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  • Is Apple getting out of the general purpose development platform business?

    - by Charles E. Grant
    I've been doing general ANSI C/Console C++/Java/Web development on Mac hardware for about ten years. I make no claims of objective superiority over other platforms, it just satisfies my personal tastes. With the success of the iPhone and the related App store there was some speculation that Apple would get out of the general purpose computer market, and become a closed software ecosystem, focusing on consumer appliances. I pooh-poohed the speculation at the time, but this week Apple announced that a) they were opening an App store for the Mac, b) Java applications would not be eligible for the App store, c) the Apple JVM was being deprecated and might not be available for future releases of OS X. I'm not a Java developer per se, but I work in a research lab that occasionally writes Java applications, and also depends on tools written Java. This has the potential to be a huge pain in the butt for us. As of now, there is no other JVM for OS X that we can point our end users to. Soy Latte and OpenJDK might be appropriate for developers, but the complexity of the installation makes them inappropriate for end users. Eventually I expect Oracle/SUN will produce a replacement JVM for OS X. More worrisome to me is that Apple used to specifically advertise that it was an excellent platform for scientific development, because they supported all major language platforms. Is the deprecation of their JVM a sign that this market no longer interests them?

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  • Should I use OpenGL or DX11 for my game?

    - by Sundareswaran Senthilvel
    I'm planning to write a game from scratch (a BIG Game, for commercial purpose). I'm aware that there are certain compute libraries like OpenCL, AMD APP SDK, C++ AMP as well as DirectCompute - both from MS (NOT interested in CUDA) are available in the market. I'm planning to write the game from the scratch, which includes the following engines... Physics Engine AI Engine Main Game Engine (... and if anything is missed). I'm aware that, there are some free physics engine libraries in the market. Not sure about free AI engine libraries. I'm bit confused in choosing between the OpenCL, AMD APP SDK, and C++ AMP libraries (as already mentioned i'm NOT interested in CUDA). I want my game to be published in Windows/Android/Mac OSX. It means it should be a cross-platform game. I will be having "one source code" that i'll compile for various platforms like Windows/Android/Mac OSX, and any others if i missed. Note: Since I'm NOT a Java guy, kindly do NOT suggest me the Java Language. For Graphics language should i use OpenGL or DirectX 11? I have heard that OpenGL runs on a single core, and not sure of DirectX 11. Between OpenGL and DirectX which one should i follow? or else, are there any other graphics language that i need to start with? I want to make use of the parallelism in GPU as well as CPU.

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  • What to do if you find a vulnerability in a competitor's site?

    - by user17610
    While working on a project for my company, I needed to build functionality that allows users to import/export data to/from our competitor's site. While doing this, I discovered a very serious security exploit that could, in short, perform any script on the competitor's website. My natural feeling is to report the issue to them in the spirit of good-will. Exploiting the issue to gain advantage crossed my mind, but I don't want to go down that path. So my question is, would you report a serious vulnerability to your direct competition, in order to help them? Or would you keep your mouth shut? Is there a better way of going about this, perhaps to gain at least some advantage from the fact that I'm helping them by reporting the issue? Update (Clarification): Thanks for all your feedback so far, I appreciate it. Would your answers change if I were to add that the competition in question is a behemoth in the market (hundreds of employees in several continents), and my company only started a few weeks ago (three employees)? It goes without saying, they most definitely will not remember us, and if anything, only realize that their site needs work (which is why we entered this market in the first place). I confess this is one of those moral vs. business toss-ups, but I appreciate all the advice.

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  • Oracle Transportation Management (Lead) Functional Consultant in Germany

    - by user769227
    My name is Giovanni and I lead the practice of OTM (Oracle Transportation Management) consultants in Western Europe. I currently have a role open for an OTM Lead Consultant to join my international team in Germany. Oracle Transportation Management is the leading TMS application software in the market, as confirmed by Gartner’s classification as LEADER of its TMS Magic Quadrant with the highest rating among vendors. The OTM Consulting practice is a team of OTM functional and technical specialists located across Europe whose broad objective is to assist companies in the implementation of their TMS solution based on OTM. These companies are leading Shippers of various industries and Logistic Service Providers. Key requirements for this role are: relevant experience with Supply Chain or Transportation Management in other consulting organizations or large enterprises, the drive to learn the leading TMS application software in today’s market and the interest to join a truly international team. We offer the opportunity to work for a leader of the IT Industry and assist international clients to realize their business transformation initiatives through innovation. If you have an entrepreneurial spirit, and are you looking for a work culture where innovation is the goal, hard work is expected, and creativity is rewarded then please visit this link for more information.

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  • ACT On' OVCA for Cloud Providers Program Launch Webcast: June 12, 2014 - 9am UKT / 10am CET / 11am EET

    - by Cinzia Mascanzoni
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE We invite you to join the OVCA for Cloud Providers ‘ACT On' program launch at 11am BST / 12noon CET on June 12. · More and more customers realize the value of shifting to a Converged IT Infrastructure, this is why IDC expects this market to grow 40% annually for the next 2 years. · The Oracle Virtual Compute Appliance (OVCA) with attached ZFS storage is the perfect answer to this market trend. By providing rapid application and cloud deployment, OVCA allows customers to cut capital expenditures by up to 50% and deploy key applications up to 7x faster. · For Partners, OVCA supports their journey to consolidation, virtualization and cloud, and allows them to sell higher value services to their customers. The objective of this webcast is to share with you the OVCA value proposition, help you identify the best target partners, and provide you with the Enablement and Demand Generation content and resources. To register and for further details click here /* 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:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; 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;}

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  • More Win 8 Education is Needed

    - by D'Arcy Lussier
    “My mail doesn’t work”. That’s what a colleague running Windows 8 said to me the day after he installed Windows 8 on his work laptop. “When I click my email, nothing comes up.” I took a look and realized what was going on – he was clicking the Windows 8 UI Mail app and assumed that this was somehow connected to his Outlook which was installed as a desktop app. And so highlights a major educational challenge that Windows 8 will encounter – millions of users used to one style of interface now being introduced to a new one that runs side-by-side with their desktop. At work we had an internal tech user group meeting, and we were showing new features of VS.NET 2012 and Windows 8. When we started talking about the difference between Windows 8 UI Apps (AKA Windows Store Apps), people started asking some good questions: - Can we share a codebase between desktop and Windows Store Apps? - What’s the difference between WinRT and .NET? - Why would we create a Windows Store App and not just a Desktop app? Of course, people are looking at this from a traditional desktop point of view and not a tablet platform, which is really the market that Windows Store Apps will shine on. Still, for developers who not only need to educate themselves but also educate their clients, we’re going to need a better understanding of Windows 8 to see it get real traction within the business/enterprise market. D

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  • Windows W8, L8 and now H8

    - by raccoon_tim
    Windows 8 is having to endure with a lot of headwind at the moment. The weather forecast doesn’t appear to improve in the near future either with prominent game developers and publishers taking to the barricades accusing Microsoft of building a closed ecosystem. I am forced to side with this opinion as I too see services the likes of Steam as playing an important role in the gaming world, which just happens to be an industry that cannot be sidelined. What Microsoft is attempting to do is merge the PC and mobile markets. The Windows Marketplace is to be the only place where you can purchase Windows applications in the future starting now with Metro apps. This is what Apple, Google and Microsoft have been doing with mobile devices for some time now and it’s what we have all come to expect. The PC market is different, however. It has always been open, which has resulted in a diverse market allowing for third parties to build successful distribution and marketing networks. You could argue that Microsoft is just doing something that Steam has been doing for a long time now but the difference is that Microsoft would own both the marketplace AND that operating system, which would eventually give it dominance over the whole Windows application distribution network. Currently there is no real alternative to Windows in the PC gaming world but I would expect to see Mac OS and Linux getting more popular if Microsoft does not notice the signals coming from the gaming industry and choose to once again open up the markets on the PC.

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  • Game Development

    - by Sundareswaran Senthilvel
    I'm planning to write a game from scratch (a BIG Game, for commercial purpose). I'm aware that there are certain compute libraries like OpenCL, AMD APP SDK, C++ AMP as well as DirectCompute - both from MS (NOT interested in CUDA) are available in the market. I'm planning to write the game from the scratch, which includes the following engines... 1.Physics Engine 2.AI Engine 3.Main Game Engine (... and if anything is missed). I'm aware that, there are some free physics engine libraries in the market. Not sure about free AI engine libraries. I'm bit confused in choosing between the OpenCL, AMD APP SDK, and C++ AMP libraries (as already mentioned i'm NOT interested in CUDA). I want my game to be published in Windows/Android/Mac OSX. It means it should be a cross-platform game. I will be having "one source code" that i'll compile for various platforms like Windows/Android/Mac OSX, and any others if i missed. Note: Since I'm NOT a Java guy, kindly do NOT suggest me the Java Language. For Graphics language should i use OpenGL or DirectX 11? I have heard that OpenGL runs on a single core, and not sure of DirectX 11. Between OpenGL and DirectX which one should i follow? or else, are there any other graphics language that i need to start with? I want to make use of the parallelism in GPU as well as CPU.

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  • Off The Beaten Path—Three Things Growing Midsize Companies are Thankful For

    - by Christine Randle
    By: Jim Lein, Senior Director, Oracle Accelerate Last Sunday I went on a walkabout.  That’s when I just step out the door of my Colorado home and hike through the mountains for hours with no predetermined destination. I favor “social trails”, the unmapped routes pioneered by both animal and human explorers.  These tracks  are usually more challenging than established, marked routes and you can’t be 100% sure of where you’re going to end up. But I’ve found the rewards to be much greater. For awhile, I pondered on how—depending upon your perspective—the current economic situation worldwide could be viewed as either a classic “the glass is half empty” or a “the glass is half full” scenario. Midsize companies buy Oracle to grow and so I’m continually amazed and fascinated by the success stories our customers relate to me.  Oracle’s successful midsize companies are growing via innovation, agility, and opportunity. For them, the glass isn’t half full—it’s overflowing. Growing Midsize Companies are Thankful for: Innovation The sun angling through the pine trees reminded me of a conversation with a European customer a year ago May.  You might not recognize the name but, chances are, your local evening weather report relies on this company’s weather observation, monitoring and measurement products.  For decades, the company was recognized in its industry for product innovation, but its recent rapid growth comes from tailoring end to end product and service solutions based on the needs of distinctly different customer groups across industrial, public sector, and defense sectors.  Hours after that phone call I was walking my dog in a local park and came upon a small white plastic box sprouting short antennas and dangling by a nylon cord from a tree branch.  I cut it down. The name of that customer’s company was stamped on the housing. “It’s a radiosonde from a high altitude weather balloon,” he told me the next day. “Keep it as a souvenir.”  It sits on my fireplace mantle and elicits many questions from guests. Growing Midsize Companies are Thankful for: Agility In July, I had another interesting discussion with the CFO of an Asia-Pacific company which owns and operates a large portfolio of leisure assets. They are best known for their epic outdoor theme parks. However, their primary growth today is coming from a chain of indoor amusement centers in the USA where billiards, bowling, and laser tag take the place of roller coasters, kiddy rides, and wave pools. With mountains and rivers right out my front door, I’m not much for theme parks, but I’ll take a spirited game of laser tag any day.  This company has grown dramatically since first implementing Oracle ERP more than a decade ago. Their profitable expansion into a completely foreign market is derived from the ability to replicate proven and efficient best business practices across diverse operating environments.  They recently went live on Oracle’s Fusion HCM and Taleo. Their CFO explained to me how, with thousands of employees in three countries, Fusion HCM and Taleo would enable them to remain incredibly agile by acting on trends linking individual employee performance to their management, establishing and maintaining those best practices. Growing Midsize Companies are Thankful for: Opportunity I have three GPS apps on my iPhone. I use them mainly to keep track of my stats—distance, time, and vertical gain. However, every once in awhile I need to find the most efficient route back home before dark from my current location (notice I didn’t use the word “lost”). In August I listened in on an interview with the CFO of another European company that designs and delivers telematics solutions—the integrated use of telecommunications and informatics—for managing the mobile workforce. These solutions enable customers to achieve evolutionary step-changes in their performance and service delivery. Forgive the overused metaphor, but this is route optimization on steroids.  The company’s executive team saw an opportunity in this emerging market and went “all in”. Consequently, they are being rewarded with tremendous growth results and market domination by providing the ability for their clients to collect and analyze performance information related to fuel consumption, service workforce safety, and asset productivity. This Thanksgiving, I’m thankful for health, family, friends, and a career with an innovative company that helps companies leverage top tier software to drive and manage growth. And I’m thankful to have learned the lesson that good things happen when you get off the beaten path—both when hiking and when forging new routes through a complex world economy. Halfway through my walkabout on Sunday, after scrambling up a long stretch of scree-covered hill, I crested a ridge with an obstructed view of 14,265 ft Mt Evans just a few miles to the west.  There, nowhere near a house or a trail, someone had placed a wooden lounge chair. Its wood was worn and faded but it was sturdy. I had lunch and a cold drink in my pack. Opportunity knocked and I seized it. Happy Thanksgiving.  

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  • Why everybody should do Sales!

    - by FelixWehmeyer
    I speak with many business students and ask them what job they want to get into. Most of them tell me they want a job in Marketing, Management Consulting or Finance. I hardly ever hear “Sales, that is what I want to do”, and I often wonder why. I would like to start with a quote from Zig Ziglar, a successful salesman: "Nothing happens until someone sells something." But to get back to the main point, why wouldn’t you want to get in sales? When people think of sales, they picture a typical salesman in their head and think that selling is scary and all about manipulating, pressuring and pushing someone into buying something they don’t need. Are these stereotypes accurate? I don’t believe so: So why should you want to be in sales? If you think about selling as providing the solution for the problem and talking about the benefits of making a decision, then every job in this world comes out of selling. In every job you deal with coworkers that you want to convince of your ideas or convincing your boss that the project you want to work on is good for the company.  These days, consumers and businesses are very well informed about services and products. When we are talking about highly complex products, such as IT solutions, businesses don’t accept your run-of-the-mill salesman who is pushing a sale. These are often long projects where salespeople have a consulting and leading role. Salespeople need to be able to consult companies and customers with their problem and convince a client that their solution is the best fit. Next to the fact that sales, is by far, not as scary and shady as you thought, there are a few points that will make you want to consider a sales career: Negotiating skills – When you are in sales you will learn how to negotiate. Salespeople learn to listen to their customers and try to make them happy, overcoming objections and come to a final agreement that both parties are happy with. Persistence/Challenge – As a salesperson you will often hear a negative answer, in a sales role you will start to embrace this and see a ‘no’ as a challenge not as a rejection. This attitude change can help you a lot in your career, but also in your personal life. You will become more optimistic and gain a go-getter attitude. Salary – As salespeople are seen as the moneymakers for the company, companies often reward their sales teams generously. Most likely in a sales role, you will receive a good basic salary and often you get nice bonuses on top of that based on your performance. Oracle is, for instance, the company that offers the highest average commission in the world. Further you can expect many other benefits as companies know that there is a high demand for good salespeople. Teamwork – Sales is a lot like having your own business, you are responsible for your own territory or set of clients. You are the one who is responsible for the revenue coming from that territory. So in order to gain revenue you will have to work together with many departments and people to make that happen. Every (potential) client could be seen as a different project, and you are the project leader. Understanding customers and the business – From any job that you choose sales will get you the most insight in the market. Salespeople are usually well-connected, talk with different customers and learn about the market and are up-to-date about all latest changes. Even if you want to change to a different role in the long run, you have a great head start as you understand the market and customers like no one else. Job security – Look at all the job postings out there. Many of them are sales-related. So if you want to have a steady job, plenty of choice and companies willing to invest in you, sales could be something for you.  Are you interested in exploring a sales career? At Oracle we are always looking for good sales professionals and fresh graduates who want to get into sales! For many languages such as Flemish, Dutch, German, French, Swedish and Norwegian (and more) we are currently looking for graduates who want to develop their career in Oracle. Please have a look at this article for the experience of a Business Development Consultant at Oracle in Dublin. Want to learn more about this job check out this link or send an email to jessica.ebbelaar-at-oracle.com! Have a look at our website http://campus.oracle.com for all of our other latest sales and non-sales vacancies!

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  • Identity Globe Trotters (Sep Edition): The Social Customer

    - by Tanu Sood
    Welcome to the inaugural edition of our monthly series - Identity Globe Trotters. Starting today, the last Friday of every month, we will explore regional commentary on Identity Management. We will invite guest contributors from around the world to share their opinions and experiences around Identity Management and highlight regional nuances, specific drivers, solutions and more. Today's feature is contributed by Michael Krebs, Head of Business Development at esentri consulting GmbH, a (SOA) specialized Oracle Gold Partner based in Ettlingen, Germany. In his current role, Krebs is dealing with the latest developments in Enterprise Social Networking and the Integration of Social Media within business processes.  By Michael Krebs The relevance of "easy sign-on" in the age of the "Social Customer" With the growth of Social Networks, the time people spend within those closed "eco-systems" is growing year by year. With social networks looking to integrate search engines, like Facebook announced some weeks ago, their relevance will continue to grow in contrast to the more conventional search engines. This is one of the reasons why social network accounts of the users are getting more and more like a virtual fingerprint. With the growing relevance of social networks the importance of a simple way for customers to get in touch with say, customer care or contract departments, will be crucial for sales processes in critical markets. Customers want to have one single point of contact and also an easy "login-method" with no dedicated usernames, passwords or proprietary accounts. The golden rule in the future social media driven markets will be: The lower the complexity of the initial contact, the better a company can profit from social networks. If you, for example, can generate a smart way of how an existing customer can use self-service portals, the cost in providing phone support can be lowered significantly. Recruiting and Hiring of "Digital Natives" Another particular example is "social" recruiting processes. The so called "digital natives" don´t want to type in their profile facts and CV´s in proprietary systems. Why not use the actual LinkedIn profile? In German speaking region, the market in the area of professional social networks is dominated by XING, the equivalent to LinkedIn. A few weeks back, this network also opened up their interfaces for integrating social sign-ons or the usage of profile data for recruiting-purposes. In the European (and especially the German) employment market, where the number of young candidates is shrinking because of the low birth rate in the region, it will become essential to use social-media supported hiring processes to find and on-board the rare talents. In fact, you will see traditional recruiting websites integrated with social hiring to attract the best talents in the market, where the pool of potential candidates has decreased dramatically over the years. Identity Management as a key factor in the Customer Experience process To create the biggest value for customers and also future employees, companies need to connect their HCM or CRM-systems with powerful Identity management solutions. With the highly efficient Oracle (social & mobile enabling) Identity Management solution, enterprises can combine easy sign on with secure connections to the backend infrastructure. This combination enables a "one-stop" service with personalized content for customers and talents. In addition, companies can collect valuable data for the enrichment of their CRM-data. The goal is to enrich the so called "Customer Experience" via all available customer channels and contact points. Those systems have already gained importance in the B2C-markets and will gradually spread out to B2B-channels in the near future. Conclusion: Central and "Social" Identity management is key to Customer Experience Management and Talent Management For a seamless delivery of "Customer Experience Management" and a modern way of recruiting the best talent, companies need to integrate Social Sign-on capabilities with modern CX - and Talent management infrastructure. This lowers the barrier for existing and future customers or employees to get in touch with sales, support or human resources. Identity management is the technology enabler and backbone for a modern Customer Experience Infrastructure. Oracle Identity management solutions provide the opportunity to secure Social Applications and connect them with modern CX-solutions. At the end, companies benefit from "best of breed" processes and solutions for enriching customer experience without compromising security. About esentri: esentri is a provider of enterprise social networking and brings the benefits of social network communication into business environments. As one key strength, esentri uses Oracle Identity Management solutions for delivering Social and Mobile access for Oracle’s CRM- and HCM-solutions. …..End Guest Post…. With new and enhanced features optimized to secure the new digital experience, the recently announced Oracle Identity Management 11g Release 2 enables organizations to securely embrace cloud, mobile and social infrastructures and reach new user communities to help further expand and develop their businesses. Additional Resources: Oracle Identity Management 11gR2 release Oracle Identity Management website Datasheet: Mobile and Social Access (pdf) IDM at OOW: Focus on Identity Management Facebook: OracleIDM Twitter: OracleIDM We look forward to your feedback on this post and welcome your suggestions for topics to cover in Identity Globe Trotters. Last Friday, every month!

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  • Building Enterprise Smartphone App &ndash; Part 2: Platforms and Features

    - by Tim Murphy
    This is part 2 in a series of posts based on a talk I gave recently at the Chicago Information Technology Architects Group.  Feel free to leave feedback. In the previous post I discussed what reasons a company might have for creating a smartphone application.  In this installment I will cover some of history and state of the different platforms as well as features that can be leveraged for building enterprise smartphone applications. Platforms Before you start choosing a platform to develop your solutions on it is good to understand how we got here and what features you can leverage. History To my memory we owe all of this to a product called the Apple Newton that came out in 1987. It was the first PDA and back then I was much more of an Apple fan.  I was very impressed with this device even though it never really went anywhere.  The Palm Pilot by US Robotics was the next major advancement in PDA. It had a simple short hand window that allowed for quick stylus entry.. Later, Windows CE came out and started the broadening of the PDA market. After that it was the Palm and CE operating systems that started showing up on cell phones and for some time these were the two dominant operating systems that were distributed with devices from multiple hardware vendors. Current The iPhone was the first smartphone to take away the stylus and give us a multi-touch interface.  It was a revolution in usability and really changed the attractiveness of smartphones for the general public.  This brought us to the beginning of the current state of the market with the concept of an online store that makes it easy for customers to get new features and functionality on demand. With Android, Google made this more than a one horse race.  Not only did they come to compete, their low cost actually made them the leading OS.  Of course what made Android so attractive also is its major fault.  It is so open that it has been a target for malware which leaves consumers exposed.  Fortunately for Google though, most consumers aren’t aware of the threat that they are under. Although Microsoft had put out one of the first smart phone operating systems with CE it had to play catch up and finally came out with the Windows Phone.  They have gone for a market approach between those of iOS and Android.  They support multiple hardware vendors like Google, but they kept a certification process for applications that is similar to Apple.  They also created a user interface that was different enough to give it a clear separation from the other two platforms. The result of all this is hundreds of millions of smartphones being sold monthly across all three platforms giving us a wide range of choices and challenges when it comes to developing solutions. Features So what are the features that make these devices flexible enough be considered for use in the enterprise? The biggest advantage of today's devices is network connectivity.  The ability to access information from multiple sources at a moment’s notice is critical for businesses.  Add to that the ability to communicate over a variety of text, voice and video modes and we have a powerful starting point. Every smartphone has a cameras and they are not just useful for posting to Instagram. We are seeing more applications such as Bing vision that allow us to scan just about any printed code or text to find information.  These capabilities have been made available to developers in the form of standard libraries for reading barcodes of just about an flavor and optical character recognition (OCR) interpretation. Bluetooth give us the ability to communicate with multiple devices. Whether these are headsets, keyboard or printers the wireless communication capabilities are just starting to evolve.  The more these wireless communication protocols grow, the more opportunities we will see to transfer data between users and a variety of devices. Local storage of information that can be called up even when the device cannot reach the network is the other big capability.  This give users the ability to work offline as well and transmit information when connections are restored. These are the tools that we have to work with to build applications that can be leveraged to gain a competitive advantage for companies that implement them. Coming Up In the third installment I will cover key concerns that you face when building enterprise smartphone apps. del.icio.us Tags: smartphones,enterprise smartphone Apps,architecture,iOS,Android,Windows Phone

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  • Understanding the value of Customer Experience & Loyalty for the Telecommunications Industry

    - by raul.goycoolea
    Worried by economic woes and market forces, especially in mature markets, communications service providers (CSPs) increasingly focus on improving customer experience. In fact, it seems difficult to find a major message by a C-level executive in the developed world that does not include something on "meeting and exceeding customers' needs". Frequently in customer satisfaction studies by prominent firms, CSPs fall short of the leadership demonstrated by other industries that take customer-centric approaches to their bottom-line strategies. Consider the following:Despite the continued impact of global economic crisis, in July 2010, Apple Computer posted record revenue and net quarterly profit. Those who attribute the results primarily to the iPhone 4 launch should note that Apple also shipped around 30% more Macintosh computers than the same period the previous year. Even sales of the iPod line increased by 8% in a highly commoditized, shrinking media player market. Finally, Apple began selling iPads during the quarter, with total sales of more than 3 million units. What does Apple have that the others lack? Well, some great products (and services) to be sure, but it also excels at customer service and support, marketing, and distribution, and has one of the strongest brands globally. Its products are useful, simple to use, easy to acquire and augment, high quality, and considered very cool. They also evoke such an emotional response from many of Apple's customers, which they turn up their noses at competitive products.In other words, Apple appears to have mastered virtually every aspect of customer experience and the resultant loyalty of its customer base - even in difficult financial times. Through that unwavering customer focus, Apple continues to drive its revenues and profits to new heights. Other customer loyalty leaders like Wal-Mart, Google, Toyota and Honda are also doing well by focusing on customer experience as an essential driver of profitability. Service providers should note this performance and ask themselves how they might leverage the same principles to increase their own profitability. After all, that is what customer experience and loyalty are all about: profitability.To successfully manage all the critical touch points of customer experience, CSPs must shun the one-size-fits-all approach. They can no longer afford to view customer service fundamentally as an act of altruism - which mentality dates back to the industry's civil service days, when CSPs were typically government organizations that were critical to economic development and public safety.As regulators and public officials have pushed, and continue to push, service providers to new heights of reliability - using incentives and punishments - most CSPs already have some of the fundamental building blocks of customer service in place. Yet despite that history and experience, service providers still lag other industries in providing what is seen as good customer service.As we observed in the TMF's 2009 Insights Research report, Customer Experience Management: Driving Loyalty & Profitability there has been resurgence in interest by CSPs. More and more of them have stated ambitions to catch up other industries, and they are realizing that good customer service is a powerful strategy for increasing business performance and profitability, not an act of good will.CSPs are recognizing the connection between customer experience and profitability, as demonstrated in many studies. For example, according to research by Bain & Company, a 5 percent improvement in customer retention rates can yield as much as a 75 percent increase in profits for companies across a range of industries.After decades of customer experience strategy formulation, Bain partner and business author, Frederick Reichheld, considers "would you recommend us to a friend?" as the ultimate question for a customer. How many times have you or your friends recommended an iPod, iPhone or a Mac? What do your children recommend to their peers? Their peers to them?There are certain steps service providers have to take to create more personalized relationships with their customers, as well as reduce churn and increase profitability, all while becoming leaner and more agile. First, they have to define customer experience, we define it as the result of the sum of observations, perceptions, thoughts and feelings arising from interactions and relationships between customers and their service provider(s). Virtually every customer touch point - whether directly or indirectly linked to service providers and their partners - contributes to customer perception, satisfaction, loyalty, and ultimately profitability. Gaining leadership in customer experience and satisfaction will not be a simple task, as it is affected by virtually every customer-facing aspect of the service provider, and in turn impacts the service provider deeply - especially on the all-important bottom line. The scope of issues affecting customer experience is complex and dynamic.With new services, devices and applications extending the basis of customer experience to domains beyond the direct control of the service provider, it is likely to increase in complexity and dynamism.Customer loyalty = increased profitsAs stated earlier, customer experience programs are not fundamentally altruistic exercises, but a strategic means of improving competitiveness and profitability in the short and long term. Loyalty is essential to deriving long term profits from customers.Some of the earliest loyalty programs date back to the 1930s, when packaged goods companies offered embedded coupons for rewards to buyers, and eventually retail chains began offering reward programs to frequent shoppers. These programs continued for decades but were leapfrogged in the 1980s by more aggressive programs from the airlines.This movement was led by American Airlines, which launched the first full-scale loyalty marketing program of the modern era with the AAdvantage frequent flyer scheme. It was the first to reward frequent fliers with notional air miles that could be accumulated and later redeemed for free travel. Figure 1: Opportunities example of Customer loyalty driven profitOther airlines and travel providers were quick to grasp the incredible value of providing customers with an incentive to use their company exclusively. Within a few years, dozens of travel industry companies launched similar initiatives and now loyalty programs are achieving near-ubiquity in many service industries, especially those in which it is difficult to differentiate offerings by product attributes.The belief is that increased profitability will result from customer retention efforts because:•    The cost of acquisition occurs only at the beginning of a relationship: the longer the relationship, the lower the amortized cost;•    Account maintenance costs decline as a percentage of total costs, or as a percentage of revenue, over the lifetime of the relationship;•    Long term customers tend to be less inclined to switch and less price sensitive which can result in stable unit sales volume and increases in dollar-sales volume;•    Long term customers may initiate word-of-mouth promotions and referrals, which cost the company nothing and arguably are the most effective form of advertising;•    Long-term customers are more likely to buy ancillary products and higher margin supplemental products;•    Long term customers tend to be satisfied with their relationship with the company and are less likely to switch to competitors, making market entry or competitors gaining market share difficult;•    Regular customers tend to be less expensive to service, as they are familiar with the processes involved, require less 'education', and are consistent in their order placement;•    Increased customer retention and loyalty makes the employees' jobs easier and more satisfying. In turn, happy employees feed back into higher customer satisfaction in a virtuous circle. Figure 2: The virtuous circle of customer loyaltyFigure 2 represents a high-level example of a virtuous cycle driven by customer satisfaction and loyalty, depicting how superiority in product and service offerings, as well as strong customer support by competent employees, lead to higher sales and ultimately profitability. As stated above, this is not a new concept, but succeeding with it is difficult. It has eluded many a company driven to achieve profitability goals. Of course, for this circle to be virtuous, the customer relationship(s) must be profitable.Trying to maintain the loyalty of unprofitable customers is not a viable business strategy. It is, therefore, important that marketers can assess the profitability of each customer (or customer segment), and either improve or terminate relationships that are not profitable. This means each customer's 'relationship costs' must be understood and compared to their 'relationship revenue'. Customer lifetime value (CLV) is the most commonly used metric here, as it is generally accepted as a representation of exactly how much each customer is worth in monetary terms, and therefore a determinant of exactly how much a service provider should be willing to spend to acquire or retain that customer.CLV models make several simplifying assumptions and often involve the following inputs:•    Churn rate represents the percentage of customers who end their relationship with a company in a given period;•    Retention rate is calculated by subtracting the churn rate percentage from 100;•    Period/horizon equates to the units of time into which a customer relationship can be divided for analysis. A year is the most commonly used period for this purpose. Customer lifetime value is a multi-period calculation, often projecting three to seven years into the future. In practice, analysis beyond this point is viewed as too speculative to be reliable. The model horizon is the number of periods used in the calculation;•    Periodic revenue is the amount of revenue collected from a customer in a given period (though this is often extended across multiple periods into the future to understand lifetime value), such as usage revenue, revenues anticipated from cross and upselling, and often some weighting for referrals by a loyal customer to others; •    Retention cost describes the amount of money the service provider must spend, in a given period, to retain an existing customer. Again, this is often forecast across multiple periods. Retention costs include customer support, billing, promotional incentives and so on;•    Discount rate means the cost of capital used to discount future revenue from a customer. Discounting is an advanced method used in more sophisticated CLV calculations;•    Profit margin is the projected profit as a percentage of revenue for the period. This may be reflected as a percentage of gross or net profit. Again, this is generally projected across the model horizon to understand lifetime value.A strong focus on managing these inputs can help service providers realize stronger customer relationships and profits, but there are some obstacles to overcome in achieving accurate calculations of CLV, such as the complexity of allocating costs across the customer base. There are many costs that serve all customers which must be properly allocated across the base, and often a simple proportional allocation across the whole base or a segment may not accurately reflect the true cost of serving that customer;  This is made worse by the fragmentation of customer information, which is likely to be across a variety of product or operations groups, and may be difficult to aggregate due to different representations.In addition, there is the complexity of account relationships and structures to take into consideration. Complex account structures may not be understood or properly represented. For example, a profitable customer may have a separate account for a second home or another family member, which may appear to be unprofitable. If the service provider cannot relate the two accounts, CLV is not properly represented and any resultant cancellation of the apparently unprofitable account may result in the customer churning from the profitable one.In summary, if service providers are to realize strong customer relationships and their attendant profits, there must be a very strong focus on data management. This needs to be coupled with analytics that help business managers and those who work in customer-facing functions offer highly personalized solutions to customers, while maintaining profitability for the service provider. It's clear that acquiring new customers is expensive. Advertising costs, campaign management expenses, promotional service pricing and discounting, and equipment subsidies make a serious dent in a new customer's profitability. That is especially true given the rising subsidies for Smartphone users, which service providers hope will result in greater profits from profits from data services profitability in future.  The situation is made worse by falling prices and greater competition in mature markets.Customer acquisition through industry consolidation isn't cheap either. A North American service provider spent about $2,000 per subscriber in its acquisition of a smaller company earlier this year. While this has allowed it to leapfrog to become the largest mobile service provider in the country, it required a total investment of more than $28 billion (including assumption of the acquiree's debt).While many operating cost synergies clearly made this deal more attractive to the acquiring company, this is certainly an expensive way to acquire customers: the cost per subscriber in this case is not out of line with the prices others have paid for acquisitions.While growth by acquisition certainly increases overall revenues, it often creates tremendous challenges for profitability. Organic growth through increased customer loyalty and retention is a more effective driver of profit, as well as a stronger predictor of future profitability. Service providers, especially those in mature markets, are increasingly recognizing this and taking steps toward a creating a more personalized, flexible and satisfying experience for their customers.In summary, the clearest path to profitability for companies in virtually all industries is through customer retention and maximization of lifetime value. Service providers would do well to recognize this and focus attention on profitable customer relationships.

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  • In Email, Image (img) Source (src) Tags are rewritten as relative links. How to fix?

    - by Noah Goodrich
    I'm working on sending out an html based email, and every time it sends the image src tags and some of the anchor href tags are modified to be relative url's. Update 2: This is happening between when the body of the email is generated and sent and when it arrives in my inbox. Update: I am using Postfix on a LAMPP server. In addition, I am using Zend_Mail to send the emails out. For example, I have a link: src="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/header.jpg" And it gets rewritten as: src="../../../../images/email/highpoint_2009_04/header.jpg" What can cause this to occur and how is it corrected? Email headers: Return-Path: <[email protected]> X-Original-To: [email protected] Delivered-To: [email protected] Received: by mail.example.com (Postfix, from userid 0) id 6BF012252; Tue, 14 Apr 2009 12:15:20 -0600 (MDT) To: Gabriel <[email protected]> Subject: Free Map to Sales Success From: Somebody <[email protected]> Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 12:15:20 -0600 Content-Type: text/html; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: multipart/related Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <[email protected]> Original content to be sent out: <table align="center" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="600"> <tbody> <tr> <td valign="top"> <a href="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com"> <img moz-do-not-send="true" alt="The Furniture Training Company - Know More. Sell More." src="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/header.jpg" border="0" height="123" width="600"> </a> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <table align="center" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="600"> <tbody> <tr> <td valign="top"><img alt="Visit us at High Point to receive your free training poster" src="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/hero.jpg" moz-do-not-send="true" height="150" width="600"><br> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <table align="center" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="600"> <tbody> <tr> <td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="top"><img alt="" src="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/spacer_content_left.jpg" moz-do-not-send="true" height="30" width="30"><br> </td> <td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="top"><font originaltag="yes" style="font-size: 9px; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" color="#000000" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1"><big><big><big><big><small><big><b>See you at Market</b></big><br> </small></big></big></big></big></font> <font originaltag="yes" style="font-size: 9px; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" color="#000000" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1"><big><big><big><big><small><br> </small></big></big></big></big></font><small><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">Visit our space to get your free Map to Sales Success poster! This unique 24 X 36 color poster is your guide to developing high volume salespeople with larger tickets. Find us in the new NHFA Retailer Resource Center located in the Plaza. <br> <br> Don&#8217;t miss Mark Lacy&#8217;s entertaining seminar "Help Wanted! My Sales Associates Can&#8217;t Sell Water to a Thirsty Camel." He&#8217;ll reveal powerful secrets for turning sales associates into furniture experts that will sell. See him Saturday, April 25th at 11:30 AM in the seminar room of the new NHFA Retail Resource Center in the Plaza. <br> <br> Stop by our space to learn how our ingenious internet-delivered training courses are easy to use, guaranteed to work, and cheaper than the daily donuts. Over 95% report increased sales. <br> <br> Plan to see us at High Point. </font></small> <font originaltag="yes" style="font-size: 9px; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" color="#000000" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1"><big><big><big><big><small><small><br> <br> <br> <br> </small></small></big></big></big></big></font><small><font originaltag="yes" style="font-size: 9px; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" color="#000000" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1"><big><big><big><small> </small></big></big></big></font></small> <a href="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/map"><img alt="Find out more" src="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/image_content_left.jpg" moz-do-not-send="true" border="0" height="67" width="326"></a><br> <br> </td> <td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="top"> <img alt="" src="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/spacer_content_middle.jpg" moz-do-not-send="true" height="28" width="28"><br> </td> <td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="top"><img alt="Roadmap to Sales Success poster" src="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/image_content_right.jpg" moz-do-not-send="true" height="267" width="186"><br> <font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"><small><font originaltag="yes" style="font-size: 9px; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" color="#000000" size="1"><big><big><big><small><b>Road Map to Sales Success<br> </b><br> </small></big></big></big></font>This beautiful poster is yours free for simply stopping by and visiting with us at High Point. <span class="moz-txt-slash">Our space is located inside the </span>new NHFA Retailer Resource Center in the Plaza Suites, 222 South Main St, 1st Floor. We will be at market from Sat April 25th until Thur April 30th. </small></font><br> </td> <td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="top"><img alt="" src="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/spacer_content_right.jpg" moz-do-not-send="true" height="30" width="30"><br> <br> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <table align="center" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="600"> <tbody> <tr> <td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="top"><img alt="" src="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/disclaimer_divider.jpg" moz-do-not-send="true" height="25" width="600"><br> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <table align="center" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="600"> <tbody> <tr> <td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="top"><img alt="" src="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/spacer_disclaimer_left.jpg" moz-do-not-send="true"></td> <td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="top"><img alt="" src="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/spacer_disclaimer_middle.jpg" moz-do-not-send="true"><br> <font originaltag="yes" style="font-size: 9px; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" color="#666666" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1"><big><big><big><big><small><small><small>If you are not attending the High Point market in April but would still like to receive a free Road Map to Sales Success poster visit us on the web at <u><a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com">www.furnituretrainingcompany.com</a></u>, or to speak with a Furniture Training Company representative, call toll free (866) 755-5996. We do not offer free shipping outside of the U.S. and Canada. Retailers outside of the U.S. and Canada may call for more information. Limit one free Road Map to Sales Success per company. Other copies of the poster may be purchased on our web site.<br> <br> </small></small></small></big></big></big></big></font> <font color="#666666"><small><font originaltag="yes" style="font-size: 9px; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1"><big><big><big><small><small>We hope you found this message to be useful. However, if you'd rather not receive future emails of this sort from The Furniture Training Company, please <a moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://www.furnituretraining.com/contact">click here to unsubscribe</a>.<br> <br> </small></small></big></big></big></font></small><small><font originaltag="yes" style="font-size: 9px; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1"><big><big><big><small><small>&copy;Copyright 2009 The Furniture Training Company.<br> 1770 North Research Park Way, <br> North Logan, UT 84341. <br> All Rights Reserved.</small></small></big></big></big></font></small></font><br> </td> <td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="top"><img alt="" src="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/spacer_disclaimer_right.jpg" moz-do-not-send="true"></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <table align="center" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="600"> <tbody> <tr> <td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="top"><img alt="" src="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/footer.jpg" moz-do-not-send="true"> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <br> <br> Content that gets sent: <table border=3D"0" cellspacing=3D"0" cellpadding=3D"0" width=3D"600" al= ign=3D"center">=0D=0A<tbody>=0D=0A<tr>=0D=0A<td valign=3D"top"><a href= =3D"http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com"> <img src=3D"http://www.fur= nituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/header.jpg" bor= der=3D"0" alt=3D"The Furniture Training Company - Know More. Sell More."= width=3D"600" height=3D"123" /> </a></td>=0D=0A</tr>=0D=0A</tbody>=0D= =0A</table>=0D=0A<table border=3D"0" cellspacing=3D"0" cellpadding=3D"0"= width=3D"600" align=3D"center">=0D=0A<tbody>=0D=0A<tr>=0D=0A<td valign= =3D"top"><img src=3D"http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/emai= l/highpoint_2009_04/hero.jpg" alt=3D"Visit us at High Point to receive y= our free training poster" width=3D"600" height=3D"150" /><br /></td>=0D= =0A</tr>=0D=0A</tbody>=0D=0A</table>=0D=0A<table border=3D"0" cellspacin= g=3D"0" cellpadding=3D"0" width=3D"600" align=3D"center">=0D=0A<tbody>= =0D=0A<tr>=0D=0A<td valign=3D"top" bgcolor=3D"#ffffff"><img src=3D"http:= //www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/spacer= _content_left.jpg" alt=3D"" width=3D"30" height=3D"30" /><br /></td>=0D= =0A<td valign=3D"top" bgcolor=3D"#ffffff"><span style=3D"font-size: xx-s= mall; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; color: #000000;">= <big><big><big><big><small><big><strong>See you at Market</strong></big>= <br /> </small></big></big></big></big></span> <span style=3D"font-size:= xx-small; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; color: #0000= 00;"><big><big><big><big><small><br /> </small></big></big></big></big><= /span><small><span style=3D"font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;">Vi= sit our space to get your free Map to Sales Success poster! This unique= 24 X 36 color poster is your guide to developing high volume salespeopl= e with larger tickets. Find us in the new NHFA Retailer Resource Center= located in the Plaza. <br /> <br /> Don&rsquo;t miss Mark Lacy&rsquo;s= entertaining seminar "Help Wanted! My Sales Associates Can&rsquo;t Sell= Water to a Thirsty Camel." He&rsquo;ll reveal powerful secrets for turn= ing sales associates into furniture experts that will sell. See him Satu= rday, April 25th at 11:30 AM in the seminar room of the new NHFA Retail= Resource Center in the Plaza. <br /> <br /> Stop by our space to learn= how our ingenious internet-delivered training courses are easy to use,= guaranteed to work, and cheaper than the daily donuts. Over 95% report= increased sales. <br /> <br /> Plan to see us at High Point. </span></s= mall> <span style=3D"font-size: xx-small; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Hel= vetica,sans-serif; color: #000000;"><big><big><big><big><small><small><b= r /> <br /> <br /> <br /> </small></small></big></big></big></big></span= ><small><span style=3D"font-size: xx-small; font-family: Verdana,Arial,H= elvetica,sans-serif; color: #000000;"><big><big><big><small> </small></b= ig></big></big></span></small> <a href=3D"http://www.furnituretrainingco= mpany.com/map"><img src=3D"http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/image= s/email/highpoint_2009_04/image_content_left.jpg" border=3D"0" alt=3D"Fi= nd out more" width=3D"326" height=3D"67" /></a><br /> <br /></td>=0D=0A<= td valign=3D"top" bgcolor=3D"#ffffff"><img src=3D"http://www.furnituretr= ainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/spacer_content_middle.j= pg" alt=3D"" width=3D"28" height=3D"28" /><br /></td>=0D=0A<td valign=3D= "top" bgcolor=3D"#ffffff"><img src=3D"http://www.furnituretrainingcompan= y.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/image_content_right.jpg" alt=3D"Roa= dmap to Sales Success poster" width=3D"186" height=3D"267" /><br /> <spa= n style=3D"font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;"><small><span style= =3D"font-size: xx-small; color: #000000;"><big><big><big><small><strong>= Road Map to Sales Success<br /> </strong><br /> </small></big></big></bi= g></span>This beautiful poster is yours free for simply stopping by and= visiting with us at High Point. <span class=3D"moz-txt-slash">Our space= is located inside the </span>new NHFA Retailer Resource Center in the P= laza Suites, 222 South Main St, 1st Floor. We will be at market from Sat= April 25th until Thur April 30th. </small></span><br /></td>=0D=0A<td v= align=3D"top" bgcolor=3D"#ffffff"><img src=3D"http://www.furnituretraini= ngcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/spacer_content_right.jpg" a= lt=3D"" width=3D"30" height=3D"30" /><br /> <br /></td>=0D=0A</tr>=0D=0A= </tbody>=0D=0A</table>=0D=0A<table border=3D"0" cellspacing=3D"0" cellpa= dding=3D"0" width=3D"600" align=3D"center">=0D=0A<tbody>=0D=0A<tr>=0D=0A= <td valign=3D"top" bgcolor=3D"#ffffff"><img src=3D"http://www.furnituret= rainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/disclaimer_divider.jpg= " alt=3D"" width=3D"600" height=3D"25" /><br /></td>=0D=0A</tr>=0D=0A</t= body>=0D=0A</table>=0D=0A<table border=3D"0" cellspacing=3D"0" cellpaddi= ng=3D"0" width=3D"600" align=3D"center">=0D=0A<tbody>=0D=0A<tr>=0D=0A<td= valign=3D"top" bgcolor=3D"#ffffff"><img src=3D"http://www.furnituretrai= ningcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/spacer_disclaimer_left.jp= g" alt=3D"" /></td>=0D=0A<td valign=3D"top" bgcolor=3D"#ffffff"><img src= =3D"http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_= 04/spacer_disclaimer_middle.jpg" alt=3D"" /><br /> <span style=3D"font-s= ize: xx-small; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; color: #= 666666;"><big><big><big><big><small><small><small>If you are not attendi= ng the High Point market in April but would still like to receive a free= Road Map to Sales Success poster visit us on the web at <span style=3D"= text-decoration: underline;"><a class=3D"moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href= =3D"http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com">www.furnituretrainingcompan= y.com</a></span>, or to speak with a Furniture Training Company represen= tative, call toll free (866) 755-5996. We do not offer free shipping out= side of the U.S. and Canada. Retailers outside of the U.S. and Canada ma= y call for more information. Limit one free Road Map to Sales Success pe= r company. Other copies of the poster may be purchased on our web site.<= br /> <br /> </small></small></small></big></big></big></big></span> <sp= an style=3D"color: #666666;"><small><span style=3D"font-size: xx-small;= font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><big><big><big><small= ><small>We hope you found this message to be useful. However, if you'd r= ather not receive future emails of this sort from The Furniture Training= Company, please <a href=3D"http://www.furnituretraining.com/contact">cl= ick here to unsubscribe</a>.<br /> <br /> </small></small></big></big></= big></span></small><small><span style=3D"font-size: xx-small; font-famil= y: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><big><big><big><small><small>&co= py;Copyright 2009 The Furniture Training Company.<br /> 1770 North Resea= rch Park Way, <br /> North Logan, UT 84341. <br /> All Rights Reserved.<= /small></small></big></big></big></span></small></span><br /></td>=0D=0A= <td valign=3D"top" bgcolor=3D"#ffffff"><img src=3D"http://www.furnituret= rainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/spacer_disclaimer_righ= t.jpg" alt=3D"" /></td>=0D=0A</tr>=0D=0A</tbody>=0D=0A</table>=0D=0A<tab= le border=3D"0" cellspacing=3D"0" cellpadding=3D"0" width=3D"600" align= =3D"center">=0D=0A<tbody>=0D=0A<tr>=0D=0A<td valign=3D"top" bgcolor=3D"#= ffffff"><img src=3D"http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email= /highpoint_2009_04/footer.jpg" alt=3D"" /></td>=0D=0A</tr>=0D=0A</tbody>= =0D=0A</table>=0D=0A<p><br /></p><br><hr><a href=3D'http://localhost/ftc= /app/unsubscribe.php?action=3DoptOut&pid=3D6121&cid=3D19&email=3Dmarkl@f= urnituretrainingcompany.com'>Click to Unsubscribe</a>

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  • Are there free realtime financial data feeds since the demise of OpenQuant?

    - by Mel Cooper
    Now that the oligopole of market data providers successfully killed OpenQuant, does any alternative to proprietary and expensive subscriptions for realtime market data subsist? Ideally I would like to be able to monitor tick by tick securities from the NYSE, NASDAQ and AMEX (about 6000 symbols). Most vendors put a limit of 500 symbols watchable at the same time, this is unacceptable to me, even if one can imagine a rotation among the 500 symbols ie. making windows of 5 sec. of effective observation out of each minute for every symbol. Currently I'm doing this by a Java thread pool calling Google Finance, but this is unsatisfactory for several reasons, one being that Google doesn't return the volume traded. Any hint much appreciated, Cheers

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  • Why GPRS modem provides embedded TCP/IP stack

    - by Christian Madsen
    My colleague and I are mining the GPRS MODEM market for a module suitable for use with embedded Linux. During the market scan, we see that several vendors highlight that their MODEMs include an embedded TCP/IP stack. This makes me wonder: when we are using embedded Linux which already contains a TCP/IP stack and connects using PPP, will it make use of the stack included in the GPRS MODEM at all? My current assumption is that the stack is included for use with tiny microcontroller OS that do not supply their own stack. Also some of the MODEMs allow for running small applications IN the MODEM baseband processor which could explain the embedded stack... So: is the TCP/IP stack supplied by the GPRS MODEM superfluous when using it with an HL OS or did I overlook something?

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  • Selling an app to a company - How much to charge?

    - by Moshe
    I wrote an app targeting a particular clientele. A software company with a reputation among my target audience is willing to negotiate a price to either license or buy it. As a newcomer to the app store, I am not sure that I will successfully market it myself. What would be appropriate terms of a sale or license and what about pricing? I am looking for answers that draw from personal experience with software, although not necessarily apps. I've seen this post on SO, but it's a few years old and I assume that the app market has changed and stabilized somewhat. Thanks.

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  • Inserting Large volume of data in SQL Server 2005

    - by Manjoor
    We have a application (written in c#) to store live stock market price in the database (SQL Server 2005). It insert about 1 Million record in a single day. Now we are adding some more segment of market into it and the no of records would be double (2 Millions/day). Currently the average record insertion per second is about 50, maximum is 450 and minimum is 0. To check certain conditions i have used service broker (asynchronous trigger) on my price table. It is running fine at this time(about 35% CPU utilization). Now i am planning to create a in memory dataset of current stock price. we would like to do some simple calculations. I want to know different views of members on this. Please provide your way of dealing with such situation.

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  • facing outsourced wages, can i still eat and survive as a computing science major ?

    - by wefwgeweg
    offshore outsourced programmers charge fraction of what costs a North American developer. should I still pursue my major as computing science ? Why would companies spend more on North American/local developers where they can get the same quality if not better job done offshore ? I am just concerned for the development labor market, the free market wants the lowest cost provider. not just programming but many high skilled labor such as engineering, scientists, artists and etc. perhaps i should become a lawyer ?

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  • NHibernate AssertException: Interceptor.OnPrepareStatement(SqlString) returned null or empty SqlString.

    - by jwynveen
    I am trying to switch a table from being a many-to-one mapping to being many-to-many with an intermediate mapping table. However, when I switched it over and tried to do a query on it with NHibernate, it's giving me this error: "Interceptor.OnPrepareStatement(SqlString) returned null or empty SqlString." My query was originally something more complex, but I switched it to a basic fetch all and I'm still having the problem: Session.QueryOver<T>().Future(); It would seem to either be a problem in my model mapping files or something in my database. Here are my model mappings: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <hibernate-mapping xmlns="urn:nhibernate-mapping-2.2" assembly="GBI.Core" namespace="GBI.Core.Models"> <class name="Market" table="gbi_Market"> <id name="Id" column="MarketId"> <generator class="identity" /> </id> <property name="Name" /> <property name="Url" /> <property name="Description" type="StringClob" /> <property name="Rating" /> <property name="RatingComment" /> <property name="RatingCommentedOn" /> <many-to-one name="RatingCommentedBy" column="RatingCommentedBy" lazy="proxy"></many-to-one> <property name="ImageFilename" /> <property name="CreatedOn" /> <property name="ModifiedOn" /> <property name="IsDeleted" /> <many-to-one name="CreatedBy" column="CreatedBy" lazy="proxy"></many-to-one> <many-to-one name="ModifiedBy" column="ModifiedBy" lazy="proxy"></many-to-one> <set name="Content" where="IsDeleted=0 and ParentContentId is NULL" order-by="Ordering asc, CreatedOn asc, Name asc" lazy="extra"> <key column="MarketId" /> <one-to-many class="MarketContent" /> </set> <set name="FastFacts" where="IsDeleted=0" order-by="Ordering asc, CreatedOn asc, Name asc" lazy="extra"> <key column="MarketId" /> <one-to-many class="MarketFastFact" /> </set> <set name="NewsItems" table="gbi_NewsItem_Market_Map" lazy="true"> <key column="MarketId" /> <many-to-many class="NewsItem" fetch="join" column="NewsItemId" where="IsDeleted=0"/> </set> <!--<set name="MarketUpdates" table="gbi_Market_MarketUpdate_Map" lazy="extra"> <key column="MarketId" /> <many-to-many class="MarketUpdate" fetch="join" column="MarketUpdateId" where="IsDeleted=0" order-by="CreatedOn desc" /> </set>--> <set name="Documents" table="gbi_Market_Document_Map" lazy="true"> <key column="MarketId" /> <many-to-many class="Document" fetch="join" column="DocumentId" where="IsDeleted=0"/> </set> </class> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <hibernate-mapping xmlns="urn:nhibernate-mapping-2.2" assembly="GBI.Core" namespace="GBI.Core.Models"> <class name="MarketUpdate" table="gbi_MarketUpdate"> <id name="Id" column="MarketUpdateId"> <generator class="identity" /> </id> <property name="Description" /> <property name="CreatedOn" /> <property name="ModifiedOn" /> <property name="IsDeleted" /> <!--<many-to-one name="Market" column="MarketId" lazy="proxy"></many-to-one>--> <set name="Comments" where="IsDeleted=0" order-by="CreatedOn desc" lazy="extra"> <key column="MarketUpdateId" /> <one-to-many class="MarketUpdateComment" /> </set> <many-to-one name="CreatedBy" column="CreatedBy" lazy="proxy"></many-to-one> <many-to-one name="ModifiedBy" column="ModifiedBy" lazy="proxy"></many-to-one> </class> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <hibernate-mapping xmlns="urn:nhibernate-mapping-2.2" assembly="GBI.Core" namespace="GBI.Core.Models"> <class name="MarketUpdateMarketMap" table="gbi_Market_MarketUpdate_Map"> <id name="Id" column="MarketUpdateMarketMapId"> <generator class="identity" /> </id> <property name="CreatedOn" /> <property name="ModifiedOn" /> <property name="IsDeleted" /> <many-to-one name="CreatedBy" column="CreatedBy" lazy="proxy"></many-to-one> <many-to-one name="ModifiedBy" column="ModifiedBy" lazy="proxy"></many-to-one> <many-to-one name="MarketUpdate" column="MarketUpdateId" lazy="proxy"></many-to-one> <many-to-one name="Market" column="MarketId" lazy="proxy"></many-to-one> </class> As I mentioned, MarketUpdate was originally a many-to-one with Market (MarketId column is still in there, but I'm ignoring it. Could this be a problem?). But I've added in the Market_MarketUpdate_Map table to make it a many-to-many. I'm running in circles trying to figure out what this could be. I couldn't find any reference to this error when searching. And it doesn't provide much detail. Using: NHibernate 2.2 .NET 4.0 SQL Server 2005

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  • Cobol: science and fiction

    - by user847
    There are a few threads about the relevance of the Cobol programming language on this forum, e.g. this thread links to a collection of them. What I am interested in here is a frequently repeated claim based on a study by Gartner from 1997: that there were around 200 billion lines of code in active use at that time! I would like to ask some questions to verify or falsify a couple of related points. My goal is to understand if this statement has any truth to it or if it is totally unrealistic. I apologize in advance for being a little verbose in presenting my line of thought and my own opinion on the things I am not sure about, but I think it might help to put things in context and thus highlight any wrong assumptions and conclusions I have made. Sometimes, the "200 billion lines" number is accompanied by the added claim that this corresponded to 80% of all programming code in any language in active use. Other times, the 80% merely refer to so-called "business code" (or some other vague phrase hinting that the reader is not to count mainstream software, embedded systems or anything else where Cobol is practically non-existent). In the following I assume that the code does not include double-counting of multiple installations of the same software (since that is cheating!). In particular in the time prior to the y2k problem, it has been noted that a lot of Cobol code is already 20 to 30 years old. That would mean it was written in the late 60ies and 70ies. At that time, the market leader was IBM with the IBM/370 mainframe. IBM has put up a historical announcement on his website quoting prices and availability. According to the sheet, prices are about one million dollars for machines with up to half a megabyte of memory. Question 1: How many mainframes have actually been sold? I have not found any numbers for those times; the latest numbers are for the year 2000, again by Gartner. :^( I would guess that the actual number is in the hundreds or the low thousands; if the market size was 50 billion in 2000 and the market has grown exponentially like any other technology, it might have been merely a few billions back in 1970. Since the IBM/370 was sold for twenty years, twenty times a few thousand will result in a couple of ten-thousands of machines (and that is pretty optimistic)! Question 2: How large were the programs in lines of code? I don't know how many bytes of machine code result from one line of source code on that architecture. But since the IBM/370 was a 32-bit machine, any address access must have used 4 bytes plus instruction (2, maybe 3 bytes for that?). If you count in operating system and data for the program, how many lines of code would have fit into the main memory of half a megabyte? Question 3: Was there no standard software? Did every single machine sold run a unique hand-coded system without any standard software? Seriously, even if every machine was programmed from scratch without any reuse of legacy code (wait ... didn't that violate one of the claims we started from to begin with???) we might have O(50,000 l.o.c./machine) * O(20,000 machines) = O(1,000,000,000 l.o.c.). That is still far, far, far away from 200 billion! Am I missing something obvious here? Question 4: How many programmers did we need to write 200 billion lines of code? I am really not sure about this one, but if we take an average of 10 l.o.c. per day, we would need 55 million man-years to achieve this! In the time-frame of 20 to 30 years this would mean that there must have existed two to three million programmers constantly writing, testing, debugging and documenting code. That would be about as many programmers as we have in China today, wouldn't it? Question 5: What about the competition? So far, I have come up with two things here: 1) IBM had their own programming language, PL/I. Above I have assumed that the majority of code has been written exclusively using Cobol. However, all other things being equal I wonder if IBM marketing had really pushed their own development off the market in favor of Cobol on their machines. Was there really no relevant code base of PL/I? 2) Sometimes (also on this board in the thread quoted above) I come across the claim that the "200 billion lines of code" are simply invisible to anybody outside of "governments, banks ..." (and whatnot). Actually, the DoD had funded their own language in order to increase cost effectiveness and reduce the proliferation of programming language. This lead to their use of Ada. Would they really worry about having so many different programming languages if they had predominantly used Cobol? If there was any language running on "government and military" systems outside the perception of mainstream computing, wouldn't that language be Ada? I hope someone can point out any flaws in my assumptions and/or conclusions and shed some light on whether the above claim has any truth to it or not.

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  • Will sharpening my sword eventually lead to it cutting my head off?

    - by Achilles
    Sharpening the sword: All I've read in the developer community suggests that I should keep learning and studying to become the best developer I can. This will make me better at my job and more valuable as an employee. Cutting my head off: However there seems to be an influx of cheap programming labor constantly coming int to the market(college, foreign countries, etc.) I was part of that influx when I graduated. So my question is, What is the likely outcome? Will there always be a job where a skilled-programmer(Grey-Beard) will have a place to work and contribute, or will he eventually price himself out of the market by having such great knowledge and skill?

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  • Virus - How much it can affect?

    - by Sarang
    In our daily life, we come across various Viruses. In this internet world, we do have lots of type of viruses come to visit us ! While for the beginners, Virus is a complicated matter to fight with. Please explain the way how the virus come flow across the PC using Internet. What are the ways to search for them in the Personal Computer ? Also, we do have various solutions available in the market of Anti-Viruses, but also have different comments available for different software. Which is actually, really a useful Anti-Virus in the market that can give reliable performance ? Every Personal Computer connected to internet has to face against the viruses. Isn't there any general solution using Internet itself through which all networked computers get protected against Viruses ? Please give any solution.

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