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  • The 2010 Life Insurance Conference - Washington, DC

    - by [email protected]
    How ironic to be in Washington, DC on April 15 - TAX DAY! Fortunately, I avoided IRS offices and attended the much more enjoyable 2010 Life Insurance Conference, presented by LIMRA, LOMA SOA and ACLI. This year's conference offered a variety of tracks focused on the Life Industry including Distribution/Marketing Marketing, Administration, Actuarial/Product Development, Regulatory, Reinsurance and Strategic Management. President and CEO of the ACLI, Frank Keating, opened the event by moderating a session titled "Executive Viewpoint on new Opportunities." Guest speakers included Ted Mathas, President and CEO of NY Life, and John Walters, President and CEO of Hartford Life. Both speakers were insightful as they shared the challenges and opportunities each company faces and the key role life insurance companies play in our society and the global economy. There were several key themes that were reiterated in multiple sessions throughout the conference - the economy is on the rebound, optimism is growing, consumer spending is up and an uptick in employment is likely to follow. The threat of a double dip recession has seemed to passed. Good news for our industry, and welcomed by all in attendance. Of special interest to me, given my background, was some research shared by both The Nolan Group and Novarica in separate sessions. Both firms indicate that policy administration upgrades/replacement projects remain a top priority in 2010. Carriers continue to invest in modern technology. Modern ultra-configurable systems enable carriers to switch from a waterfall to an agile project methodology, which often entails a "culture change" within an organization. Other themes heard throughout the two-day event: Virtually all sessions focused on People, Process and Technology! Product innovation, agility and speed to market are as important as ever. Social Networks and Twitter are becoming more popular ways of communicating with both field and dispersed staff. Several sessions focused on the application, new business and underwriting process. Companies continue looking for ways to increase market agility, accelerate speed to market, address cost issues and improve service levels across the process. They recognize the need to ease the way to do business with both producers and consumers. Author and economic futurist Jeff Thredgold presented an entertaining, informative and humorous general session on Wednesday afternoon that focused on the US and global economies, financial markets and retirement outlook. Thredgold did not disappoint anyone with his message! The Thursday morning general session was keynoted by Therese Vaughan (CEO - NAIC) and Thomas Crawford (President of C2 Group). Both speakers gave a poignant view of the recent financial crisis and discussed "Putting the Pieces Back Together." Therese spoke of the recent financial turmoil and likely changes to regulations to the financial services sector. Tom's topics focused on economic recovery and the political environment in Washington, and how that impacts our industry. Next year's event will be April 11-13, 2011 in Las Vegas. Roger A.Soppe, CLU, LUTCF, is the Senior Director of Insurance Strategy, Oracle Insurance.

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  • American Modern Insurance Group recognized at 2010 INN VIP Best Practices Awards

    - by [email protected]
    Below: Helen Pitts (right), Oracle Insurance, congratulates Bruce Weisgerber, Munich Re, as he accepts a VIP Best Practices Award on behalf of American Modern Insurance Group.     Oracle Insurance Senior Product Marketing Manager Helen Pitts is attending the 2010 ACORD LOMA Insurance Forum this week at the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas, Nevada, and will be providing updates from the show floor. This is one of my favorite seasons of the year--insurance trade show season. It is a time to reconnect with peers, visit with partners, make new industry connections, and celebrate our customers' achievements. It's especially meaningful when we can share the experience of having one of our Oracle Insurance customers recognized for being an innovator in its business and in the industry. Congratulations to American Modern Insurance Group, part of the Munich Re Group. American Modern earned an Insurance Networking News (INN) 2010 VIP Best Practice Award yesterday evening during the 2010 ACORD LOMA Insurance Forum. The award recognizes an insurer's best practice for use of a specific technology and the role, if feasible, that ACORD data standards played as a part of their business and technology. American Modern received an Honorable Mention for leveraging the Oracle Documaker enterprise document automation solution to: Improve the quality of communications with customers in high value, high-touch lines of business Convert thousands of page elements or "forms" from their previous system, with near pixel-perfect accuracy Increase efficiency and reusability by storing all document elements (fonts, logos, approved wording, etc.) in one place Issue on-demand documents, such as address changes or policy transactions to multiple recipients at once Consolidate all customer communications onto a single platform Gain the ability to send documents to multiple recipients at once, further improving efficiency Empower agents to produce documents in real time via the Web, such as quotes, applications and policy documents, improving carrier-agent relationships Munich Re's Bruce Weisgerber accepted the award on behalf of American Modern from Lloyd Chumbly, vice president of standards at ACORD. In a press release issued after the ceremony Chumbly noted, "This award embodies a philosophy of efficiency--working smarter with standards, these insurers represent the 'best of the best' as chosen by a body of seasoned insurance industry professionals." We couldn't agree with you more, Lloyd. Congratulations again to American Modern on your continued innovation and success. You're definitely a VIP in our book! To learn more about how American Modern is putting its enterprise document automation strategy into practice, click here to read a case study. Helen Pitts is senior product marketing manager for Oracle Insurance.

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  • What is meant by "Repeat Business" ?

    - by vinoth
    Repeat Business obviously happens because the company has a great product or a great service. In the software industry, do companies make the code base complex enough so that the maintenance comes back to them? I have heard of cases where companies say "ya this code base has minor errors, let's ship them anyway, and let the customers come back for another change request on these". Then they would sometimes charge the customer for that. This question is specific to the software services industry. Do these things happen in the real world? I am trying to understand the business process.

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  • Computer / Software Engineering vs Other Engineering Disciplines [closed]

    - by Mohammad Yaseen
    Since this was a rather specific question, I have tried my best to present this question in a format which fits the style of this site. Please comment if it can be improved further. I have to choose the Engineering discipline on 6th Nov. My interest is in Robotics, hardware-level programming, Artificial Intelligence and back-end programming. I am currently working as a freelance developer using mainly PHP and occasionally working with GWT.I am somewhat familiar with C# and Python too. I am not super good at programming but I do like it. I am thinking to choose Computer and Information Systems Engineering as this is what I love but all the eggheads of my city are going to Mechanical Engineering and when I ask one of them Why are you choosing this? They say It's my interest and for job and the money. Basically I am confused between CIS and Mechanical Engineering, specifically the job market for both. Since this is a programmers' site I think following questions will be relevant . I am asking this because I want to take advice from professionals in this field before diving too deep . Are you happy with your job / work and pay. Are you satisfied with the work environment and career growth Do you feel OK (or great?) about the near and/or distant future of your industry. Why should a person choose Computer if he has other choices i.e what this industry has to offer in particular which other fields of work don't This industry is subject to rapid changes and you have to learn continuously throughout your entire career. Does this learning and constant hard work pay off ? In my country there is no hardware manufacturing. So most of CIS graduates (like Software Engineers) work in Software Houses. What is the scenario in your country. Is a degree titled 'Software' necessary or companies will take Computer Engineers too if they have relevant experience. I am asking this because I plan to move abroad for work. This is going to be something which I'll do for the rest of my life so I am a bit confused about the right choice. You can view the course outline for both programmes below. Computer and Information Systems Engineering. Mechanical Engineering

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  • ACORD LOMA Session Highlights Policy Administration Trends

    - by [email protected]
    Helen Pitts, senior product marketing manager for Oracle Insurance, attended and is blogging from the ACORD LOMA Insurance Forum this week. Above: Paul Vancheri, Chief Information Officer, Fidelity Investments Life Insurance Company. Vancheri gave a presentation during the ACORD LOMA Insurance Systems Forum about the key elements of modern policy administration systems and how insurers can mitigate risk during legacy system migrations to safely introduce new technologies. When I had a few particularly challenging honors courses in college my father, a long-time technology industry veteran, used to say, "If you don't know how to do something go ask the experts. Find someone who has been there and done that, don't be afraid to ask the tough questions, and apply and build upon what you learn." (Actually he still offers this same advice today.) That's probably why my favorite sessions at industry events, like the ACORD LOMA Insurance Forum this week, are those that include insight on industry trends and case studies from carriers who share their experiences and offer best practices based upon their own lessons learned. I had the opportunity to attend a particularly insightful session Wednesday as Craig Weber, senior vice president of Celent's Insurance practice, and Paul Vancheri, CIO of Fidelity Life Investments, presented, "Managing the Dynamic Insurance Landscape: Enabling Growth and Profitability with a Modern Policy Administration System." Policy Administration Trends Growing the business is the top issue when it comes to IT among both life and annuity and property and casualty carriers according to Weber. To drive growth and capture market share from competitors, carriers are looking to modernize their core insurance systems, with 65 percent of those CIOs participating in recent Celent research citing plans to replace their policy administration systems. Weber noted that there has been continued focus and investment, particularly in the last three years, by software and technology vendors to offer modern, rules-based, configurable policy administration solutions. He added that these solutions are continuing to evolve with the ongoing aim of helping carriers rapidly meet shifting business needs--whether it is to launch new products to market faster than the competition, adapt existing products to meet shifting consumer and /or regulatory demands, or to exit unprofitable markets. He closed by noting the top four trends for policy administration either in the process of being adopted today or on the not-so-distant horizon for the future: Underwriting and service desktops New business automation Convergence of ultra-configurable and domain content-rich systems Better usability and screen design Mitigating the Risk When Making the Decision to Modernize Third-party analyst research from advisory firms like Celent was a key part of the due diligence process for Fidelity as it sought a replacement for its legacy policy administration system back in 2005, according to Vancheri. The company's business opportunities were outrunning system capability. Its legacy system had not been upgraded in several years and was deficient from a functionality and currency standpoint. This was constraining the carrier's ability to rapidly configure and bring new and complex products to market. The company sought a new, modern policy administration system, one that would enable it to keep pace with rapid and often unexpected industry changes and ahead of the competition. A cross-functional team that included representatives from finance, actuarial, operations, client services and IT conducted an extensive selection process. This process included deep documentation review, pilot evaluations, demonstrations of required functionality and complex problem-solving, infrastructure integration capability, and the ability to meet the company's desired cost model. The company ultimately selected an adaptive policy administration system that met its requirements to: Deliver ease of use - eliminating paper and rework, while easing the burden on representatives to sell and service annuities Provide customer parity - offering Web-based capabilities in alignment with the company's focus on delivering a consistent customer experience across its business Deliver scalability, efficiency - enabling automation, while simplifying and standardizing systems across its technology stack Offer desired functionality - supporting Fidelity's product configuration / rules management philosophy, focus on customer service and technology upgrade requirements Meet cost requirements - including implementation, professional services and licenses fees and ongoing maintenance Deliver upon business requirements - enabling the ability to drive time to market for new products and flexibility to make changes Best Practices for Addressing Implementation Challenges Based upon lessons learned during the company's implementation, Vancheri advised carriers to evaluate staffing capabilities and cultural impacts, review business requirements to avoid rebuilding legacy processes, factor in dependent systems, and review policies and practices to secure customer data. His formula for success: upfront planning + clear requirements = precision execution. Achieving a Return on Investment Vancheri said the decision to replace their legacy policy administration system and deploy a modern, rules-based system--before the economic downturn occurred--has been integral in helping the company adapt to shifting market conditions, while enabling growth in its direct channel sales of variable annuities. Since deploying its new policy admin system, the company has reduced its average time to market for new products from 12-15 months to 4.5 months. The company has since migrated its other products to the new system and retired its legacy system, significantly decreasing its overall product development cycle. From a processing standpoint Vancheri noted the company has achieved gains in automation, information, and ease of use, resulting in improved real-time data edits, controls for better quality, and tax handling capability. Plus, with by having only one platform to manage, the company has simplified its IT environment and is well positioned to deliver system enhancements for greater efficiencies. Commitment to Continuing the Investment In the short and longer term future Vancheri said the company plans to enhance business functionality to support money movement, wire automation, divorce processing on payout contracts and cost-based tracking improvements. It also plans to continue system upgrades to remain current as well as focus on further reducing cycle time, driving down maintenance costs, and integrating with other products. Helen Pitts is senior product marketing manager for Oracle Insurance focused on life/annuities and enterprise document automation.

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  • Deloitte IFRS Seminar for Oil and Gas Industries

    - by Theresa Hickman
    What: Deloitte will be giving an educational program that explores IFRS in the Oil & Gas industry. This two-day event will be more of a technical training on how to implement IFRS from an accounting perspective where participants will work through journal entries. This training will provide CPE credits and include breakout sessions. They will cover the following IFRS topics: Derivatives & Financial Instruments Income Taxes Regulatory Update State of the Industry Asset Retirement Obligations Joint Ventures Revenue Recognition When: June 16 and 17, 2010 Where: Omni Houston Hotel (Houston, TX) To learn more and register for this exciting event, visit this webpage.

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  • ACORD LOMA 2010: Building Insurance Companies in the Clouds

    - by [email protected]
    Chuck Johnston, vice president of global strategy and alliances for Oracle Insurance, participated in a featured speaking session at ACORD LOMA 2010. He provides an update on his discussions with insurers at the show and after his presentation. Every year I always make a point of walking the show floor at the ACORD LOMA technology conference to visit with colleagues and competitors, and try to get a feel for which way the industry will move over the next 12 months. Insurers are looking for substance in cloud (computing), trying to mix business with pleasure (monetizing social networks), and expect differentiation through commodity (Software as a Service). The disconnect at this show is that most vendors are still struggling with creating a clear path from Facebook to customer intimacy, SaaS to core cost savings and clouds to ubiquitous presence. Vendors need to find new ways to help insurers find the real value in these potentially disruptive technologies by understanding the changes coming to the insurance business and how these new technologies impact the new insurance business. Oracle's approach to understanding the evolving insurance industry comes from a discussion with our customers in our Insurance CIO Council, where one of our customers suggested we buy an insurance company to really understand our customers. We have decided to do the next best thing and build our own model of an insurance company, Alamere Insurance, that uses the latest technologies to transform its own business. Alamere will never issue an actual policy, but it does give us a framework to consider the impacts of changes in the insurance landscape and how Oracle technology meets the challenge or needs to evolve to help our customers be successful. In preparing for my talk at the conference using Alamere as my organizing theme, I found myself reading actuarial memoranda on CSO table changes and articles on underwriting theory that really made me think about my customer's problems first and foremost, and then how Oracle technology can provide answers. As much as I prefer techno-thrillers and sci-fi novels to actuarial papers for plane reading, I got very excited about the idea of putting myself back in the customer shoes I haven't worn in a decade, and really looking at how Oracle can power the Adaptive Insurance Enterprise. Talking to customers and industry people after the session, the idea of Alamere seemed to excite people and I got a lot of suggestions as to what lines of business we should model and where we should focus first on technology uptake. One customer said to a colleague that Oracle's attempt to "share their pain" was unique among vendors. More about Alamere, and the Adaptive Insurance Enterprise next time. Chuck Johnston is vice president of global strategy and alliances for Oracle Insurance.

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  • MySQL - Powering Online Media & Entertainment

    - by bertrand.matthelie(at)oracle.com
    @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Times"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }a:link, span.MsoHyperlink { color: blue; text-decoration: underline; }a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed { color: purple; text-decoration: underline; }p { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 10pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } If you're reading news, watching videos, or playing games online, you're probably relying on MySQL to do so.   Facebook, YouTube, BBC News, Zynga, thePlatform and many other leading Media & Entertainment organizations chose MySQL to power their online news, gaming, social networking, advertising or other applications.   During the past decade, the Media & Entertainment industry experienced a spectacular transformation.  The mobile Internet is becoming the dominant media platform, and the boundaries between the different types of media (i.e. Print, TV, Radio, Internet) have increasingly blurred as we've gradually come to perform more and more of our daily activities online.   To better understand how MySQL can help you win in the fast paced world of Media & Entertainment, check out our whitepaper "MySQL - Powering The Online Media & Entertainment Industry" in which we cover:   ·       The key trends shaping the evolution of the media & entertainment industry.   ·       Their implications, and the requirements they place on the infrastructure of information & entertainment services providers.   ·       How you can leverage Oracle's MySQL technologies to quickly and cost-effectively deliver new highly scalable and highly available online media & entertainment applications.   You're welcome to download it here.

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  • Successful technical communities except for open-source?

    - by Joshua Fox
    Have you ever seen a successful technical community -- e.g. user group, industry organization? Am I asking about a group of software engineers who get together F2F (or maybe online) and discuss technical and industry issues with deep zeal and interest -- a place where meaningful connections are made. Here are the only examples I have ever seen: Open source Maybe the Silicon Valley Java Users' Group Homebrew Computing Club in the '70's This sort of thing does exist in academia. Of course, there are lots of conferences and attempts at user's groups. However, almost all committed, serious software engineers, when asked about this, say "I don't have the time", which means that the organizations are not worthwhile to the best in our profession. Has anyone seen any organizations with an ongoing spirit of enthusiasm from top software engineers?

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  • What is the etiquette in negotiating payment for a software development job

    - by EpsilonVector
    The reason I'm taking a general business question and localize it to software development is that I'm curious as to whether there are certain trends/etiquette/nuances that are typical to our industry. For example, I can imagine two different attitudes employers may generally have to payment negotiations: 1) we'll give you the best offer so we can't really be flexible about it because we already pretty much gave you everything we can give you, or 2) we'll give him an average offer and give in to a better one if forced to. If you try to play hard ball in the first attitude it'll probably cost you the job because you ask for more than they can give you, however if you don't insist on better payment in the second one you'll get a worse offer. In short, when applying to a typical job in our industry what are the typical attitudes from employers on the offers they give, what is the correct way to ask for a better payment, do these things differ between different types of companies (for example startups vs well entrenched companies), and how do these things differ between different kinds of applicants (graduate vs student)?

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  • Join us! Oracle Manufacturing Industries Forum, Chicago Thurs. Nov.14'13

    - by Stephen Slade
    The 6th Annual Oracle Manufacturing Industries Forum will take place in Chicago, Thurs, Nov.14 '13. Executives from successful global manufacturing companies will address key themes including: Value Chain Transformation, Owning the Customer Service Experience, Sales and Operations Planning in a Global Enterprise Supply Chain, and Modernizing the Manufacturing Enterprise. Join us for what we expect to be one of the industry's most informative and provocative executive events of the year. Event Objectives: Create an environment where executives can interact with their peers to discuss current issues Brainstorm and discuss how attendees can use technology to transform their organizations Share best practices and learn through the experiences of industry peers Where: Westin Chicago River North,  320 North Dearborn St,  Chicago, IL 60654 Evite: http://www.oracle.com/us/dm/229048-nafm13049989mpp074-se-2021171.html Register:   http://eventreg.oracle.com/profile/web/index.cfm?PKWebId=0x25005591a&source=evite Partner Sponsors Include: CSS, Fujitsu, Inspirage, Hitachi Consulting, Lucidity and Rolta Register Now!

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  • ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-03-30

    - by Bob Rhubart
    The One Skill All Leaders Should Work On | Scott Edinger blogs.hbr.org Assertiveness, according to HBR blogger Scott Edinger, has the "power to magnify so many other leadership strengths." When Your Influence Is Ineffective | Chris Musselwhite and Tammie Plouffe blogs.hbr.org "Influence becomes ineffective when individuals become so focused on the desired outcome that they fail to fully consider the situation," say Chris Musselwhite and Tammie Plouffe. BPM in Retail Industry | Sanjeev Sharma blogs.oracle.com Sanjeev Sharma shares links to a pair of blog posts that address common BPM use-cases in the Retail industry. Oracle VM: What if you have just 1 HDD system | Yury Velikanov www.pythian.com "To start playing with Oracle VM v3 you need to configure some storage to be used for new VM hosts," says Yury Velikanov. He shows you how in this post. Thought for the Day "Elegance is not a dispensable luxury but a factor that decides between success and failure." — Edsger Dijkstra

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  • Going Direct to Consumer in Consumer Goods – Live Webcast April 12

    - by Michael Seback
    Going Direct to Consumer is top of mind with executives in the Consumer Goods (CG) industry today.   Join our live webcast on Thursday, April 12 to learn what CG companies worldwide are thinking as they deploy their direct-to-consumer strategies in an effort to better engage with today’s empowered consumer. Hear Jon Copestake, Chief Consumer Goods Analyst of the Economist Intelligence Unit and Oracle to discuss the findings and industry trends. Some key findings include: Pushing traditional media through new media channels is not enough to reach today’s more plugged in, product-savvy consumer CG companies are experimenting with new ways to establish and enhance direct, two-way relationships with their target consumers across multiple channels Survey respondents and other CG executives see their nascent e-commerce efforts as complimentary to, not competing with, existing retail channels. Register to attend on April 12, 8:00 a.m. PT / 11:00 p.m. ET  

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  • As a young student aspiring to have a career as a programmer, how should I feel about open source software?

    - by Matt
    Every once in a while on some technology websites a headline like this will pop up: http://www.osor.eu/news/nl-moving-to-open-source-would-save-government-one-to-four-billion My initial thought about government and organizations moving to open source software is that tons of programmers would lose their jobs and the industry would shrink. At the same time the proliferation and use of open source software seems to be greatly encouraged in many programming communities. Is my thinking that the full embrace of open source software everywhere will hurt the software industry a misconception? If it is not, then why do so many programmers love open source software?

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  • Day 1 - Finding Like Minds

    - by dapostolov
    So, is being a Game Developer any different from being an IT Developer? I picture a poorly lit environment where I get to purchase my own desk lamp; I'm thinking one of those huge lava lamps that pump out so much heat you could fry an egg on it. To my right: a "great wall" of empty coke cans dwarf me. Eating my last slice of pizza I look across my desk to see a fellow developer with a smug look on his face;  he's just coded his latest module for the game and it looks like he's in nirvana. My duty, of course, is to remind him to keep focused on the job at hand. So, picking up my trusty elastic and aerodynamically crafted paper bullet I begin a 10 minute war of welts and laughter which is promptly abrupted by our Project Manager demanding more details from our morning Scrum meeting. After providing about 5 minutes of geek speak and several words of comfort to make his eyes glaze over...it hits me, the idea for the module...beckoning my developer friend over, we quickly shoo the Project Manager away and begin our brainstorming frenzy ... now, where'd I put that full can of coke? OK. OK. This isn't probably the most ideal game developer environment, but it definitely sounds fun to me...and from what I gather is nothing like most game development companies. But I'm not doing this blog series to "go pro"; like I stated in my first post I want to make a 2D game from an idea my best friend and I drummed up long, long ago. I'm in this for the passion AND I want to see how easy it is for us .Net Developers to create a game. So where do I start? Where can I find like minded individuals? What technologies are there? What do I need to make a video game? The questions are endless....AND...since I already have an idea ... lets start with ... Technology (yes, I'm a geek, live with it...) Technology OK. Predominantly, games are still made in C++ or even C. I'm not sure how much assembly code is floating around lately, however, that is not my concern. I do know C / C++ from my past, enough to even get me by, but I'm mainly interested in a recent, not-so-new, technology called XNA. What is XNA? XNA allows us .Net Developers to make 2D / 3D games for windows, Xbox*, and Windows Mobile 7*. * = for a nominal fee *cough* The following link is your one stop shop to XNA game development: http://creators.xna.com/en-US/education/gettingstarted The above site hosts information such as: - getting started - a sample/instructional shooter game in 2D / 3D with code (if I'm taking too long for you in this blog series) - downloads - starter kits... http://creators.xna.com/en-US/education/starterkits/ And of course...forums. You can also subscribe and pay for their premium membership which gets you some pretty awesome tutorials, resources, downloads, and premium community support. Some general Wiki information about XNA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XNA_%28Microsoft%29 Community Support OK. Let's move on to industry and community support. Apart from XNA, there are some really cool sites out there, I just haven't found all of them yet. However, I found a really cool Game Development website called Gamastura. You can click on the following link to get you there: http://www.gamasutra.com/ The site is 100% dedicated to "The Art & Business of Making Games". Armed with blogs, twitter, jobs/resumes and most importantly industry news; one could subscribe to the feed and got lost in the wealth of information it provides. On a side note: I remember Gamasutra being around when my best friend and I wanted to make a video game...meaning, they've been around for a while now. I think the most beneficial aspect of this site is to understand the industry you want to get into. Otherwise, it's just a cool site to keep up to date with the industry in general. Another Community Support option is LinkedIn. Amongst the land of extremely bloated achievements and responsibilities lay 3 groups (that I have found) that deal with game development.: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=59205 - Game Developers http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=824817 - DirectX Game Developer Network http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=756587 - DirectX Developers The Game Developers group in LinkedIn is by far the most active of the three and could possibly provide a wealth of support. What I've done thus far: - I lightly researched the XNA technology - I looked around for some community sites to assist me - I downloaded the XNA Game Studio 3.1 on my PC and installed it on my IDE - I even tried both tutorials! http://creators.xna.com/en-US/education/gettingstarted/bgintro/chapter1   Best Regards D.

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  • Insider Insights

    Insider rumours and gossip from the murky world of the Database Industry, and from the colourful characters that inhabit it.

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  • What benefits does a game design degree have for a hobby game programmer?

    - by sm4
    I am interested in studying game design, not because I want a job in the games industry, but because I am interested in the subject itself. I read the following questions, but they mostly deal with the effects on your career in game industry. Should I consider a graduate degree in game development? Game Development Degree vs Computer Science Degree First I thought a game development degree could be beneficial. But from the websites of colleges that offer such degrees, I feel like its more about basic programming with examples from games. This college offers game design degrees, for example. My question is, can I benefit from such a degree when I already have a degree in Computer Science, I already know programming, I'm already developing a game and finally, I have this site to help me when I get stuck?

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  • Agile Executives

    - by Robert May
    Over the years, I have experienced many different styles of software development. In the early days, most of the development was Waterfall development. In the last few years, I’ve become an advocate of Scrum. As I talked about last month, many people have misconceptions about what Scrum really is. The reason why we do Scrum at Veracity is because of the difference it makes in the life of the team doing Scrum. Software is for people, and happy motivated people will build better software. However, not all executives understand Scrum and how to get the information from development teams that use Scrum. I think that these executives need a support system for managing Agile teams. Historical Software Management When Henry Ford pioneered the assembly line, I doubt he realized the impact he’d have on Management through the ages. Historically, management was about managing the process of building things. The people were just cogs in that process. Like all cogs, they were replaceable. Unfortunately, most of the software industry followed this same style of management. Many of today’s senior managers learned how to manage companies before software was a significant influence on how the company did business. Software development is a very creative process, but too many managers have treated it like an assembly line. Idea’s go in, working software comes out, and we just have to figure out how to make sure that the ideas going in are perfect, then the software will be perfect. Lean Manufacturing In the manufacturing industry, Lean manufacturing has revolutionized Henry Ford’s assembly line. Derived from the Toyota process, Lean places emphasis on always providing value for the customer. Anything the customer wouldn’t be willing to pay for is wasteful. Agile is based on similar principles. We’re building software for people, and anything that isn’t useful to them doesn’t add value. Waterfall development would have teams build reams and reams of documentation about how the software should work. Agile development dispenses with this work because excessive documentation doesn’t add value. Instead, teams focus on building documentation only when it truly adds value to the customer. Many other Agile principals are similar. Playing Catch-up Just like in the manufacturing industry, many managers in the software industry have yet to understand the value of the principles of Lean and Agile. They think they can wrap the uncertainties of software development up in a nice little package and then just execute, usually followed by failure. They spend a great deal of time and money trying to exactly predict the future. That expenditure of time and money doesn’t add value to the customer. Managers that understand that Agile know that there is a better way. They will instead focus on the priorities of the near term in detail, and leave the future to take care of itself. They have very detailed two week plans with less detailed quarterly plans. These plans are guided by a general corporate strategy that doesn’t focus on the exact implementation details. These managers also think in smaller features rather than large functionality. This adds a great deal of value to customers, since the features that matter most are the ones that the team focuses on in the near term and then are able to deliver to the customers that are paying for them. Agile managers also realize that stale software is very costly. They know that keeping the technology in their software current is much less expensive and risky than large rewrites that occur infrequently and schedule time in each release for refactoring of the existing software. Agile Executives Even though Agile is a better way, I’ve still seen failures using the Agile process. While some of these failures can be attributed to the team, most of them are caused by managers, not the team. Managers fail to understand what Agile is, how it works, and how to get the information that they need to make good business decisions. I think this is a shame. I’m very pleased that Veracity understands this problem and is trying to do something about it. Veracity is a key sponsor of Agile Executives. In fact, Galen is this year’s acting president for Agile Executives. The purpose of Agile Executives is to help managers better manage Agile teams and see better success. Agile Executives is trying to build a community of executives that range from managers interested in Agile to managers that have successfully adopted Agile. Together, these managers can form a community of support and ideas that will help make Agile teams more successful. Helping Your Team You can help too! Talk with your manager and get them involved in Agile Executives. Help Veracity build the community. If your manager understands Agile better, he’ll understand how to help his teams, which will result in software that adds more value for customers. If you have any questions about how you can be involved, please let me know. Technorati Tags: Agile,Agile Executives

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  • Connecting People, Processes, and Content: An Online Event

    - by Brian Dirking
    This morning we announced a new online event, “Transform Your Business by Connecting People, Processes, and Content.” At this event you will learn how an integrated approach to business process management (BPM), portals, content management, and collaboration can help you make more accurate and timely decisions based on the collective knowledge across your organization. But more than that, this event will focus on how customers have been successful transforming to a social enterprise. We’ve blogged about a few of the in the past few weeks – Balfour Beatty, New Look, Texas A&M. This event will give you an opportunity to learn about other customers and their successes, as well as an opportunity to: Watch Oracle executives participate in a roundtable discussion on the state of the social enterprise Hear industry experts discuss best practices and case studies of leveraging BPM, portals, and content management to transform and improve business processes Engage the experts by having your questions answered in real time Register today and learn how Oracle Fusion Middleware provides the most complete, open, integrated, and best-of-breed solution in the industry for transforming your business.

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  • If Apple made Cars [closed]

    - by benhowdle89
    There was a joke going round a few months(?) ago that if the GM industry kept up with the computer industry that we'd all be better off (in relation to driving and costs). There was also a counter joke that if Microsoft made Cars you would, for example, have to squeeze the wing mirror, honk the horn and move the gearstick the reboot the car (CTRL + ALT + DEL) This got me thinking in terms of Apple's recent iPad 2 release, if Apple made cars what would they be like? What sort of technological advancements would software developers and programmers be able to implement if you built a car in a similar fashion to building an iPhone app. Xcode is you Mechanics garage, as it were. What would a car look like if it was designed by Apple Chief of Design: Jonothan Ive?

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  • Oracle will be a Bronze Sponsor of Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Cmputing

    - by bubbva
    Oracle is proud to be a Bronze Sponsor at the upcoming Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing from October 3-6, 2012 in Baltimore, MD. Oracle's Women's Leadership group, Oracle's Diversity & Inclusion program and Product Development are proud to be behind this sponsorship.Several women from Oracle will be presenting and participating at the conference: Industry Track: "From Engineer to Executive; The Path Forward", speaker Susan Zwinger VP, Global Systems Technology Service Center Industry Track: "Are We There Yet? Finding Your Career Sweet Spot", speaker Gilda Garreton, Principal Software Engineer Birds of a feather:  "Juggling Our Different Worlds", speaker Gilda Garreton New Investigator Co-Chair, Gilda Garreton Communities Committee Co-Chair, Valerie Fenwick, Manager Software Development "Considering a shift in career from Technical towards Management?" table host,  Valerie Fenwick Oracle will have a booth as well, so stop by and introduce yourself!

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  • Move subdomain into subdirectory SEO question

    - by JMC
    I have read this article: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/subdomains-and-subdirectories/ But I'm not 100% clear if moving my subdomain website into a subdirectory on the main domain would change anything related to SEO. I inherited this structure: Informational site related to our specific industry lives at: http://website.com StoreFront where we sell product related to our industry lives at: http://store.website.com The informational site gives a lot of good information on how to use the products we sell. The storefront is primarily used for the ecommerce function of selling the products, but there is a lot of info specific to the products on that site. Question: Is our main domain http://website.com getting page rank credit for the product info contained at http://store.website.com? Would there be a benefit to changing the structure?

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  • Masters vs. PhD - long [closed]

    - by Sterling
    I'm 21 years old and a first year master's computer science student. Whether or not to continue with my PhD has been plaguing me for the past few months. I can't stop thinking about it and am extremely torn on the issue. I have read http://www.cs.unc.edu/~azuma/hitch4.html and many, many other masters vs phd articles on the web. Unfortunately, I have not yet come to a conclusion. I was hoping that I could post my ideas about the issue on here in hopes to 1) get some extra insight on the issue and 2) make sure that I am correct in my assumptions. Hopefully having people who have experience in the respective fields can tell me if I am wrong so I don't make my decision based on false ideas. Okay, to get this topic out of the way - money. Money isn't the most important thing to me, but it is still important. It's always been a goal of mine to make 6 figures, but I realize that will probably take me a long time with either path. According to most online salary calculating sites, the average starting salary for a software engineer is ~60-70k. The PhD program here is 5 years, so that's about 300k I am missing out on by not going into the workforce with a masters. I have only ever had ~1k at one time in my life so 300k is something I can't even really accurately imagine. I know that I wouldn't have at once obviously, but just to know I would be earning that is kinda crazy to me. I feel like I would be living quite comfortably by the time I'm 30 years old (but risk being too content too soon). I would definitely love to have at least a few years of my 20s to spend with that kind of money before I have a family to spend it all on. I haven't grown up very financially stable so it would be so nice to just spend some money…get a nice car, buy a new guitar or two, eat some good food, and just be financially comfortable. I have always felt like I deserved to make good money in my life, even as a kid growing up, and I just want to have it be a reality. I know that either path I take will make good money by the time I'm ~40-45 years old, but I guess I'm just sick of not making money and am getting impatient about it. However, a big idea pushing me towards a PhD is that I feel the masters path would give me a feeling of selling out if I have the capability to solve real questions in the computer science world. (pretty straight-forward - not much to elaborate on, but this is a big deal) Now onto other aspects of the decision. I originally got into computer science because of programming. I started in high school and knew very soon that it was what I wanted to do for a career. I feel like getting a masters and being a software engineer in the industry gives me much more time to program in my career. In research, I feel like I would spend more time reading, writing, trying to get grant money, etc than I would coding. A guy I work with in the lab just recently published a paper. He showed it to me and I was shocked by it. The first two pages was littered with equations and formulas. Then the next page or so was followed by more equations and formulas that he derived from the previous ones. That was his work - breaking down and creating all of these formulas for robotic arm movement. And whenever I read computer science papers, they all seem to follow this pattern. I always pictured myself coding all day long…not proving equations and things of that nature. I know that's only one part of computer science research, but that part bores me. A couple cons on each side - Phd - I don't really enjoy writing or feel like I'm that great at technical writing. Whenever I'm in groups to make something, I'm always the one who does the large majority of the work and then give it to my team members to write up a report. Presenting is different though - I don't mind presenting at all as long as I have a good grasp on what I am presenting. But writing papers seems like such a chore to me. And because of this, the "publish or perish" phrase really turns me off from research. Another bad thing - I feel like if I am doing research, most of it would be done alone. I work best in small groups. I like to have at least one person to bounce ideas off of when I am brainstorming. The idea of being a part of some small elite group to build things sounds ideal to me. So being able to work in small groups for the majority of my career is a definite plus. I don't feel like I can get this doing research. Masters - I read a lot online that most people come in as engineers and eventually move into management positions. As of now, I don't see myself wanting to be a part of management. Lets say my company wanted to make some new product or system - I would get much more pride, enjoyment, and overall satisfaction to say "I made this" rather than "I managed a group of people that made this." I want to be a big part of the development process. I want to make things. I think it would be great to be more specialized than other people. I would rather know everything about something than something about everything. I always have been that way - was a great pitcher during my baseball years, but not so good at everything else, great at certain classes in school, but not so good at others, etc. To think that my career would be the same way sounds okay to me. Getting a PhD would point me in this direction. It would be great to be some guy who is someone that people look towards and come to ask for help because of being such an important contributor to a very specific field, such as artificial neural networks or robotic haptic perception. From what I gather about the software industry, being specialized can be a very bad thing because of the speed of the new technology. I When it comes to being employed, I have pretty conservative views. I don't want to change companies every 5 years. Maybe this is something everyone wishes, but I would love to just be an important person in one company for 10+ (maybe 20-25+ if I'm lucky!) years if the working conditions were acceptable. I feel like that is more possible as a PhD though, being a professor or researcher. The more I read about people in the software industry, the more it seems like most software engineers bounce from company to company at rapid paces. Some even work like a hired gun from project to project which is NOT what I want AT ALL. But finding a place to make great and important software would be great if that actually happens in the real world. I'm a very competitive person. I thrive on competition. I don't really know why, but I have always been that way even as a kid growing up. Competition always gave me a reason to practice that little extra every night, always push my limits, etc. It seems to me like there is no competition in the research world. It seems like everyone is very relaxed as long as research is being conducted. The only competition is if someone is researching the same thing as you and its whoever can finish and publish first (but everyone seems to careful to check that circumstance). The only noticeable competition to me is just with yourself and your own discipline. I like the idea that in the industry, there is real competition between companies to put out the best product or be put out of business. I feel like this would constantly be pushing me to be better at what I do. One thing that is really pushing me towards a PhD is the lifetime of the things you make. I feel like if you make something truly innovative in the industry…just some really great new application or system…there is a shelf-life of about 5-10 years before someone just does it faster and more efficiently. But with research work, you could create an idea or algorithm that last decades. For instance, the A* search algorithm was described in 1968 and is still widely used today. That is amazing to me. In the words of Palahniuk, "The goal isn't to live forever, its to create something that will." Over anything, I just want to do something that matters. I want my work to help and progress society. Seriously, if I'm stuck programming GUIs for the next 40 years…I might shoot myself in the face. But then again, I hate the idea that less than 1% of the population will come into contact with my work and even less understand its importance. So if anything I have said is false then please inform me. If you think I come off as a masters or PhD, inform me. If you want to give me some extra insight or add on to any point I made, please do. Thank you so much to anyone for any help.

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