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  • Anyone have experience with Silicon Mechanics 4-Node Machines?

    - by Matt Simmons
    I'm taking a look at buying some new servers (small infrastructure, 2 racks, etc), and although I like a lot of the features in blades, I'm looking at the price point for Silicon Mechanics' 4-node machines. http://www.siliconmechanics.com/i27091/xeon-2U-4-Node.php It's a bit like a mini-blade enclosure, but has no shared resources, except for the redundant power supplies. A single point of management would be great, but for the low price point here, I'm possibly willing to give that up, if the server quality is adequate. Basically, have you used these machines? Any problems? Anything you like?

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  • Experience with AMCC 3ware 9650se raid cards? Ours seems dead

    - by antiduh
    We have a 8-port 3ware 9650se raid card for our main disk array. We had to bring the server down for a pending power outage, and when we turned the machine back on, the raid card never started. This card has been in service for a couple years without problems, and was working up until the shutdown. Now, when we turn the machine on, the bios option rom that normally kicks in before the bootloader doesn't show up, none of the drives start, and when the OS tries to access the device, it just times out. The firmware on it has been upgraded in the past, so it's possible we've hit some sort of firmware bug. We're using it in a Silicon Mechanics R272 machine with gentoo for the OS. The OS eventually boots, but alas, without the card. We've ordered a new one, but I'm worried that if we replace the card it won't recognize the existing array. Has anybody performed a card swap before? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Edit: These are the kernel errors we see: 3ware 9000 Storage Controller device driver for Linux v2.26.02.012. 3w-9xxx 0000:09:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18 3w-9xxx 0000:09:00.0: setting latency timer to 64 3w-9xxx: scsi0: ERROR: (0x06:0x000D): PCI Abort: clearing. 3w-9xxx: scsi0: ERROR: (0x06:0x001F): Microcontroller not ready during reset sequence. 3w-9xxx: scsi0: ERROR: (0x06:0x0036): Response queue (large) empty failed during reset sequence. 3w-9xxx 0000:09:00.0: PCI INT A disabled

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  • Can hard drives experience magnetic interference from a server chassis?

    - by eek142
    I'm currently building a server, and it's exhibiting the weirdest behavior with the hard drive. It is a 2U case, and I have trouble trouble accessing the Seagate SATAIII hard drive when it is in the bottom slot of the hard drive cage. The case is made of galvanized/anodized steel. I thought the drive was DOA, but then I swapped it into the top slot, and the problem was solved--the system had no trouble recognizing the drive anymore! This got me thinking: Is it possible that the magnetic field from the chassis was affecting the hard drive's functionality? I only have this problem with the mechanical hard drive, not the SSD. Could it be because the chassis is made of steel? I'm baffled.

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  • a hidden program (virus) send hundred e-mail - Can you have any experience on something similar ?

    - by Aristos
    In one tablet computer yesterday I make the usually automatic updates from ms. This tablet have comodo firewall, and and old nod32. After that I notice very soon, that something start sending hundred smtp e-mail the moment the tablet computer is connected to the internet. Also the previous t time I have make updates, some 'virus' gets on the computer but I find very easy and stop it from run. I find using the autostart from sysinternals, and the process explorer. This virus has also break the automatic update from ms, and lost a lot of time to fix it. This is my usually practice when some call me to delete a virus from xp, I use the process explorer and autostart to locate the program, and delete it from everywhere. How ever the last one is so hard to locate. 0.I delete everything from temp directorys and search for suspicious files everywhere, run the nod32, 1.I use the TCPView to see witch program sending the smpt (I see hundred open smpt connections sending emails) but the SMTP was opened by the main service program. 2. I use the process monitor to locate whats happens but find again the main service that do the job. 3.I start delete many thinks on process explorer, but did not found the one that send the emails 4.I open many times the autorun but did not find there also something suspicion, I stop some thinks, but nothing happends. 5.From the last time that I suspect that this virus come to my computer and I partial remove it, he has broke my windows update, to fix it I lost a lot of time, searching on Internet for the error - it was just a register to a dll. 6.From what I suspect something is trigger after the ms update. 7.For the moment I block the email ports, and try to find a way to locate it. I like to notice here that everything is genius - and I mean everything. I believe that this virus pass from a page, or from an e-mail that this computer receive it in the past. Any help or information are appreciate. If you know anything similar, if you know how this virus send emails and how can I locate it, if you know any anti-virus anti-spyware program that maybe can find it. If you know how a virus gets after the ms updates. Million thanks.

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  • Experience with AMCC 3ware 9650se raid cards? Ours seems dead

    - by antiduh
    We have a 8-port 3ware 9650se raid card for our main disk array. We had to bring the server down for a pending power outage, and when we turned the machine back on, the raid card never started. This card has been in service for a couple years without problems, and was working up until the shutdown. Now, when we turn the machine on, the bios option rom that normally kicks in before the bootloader doesn't show up, none of the drives start, and when the OS tries to access the device, it just times out. The firmware on it has been upgraded in the past, so it's possible we've hit some sort of firmware bug. We're using it in a Silicon Mechanics R272 machine with gentoo for the OS. The OS eventually boots, but alas, without the card. We've ordered a new one, but I'm worried that if we replace the card it won't recognize the existing array. Has anybody performed a card swap before? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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  • Zero-channel RAID for High Performance MySQL Server (IBM ServeRAID 8k) : Any Experience/Recommendation?

    - by prs563
    We are getting this IBM rack mount server and it has this IBM ServeRAID8k storage controller with Zero-Channel RAID and 256MB battery backed cache. It can support RAID 10 which we need for our high performance MySQL server which will have 4 x 15000K RPM 300GB SAS HDD. This is mission-critical and we want as much bandwidth and performance. Is this a good card or should we replace with another IBM RAID card? IBM ServeRAID 8k SAS Controller option provides 256 MB of battery backed 533 MHz DDR2 standard power memory in a fixed mounting arrangement. The device attaches directly to IBM planar which can provide full RAID capability. Manufacturer IBM Manufacturer Part # 25R8064 Cost Central Item # 10025907 Product Description IBM ServeRAID 8k SAS - Storage controller (zero-channel RAID) - RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 1E Device Type Storage controller (zero-channel RAID) - plug-in module Buffer Size 256 MB Supported Devices Disk array (RAID) Max Storage Devices Qty 8 RAID Level RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 6, RAID 10, RAID 1E Manufacturer Warranty 1 year warranty

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  • How do you think while formulating Sql Queries. Is it an experience or a concept ?

    - by Shantanu Gupta
    I have been working on sql server and front end coding and have usually faced problem formulating queries. I do understand most of the concepts of sql that are needed in formulating queries but whenever some new functionality comes into the picture that can be dont using sql query, i do usually fails resolving them. I am very comfortable with select queries using joins and all such things but when it comes to DML operation i usually fails For every query that i never done before I usually finds uncomfortable with that while creating them. Whenever I goes for an interview I usually faces this problem. Is it their some concept behind approaching on formulating sql queries. Eg. I need to create an sql query such that A table contain single column having duplicate record. I need to remove duplicate records. I know i can find the solution to this query very easily on Googling, but I want to know how everyone comes to the desired result. Is it something like Practice Makes Man Perfect i.e. once you did it, next time you will be able to formulate or their is some logic or concept behind. I could have get my answer of solving above problem simply by posting it on stackoverflow and i would have been with an answer within 5 to 10 minutes but I want to know the reason. How do you work on any new kind of query. Is it a major contribution of experience or some an implementation of concepts. Whenever I learns some new thing in coding section I tries to utilize it wherever I can use it. But here scenario seems to be changed because might be i am lagging in some concepts.

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  • What should a teen dev do for practical experience in development?

    - by aviraldg
    What should a teen dev do for practical experience? If you want more details , then read on: I learnt programming when I was 9 , with GWBASIC (which I now hate) , which was what was taught @ school. That was done in a month. After that I learnt C++ and relearnt it (as I didn't know of templates and the STL before that) Recently I learnt PHP , SQL and Python. This was around the time I switched over to Ubuntu. I'd always loved the "GNUish" style of software development so I jumped right in. However , most of the projects that I found required extensive knowledge of their existing codebase. So , right now I'm this guy who knows a couple of languages and has written a couple of small programs ... but hasn't gone "big", if you get it. I would love suggestions of projects that are informal and small to medium sized , and do not require much knowledge of the codebase. Also note that I've looked at things like Google Summer of Code and sites like savannah.gnu.org and the first doesn't apply , since I'm still in school and the latter either has infeasable projects , or things that are too hard.

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  • Trying to reinvent the wheel of StackOverflow to have a good learning experience. Need some suggesti

    - by Legend
    I want to learn and am not able to do it unless I have a real "mission" to complete. SO is my favorite and I can't imagine a better experience than actually recreating it but not in ASP. I'd like to use PHP+MySQL+jQuery. So far, I have been a self-taught programmer but I would like to master one paradigm that forces you to adhere to the standards. For instance, recently, jQuery forced me to use some "rules". The plugins were supposed to be written in a particular way and that's it. When I started off, everything seemed like Greek and Latin but when I finished a very small plugin, I felt really happy because it forced me to program in a certain way. I am looking for something like this only in a larger project. I've heard a lot about MVC and all but I am confused about the various frameworks out there. Zend seems awesome but looks heavy at the same time and also requires you to have a lot more control over the web-server whereas CakePHP is a good and a fast framework that needs only little control. Do I use one of these or just write my own MVC? I have the following goals: Goals: Site should be fast - I know this depends on my coding skills but I will learn on my way. The framework itself should not slow me down) Setting up the site should not require you to use command-line - This requirement is ok during development. But some frameworks like Symphony require you to initialize certain things through command-line Should support pluggable modules - For instance, if I want to be able to use the FCK editor, I should be able to organize things in a good way. Should be possible to extend - For instance, SO is mainly a Q&A site but I should be able to logically extend it into an Idea Management System (optional but I'm curious). This goes more into code re-usability I guess. I am comfortable with MySQL so I should be done with database design etc. with some serious effort. As for PHP, I can write code on my own but haven't really used any frameworks that much. jQuery, I started off recently and love it. I would be glad if someone can guide me during these initial steps. Precisely, when designing something like SO, I have the following questions: Do I use a framework? If yes, should it be MVC? If MVC, which one is a good and a scalable one? (I'd love something like jQuery that will not die anytime soon) How do I balance the functionality? The same logic can sometimes be made server centric or client centric. (more Ajax?). Is it a good idea to make a heavy javascript site considering the recent advances on client-side JS processing? Just in case anyone is wondering, I am not interested in commercializing any of this. I need a reason to learn something :)

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  • Juniper Strategy, LLC is hiring SharePoint Developers&hellip;

    - by Mark Rackley
    Isn’t everybody these days? It seems as though there are definitely more jobs than qualified devs these days, but yes, we are looking for a few good devs to help round out our burgeoning SharePoint team. Juniper Strategy is located in the DC area, however we will consider remote devs for the right fit. This is your chance to get in on the ground floor of a bright company that truly “gets it” when it comes to SharePoint, Project Management, and Information Assurance. We need like-minded people who “get it”, enjoy it, and who are looking for more than just a job. We have government and commercial opportunities as well as our own internal product that has a bright future of its own. Our immediate needs are for SharePoint .NET developers, but feel free to submit your resume for us to keep on file as it looks as though we’ll need several people in the coming months. Please email us your resume and salary requirements to [email protected] Below are our official job postings. Thanks for stopping by, we look forward to  hearing from you. Senior SharePoint .NET Developer Senior developer will focus on design and coding of custom, end-to-end business process solutions within the SharePoint framework. Senior developer with the ability to serve as a senior developer/mentor and manage day-to-day development tasks. Work with business consultants and clients to gather requirements to prepare business functional specifications. Analyze and recommend technical/development alternative paths based on business functional specifications. For selected development path, prepare technical specification and build the solution. Assist project manager with defining development task schedule and level-of-effort. Lead technical solution deployment. Job Requirements Minimum of 7 years experience in agile development, with at least 3 years of SharePoint-related development experience (SPS, SharePoint 2007/2010, WSS2-4). Thorough understanding of and demonstrated experience in development under the SharePoint Object Model, with focus on the WSS 3.0 foundation (MOSS 2007 Standard/Enterprise, Project Server 2007). Experience with using multiple data sources/repositories for database CRUD activities, including relational databases, SAP, Oracle e-Business. Experience with designing and deploying performance-based solutions in SharePoint for business processes that involve a very large number of records. Experience designing dynamic dashboards and mashups with data from multiple sources (internal to SharePoint as well as from external sources). Experience designing custom forms to facilitate user data entry, both with and without leveraging Forms Services. Experience building custom web part solutions. Experience with designing custom solutions for processing underlying business logic requirements including, but not limited to, SQL stored procedures, C#/ASP.Net workflows/event handlers (including timer jobs) to support multi-tiered decision trees and associated computations. Ability to create complex solution packages for deployment (e.g., feature-stapled site definitions). Must have impeccable communication skills, both written and verbal. Seeking a "tinkerer"; proactive with a thirst for knowledge (and a sense of humor). A US Citizen is required, and need to be able to pass NAC/E-Verify. An active Secret clearance is preferred. Applicants must pass a skills assessment test. MCP/MCTS or comparable certification preferred. Salary & Travel Negotiable SharePoint Project Lead Define project task schedule, work breakdown structure and level-of-effort. Serve as principal liaison to the customer to manage deliverables and expectations. Day-to-day project and team management, including preparation and maintenance of project plans, budgets, and status reports. Prepare technical briefings and presentation decks, provide briefs to C-level stakeholders. Work with business consultants and clients to gather requirements to prepare business functional specifications. Analyze and recommend technical/development alternative paths based on business functional specifications. The SharePoint Project Lead will be working with SharePoint architects and system owners to perform requirements/gap analysis and develop the underlying functional specifications. Once we have functional specifications as close to "final" as possible, the Project Lead will be responsible for preparation of the associated technical specification/development blueprint, along with assistance in preparing IV&V/test plan materials with support from other team members. This person will also be responsible for day-to-day management of "developers", but is also expected to engage in development directly as needed.  Job Requirements Minimum 8 years of technology project management across the software development life-cycle, with a minimum of 3 years of project management relating specifically to SharePoint (SPS 2003, SharePoint2007/2010) and/or Project Server. Thorough understanding of and demonstrated experience in development under the SharePoint Object Model, with focus on the WSS 3.0 foundation (MOSS 2007 Standard/Enterprise, Project Server 2007). Ability to interact and collaborate effectively with team members and stakeholders of different skill sets, personalities and needs. General "development" skill set required is a fundamental understanding of MOSS 2007 Enterprise, SP1/SP2, from the top-level of skinning to the core of the SharePoint object model. Impeccable communication skills, both written and verbal, and a sense of humor are required. The projects will require being at a client site at least 50% of the time in Washington DC (NW DC) and Maryland (near Suitland). A US Citizen is required, and need to be able to pass NAC/E-Verify. An active Secret clearance is preferred. PMP certification, PgMP preferred. Salary & Travel Negotiable

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  • Mixed Emotions: Humans React to Natural Language Computer

    - by Applications User Experience
    There was a big event in Silicon Valley on Tuesday, November 15. Watson, the natural language computer developed at IBM Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York, and its inventor and principal research investigator, David Ferrucci, were guests at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California for another round of the television game Jeopardy. You may have read about or watched on YouTube how Watson beat Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, two top Jeopardy competitors, last February. This time, Watson swept the floor with two Silicon Valley high-achievers, one a venture capitalist with a background  in math, computer engineering, and physics, and the other a technology and finance writer well-versed in all aspects of culture and humanities. Watson is the product of the DeepQA research project, which attempts to create an artificially intelligent computing system through advances in natural language processing (NLP), among other technologies. NLP is a computing strategy that seeks to provide answers by processing large amounts of unstructured data contained in multiple large domains of human knowledge. There are several ways to perform NLP, but one way to start is by recognizing key words, then processing  contextual  cues associated with the keyword concepts so that you get many more “smart” (that is, human-like) deductions,  rather than a series of “dumb” matches.  Jeopardy questions often require more than key word matching to get the correct answer; typically several pieces of information put together, often from vastly different categories, to come up with a satisfactory word string solution that can be rephrased as a question.  Smarter than your average search engine, but is it as smart as a human? Watson was especially fast at descrambling mixed-up state capital names, and recalling and pairing movie titles where one started and the other ended in the same word (e.g., Billion Dollar Baby Boom, where both titles used the word Baby). David said they had basically removed the variable of how fast Watson hit the buzzer compared to human contestants, but frustration frequently appeared on the faces of the contestants beaten to the punch by Watson. David explained that top Jeopardy winners like Jennings achieved their success with a similar strategy, timing their buzz to the end of the reading of the clue,  and “running the board”, being first to respond on about 60% of the clues.  Similar results for Watson. It made sense that Watson would be good at the technical and scientific stuff, so I figured the venture capitalist was toast. But I thought for sure Watson would lose to the writer in categories such as pop culture, wines and foods, and other humanities. Surprisingly, it held its own. I was amazed it could recognize a word definition of a syllogism in the category of philosophy. So what was the audience reaction to all of this? We started out expecting our formidable human contestants to easily run some of their categories; however, they started off on the wrong foot with the state capitals which Watson could unscramble so efficiently. By the end of the first round, contestants and the audience were feeling a little bit, well, …. deflated. Watson was winning by about $13,000, and the humans had gone into negative dollars. The IBM host said he was going to “slow Watson down a bit,” and the humans came back with respectable scores in Double Jeopardy. This was partially thanks to a very sympathetic audience (and host, also a human) providing “group-think” on many questions, especially baseball ‘s most valuable players, which by the way, couldn’t have been hard because even I knew them.  Yes, that’s right, the humans cheated. Since Watson could speak but not hear us (it didn’t have speech recognition capability), it was probably unaware of this. In Final Jeopardy, the single question had to do with law. I was sure Watson would blow this one, but all contestants were able to answer correctly about a copyright law. In a career devoted to making computers more helpful to people, I think I may have seen how a computer can do too much. I’m not sure I’d want to work side-by-side with a Watson doing my job. Certainly listening and empathy are important traits we humans still have over Watson.  While there was great enthusiasm in the packed room of computer scientists and their friends for this standing-room-only show, I think it made several of us uneasy (especially the poor human contestants whose egos were soundly bashed in the first round). This computer system, by the way , only took 4 years to program. David Ferrucci mentioned several practical uses for Watson, including medical diagnoses and legal strategies. Are you “the expert” in your job? Imagine NLP computing on an Oracle database.   This may be the user interface of the future to enable users to better process big data. How do you think you’d like it? Postscript: There were three little boys sitting in front of me in the very first row. They looked, how shall I say it, … unimpressed!

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  • Deep in the Heart of Texas

    - by Applications User Experience
    Author: Erika Webb, Manager, Fusion Applications UX User Assistance When I was first working in the usability field, the only way I could consider conducting a usability study was to bring a potential user to a lab environment where I could show them whatever I was interested in learning more about and ask them questions. While I hate to reveal just how long I have been working in this field, let's just say that pads of paper and a stopwatch were key tools for any test I conducted. Over the years, I have worked in simple labs with basic video taping equipment and not much else, and I have worked in corporate environments with sophisticated usability labs and state-of-the-art equipment. Years ago, we conducted all usability studies at the location of the user. If we wanted to see if there were any differences between users in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, we went to those places to run the test. A lab environment is very useful for many test situations. However, there has always been a debate in the usability field about whether bringing someone into a lab environment, however friendly we make it, somehow intrinsically changes the behavior of the user as compared to having them work in their own environment, at their own desk, and on their own computer. We developed systems to create a portable usability lab, so that we could go to the users that we needed to test.  Do lab environments change user behavior patterns? Then 9/11 hit. You may not remember, but no planes flew for weeks afterwards. Companies all over the world couldn't fly-in employees for meetings. Suddenly, traveling to the location of the users had an additional difficulty. The company I was working for at the time had usability specialists stuck in New York for days before they could finally rent a car and drive home to Colorado. This changed the world pretty suddenly, and technology jumped on the change. Companies offering Internet meeting tools were strugglinguntil no one could travel. The Internet boomed with collaboration tools that enabled people to work together wherever they happened to be. This change in technology has made a huge difference in my world. We use collaborative tools to bring our product concepts and ideas to the user across the Internet. As a global company, we benefit from having users from all over the world inform our designs. We now run usability studies with users all over the world in a single day, a feat we couldn't have accomplished 10 years ago by plane! Other technology companies have started to do more of this type of usability testing, since the tools have improved so dramatically. Plus, in our busy world, it's not always easy to find users who can take the time away from their jobs to come to our labs. reaching users where it is convenient for them greatly improves the odds that people do participate. I manage a team of usability specialists who live in India and California, whlie I live in Colorado. We have wonderful labs that we bring users into to show them our products. But very often, we run our studies remotely. We used to take the lab to the users now we use the labs, but we let the users stay where they are. We gain users who might not have been able to leave work to come to our labs, and they get to use the system they are familiar with. And we gain users nearly anywhere that we can set up an Internet connection, as long as the users have a phone, a broadband connection, and a compatible Web browser (with no pop-up blockers). After we recruit participants in a traditional manner, we send them an invitation to participate through the use of a telephone conference call and Web conferencing tool. At Oracle, we use Oracle Web Conference part of Oracle Collaboration Suite, which enables us to give the user control of the mouse, while we present a prototype or wireframe pictures. We can record the sessions over the Web and phone conference. We send the users instructions, plus tips to ensure that we won't have problems sharing screens. In some cases, when time is tight, we even run a five-minute "test session" with users a day in advance to be sure that we can connect. Prior to the test, we send users a participant script that contains information about the study, including any questionnaires. This is exactly the same script we give to participants who come to the labs. We ask users to print this before the beginning of the session. We generally run these studies by having a usability engineer in our usability labs, so that we can record the session as though the user were in the lab with us. Roughly 80% of our application software usability testing at Oracle is performed using remote methods. The probability of getting a   remote test participant decreases the higher up the person is in the target organization. We have a methodology checklist available to help our usability engineers work through the remote processes.

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  • Kinetic Scroll in Maverick

    - by Shoaib
    I have Sony VAIO FW 230J laptop. I was using Lucid and upgraded my system to Maverick beta in September 2010. Although there were few issues with beta release on my system although I did not felt myself in any deadlock. The most notable experience on my ubuntu was the smooth and kinetic scrolling and very sensitive touch pad experience with finer control that was oddly normal in previous releases and even on windows 7 currently. Definitely this release of ubuntu is improved for touch UI experience. I believe that this is magic of 10.10. For my official system I waited until the final release was out. After installing (upgrading) official system to Maverick I am not feeling the same smooth and kinetic scroll experience. My laptop has Graphics: Intel DMA-X4500MHD while my official desktop has Graphics: Intel DMA-X4500HD Do I need to install or update some software package to have similar kinetic scroll experience?

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  • The Faces in the Crowdsourcing

    - by Applications User Experience
    By Jeff Sauro, Principal Usability Engineer, Oracle Imagine having access to a global workforce of hundreds of thousands of people who can perform tasks or provide feedback on a design quickly and almost immediately. Distributing simple tasks not easily done by computers to the masses is called "crowdsourcing" and until recently was an interesting concept, but due to practical constraints wasn't used often. Enter Amazon.com. For five years, Amazon has hosted a service called Mechanical Turk, which provides an easy interface to the crowds. The service has almost half a million registered, global users performing a quarter of a million human intelligence tasks (HITs). HITs are submitted by individuals and companies in the U.S. and pay from $.01 for simple tasks (such as determining if a picture is offensive) to several dollars (for tasks like transcribing audio). What do we know about the people who toil away in this digital crowd? Can we rely on the work done in this anonymous marketplace? A rendering of the actual Mechanical Turk (from Wikipedia) Knowing who is behind Amazon's Mechanical Turk is fitting, considering the history of the actual Mechanical Turk. In the late 1800's, a mechanical chess-playing machine awed crowds as it beat master chess players in what was thought to be a mechanical miracle. It turned out that the creator, Wolfgang von Kempelen, had a small person (also a chess master) hiding inside the machine operating the arms to provide the illusion of automation. The field of human computer interaction (HCI) is quite familiar with gathering user input and incorporating it into all stages of the design process. It makes sense then that Mechanical Turk was a popular discussion topic at the recent Computer Human Interaction usability conference sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery in Atlanta. It is already being used as a source for input on Web sites (for example, Feedbackarmy.com) and behavioral research studies. Two papers shed some light on the faces in this crowd. One paper tells us about the shifting demographics from mostly stay-at-home moms to young men in India. The second paper discusses the reliability and quality of work from the workers. Just who exactly would spend time doing tasks for pennies? In "Who are the crowdworkers?" University of California researchers Ross, Silberman, Zaldivar and Tomlinson conducted a survey of Mechanical Turk worker demographics and compared it to a similar survey done two years before. The initial survey reported workers consisting largely of young, well-educated women living in the U.S. with annual household incomes above $40,000. The more recent survey reveals a shift in demographics largely driven by an influx of workers from India. Indian workers went from 5% to over 30% of the crowd, and this block is largely male (two-thirds) with a higher average education than U.S. workers, and 64% report an annual income of less than $10,000 (keeping in mind $1 has a lot more purchasing power in India). This shifting demographic certainly has implications as language and culture can play critical roles in the outcome of HITs. Of course, the demographic data came from paying Turkers $.10 to fill out a survey, so there is some question about both a self-selection bias (characteristics which cause Turks to take this survey may be unrepresentative of the larger population), not to mention whether we can really trust the data we get from the crowd. Crowds can perform tasks or provide feedback on a design quickly and almost immediately for usability testing. (Photo attributed to victoriapeckham Flikr While having immediate access to a global workforce is nice, one major problem with Mechanical Turk is the incentive structure. Individuals and companies that deploy HITs want quality responses for a low price. Workers, on the other hand, want to complete the task and get paid as quickly as possible, so that they can get on to the next task. Since many HITs on Mechanical Turk are surveys, how valid and reliable are these results? How do we know whether workers are just rushing through the multiple-choice responses haphazardly answering? In "Are your participants gaming the system?" researchers at Carnegie Mellon (Downs, Holbrook, Sheng and Cranor) set up an experiment to find out what percentage of their workers were just in it for the money. The authors set up a 30-minute HIT (one of the more lengthy ones for Mechanical Turk) and offered a very high $4 to those who qualified and $.20 to those who did not. As part of the HIT, workers were asked to read an email and respond to two questions that determined whether workers were likely rushing through the HIT and not answering conscientiously. One question was simple and took little effort, while the second question required a bit more work to find the answer. Workers were led to believe other factors than these two questions were the qualifying aspect of the HIT. Of the 2000 participants, roughly 1200 (or 61%) answered both questions correctly. Eighty-eight percent answered the easy question correctly, and 64% answered the difficult question correctly. In other words, about 12% of the crowd were gaming the system, not paying enough attention to the question or making careless errors. Up to about 40% won't put in more than a modest effort to get paid for a HIT. Young men and those that considered themselves in the financial industry tended to be the most likely to try to game the system. There wasn't a breakdown by country, but given the demographic information from the first article, we could infer that many of these young men come from India, which makes language and other cultural differences a factor. These articles raise questions about the role of crowdsourcing as a means for getting quick user input at low cost. While compensating users for their time is nothing new, the incentive structure and anonymity of Mechanical Turk raises some interesting questions. How complex of a task can we ask of the crowd, and how much should these workers be paid? Can we rely on the information we get from these professional users, and if so, how can we best incorporate it into designing more usable products? Traditional usability testing will still play a central role in enterprise software. Crowdsourcing doesn't replace testing; instead, it makes certain parts of gathering user feedback easier. One can turn to the crowd for simple tasks that don't require specialized skills and get a lot of data fast. As more studies are conducted on Mechanical Turk, I suspect we will see crowdsourcing playing an increasing role in human computer interaction and enterprise computing. References: Downs, J. S., Holbrook, M. B., Sheng, S., and Cranor, L. F. 2010. Are your participants gaming the system?: screening mechanical turk workers. In Proceedings of the 28th international Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Atlanta, Georgia, USA, April 10 - 15, 2010). CHI '10. ACM, New York, NY, 2399-2402. Link: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1753326.1753688 Ross, J., Irani, L., Silberman, M. S., Zaldivar, A., and Tomlinson, B. 2010. Who are the crowdworkers?: shifting demographics in mechanical turk. In Proceedings of the 28th of the international Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Atlanta, Georgia, USA, April 10 - 15, 2010). CHI EA '10. ACM, New York, NY, 2863-2872. Link: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1753846.1753873

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  • How Mary Meeker’s Latest Findings May Make You Re-Imagine Commerce

    - by Brenna Johnson-Oracle
    0 0 1 954 5439 Endeca Technologies 45 12 6381 14.0 Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Today, Mary Meeker released her highly anticipated annual “Internet Trends” presentation for 2014. All 164 slides are jam-packed with pretty much everything you need to know about the state of the Internet. And as luck would have it, Oracle is staying ahead of these trends (but we’ll talk about that later). There were a few surprises, some stats to solidify what you likely already know, and Meeker’s novel observations about where we are all going. What interested me the most is not only how people are engaging in their personal lives, but how they engage with brands. As you could probably predict, Internet usage growth is slowing while tablet user and mobile data traffic growth continue their meteoric rise around the globe, with tremendous growth in underpenetrated markets like China, India, Brazil and Indonesia. Now hold those the “Internet is dead” comments. Keep in mind there’s still plenty of room to grow, and a multiscreen model is Meeker’s vision for our future. Despite 1.5x YOY growth for mobile traffic, mobile still only makes up about 23% of all traffic today. With tablet shipments easily outpacing figures for PCs even at their height (in 2007), mobile will only continue on it’s path, but won’t be everything to everyone. Mobile won’t replace every touchpoint, it’s just created our shorter attention spans and demand for simpler, more personal experiences. As Meeker points out TVs, tablets, PCs, and smartphones are used for different activities at present, but lines will blur (for example, 84% of smartphones owners use their device while watching TV). Day-to-day activities are being re-imagining through simple, beautiful user experiences. It seems like every day I discover a new way a brand/site/app made the most mundane or mounting task enjoyable and frictionless – and I’m not alone. Meeker points out the evolution of how we do everything from how we communicate, get information, use money, meet someone, get places, order a meal, and consume media is all done through new user interfaces that make day-to-day tasks simpler. This movement has caused just about everyone’s patience for a poor UX to take a nosedive. And it’s not just the digital user experience, technology is making a lot of people’s offline lives easier, and less expensive. Today 47% of online shopping utilizes free shipping— nearly half. And Meeker predicts same day local delivery will be the “next big thing” (and you can take a guess on who will own that). Content, Community and Commerce creates the “Internet Trifecta.” Meeker pointed out that when content, communities and commerce occur in a single experience it’s embraced by consumers, which translates to big dollars for brands. The magic happens when consumers can get inspired, research, and buy in a single experience. As the buying cycle has changed and touchpoints (Web, mobile, social, store) are no longer tied to “roles” or steps in the customer journey, brands must make all experiences (content and commerce) available in a single, adaptable experience. (We at Oracle Commerce have a lot to say on this topic – stay tuned!) And in what Meeker calls the “biggest re-imagination of all:” consumers enabled with smartphones and sensors are creating troves of findable and sharable data, which she says is in the early stages, by growing rapidly. She notes that transparency and patterns of consumers with this hardware (FYI - there are up to 10 sensors embedded in smartphones now) has created a Big Data treasure chest to be mined to improve business and the life of the consumer. The opportunities are endless. So what does it all mean for a company doing business online? Start thinking about how you can: Re-imagine your experience. Not your online experience and your mobile experience and your social experience – your overall experience. When consumers can research, buy, and advocate from anywhere (and their attention spans are at an all-time low) channels don’t exist. Enable simple and beautiful interactions informed by all of the online and offline data you leverage across your enterprise. Ethically leverage the endless supply of data (user generated content, clicks, purchases, in-store behavior, social activity) to make experiences more beautiful, more accurate, and more personalized (not to mention, more lucrative for you). Re-imagine content and commerce. Content and commerce must co-exist in a single destination where shoppers can get inspired, explore, research, share, and purchase in a collective experience. Think of how you can deliver an experience where all types of experiences (brand stories and commerce) adapt to every customer need. (Look for more on this topic coming soon). Re-imagine your reach. Look to Meeker’s findings to see how the global appetite for digital experiences is growing, but under-served in many places (i.e.: India, Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil, Philippines, etc.). Growing your online business to a new geography doesn’t have to mean starting from scratch or having an entirely new team manage the new endeavor. Expand using what you’ve already built in a multisite framework, with global language support. And of course, make sure it’s optimized for mobile! Re-imagine the possible. After every Meeker report, I’m always left with the thought “we are just at the beginning.” Everyday there is more data, more possibilities, more online consumers, and more opportunities to use new latest technology to get closer to your customers and be more successful. There’s a lot going on in our Product Development and Product Innovations groups to automate innovation for our customers, so that they can continue to stay ahead of these trends, without disrupting their business. Check out a recent interview with our Innovations Team on some of these new possibilities. Staying on track despite the seemingly endless possibilities out there is the hard part. Prioritizing where you will focus based on your unique brand promise, customer and goals is what you do best. To learn how Oracle Commerce can help your business achieve your goals check out oracle.com/commerce. Check out Meeker’s entire report here.

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  • Partner Webcast – Oracle CRM: The Age of the Customer - 18 July 2013

    - by Thanos
    High-touch solutions for the complete customer experience How does Customer Relationship Management change in "the age of the customer", or does it at all? Customer relationship management has changed over the past years from a pure "inside out" point of view, where the customer is the center of attention to an "outside in" discipline where the customer has become the driving force. Away from the 360° view, through data to a holistic view of the customer’s journey and experience, through behavioral analysis and interaction across all touch points along a lifecycle of a customer relationship. Learn how this approach, integrating sales, service and marketing channels into one cohesive customer experience can drive customer experience and support acquisition, retention and efficiency in your customer relationship. With Oracle's Sales, Service and Marketing cloud offerings, you can be ahead of the game and provide a consistent and personalized voice to your customers, regardless of which channels you favor and your customers prefer. Integrated, cross-channel campaign automation and service delivery, as well as feedback-loops to sales automation, will provide you with tools to achieve top-of-the-line customer experience. Agenda · Oracle Customer Experience - Introduction into a new take on CRM · Oracle Sales Cloud - Integrated Salesforce Automation · Oracle Marketing Cloud - Cross-Channel Campaign Management · Oracle Service Cloud - Channel-blending in service delivery Delivery Format This FREE online LIVE eSeminar will be delivered over the Web. Registrations received less than 24 hours prior to start time may not receive confirmation to attend. Duration: 1 hour REGISTER NOW For any questions please contact us at partner.imc-AT-beehiveonline.oracle-DOT-com.

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  • Tips for switching jobs and moving into web based programming?

    - by JerryC
    I graduated in 2006 with a computer science degree and got solid grades (3.5 overall 3.8 in my major) For the past 4.5 years I've been working as a Software Engineer doing primarily rich client development. Most of my experience is with Java, Swing and C++. I've done a lot of network programming and I have acquired some skill working & debugging in distributed environments. I would like to switch jobs and move into a role where I can get exposure to some new technologies and frameworks. I would like to move into a more web development role but I find my lack of web development experience is hurting me. 90% of the jobs I see advertised are looking for one of two skill sets: 1) Stereotypical server side Java web developer. Experience with Spring, Hibernate, J2EE, etc. 2) Stereotypical front end web developer. Experience with Javascript, jQuery, HTML5, GWT, CSS, etc I find most of these companies are looking really specifically for this experience and they are not willing to take on good programmers/ CS fundamental guys who lack experience with this stuff. I would love to get a job doing stuff like this, but have my skills become out of date and unmarketable? Any opinions on ways to sell myself to help get a new position?

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  • Learn How Ancestry.com Helps Families Uncover Their History with Oracle WebCenter

    - by Christie Flanagan
    Delivering Exceptional Online Customer ExperiencesAncestry.com is the world’s largest online family history resource, providing an engaging and interactive customer experience to more than 1.7 million members. With smart search technology, a wealth of learning resources, and a worldwide community of family history enthusiasts, Ancestry.com helps people discover their roots and tell their unique family stories. Key to Ancestry.com’s success has been the delivery of an online customer experience that converts site visitors into paying subscribers and keeps them coming back. To help achieve this goal, Ancestry.com turned to Oracle’s Web experience management solution, Oracle WebCenter Sites. Join us as executives from Ancestry.com and Oracle discuss how Oracle’s Web experience management solution is helping them deliver engaging online experiences. Learn how: Ancestry.com selected Oracle WebCenter Sites to meet their demanding Web experience management requirements The company was able to get up and running quickly despite a complex technology stack and challenging integration requirements with legacy systems Ancestry.com empowered business users to manage the online experience and significantly reduce time to market for their online campaigns and initiatives Register now for the Webcast. REGISTER NOW Thursday,June 28, 201210 a.m. PT / 1 p.m. ET Presented by: Blane Nelson Chief Architect–Applications,Ancestry.com Christie FlanaganDirector of Product Marketing, Oracle WebCenter Sites,Oracle

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  • Introducing the New Face of Fusion Applications

    - by mvaughan
    By Misha Vaughan and Kathy Miedema, Oracle Applications User Experience At OpenWorld 2012, the Oracle Applications User Experience (UX) team unveiled the new face of Fusion Applications. You may have seen it in sessions presented by Chris Leone, Anthony Lye, Jeremy Ashley or others, or you may have gotten a look on the demogrounds. This screenshot shows the new Oracle Fusion Applications entry experience.Why are we delivering a new face for Fusion Applications? Because, says Ashley, the vice president of the Oracle Applications User Experience team, we want to provide a simple, modern, productive way for users to complete their top quick-entry tasks. The idea is to provide a clear, productive user experience that is backed by the full functionality of Fusion Applications. The first release of the new face of Fusion focuses on three types of users. It provides a fully functional gateway to Fusion Applications for: New and casual users who need quick access to self-service tasks Professional users who need fast access to quick-entry, high-volume tasks Users who are looking for a way to quickly brand their portal for employees The new face of Fusion allows users to move easily from navigation to action, Ashley said, and it has been designed for any device -- Mac, PC, iPad, Android, SmartBoard -- in the browser. The Oracle Fusion Applications Employee Directory. How did we build it? The new face of Fusion essentially is a custom shell, developed by the Apps UX team, and a set of page templates that embodies a simple design aesthetic. It’s repeatable, providing consistency across its pages, and requires little to zero training. More specifically, the new face of Fusion has been built on ADF. The Applications UX team created pages in JDeveloper using local tasks flows bound to existing view objects. Three new components were commissioned from ADF, and existing Fusion components were re-skinned to deliver a simple, modern user experience. It really is that simple – and to prove that point, we’ve been sharing our story around the new face of Fusion on several Oracle channels such as this one. Want to know more? Check the VoX blog for our favorite highlights from OpenWorld, which included demos of the new face of Fusion. And take a look at these posts from Ace Directors Debra Lilley, and Floyd Teter. Special mention to Floyd for the first screen shot credit. Also a nod to Wilfred vander Deijl for capturing the demo to share as part 1 and part 2. We will also be hitting upcoming user group conferences with our demos, and you can always reach out to one of our Fusion User Experience Advocates for a look.

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  • Any experience on Sitecore CMS using Windows Sharepoint Services?

    - by Marcin B
    Hi guys, I plan to develop a solution based on Sitecore CMS which would allow the client company to manage their documents in a Sharepoint-fashion (versioning, diffs??). Of course, we're after limiting the number of licences required for the project, and the client doesn't yet have licences for MOSS, so we couldn't simply use the Sitecore Sharepoint Connector which from everything I read requires the MOSS installation, and won't work with bare WSS. From what I know Sitecore CMS doesn't version documents as such, but is there a possibility for a workaround? Ideally we'd work with Documents and Files in the same fashion as with normal pages, which enables DIFFs and stuff. Any ideas? Thanks, Marcin B

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  • Enterprise Manager 12c: New DSS Demos Available

    - by Javier Puerta
    Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Application Replay Demo Now Available! User Experience Monitoring with Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c and Real User Experience Insight 12R1 Now Available! Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c: Database Management Packs demo upgrade     Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Application Replay Demo Now Available! We are pleased to announce the availability of the Oracle Application Replay demo that showcases some of the key capabilities of performing realistic, production scale testing of your web and packaged Oracle applications. This demo specifically focuses on capturing production web traffic from an E-Business Suite application and replaying the captured workload on a test E-Business Suite application to assess the impact of an application infrastructure change on the workload. The target audiences are application developers, quality assurance teams, IT managers and production control staff that deal in day-to-day change management activities and trouble shooting of production environments. Demo Highlights: Enterprise Manager 12c workflows for capturing application workload Seamless integration of Application Replay with Real User Experience Insight for application workload capture Enterprise Manager 12c centralized workflows for replaying captured application workloads in a test environment Demonstrates how to minimize risk when deploying a complex EBusiness Suite application infrastructure change. Rich reporting capability for performance analysis and problem detection User Experience Monitoring with Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c and Real User Experience Insight 12R1 Now Available! We are pleased to announce the availability of the Oracle Real User Experience Insight demo that showcases some of the key capabilities of user experience monitoring. This demo specifically focuses on business reporting, integrated performance diagnostics, tracking of customer journey’s through RUEI’s userflow tracking capabilities and it’s Key Performance Indicators tracking and configuration. Demo Highlights: Application-centric dashboard Integration with Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c – JVMD, ADP and BTM Session diagnostics and user session replay Monitoring through “Key Performance Indicators” (KPI) --- create alerts/incidents FUSION Application centric dashboards & integrated BI Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c: Database Management Packs demo upgrade DSS is pleased to announce an upgrade to the Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c: Database Management Packs demo. While retaining the content from the initial release of the demo—Diagnostic and Tuning Packs, Test Data Management and Data Masking, and Real Application Testing—the demo now includes a new Data Masking for Real Application Testing scenario. Demo Features: Diagnostic and Tuning Packs SQL Performance Analyzer Database Replay Data Masking Masking Real Application Testing workloads Testing pending Optimizer statistics Test Data Management

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