Search Results

Search found 15266 results on 611 pages for 'young people'.

Page 110/611 | < Previous Page | 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117  | Next Page >

  • AutoVue at AIIM expo

    - by warren.baird
    Myself and a few other people from the AutoVue team will be at the #AIIM "info360" conference in Philadelphia next week. If you are attending, let me know, or come by the Oracle booth to say hello!

    Read the article

  • How to Customize Your How-To Geek RSS Feeds (We’re Changing Things)

    - by The Geek
    If you’re an RSS subscriber, you’ll soon notice that we’re making a few changes. Why? It’s time to simplify our system, while providing you a little more control over which articles you want to see. The point, of course, is that people like different things, and that’s OK. What’s not so great is getting complaints—Linux users are always whining about Windows posts, and Windows users are whining when we write Linux posts. It’s also worth pointing out that if you aren’t interested in a post—you don’t have to click on it to read it. This is probably fairly obvious to reasonable people. The New Feeds Here’s the new set of feeds you can subscribe to. We’ll probably add more fine-grained feeds in the future, as we get some more things straightened out. Everything we publish (news, how-tos, features) Just the Feature Articles (the absolute best stuff) Just News (ETC) Posts Just Windows Articles Just Linux Articles Just Apple Articles Just Desktop Fun Articles You can obviously subscribe to one or many of them if you feel like it. The Once Daily Summary Feed! If you’d rather get all your How-To Geek in a single dose each day, you can subscribe to the summary feed, which is pretty much the same as our daily email newsletter. You can subscribe to this summary feed by clicking here. Note: we’re working on a lot of backend changes to hopefully make things a little better for you, the reader. One of the things we’ve consistently had feedback on is the comment system, which we’ll tackle a little later. Also, if you suddenly saw a barrage of posts earlier… oops! Our mistake. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware How to Change the Default Application for Android Tasks Stop Believing TV’s Lies: The Real Truth About "Enhancing" Images The How-To Geek Valentine’s Day Gift Guide CyanogenMod Updates; Rolls out Android 2.3 to the Less Fortunate MyPaint is an Open-Source Graphics App for Digital Painters Can the Birds and Pigs Really Be Friends in the End? [Angry Birds Video] Add the 2D Version of the New Unity Interface to Ubuntu 10.10 and 11.04 MightyMintyBoost Is a 3-in-1 Gadget Charger Watson Ties Against Human Jeopardy Opponents

    Read the article

  • Prioritizing Product Features

    - by Robert May
    A very common task in Agile Environments is prioritization.  Teams that are functioning well will prioritize new features, old features, the backlog, and any other source of stories for the team, and they’ll do it regularly. Not all teams are good at prioritizing according to the real return on investment that building stories will yield to the company.  This is unfortunate.  Too often, teams end up building features that are less valuable, and everyone seems to know it except perhaps the product owner!  Most features built into software are never even used.  Clearly, not much return for features that go unused. So how does a company avoid building features that add little value to the company?  This is a tough question to answer, but usually, this prioritization starts at the top with the executives of the company.  After all, they’re responsible for the overall vision of the company. Here’s what I recommend: Know your market. Know your customers and users. Know where you’re going and what you want to achieve. Implement the Vision Know Your Market We often see companies that don’t know their market.  Personally, I’m surprised by this.  These companies don’t know who their competitors are, don’t know what features make their product desirable in the market, and in many cases, get by with saying, “I’ve been doing this for XX years.  I know what the market wants!”  In many cases, they equate “marketing” with “advertising” and don’t understand the difference. This is almost never true.  Good companies will spend significant amounts of time and money finding out who they’re competing against and what makes their competitors successful in the marketplace.  Good companies understand that marketing involves more than just advertising.  Often, marketing is mostly research and analysis, not sales.  Until you understand your market, you cannot know what features will give you the best return on your investment dollar. Good companies have a marketing department and can answer the next important step which is to know your customers and your users. Know your Customers and Users First, note that I included both customers and users.  They’re often not the same thing.  Users use the product that you build.  Customers buy the product that you build.  It’s a subtle difference, but too often, I’ve seen companies that focus exclusively on one or the other and are not successful simply because they ignore an important part of the group. If your company is doing appropriate marketing, you know that these are two different aspects of your product and that both deserve attention to have a product that is successful in your target market.  Your marketing department should be spending a lot of time understanding these personas and then conveying that information to the company. I’m always surprised when development teams think that they can build a product that people want to use without understanding the users of that product.  Developers think differently than most people in the world.  They know what the computer is doing.  The computer isn’t magic to them.  So when they assume that they know how to build something, they bring with them quite a bit of baggage.  Never assume that you know your customer unless you’re regularly having interaction with them.  Also, don’t just leave this to Marketing or Product Management.  Take them time to get your developers out with the customers as well.  Developers are very smart people, and often, seeing how someone uses their software inspires them to make a much better product. Very often, because the users and customers aren’t know, teams will spend a significant amount of time building apps that are super flexible and configurable so that any possible combination of feature can be used.  This demonstrates a clear lack of understanding of the customer.  Most configuration questions can quickly be answered by talking to the customer.  In most cases, if your software requires significant setup and configuration before its usable, you probably don’t know your customers and users very well. Until you know your customers, you cannot know what features will be most valuable to your customers and you cannot build those features in a way that your customers can use. Know Where You’re Going and What You Want to Achieve Many companies suffer from not having a plan.  Executives will tell the team to make them a plan.  The team, not knowing their market and customers and users, will come up with a plan that doesn’t reflect reality and doesn’t consider ROI.  Management then wonders why the product is doing poorly in the market place. Instead of leaving this up to the teams, as executives, work with Marketing to understand what broad categories of features will sell the most product in the marketplace.  Then, once you’ve determined that, give this vision to the team and let them run with it.  Revise the vision as needed, but avoid changing streams frequently.  Sure, sometimes you need to, but often, executives will change priorities many times a month, leading to nothing more than confusion.  If the team has a vision, they’ll be able to execute that vision far better than they could otherwise. By knowing what products are most important, you can set budgetary goals and guidelines that will help you achieve the vision that was created. Implement the Vision Creating the vision is often where the general executives stop participating in the plan.  The team is responsible for implementing that vision.  Executives should attend showcases and and should remain aware of the progress that the team is making towards meeting the vision, however. Once a broad vision has been created, the team should break that vision down into minimal market features (MMF).  These MMFs should be sized using story points so that, using the team’s velocity, an estimated cost can be determined for each feature.  The product management team should then try to quantify the relative value of the MMFs based on customer feedback and interviews.  Once the value and cost of creating the feature is understood, a return on investment can be calculated.  The features should then be prioritized with the MMF’s that have the highest value and lowest cost rising to the top of features to implement.  Don’t let politics get in the way! Once the MMF’s have been prioritized, they should go through release planning to schedule them for implementation. Conclusion By having a good grasp on the strategy of the company, your Agile teams can be much more effective.  Each and every story the team is implementing will roll up into features that matter to the company and provide ROI to them.  The steps outlined in this post should be repeated on a regular basis.  I recommend reviewing them at least once per quarter to make sure that the vision hasn’t shifted and that the teams are still working on what matters most to the company. Technorati Tags: Agile,Product Owner,ROI

    Read the article

  • South African .Net Bloggers

    - by MarkPearl
    Where would I be without the inspiration of the following South African developers who are constantly contributing to the .NET community. Robert MacClean Hilton Giesenow Rubi Grobler Zayd Kara Zlatan Dzinic Dave Coates As well as the great input we get from the local Microsoft people.

    Read the article

  • Developer’s Life – Attitude and Communication – They Can Cause Problems – Notes from the Field #027

    - by Pinal Dave
    [Note from Pinal]: This is a 27th episode of Notes from the Field series. The biggest challenge for anyone is to understand human nature. We human have so many things on our mind at any moment of time. There are cases when what we say is not what we mean and there are cases where what we mean we do not say. We do say and things as per our mood and our agenda in mind. Sometimes there are incidents when our attitude creates confusion in the communication and we end up creating a situation which is absolutely not warranted. In this episode of the Notes from the Field series database expert Mike Walsh explains a very crucial issue we face in our career, which is not technical but more to relate to human nature. Read on this may be the best blog post you might read in recent times. In this week’s note from the field, I’m taking a slight departure from technical knowledge and concepts explained. We’ll be back to it next week, I’m sure. Pinal wanted us to explain some of the issues we bump into and how we see some of our customers arrive at problem situations and how we have helped get them back on the right track. Often it is a technical problem we are officially solving – but in a lot of cases as a consultant, we are really helping fix some communication difficulties. This is a technical blog post and not an “advice column” in a newspaper – but the longer I am a consultant, the more years I add to my experience in technology the more I learn that the vast majority of the problems we encounter have “soft skills” included in the chain of causes for the issue we are helping overcome. This is not going to be exhaustive but I hope that sharing four pieces of advice inspired by real issues starts a process of searching for places where we can be the cause of these challenges and look at fixing them in ourselves. Or perhaps we can begin looking at resolving them in teams that we manage. I’ll share three statements that I’ve either heard, read or said and talk about some of the communication or attitude challenges highlighted by the statement. 1 – “But that’s the SAN Administrator’s responsibility…” I heard that early on in my consulting career when talking with a customer who had serious corruption and no good recent backups – potentially no good backups at all. The statement doesn’t have to be this one exactly, but the attitude here is an attitude of “my job stops here, and I don’t care about the intent or principle of why I’m here.” It’s also a situation of having the attitude that as long as there is someone else to blame, I’m fine…  You see in this case, the DBA had a suspicion that the backups were not being handled right.  They were the DBA and they knew that they had responsibility to ensure SQL backups were good to go – it’s a basic requirement of a production DBA. In my “As A DBA Where Do I start?!” presentation, I argue that is job #1 of a DBA. But in this case, the thought was that there was someone else to blame. Rather than create extra work and take on responsibility it was decided to just let it be another team’s responsibility. This failed the company, the company’s customers and no one won. As technologists – we should strive to go the extra mile. If there is a lack of clarity around roles and responsibilities and we know it – we should push to get it resolved. Especially as the DBAs who should act as the advocates of the data contained in the databases we are responsible for. 2 – “We’ve always done it this way, it’s never caused a problem before!” Complacency. I have to say that many failures I’ve been paid good money to help recover from would have not happened had it been for an attitude of complacency. If any thoughts like this have entered your mind about your situation you may be suffering from it. If, while reading this, you get this sinking feeling in your stomach about that one thing you know should be fixed but haven’t done it.. Why don’t you stop and go fix it then come back.. “We should have better backups, but we’re on a SAN so we should be fine really.” “Technically speaking that could happen, but what are the chances?” “We’ll just clean that up as a fast follow” ..and so on. In the age of tightening IT budgets, increased expectations of up time, availability and performance there is no room for complacency. Our customers and business units expect – no demand – the best. Complacency says “we will give you second best or hopefully good enough and we accept the risk and know this may hurt us later. Sometimes an organization will opt for “good enough” and I agree with the concept that at times the perfect can be the enemy of the good. But when we make those decisions in a vacuum and are not reporting them up and discussing them as an organization that is different. That is us unilaterally choosing to do something less than the best and purposefully playing a game of chance. 3 – “This device must accept interference from other devices but not create any” I’ve paraphrased this one – but it’s something the Federal Communications Commission – a federal agency in the United States that regulates electronic communication – requires of all manufacturers of any device that could cause or receive interference electronically. I blogged in depth about this here (http://www.straightpathsql.com/archives/2011/07/relationship-advice-from-the-fcc/) so I won’t go into much detail other than to say this… If we all operated more on the premise that we should do our best to not be the cause of conflict, and to be less easily offended and less upset when we perceive offense life would be easier in many areas! This doesn’t always cause the issues we are called in to help out. Not directly. But where we see it is in unhealthy relationships between the various technology teams at a client. We’ll see teams hoarding knowledge, not sharing well with others and almost working against other teams instead of working with them. If you trace these problems back far enough it often stems from someone or some group of people violating this principle from the FCC. To Sum It Up Technology problems are easy to solve. At Linchpin People we help many customers get past the toughest technological challenge – and at the end of the day it is really just a repeatable process of pattern based troubleshooting, logical thinking and starting at the beginning and carefully stepping through to the end. It’s easy at the end of the day. The tough part of what we do as consultants is the people skills. Being able to help get teams working together, being able to help teams take responsibility, to improve team to team communication? That is the difficult part, and we get to use the soft skills on every engagement. Work on professional development (http://professionaldevelopment.sqlpass.org/) and see continuing improvement here, not just with technology. I can teach just about anyone how to be an excellent DBA and performance tuner, but some of these soft skills are much more difficult to teach. If you want to get started with performance analytics and triage of virtualized SQL Servers with the help of experts, read more over at Fix Your SQL Server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: Notes from the Field, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

    Read the article

  • Finalists for the Microsoft Accelerator for Windows Azure

    - by ScottGu
    Today, I am pleased to announce the ten finalists for the Microsoft Accelerator for Windows Azure powered by TechStars. These startups are about to launch into a three-month program where they will develop new products and businesses using Windows Azure. The response to the program has been fantastic - we received nearly 600 applications from entrepreneurs in 69 countries around the world, spanning a host of industries including retail, travel, entertainment, banking, real estate and more.  There were so many innovative ideas and amazing teams that it really made the selection process hard.  We finally landed on 10 finalists, based on their experience, qualifications, and innovative business ideas built on the cloud. This fall’s Windows Azure class includes: Advertory – Berlin, Germany. Advertory helps local businesses increase revenue and build customer loyalty. Appetas – Seattle, WA. Appetas' mission is to make restaurants look as beautiful online as they do on the plate! BagsUp – Sydney, Australia. Find great places from people you trust. Embarke – San Diego, CA. Embarke allows developers and companies the ability to integrate with any human communication channel (Facebook, Email, Text Message, Twitter) without having to learn the specifics, write code, or spend time on any of them. Fanzo – Seattle, WA. Fanzo puts sports fans in the spotlight. Find other fans, show off your fanswagger and get rewarded for your passion. MetricsHub – Bellevue, WA. A service providing cloud monitoring with incident detection and prebuilt workflows for remedying common problems. Mobilligy – Bellevue, WA. Mobilligy revolutionizes how people pay their bills by bringing convenient, secure, and instant bill payment support to mobile devices. Realty Mogul – Los Angeles, CA. Realty Mogul is a crowdfunding platform for real estate where accredited investors pool capital and invest in properties that are acquired, managed and eventually resold by professional private real estate companies and their management teams. Staq – San Francisco, CA. Back-end as a service for APIs. Socedo – Bellevue, WA. A simple and effective web application for lead generation and relationship management on Twitter. Each startup will be hosted in Seattle and mentored by entrepreneurs and venture capitalists as well as leaders from Windows Azure and other Microsoft organizations. The teams will spend the first month ideating and refining their business concepts with input and advice from their mentors as well as Microsoft customers, followed by two months of design and development. They will present their results to investors and Microsoft partners at an event in mid-January. We are really looking forward to seeing how their businesses evolve.  These teams have demonstrated incredible energy, passion, and innovative capabilities – and they are ready to show the world what’s possible with Windows Azure. Thanks, Scott P.S. And if you are new to Twitter you can also optionally follow me: @scottgu

    Read the article

  • Some date math fun

    - by drsql
    Note: This concept presented is pretty simple and I am not claiming that I am the first to do this… so if you were the one who came up with this, let me know and I will give you linkage Today I was needing to get the data for the current month for a query, and it hit me that I really didn’t have a good way to do this.  There were two common methods that people use: WHERE YEAR(MonthColumn) = YEAR(Getdate()) AND MONTH(MonthColumn) = MONTH(Getdate()) But this particular method is pretty horrible...(read more)

    Read the article

  • Some date math fun

    - by drsql
    Note: This concept presented is pretty simple and I am not claiming that I am the first to do this… so if you were the one who came up with this, let me know and I will give you linkage Today I was needing to get the data for the current month for a query, and it hit me that I really didn’t have a good way to do this.  There were two common methods that people use: WHERE YEAR(MonthColumn) = YEAR(Getdate()) AND MONTH(MonthColumn) = MONTH(Getdate()) But this particular method is pretty horrible...(read more)

    Read the article

  • Performance Tuning Tips for Apache

    Apache is one of the most successful open source projects of our times. A big advantage of this popularity is that over the years people have spent a great deal of time fine tuning the software for better performance. Read on to learn more.

    Read the article

  • Open the SQL Server Error Log with PowerShell

    - by BuckWoody
    Using the Server Management Objects (SMO) library, you don’t even need to have the SQL Server 2008 PowerShell Provider to read the SQL Server Error Logs – in fact, you can use regular old everyday PowerShell. Keep in mind you will need the SMO libraries – which can be installed separately or by installing the Client Tools from the SQL Server install media. You could search for errors, store a result as a variable, or act on the returned values in some other way. Replace the Machine Name with your server and Instance Name with your instance, but leave the quotes, to make this work on your system: [reflection.assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.SqlServer.Smo") $machineName = "UNIVAC" $instanceName = "Production" $sqlServer = new-object ("Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.Server") "$machineName\$instanceName" $sqlServer.ReadErrorLog() Want to search for something specific, like the word “Error”? Replace the last line with this: $sqlServer.ReadErrorLog() | where {$_.Text -like "Error*"} Script Disclaimer, for people who need to be told this sort of thing: Never trust any script, including those that you find here, until you understand exactly what it does and how it will act on your systems. Always check the script on a test system or Virtual Machine, not a production system. Yes, there are always multiple ways to do things, and this script may not work in every situation, for everything. It’s just a script, people. All scripts on this site are performed by a professional stunt driver on a closed course. Your mileage may vary. Void where prohibited. Offer good for a limited time only. Keep out of reach of small children. Do not operate heavy machinery while using this script. If you experience blurry vision, indigestion or diarrhea during the operation of this script, see a physician immediately. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

    Read the article

  • Big Data – Buzz Words: What is NoSQL – Day 5 of 21

    - by Pinal Dave
    In yesterday’s blog post we explored the basic architecture of Big Data . In this article we will take a quick look at one of the four most important buzz words which goes around Big Data – NoSQL. What is NoSQL? NoSQL stands for Not Relational SQL or Not Only SQL. Lots of people think that NoSQL means there is No SQL, which is not true – they both sound same but the meaning is totally different. NoSQL does use SQL but it uses more than SQL to achieve its goal. As per Wikipedia’s NoSQL Database Definition – “A NoSQL database provides a mechanism for storage and retrieval of data that uses looser consistency models than traditional relational databases.“ Why use NoSQL? A traditional relation database usually deals with predictable structured data. Whereas as the world has moved forward with unstructured data we often see the limitations of the traditional relational database in dealing with them. For example, nowadays we have data in format of SMS, wave files, photos and video format. It is a bit difficult to manage them by using a traditional relational database. I often see people using BLOB filed to store such a data. BLOB can store the data but when we have to retrieve them or even process them the same BLOB is extremely slow in processing the unstructured data. A NoSQL database is the type of database that can handle unstructured, unorganized and unpredictable data that our business needs it. Along with the support to unstructured data, the other advantage of NoSQL Database is high performance and high availability. Eventual Consistency Additionally to note that NoSQL Database may not provided 100% ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) compliance.  Though, NoSQL Database does not support ACID they provide eventual consistency. That means over the long period of time all updates can be expected to propagate eventually through the system and data will be consistent. Taxonomy Taxonomy is the practice of classification of things or concepts and the principles. The NoSQL taxonomy supports column store, document store, key-value stores, and graph databases. We will discuss the taxonomy in detail in later blog posts. Here are few of the examples of the each of the No SQL Category. Column: Hbase, Cassandra, Accumulo Document: MongoDB, Couchbase, Raven Key-value : Dynamo, Riak, Azure, Redis, Cache, GT.m Graph: Neo4J, Allegro, Virtuoso, Bigdata As of now there are over 150 NoSQL Database and you can read everything about them in this single link. Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will discuss Buzz Word – Hadoop. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

    Read the article

  • ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 11/15/2011

    - by Bob Rhubart
    Java Magazine - November/December 2011 - by and for the Java Community Java Magazine is an essential source of knowledge about Java technology, the Java programming language, and Java-based applications for people who rely on them in their professional careers, or who aspire to. Enterprise 2.0 Conference: November 14-17 | Kellsey Ruppel "Oracle is proud to be a Gold sponsor of the Enterprise 2.0 West Conference, November 14-17, 2011 in Santa Clara, CA. You will see the latest collaboration tools and technologies, and learn from thought leaders in Enterprise 2.0's comprehensive conference." The Return of Oracle Wikis: Bigger and Better | @oracletechnet The Oracle Wikis are back - this time, with Oracle SSO on top and powered by Atlassian's Confluence technology. These wikis offer quite a bit more functionality than the old platform. Cloud Migration Lifecycle | Tom Laszewski Laszewski breaks down the four steps in the Set Up Phase of the Cloud Migration lifecycle. Architecture all day. Oracle Technology Network Architect Day - Phoenix, AZ - Dec14 Spend the day with your peers learning from Oracle experts in engineered systems, cloud computing, Oracle Coherence, Oracle WebLogic, and more. Registration is free, but seating is limited. SOA all the Time; Architects in AZ; Clearing Info Integration Hurdles This week on the Architect Home Page on OTN. Live Webcast: New Innovations in Oracle Linux Date: Tuesday, November 15, 2011 Time: 9:00 AM PT / Noon ET Speakers: Chris Mason, Elena Zannoni. People in glass futures should throw stones | Nicholas Carr "Remember that Microsoft video on our glassy future? Or that one from Corning? Or that one from Toyota?" asks Carr. "What they all suggest, and assume, is that our rich natural 'interface' with the world will steadily wither away as we become more reliant on software mediation." Integration of SABSA Security Architecture Approaches with TOGAF ADM | Jeevak Kasarkod Jeevak Kasarkod's overview of a new paper from the OpenGroup and the SABSA institute "which delves into the incorporatation of risk management and security architecture approaches into a well established enterprise architecture methodology - TOGAF." Cloud Computing at the Tactical Edge | Grace Lewis - SEI Lewis describes the SEI's work with Cloudlets, " lightweight servers running one or more virtual machines (VMs), [that] allow soldiers in the field to offload resource-consumptive and battery-draining computations from their handheld devices to nearby cloudlets." Simplicity Is Good | James Morle "When designing cluster and storage networking for database platforms, keep the architecture simple and avoid the complexities of multi-tier topologies," says Morle. "Complexity is the enemy of availability." Mainframe as the cloud? Tom Laszewski There's nothing new about using the mainframe in the cloud, says Laszewski. Let Devoxx 2011 begin! | The Aquarium The Aquarium marks the kick-off of Devoxx 2011 with "a quick rundown of the Java EE and GlassFish side of things."

    Read the article

  • Using Flash in Your Website Design

    Many people like a wow factor in their website design and something that gives that is flash. Flash is used to created rich internet applications such as animation, video, audio and the interactivity of images.

    Read the article

  • Virtual Brown Bag Recap: FancyHands, CanCan, 1KB XMas Tree, YouTube Yuks

    - by Brian Schroer
    At this week's Virtual Brown Bag meeting: Claudio has some one-month Evernote premium accounts to give away Claudio & George talked about FancyHands, the 4-hour work week, and paying people to do the stuff you don't want to JB shared more Ruby gems: cancan and open and talked about insert and other Ruby Enumerable functions We looked at the winner of the 1KB JavaScript Christmas contest and some fun YouTube videos For detailed notes, links, and the video recording, go to the VBB wiki page: https://sites.google.com/site/vbbwiki/main_page/2010-12-23

    Read the article

  • Defining Discovery: Core Concepts

    - by Joe Lamantia
    Discovery tools have had a referencable working definition since at least 2001, when Ben Shneiderman published 'Inventing Discovery Tools: Combining Information Visualization with Data Mining'.  Dr. Shneiderman suggested the combination of the two distinct fields of data mining and information visualization could manifest as new category of tools for discovery, an understanding that remains essentially unaltered over ten years later.  An industry analyst report titled Visual Discovery Tools: Market Segmentation and Product Positioning from March of this year, for example, reads, "Visual discovery tools are designed for visual data exploration, analysis and lightweight data mining." Tools should follow from the activities people undertake (a foundational tenet of activity centered design), however, and Dr. Shneiderman does not in fact describe or define discovery activity or capability. As I read it, discovery is assumed to be the implied sum of the separate fields of visualization and data mining as they were then understood.  As a working definition that catalyzes a field of product prototyping, it's adequate in the short term.  In the long term, it makes the boundaries of discovery both derived and temporary, and leaves a substantial gap in the landscape of core concepts around discovery, making consensus on the nature of most aspects of discovery difficult or impossible to reach.  I think this definitional gap is a major reason that discovery is still an ambiguous product landscape. To help close that gap, I'm suggesting a few definitions of four core aspects of discovery.  These come out of our sustained research into discovery needs and practices, and have the goal of clarifying the relationship between discvoery and other analytical categories.  They are suggested, but should be internally coherent and consistent.   Discovery activity is: "Purposeful sense making activity that intends to arrive at new insights and understanding through exploration and analysis (and for these we have specific defintions as well) of all types and sources of data." Discovery capability is: "The ability of people and organizations to purposefully realize valuable insights that address the full spectrum of business questions and problems by engaging effectively with all types and sources of data." Discovery tools: "Enhance individual and organizational ability to realize novel insights by augmenting and accelerating human sense making to allow engagement with all types of data at all useful scales." Discovery environments: "Enable organizations to undertake effective discovery efforts for all business purposes and perspectives, in an empirical and cooperative fashion." Note: applicability to a world of Big data is assumed - thus the refs to all scales / types / sources - rather than stated explicitly.  I like that Big Data doesn't have to be written into this core set of definitions, b/c I think it's a transitional label - the new version of Web 2.0 - and goes away over time. References and Resources: Inventing Discovery Tools Visual Discovery Tools: Market Segmentation and Product Positioning Logic versus usage: the case for activity-centered design A Taxonomy of Enterprise Search and Discovery

    Read the article

  • Leaving a SQL Server DBA Job Gracefully

    You’re leaving your current employer for a new opportunity and want to make the move as smooth as possible. You don’t want to burn your bridges and want to make sure that everything you’ve left behind can be managed by the people you’ve left behind or the DBA who is replacing you. So, you’ve done your handover documentation and trained up the new guy. You definitely don’t want to be that DBA who is cursed the week after they leave when their network account is disabled and a bunch of stuff ‘breaks’.

    Read the article

  • User Guide to Dropbox Shared Folders

    - by Matthew Guay
    Dropbox is an incredibly useful tool for keeping all your files synced between your computers and the cloud.  Here we’re going to look at how you can keep all of your team on the same page with Dropbox shared folders. Creating a Shared Folder Setting up a shared folder in Dropbox is easy.  Add the files you want to share to a folder in Dropbox on your computer, then right-click in the folder, select Dropbox, and then choose Share This Folder.   Alternately, log into your Dropbox account online, click the drop-down menu beside the folder you want to share, and click Share this folder. Now, enter the email addresses of the people you want to share the folder with, and optionally enter a message explaining why you’re sharing the folder. The people you invite will receive an email inviting them to view and join the shared folder.  If they haven’t signed up for Dropbox, they can directly signup; otherwise, they can simply log into their Dropbox account and start adding or editing files. Shared folders have a slightly different icon in your Dropbox.  Notice the shared folder on the left has an icon with 2 people, while the folder on the right that is not shared, shows previews of its contents. See Your Shared Folder’s History Whenever your collaborators with your shared folders add or change files, you will see a tooltip notification telling you what changed. You can also view the changes online.  Log into your Dropbox account in your browser and select the Events tab.  This shows all changes to your Dropbox, but you can view only the changes in your shared folder by selecting its name on the left sidebar. Now you can see all recent changes to your folder, and can also see who added or removed each file.   On the bottom of the page, you can even add a comment that all the collaborators will see. If someone deleted a file you still need, you can restore it by clicking its link in this online history.  Or, you can view any deleted files by right-clicking in your Dropbox folder in Explorer.  Select Dropbox, and then click Show Deleted Files.   Get Notified When a Change is Made You’re not always in front of your computer; you’ve got a life beyond your projects, after all (at least hopefully).  If you really want to stay connected to what’s happening with your project, though, you can easily do that no matter where you are. Your shared Dropbox folder’s history page offers an RSS feed of all changes to the folder.  Click  the Subscribe to this feed hyperlink. Now, in the popup that opens, click “Copy to clipboard” so you can use this RSS feed. You can subscribe to RSS feeds through many web browsers, email clients, dedicated feed readers, and more.  In Firefox, Internet Explorer 7/8, or Opera, you can paste the feed address into your address bar and subscribe to the feed directly in your browser.   However, subscribing to the feed in a desktop application won’t help you much when you’re away from your computer.  One great option is to subscribe in the popular Google Reader.  Then you can check your feed from any browser, on any computer or mobile device. To add your Dropbox feed to Google Reader, log into Google Reader (link below), click Add a subscription on the top left, paste your RSS feed from Dropbox, and click Add.   Now you can see any changes to files or folders in Google Reader. You can even add your feed to your iGoogle homepage.  Click the Add it Now button on the right in the front page of Google Reader to add your feeds to iGoogle.   Now you can see updates on your files from your homepage.  If you’re using a different computer, just login to your Google account to see what’s happening. You can also access your Google Reader feeds from many programs and apps for most major Smartphones including iPhone, Windows Phone, and Blackberry. Receive a Tweet or Text When Changes are Made If you’re a hyper-connected individual, chances are you send and receive tweets on the go.  If so, this might be the best way for you to get notified when changes are made to your Dropbox shared folder.  To do this, first create a new Twitter account to publish your changes through.  If you don’t want the whole world to see your updates, click Settings and set your new Twitter account to Private. Once the new account is created, follow it with your normal Twitter account so you’ll see updates. Now, let’s publish our Dropbox RSS feed to Twitter.  Create an account with Twitterfeed (link below). Once your account is setup, add your feed to it.  Name your feed, and enter your Feed address from Dropbox.  Click Advanced Settings to make your feed work just like you want. In Advanced Settings, change the frequency to “Every 30 mins” to make sure you’re updated on changes as quick as possible.  You can also change other settings if you like. Click “Continue to Step 2”, and then click Twitter under the available services to add your account. Make sure your signed into your new Twitter account, and then click Authenticate Twitter. Allow the application. Now, finally, click Create Service. Whenever a change is made, you will receive a tweet via your new Twitter account.  And since you can receive tweets via text message or many mobile applications, you’ll never be very far away from your Dropbox changes!   Conclusion Dropbox shared folders are a great way to keep your whole team working together on the same files in a project.  And with these handy tricks, you can keep up with your shared files wherever you are! There are a lot of cool things you can do with Dropbox make sure to check out our posts on adding Dropbox to the Windows 7 Start menu, Accessing Dropbox files from Chrome, and Syncing your Pidgin Profile Across Multiple PCs. Links Signup or access your Dropbox account Google Reader Tweet your feed with Twitterfeed Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How to Add and Manage Shared Folders on Windows Home ServerManage User Accounts in Windows Home ServerAdd "My Dropbox" to Your Windows 7 Start MenuComplete Guide to Networking Windows 7 with XP and VistaMoving Your Personal Data Folders in Windows Vista the Easy Way TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Office 2010 reviewed in depth by Ed Bott FoxClocks adds World Times in your Statusbar (Firefox) Have Fun Editing Photo Editing with Citrify Outlook Connector Upgrade Error Gadfly is a cool Twitter/Silverlight app Enable DreamScene in Windows 7

    Read the article

  • How Social Networking Websites Can Play a Vital Role Websites in SEO

    Social networking websites have now became an important part of the internet platform all across the globe and almost every individual who is using the internet these days has an account or profile registered with at least 1 or 2 social networking websites. The spreading and rapidly growing trend of social sites should be an obvious sign to all online businesses and individual internet marketers that are competing in the search engines that this is a platform which they must consider using in order to give more exposure to their business as well as target to attract different people to their site.

    Read the article

  • User Group Meeting Summary - April 2010

    - by Michael Stephenson
    Thanks to everyone who could make it to what turned out to be an excellent SBUG event.  First some thanks to:  Speakers: Anthony Ross and Elton Stoneman Host: The various people at Hitachi who helped to organise and arrange the venue.   Session 1 - Getting up and running with Windows Mobile and the Windows Azure Service Bus In this session Anthony discussed some considerations for using Windows Mobile and the Windows Azure Service Bus from a real-world project which Hitachi have been working on with EasyJet.  Anthony also walked through a simplified demo of the concepts which applied on the project.   In addition to the slides and demo it was also very interesting to discuss with the guys involved on this project to hear about their real experiences developing with the Azure Service Bus and some of the limitations they have had to work around in Windows Mobiles ability to interact with the service bus.   On the back of this session we will look to do some further activities around this topic and the guys offered to share their wish list of features for both Windows Mobile and Windows Azure which we will look to share for user group discussion.   Another interesting point was the cost aspects of using the ISB which were very low.   Session 2 - The Enterprise Cache In the second session Elton used a few slides which are based around one of his customer scenario's where they are looking into the concept of an Enterprise Cache within the organisation.  Elton discusses this concept and also a codeplex project he is putting together which allows you to take advantage of a cache with various providers such as Memcached, AppFabric Caching and Ncache.   Following the presentation it was interesting to hear peoples thoughts on various aspects such as the enterprise cache versus an out of process application cache.  Also there was interesting discussion around how people would like to search the cache in the future.   We will again look to put together some follow-up activity on this   Meeting Summary Following the meeting all slide decks are saved in the skydrive location where we keep content from all meetings: http://cid-40015ea59a1307c8.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/.Public/SBUG/SBUG%20Meetings/2010%20April   Remember that the details of all previous events are on the following page. http://uksoabpm.org/Events.aspx   Competition We had three copies of the Windows Identity Foundation Patterns and Practices book that were raffles on the night, it would be great to hear any feedback on the book from those who won it.   Recording The user group meeting was recorded and we will look to make this available online sometime soon.   UG Business The following things were discussed as general UG topics:   We will change the name of the user group to the UK Connected Systems User Group to we are more inline with other user groups who cover similar topics and we believe this will help us to attract more members.  The content or focus of the user group is not expected to change.   The next meeting is 26th May and can be registered at the following link: http://sbugmay2010.eventbrite.com/

    Read the article

  • Sweet JavaFX App on the Winter Olympics Website

    - by kerry
    Though it may be old news for people following JavaFX closely, I have just run across the JavaFX application on the Winter Olympics website.  Slick transitions and useful data make this a great example of what JavaFX can do.  I think it’s really cool that you can look at past olympics as well as the current year. Maybe this will help generate a little buzz around JavaFX. Check out the application on vancouver2010.com

    Read the article

  • IIS MIME type for XML content

    - by Rodolfo
    recently a third party plugin I'm using to display online magazines stopped working on mobile devices. According to their help page, this happens for people serving with IIS. Their solution is to set the MIME type .xml to "application/xml". It's by default set to "text/xml". Changing it does work, but would that have unintended side effects or is it actually the correct way and IIS just set it wrong?

    Read the article

< Previous Page | 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117  | Next Page >