Search Results

Search found 3180 results on 128 pages for 'david belanger'.

Page 26/128 | < Previous Page | 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33  | Next Page >

  • Resize broswer window below 400px on OS X

    - by David
    Resizing Firefox windows (by dragging) works fine, up until the window is about 400 px wide, at which point the width of the web page content cease to follow the window with. I'm pretty sure it's not a CSS issue, and the same thing goes for Chrome and Safari as well (they won't even let me resize the window < 400 px wide). I can't understand where this limitation comes from. Is it a setting in the browser? A bug? A limitation of the OS?

    Read the article

  • image viewer: png vs gif

    - by David Oneill
    I have a bunch of files that have .png extension. However, some of them are actually gif files. Any of the files, I can open them w/ gimp or view them in firefox, but when I try to open them with the Eye of Gnome viewer, it gives an error "Could not load image: Fatal error reading PNG image file: Not a PNG file" Is there: Another image viewer that can open files with incorrect extensions that I could use as default? It would need to have the ability to zoom in and out on images, and scroll through all the images in a folder via arrow keys. An automated way to rename the files that are actually gif files to the correct extensions? Choice 2 is preferred, but I don't now how to tell what type they are. I would be able to put together a bash script to do the renaming if there is a command that could tell me what type they are.

    Read the article

  • How do I create a third Person View using DXUTCamera in DX10?

    - by David
    I am creating a 3d flying game and using DXUTCamera for my view. I can get the camera to take on the characters position, But I would like to view my character in the 3rd person. Here is my code for first person view: //Put the camera on the object. D3DXVECTOR3 viewerPos; D3DXVECTOR3 lookAtThis; D3DXVECTOR3 up ( 5.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f ); D3DXVECTOR3 newUp; D3DXMATRIX matView; //Set the viewer's position to the position of the thing. viewerPos.x = character->x; viewerPos.y = character->y; viewerPos.z = character->z; // Create a new vector for the direction for the viewer to look character->setUpWorldMatrix(); D3DXVECTOR3 newDir, lookAtPoint; D3DXVec3TransformCoord(&newDir, &character->initVecDir, &character->matAllRotations); // set lookatpoint D3DXVec3Normalize(&lookAtPoint, &newDir); lookAtPoint.x += viewerPos.x; lookAtPoint.y += viewerPos.y; lookAtPoint.z += viewerPos.z; g_Camera.SetViewParams(&viewerPos, &lookAtPoint); So does anyone have an ideas how I can move the camera to the third person view? preferably timed so there is a smooth action in the camera movement. (I'm hoping I can just edit this code instead of bringing in another camera class)

    Read the article

  • Project Management Tool for developers and sysadmins: shared or separate?

    - by David
    Should a team of system administrators who are on a software development project share a project management tool with the developers or use their own separate one? We use Trac and I see the benefit in sharing since inter-team tasks can be maintained by a single system where there may be cross-over or misfiled bugs (e.g. an apparent bug which turns out to be a server configuration issue or a development cycle which needs a server to be configured before it can start) However sharing could be difficult since many system administration tasks don't coincide with a single development milestone if at all. So should a system administration team use a separate PM Tool or share the same one with the developers? If they should share, then how?

    Read the article

  • The State of the Internet -- Retail Edition

    - by David Dorf
    Over at Business Insider, there's a great presentation on the State of the Internet done in the Mary Meeker style.  Its 138 slides so I took the liberty of condensing it down to the 15 slides that directly apply to the retail industry.  However, I strongly recommend looking at the entire deck when you have time.  And while you're at it, Business Insider just launched a retail portal that's dedicated to retail industry content.  Please check it out as well.  My take-aways are below after the slide show. &amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;span id=&amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;XinhaEditingPostion&amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/span&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; [Source: Business Insider] Here are a few things I took away from the statistics: Facebook and Twitter are in their infancy.  While all retailers should have social programs, search is still the driver and therefore should receive the lions share of investment.  Facebook referrals are up 92% year-over-year, but Google still does 80% of the referrals. E-commerce continues to grow at breakneck speed, but in-store commerce is still king. Stores are not showrooms yet.  And social commerce pure-plays like Gilt and Groupon are tiny but worthy of some attention. There are more smartphones than PCs on the internet, and the disparity will continue to grow. PC growth will be flat and Tablet use will continue to grow. Mobile accounts for 12% of all internet traffic. A quarter of smartphone sales come from China, so anyone with a presence there better have a strong mobile strategy. 38% of people have used their smartphone to make a purchase, and many use their smartphones inside stores.  Smartphones are a critical consumer tool for shopping. Mobile is starting to drive significant traffic to e-commerce sites, especially tablets.  Tablet strategies are crucial for retailers. Mobile payments from the likes of Paypal and Square are growing quickly.  It will be interesting to see how NFC plays in this area. Mobile operating systems are losing market share to iOS and Android.  I wonder in Microsoft can finally make a dent? The internet is being dominated by mobile devices, and retailers had better have a strong mobile strategy to meet consumer demand.

    Read the article

  • Take the Oracle Database Assessment for Midsize Businesses and Enterprise Departments

    - by David Swanger
    Midsize businesses and enterprise departments often face the dual challenge of having to ensure 24x7 availability while operating with limited resources.  Take this assessment to see how your organization stacks up in terms of simplicity, reliability, and affordability.  And find out how the Oracle Database Appliance helps midsize businesses balance the challenge of high availability and limited resources by simplifying deployment, maintenance, and support of high-availability database workloads. Visit this link to take the assessment: http://www.oracle.com/us/media/survey/index-dbapp-1518659.html

    Read the article

  • Added resolution not working after upgrading to 12.04

    - by David
    After upgrading, my screen resolution (added by xrandr comands on the start) did not work like before. Messages appear showing some errors (that i have never had in 11.10). "No se pudo aplicar la configuración almacenada para los monitores"/"Can't apply the stored configuration for the monitors." This script didn't work either. xrandr --newmode "1280x1024_60.00" 109.00 1280 1368 1496 1712 1024 1027 1034 1063 -hsync +vsync xrandr --addmode VGA1 1280x1024_60.00 xrandr --output VGA1 --mode 1280x1024_60.00 I also tryed deleting monitors.xml but, nothing. This only erase the window message. It's been sayd that ##It's a normal buggy and well know problem for Pc's with Intel integrated video cards.## The new version of gnome-settings-daemon stores its configuration information in dconf rather than gconf. I tryed something, but the problem persist. This is what i did. Install the dconf-tools package, and then run dconf-editor. In the tree on the left, navigate org - gnome - settings-daemon - plugins - xrandr. Uncheck the active checkbox. restart your XServer (Ctrl+Alt+Backspace) (It didn't worked out for me, but it may be helpful to someone)

    Read the article

  • How much time do you spend in this site with work on your desk?

    - by David Conde
    This is a simple question, because I want to see if there is a collective tendency to do this: How much time do you spend snooping around in StackOverflow, Programmers, and all those heavenly sites even when having work on the desk? Are these sites becoming facebook, in our case? I used to enter facebook from time to time... it's been like 20 days now and I dont even care about it. All I want to see is what are the latest post of my geeky friends around here..! Is this collective?

    Read the article

  • Pidgin XML

    - by David Totzke
    I'm looking at an xml document that gets passed to a COM object (yes, I said the "C" word) to save a new record.  You can tell by the "new|" at the top of the file before the xml declaration.  If we were saving, there would be "edit|" at the top.  Couldn't you just have a root element with something like: <myRootElement mode="new"> Ah, here's why that won't work... There's no single root element but that's ok because next we find that this document is actually several documents.  <?xml version="1.0"?> appears several times.  The final document opens with <myElementStart> and closes with <myElementEnd> so it's not even well-formed. This isn't a style thing.  This is broken.  I mean, basic well-formed XML only has two rules; three if you count the xml declaration but it works as a document for DTO purposes without it. One root element. Close all elements with a matching tag. As a result, both ends of this conversation need to speak the same dialect of broken XML in order to communicate.  To join the conversation, you must also learn pidgin XML. How can you start out so right - XML being the obvious choice in this instance - and then go so horribly wrong? Dave Just because I can…

    Read the article

  • How to emulate Mode 13h in a modern 3D renderer?

    - by David Gouveia
    I was indulging in nostalgia and remembered the first game I created, which used Mode 13h. This mode was really simple to work with, since it was essentially just an array of bytes with an element for each pixel on the screen (using an indexed color scheme). So I thought it might be fun to create something nowadays under these restrictions, but on modern hardware. The API could be as simple as: public class Mode13h { public byte[] VideoMemory = new byte[320 * 200]; public Color[] Palette = new Color[256]; } Now I'm wondering what would be the best way to get this data on the screen, using something like XNA / DirectX / OpenGL. The only solution I could think of was to create a texture with the same size as the VideoMemory array, write the contents of VideoMemory to it every frame, then render that texture in a full screen quad with the correct aspect ratio and using point texture filtering for that retro look. Is there a better way?

    Read the article

  • Windows 8 App Downloads Increasing + Over 5,000 Apps Available

    - by David Paquette
    Windows 8 will be unleashed on the general public tomorrow and I thought it would be a good time to review some of the numbers I have been tracking over the last month. Downloads of Windows 8 Apps have been steadily increasing over the last month.  Below is screenshot from the App Summary page for my Windows 8 app.  The blue line is my app, while the orange line is average for the top 5 apps in that subcategory.  Considering the large gap between the 2, I think it is safe to assume that my app is NOT in the top 5 in the subcategory. The spike in the last couple of days is fairly dramatic and I am a little surprised by that.  I would have expected that kind of spike on the days following the official release as opposed to the days leading up to the release.   Finally, the all important App count.  There have been some stories floating around that the Window 8 Store is a ghost town and that there are no apps available.  I think these might be exaggerating the situation a little.  As of this morning, in the US store there are over 5000 apps available for download.  Obviously a far cry from the hundreds of thousands available in other app stores, but we are seeing solid growth in this number. Less than a month ago, that number was 2000. That means the store more than doubled in less than a month. If the growth continues, it won’t be long before the Widows 8 Store is filled with all the apps you need (and a whole lot you don’t need).

    Read the article

  • SQL Server Express Profiler

    - by David Turner
    During a recent project, while waiting for our Development Database to be provisioned on the clients corporate SQL Server Environment (these things can sometimes take weeks or months to be setup), we began our initial development against a local instance on SQL Server Express, just as an interim measure until the Development database was live.  This was going just fine, until we found that we needed to do some profiling to understand a problem we were having with the performance of our ORM generated Data Access Layer.  The full version of SQL Server Management Studio includes a profiler, that we could use to help with this kind of problem, however the Express version does not, so I was really pleased to find that there is a freely available Profiler for SQL Server Express imaginatively titled ‘SQL Server Express Profiler’, and it worked great for us.  http://sites.google.com/site/sqlprofiler/

    Read the article

  • Big Companies Influence Retail in 2010

    - by David Dorf
    From a retail industry perspective, 2010 will go down as the year mobile went mainstream, the economy recovered from the crash, and Facebook surpassed Google as the most influential online property. While the economy certainly had the biggest impact on the retail industry, a few big companies also exerted influence. Here's a rundown and a look back at 2010: Apple -- Steve Jobs and company continued to lead the mobile pack. Consumers are using their iPhones to shop, retailers are using the iPod Touch for mobile checkout, and both are embracing the iPad as the next wave of technology. The Next Technology from Apple Mobile Platforms in Retail Apple Stores, Touch2Systems, and the iPad Google -- Not to be outdone, Google's Android platform grew faster than Apple's, plus they support QRCodes natively and will probably beat Apple to NFC. Google Checkout, Product Search, and Boutiques.com continue to impact the e-commerce scene. Google Leverages Like.com Facebook -- While the movie The Social Network certainly made Facebook a household name, Connect, Places, and seeing the "like" button all over the Web really pushed Facebook everywhere. 2010 set the foundations for f-commerce. Facebook Participatory Promotions Crowd Savers What's the value of a Facebook fan? Step Aside Google Leveraging Social Networks for Retail Social Shopping at Nine West Groupon -- This newcomer executed on a simple concept flawlessly, making them the fasted company to reach $1B in revenue. (See cool chart from Silicon Alley Insider.) Google's offer of $5-6B wasn't enough, so now they are raising an additional $1B in funding, presumably to buy-up all the copycats across the globe. Changing the Way We Shop Amazon -- As if leading the e-commerce charge wasn't enough, Amazon shook things up with their purchase of Woot and release of their Price Checker mobile app. They continue to push boundaries with Kindle, and don't seem worried about the iPad at all. You Can't Win on Price Amazon Looks at Your Social Graph eBay -- Acquiring Skype didn't exactly work out, but eBay's purchase of PayPal and RedLaser are driving the company forward. They are still a major force. Bump the Bill Oracle, SAP, HP, IBM, and Cisco left their marks on the retail industry as well with various acquisitions and CxO shake-ups. We'll just have to wait and see what 2011 brings next.

    Read the article

  • What cars on roads game engines are there?

    - by David Thielen
    What game engines are there that support laying out a map of roads and handle vehicle movement on the roads. Something similar to the basic functionality in Transport Tycoon/Locomotion. I don't care about looks (although prettier is better) and top down or isometric is fine. I just need a simple way to create maps and move cars on it. And preferably the cars do take time to speed up and slow down as they go from stopped to full speed. Prefer in Windows (any API in Windows). I also prefer a free engine as this is just for internal use. I have found CarDriving 2D - does anyone know if it works well?

    Read the article

  • Top Questions and Answers for Pluging into Oracle Database as a Service

    - by David Swanger
    Yesterday we hosted a comprehensive online forum that shared a comprehensive path to help your organization design, deploy, and deliver a Database as a Service cloud. If you missed the online forum, you can watch it on demand by registering here. We received numerous questions.  Below are highlights of the most informative: DBaaS requires a lengthy and careful design efforts. What is the minimum requirements of setting up a scaled-down environment and test it out? You should have an OEM 12c environment for DBaaS administration and then a target database deployment platform that has the key characteristics of what your production environment will look like. This could be a single server or it could be a small pool of hosts if your production DBaaS will be larger and you want to test a more robust / real world configuration with Zones and Pools or DR capabilities for example. How does this benefit companies having their own data center? This allows companies to transform their internal IT to a service delivery model for the database. The benefits to the company are significant cost savings, improved business agility and reduced risk. The benefits to the consumers (internal) of services if much fast provisioning, and response to change in business requirements. From a deployment perspective, is DBaaS's job solely DBA's job? The best deployment model enables the DBA (or end-user) to control the entire process. All resources required to deploy the service are pre-provisioned, and there are no external dependencies (on network, storage, sysadmins teams). The service is created either via a self-service portal or by the DBA. The purpose of self service seems to be that the end user does not rely on the DBA. I just need to give him a template. He decides how much AMM he needs. Why shall I set it one by one. That doesn't seem to be the purpose of self service. Most customers we have worked with define a standardized service catalog, with a few (2 to 5) different classes of service. For each of these classes, there is a pre-defined deployment template, and the user has the ability to select from some pre-defined service sizes. The administrator only has to create this catalog once. Each user then simply selects from the options offered in the catalog.  Looking at DBaaS service definition, it seems to be no different from a service definition provided by a well defined DBA team. Why do you attribute it to DBaaS? There are a couple of perspectives. First, some organizations might already be operating with a high level of standardization and a higher level of maturity from an ITIL or Service Management perspective. Their journey to DBaaS could be shorter and their Service Definition will evolve less but they still might need to add capabilities such as Self Service and Metering/Chargeback. Other organizations are still operating in highly siloed environments with little automation and their formal Service Definition (if they have one) will be a lot less mature today. Therefore their future state DBaaS will look a lot different from their current state, as will their Service Definition. How database as a service impact or help with "Click to Compute" or deploying "Database in cloud infrastructure" DBaaS enables Click to Compute. Oracle DBaaS can be implemented using three architecture models: Oracle Multitenant 12c, native consolidation using Oracle Database and consolidation using virtualization in infrastructure cloud. As Deploy session showed, you get higher consolidating density and efficiency using Multitenant and higher isolation using infrastructure cloud. Depending upon your business needs, DBaaS can be implemented using any of these models. How exactly is the DBaaS different from the traditional db? Storage/OS/DB all together to 'transparently' provide service to applications? Will there be across-databases access by application/user. Some key differences are: 1) The services run on a shared platform. 2) The services can be rapidly provisioned (< 15 minutes). 3) The services are dynamic and can be relocated, grown, shrunk as needed to meet business needs without disruption and rapidly. 4) The user is able to provision the services directly from a standardized service catalog.. With 24x7x365 databases its difficult to find off peak hrs to do basic admin tasks such as gathering stats, running backups, batch jobs. How does pluggable database handle this and different needs/patching downtime of apps databases might be serving? You can gather stats in Oracle Multitenant the same way you had been in regular databases. Regarding patching/upgrading, Oracle Multitenant makes patch/upgrade very efficient in that you can pre-provision a new version/patched multitenant db in a different ORACLE_HOME and then unplug a PDB from its CDB and plug it into the newer/patched CDB in seconds.  Thanks for all the great questions!  If you'd like to learn more and missed the online forum, you can watch it on demand here.

    Read the article

  • What's the best way to version CSS and JS URLs?

    - by David Eyk
    As per Yahoo's much-ballyhooed Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Site, we serve up static content from a CDN using far-future cache expiration headers. Of course, we need to occasionally update these "static" files, so we currently add an infix version as part of the filename (based on the SHA1 sum of the file contents). Thus: styles.min.css Becomes: styles.min.abcd1234.css However, managing the versioned files can become tedious, and I was wondering if a GET argument notation might be cleaner and better: styles.min.css?v=abcd1234 Which do you use, and why? Are there browser- or proxy/cache-related considerations that I should consider?

    Read the article

  • Terminal closing itself after 14.04 upgrade

    - by David
    All was fine in 12.04, in this case I'm using virtualbox in Windows. Last days the warning message about my Ubuntu version no longer being supported was coming up pretty often, so, yesterday I finally decided to upgrade. The upgrading process ran ok, no errors, no warnings. After rebooting the errors started to happen. Just after booting up there were some errors about video, gnome, and video textures (sorry I didn't care in that moment so I don't remember well). Luckly that went away after installing VirtualBox additions. But the big problem here is that I can't use the terminal. It opens Ok when pressing control+alt+t, but most of the commands cause instant closing. For example, df, ls, mv, cd... usually work, although it has closed few times. But 'find' causes instant close. 'apt-get' update kills it too, just after it gets the package list from the sources, when it starts processing them. I've tried xterm, everything works and I have none of that problems. I have tried reinstalling konsole, bash-static, bash-completion, but nothing worked. I have no idea what to do as there is no error message to search for the cause. It seems something related to bash, but that's all I know.

    Read the article

  • Creating a bootable USB recovery drive to be used by someone who isn't computer savvy

    - by David
    I am looking for a way to prepare an image of an Ubuntu machine which would be bootable and installable in the easiest way possible. I'm actually preparing an Ubuntu machine for someone living far, and not computer savvy. If he ever has troubles with his installation, he could just put a USB drive in, boot the machine and everything would be resetted for him. I know there are many methods of creating/loading an image of a drive, but the ones I've found so far have complicated menus with several options to choose from, etc. Ideally, perhaps only asking a Yes/No question such as "Would you like to reinstall?" would be great. Does such a tool exist? Thank you in advance!

    Read the article

  • Solved: Chrome v18, self signed certs and &ldquo;signed using a weak signature algorithm&rdquo;

    - by David Christiansen
    So chrome has just updated itself automatically and you are now running v18 – great. Or is it… If like me, you are someone that are running sites using a self-signed SSL Certificate (i.e. when running a site on a developer machine) you may come across the following lovely message; Fear not, this is likely as a result of you following instructions you found on the apache openssl site which results in a self signed cert using the MD5 signature hashing algorithm. Using OpenSSL The simple fix is to generate a new certificate specifying to use the SHA512 signature hashing algorithm, like so; openssl req -new -x509 -sha512 -nodes -out server.crt -keyout server.key Simples! Now, you should be able to confirm the signature algorithm used is sha512 by looking at the details tab of certificate Notes If you change your certificate, be sure to reapply any private key permissions you require – such as allowing access to the application pool user.

    Read the article

  • Solved: Chrome v18, self signed certs and &ldquo;signed using a weak signature algorithm&rdquo;

    - by David Christiansen
    So chrome has just updated itself automatically and you are now running v18 – great. Or is it… If like me, you are someone that are running sites using a self-signed SSL Certificate (i.e. when running a site on a developer machine) you may come across the following lovely message; Fear not, this is likely as a result of you following instructions you found on the apache openssl site which results in a self signed cert using the MD5 signature hashing algorithm. The simple fix is to generate a new certificate specifying to use the SHA1 signature hashing algorithm, like so; openssl req -new -x509 -sha1 -nodes -out server.crt -keyout server.key Simples!

    Read the article

  • ALSA mixer applet?

    - by David Given
    I have recently installed Narwhal. Everything seems to look good so far, but as usual sound via PulseAudio is deeply unsatisfactory; scratchy sound from Skype, choppy sound from command line apps, etc. So I've removed it, and sound now works fine. Unfortunately I now discover that the standard Gnome mixer applet has changed to being PulseAudio-only, and trying to run it just hangs waiting for a PulseAudio connection. Does anyone know of a replacement volume control applet that I could use which manipulates the ALSA mixer directly? I've found xfce4-volumed, which handles the hotkeys very nicely (once I disable the keyboard shortcuts in Gnome), but of course the XFCE4 mixer applet isn't compatible with Gnome so I can't use that; and there appears to be nothing else readily apparent...

    Read the article

  • Adding tolerance to a point in polygon test

    - by David Gouveia
    I've been using this method which was taken from Game Coding Complete to detect whether a point is inside of a polygon. It works in almost every case, but is failing on a few edge cases, and I can't figure out the reason. For example, given a polygon with vertices at (0,0) (0,100) and (100,100), the algorithm is returning: True for any point strictly inside the polygon False for any of the vertices False for (0, 50) which lies on one of the edges of the polygon True (?) for (50,50) which is also on one of the edges of the polygon I'd actually like to relax the algorithm so that it returns true in all of these cases. In other words, it should return true for points that are strictly inside, for the vertices themselves, and for points on the edges of the polygon. If possible I'd also like to give it enough tolerance so that it always tend towards "true" in face of floating point fluctuations. For example, I have another method, that given a line segment and a point, returns the closest location on the line segment to the given point. Currently, given any point outside the polygon and one of its edges, there are cases where the result is categorized as being inside by the method above, while other points are considered outside. I'd like to give it enough tolerance so that it always returns true in this situation. The way I've currently solved the problem is an hack, which consists of using an external library to inflate the polygon by a few pixels, and performing the tests on the inflated polygon, but I'd really like to replace this with a proper solution.

    Read the article

  • 1 to 1 Comparison and Ranking System

    - by David
    I'm looking to create a comparison and ranking system which allows users to view 2 items, click on the one that they feel is the better one and then get presented with 2 more random items and continue to do this until they decide to stop. In the background, I want the system to use these wins and loses to rank each item in an overall ranking table so I can then see what is #1 and what isn't. I haven't got a clue where to begin with the formula, but I image I need to log wins and loses. Any help/direction appreciated!

    Read the article

  • Chrome Facebook Issue Ubuntu 11.10

    - by David Gaviria Piedrahita
    Facebook, navigating with Google Chrome 15.0.874.121 and using Ubuntu 11.10, when i try to comment, chat or give a "like it" the next blank page appears and don't let me do anything: http://www.facebook.com/ajax/ufi/modify.php I've tried with, based on what i found in internet: Erasing cookies and cache desynchronize chrome before erasing it Uninstalling chrome with: sudo apt-get purge google-chrome-stable Erasing manually: /.config/google-chrome directory And nothings solves the problem, Any ideas, would appreciate your help Thanks

    Read the article

  • Traditional POS is Dead

    - by David Dorf
    Traditional POS is dead -- I've heard that one before. Here's an excerpt from Joe Skorupa's blog over at RIS where he relayed ten trends that were presented at NRF. 7. Mobile POS signals death of traditional POS. Shoppers don't love self-checkout, but they prefer it to long queues or dealing with associates. Fixed POS is expensive and bulky. Mobile POS frees floor space for other purposes and converts associates from being cashiers to being sales assistants that provide new levels of customer service and incremental basket sales. In addition to unplugging the POS, new alternatives are starting to take hold - thin client, POS as a service, and replacing POS software with e-commerce platforms. I'll grant that in some situations for some retailers there might be an opportunity to to ditch the traditional POS, but for the majority of retailers that's just not practical. Take it from a guy that had to wake up at 3am after every Thanksgiving to monitor POS systems across the US on Black Friday. If a retailer's website goes down on Black Friday, they will take a significant hit. If a retailer's chain-wide POS system goes down on Black Friday, that retailer will cease to exist. Mobile POS works great for Apple because the majority of purchases are one or two big-ticket items that don't involve cash. There's still a traditional POS in every store to fall back on (its just hidden). Try this at home: Choose your favorite e-commerce site and add an item to the cart while timing how long it takes. Now multiply that by 15 to represent the 15 items you might buy at store like Target. The user interface isn't optimized for bulk purchases, and that's how it should be. The webstore and POS are designed for different purposes. Self-checkout is a great addition to POS and so is mobile checkout. But they add capabilities to POS, not replace it. Centralized architectures, even those based in the cloud, are quite viable as long as there's resiliency in the registers. You cannot assume perfect access to the network, so a POS must always be able to sell regardless of connectivity. Clearly the different selling channels should be sharing common functionality. Things like calculating tax, accepting coupons, and processing electronic payments can be shared, usually through a service-oriented architecture. This lowers costs and providers greater consistency, both of which help retailers. On paper these technologies look really good and we should continue to push boundaries, but I'm not ready to call the patient dead just yet.

    Read the article

< Previous Page | 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33  | Next Page >