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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, March 13, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, March 13, 2010New Projects[Experiment] vczh DBUI: EXPERIMENT. Auto UI adaptor for a specified data base[SAMPLE PROJECT] Branch and Patch with GIT: I'll paste more here later...BlogPress: This web application provides a content management system. Coot: Facebook Photos Screensaver.DotNetNuke® JDMenu: dnnJDMenu makes it easy to use the open source JDMenu component in your DotNetNuke skin.DotNetNuke® RadRotator: dnnRadRotator makes it easy to add telerik RadRotator functionality to your site or custom module. Licensing permits anyone to use the components ...DotNetNuke® RadTabStrip: DNNRadTabStrip makes it easy to add telerik RadTabStrip functionality to your module or skin. Licensing permits anyone to use the components (incl...DotNetNuke® RadTreeView: DNNRadTreeView makes it easy to add telerik RadTreeView functionality to your module or skin. Licensing permits anyone to use the components (incl...DotNetNuke® Skin Garden: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Out of the box" category by Mark Allan of DnnGarden. Concise and semantic HTML 5 stru...ElmasFC: Elmas Facebook CheckerFront Callback Protocol: Front Callback Protocol make it easier for developers to create a network application in the .Net Language. It provide the flexibility of using TCP...Glass UI: A Windows Forms Control Library built specifically for Aero Glass. This will consist of existing controls, modified to render on glass, as well as ...Guitarist Tools: Some tools for guitarists.HomeUX: HomeUX is home control software featuring a Silverlight-based touch screen user interface.Homework Helper: Homework Helper help students to train simpler homework like "What's the name of the capital of France?" - Question - Answear based. It's made i...IGNOU Mini Project Allocation: A mini project allocation system.Images Compiler: Images Compiler is pretty small wpf application for users who want to resize, rename, disable colors... for too much images in very short time. It...InstitutionManagementSystem: Institution Management System prototypeManagedCv: ManagedCv is the library for C#/VB/ to use the OpenCV librarymanagement joint ownership: Application pour la gestion des actions réalisées au sein d’une copropriété. Application for management actions within a joint ownershipMapWindow6: MapWindow 6.0 is an open source geographic information system (GIS) and library of geospatial software development tools for .NET, written in C#. T...Morris Auto: Morris Auto is a social application build templateMouse control with finger detection: The aim of this project is to design an application for recognition of the movement of a finger through a webcam and then control the mouse. The pr...ORAYLIS BI.Quality: ORAYLIS BI.Quality makes it easier to develop BI Solutions in an agile environment. It adapts Unit Tests to BI Development. Propositional Framework: Different sales propositions are presented to the user using data collected from marketing intelligence, browser history or user behaviour as they ...ServStop: ServStop is a .NET application that makes it easy to stop several system services at once. Now you don't have to change startup types or stop them ...shatkotha web portal: source code of web portal shatkothaSurvey and Registration tools: Two Silverlight tools for add Survey and Registration in your websiteTable Storage Backup & Restore for Windows Azure: Allows various backup & restore options for Windows Azure Table Storage accounts: - Backup from one storage account to another - Backup a storag...Topsy Lib: This project provides wrapper methods to call Topsy's web services from C#.twNowplaying: twNowplaying is a small and handy utility that allows you to tweet your currently playing track from Spotify to Twitter. Followed by the #twNowplay...XOM: XOM: Xml Object Mapper Automatically populate your objects with data from XML via an XML map. Never do this again: if(e.GetElementsByTagName("us...YS Utils: The library contains set of useful classes which may solve common tasks for different applications.ZabViewer: CS ProjectNew ReleasesAppFabric Caching Admin Tool: AppFabric Caching Admin Tool (0.8): System Requirements:.NET 4.0 RC AppFabric Caching Beta2 Test On:Win 7 (64x)ASP.Net Routing Configuration: mal.Web.Routing v0.9.2.0: mal.Web.Routing v0.9.2.0DotNetNuke IM Module of Facebook Like Messenger: DNN IM Module of Facebook Like Messenger: Empower DNN Website with a 1-to-1 Chat Solution named Free Facebook Messenger Style Web Chat Bar of 123 Web Messenger. 1. If you need to use the c...DotNetNuke® Form and List (formerly User Defined Table): 05.01.02: Form and List 05.01.02 (Release Candidate 2)5.1.2 will be the next stabilzation release. Major Highlights fixed Cancel action in a form, it don't ...DotNetNuke® JDMenu: DNN jdMenu 1.0.0: dnnJDMenu makes it easy to use the open source JDMenu component in your DotNetNuke skin. Many thanks to Jonathan Sharp of Outwest Media for creati...DotNetNuke® RadTabStrip: DNNRadTabstrip 1.0.0: DNNRadTabStrip makes it easy to add telerik RadTabStrip functionality to your module or skin. Licensing permits anyone to use the components (inclu...DotNetNuke® RadTreeView: DNNRadTreeView 1.0.0: DNNRadTreeView makes it easy to create skins which use the Telerik RadTreeview functionality. Licensing permits anyone (including designers) to use...DotNetNuke® Skin Garden: Garden Package 1.0.0: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Out of the box" category by Mark Allan of DnnGarden. Concise and semantic HTML 5 struc...ElmasFC: Elmas FC: This porgram is checking your facebook account automaticly.Free DotNetNuke IM of 123 Web Messenger -- Web-based Friend List: Free Download DNN IM Module and Source Code: 123 Web Messenger offers free DotNetNuke Instant Messaging to help you embed a IM Software into DNN Website by integrating 123 Web Messenger with D...Free Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire SL and WPF Charts 3.0.4 Released: Hi, Today we have released the final version of Visifire v3.0.4 which contains the following major features: * Zooming * Step Line chart ...Home Access Plus+: v3.1.0.0: Version 3.1.0.0 Release Problem with this release, get Version 3.1.1.1 Change Log: Fixed ampersand issue Added Unzip Features Added Help Desk ...Home Access Plus+: v3.1.1.1: Version 3.1.1.1 Release Change Log: Fixed the Help Desk File Changes: ~/App_Data/Tickets.xml ~/bin/CHS Extranet.dll ~/bin/CHS Extranet.pdbHomework Helper: Homework Helper 1.0: The first release of Homework Helper. It got basic functionality. Check the Documentation or press F1 while using the program.Homework Helper: Homework Helper v1.0: This is the latest version of Homework Helper. Just a few updates since the latest one (a couple of minutes ago). Now it saves your settings! Instr...IBCSharp: IBCSharp 1.02: What IBCSharp 1.02.zip unzips to: http://i39.tinypic.com/28hz8m1.png Note: The above solution has MSTest, Typemock Isolator, and Microsoft CHESS c...InfoService: InfoService v1.5 RC 1: InfoService Release Canidate Please note this is a RC. It should be stable, but i can't guarantee that! So use it on your own risk. Please read Pl...IntX: IntX 0.9.3.3: Fixed issue #7100IronRuby: 1.0 RC3: The IronRuby team is pleased to announce version 1.0 RC3! As IronRuby approaches the final 1.0, these RCs will contain crucial bug fixes and enhanc...MAISGestão: LayerDiagram (pdf): This is the final version of the layer diagramMapWindow6: MapWindow 6.0 msi (March 12): After some significant trouble with svn, this site represents a test of using Mercurial for our version control. Hopefully the choice of this new ...MSBuild Mercurial Tasks: 0.2.0 Beta: This release realises the Scenario 2 and provides two MSBuild tasks: HgCommit and HgPush. This task allows to create a new changeset in the current...NLog - Advanced .NET Logging: NLog 2.0 preview 1: This is very experimental first build of NLog from 2.0 branch is available for download. It’s not alpha, beta or even gamma, just a preview of upco...Open NFe: Fonte DANFE v1.9.5: Código-fonte para a versão 1.9.5 do DANFEOpiConsole (XNA): OpiConsole 0.3: OpiConsole 0.3 OpiConsole includes: * PC & Xbox support. * Default commands (cvar, quit etc.) * Ability to add custom commands. *...ORAYLIS BI.Quality: Release 1.0.0: Release 1.0.0Pcap.Net: Pcap.Net 0.5.0 (38141): Pcap.Net - March 2010 Release Pcap.Net is a .NET wrapper for WinPcap written in C++/CLI and C#. It Features almost all WinPcap features and include...PhysX.Net: PhysX.Net 0.12.0.0 Beta 1: This is beta release of 0.12.0.0 for people to test and provide feedback on. It targets 2.8.3.21 of PhysXPólya: Pólya 2010 03 13 alpha: Pólya is a collection of generic data structures; as generic as C#/.Net allows them to be. In this first release the focus has been on some fundam...Prolog.NET: Prolog.NET 1.0 Beta 1.3: Installer includes: primary Prolog.NET assembly Prolog.NET Workbench Prolog.NET Scheduler sample application PrologTest console applicatio...Propositional Framework: USP: The initial code drop was based on the Autocomplete demo and the neural network approach used by Jeff Heaton (@ http://www.heatonresearch.com/) - e...Protocol Transition with BizTalk: Source: Stable buildRoTwee: RoTwee (7.1.0.0): Now picture of your friend is shown in RoTwee. Place mouse cursor to the tweet !ServStop: 0.5.0.0: Initial Release Contents of ServStop0500.zip ServStop.exe 0.5.0.0 Initial Release. 32,768 bytes. Other files None. Source code available on "...SkeinLibManaged: Release 1.0.0.0 (Beta): This is the compiled DLL with XML documentation, so there should be plenty of context sensitive help and Intellisense. This is the Release version...sPWadmin: pwAdmin v0.9a: Added: LiveChat Plugin Shows the latest 150 chat messages from "/Your PW Server/logservice/logs/world2.chat" Refresh chat every 5 seconds Allow...sPWadmin: pwAdmin v0.9b: Some minor fixes to style, layout & different browser support Merged the forms in server configuration tab to a single form that can now save mul...Topsy Lib: Initial release: Initial Debug and Release versions.twNowplaying: twNowplaying: Press the Twitter icon to get started, don't forget to submit bugs to the issue tracker. What's new This release has some minor UI fixes.twNowplaying: twNowplaying Alpha 1.0: Press the Twitter icon to get started, don't forget to submit bugs to the issue tracker. Thank you , and enjoy! =)VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30312.0: Automatic drop of latest buildWPF Dialogs: Version 0.1.3: The FolderBrowseDialog / FolderBrowseDialog - Deutsch was improved and extended.XOM: XOM 0.1A: Just a release of the code I have so far. In order to get your objects to work, you need to create an XML file to define your objects. Here is a ...Xpress - ASP.NET MVC 个人博客程序: xpress2.1.1.0312.beta: 最新beta版，注意：此版本和2.1.0不兼容 更改内容： 将主题文件发放在 Views 文件夹下 主题文件支持强类型Model 主题资源文件放在Resouces目录下YS Utils: V 1.0.0.0: This is first release. The YSUtils library contains first set of classes. ZIP files contains documentation.Most Popular ProjectsMetaSharpWBFS ManagerRawrAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NET Ajax LibraryASP.NETMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesMost Active ProjectsRawrN2 CMSBlogEngine.NETFasterflect - A Fast and Simple Reflection APIpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryFarseer Physics EngineSharePoint Team-MailerCaliburn: An Application Framework for WPF and SilverlightCalcium: A modular application toolset leveraging PrismjQuery Library for SharePoint Web Services

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• HTG Reviews the CODE Keyboard: Old School Construction Meets Modern Amenities

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  There’s nothing quite as satisfying as the smooth and crisp action of a well built keyboard. If you’re tired of  mushy keys and cheap feeling keyboards, a well-constructed mechanical keyboard is a welcome respite from the $10 keyboard that came with your computer. Read on as we put the CODE mechanical keyboard through the paces. What is the CODE Keyboard? The CODE keyboard is a collaboration between manufacturer WASD Keyboards and Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror (the guy behind the Stack Exchange network and Discourse forum software). Atwood’s focus was incorporating the best of traditional mechanical keyboards and the best of modern keyboard usability improvements. In his own words: The world is awash in terrible, crappy, no name how-cheap-can-we-make-it keyboards. There are a few dozen better mechanical keyboard options out there. I’ve owned and used at least six different expensive mechanical keyboards, but I wasn’t satisfied with any of them, either: they didn’t have backlighting, were ugly, had terrible design, or were missing basic functions like media keys. That’s why I originally contacted Weyman Kwong of WASD Keyboards way back in early 2012. I told him that the state of keyboards was unacceptable to me as a geek, and I proposed a partnership wherein I was willing to work with him to do whatever it takes to produce a truly great mechanical keyboard. Even the ardent skeptic who questions whether Atwood has indeed created a truly great mechanical keyboard certainly can’t argue with the position he starts from: there are so many agonizingly crappy keyboards out there. Even worse, in our opinion, is that unless you’re a typist of a certain vintage there’s a good chance you’ve never actually typed on a really nice keyboard. Those that didn’t start using computers until the mid-to-late 1990s most likely have always typed on modern mushy-key keyboards and never known the joy of typing on a really responsive and crisp mechanical keyboard. Is our preference for and love of mechanical keyboards shining through here? Good. We’re not even going to try and hide it. So where does the CODE keyboard stack up in pantheon of keyboards? Read on as we walk you through the simple setup and our experience using the CODE. Setting Up the CODE Keyboard Although the setup of the CODE keyboard is essentially plug and play, there are two distinct setup steps that you likely haven’t had to perform on a previous keyboard. Both highlight the degree of care put into the keyboard and the amount of customization available. Inside the box you’ll find the keyboard, a micro USB cable, a USB-to-PS2 adapter, and a tool which you may be unfamiliar with: a key puller. We’ll return to the key puller in a moment. Unlike the majority of keyboards on the market, the cord isn’t permanently affixed to the keyboard. What does this mean for you? Aside from the obvious need to plug it in yourself, it makes it dead simple to repair your own keyboard cord if it gets attacked by a pet, mangled in a mechanism on your desk, or otherwise damaged. It also makes it easy to take advantage of the cable routing channels in on the underside of the keyboard to  route your cable exactly where you want it. While we’re staring at the underside of the keyboard, check out those beefy rubber feet. By peripherals standards they’re huge (and there is six instead of the usual four). Once you plunk the keyboard down where you want it, it might as well be glued down the rubber feet work so well. After you’ve secured the cable and adjusted it to your liking, there is one more task  before plug the keyboard into the computer. On the bottom left-hand side of the keyboard, you’ll find a small recess in the plastic with some dip switches inside: The dip switches are there to switch hardware functions for various operating systems, keyboard layouts, and to enable/disable function keys. By toggling the dip switches you can change the keyboard from QWERTY mode to Dvorak mode and Colemak mode, the two most popular alternative keyboard configurations. You can also use the switches to enable Mac-functionality (for Command/Option keys). One of our favorite little toggles is the SW3 dip switch: you can disable the Caps Lock key; goodbye accidentally pressing Caps when you mean to press Shift. You can review the entire dip switch configuration chart here. The quick-start for Windows users is simple: double check that all the switches are in the off position (as seen in the photo above) and then simply toggle SW6 on to enable the media and backlighting function keys (this turns the menu key on the keyboard into a function key as typically found on laptop keyboards). After adjusting the dip switches to your liking, plug the keyboard into an open USB port on your computer (or into your PS/2 port using the included adapter). Design, Layout, and Backlighting The CODE keyboard comes in two flavors, a traditional 87-key layout (no number pad) and a traditional 104-key layout (number pad on the right hand side). We identify the layout as traditional because, despite some modern trapping and sneaky shortcuts, the actual form factor of the keyboard from the shape of the keys to the spacing and position is as classic as it comes. You won’t have to learn a new keyboard layout and spend weeks conditioning yourself to a smaller than normal backspace key or a PgUp/PgDn pair in an unconventional location. Just because the keyboard is very conventional in layout, however, doesn’t mean you’ll be missing modern amenities like media-control keys. The following additional functions are hidden in the F11, F12, Pause button, and the 2×6 grid formed by the Insert and Delete rows: keyboard illumination brightness, keyboard illumination on/off, mute, and then the typical play/pause, forward/backward, stop, and volume +/- in Insert and Delete rows, respectively. While we weren’t sure what we’d think of the function-key system at first (especially after retiring a Microsoft Sidewinder keyboard with a huge and easily accessible volume knob on it), it took less than a day for us to adapt to using the Fn key, located next to the right Ctrl key, to adjust our media playback on the fly. Keyboard backlighting is a largely hit-or-miss undertaking but the CODE keyboard nails it. Not only does it have pleasant and easily adjustable through-the-keys lighting but the key switches the keys themselves are attached to are mounted to a steel plate with white paint. Enough of the light reflects off the interior cavity of the keys and then diffuses across the white plate to provide nice even illumination in between the keys. Highlighting the steel plate beneath the keys brings us to the actual construction of the keyboard. It’s rock solid. The 87-key model, the one we tested, is 2.0 pounds. The 104-key is nearly a half pound heavier at 2.42 pounds. Between the steel plate, the extra-thick PCB board beneath the steel plate, and the thick ABS plastic housing, the keyboard has very solid feel to it. Combine that heft with the previously mentioned thick rubber feet and you have a tank-like keyboard that won’t budge a millimeter during normal use. Examining The Keys This is the section of the review the hardcore typists and keyboard ninjas have been waiting for. We’ve looked at the layout of the keyboard, we’ve looked at the general construction of it, but what about the actual keys? There are a wide variety of keyboard construction techniques but the vast majority of modern keyboards use a rubber-dome construction. The key is floated in a plastic frame over a rubber membrane that has a little rubber dome for each key. The press of the physical key compresses the rubber dome downwards and a little bit of conductive material on the inside of the dome’s apex connects with the circuit board. Despite the near ubiquity of the design, many people dislike it. The principal complaint is that dome keyboards require a complete compression to register a keystroke; keyboard designers and enthusiasts refer to this as “bottoming out”. In other words, the register the “b” key, you need to completely press that key down. As such it slows you down and requires additional pressure and movement that, over the course of tens of thousands of keystrokes, adds up to a whole lot of wasted time and fatigue. The CODE keyboard features key switches manufactured by Cherry, a company that has manufactured key switches since the 1960s. Specifically the CODE features Cherry MX Clear switches. These switches feature the same classic design of the other Cherry switches (such as the MX Blue and Brown switch lineups) but they are significantly quieter (yes this is a mechanical keyboard, but no, your neighbors won’t think you’re firing off a machine gun) as they lack the audible click found in most Cherry switches. This isn’t to say that they keyboard doesn’t have a nice audible key press sound when the key is fully depressed, but that the key mechanism isn’t doesn’t create a loud click sound when triggered. One of the great features of the Cherry MX clear is a tactile “bump” that indicates the key has been compressed enough to register the stroke. For touch typists the very subtle tactile feedback is a great indicator that you can move on to the next stroke and provides a welcome speed boost. Even if you’re not trying to break any word-per-minute records, that little bump when pressing the key is satisfying. The Cherry key switches, in addition to providing a much more pleasant typing experience, are also significantly more durable than dome-style key switch. Rubber dome switch membrane keyboards are typically rated for 5-10 million contacts whereas the Cherry mechanical switches are rated for 50 million contacts. You’d have to write the next War and Peace  and follow that up with A Tale of Two Cities: Zombie Edition, and then turn around and transcribe them both into a dozen different languages to even begin putting a tiny dent in the lifecycle of this keyboard. So what do the switches look like under the classicly styled keys? You can take a look yourself with the included key puller. Slide the loop between the keys and then gently beneath the key you wish to remove: Wiggle the key puller gently back and forth while exerting a gentle upward pressure to pop the key off; You can repeat the process for every key, if you ever find yourself needing to extract piles of cat hair, Cheeto dust, or other foreign objects from your keyboard. There it is, the naked switch, the source of that wonderful crisp action with the tactile bump on each keystroke. The last feature worthy of a mention is the N-key rollover functionality of the keyboard. This is a feature you simply won’t find on non-mechanical keyboards and even gaming keyboards typically only have any sort of key roller on the high-frequency keys like WASD. So what is N-key rollover and why do you care? On a typical mass-produced rubber-dome keyboard you cannot simultaneously press more than two keys as the third one doesn’t register. PS/2 keyboards allow for unlimited rollover (in other words you can’t out type the keyboard as all of your keystrokes, no matter how fast, will register); if you use the CODE keyboard with the PS/2 adapter you gain this ability. If you don’t use the PS/2 adapter and use the native USB, you still get 6-key rollover (and the CTRL, ALT, and SHIFT don’t count towards the 6) so realistically you still won’t be able to out type the computer as even the more finger twisting keyboard combos and high speed typing will still fall well within the 6-key rollover. The rollover absolutely doesn’t matter if you’re a slow hunt-and-peck typist, but if you’ve read this far into a keyboard review there’s a good chance that you’re a serious typist and that kind of quality construction and high-number key rollover is a fantastic feature.  The Good, The Bad, and the Verdict We’ve put the CODE keyboard through the paces, we’ve played games with it, typed articles with it, left lengthy comments on Reddit, and otherwise used and abused it like we would any other keyboard. The Good: The construction is rock solid. In an emergency, we’re confident we could use the keyboard as a blunt weapon (and then resume using it later in the day with no ill effect on the keyboard). The Cherry switches are an absolute pleasure to type on; the Clear variety found in the CODE keyboard offer a really nice middle-ground between the gun-shot clack of a louder mechanical switch and the quietness of a lesser-quality dome keyboard without sacrificing quality. Touch typists will love the subtle tactile bump feedback. Dip switch system makes it very easy for users on different systems and with different keyboard layout needs to switch between operating system and keyboard layouts. If you’re investing a chunk of change in a keyboard it’s nice to know you can take it with you to a different operating system or “upgrade” it to a new layout if you decide to take up Dvorak-style typing. The backlighting is perfect. You can adjust it from a barely-visible glow to a blazing light-up-the-room brightness. Whatever your intesity preference, the white-coated steel backplate does a great job diffusing the light between the keys. You can easily remove the keys for cleaning (or to rearrange the letters to support a new keyboard layout). The weight of the unit combined with the extra thick rubber feet keep it planted exactly where you place it on the desk. The Bad: While you’re getting your money’s worth, the $150 price tag is a shock when compared to the $20-60 price tags you find on lower-end keyboards. People used to large dedicated media keys independent of the traditional key layout (such as the large buttons and volume controls found on many modern keyboards) might be off put by the Fn-key style media controls on the CODE. The Verdict: The keyboard is clearly and heavily influenced by the needs of serious typists. Whether you’re a programmer, transcriptionist, or just somebody that wants to leave the lengthiest article comments the Internet has ever seen, the CODE keyboard offers a rock solid typing experience. Yes, $150 isn’t pocket change, but the quality of the CODE keyboard is so high and the typing experience is so enjoyable, you’re easily getting ten times the value you’d get out of purchasing a lesser keyboard. Even compared to other mechanical keyboards on the market, like the Das Keyboard, you’re still getting more for your money as other mechanical keyboards don’t come with the lovely-to-type-on Cherry MX Clear switches, back lighting, and hardware-based operating system keyboard layout switching. If it’s in your budget to upgrade your keyboard (especially if you’ve been slogging along with a low-end rubber-dome keyboard) there’s no good reason to not pickup a CODE keyboard. Key animation courtesy of Geekhack.org user Lethal Squirrel.       

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• How Expedia Made My New Bride Cry

  - by Lance Robinson

  Tweet this? Email Expedia and ask them to give me and my new wife our honeymoon? When Expedia followed up their failure with our honeymoon trip with a complete and total lack of acknowledgement of any responsibility for the problem and endless loops of explaining the issue over and over again - I swore that they would make it right. When they brought my new bride to tears, I got an immediate and endless supply of motivation. I hope you will help me make them make it right by posting our story on Twitter, Facebook, your blog, on Expedia itself, and when talking to your friends in person about their own travel plans.   If you are considering using them now for an important trip - reconsider. Short summary: We arrived early for a flight - but Expedia had made a mistake with the data they supplied to JetBlue and Emirates, which resulted in us not being able to check in (one leg of our trip was missing)!  At the time of this post, three people (myself, my wife, and an exceptionally patient JetBlue employee named Mary) each spent hours on the phone with Expedia.  I myself spent right at 3 hours (according to iPhone records), Lauren spent an hour and a half or so, and poor Mary was probably on the phone for a good 3.5 hours.  This is after 5 hours total at the airport.  If you add up our phone time, that is nearly 8 hours of phone time over a 5 hour period with little or no help, stall tactics (?), run-around, denial, shifting of blame, and holding. Details below (times are approximate): First, my wife and I were married yesterday - June 18th, the 3 year anniversary of our first date. She is awesome. She is the nicest person I have ever known, a ton of fun, absolutely beautiful in every way. Ok enough mushy - here are the dirty details. 2:30 AM - Early Check-in Attempt - we attempted to check-in for our flight online. Some sort of technology error on website, instructed to checkin at desk. 4:30 AM - Arrive at airport. Try to check-in at kiosk, get the same error. We got to the JetBlue desk at RDU International Airport, where Mary helped us. Mary discovered that the Expedia provided itinerary does not match the Expedia provided tickets. We are informed that when that happens American, JetBlue, and others that use the same software cannot check you in for the flight because. Why? Because the itinerary was missing a leg of our flight! Basically we were not shown in the system as definitely being able to make it home. Mary called Expedia and was put on hold by their automated system. 4:55 AM - Mary, myself, and my brand new bride all waited for about 25 minutes when finally I decided I would make a call myself on my iPhone while Mary was on the airport phone. In their automated system, I chose "make a new reservation", thinking they might answer a little more quickly than "customer service". Not surprisingly I was connected to an Expedia person within 1 minute. They informed me that they would have to forward me to a customer service specialist. I explained to them that we were already on hold for that and had been for nearly half an hour, that we were going on our honeymoon and that our flight would be leaving soon - could they please help us. "Yes, I will help you". I hand the phone to JetBlue Mary who explains the situation 3 or 4 times. Obviously I couldn't hear both ends of the conversation at this point, but the Expedia person explained what the problem was by stating exactly what Mary had just spent 15 minutes explaining. Mary calmly confirms that this is the problem, and asks Expedia to re-issue the itinerary. Expedia tells Mary that they'll have to transfer her to customer service. Mary asks for someone specific so that we get an answer this time, and goes on hold. Mary get's connected, explains the situation, and then Mary's connection gets terminated. 5:10 AM - Mary calls back to the Expedia automated system again, and we wait for about 5 minutes on hold this time before I pick up my iPhone and call Expedia again myself. Again I go to sales, a person picks up the phone in less than a minute. I explain the situation and let them know that we are now very close to missing our flight for our honeymoon, could they please help us. "Yes, I will help you". Again I give the phone to Mary who provides them with a call back number in case we get disconnected again and explains the situation again. More back and forth with Expedia doing nothing but repeating the same questions, Mary answering the questions with the same information she provided in the original explanation, and Expedia simply restating the problem. Mary again asks them to re-issue the itinerary, and explains that doing so will fix the problem. Expedia again repeats the problem instead of fixing it, and Mary's connection gets terminated. 5:20 AM - Mary again calls back to Expedia. My beautiful bride also calls on her own phone. At this point she is struggling to hold back her tears, stumbling through an explanation of all that has happened and that we are about to miss our flight. Please help us. "Yes, I will help". My beautiful bride's connection gets terminated. Ok, maybe this disconnection isn't an accident. We've now been disconnected 3 times on two different phones. 5:45 AM - I walk away and pleadingly beg a person to help me. They "escalate" the issue to "Rosy" (sp?) at Expedia. I go through the whole song and dance again with Rosy, who gives me the same treatment Mary was given. Rosy blames JetBlue for now having the correct data. Meanwhile Mary is on the phone with Emirates Air (the airline for the second leg of our trip), who agrees with JetBlue that Expedia's data isn't up to date. We are informed by two airport employees that issues like this with Expedia are not uncommon, and that the fix is simple. On the phone iwth Rosy, I ask her to re-issue the itinerary because we are about to miss our flight. She again explains the problem to me. At this point, I am standing at the window, pleading with Rosy to help us get to our honeymoon, watching our airplane. Then our airplane leaves without us. 6:03 AM - At this point we have missed our flight. Re-issuing the itinerary is no longer a solution. I ask Rosy to start from the beginning and work us up a new trip. She says that she cannot do that. She says that she needs to talk to JetBlue and Emirates and find out why we cannot check-in for our flight. I remind Rosy that our flight has already left - I just watched it taxi away - it no longer matters why (not to mention the fact that we already knew why, and have known why since 4:30 AM), and have known the solution since 4:30 AM. Rosy, can you please book a new trip? Yes, but it will cost $400. Excuse me? Now you can, but it will cost ME to fix your mistake? Rosy says that she can escalate the situation to her supervisor but that will take 1.5 hours. 6:15 AM - I told Rosy that if they had re-issued the itinerary as JetBlue asked (at 4:30 AM), my new wife and I might be on the airplane now instead of dealing with this on the phone and missing the beginning (and how much more?) of our honeymoon. Rosy said that it was not necessary to re-issue the itinerary. Out of curiosity, i asked Rosy if there was some financial burden on them to re-issue the itinerary. "No", said Rosy. I asked her if it was a large time burden on Expedia to re-issue the itinerary. "No", said Rosy. I directly asked Rosy: Why wouldn't Expedia have re-issued the itinerary when JetBlue asked? No answer. I asked Rosy: If you had re-issued the itinerary at 4:30, isn't it possible that I would be on that flight right now? She actually surprised me by answering "Yes" to that question. So I pointed out that it followed that Expedia was responsible for the fact that we missed out flight, and she immediately went into more about how the problem was with JetBlue - but now it was ALSO an Emirates Air problem as well. I tell Rosy to go ahead and escalate the issue again, and please call me back in that 1.5 hours (which how is about 1 hour and 10 minutes away). 6:30 AM - I start tweeting my frustration with iPhone. It's now pretty much impossible for us to make it to The Maldives by 3pm, which is the time at which we would need to arrive in order to be allowed service to the actual island where we are staying. Expedia has now given me the run-around for 2 hours, caused me to miss my flight, and worst of all caused my amazing new wife Lauren to miss our honeymoon. You think I was mad? No. Furious. Its ok to make mistakes - but to refuse to fix them and to ruin our honeymoon? No, not ok, Expedia. I swore right then that Expedia would make this right. 7:45 AM - JetBlue mary is still talking her tail off to other people in JetBlue and Emirates Air. Mary works it out so that if Expedia simply books a new trip, JetBlue and Emirates will both waive all the fees. Now we just have to convince Expedia to fix their mistake and get us on our way! Around this time Expedia Rosy calls me back! I inform her of the excellent work of JetBlue Mary - that JetBlue and Emirates both will waive the fees so Expedia can fix their mistake and get us going on our way. She says that she sees documentation of this in her system and that she needs to put me on hold "for 1 to 10 minutes" to talk to Emirates Air (why I'm not exactly sure). I say ok. 8:45 AM - After an hour on hold, Rosy comes on the line and asks me to hold more. I ask her to call me back. 9:35 AM - I put down the iPhone Twitter app and picks up the laptop. You think I made some noise with my iPhone? Heh 11:25 AM - Expedia follows me and sends a canned "We're sorry, DM us the details".  If you look at their Twitter feed, 16 out of the most recent 20 tweets are exactly the same canned response.  The other 4?  Ads.  Um - #MultiFAIL? To Expedia:  You now have had (as explained above) 8 hours of 3 different people explaining our situation, you know the email address of our Expedia account, you know my web blog, you know my Twitter address, you know my phone number.  You also know how upset you have made both me and my new bride by treating us with such a ... non caring, scripted, uncooperative, argumentative, and possibly even deceitful manner.  In the wise words of the great Kenan Thompson of SNL: "FIX IT!".  And no, I'm NOT going away until you make this right. Period. 11:45 AM - Expedia corporate office called.  The woman I spoke to was very nice and apologetic.  She listened to me tell the story again, she says she understands the problem and she is going to work to resolve it.  I don't have any details on what exactly that resolution might me, she said she will call me back in 20 minutes.  She found out about the problem via Twitter.  Thank you Twitter, and all of you who helped.  Hopefully social media will win my wife and I our honeymoon, and hopefully Expedia will encourage their customer service teams treat their customers properly. 12:22 PM - Spoke to Fran again from Expedia corporate office.  She has a flight for us tonight.  She is booking it now.  We will arrive at our honeymoon destination of beautiful Veligandu Island Resort only 1 day late.  She cannot confirm today, but she expects that Expedia will pay for the lost honeymoon night.  Thank you everyone for your help.  I will reflect more on this whole situation and confirm its resolution after our flight is 100% confirmed.  For now, I'm going to take a breather and go kiss my wonderful wife! 1:50 PM - Have not yet received the promised phone call.  We did receive an email with a new itinerary for a flight but the booking is not for specific seats, so there is no guarantee that my wife and I will be able to sit together.  With the original booking I carefully selected our seats for every segment of our trip.  I decided to call into the phone number that Fran from the Expedia corporate office gave me.  Its automated voice system identified itself as "Tier 3 Support".  I am currently still on hold with them, I have not gotten through to a human yet. 1:55 PM - Fran from Expedia called me back.  She confirmed us as booked.  She called the airlines to confirm.  Unfortunately, Expedia was unwilling or unable to allow us any type of seat selection.  It is possible that i won't get to sit next to the woman I married less than a day ago on our 40 total hours of flight time (there and back).  In addition, our seats could be the worst seats on the planes, with no reclining seat back or right next to the restroom.  Despite this fact (which in my opinion is huge), the horrible inconvenience, the hours at the airport, and the negative Internet publicity that Expedia is receiving, Expedia declined to offer us any kind of upgrade or to mark us as SFU (suitable for upgrade).  Since they didn't offer - I asked, and was rejected.  I am grateful to finally be heading in the right direction, but not only did Expedia horribly botch this job from the very beginning, they followed that botch job with near zero customer service, followed by a verbally apologetic but otherwise half-hearted resolution.  If this works out favorably for us, great.  If not - I'm not done making noise, Expedia.  You owe us, and I expect you to make it right.  You haven't quite done that yet. Thanks - Thank you to Twitter.  Thanks to all those who sympathize with us and helped us get the attention of Expedia, since three people (one of them an airline employee) using Expedia's normal channels of communication for many hours didn't help.  Thanks especially to my PowerShell and Sharepoint friends, my local friends, and those connectors who encouraged me and spread my story. 5:15 PM - Love Wins - After all this, Lauren and I are exhausted.  We both took a short nap, and when we woke up we talked about the last 24 hours.  It was a big, amazing, story-filled 24 hours.  I said that Expedia won, but Lauren said no.  She pointed out how lucky we are.  We are in love and married.  We have wonderful family and friends.  We are both hard-working successful people who love what they do.  We get to go to an amazing exotic destination for our honeymoon like Veligandu in The Maldives...  That's a lot of good.  Expedia didn't win.  This was (is) a big loss for Expedia.  It is a public blemish for all to see.  But Lauren and I did win, big time.  Expedia may not have made things right - but things are right for us.  Post in progress... I will relay any further comments (or lack of) from Expedia soon, as well as an update on confirmation of their repayment of our lost resort room rates.  I'll also post a picture of us on our honeymoon as soon as I can!

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• Is your team is a high-performing team?

  As a child I can remember looking out of the car window as my father drove along the Interstate in Florida while seeing prisoners wearing bright orange jump suits and prison guards keeping a watchful eye on them. The prisoners were taking part in a prison road gang. These road gangs were formed to help the state maintain the state highway infrastructure. The prisoner’s primary responsibilities are to pick up trash and debris from the roadway. This is a prime example of a work group or working group used by most prison systems in the United States. Work groups or working groups can be defined as a collection of individuals or entities working together to achieve a specific goal or accomplish a specific set of tasks. Typically these groups are only established for a short period of time and are dissolved once the desired outcome has been achieved. More often than not group members usually feel as though they are expendable to the group and some even dread that they are even in the group. "A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they are mutually accountable." (Katzenbach and Smith, 1993) So how do you determine that a team is a high-performing team?  This can be determined by three base line criteria that include: consistently high quality output, the promotion of personal growth and well being of all team members, and most importantly the ability to learn and grow as a unit. Initially, a team can successfully create high-performing output without meeting all three criteria, however this will erode over time because team members will feel detached from the group or that they are not growing then the quality of the output will decline. High performing teams are similar to work groups because they both utilize a collection of individuals or entities to accomplish tasks. What distinguish a high-performing team from a work group are its characteristics. High-performing teams contain five core characteristics. These characteristics are what separate a group from a team. The five characteristics of a high-performing team include: Purpose, Performance Measures, People with Tasks and Relationship Skills, Process, and Preparation and Practice. A high-performing team is much more than a work group, and typically has a life cycle that can vary from team to team. The standard team lifecycle consists of five states and is comparable to a human life cycle. The five states of a high-performing team lifecycle include: Formulating, Storming, Normalizing, Performing, and Adjourning. The Formulating State of a team is first realized when the team members are first defined and roles are assigned to all members. This initial stage is very important because it can set the tone for the team and can ultimately determine its success or failure. In addition, this stage requires the team to have a strong leader because team members are normally unclear about specific roles, specific obstacles and goals that my lay ahead of them.  Finally, this stage is where most team members initially meet one another prior to working as a team unless the team members already know each other. The Storming State normally arrives directly after the formulation of a new team because there are still a lot of unknowns amongst the newly formed assembly. As a general rule most of the parties involved in the team are still getting used to the workload, pace of work, deadlines and the validity of various tasks that need to be performed by the group.  In this state everything is questioned because there are so many unknowns. Items commonly questioned include the credentials of others on the team, the actual validity of a project, and the leadership abilities of the team leader.  This can be exemplified by looking at the interactions between animals when they first meet.  If we look at a scenario where two people are walking directly toward each other with their dogs. The dogs will automatically enter the Storming State because they do not know the other dog. Typically in this situation, they attempt to define which is more dominating via play or fighting depending on how the dogs interact with each other. Once dominance has been defined and accepted by both dogs then they will either want to play or leave depending on how the dogs interacted and other environmental variables. Once the Storming State has been realized then the Normalizing State takes over. This state is entered by a team once all the questions of the Storming State have been answered and the team has been tested by a few tasks or projects.  Typically, participants in the team are filled with energy, and comradery, and a strong alliance with team goals and objectives.  A high school football team is a perfect example of the Normalizing State when they start their season.  The player positions have been assigned, the depth chart has been filled and everyone is focused on winning each game. All of the players encourage and expect each other to perform at the best of their abilities and are united by competition from other teams. The Performing State is achieved by a team when its history, working habits, and culture solidify the team as one working unit. In this state team members can anticipate specific behaviors, attitudes, reactions, and challenges are seen as opportunities and not problems. Additionally, each team member knows their role in the team’s success, and the roles of others. This is the most productive state of a group and is where all the time invested working together really pays off. If you look at an Olympic figure skating team skate you can easily see how the time spent working together benefits their performance. They skate as one unit even though it is comprised of two skaters. Each skater has their routine completely memorized as well as their partners. This allows them to anticipate each other’s moves on the ice makes their skating look effortless. The final state of a team is the Adjourning State. This state is where accomplishments by the team and each individual team member are recognized. Additionally, this state also allows for reflection of the interactions between team members, work accomplished and challenges that were faced. Finally, the team celebrates the challenges they have faced and overcome as a unit. Currently in the workplace teams are divided into two different types: Co-located and Distributed Teams. Co-located teams defined as the traditional group of people working together in an office, according to Andy Singleton of Assembla. This traditional type of a team has dominated business in the past due to inadequate technology, which forced workers to primarily interact with one another via face to face meetings.  Team meetings are primarily lead by the person with the highest status in the company. Having personally, participated in meetings of this type, usually a select few of the team members dominate the flow of communication which reduces the input of others in group discussions. Since discussions are dominated by a select few individuals the discussions and group discussion are skewed in favor of the individuals who communicate the most in meetings. In addition, Team members might not give their full opinions on a topic of discussion in part not to offend or create controversy amongst the team and can alter decision made in meetings towards those of the opinions of the dominating team members. Distributed teams are by definition spread across an area or subdivided into separate sections. That is exactly what distributed teams when compared to a more traditional team. It is common place for distributed teams to have team members across town, in the next state, across the country and even with the advances in technology over the last 20 year across the world. These teams allow for more diversity compared to the other type of teams because they allow for more flexibility regarding location. A team could consist of a 30 year old male Italian project manager from New York, a 50 year old female Hispanic from California and a collection of programmers from India because technology allows them to communicate as if they were standing next to one another.  In addition, distributed team members consult with more team members prior to making decisions compared to traditional teams, and take longer to come to decisions due to the changes in time zones and cultural events. However, team members feel more empowered to speak out when they do not agree with the team and to notify others of potential issues regarding the work that the team is doing. Virtual teams which are a subset of the distributed team type is changing organizational strategies due to the fact that a team can now in essence be working 24 hrs a day because of utilizing employees in various time zones and locations.  A primary example of this is with customer services departments, a company can have multiple call centers spread across multiple time zones allowing them to appear to be open 24 hours a day while all a employees work from 9AM to 5 PM every day. Virtual teams also allow human resources departments to go after the best talent for the company regardless of where the potential employee works because they will be a part of a virtual team all that is need is the proper technology to be setup to allow everyone to communicate. In addition to allowing employees to work from home, the company can save space and resources by not having to provide a desk for every team member. In fact, those team members that randomly come into the office can actually share one desk amongst multiple people. This is definitely a cost cutting plus given the current state of the economy. One thing that can turn a team into a high-performing team is leadership. High-performing team leaders need to focus on investing in ongoing personal development, provide team members with direction, structure, and resources needed to accomplish their work, make the right interventions at the right time, and help the team manage boundaries between the team and various external parties involved in the teams work. A team leader needs to invest in ongoing personal development in order to effectively manage their team. People have said that attitude is everything; this is very true about leaders and leadership. A team takes on the attitudes and behaviors of its leaders. This can potentially harm the team and the team’s output. Leaders must concentrate on self-awareness, and understanding their team’s group dynamics to fully understand how to lead them. In addition, always learning new leadership techniques from other effective leaders is also very beneficial. Providing team members with direction, structure, and resources that they need to accomplish their work collectively sounds easy, but it is not.  Leaders need to be able to effectively communicate with their team on how their work helps the company reach for its organizational vision. Conversely, the leader needs to allow his team to work autonomously within specific guidelines to turn the company’s vision into a reality.  This being said the team must be appropriately staffed according to the size of the team’s tasks and their complexity. These tasks should be clear, and be meaningful to the company’s objectives and allow for feedback to be exchanged with the leader and the team member and the leader and upper management. Now if the team is properly staffed, and has a clear and full understanding of what is to be done; the company also must supply the workers with the proper tools to achieve the tasks that they are asked to do. No one should be asked to dig a hole without being given a shovel.  Finally, leaders must reward their team members for accomplishments that they achieve. Awards could range from just a simple congratulatory email, a party to close the completion of a large project, or other monetary rewards. Managing boundaries is very important for team leaders because it can alter attitudes of team members and can add undue stress to the team which will force them to loose focus on the tasks at hand for the group. Team leaders should promote communication between team members so that burdens are shared amongst the team and solutions can be derived from hearing the opinions of multiple sources. This also reinforces team camaraderie and working as a unit. Team leaders must manage the type and timing of interventions as to not create an even bigger mess within the team. Poorly timed interventions can really deflate team members and make them question themselves. This could really increase further and undue interventions by the team leader. Typically, the best time for interventions is when the team is just starting to form so that all unproductive behaviors are removed from the team and that it can retain focus on its agenda. If an intervention is effectively executed the team will feel energized about the work that they are doing, promote communication and interaction amongst the group and improve moral overall. High-performing teams are very import to organizations because they consistently produce high quality output and develop a collective purpose for their work. This drive to succeed allows team members to utilize specific talents allowing for growth in these areas.  In addition, these team members usually take on a sense of ownership with their projects and feel that the other team members are irreplaceable. References: http://blog.assembla.com/assemblablog/tabid/12618/bid/3127/Three-ways-to-organize-your-team-co-located-outsourced-or-global.aspx Katzenbach, J.R. & Smith, D.K. (1993). The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-performance Organization. Boston: Harvard Business School.

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• AxCMS.net 10 with Microsoft Silverlight 4 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2010

  - by Axinom

  Axinom, European WCM vendor, today announced the next version of its WCM solution AxCMS.net 10, which streamlines the processes involved in creating, managing and distributing corporate content on the internet. The new solution helps reducing ongoing costs for managing and distributing to large audiences, while at the same time drastically reducing time-to-market and one-time setup costs. http://www.AxCMS.net Axinom’s WCM portfolio, based on the Microsoft .NET Framework 4, Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and Microsoft Silverlight 4, allows enterprises to increase process efficiency, reduce operating costs and more effectively manage delivery of rich media assets on the Web and mobile devices. Axinom solutions are widely used by major European online brands in IT, telco, retail, media and entertainment industries such as Siemens, American Express, Microsoft Corp., ZDF, Pro7Sat1 Media, and Deutsche Post. Brand New User Interface built with Silverlight 4By using Silverlight 4, Axinom’s team created a new user interface for AxCMS.net 10 that is optimized for improved usability and speed. WYSIWYG mode, integrated image editor, extended list views, and detail views of objects allow a substantial acceleration of typical editor tasks. Axinom’s team worked with Silverlight Rough Cut Editor for video management and Silverlight Analytics Framework for extended reporting to complete the wide range of capabilities included in the new release. “Axinom’s release of AxCMS.net 10 enables developers to take advantage of the latest features in Silverlight 4,” said Brian Goldfarb, director of the developer platform group at Microsoft Corp. “Microsoft is excited about the opportunity this creates for Web developers to streamline the creating, managing and distributing of online corporate content using AxCMS.net 10 and Silverlight.” Rapid Web Development with Visual Studio 2010AxCMS.net 10 is extended by additional products that enable developers to get productive quickly and help solve typical customer scenarios. AxCMS.net template projects come with documented source code that help kick-start projects and learn best practices in all aspects of Web application development. AxCMS.net overcomes many hard-to-solve technical obstacles in an out-of-the-box manner by providing a set of ready-to-use vertical solutions such as corporate Web site, Web shop, Web campaign management, email marketing, multi-channel distribution, management of rich Internet applications, and Web business intelligence. Extended Multi-Site ManagementAxCMS.net has been supporting the management of an unlimited number of Web sites for a long time. The new version 10 of AxCMS.net will further improve multi-site management and provide features to editors and developers that will simplify and accelerate multi-site and multi-language management. Extended publication workflow will take into account additional dependencies of dynamic objects, pages, and documents. “The customer requests evolved from static html pages to dynamic Web applications content with the emergence of rich media assets seamlessly combined across many channels including Web, mobile and IPTV. With the.NET Framework 4 and Silverlight 4, we’re on the fast track to making the three screen strategy a reality for our customers,” said Damir Tomicic, CEO of Axinom Group. “Our customers enjoy substantial competitive advantages of using latest Microsoft technologies. We have a long-standing, relationship with Microsoft and are committed to continued development using Microsoft tools and technologies to deliver innovative Web solutions in the future.”  

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• How To: LIC of India Online Policy Payments And Status Enquiries

  - by Kavitha

  Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) of India is the largest state-owned insurance company in India and also the country’s largest investor. The premium  amount for the insurance policies purchased from LIC are paid by visiting the nearest LIC office or by taking help of LIC agents. It’s a time consuming process and most of us are fed up of standing in long queues at LIC offices for paying premium amount. LIC Online Services Website The worries are not any more, no need to stand in a long queue or approach an agent for paying your LIC policies. LIC of India has an online payment and also renewal facility : http://licindia.in. To pay the policies online we have to register with LIC and login to the site using the registered username and password. Once you login, you can enter your profile information and LIC policies that are purchased on your name(register the policies that are purchased  only on your name, otherwise you land in to troubles). Once registered, managing activities of like payments, loan eligibility checking, policy maturity, etc. are very easy. For online payment of policies you can find Pay Premium Online tab which when clicked takes you to a page that lists all the policies that are due. Payments can be made using credit/debit cards and online banking systems. Almost all the Indian banks are covered as part of the online payment system. Other services that are available through the online system of LIC are : View ULIP Policies,Premium Calendar, Calculate Loan Eligibility, Revival Quote, Policy Maturity, Address Change Requests, etc. LIC Policy Status Enquiry Through Phone LIC also has a helpline/customer care  number ‘1251‘. You can call 1251 to know about  your policy status, premium due date, Loan possibility and loan amount possible, time of maturity etc. This article titled,How To: LIC of India Online Policy Payments And Status Enquiries, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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• SQL SERVER – ColumnStore Index – Batch Mode vs Row Mode

  - by pinaldave

  What do you do when you are in a hurry and hear someone say things which you do not agree or is wrong? Well, let me tell you what I do or what I recently did. I was walking by and heard someone mentioning “Columnstore Index are really great as they are using Batch Mode which makes them seriously fast.” While I was passing by and I heard this statement my first reaction was I thought Columnstore Index can use both – Batch Mode and Row Mode. I stopped by even though I was in a hurry and asked the person if he meant that Columnstore indexes are seriously fast because they use Batch Mode all the time or Batch Mode is one of the reasons for Columnstore Index to be faster. He responded that Columnstore Indexes can run only in Batch Mode. However, I do not like to confront anybody without hearing their complete story. Honestly, I like to do information sharing and avoid confronting as much as possible. There are always ways to communicate the same positively. Well, this is what I did, I quickly pull up my earlier article on Columnstore Index and copied the script to SQL Server Management Studio. I created two versions of the script. 1) Very Large Table 2) Reasonably Small Table. I a query which uses columnstore index on both of the versions. I found very interesting result of the my tests. I saved my tests and sent it to the person who mentioned about that Columnstore Indexes are using Batch Mode only. He immediately acknowledged that indeed he was incorrect in saying that Columnstore Index uses only Batch Mode. What really caught my attention is that he also thanked me for sending him detail email instead of just having argument where he and I both were standing in the corridor and neither have no way to prove any theory. Here is the screenshots of the both the scenarios. 1) Columnstore Index using Batch Mode 2) Columnstore Index using Row Mode Here is the logic behind when Columnstore Index uses Batch Mode and when it uses Row Mode. A batch typically represents about 1000 rows of data. Batch mode processing also uses algorithms that are optimized for the multicore CPUs and increased memory throughput.  Batch mode processing spreads metadata access costs and overhead over all the rows in a batch.  Batch mode processing operates on compressed data when possible leading superior performance. Here is one last point – Columnstore Index can use Batch Mode or Row Mode but Batch Mode processing is only available in Columnstore Index. I hope this statement truly sums up the whole concept. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Index, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Is Nick Clegg a man or a mouse?

  - by BizTalk Visionary

  Well we got the hung election so many of us wanted! I believe it really is time for electoral change. Why? Consider: the ConMen under Cameroon have polled 36% of the great British voting public – well those that got to vote!! That means 64% of us don’t want him as PM. So what gives him the right to govern? Well an ancient voting system ideal for two party politics. But for the last 30 years we’ve had multi-party politics and going forward we may see 4 or 5 parties stepping up. We have to set in place a system that makes this work! So what does that mean today: Nick has a golden chance to push forward the case and in fact the absolute right for the change. He needs to keep this in mind when he discusses coalition with both Labour and the ConMen. So the mouse approach: Decides it is only fair to side with the ‘biggest’ vote and team up with the ConMen. Chances of electoral change? Big fat zero. Chance of achieving any of his other targets. Big fat zero. Why? Simple (as the Meer Kat would say). Cameroon needs to become PM by hook or crook. Once PM he holds the whip hand. Labour will dump Brown and head off into Leadership race land, Clegg will be knocking on number 10, having meaningless meetings and seeing no reward. Finally while Labour is at 6‘s and 7’s  the ‘new’ PM will call a new election, gain the majority they need and dump luckless Nick!! So the man approach: Team up with Labour. As one of the conditions – Brown to go. Run referendum for PR. Get PR through then force Labour to have new election under PR. Nick now hero and should be in a much better place following a PR election!! The man bit is standing up to the media attack for supporting Labour. Come Nick – be a man for a better Britain!!

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• Is Nick Clegg a man or a mouse?

  - by BizTalk Visionary

  Well we got the hung election so many of us wanted! I believe it really is time for electoral change. Why? Consider: the ConMen under Cameroon have polled 36% of the great British voting public – well those that got to vote!! That means 64% of us don’t want him as PM. So what gives him the right to govern? Well an ancient voting system ideal for two party politics. But for the last 30 years we’ve had multi-party politics and going forward we may see 4 or 5 parties stepping up. We have to set in place a system that makes this work! So what does that mean today: Nick has a golden chance to push forward the case and in fact the absolute right for the change. He needs to keep this in mind when he discusses coalition with both Labour and the ConMen. So the mouse approach: Decides it is only fair to side with the ‘biggest’ vote and team up with the ConMen. Chances of electoral change? Big fat zero. Chance of achieving any of his other targets. Big fat zero. Why? Simple (as the Meer Kat would say). Cameroon needs to become PM by hook or crook. Once PM he holds the whip hand. Labour will dump Brown and head off into Leadership race land, Glegg will be knocking on number 10, having meaningless meetings and seeing no reward. Finally while Labour is at 6‘s and 7’s  the ‘new’ PM will call a new election, gain the majority they need and dump luckless Nick!! So the man approach: Team up with Labour. As one of the conditions – Brown to go. Run referendum for PR. Get PR through then force Labour to have new election under PR. Nick now hero and should be in a much better place following a PR election!! The man bit is standing up to the media attack for supporting Labour. Come Nick – be a man for a better Britain!!

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• BI Publisher - Hottest Show in Vegas

  - by mike.donohue

  Two days down, two to go. Monday was a very busy and rewarding day. Attended "XML Publisher and FSG for Beginners" given by Susan Behn and Alyssa Johnson from Solution Beacon. It was packed, standing room only ... even though it was at 8:00 am. Later in the afternoon, despite being at the same time and in conflict with other Publisher related sessions, Noelle's session, "The Reporting Platform for Applications: Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher" and my session, "Introduction to Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher" were both very well attended. Immediately following our presentations we ran the BI Publisher Hands On Lab which was great fun. The turnout was so large that unfortunately we could not accommodate everyone who came to the lab. There were as many as 5 people huddled around each of the 20 machines. All the the groups completed the 2 main exercises. Some groups even took the product for an off-road test drive. Look at all the fun we had ... For those who could not attend or want the Hands On Lab document: Hands On Lab Oracle BI Publisher Collaborate 2010.pdf Note that these lab instructions assume a specific set up and files that you may not have in your environment. You can download and install a trial license version of BI Publisher from the download page. Highly recommend taking a look at the additional Tutorials available on OTN. Big thanks to Dan Vlamis and Jonathan Clark from Vlamis Software Solutions and to the Oracle BIWA SIG for setting up these machines and getting the time and space to run this lab. It was inspiring to see all of the attendees successfully creating reports. On Tuesday morning we were up early again for a rousing session of BI Publisher Best Practices that was also, very well attended especially considering the 8 am start. Later that morning saw Ben Bruno from STR Software and two of his customers speak on the additional functionality and ROI they have achieved by using Publisher within EBS and AventX to FAX and Email Publisher generated documents. Spent the afternoon staffing the BI Technology demo pod and had a steady flow of people dropping by with questions. Having a great conference so far and looking forward to the rest of it.

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• JCP.Next - Early Adopters of JCP 2.8

  - by Heather VanCura

  JCP.Next is a series of three JSRs (JSR 348, JSR 355 and JSR 358), to be defined through the JCP process itself, with the JCP Executive Committee serving as the Expert Group. The proposed JSRs will modify the JCP's processes  - the Process Document and Java Specification Participation Agreement (JSPA) and will apply to all new JSRs for all Java platforms.   The first - JCP.next.1, or more formally JSR 348, Towards a new version of the Java Community Process - was completed and put into effect in October 2011 as JCP 2.8. This focused on a small number of simple but important changes to make our process more transparent and to enable broader participation. We're already seeing the benefits of these changes as new and existing JSRs adopt the new requirements. The second - JSR 355, Executive Committee Merge, is also Final. You can read the JCP 2.9 Process Document .  As part of the JSR 355 Final Release, the JCP Executive Committee published revisions to the JCP Process Document (version 2.9) and the EC Standing Rules (version 2.2).  The changes went into effect following the 2012 EC Elections in November. The third JSR 358, A major revision of the Java Community Process was submitted in June 2012.  This JSR will modify the Java Specification Participation Agreement (JSPA) as well as the Process Document, and will tackle a large number of complex issues, many of them postponed from JSR 348. For these reasons, the JCP EC (acting as the Expert Group for this JSR), expects to spend a considerable amount of time working on. The JSPA is defined by the JCP as "a one-year, renewable agreement between the Member and Oracle. The success of the Java community depends upon an open and transparent JCP program.  JSR 358, A major revision of the Java Community Process, is now in process and can be followed on java.net. The following JSRs and Spec Leads were the early adopters of JCP 2.8, who voluntarily migrated their JSRs from JCP 2.x to JCP 2.8 or above.  More candidates for 2012 JCP Star Spec Leads! JSR 236, Concurrency Utilities for Java EE (Anthony Lai/Oracle), migrated April 2012 JSR 308, Annotations on Java Types (Michael Ernst, Alex Buckley/Oracle), migrated September 2012 JSR 335, Lambda Expressions for the Java Programming Language (Brian Goetz/Oracle), migrated October 2012 JSR 337, Java SE 8 Release Contents (Mark Reinhold/Oracle) – EG Formation, migrated September 2012 JSR 338, Java Persistence 2.1 (Linda DeMichiel/Oracle), migrated January 2012 JSR 339, JAX-RS 2.0: The Java API for RESTful Web Services (Santiago Pericas-Geertsen, Marek Potociar/Oracle), migrated July 2012 JSR 340, Java Servlet 3.1 Specification (Shing Wai Chan, Rajiv Mordani/Oracle), migrated August 2012 JSR 341, Expression Language 3.0 (Kin-man Chung/Oracle), migrated August 2012 JSR 343, Java Message Service 2.0 (Nigel Deakin/Oracle), migrated March 2012 JSR 344, JavaServer Faces 2.2 (Ed Burns/Oracle), migrated September 2012 JSR 345, Enterprise JavaBeans 3.2 (Marina Vatkina/Oracle), migrated February 2012 JSR 346, Contexts and Dependency Injection for Java EE 1.1 (Pete Muir/RedHat) – migrated December 2011

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• PeopleSoft HCM @ OHUG 11: Enter the Matrix

  - by Jay Zuckert

  The PeopleSoft HCM team is back from a very busy and exciting OHUG conference in Orlando. The packed, standing-room only PeopleSoft HCM Roadmap keynote was the highlight of the conference for many attendees and the reviews are in : PeopleSoft rocked the house ! Great demonstration of products in the keynote. Best keynote in a long time, and fun. Engaging and entertaining, great demonstration of capabilities. Message received loud and clear, PeopleSoft applications are here to stay.  PeopleSoft has a real vision moving forward. Real-time polls using mobile texting were cutting edge.                          Tracy Martin (as Trinity) and other members of the PeopleSoft HCM team presented a ‘must-see’ Matrix-themed session while dressed as movie characters. The keynote highlighted planned HCM capabilities for Matrix administration and future organization visualization enhancements. The team also previewed the planned Manager Dashboard and Talent Summary.                           Following the keynote, some of the cast posed for photo opportunities at the OHUG booth in the exhibition hall. As you can imagine, they received some interesting looks walking by the other vendor booths. The PeopleSoft HCM team also presented numerous other OHUG sessions covering PeopleSoft Talent Management, Compensation, HR HelpDesk, Payroll, Global HCM Practices, Time & Labor, Absence Management, and Benefits. All of those presentations are available from the OHUG site at www.ohug.org. When not in one of the well-attended PeopleSoft HCM sessions, conference attendees filled the Oracle booth in the exhibition hall to see live product demonstrations. True to their PeopleSoft roots, some of the PeopleSoft HCM team played as hard as they worked in Orlando and enjoyed the OHUG Appreciation event along with customers at the Hard Rock. We are already busy planning for Oracle OpenWorld 2011 and prepping sessions our PeopleSoft HCM customers are sure to like. We hope to see you there in San Francisco from Oct. 2-6. To learn more about OpenWorld or to register, click here.

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• Open World Day 1 Continued

  - by Antony Reynolds

  A Day in the Life of an Oracle OpenWorld Attendee Part II A couple of things I forgot to mention about yesterdays OpenWorld. First I attended a presentation on SOA Suite and Virtualization which explained how Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder (OVAB) can be used to accelerate the deployment of an Enterprise Deployment Guide (EDG) compliant SOA Suite infrastructure.  OVAB provides the ability to introspect a deployed software component such as WebLogic Server, SOA Suite or other components and extract the configuration and package it up for rapid deployment into an Oracle Virtual Machine.  OVAB allows multiple machines to be configured and connections made between the machines and outside resources such as databases.  That by itself is pretty cool and has been available for a while in OVAB.  What is new is that Oracle has done this for an EDG compliant installations and made it available as an OVAB assembly for customers to use, significantly accelerating the deployment of an EDG deployment.  A real help for customers standing up EDG environments, particularly in test, dev and QA environments. The other thing I forgot to mention was the most memorable demo I saw at OpenWorld.  This was done by my co-author Matt Wright who was showcasing the products of his company Rubicon Red.  They showed a really cool application called OneSpot which puts all the information about a single users business processes in one spot!  Apparently a customer suggested the name.  It allows business flows to be defined that map onto events.  As events occur the status of the business flow is updated to reflect the change.  The interface is strongly reminiscent of social media sites and provides a graphical view of business flows.  So how does this differ from BPEL and BPM process flows?  The OneSpot process flow is more like a BAM process flow, it is based on events arriving from multiple sources, and is focused on the clients view of the process, not the actual business process.  This is important because it allows an end user to get a view of where his current business flow is and what actions, if any, are required of him.  This by itself is great, but better still is that OneSpot has a real time updating view of events that have occurred (BAM style no need to refresh the browser).  This means that as new events occur the end user can see them and jump to the business flow or take other appropriate actions.  Under the covers OneSpot makes use of Oracle Human Workflow to provide a forms interface, but this is not the HWF GUI you know!  The HWF GUI screens are much prettier and have more of a social media feel about them due to their use of images and pulling in relevant related information.  If you are at OOW I strongly recommend you visit Matt or John at the Rubicon Red stand and ask, no demand a demo of OneSpot!

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• The Loneliest Road in America and the OTN Garage

  - by rickramsey

  Source I never told anyone how the image of the OTN Garage on Facebook came to be. I took the Facebook picture on Route 50 in Nevada, USA, in October of 2010. I was riding from Colorado to Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco, so it was probably October. Route 50 is known as "The Loneliest Road in America." There are roads across Nevada that have even LESS traffic, but Route 50 still one. desolate. road. Although I have seen stranger things while riding along Nevada's Extraterrestrial Highway, I still run across notable oddities every time I ride Route 50. Like the old man with a bandolero of water bottles jogging along the side of the highway in the middle of the day, 50 miles from the closest town. First ultra-marathoner I'd seen in action. He waved at me. Or the dozen Corvettes with California license plates driving toward me, all doing the speed limit in the middle of nowhere because they were being tailed by half a dozen Nevada state troopers. #fail. I don't remember which town I was in, but I noticed the building when I stopped at the gas station. While standing there pouring fuel into the Harley, the store caught my eye. So I pulled the bike in front and walked inside. The owner is a little old lady, about 100 years old. Most of the goods she had on the shelves looked like they had been placed there during WWII. She was itty bitty and could barely see over the counter, but she was so happy when I bought a bar of Hershey's chocolate that she gave me a five cent discount. I took a few pictures and, when I got back, Kemer Thomson, who sometimes blogs here, photoshopped the OTN Garage and Oil Change signs onto it. The bike is a 2009 Road King Classic with a Bob Dron fairing and a Corbin heated seat. The seat came in handy when I rode home over Tioga Pass. The Road King is a very comfy touring bike with a great Harley rumble. I'm kinda sorry I sold it. When I stopped for fuel about 75 miles down the road at the next town, I peeled back the chocolate bar. I had turned into powder. Probably 50 years ago. - Rick Website Newsletter Facebook Twitter

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• The Social Business Thought Leaders - Ray Wang

  - by kellsey.ruppel

  It seems both consumers and businesses are at the peak of the social hype. Overwhelmed by social media channels, platforms, and processes both in their private and professional life, many early adopters are starting to feel the social fatigue. Mirroring what happened with email and web sites during the late 1990's - early 2000's, more and more managers are looking to move from ubiquitous social media tactics to the most appropriate business use case and processes. This step becomes even more important considering the year over year contraction in IT budgets and the consequent need to maximize return on every dollar spent in new technologies. Ray Wang, CEO and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, suggests engagement through collaborative technologies both as a conceptual model and a transformational tool for enterprises to reap business value. Without participation - the reasoning goes - there is no value and good technology alone is not enough to guarantee employee and customer adoption. Enterprise gamification is a new lever to succeed with Social Business by directing a critical mass of participation towards desired outcomes. What kind of outcomes? A recent study from Constellation Research (see 2012 Q1 Gamification Early Adopters Best Practices) highlights how Marketing, Customer Service and HR are leading the pack with gamification in processes such as: Sustaining long term customer loyalty (76.4%) Improving response in campaign to lead (74.5%) Right channeling incidents for resolution in social media (67.3%) Growing the number service and support incidents resolved by the community (63.6%) Improving employee referral rates and effective recruiting (43.6%) Driving on-boarding success with new hires (20%) More than simply adding badges, points and leaderboards to existing processes, enterprise gamification should be holistically embedded into employee and customer experience to stimulate specific behaviors. According to Ray Wang this can be done at three core levels: Measurable actions. The behaviors we want to facilitate consist of granular actions (i.e likes, comments, posts, recommendations, etc) and more complex actions (i.e projects, initiatives, programmes) attributed to individuals, groups and/or external actors  Reputation. The reputation an individual has earned through his actions is a key factor in building motivation among others and it is determined by its identity, social standing status and competitiveness Incentives or the intrinsic and extrinsic rewards that motivate behaviors and drive actions Listen to Ray Wang's video-interview to learn more about the dynamics that are shaping the future of collaboration and how gamification can help organizations attain new levels of engagement.

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• Oracle Developer Day, Poland, 2012

  - by Geertjan

  Oracle Developer Day took place in Poland today. Oracle's Gregor Rayman did the keynote, where NetBeans was positioned, yet again, as Oracle's IDE for the Java Platform, via the JavaFX Roadmap: Well, it's not so clear from my pic above, but NetBeans is closely tied to the JavaFX Roadmap, as well as the JDK Roadmap too. Then the tracks started, one of which was the Java Track (the other two tracks were on ADF/WebLogic and SOA/BPM/BAM), where among other things I demonstrated the Java EE 6 Platform via tools in NetBeans IDE at some length. The room could hardly have been fuller, chairs had to be brought in and people were standing along the walls. The above pic shows the session being set up, with the room full of developers ready to hear about Java EE 6. I also did a session on pluggable Java desktop development (i.e., NetBeans Platform) and on "What's New in NetBeans IDE 7.1?", while Martin Grebac had a session on Java EE Web Services. Some of the many questions asked during the day that I thought were interesting: Is there localization support for the @Pattern annotation? I.e., what if I want to display the error message in Polish, what do I do? Is there filtering/sorting support for the DataTable component in JSF? Why is there no visual editor for ejb-jar.xml, in the same way that there is for web.xml? "Would be handy if there were to be a JSR for IDE Keyboard Shortcuts." (Two different people asked this question, separately, without knowing about each other. The second didn't know about the Eclipse and IntelliJ keyboard shortcut support in NetBeans IDE and was happy when I told them about it.) Wouldn't it be cool if, on start up, or during installation, there'd be a question: "Are you migrating from Eclipse/IntelliJ?" Then, if "yes", reset the keyboard shortcuts to match the IDE they're coming from.Is there a way in NetBeans to find subclasses of a class? "Would be cool if HTML or JSF files could be visualized in the same way as JavaFX and Swing classes." I.e., Visual Debugger for web developers. I had a great day and am looking at the Oracle Developer Day that will be held in Cluj, Romania, on Friday.

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• The Spotlight is on You

  - by Claudia McDonald

  On the field or off the field, in ballet slippers or singing your heart out on stage, offering a stellar performance every time is key to holding the attention of your audience and having them come back hungry for more. Similarly, showing up to a new business meeting wearing pink tights and a tutu might be one way to holding the attention of your customer, but offering them an unmatched and ground-breaking software solution certainly will get their attention! Simply put, the Oracle Exastack program enables both ISV's and OEM's to rapidly build and deliver faster, more reliable applications. It comes as no surprise that the success of the Oracle Exastack program is centered on establishing Oracle Exadata Database Machine and Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud as the highest performance, lowest cost platforms available in the industry today.  But here is where the real standing-ovation-worthy facts come in. The Oracle Exadata Database Machine is the only database machine that provides extreme performance for both data warehousing and online transaction processing (OLTP) workloads, making it the ideal platform for consolidating onto private clouds. Whereas the Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud is an engineered hardware and software system tested and tuned by Oracle to provide the best foundation for cloud computing, while allowing Java applications, Oracle Applications and other enterprise applications to run with extreme performance. – And the crowd goes wild, ladies and gentlemen! In just four months alone, our partners have already achieved over 150 Oracle Exastack Ready milestones for Oracle Solaris, Oracle Linux, Oracle Database and Oracle WebLogic Server.  As Judson has said, “With the Oracle Exastack program, Oracle is helping partners test, tune and optimize their applications to deliver optimal performance and reliability, accelerating innovation and delivering superior value to customers." And get this, not only are their applications running faster and more efficiently, they are actually being delivered at a lower cost to customers than ever before – extreme performance well deserving of 3 consecutive arabesques! If you haven’t already, check out what some of our partners are saying about the Oracle Exastack program in this video, and find out all that is available to you today. By participating in the Oracle Exastack program, partners now have the ability to achieve Oracle Exadata Optimized, Oracle Exalogic Optimized, Oracle Exadata Ready and Oracle Exalogic Ready status for their solutions. New Oracle Exastack labs, provide OPN members with access to Oracle technical resources, on-premise facilities and remote lab environments. With Oracle Exastack Optimized, partners experience faster and more reliable applications to run on the Oracle Exadata Database Machine, as well as the long awaited Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud. Savvy OPN members are leveraging the Oracle Exastack Optimized program toward their advancement to Platinum or Diamond level in OPN. Partners are achieving Oracle Exadata Ready and Oracle Exalogic Ready giving them a competitive advantage and signaling to customers that their applications readily support Oracle Exadata Database Machine or Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud to deliver extreme performance. Get your dancing shoes on, The OPN Communications Team

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• Oracle Leader in Transportation Management

  - by John Murphy

  Oracle Named a Leader in the Transportation Management Systems Market by Leading Analyst Firm Redwood Shores, Calif. – October 15, 2012 News Facts Gartner, Inc. has placed Oracle Transportation Management in the Leaders Quadrant of its 2012 report, “Magic Quadrant for Transportation Management Systems (TMS).” (1) Gartner Magic Quadrants position vendors within a particular market segment based on their completeness of vision and ability to execute on that vision. According to the report, “Multiple subcomponents make up a comprehensive TMS across planning (for example, load consolidation, routing, mode selection and carrier selection) and execution (for example, tendering loads to carriers, shipment track and trace, and freight audit and payment).” Built on modern, flexible, Internet based architecture, Oracle Transportation Management is a global transportation and logistics operations system that allows companies to minimize cost, optimize service levels, support sustainability initiatives, and create flexible business process automation within their transportation and logistics networks. With a share of 26% of worldwide software revenue for 2011, Oracle is also number one in TMS vendor share according to Gartner’s report, “Market Trends: A Golden Opportunity in the Transportation Management System Market, 2012 – 2016.” (2) Supporting Quote “Shippers and logistics service providers face increasingly complex challenges as they try to reduce costs, secure capacity and improve overall freight efficiency,” said Derek Gittoes, vice president, logistics product strategy, Oracle. “We believe our high standing in both Gartner reports is a reflection of Oracle’s commitment to addressing these challenges by delivering the industry’s broadest and deepest transportation management platform. With a flexible and modern platform, we are able to support customers with both basic transportation needs, as well as those with highly complex logistics requirements.” Supporting Resources Magic Quadrant for Transportation Management Systems Market Trends: A Golden Opportunity in the Transportation Management System Market, 2012 – 2016 Oracle Transportation Management (1) Gartner, Inc., “Magic Quadrant for Transportation Management Systems,” by C. Dwight Klappich, August 23, 2012 (2) Gartner, Inc., “Market Trends: A Golden Opportunity in the Transportation Management System Market, 2012 – 2016,” by Chad Eschinger and C. Dwight Klappich, September 24, 2012. About Oracle Applications Over 65,000 customers worldwide rely on Oracle's complete, open and integrated enterprise applications to achieve superior results. Oracle provides a secure path for customers to benefit from the latest technology advances that improve the customer software experience and drive better business performance. Oracle Applications Unlimited is Oracle's commitment to customer choice through continuous investment and innovation in current applications offerings. Oracle's next-generation Fusion Applications build upon that commitment, and are designed to work with and evolve Oracle's Applications Unlimited offerings. Oracle's lifetime support policy helps ensure customers will continue to have a choice in upgrade paths, based on their enterprise needs. For more information on the latest Oracle Applications releases go towww.oracle.com/applications About Oracle Oracle engineers hardware and software to work together in the cloud and in your data center. For more information about Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL), visit www.oracle.com. Trademarks Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. ###   Karen [email protected] Simon JonesBlanc & [email protected]

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• Enterprise 2.0 Conference recap

  - by kellsey.ruppel

  We had a great week in Boston attending the Enterprise 2.0 Conference. We learned a lot from industry thought leaders and had a chance to speak with a lot of different folks about social and collaboration technologies and trends.  Of all the conferences we attend, this one definitely has a different “feel”. It seems like the attendees are younger, they dress hipper, and there is much more livelihood all around. A few of the sessions addressed this, as the "millenials" or Generation Y, have been using Web 2.0 tools, such as Facebook and Twitter for many years now, and as they are entering the workforce they are expecting similar tools to be a part of how they accomplish their job tasks. It's important to note that it's not just Millenials that are expecting these technologies, as workers young and old alike benefit from social and collaboration tools. I’ve highlighted some of the takeaways I had, as well as a reaction from John Brunswick, who helped us in staffing the booth. Giving your employees choices is empowering, but if there is no course of action or plan, it’s useless. There is no such thing as collaboration without a goal. In a few years, social will become a feature in the “platform”, a component of collaboration. Social will become part of the norm – just like email is expected when you start a job at a company, Social will be too. 1 in 3 of your employees are using tools your company doesn't sanction (how scary is this?!) 25,000 pieces of content are created every second. Context is king. Social tools help us navigate and manage the complexities we face with information overload. We need to design products for the way people work. Consumerization of the enterprise - bringing social tools like Facebook to the organization. From John Brunswick: "The conference had solid attendance, standing as a testament to organizations making a concerted effort to understand what social tools exist to support their businesses.  Many vendors were narrowly focused and people we pleasantly surprised at the breadth of capability provided by Oracle WebCenter.  People seemed to feel that it just made sense that social technology provides the most benefit when presented in the context of key business data." Did you attend the conference? What were some of your key takeaways?

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• The Case for Complimentary Software Copies

  - by GGBlogger

  As the Geriatric Geek you can understand that I’ve been writing and studying for over 60 years. That means that I’ve seen insane changes in the computer software industry. I’ve made the joke that I get a new college education every 6 months or so. Of course that’s an exaggeration but it doesn’t make the feeling go away. I have a long standing and strong relationship with Microsoft so I’m armed with virtually every tool they make. It also means that I have access to tons of training material. But here’s the rub… Last year I started a definitive read of Professional Visual Basic 2008. The purpose was to fill in holes in my understanding of various things. I’m currently on page 1119 of some 1400 pages. During this sojourn I’ve decided that the future is web related which is to say that the future of “thick client” applications running as Windows applications is likely to slowly disappear. To that end I’ve taken a side trip or two into the world of ASP (including XML), Silverlight and cloud development. After carefully avoiding (that’s tongue in cheek) XML for years I finally had to bite the bullet, so to speak, and start learning XML in earnest. The most recent result of that was trail downloads of Altova’s MissionKit 2010 for Software Architects and Liquid Technologies Liquid XML Studio Developer Edition. These are both beautiful products and I want to learn them and write about them. Now comes the rub… While 30 day evaluations are generous in allowing casual users to assess these technologies for purchase they are NOT long enough to allow an author to evaluate, learn and ultimately write about them. Even if I devoted the full 30 days to learning, using and writing about say Altova’s suite I wouldn’t have enough time. Liquid XML may be a little easier to learn (one product as opposed to 8).  Add to that the fact that I frequently get sidetracked to add to my kit and it really blows out. It can be extremely frustrating when I’ve devoted hours to a project and suddenly discover that to complete it I will either need to purchase a license or abandon the project. Since my life blood does not depend on the product I end up abandoning the project and moving on. So to the folks from whom I request complimentary copies… I guarantee that if I convert your product to doing paid development work I will purchase a license to do that but as long as I am using your product to study for the purpose of writing samples, teaching use or otherwise promoting your product to other paying customers I will ask that you give me a license so that I can do that without facing the dread expiration of a 30 day trial.

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• Three Master Data Management Deployment Tips

  - by david.butler(at)oracle.com

  MDM is all about data quality and data governance. We now know that improved data quality raises all operational and analytical boats. But it's not just about deploying data quality tools. It's about deploying data quality tools within and across the IT landscape - from a thousand points of data entry to a single version of the truth. Here are three tips to deploying MDM across your applications and enterprise.   #1: Identify a tactical, high-value business problem where MDM can materially help. §  Support a customer acquisition and retention program with a 'customer' master data solution. §  Accelerate new products and services to market with a 'product' master data solution. §  Reduce supplier exceptions or support spend control initiatives with a 'supplier' master data solution. §  Support new store (branch, campus, restaurant, hospital, office, well head) location analysis with a 'site' master data solution. §  Fix long standing Chart of Accounts and Cost Center problems with a 'financial' master data solution. §  Support M&A activity, application upgrades, an SOA initiative, a cloud computing program, or a new business intelligence deployment by implementing a mix of master data solutions.   #2: Incrementally expand to a full information architecture. Quite often, the measurable return on interest from tactical MDM initiatives will fund future deployments. Over time, the MDM solution expands into its full architecture to cover the entire IT landscape. Operations and analytics are united, IT flexibility is restored, and sustainable competitive advantage is achieved.   #3: Bring business into every MDM deployment. To be successful, MDM must work hand in hand with data governance. In fact, Oracle MDM incorporates data governance tools for business users. IT can insure data quality, but only after the business side has defined what quality means. The business establishes the rules for governing the master data, and then IT enforces the rules via the MDM applications. Without this business/IT collaboration, MDM initiatives seldom achieve their full potential.   It is not very often that a technology comes along that can measurably assist organizations across a wide variety of top IT initiatives. Reducing costs, increasing flexibility, getting more out of existing assets, and aligning business and IT are not easy tasks for any CIO. But with MDM, success is achievable. IT can regain its place as a center for innovation.   For more information on this topic, take a look at my article Master Data Management Deployment Tips in the Opinion Section of Oracle's Profit Online magazine.

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• Impressions from VMworld - Clearing up Misconceptions

  - by Monica Kumar

  Gorgeous sunny weather…none of the usual summer fog…the Oracle Virtualization team has been busy at VMworld in San Francisco this week. From the time exhibits opened on Sunday, our booth staff was fully engaged with visitors. It was great to meet with customers and prospects, and there were many…most with promises to meet again in October at Oracle OpenWorld 2012. Interests and questions ran the gamut - from implementation details to consolidating applications to how does Oracle VM enable rapid application deployment to Oracle support and licensing. All good stuff! Some inquiries are poignant and really help us get at the customer pain points. Some are just based on misconceptions. We’d like to address a couple of common misconceptions that we heard: 1) Rapid deployment of enterprise applications is great but I don’t do this all the time. So why bother? While production applications don’t get updated or upgraded as often, development and QA staging environments are much more dynamic. Also, in today’s Cloud based computing environments, end users expect an entire solution, along with the virtual machine, to be provisioned instantly, on-demand, as and when they need to scale. Whether it’s adding a new feature to meet customer demands or updating applications to meet business/service compliance, these environments undergo change frequently. The ability to rapidly stand up an entire application stack with all the components such as database tier, mid-tier, OS, and applications tightly integrated, can offer significant value. Hand patching, installation of the OS, application and configurations to ensure the entire stack works well together can take days and weeks. Oracle VM Templates provide a much faster path to standing up a development, QA or production stack in a matter of hours or minutes. I see lots of eyes light up as we get to this point of the conversation. 2) Oracle Software licensing on VMware vSphere In the world of multi-vendor IT stacks, understanding license boundaries and terms and conditions for each product in the stack can be challenging.  Oracle’s licensing, though, is straightforward.  Oracle software is licensed per physical processor in the server or cluster where the Oracle software is installed and/or running.  The use of third party virtualization technologies such as VMware is not allowed as a means to change the way Oracle software is licensed.  Exceptions are spelled out in the licensing document labeled “Hard Partitioning". Here are some fun pictures! Visitors to our booth told us they loved the Oracle SUV courtesy shuttles that are helping attendees get to/from hotels. Also spotted were several taxicabs sporting an Oracle banner! Stay tuned for more highlights across desktop and server virtualization as we wrap up our participation at VMworld.

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• OPN Specialized Partner Activities at Collaborate 2012

  - by Get_Specialized!

  If your a Partner planning to attend the Collaborate 2012 event, April 22-26th in Las Vegas, Oracle Partner Network (OPN) team members attending welcome meeting you onsite. Whether you are interested in being a new Partner, or you are a long standing Partner seeking an update on OPN programs or Partner Specialization, we welcome meeting with you 1 on 1. In fact, we might drop by your booth or session to further recognize you for your OPN Specialization accomplishments! If you are also  participating in Social Media while at the event, let us know that as well. In addition, we are also seeking to meet Partners, while at Collaborate 2012, who may be interested in speaking at Oracle OpenWorld on their OPN Specialization program accomplishments and customer successes. Understanding that Partners can be busy staffing their own booths, we welcome meeting you when the exhibit hall is closed. Or if you want a break away from your booth, we are glad to meet  on the exhibit hall floor Oracle Validated Integration Lounge - OAUG & Quest member Booth 1679. To learn more or to schedule a meeting on site Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} contact us

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• Microsoft BUILD 2013&ndash;Day 1 Summary

  - by Tim Murphy

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/tmurphy/archive/2013/06/27/microsoft-build-2013ndashday-1-summary.aspx I’m happy to be at BUILD this week, mainly because my flights finally got me here late on Tuesday.  My biggest complaints so far are the flights and the hotel.  It seems that almost every flight into San Francisco were delayed multiple hours.  The Sequester so lovingly forced on America by congress means that the airport was short controllers.   That, along with poor weather and airport construction meant most people were 2-3 hours late arriving.  Add on top of that the fact that the hotel that I picked durring registration is absolutely horrid.  It looks like something out of a ghost hunters show and smells like it too.  I think if Microsoft is going to select a hotel they need to make sure that it is adequate. Rant over! So what happened the first day?  Steve Balmer started off the keynote along with Julie Larson-Green and a cast of others.  We finally found out that there were around six thousand people attending BUILD and that the focus this year would be Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 and Azure.  For the rest of the keynote I am going to have a separate post. You can’t have a Microsoft conference without some fun.  This year they have a hunt for pins that represent different gestures in Windows 8.  I got all of mine.  Now they just need to pull my name. The sessions I attended were really good. They covered live tiles, what’s new in XAML and building Windows Phone UIs presented by Kraig Brockschmidt, Tim Heuer and Shawn Oster respectively.  These will also be covered in separate posts. The exhibit area was interesting, but somewhat disappointing.  TechEd 2012 I think was better organized and better staffed by the vendors.  It also seemed that the Microsoft teams’ booths were also in need of some organization and staffing. Overall it was a really fun day capped off by all six thousand attendees standing in like to get their Acer 8” tables and Surface Pros.  What a day!  Stay tuned for follow up posts. del.icio.us Tags: BUILD 2013,Windows 8.1,Winodws Phone,XAML,Keynote

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• Dadaism and Agility

  - by alexhildyard

  We all have our little bugbears, and something that has given me particular pause over the years is the place of Agility in the software development life cycle. While I have seen it used successfully on both small and Enterprise-level projects, I have also seen many instances in which long-standing technical debt has also originated under its watch. Ironically the problem in such cases seems to me not that the practitioners in question have failed to follow due process (Test, Develop, Refactor -- a common "what" of Agile), but basically that they have missed the point (the "why" of Agile). It's probably a sign of my age that I'm much more interested in the "why" than the "what", since I feel that the latter falls out naturally from the former, but that this is not a reciprocal relationship.Consider Dadaism, precursor to the Surrealist movement in the early part of the twentieth century. Anyone could stand up and proclaim he or she was Dada; anyone could write cut-ups, or pull words out a hat, or produce gibberish on duelling typewriters under the inspiration of Dada. And all that took place at such performances was a manifestation of Dada, and all the artefacts that resulted were also Dada. Hence one commentator's engimatic observation that 'when one speaks of Dada, then one speaks of Dada. But when one does not speak of Dada, one still speaks of Dada.'What is Dada? Literally, Dada is what you say it is. But that's also missing the point. Dada is about erecting a framework within which utterances like this are valid; Dada is about preparing a stage for itself. Dadaism exemplifies the purity of a process-driven ideology -- in fact an ideology that is almost pure process, with nothing extraneous in the way of formal method, and while perhaps Agile delivery should not embrace the liberties of Dadaism too literally, some of the similarities nevertheless are salutary.Agile -- like Dada -- is an attitude; it is about *being* agile; it is not really about doing a specific set of things that are somehow *part* of being Agile. It is an abstract base rather than an implementation, a characteristic rather than a factor. It is the pragmatic response to the need for change in the face of partial information, ephemeral requirements and a healthy dose of systematic uncertainty. In practice this will usually mean repeatedly making the smallest useful changes to a system, recognising that systems evolve, and that all change carries risk. It will usually mean that instead of investing effort in future-proofing a system against a known technology roadmap, one instead invests one's energies in the daily repetition and incremental development of processes best designed to accommodate change quickly. But though it may mean these things in practice, it isn't actually *about* either of these things; it's about the mindset, the attitude that conceives of such responses as sensible solutions given the larger and ultimately unclassifiable thing that constitutes the development lifecycle of a specific project.

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