people archive email (and lose completely at some point if they follow the company retention policy). Like I said, attachments do have their place, but they should be an explicit choice for explicit reasons rather than the default. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• Legitimate use of the Windows "Documents" folder in programs.

  - by romkyns

  Anyone who likes their Documents folder to contain only things they place there knows that the standard Documents folder is completely unsuitable for this task. Every program seems to want to put its settings, data, or something equally irrelevant into the Documents folder, despite the fact that there are folders specifically for this job1. So that this doesn't sound empty, take my personal "Documents" folder as an example. I don't ever use it, in that I never, under any circumstances, save anything into this folder myself. And yet, it contains 46 folders and 3 files at the top level, for a total of 800 files in 500 folders. That's 190 MB of "documents" I didn't create. Obviously any actual documents would immediately get lost in this mess. My question is: can anything be done to improve the situation sufficiently to make "Documents" useful again, say over the next 5 years? Can programmers be somehow educated en-masse not to use it as a dumping ground? Could the OS start reporting some "fake" location hidden under AppData through the existing APIs, while only allowing Explorer and the various Open/Save dialogs to know where the "real" Documents folder resides? Or are any attempts completely futile or even unnecessary? 1For the record, here's a quick summary of the various standard directories that should be used instead of "Documents": RoamingAppData for user-specific data and settings. This is the directory to use for user-specific non-temporary data. Anything placed here will be available on any machine that a given user logs on to in networks where this is configured. Do not place large files here though, because they slow down login/logout in such environments. LocalAppData for user-and-machine-specific data and settings. This data differs for every user and every machine. This is also where very large user-specific data should be placed. ProgramData for machine-specific data and settings. These are the same regardless of which user is logged on, and will not roam to other machines in a network. GetTempPath for all files that may be wiped without loss of data when not in use. This is also the place for things like caches, because like temporary data, a cache does not need to be backed up. Place your huge cache here and you'll save your user some backup trouble. "Documents" itself should only ever be used if the user specified it manually by entering a path or selecting it in a Save dialog. That is the only time it is ever appropriate to save stuff in "Documents".

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• Pixels - A cry for some insight

  - by CarrotFile

  I'm pretty new to web developing and I'd love some clarification. Although reading more than one book on the topic, I cannot seem to wrap my head around the pixel concept. I encounter problems with this issue when trying to use CSS and pixel units for design that fits different screen sizes. To my understanding a pixel is the most basic unit used by a monitor in order to compose an image on the screen. So if me resolution is 800 by 600, everything on my screen is rendered using those 800*600 basic building blocks. If I were to enlarge my screen resolution, 3 things would accrue: A. The basic image building block(the pixel) would shrink in size B. The pixels would move close together C. Well, more pixels would now be available All these combined lead to a sharper(depending on the viewing distance) and more detail enabling image. Well so far so good. Here is were I start getting lost: To my knowledge a pixel is not a physical, real object. Monitors are not embedded with a few thousand pixels. I am drawn to this conclusion because anyone can change his screen's resolution, making a pixel on his screen bigger or smaller, and adding or subtracting the amount of total pixels on screen. Adding to that, I have herd that different monitors have different pixel densities. For example Apple's retina monitors. Taking all of the above as my knowledge base, These are my questions: If a pixel has no real world constant size, what does comparing different pixel densities matter? Each screen company can define it's own pixel concept and declare the higher density. What does a bigger pixel density mean? Say we take two screens with the same physical dimensions, but with a different pixel density, am I to assert that the main difference would be the larger density screen being able to display a higher max resolution? Or am I to assert that given the same resolution on both monitors, the higher density one would display a sharper, smaller image? If a pixel is not a fixed size within one monitor, is it a fixed size between the same resolution on two different monitors? For example, would two different monitors, set to the same resolution, be comprised of same size, same quantity pixels? I'd love some help (:

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• Homepage issue on Google [closed]

  - by nico

  We have recently updated our website www.blinds4uk.co.uk with a new homepage containing additional features and more on page content but since then we have lost primary keyword positions and the home page has disappeared completely. The only time it appears is for an exact search ‘blinds4uk’. Today I took snippets of 'unique content' from the homepage and put this into the 'google search' but our homepage was nowhere to be found. When I did the same in ‘Yahoo’ the homepage came up. Are we missing something? We ranked in the top 4 for primary kw terms 'blinds uk' & 'uk blinds' but now we don’t show anywhere for these terms. Our homepage has never ranked well for the primary kw 'blinds' yet our internal pages rank very well with many pages on page 1 of google uk. We employed an SEO firm for 9 months to help us establish issues with the homepage but they never could, so we got rid. We have been trying to get to the root cause of why the homepage ranks so poorly for a number of years and only yesterday we established that we had the meta tag directly below the tag and our title & meta description were further down the page; we have today corrected. Not sure what effect this would have on the way Google reads the homepage but we are trying everything to try and get the homepage ranking fro those primary kw's. Our current developers & ex SEO guys are all part of the same company and cannot pin-point anything other than saying carryon with their SEO team because it will take time but just comes across as a milking exercise. Another thing which I have found very strange is the data from our 'traffic audience'. We are a UK based website yet our traffic stats were showing as;- UK 36.6%, Denmark 35.8% and India 27.6%. – don’t make sense to me! Is there anybody out there that could simply point us in the right direction to the problem(s), so we can fix once and for all? Could there be anything within the code that is causing the home page not to display within google for our primary kw's terms such as blinds, window blinds etc. I would appreciate any advice at all that may help us in our quest to sort this homepage issue once and for all

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• Powerful Lessons in Data from the Presidential Election

  - by Christina McKeon

  Now that we’ve had a few days to recover from the U.S. presidential election, it’s a good time to take a step back from politics and look for the customer experience lessons that we can take away. The most powerful lesson is that when you know more about your base, you will have an advantage over your competition. That advantage will translate into you winning and your competition losing. Michael Scherer of TIME was given access to Obama’s data analysts two days before the election. His account is documented in Inside the Secret World of the Data Crunchers Who Helped Obama Win. What we learned from Scherer’s inside view is how well Obama’s team did in getting the right data, analyzing it, and acting on it. This data team recognized how critical it was to break down data silos within the campaign. As Scherer noted, they created “a single system that merged information from pollsters, fundraisers, field workers, consumer databases, and social-media and mobile contacts with the main Democratic voter files in the swing states.” The Obama analysis was so meticulous that they knew which celebrity and which type of celebrity event would help them maximize campaign contributions. With a single system, their data models became more precise. They determined which messages were more successful with specific demographic groups and that who made the calls mattered. Data analysis also led to many other changes in Obama’s campaign including a new ad buying strategy, using social media and applications to tap into supporters’ friends, and using new social news sites. While we did not have that same inside view into Romney’s campaign, much of the post-mortem coverage indicates that Romney’s team did not have the right analysis. As Peter Hamby of CNN wrote in Analysis: Why Romney Lost, “Romney officials had modeled an electorate that looked something like a mix of 2004 and 2008….” That historical data did not account for the changing demographics in the U.S. Does your organization approach data like the Obama or Romney team? Do you really know your base? How well can you predict what is going to happen in your business? If you haven’t already put together a strategy and plan to know more, this week’s civics lesson is a powerful reason to do it sooner rather than later. Your competitors are probably thinking the same thing that you are!

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