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  • The Social Business Thought Leaders - Esteban Kolsky

    - by kellsey.ruppel
    Esteban Kolsky's presentation at the Social Business Forum 2012 was meaningfully titled “Everything you wanted to know about Customer Service using Social but had no one to ask”.  A recent survey by ThinkJar, Kolsky’s independent analyst firm, reported how more than 90% of the interviewed companies consider embracing social channels in customer service the right thing to do for the business and its customers. These numbers shouldn't be too surprising given the popularity of services such as Twitter and Facebook (59% and 60% respectively in the survey) among organizations, the power consumers are gaining online and the 40% preference they have to escalate issues on social services. Moreover, both large enterprises and small businesses are realizing how customer retention is cheaper and easier than customer acquisition. Many companies are looking at communities and social networks as an opportunity to drive loyalty, satisfaction and word of mouth. However, in this early phase the way they are preparing to launch social support appears to be lacking at best: 66% have no defined processes for customer service over social channels 68% were not able to estimate ROI before deploying social in customer service Only 8% found the expected ROI Most of the projects are stuck in the pilot or testing phase In his interview for the Social Business Thought-Leaders, Esteban discusses how to turn social media hype in business gains by touching upon some of the hottest topics organizations face when approaching social support: How to go from social media monitoring to actionable insights How Social CRM should be best positioned in regard to traditional CRM The importance of integrating social data to transactional data  Conversations with customer service organizations points to 2012 as the year of "understanding what social means for supporting customers". Will 2013 be the year it all becomes reality? We invite you to listen to Esteban Kolsky's interview to understand how to most effectively develop cross-channel strategies that include social channels and improve both customer satisfaction and the overall customer experience.

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  • Online Media Daily: Oracle Takes Social Marketing Seriously

    - by Richard Lefebvre
    In the article published on Nov 12, 2012 and titled "Oracle Integrates Social Marketing Into Enterprise To Gain Marketing Revs," Online Media Daily explores Oracle's approach to social marketing. The publication says that Oracle is focused on showing marketers how to integrate social data into corporate business processes and how to "socialize" the corporate world. The article goes on to state:"Enterprise software companies like Oracle, SAP, IBM, Salesforce and Microsoft have been slowly building up an expertise in social marketing to integrate the data into traditional enterprise resource planning, and customer relationship management tools into social marketing tools.   Enterprise software companies like Oracle, SAP, IBM, Salesforce and Microsoft have been slowly building up an expertise in social marketing to integrate the data into traditional enterprise resource planning, and customer relationship management tools into social marketing tools.    Read more: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/187096/oracle-integrates-social-marketing-into-enterprise.html#ixzz2CPMZ1w3D Meg Bear, VP of cloud social platform at Oracle, sees the integration with ERP systems as a differentiator for the company. Oracle Social Relationship Management launched last month. It integrates social data into traditional enterprise applications like Oracle Fusion Marketing, Oracle Fusion Sales Catalog, Oracle ATG Web Commerce and Oracle ERP." The post goes on to quote a Forrester analyst stating the following:""There's room for any process-driven application to run more efficiently, especially if they're socially enabled," said Rob Koplowitz, VP and principal analyst at Forrester Research. "It takes the human part of the process not generally captured today to provide better access to content, information and collective actions." Koplowitz said several acquisitions support Oracle's long-term vision: to layer social on top of other enterprise apps, like its ERP platform." With many great acquisitions under our belt and organically grown social tools, the market recognizes that Oracle is poised to seize the moment in socially enabled business apps. Continue reading the full article here.

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  • White Paper on Analysis Services Tabular Large-scale Solution #ssas #tabular

    - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)
    Since the first beta of Analysis Services 2012, I worked with many companies designing and implementing solutions based on Analysis Services Tabular. I am glad that Microsoft published a white paper about a case-study using one of these scenarios: An Analysis Services Case Study: Using Tabular Models in a Large-scale Commercial Solution. Alberto Ferrari is the author of the white paper and many people contributed to it. The final result is a very technical document based on a case study, which provides a level of detail that I don’t see often in other case studies (which are usually more marketing-oriented). This white paper has the following structure: Requirements (data model, capacity planning, client tool) Options considered (SQL Server Columnstore Indexes, SSAS Multidimensional, SSAS Tabular) Data Model optimizations (memory compression, query performance, scalability) Partitioning and Processing strategy for near real-time latency Hardware selection (NUMA analysis, Azure VM tests) Scalability tests (estimation of maximum users per node) If you are in charge of evaluating Tabular as analytical engine, or if you have to design your solution based on Tabular, this white paper is a must read. But if you just want to increase your knowledge of Analysis Services, you will find a lot of useful technical information. That said, my favorite quote of the document is the following one, funny but true: […] After several trials, the clear winner was a video gaming machine that one guy on the team used at home. That computer outperformed any available server, running twice as fast as the server-class machines we had in house. At that point, it was clear that the criteria for choosing the server would have to be expanded a bit, simply because it would have been impossible to convince the boss to build a cluster of gaming machines and trust it to serve our customers.  But, honestly, if a business has the flexibility to buy gaming machines (assuming the machines can handle capacity) – do this. Owen Graupman, inContact I want to write a longer discussion about how companies are adopting Tabular in scenarios where it is the hidden engine of a more complex solution (and not the classical “BI system”), because it is more frequent than you might expect (and has several advantages over many alternative approaches).

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  • Experience vs. versatility

    - by Florin Bombeanu
    Let's say a .NET programmer works at a company which provides software on demand, not as a product. The programmer works in WPF for a period of time and he/she invests lots of time in it. He/she get very good at WPF and Windows Forms and desktop development in general. But the company has to provide a web application now, so the developer has to learn MVC or Web Forms. He/she is not experienced in web development so he/she starts investing time in this new technology and in time they get good at it. But this time the company has to provide a Sharepoint solution, and so on. What is more important: Being very very good at a certain technology, Or be as versatile as possible knowing less in each technology but covering a greater area of expertise? Should the programmer keep studying and working in WPF until he/she reaches a guru level or is it a good thing that they had to learn other technologies as well? I agree with those of you who will say that when learning different technologies you will also learn things which are useful no matter the technology you're programming in. But eventually, when the programmer will want to change jobs, will it matter more that he/she knows some WPF, MVC or Sharepoint than the fact that he/she is insanely good at one of them? I would think the second one is more important since most companies are looking for a developer for a certain technology. I don't think there are many companies looking for technical know-it-all people. What do you think?

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  • What type of career path / jobs for a developer to have best work life balance?

    - by programmx10
    I know some people may look down on a question like this but I've been thinking lately a lot about what direction I can take my career to have a good work life balance, since I have been working for a startup where hours tend to drag on, etc and I find it often drains the life out of me. I have been going to interviews and some other companies are also startups / new companies and seem to have a similar attitude about working long hours. Maybe its the technologies I use, the type of development, I don't know but I'm curious if anyone can offer advice on what a path is to be a programmer / developer but work for a company that respects a regular work week and would only rarely find the need to move past this. I realize this won't lead to being the highest paid in my field but I'm ok with that and feel the tradeoff would be worth it as it would also give me time for my own projects, etc. I know some people may say this is too general but I believe it is a programmer specific question because I believe there tends to be a higher than average rate of working overtime, etc and people working in "startup" venture situations than in many other fields and there is definitely a mindset among a lot of people in the field of working long hours that doesn't exist in every industry.

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  • Prognostications for the Future of BI

    - by jacqueline.coolidge(at)oracle.com
    Dashboard Insight has published the viewpoints on the future of BI from several vendors' perspectives including ours at Business Intelligence Predictions for 2011 We offered: In 2011, businesses will demand more from BI.  With intense competitive and economic pressures, it's not enough to be interesting.  BI must be actionable and enable people to respond smarter and faster to the opportunities and challenges of the day.  Most companies rely on BI to help them understand what's going on in their business.  Many are ready to make the leap from "What's going on?" to "What are we going to do about it?" Seamless integration from reporting to what-if analysis and scenario modeling helps businesses decide the right course of action.  The integration of BI with SOA and BPEL will deliver the true payoff for BI by enabling companies to initiate business processes directly from their analysis, turning insight to action for more agile and competitive business.  And, I must admit, it's tough to argue with the trends identified by other vendors. Enabling true self-service and engaging a larger community of users Accelerating the adoption of BI on mobile devices Embracing more advanced analytics such as data/text mining and location intelligence Price/performance breakthroughs It's singing to the choir.  I look forward to hearing the voices of some customers who are pushing the envelope and will post those stories as I capture them.  

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  • Why is it that software is still easily pirated today?

    - by mohabitar
    I've always been curious about this. Now I wouldn't call myself a programmer yet, but I'm learning, so maybe the answer to this is obvious. It just seems a little hard to believe that with all of our technological advances and the billions of dollars spent on engineering the most unbelievable and mind-blowing software, we still have no other means of protecting against piracy then a "serial number/activation key". I'm sure a ton of money, maybe even billions, went into creating Windows 7 or Office and even Snow Leopard, yet I can get it for free in less than 20 minutes. Same for all of Adobe's products, which are probably the easiest. I guess my question is: can there exist a fool proof and hack proof method of protecting your software against piracy? If not realistically, how about theoretically possible? Or no matter what mechanisms these companies deploy, hackers can always find a way around it? EDIT: So apparently, the answer is no. There's pretty much no way. And so I'm sure these big companies have realized this as well. Should they adopt another sales model rather than charging a crapload for their software (I know its justified and they put a lot of hard work into their software, but its still a lot of money). Are there any alternative solutions that will benefit both the company and the user (i.e. if you purchase our product, we'll apply $X dollars to your account that will apply to future purchases from our company)?

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  • Should Professional Development occur on company time?

    - by jshu
    As a first-time part-time software developer at a small consulting company, I'm struggling to organise time to further my own software development knowledge - whether that's reading a book, keeping up with the popular questions on StackOverflow, researching a technology we're using in-depth, or following the front page of Hacker News. I can see results borne from my self-allocated study time, but listing and demonstrating the skills and knowledge gained through Professional Development is difficult. The company does not have any defined PD policy, and there's a lot of pressure to get something deliverable done now! when working for consultants. I've checked what my coworkers do, and they don't appear to allocate any time to self-improvement; they just work at the problems they're given, looking up specific MSDN references, code samples, and the like as they need them. I realise that PD policy is going to vary across companies of different size and culture, and a company like my own is probably a bit of an edge case. I'd love to hear views and experiences from more seasoned developers; especially those who have to make the PD policy choices in their team or company. I'd also like to learn about the more radical approaches to PD, even if they're completely out there; it's always interesting to see what other people are trying. Not quite a summary, but what I'm trying to ask: Is it common or recommended for companies to allocate PD time? Whose responsibility is it to ensure a developer's knowledge and skills are up to date? Should a part-time work schedule inspire a lower ratio of PD time : work? How can a developer show non-developer coworkers that reading blogs and books is net productive? Is reading blogs and books actually net productive? (references welcomed) Is writing blogs effective as a way of PD? (a recent theme on Hacker News) This is sort of a broad question because I don't know exactly which questions I need to ask here, so any thoughts on relevant issues I haven't addressed are very welcome.

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  • Why We Need UX Designers

    - by Tim Murphy
    Ok, so maybe this is really why I need UX designers.  While I have always had an interest in photography and can appreciate a well designed user interface putting one together is an entirely different endeavor.  Being color blind doesn’t help, but coming up with ideas is probably the biggest portion of the issue.  I can spot things that just don’t look like they work right, but what will? UX designers is an area that most companies do not spend much if any resources.  As they say, you only get one chance to make a first impression and and a poorly designed site or application is a bad first impression.  Given that they you would think that companies would invest more in appearance and usability. One of two things need to be done to rectify this issue.  Either we need to start educating our developers on user experience and design or we need to start finding ways to subsidize putting full time designers on our project teams.  Maybe it should be a time share type of situation, but something needs to be done.  As architects we need to impress on our project stakeholders the importance of User Experience and why it should be part of the budget.  If they hear it often enough eventually they may present it to you as their own idea. del.icio.us Tags: User Experience,UX,Application Design

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  • Customer Concepts TV

    - by Richard Lefebvre
    Eliminate the Guesswork in Your Customer's Sales Organization Selling is the lifeblood of every business. In the past, companies would increase headcount to boost sales. In today’s business environment, companies need to re-evaluate the way in which they sell. Sales and marketing organisations must optimise performance, increase team productivity and focus on the best opportunities. Oracle Fusion CRM has been specifically designed with tools to help sales and marketing teams improve efficiency and drive revenue. Territory modeling and management, quota and commission management, collaborative features, real-time customer information and mobile device integration are just some features incorporated. Join us on Customer Concepts TV as we aim to help you find the right strategy for your prospect and customers. Whether they already have a CRM solution in place or are looking for the next level of CRM implementation, this online TV show will give you very practical advice that can help you to make the most out of your CRM implementation.Register now to reserve your spot for this exclusive, live-stream event. Customer Concepts TV comes to you on April 24. Watch the Customer Concepts TV trailer here

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  • Would I be able to use code hosting services to host malware code?

    - by NlightNFotis
    Let me start by saying that I am a computer security researcher. Part of my job is to create malware to deploy on a controlled environment in order to study or evaluate several aspects of computer security. Now, I am starting to think that using an online code hosting service (such as BitBucket, Github, etc...) to have all my code in 1 place, would allow me to work on my projects more efficiently. My question is: Are there any issues with this? I have studied those companies' privacy policies, and they state that they allow usage of their services for lawful usage. Since I am not distributing malware, but I am only using it on my machines and machines that I am authorized to use, aren't I allowed to use the service? For the usage that I am doing, malware is the same as any other software. I recognise that I should be extremely careful with code hosting, as any mistake from my part could hold me liable for damages and leave me open against legal action. As such I am recognizing that I should use private repositories, so the code is not available to the public. But how private is a private repository? How can I trust that companies like them will not leak or sell a potential (electronic) viral weaponry that I may have created in the future?

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  • OS X is based on the codex Gigas the devils bible: Android OS n 4.4 Dio Ra Egyptian deity why is that?

    - by user215250
    GUESS WHO? The Internet and all computers are based on a mathematical number system that seems to be 3, 4, 6, 8 and 10. The HTTP is 888P and UTF-8 and Windows 8 and 8 gigas of RAM(88) on a 64biTOS X-10 or Aten(satan) why is it allowed to be so evil and who all knows about it? Is this activity illegal and should I sew these companies for being involved in satanic practices? iC3 iC3 iC3 I do see XP (X) Chi and (P) Rho a monogram and symbol for Christ, consisting of the superimposed Greek letters. The X is ten, The X code, OS X(O Satan) and codex The Gigas the Devil bible and the P is Payne, The House of Payne in which God dwells. Windows 8, Google Android and Apples OS X are the foundation on which we operarte on the Internet and our Mobiles devices. What is it that these 3 companies have chosen to base their OS’s on such evil? Windows 8 is windows hate H8, HH and H8. Said to be the Devil. Google’s (UGLE) M the Masonic M behind Android OS.in 4.4 is Dio (R) DNA O Sin and 44 is the Devils name in Twain’s The Mysterious Stranger. Apple’s evil (i) OS X (ou-es-ten) O Satan them all beat (B8) considering Apple put their first product on the market for $666.66. The Holy Grail of computers they say. Your Excellency, Lord and King OS2 Eisus Uni Peg Unix: The Unicorn Pegasus Jesus Christ

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  • SOA Forcing A Shift In IT Governance

    As more and more companies adopt a service oriented approach to developing and maintaining existing enterprise systems, IT governance also needs to shift its philosophies to fit the emerging development paradigm. When I first started programming companies placed an emphasis on “Code and Go” software development style. They only developed for current problems and did not really take a look at how the company could leverage some of the code we were developing across the entire enterprise system.  The concept of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) has dramatically shifted how we develop enterprise software with emphasizing software processes as company assets. This has driven some to start developing new components as processes strictly for the possibility of future integration of existing and new systems. I personally like this new paradigm because it truly promotes code reusability. However, most enterprise level IT governance polices were created prior to the introduction of SOA in their respected organization. This can create a sense of the Wild West for developers working on projects related to SOA. This is due to the fact that a lot of the standards and polices implemented by enterprise IT governing boards were initially for developing under the “Code and Go” paradigm and do not take in to account idiosyncrasies found in the SOA/integration based development. As IT governance moves forward its focus should aim more for “Develop to Integrate” versus “Code and Go” philosophies. Examples of “Develop to Integrate” Philosophy: Defining preferred data transfer methodologies (XML vs. JSON), and when to use them Updating security best practices for exposing public services based on existing standard security policies Define when to use create new SOA project vs. implementing localized components that could be reused elsewhere in the enterprise.

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  • SOA Starting Point: Methods for Service Identification and Definition

    As more and more companies start to incorporate a Service Oriented Architectural design approach into their existing enterprise systems, it creates the need for a standardized integration technology. One common technology used by companies is an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). An ESB, as defined by Progress Software, connects and mediates all communications and interactions between services. In essence an ESB is a form of middleware that allows services to communicate with one another regardless of framework, environment, or location. With the emergence of ESB, a new emphasis is now being placed on approaches that can be used to determine what Web services should be built. In addition, what order should these services be built? In May 2011, SOA Magazine published an article that identified 10 common methods for identifying and defining services. SOA’s Ten Common Methods for Service Identification and Definition: Business Process Decomposition Business Functions Business Entity Objects Ownership and Responsibility Goal-Driven Component-Based Existing Supply (Bottom-Up) Front-Office Application Usage Analysis Infrastructure Non-Functional Requirements  Each of these methods provides various pros and cons in regards to their use within the design process. I personally feel that during a design process, multiple methodologies should be used in order to accurately define a design for a system or enterprise system. Personally, I like to create a custom cocktail derived from combining these methodologies in order to ensure that my design fits with the project’s and business’s needs while still following development standards and guidelines. Of these ten methods, I am particularly fond of Business Process Decomposition, Business Functions, Goal-Driven, Component-Based, and routinely use them in my designs.  Works Cited Hubbers, J.-W., Ligthart, A., & Terlouw , L. (2007, 12 10). Ten Ways to Identify Services. Retrieved from SOA Magazine: http://www.soamag.com/I13/1207-1.php Progress.com. (2011, 10 30). ESB ARCHITECTURE AND LIFECYCLE DEFINITION. Retrieved from Progress.com: http://web.progress.com/en/esb-architecture-lifecycle-definition.html

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  • Microsoft Tag Tagged Me

    - by Brian Schroer
    I got EXTREMELY lucky last week and won an HP Mini 311 notebook from a Microsoft Tag Twitter contest. I did my required tweet to enter last Tuesday, and one hour later received notification that I had won the weekly drawing. Apparently you can tweet up to 500 times (I pity the followers of those who do that), so it was really lucky that I won, and I sympathize with those who had been really trying. If you would like to try your luck, there are seven weekly prizes left, and you can find out about the contest here: http://tag.microsoft.com/ttcontest.aspx For a free PC, I thought it was the least I could do to find out what Microsoft Tag is. I was vaguely aware of those pastel-y triangle-y square things that look like someone put one of Don Johnson’s Miami Vice outfits through a shredder, and knew that the company I work for (one of the world’s largest consumer products companies) was looking into putting them on our products, packaging and advertising, but didn’t know much more about the technology. I thought they were just an improvement over bar codes, and would be used in retail store scanners, but I was mistaken. These tags are meant to be scanned by consumers using their mobile phones, to get instant access to information, websites, reviews, etc. Scanning a tag can open a web page, import a contact card, or dial a phone number, play a video… Tag reader software can be installed on Windows Mobile, iPhone, Symbian, Blackberry, Android, J2ME, and other phones (and I suspect that it will be available for Windows Phone 7 also :). There are built-in tracking, metrics and analysis tools, to help companies using Tag make decisions about their marketing expenditures. (And they don’t have to look Miami Vice-y – They can be customized to reflect the personality of the person or a brand.) Looks like interesting stuff. You can find out more at http://tag.microsoft.com.

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  • IASA South East Florida Chapter &ndash; November 2012 Meeting

    - by Rainer Habermann
    After a short introduction by Rainer Habermann and announcements for the chapter and promoting the upcoming IASA IFC Certification Class in January 2013 at Citrix, the audience was exited to welcome Jesus Rodriquez for the main presentation about “Mobilizing the Enterprise”.       Jesus is a co-founder and CEO of both Tellago Studios and Tellago, two fast growing start-ups with a unique vision around software technology. Jesus spends his days working on the technology and strategic vision of both companies. Under his leadership, Tellago and Tellago Studios have been recognized as an innovator in the areas of enterprise software and solutions achieving important awards like the Inc500, American Business Awards’ American and International Business Awards. A software scientist by background, Jesus is an internationally recognized speaker and author with contributions that include hundreds of articles and sessions at industry conferences. Jesus serves as an advisor to several software companies such as Microsoft and Oracle, and is the only person who holds both the Microsoft MVP and Oracle ACE awards. Jesus introduced the architecture of the Enterprise Mobile Backend as a service, integrating enterprise mobile applications with corporate line of business systems and providing robust backend capabilities represent some of the major challenges in today’s enterprise mobility solutions. The mobile consumer space has seen the emergence of backend as a service technologies as one of the main mechanisms for enabling backend capabilities in mobile applications. This session introduced the concept of mobile backend as a service (MBaaS) as the fundamental enabler of the next generation enterprise mobile applications. The session further explored the fundamental components and services of a mBaaS platform that makes it an ideal option for enabling backend capabilities in enterprise mobile applications. Using real world examples. Jesus demonstrated how mBaaS represents an agile and extremely simple model to integrate mobile applications with corporate systems. Thank you very much to Jesus Rodriquez for an outstanding presentation, Peak 10 Data Centers for hosting our meeting, and to TEK Systems for Snacks. Pictures taken by Ted Harwood.   Rainer Habermann President IASA SE Florida Chapter

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  • Making an advertising server ads from different ad networks

    - by John
    In India there are many ad-networks(other than Adsense) who pay per acquisition or per lead. So Javascript ad code is not required(as fraud clicks don't matter as long as one converts). So an ad network will have many companies and each company will have many banner sizes for ads. Also suddenly any ad may be stopped just because company's target has met. Which is a common nuisance since if we don't remove those url's then that company will get conversions for free. I've a dozen sites and removing the ads are difficult every now and then. Also CPA based ads may not convert at all. That means I'll need to remove non-performing ads regularly. I've gone through: How can I show multiple ad networks on my site? . I've also visited DFP solution but without Adsense they wouldn't let me open account. I want to make an ad server wherein I'll feed new ads (banner image + link for click). I want to maintain categories there like ( shoes, phones, books etc). So if an ad is paused - i'll simply remove/pause the ad there while other ads in the category keep running. Also changing ad code within sites will no more be required. For example - let me have an ad category "clothing" where I can add ads from different companies. So if one of my site requests an ad from there it'll randomly select an ad in this category and return it to site for display. Removing/adding ads within this category will not affect the site requesting those ads. Any idea how to implement it?

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  • Not getting paid for hours you've worked?

    - by Sauron
    So I was reading from a previous thread about App vs Game Development: If it was for you to chose Game Development vs Application Development, which will you chose? Which brought me to this site: EA: The Human Story A lot of it talked about developers working something like 85 hours a week, and not getting paid overtime, or anything. Just getting paid for the 40 hours. Is this normal for most software companies? I mean where I work I'm only an entry level guy but I get overtime, and anything over 40 hours is considered this. But it got me thinking "Holy crap" I could never do that. My FREE time is important to me. But is this commonplace in most software companies? Or is more a rarity to certain types (game development, etc)? Because it got me scared! Like I understand having to put some extra hours in for a project... but like 80! that's ridiculous.

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  • Using template questions in a technical interview

    - by Desolate Planet
    I've recently been in an argument with a colleage about technical questions in interviews. As a graduate, I went round lots of companies and noticed they used the same questions. An example is "Can you write a function that determines if a number is prime or not?", 4 years later, I find that particular question is quite common even for a junior developer. I might not be looking at this the correct way, but shouldn't software houses be intelligent enought to think up their own interview questions. This may well be the case, but I've been to about 16 interviews as a graduate and the same questions came up in about 75% of them. This leads me to believe that many companies are lazy and simply Google: 'Template questions for interviewing software developers' and I kind of look down on that. Question: Is it better to use a sest of questions off some template or should software houses strive to be more original and come up with their own interview material? From my point of view, if I failed an inteview and went off and looked for good answers to the questions I messed up on, I could fly through the next interview if they questions are the same.

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  • Building Enterprise Smartphone App &ndash; Part 4: Application Development Considerations

    - by Tim Murphy
    This is the final part in a series of posts based on a talk I gave recently at the Chicago Information Technology Architects Group.  Feel free to leave feedback. Application Development Considerations Now we get to the actual building of your solutions.  What are the skills and resources that will be needed in order to develop a smartphone application in the enterprise? Language Knowledge One of the first things you need to consider when you are deciding which platform language do you either have the most in house skill base or can you easily acquire.  If you already have developers who know Java or C# you may want to use either Android or Windows Phone.  You should also take into consideration the market availability of developers.  If your key developer leaves how easy is it to find a knowledgeable replacement? A second consideration when it comes to programming languages is the qualities exposed by the languages of a particular platform.  How well does that development language and its associated frameworks support things like security and access to the features of the smartphone hardware?  This will play into your overall cost of ownership if you have to create this infrastructure on your own. Manage Limited Resources Everything is limited on a smartphone: battery, memory, processing power, network bandwidth.  When developing your applications you will have to keep your footprint as small as possible in every way.  This means not running unnecessary processes in the background that will drain the battery or pulling more data over the airwaves than you have to.  You also want to keep your on device in as compact a format as possible. Mobile Design Patterns There are a number of design patterns that have either come to life because of smartphone development or have been adapted for this use.  The main pattern in the Windows Phone environment is the MVVM (Model-View-View-Model).  This is great for overall application structure and separation of concerns.  The fun part is trying to keep that separation as pure as possible.  Many of the other patterns may or may not have strict definitions, but some that you need to be concerned with are push notification, asynchronous communication and offline data storage. Real estate is limited on smartphones and even tablets. You are also limited in the type of controls that can be represented in the UI. This means rethinking how you modularize your application. Typing is also much harder to do so you want to reduce this as much as possible.  This leads to UI patterns.  While not what we would traditionally think of as design patterns the guidance each platform has for UI design is critical to the success of your application.  If user find the application difficult navigate they will not use it. Development Process Because of the differences in development tools required, test devices and certification and deployment processes your teams will need to learn new way of working together.  This will include the need to integrate service contracts of back-end systems with mobile applications.  You will also want to make sure that you present consistency across different access points to corporate data.  Your web site may have more functionality than your smartphone application, but it should have a consistent core set of functionality.  This all requires greater communication between sub-teams of your developers. Testing Process Testing of smartphone apps has a lot more to do with what happens when you lose connectivity or if the user navigates away from your application. There are a lot more opportunities for the user or the device to perform disruptive acts.  This should be your main testing concentration aside from the main business requirements.  You will need to do things like setting the phone to airplane mode and seeing what the application does in order to weed out any gaps in your handling communication interruptions. Need For Outside Experts Since this is a development area that is new to most companies the need for experts is a lot greater. Whether these are consultants, vendor representatives or just development community forums you will need to establish expert contacts. Nothing is more dangerous for your project timelines than a lack of knowledge.  Make sure you know who to call to avoid lengthy delays in your project because of knowledge gaps. Security Security has to be a major concern for enterprise applications. You aren't dealing with just someone's game standings. You are dealing with a companies intellectual property and competitive advantage. As such you need to start by limiting access to the application itself.  Once the user is in the app you need to ensure that the data is secure at all times.  This includes both local storage and across the wire.  This means if a platform doesn’t natively support encryption for these functions you will need to find alternatives to secure your data.  You also need to keep secret (encryption) keys obfuscated or locked away outside of the application. People can disassemble the code otherwise and break your encryption. Offline Capabilities As we discussed earlier one your biggest concerns is not having connectivity.  Because of this a good portion of your code may be dedicated to handling loss of connection and reconnection situations.  What do you do if you lose the network?  Back up all your transactions and store of any supporting data so that operations can continue off line. In order to support this you will need to determine the available flat file or local data base capabilities of the platform.  Any failed transactions will need to support a retry mechanism whether it is automatic or user initiated.  This also includes your services since they will need to be able to roll back partially completed transactions.  What ever you do, don’t ignore this area when you are designing your system. Deployment Each platform has different deployment capabilities. Some are more suited to enterprise situations than others. Apple's approach is probably the most mature at the moment. Prior to the current generation of smartphone platforms it would have been Windows CE. Windows Phone 7 has the limitation that the app has to be distributed through the same network as public facing applications. You mark them as private which means that they are only accessible by a direct URL. Unfortunately this does not make them undiscoverable (although it is very difficult). This will change with Windows Phone 8 where companies will be able to certify their own applications and distribute them.  Given this Windows Phone applications need to be more diligent with application access in order to keep them restricted to the company's employees. My understanding of the Android deployment schemes is that it is much less standardized then either iOS or Windows Phone. Someone would have to confirm or deny that for me though since I have not yet put the time into researching this platform further. Given my limited exposure to the iOS and Android platforms I have not been able to confirm this, but there are varying degrees of user involvement to install and keep applications updated. At one extreme the user just goes to a website to do the install and in other case they may need to download files and perform steps to install them. Future Bluetooth Today we use Bluetooth for keyboards, mice and headsets.  In the future it could be used to interrogate car computers or manufacturing systems or possibly retail machines by service techs.  This would open smartphones to greater use as a almost a Star Trek Tricorder.  You would get you all your data as well as being able to use it as a universal remote for just about any device or machine. Better corporation controlled deployment At least in the Windows Phone world the upcoming release of Windows Phone 8 will include a private certification and deployment option that is currently not available with Windows Phone 7 (Mango). We currently have to run the apps through the Marketplace certification process and use a targeted distribution method. Platform independent approaches HTML5 and JavaScript with Web Service has become a popular topic lately for not only creating flexible web site, but also creating cross platform mobile applications.  I’m not yet convinced that this lowest common denominator approach is viable in most cases, but it does have it’s place and seems to be growing.  Be sure to keep an eye on it. Summary From my perspective enterprise smartphone applications can offer a great competitive advantage to many companies.  They are not cheap to build and should be approached cautiously.  Understand the factors I have outlined in this series, do you due diligence and see if there is a portion of your business that can benefit from the mobile experience. del.icio.us Tags: Architecture,Smartphones,Windows Phone,iOS,Android

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  • How does a CS student negotiate in/after a job interview?

    - by Billy ONeal
    Alright, I've gotten to the second step in the interview process. At this point I'm working under the assumption that I might be offered a position -- flying my butt to Redmond would be quite an expense if they weren't at least considering me for something (*crosses fingers*). So, if one is offered a position, how should a CS student negotiate? I've heard a few strategies about dealing with software companies when you are being considered for a hire, but most of them are considering the developer in a powerful position. In such examinations, (s)he has lots of job experience, and may even be overqualified for what the employer is looking for. (s)he is part of a small job market of qualified developers, because 99% of applications companies receive are from those who are woefully under qualified. I'm in a completely different position. I think I compare favorably to most of my fellow students, and I have been a programmer for almost 10 years, but often I still feel green compared to most of my coworkers. I'm in a position where the employer holds most of the chips; they'd be doing me quite a favor by hiring me. I think this scenario is considerably different than the targets for most of the advice I've seen. Above all, I don't want to be such a prick negotiating that it damages my chances to actually operate in a position, even if it means not negotiating at all. How should one approach a scenario like this? P.S. If this is off topic feel free to close it -- I think it's borderline and I'm of the opinion that it's better to ask and be closed than not ask at all ;)

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  • The Oracle Platform

    - by Naresh Persaud
    Today’s enterprises typically create identity management infrastructures using ad-hoc, multiple point solutions. Relying on point solutions introduces complexity and high cost of ownership leading many organizations to rethink this approach. In a recent worldwide study of 160 companies conducted by Aberdeen Research, there was a discernible shift in this trend as businesses are now looking to move away from the point solution approach from multiple vendors and adopt an integrated platform approach. By deploying a comprehensive identity and access management strategy using a single platform, companies are saving as much as 48% in IT costs, while reducing audit deficiencies by nearly 35%. According to Aberdeen's research, choosing an integrated suite or “platform” of solutions for Identity Management from a single vendor can have many advantages over choosing “point solutions” from multiple vendors. The Oracle Identity Management Platform is uniquely designed to offer several compelling benefits to our customers.  Shared Services: Instead of separate solutions for - Administration, Authentication, Authorization, Audit and so on–  Oracle Identity Management offers a set of share services that allows these services to be consumed by each component in the stack and by developers of new applications  Actionable Intelligence: The most compelling benefit of the Oracle platform is ” Actionable intelligence” which means if there is a compliance violation, the same platform can fix it. And If a user is logging in from an un-trusted device or we detect an attack and act proactively on that information. Suite Interoperability: With the oracle platform the components all connect and integrated with each other. So if an organization purchase the platform for provisioning and wants to manage access, then the same platform can offer access management which leads to cost savings. Extensible and Configurable: With point solutions – you typically get limited ability to extend the tool to address custom requirements. But with the Oracle platform all of the components have a common way to extend the UI and behavior Find out more about the Oracle Platform approach in this presentation. Platform approach-series-the oracleplatform-final View more PowerPoint from OracleIDM

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  • FREE goodies if you are a UK based software house already live on the Windows Azure Platform

    - by Eric Nelson
    In the UK we have seen some fantastic take up around the Windows Azure Platform and we have lined up some great stuff in 2011 to help companies fully exploit the Cloud – but we need you to tell us what you are up to! Once you tell us about your plans around Windows Azure, you will get access to FREE benefits including email based developer support and free monthly allowance of Windows Azure, SQL Azure and AppFabric from Jan 2011 – and more! (This offer is referred to as Cloud Essentials and is explained here) And… we will be able to plan the right amount of activity to continue to help early adopters through 2011. Step 1: Sign up your company to Microsoft Platform Ready (you will need a windows live id to do this) Step 2: Add your applications For each application, state your intention around Windows Azure (and SQL etc if you so wish) Step 3: Verify your application works on the Windows Azure Platform Step 4 (Optional): Test your application works on the Windows Azure Platform Download the FREE test tool. Test your application with it and upload the successful results. Step 5: Revisit the MPR site in early January to get details of Cloud Essentials and other benefits P.S. You might want some background on the “fantastic take up” bit: We helped over 3000 UK companies deploy test applications during the beta phase of Windows Azure We directly trained over 1000 UK developers during 2010 We already have over 100 UK applications profiled on the Microsoft Platform Ready site And in a recent survey of UK ISVs you all look pretty excited around Cloud – 42% already offer their solution on the Cloud or plan to.

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  • Reference Data Management

    - by rahulkamath
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} table.MsoTableColorfulListAccent2 {mso-style-name:"Colorful List - Accent 2"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:1; mso-tstyle-colband-size:1; mso-style-priority:72; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-tstyle-shading:#F8EDED; mso-tstyle-shading-themecolor:accent2; mso-tstyle-shading-themetint:25; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:black; mso-themecolor:text1;} table.MsoTableColorfulListAccent2FirstRow {mso-style-name:"Colorful List - Accent 2"; mso-table-condition:first-row; mso-style-priority:72; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-shading:#9E3A38; mso-tstyle-shading-themecolor:accent2; mso-tstyle-shading-themeshade:204; mso-tstyle-border-bottom:1.5pt solid white; mso-tstyle-border-bottom-themecolor:background1; color:white; mso-themecolor:background1; mso-ansi-font-weight:bold; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;} table.MsoTableColorfulListAccent2LastRow {mso-style-name:"Colorful List - Accent 2"; mso-table-condition:last-row; mso-style-priority:72; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-shading:white; mso-tstyle-shading-themecolor:background1; mso-tstyle-border-top:1.5pt solid black; mso-tstyle-border-top-themecolor:text1; color:#9E3A38; mso-themecolor:accent2; mso-themeshade:204; mso-ansi-font-weight:bold; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;} table.MsoTableColorfulListAccent2FirstCol {mso-style-name:"Colorful List - Accent 2"; mso-table-condition:first-column; mso-style-priority:72; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-ansi-font-weight:bold; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;} table.MsoTableColorfulListAccent2LastCol {mso-style-name:"Colorful List - Accent 2"; mso-table-condition:last-column; mso-style-priority:72; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-ansi-font-weight:bold; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;} table.MsoTableColorfulListAccent2OddColumn {mso-style-name:"Colorful List - Accent 2"; mso-table-condition:odd-column; mso-style-priority:72; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-shading:#EFD3D2; mso-tstyle-shading-themecolor:accent2; mso-tstyle-shading-themetint:63; mso-tstyle-border-top:cell-none; mso-tstyle-border-left:cell-none; mso-tstyle-border-bottom:cell-none; mso-tstyle-border-right:cell-none; mso-tstyle-border-insideh:cell-none; mso-tstyle-border-insidev:cell-none;} table.MsoTableColorfulListAccent2OddRow {mso-style-name:"Colorful List - Accent 2"; mso-table-condition:odd-row; mso-style-priority:72; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-shading:#F2DBDB; mso-tstyle-shading-themecolor:accent2; mso-tstyle-shading-themetint:51;} Reference Data Management Oracle Data Relationship Management (DRM) has always been extremely powerful as an Enterprise MDM solution that can help manage changes to master data in a way that influences enterprise structure, whether it be mastering chart of accounts to enable financial transformation, or revamping organization structures to drive business transformation and operational efficiencies, or mastering sales territories in light of rapid fire acquisitions that require frequent sales territory refinement, equitable distribution of leads and accounts to salespersons, and alignment of budget/forecast with results to optimize sales coverage. Increasingly, DRM is also being utilized by Oracle customers for reference data management, an emerging solution space that deserves some explanation. What is reference data? Reference data is a close cousin of master data. While master data may be more rapidly changing, requires consensus building across stakeholders and lends structure to business transactions, reference data is simpler, more slowly changing, but has semantic content that is used to categorize or group other information assets – including master data – and give them contextual value. The following table contains an illustrative list of examples of reference data by type. Reference data types may include types and codes, business taxonomies, complex relationships & cross-domain mappings or standards. Types & Codes Taxonomies Relationships / Mappings Standards Transaction Codes Industry Classification Categories and Codes, e.g., North America Industry Classification System (NAICS) Product / Segment; Product / Geo Calendars (e.g., Gregorian, Fiscal, Manufacturing, Retail, ISO8601) Lookup Tables (e.g., Gender, Marital Status, etc.) Product Categories City à State à Postal Codes Currency Codes (e.g., ISO) Status Codes Sales Territories (e.g., Geo, Industry Verticals, Named Accounts, Federal/State/Local/Defense) Customer / Market Segment; Business Unit / Channel Country Codes (e.g., ISO 3166, UN) Role Codes Market Segments Country Codes / Currency Codes / Financial Accounts Date/Time, Time Zones (e.g., ISO 8601) Domain Values Universal Standard Products and Services Classification (UNSPSC), eCl@ss International Classification of Diseases (ICD) e.g., ICD9 à IC10 mappings Tax Rates Why manage reference data? Reference data carries contextual value and meaning and therefore its use can drive business logic that helps execute a business process, create a desired application behavior or provide meaningful segmentation to analyze transaction data. Further, mapping reference data often requires human judgment. Sample Use Cases of Reference Data Management Healthcare: Diagnostic Codes The reference data challenges in the healthcare industry offer a case in point. Part of being HIPAA compliant requires medical practitioners to transition diagnosis codes from ICD-9 to ICD-10, a medical coding scheme used to classify diseases, signs and symptoms, causes, etc. The transition to ICD-10 has a significant impact on business processes, procedures, contracts, and IT systems. Since both code sets ICD-9 and ICD-10 offer diagnosis codes of very different levels of granularity, human judgment is required to map ICD-9 codes to ICD-10. The process requires collaboration and consensus building among stakeholders much in the same way as does master data management. Moreover, to build reports to understand utilization, frequency and quality of diagnoses, medical practitioners may need to “cross-walk” mappings -- either forward to ICD-10 or backwards to ICD-9 depending upon the reporting time horizon. Spend Management: Product, Service & Supplier Codes Similarly, as an enterprise looks to rationalize suppliers and leverage their spend, conforming supplier codes, as well as product and service codes requires supporting multiple classification schemes that may include industry standards (e.g., UNSPSC, eCl@ss) or enterprise taxonomies. Aberdeen Group estimates that 90% of companies rely on spreadsheets and manual reviews to aggregate, classify and analyze spend data, and that data management activities account for 12-15% of the sourcing cycle and consume 30-50% of a commodity manager’s time. Creating a common map across the extended enterprise to rationalize codes across procurement, accounts payable, general ledger, credit card, procurement card (P-card) as well as ACH and bank systems can cut sourcing costs, improve compliance, lower inventory stock, and free up talent to focus on value added tasks. Specialty Finance: Point of Sales Transaction Codes and Product Codes In the specialty finance industry, enterprises are confronted with usury laws – governed at the state and local level – that regulate financial product innovation as it relates to consumer loans, check cashing and pawn lending. To comply, it is important to demonstrate that transactions booked at the point of sale are posted against valid product codes that were on offer at the time of booking the sale. Since new products are being released at a steady stream, it is important to ensure timely and accurate mapping of point-of-sale transaction codes with the appropriate product and GL codes to comply with the changing regulations. Multi-National Companies: Industry Classification Schemes As companies grow and expand across geographies, a typical challenge they encounter with reference data represents reconciling various versions of industry classification schemes in use across nations. While the United States, Mexico and Canada conform to the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) standard, European Union countries choose different variants of the NACE industry classification scheme. Multi-national companies must manage the individual national NACE schemes and reconcile the differences across countries. Enterprises must invest in a reference data change management application to address the challenge of distributing reference data changes to downstream applications and assess which applications were impacted by a given change.

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  • Integrated Reporting is Getting Closer

    - by jmorourke
    Oracle recently sponsored a webcast on CFO.com titled:  The CFO Playbook on Integrated Reporting: Integrating Sustainability into Financial Disclosures.  The speakers for this webcast were James Margolis, partner with Environmental Resources Management (ERM), a global provider of environmental, health, safety, risk and sustainability consulting services (EHSS) and Mike Wallace, Director of the Global Reporting Initiative's Focal Point USA. This webcast focused on why top companies in the U.S. and overseas are incorporating sustainability content into their annual reports and other financial disclosures. The speakers discussed the benefits of integrating sustainability reporting with traditional financial reporting. They noted how investors, corporate directors, lenders and most recently, the Securities and Exchange Commission, use this information to better understand, benchmark and value companies. They also discussed the November 2012 release of an Integrated Reporting Framework by the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC).  See the press release and link to the framework here.  The shift towards integrated financial and sustainability reporting is gaining momentum with a number of global stock exchanges endorsing this approach in 2012.  See the links here if you want to listen to the webcast or download the slides. Also, here is a demonstration of Oracle’s solution for integrated financial and sustainability reporting. If you’re interested in learning more about this and Oracle’s other Sustainability Reporting solutions, click here. If you have any questions or need additional information, please feel free to contact me at [email protected].

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