Search Results

Search found 31207 results on 1249 pages for 'atg best practice in industries'.

Page 360/1249 | < Previous Page | 356 357 358 359 360 361 362 363 364 365 366 367  | Next Page >

• Windows 8 Launch&ndash;Why OEM and Retailers Should STFU

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  Microsoft has gotten a lot of flack for the Surface from OEM/hardware partners who create Windows-based devices and I’m sure, to an extent, retailers who normally stock and sell Windows-based devices. I mean we all know how this is supposed to work – Microsoft makes the OS, partners make the hardware, retailers sell the hardware. Now Microsoft is breaking the rules by not only offering their own hardware but selling them via online and through their Microsoft branded stores! The thought has been that Microsoft is trying to set a standard for the other hardware companies to reach for. Maybe. I hope, at some level, Microsoft may be covertly responding to frustrations associated with trusting the OEMs and Retailers to deliver on their part of the supply chain. I know as a consumer, I’m very frustrated with the Windows 8 launch. Aside from the Surface sales, there’s nothing happening at the retail level. Let me back up and explain. Over the weekend I visited a number of stores in hopes of trying out various Windows 8 devices. Out of three retailers (Staples, Best Buy, and Future Shop), not *one* met my expectations. Let me be honest with you Staples, I never really have high expectations from your computer department. If I need paper or pens, whatever, but computers – you’re not the top of my list for price or selection. Still, considering you flaunted Win 8 devices in your flyer I expected *something* – some sign of effort that you took the Windows 8 launch seriously. As I entered the 1910 Pembina Highway location in Winnipeg, there was nothing – no signage, no banners – nothing that would suggest Windows 8 had even launched. I made my way to the laptops. I had to play with each machine to determine which ones were running Windows 8. There wasn’t anything on the placards that made it obvious which were Windows 8 machines and which ones were Windows 7. Likewise, there was no easy way to identify the touch screen laptop (the HP model) from the others without physically touching the screen to verify. Horrible experience. In the same mall as the Staples I mentioned above, there’s a Future Shop. Surely they would be more on the ball. I walked in to the 1910 Pembina Highway location and immediately realized I would not get a better experience. Except for the sign by the front door mentioning Windows 8, there was *nothing* in the computer department pointing you to the Windows 8 devices. Like in Staples, the Win 8 laptops were mixed in with the Win 7 ones and there was nothing notable calling out which ones were running Win 8. I happened to hit up the St. James Street location today, thinking since its a busier store they must have more options. To their credit, they did have two staff members decked out in Windows 8 shirts and who were helping a customer understand Windows 8. But otherwise, there was nothing highlighting the Windows 8 devices and they were again mixed in with the rest of the Win 7 machines. Finally, we have the St. James Street Best Buy location here in Winnipeg. I’m sure Best Buy will have their act together. Nope, not even close. Same story as the others: minimal signage (there was a sign as you walked in with a link to this schedule of demo days), Windows 8 hardware mixed with the rest of the PC offerings, and no visible call-outs identifying which were Win 8 based. This meant that, like Future Shop and Staples, if you wanted to know which machine had Windows 8 you had to go and scrutinize each machine. Also, there was nothing identifying which ones were touch based and which were not. Just Another Day… To these retailers, it seemed that the Windows 8 launch was just another day, with another product to add to the showroom floor. Meanwhile, Apple has their dedicated areas *in all three stores*. It was dead simple to find where the Apple products were compared to the Windows 8 products. No wonder Microsoft is starting to push their own retail stores. No wonder Microsoft is trying to funnel orders through them instead of relying on these bloated retail big box stores who obviously can’t manage a product launch. It’s Not Just The Retailers… Remember when the Acer CEO, Founder, and President of Computer Global Operations all weighed in on how Microsoft releasing the Surface would have a “huge negative impact for the ecosystem and other brands may take a negative reaction”? Also remember the CEO stating “[making hardware] is not something you are good at so please think twice”? Well the launch day has come and gone, and so far Microsoft is the only one that delivered on having hardware available on the October 26th date. Oh sure, there are laptops running Windows 8 – but all in one desktop PCs? I’ve only seen one or two! And tablets are *non existent*, with some showing an early to late November availability on Best Buy’s website! So while the retailers could be doing more to make it easier to find Windows 8 devices, the manufacturers could help by *getting devices into stores*! That’s supposedly something that these companies are good at, according to the Acer CEO. So Here’s What the Retailers and Manufacturers Need To Do… Get Product Out The pivotal timeframe will be now to the end of November. We need to start seeing all these fantastic pieces of hardware ship – including the Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro, the Acer Iconia, the Asus TAICHI 21, and the sexy Samsung Series 7 27” desktop. It’s not enough to see product announcements, we need to see actual devices. Make It Easy For Customers To Find Win8 Devices You want to make it easy to sell these things? Make it easy for people to find them! Have staff on hand that really know how these devices run and what can be done with them. Don’t just have a single demo day, have people who can demo it every day! Make It Easy to See the Features There’s touch screen desktops, touch screen laptops, tablets, non-touch laptops, etc. People need to easily find the features for each machine. If I’m looking for a touch-laptop, I shouldn’t need to sift through all the non-touch laptops to find them – at the least, I need to quickly be able to see which ones are touch. I feel silly even typing this because this should be retail 101 and I have no retail background (but I do have an extensive background as a customer). In Summary… Microsoft launching the Surface and selling them through their own channels isn’t slapping its OEM and retail partners in the face; its slapping them to wake the hell up and stop coasting through Windows launch events like they don’t matter. Unless I see some improvements from vendors and retailers in November, I may just hold onto my money for a Surface Pro even if I have to wait until early 2013. Your move OEM/Retailers. *Update – While my experience has been in Winnipeg, similar experiences have been voiced from colleagues in Calgary and Edmonton.

  Read the article

• Testing Workflows &ndash; Test-After

  - by Timothy Klenke

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/TimothyK/archive/2014/05/30/testing-workflows-ndash-test-after.aspxIn this post I’m going to outline a few common methods that can be used to increase the coverage of of your test suite.  This won’t be yet another post on why you should be doing testing; there are plenty of those types of posts already out there.  Assuming you know you should be testing, then comes the problem of how do I actual fit that into my day job.  When the opportunity to automate testing comes do you take it, or do you even recognize it? There are a lot of ways (workflows) to go about creating automated tests, just like there are many workflows to writing a program.  When writing a program you can do it from a top-down approach where you write the main skeleton of the algorithm and call out to dummy stub functions, or a bottom-up approach where the low level functionality is fully implement before it is quickly wired together at the end.  Both approaches are perfectly valid under certain contexts. Each approach you are skilled at applying is another tool in your tool belt.  The more vectors of attack you have on a problem – the better.  So here is a short, incomplete list of some of the workflows that can be applied to increasing the amount of automation in your testing and level of quality in general.  Think of each workflow as an opportunity that is available for you to take. Test workflows basically fall into 2 categories:  test first or test after.  Test first is the best approach.  However, this post isn’t about the one and only best approach.  I want to focus more on the lesser known, less ideal approaches that still provide an opportunity for adding tests.  In this post I’ll enumerate some test-after workflows.  In my next post I’ll cover test-first. Bug Reporting When someone calls you up or forwards you a email with a vague description of a bug its usually standard procedure to create or verify a reproduction plan for the bug via manual testing and log that in a bug tracking system.  This can be problematic.  Often reproduction plans when written down might skip a step that seemed obvious to the tester at the time or they might be missing some crucial environment setting. Instead of data entry into a bug tracking system, try opening up the test project and adding a failing unit test to prove the bug.  The test project guarantees that all aspects of the environment are setup properly and no steps are missing.  The language in the test project is much more precise than the English that goes into a bug tracking system. This workflow can easily be extended for Enhancement Requests as well as Bug Reporting. Exploratory Testing Exploratory testing comes in when you aren’t sure how the system will behave in a new scenario.  The scenario wasn’t planned for in the initial system requirements and there isn’t an existing test for it.  By definition the system behaviour is “undefined”. So write a new unit test to define that behaviour.  Add assertions to the tests to confirm your assumptions.  The new test becomes part of the living system specification that is kept up to date with the test suite. Examples This workflow is especially good when developing APIs.  When you are finally done your production API then comes the job of writing documentation on how to consume the API.  Good documentation will also include code examples.  Don’t let these code examples merely exist in some accompanying manual; implement them in a test suite. Example tests and documentation do not have to be created after the production API is complete.  It is best to write the example code (tests) as you go just before the production code. Smoke Tests Every system has a typical use case.  This represents the basic, core functionality of the system.  If this fails after an upgrade the end users will be hosed and they will be scratching their heads as to how it could be possible that an update got released with this core functionality broken. The tests for this core functionality are referred to as “smoke tests”.  It is a good idea to have them automated and run with each build in order to avoid extreme embarrassment and angry customers. Coverage Analysis Code coverage analysis is a tool that reports how much of the production code base is exercised by the test suite.  In Visual Studio this can be found under the Test main menu item. The tool will report a total number for the code coverage, which can be anywhere between 0 and 100%.  Coverage Analysis shouldn’t be used strictly for numbers reporting.  Companies shouldn’t set minimum coverage targets that mandate that all projects must have at least 80% or 100% test coverage.  These arbitrary requirements just invite gaming of the coverage analysis, which makes the numbers useless. The analysis tool will break down the coverage by the various classes and methods in projects.  Instead of focusing on the total number, drill down into this view and see which classes have high or low coverage.  It you are surprised by a low number on a class this is an opportunity to add tests. When drilling through the classes there will be generally two types of reaction to a surprising low test coverage number.  The first reaction type is a recognition that there is low hanging fruit to be picked.  There may be some classes or methods that aren’t being tested, which could easy be.  The other reaction type is “OMG”.  This were you find a critical piece of code that isn’t under test.  In both cases, go and add the missing tests. Test Refactoring The general theme of this post up to this point has been how to add more and more tests to a test suite.  I’ll step back from that a bit and remind that every line of code is a liability.  Each line of code has to be read and maintained, which costs money.  This is true regardless whether the code is production code or test code. Remember that the primary goal of the test suite is that it be easy to read so that people can easily determine the specifications of the system.  Make sure that adding more and more tests doesn’t interfere with this primary goal. Perform code reviews on the test suite as often as on production code.  Hold the test code up to the same high readability standards as the production code.  If the tests are hard to read then change them.  Look to remove duplication.  Duplicate setup code between two or more test methods that can be moved to a shared function.  Entire test methods can be removed if it is found that the scenario it tests is covered by other tests.  Its OK to delete a test that isn’t pulling its own weight anymore. Remember to only start refactoring when all the test are green.  Don’t refactor the tests and the production code at the same time.  An automated test suite can be thought of as a double entry book keeping system.  The unchanging, passing production code serves as the tests for the test suite while refactoring the tests. As with all refactoring, it is best to fit this into your regular work rather than asking for time later to get it done.  Fit this into the standard red-green-refactor cycle.  The refactor step no only applies to production code but also the tests, but not at the same time.  Perhaps the cycle should be called red-green-refactor production-refactor tests (not quite as catchy).   That about covers most of the test-after workflows I can think of.  In my next post I’ll get into test-first workflows.

  Read the article

• Why does TDD work?

  - by CesarGon

  Test-driven development (TDD) is big these days. I often see it recommended as a solution for a wide range of problems here in Programmers SE and other venues. I wonder why it works. From an engineering point of view, it puzzles me for two reasons: The "write test + refactor till pass" approach looks incredibly anti-engineering. If civil engineers used that approach for bridge construction, or car designers for their cars, for example, they would be reshaping their bridges or cars at very high cost, and the result would be a patched-up mess with no well thought-out architecture. The "refactor till pass" guideline is often taken as a mandate to forget architectural design and do whatever is necessary to comply with the test; in other words, the test, rather than the user, sets the requirement. In this situation, how can we guarantee good "ilities" in the outcomes, i.e. a final result that is not only correct but also extensible, robust, easy to use, reliable, safe, secure, etc.? This is what architecture usually does. Testing cannot guarantee that a system works; it can only show that it doesn't. In other words, testing may show you that a system contains defects if it fails a test, but a system that passes all tests is not safer than a system that fails them. Test coverage, test quality and other factors are crucial here. The false safe feelings that an "all green" outcomes produces to many people has been reported in civil and aerospace industries as extremely dangerous, because it may be interepreted as "the system is fine", when it really means "the system is as good as our testing strategy". Often, the testing strategy is not checked. Or, who tests the tests? I would like to see answers containing reasons why TDD in software engineering is a good practice, and why the issues that I have explained above are not relevant (or not relevant enough) in the case of software. Thank you.

  Read the article

• How Can You Work Smarter In Life Sciences Sales?

  - by charles.knapp

  One major reason why executives keep choosing Oracle CRM On Demand and Siebel CRM is our ongoing investments that deliver comprehensive business process support, tailored "at the factory" for specific industries. For example, life sciences sales in many cases globally follows an indirect, "influence" model, where a medical clinician uses expert working knowledge to prescribe products that are sold by independent pharmacies. Smarter, presentations to clinicians can increase sales. Oracle's life sciences CRM is built for sales reps by sales reps. We worked with representatives at 15 of the top 20 pharmaceutical firms on our latest release. Oracle helps reps work smarter from planning their day to delivering samples and rapidly presenting details to busy clinicians. Watch Piers Evans, Industry Strategy Director, show what this looks like in the day of a typical pharmaceutical sales rep. By use of this code snippet, I agree to the Brightcove Publisher T and C found at https://accounts.brightcove.com/en/terms-and-conditions/. -- This script tag will cause the Brightcove Players defined above it to be created as soon as the line is read by the browser. If you wish to have the player instantiated only after the rest of the HTML is processed and the page load is complete, remove the line. -- brightcove.createExperiences();

  Read the article

• What Should You Look for In a CRM Demo?

  - by charles.knapp

  I have helped firms evaluate software demos and delivered demos in diverse industries such as manufacturing, healthcare, life sciences, and travel (to name just a few). Here are a few suggestions. First, which vendor has the best fit for your industry? Make sure that the vendor demo staff tell you clearly throughout the demo (not just in a passing comment), what portion of each business process and screen is standard, what has been configured, what has been custom coded, and what has been provided by a partner. If you don't keep asking, what you buy may be less useful than what you saw. This will lead to added (and unbudgeted) costs and time. Second, what are the roles of the primary users? What are their top-most needs, such as exception-oriented dashboards or rapid data entry? Can you get a demo for each key role, showing how the software fits a typical workday? Have the vendor repeatedly tell you what is standard, configured, custom coded, or provided by a partner. Third, how well does the demo balance ease of use with completeness of business processes? One common approach is to hide needed fields or steps that are of low visual value. Another approach is to focus heavily on a visually appealing capability, while downplaying the fit with your key business processes. Result: despite their business acumen, demo attendees may not focus adequately on gaps in business fit So, look for complete disclosure and complete CRM. To arrange a demo from Oracle, please visit http://www.oracle.com/crm.

  Read the article

• Video Of Uncontacted Tribe In Brazilian Forest

  - by Gopinath

  The dense forest of Amazon is not only the land of rare species and trees but also a home of many tribal communities who were never contacted by civilized humans. Recently BBC along with Survival International Group (a tribal advocacy group) scanned the dense Brazilian jungle and discovered an uncontacted tribal group believed to be Panoa Indians. They live in resource rich areas which are primary targets of mining & logging industries. In order to unearth the resources, often these tribes shot dead or chased away to new lands. The video footage and photographs of the tribes are released to bring awareness about these tribes and also urge governments to take necessary steps to protect them. Tess Thackara, Survival International’s U.S. coordinator says We’re trying to bring awareness to uncontacted tribes, because they are so vulnerable. Governments often deny that they exist, We’re releasing these images because we need evidence to prove they’re there.   via wired & bbc This article titled,Video Of Uncontacted Tribe In Brazilian Forest, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

  Read the article

• Thou shalt not put code on a piedestal - Code is a tool, no more, no less

  - by Ralf Westphal

  “Write great code and everything else becomes easier” is what Paul Pagel believes in. That´s his version of an adage by Brian Marick he cites: “treat code as an end, not just a means.” And he concludes: “My post-Agile world is software craftsmanship.” I wonder, if that´s really the way to go. Will “simply” writing great code lead the software industry into the light? He´s alluding to the philosopher Kant who proposed, a human beings should never be treated as a means, but always as an end. But should we transfer this ethical statement into the world of software? I doubt it.   Reason #1: Human beings are categorially different from code. They are autonomous entities who need to find a way of living happily together. To Kant it seemed this goal could only be reached if nobody (ab)used a human being for his/her purposes. Because using a human being, i.e. treating it as a means, would contradict the fundamental autonomy and freedom of human beings. People should hold up a symmetric view of their relationships: Since nobody wants to be (ab)used, nobody should (ab)use anybody else. If you want to be treated decently, with respect, in accordance with your own free will - which means as an end - then do the same to other people. Code is dead, it´s a product, it´s a tool for people to reach their goals. No company spends any money on code other than to save money or earn money in the long run. Code is not a puppy. Enterprises do not commission software development to just feel good in its company. Code is not a buddy. Code is a slave, if you will. A mechanical slave, a non-tangible robot. Code is a tool, is a tool. And if we start to treat it differently, if we elevate its status unduely… I guess that will contort our relationship in a contraproductive way. Please get me right: Just because something is “just a tool”, “just a product” does not mean we should not be careful while designing, building, using it. Right to the contrary. We should be very careful when writing code – but not for the code´s sake! We should be careful because we respect our customers who are fellow human beings who should be treated as an end. If we are careless, neglectful, ignorant when producing code on their behalf, then we´re using them. Being sloppy means you´re caring more for yourself that for your customer. You´re then treating the customer as a means to fulfill some of your own needs. That´s plain unethical behavior.   Reason #2: The focus should always be on your purpose, not on any tool. But if code is treated as an end, then the focus is on the code. That might sound right, because where else should be your focus as a software developer? But, well, I´d say, your focus should be on delivering value to your customer. Because in the end your customer does not care if you write a single line of code. She just wants her problem to be solved. Solving problems is the purpose of any contractor. Code must be treated just as a means, a tool we know how to handle very well. But if we´re really trying to be craftsmen then we should be conscious about exactly that and act ethically. That means we must never be so focused on our tool as to be unable to suggest better solutions to the problems of our customers than code.   I´m all with Paul when he urges us to “Write great code”. Sure, if you need to write code, then by all means do so. Write the best code you can think of – and then try to improve it. Paul has all the best intentions when he signs Brians “treat code as an end” - but as we all know: “The road to hell is paved with best intentions” ;-) Yes, I can imagine a “hell of code focus”. In fact, I don´t need to imagine it, I´m seeing it quite often. Because code hell is whereever two developers stand together and are so immersed in talking about all sorts of coding tricks, design patterns, code smells, technologies, platforms, tools that they lose sight of the big picture. Talking about TDD or SOLID or refactoring is a sign of consciousness – relative to the “cowboy coders” view of the world. But from yet another point of view TDD, SOLID, and refactoring are just cures for ailments within a system. And I fear, if “Writing great code” is the only focus or the main focus of software development, then we as an industry lose the ability to see that. Focus draws a line around something, it defines a horizon for perceptions and thinking. So if we focus on code our horizon ends where “the land of code” ends. I don´t think that should be our professional attitude.   So what about Software Craftsmanship as the next big thing after Agility? I think Software Craftsmanship has an important message for all software developers and beyond. But to make it the successor of the Agility movement seems to miss a point. Agility never claimed to solve all software development problems, I´d say. So to blame it for having missed out on certain aspects of it is wrong. If I had to summarize Agility in one word I´d say “Value”. Agility put value for the customer back in software development. Focus on delivering value early and often – that´s Agility´s mantra. All else follows from that. And I ask you: Is that obsolete? Is delivering value not hip anymore? No, sure not. That´s our very purpose as software developers. So how can Agility become obsolete and need to be replaced? We need to do away with this “either/or”-thinking. It´s either Agility or Lean or Software Craftsmanship or whatnot. Instead we should start integrating concepts and movements. Think “both/and”. Think Agility plus Software Craftsmanship plus Lean plus whatnot. We don´t neet to tear down anything from a piedestal and replace it with a new idol. Instead we should do away with piedestals and arrange whatever is helpful is a circle. Then we can turn to concepts, movements for whatever they are best. After 10 years of Agility we should be able to identify what it was good at – and keep that. Keep Agility around and add whatever Agility was lacking or never concerned with. Add whatever is at the core of Software Craftsmanship. Add whatever is at the core of Lean etc. But don´t call out the age of Post-Agility. Because it better never will end. Because once we start to lose Agility´s core we´re losing focus of the customer.

  Read the article

• We've Been Busy: World Tour 2010

  - by [email protected]

  By Brian Dayton on March 11, 2010 11:17 PM Right after Oracle OpenWorld 2009 we went right into planning for our 2010 World Tour. An ambitious 90+ city tour visiting cities on every continent. The Oracle Applications Strategy Update Tour started January 19th and is in full swing right now. We've put some heavy hitters on the road. If you didn't get a chance to see Steve Miranda, Senior Vice President of Oracle Application Development in Tokyo, Anthony Lye, Senior Vice President of Oracle CRM Development in New Delhi or Sonny Singh, Senior Vice President of Oracle Industries Business Unit in Stockholm don't worry...we're not done yet. The theme, Smart Strategies: Your Roadmap to the Future is a nod to the fact that everyone needs to be smart about what's going on in their business and industry right now. But just as important---how to make sure that you're on the course to where you need to be down the road. Get the big picture and key trends in "The New Normal" of today's business climate and drill down and find out about the latest and greatest innovations in Oracle Applications. Check out http://www.oracle.com/events/applicationstour/index.html for an upcoming tour date near you. Pictures, feedback, summaries and learnings from the tour to come soon.

  Read the article

• DevConnections Spring 2010 Speaker Evals and Tips

  As a conference speaker, I always look forward to hearing from attendees whether they felt my sessions were valuable and worth their time.  Its always gratifying  get a high score, but of course its the (preferably constructive) criticism thats key to continued improvement.  Im by no means the best technical presenter around, and Im always looking for ways to improve. Ive recently spoken at a few events, including TechEd and an Ohio event called Stir Trek.  DevConnections was actually back in April, but theyre just getting their final evals out to speakers.  TechEd, of course, does online evals so immediately after your talks you can see what people think.  Ill try and post my TechEd evals in the next week or so. I gave 3 talks at DevConnections Spring 2010 / VS2010 Launch which I discussed in this previous blog post.  In this follow-up, Im just going to share some eval info and my thoughts on it, albeit a couple of months later. Pragmatic ASP.NET Tips, Tricks, and Tools Evals Turned In: 27 Overall Eval: 3.74 Average Score: 3.47 89% found the technical level Just Right.  7.4% thought it was too basic (3.6% did not respond).  Since nobody thought the content was Too complex, I could perhaps have added some more complex material, but having about 90% say its Just Right is pretty good. 92% said at least 50% of the material was new to them.  36% said 75% or more was new.  Thats also pretty good, I think. 77.8% can use the information immediately; 15% can use it within 2-6 months (7.2 % no response). Overall 78% rated the session Excellent, 18% Good, 4% Fair. All comments (9): Steve did a great job Excellent session! It was good. Im now super excited to attend Steves other sessions later today.  Very useful. One of the best speakers here.  Bring him back to future conferences please. Continue to have this session with new and old stuff.  I always find something I did not know about. Excellent!  This was the best session Ive seen all week. Did not increase font on all pages could not see. For Steve to have had more sessions. Note to self make the fonts bigger across the board.  Otherwise, this is all good for my ego. :)  This is always a very popular session and one I really enjoy giving.  Tips and Tricks talks are pretty easy because you dont have to go in depth with any particular thing, and theyre almost always with existing technology so youre not dealing with betas, lack of documentation, and other issues.  Its an easy session to do well, in my experience, and one which I think attendees definitely appreciate.   Whats New in ASP.NET MVC 2 Evals Turned In: 23 Overall Eval: 3.77 Average Score: 3.47 (wow, I cant believe I scored better on this talk than the tips and tricks talk, which Ive given many times and was more excited about) 96% found the technical level Just Right.  90% found 50% or more of the material to be new.  43% can use the info immediately, and another 43% can use it within 2-6 months I guess that speaks to adoption rates of MVC 2 among my attendees Overall 74% said the session was Excellent, 22% Good.  4% No Response. All Comments (6): Great job, thank you. Great speaker! Really good, a little lost in the code at some points, but great information. Speaker needs to repeat questions from audience for everyone to hear. Exceeded my expectations. Great speaker, very informative. I really do try to religiously repeat questions from the audience for everyone to hear, but obviously I didnt do it 100% of the time.  Note to self remember to repeat questions.  That and making fonts big are really basic speaker best practices, which just goes to prove that fundamentals are always something that can be perfected.   SOLIDify Your ASP.NET MVC 2 Application Evals Turned In: 8 (!) Overall Eval: 3.63 Average Score: 3.47 As I recall this was one of the last talks of the day / show, which might account for the low number of evals turned in.  I dont recall speaking to an empty room for this talk, although it certainly wasnt as crowded as the tips and tricks talk. 100% found the technical level Just Right.  100% found at least half the material new.  62.5% can use it at once and 37.5% within 2-6 months.  62.5% rated the session Excellent overall; 37.5% Good.  Im thinking there were 5 evals with all 4s checked and 3 with all 3s checked (4 = Excellent, 3 = Good) All Comments (3): This covered many topics Ive read about recently, and it helped reinforce them. It was a nice overview of the solid principle, but I thought there might be specifics for MVC2.  I am glad there is not. Move a little slower. Ok, so another fundamental dont go too fast.  Looks like I got one fundamental tip from the comments of each talk. My Take-Aways Remember the fundamentals.  Its worth going through a checklist prior to presenting to make sure these things are fresh in your mind.  Increase all font sizes.  Repeat all questions from audience members without microphones (this is also a great way to stall for time, btw).  Resist the urge to move too quickly especially if youre nervous or short of time.  Writing this up in a blog post also further reinforces these fundamentals for me, which is one of the main reasons why I do it I retain things better when I write them, and even moreso when I write them for public consumption since I have to really think about what Im saying.  And maybe a few of you find this interesting or helpful, which is a bonus. Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

  Read the article

• Join the SOA and BPM Customer Insight Series

  - by Dain C. Hansen

  Summer is here! So put on your shades, kick back by the pool and watch the latest SOA and BPM customer insight series from Oracle. You’ll hear directly from some of Oracle’s most well respected customers across a range of deployments, industries, and use cases. You’ve heard us tell you the advantages of Oracle SOA and Oracle BPM. But this time, listen to what our customers are saying: See Rain Fletcher, VP of Application Development and Architecture at Choice Hotels, describe how they successfully made the transition from a complex legacy environment into a faster time-to-market shared services infrastructure as they implemented their event-driven Google API project. Listen to the County of San Joaquin, California discuss how they transformed to a services-oriented architecture and business process management platform to gain efficiency and greater visibility of mission critical information important to citizen public safety. Hear from Eaton, a global power management company, review innovative strategies for a successful application integration implementation, specifically the advantages of transitioning from TIBCO to using Oracle SOA and Oracle Fusion Applications.  Learn how Nets Denmark A/S implemented Oracle Unified Business Process Management Suite in just five months. Review the implementation overview from start to production, including integration with legacy systems. And finally, listen to Farmers Insurance share their SOA reference architecture as well as a timeline for how their services were deployed as well as the benefits for moving to an Oracle SOA-based application infrastructure.  Don’t miss the webcast series. Catch the first one on June 21st at 10AM PST with Rain Fletcher from Choice Hotels, and Bruce Tierney, Director Oracle SOA Suite. Register today!

  Read the article

• EBS Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) Product Family Webcasts

  - by user793044

  Oracle's Advisor Webcasts are live presentations given by subject matter experts who deliver knowledge and information about services, products, technologies, best practices and more. Delivered through WebEx the Oracle Advisor Webcast Program brings interactive expertise straight to your desktop, at no cost. Each session is usually followed by a live Q&A where you can have your questions answered. If you miss any of the live webcasts then you can replay the recording or download the PDF of the presentation. Doc Id 740966.1 gives you access to all the scheduled webcasts as well as the archived recordings and presentations. Just select the product family you are interested in to access the latest webcasts in that area. Below is a listing of the currently scheduled archived webcasts for the EBS CRM and Industries product family. Webcast Topic and Description Webcast Link Date and Time Upcoming: Oracle E-Business Suite - Service Oracle Service Charges - Introduction/Overview Register Dec 6, 2012 EBS CRM - Service R12: How to debug Email Center Auto Service Request Creation Failures Recording | .pdf Archived XCALC: Failed Calculations when Using OIC Recording | .pdf Archived XPOP: Failed Population When Using Oracle Incentive August 30, 2012 Recording | .pdf Archived XROLL: Failed Roll Up When Using Oracle Incentive Compensation August 16, 2012 Recording | .pdf Archived Common Problems Associated with Product Catalog in Sales Recording | .pdf Archived Oracle Incentive Compensation - Troubleshooting Payment Issues Recording | .pdf Archived R12 Renewing Service Contracts - Overview Recording | .pdf Archived 11i and R12 Oracle CRM Service Basics and Troubleshooting - an Overview Recording | .pdf Archived 11i and R12 Transaction Error Troubleshooting Overview Recording | .pdf Archived

  Read the article

• Top Ten Reasons to Attend the 2015 Oracle Value Chain Summit

  - by Terri Hiskey

  Need justification to attend the 2015 Oracle Value Chain Summit? Check out these Top Ten Reasons you should register now for this event: 1. Get Results: 60% higher profits. 65% better earnings per share. 2-3x greater return on assets. Find out how leading organizations achieved these results when they transformed their supply chains. 2. Hear from the Experts: Listen to case studies from leading companies, and speak with top partners who have championed change. 3. Design Your Own Conference: Choose from more than 150 sessions offering deep dives on every aspect of supply chain management: Cross Value Chain, Maintenance, Manufacturing, Procurement, Product Value Chain, Value Chain Execution, and Value Chain Planning. 4. Get Inspired from Those Who Dare: Among the luminaries delivering keynote sessions are former SF 49ers quarterback Steve Young and Andrew Winston, co-author of one of the top-selling green business books, Green to Gold. 5. Expand Your Network: With 1500+ attendees, this summit is a networking bonanza. No other event gathers as many of the best and brightest professionals across industries, including tech experts and customers from the Oracle community. 6. Improve Your Skills: Enhance your expertise by joining NEW hands-on training sessions. 7. Perform a Road-Test: Try the latest IT solutions that generate operational excellence, manage risk, streamline production, improve the customer experience, and impact the bottom line. 8. Join Similar Birds-of-a-Feather: Engage industry peers with similar interests, or shared supply chain communities, in expanded roundtable discussions. 9. Gain Unique Insight: Speak directly with the product experts responsible for Oracle’s Value Chain Solutions. 10. Save $400: Take advantage of the Super Saver rate by registering before September 26, 2014.

  Read the article

• 2012 Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards Announced

  - by Tanu Sood

  Guest Contributor: Margaret Harrist. Originally posted on Oracle NewsCentral Companies from around the world were honored Tuesday for their innovative solutions using Oracle Fusion Middleware. This year’s 27 award winners, representing 11 countries and a wide span of industries, wowed the judges with a range of projects across eight product categories. A panel of judges scored each entry across multiple categories, including the uniqueness of their business case, business benefits, level of impact relative to the size of the organization, complexity and magnitude of implementation, and the architecture’s originality. In a general session just before the award presentation, Oracle Executive Vice President Hasan Rizvi highlighted a few of the winners’ original implementations, including Nike, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, and Nintendo of America. Congratulations to the 2012 winners: Oracle Exalogic: Netshoes, Claro, UL, and Ingersoll Rand Oracle Cloud Application Foundation: Mazda Motor Corporation, HOTELBEDS Technology, Globalia, Nike, and Comcast Corporation Oracle SOA and Oracle BPM: NTT Docomo, Schneider National, Amadeus, and Motability Oracle WebCenter: News Limited, University of Louisville, China Mobile Jiangsu, Life Technologies Oracle Identity Management: Education Testing Service and Avea Oracle Data Integration: Raymond James and William Morrison Supermarkets Oracle Application Development Framework and Oracle Fusion Development: Qualcomm, Micros Systems, and Marfin Egnatia Bank Business Analytics (Oracle BI, Oracle EPM, Oracle Exalytics): INC Research, Experian, and Hologic

  Read the article

• First PC Build (Part 1)

  - by Anthony Trudeau

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/tonyt/archive/2014/08/05/157959.aspxA couple of months ago I made the decision to build myself a new computer. The intended use is gaming and for using the last real version of Photoshop. I was motivated by the poor state of console gaming and a simple desire to do something I haven’t done before – build a PC from the ground up. I’ve been using PCs for more than two decades. I’ve replaced a component hear and there, but for the last 10 years or so I’ve only used laptops. Therefore, this article will be written from the perspective of someone familiar with PCs, but completely new at building. I’m not an expert and this is not a definitive guide for building a PC, but I do hope that it encourages you to try it yourself. Component List Research There was a lot of research necessary, because building a PC is completely new to me, and I haven’t kept up with what’s out there. The first thing you want to do is nail down what your goals are. Your goals are going to be driven by what you want to do with your computer and personal choice. Don’t neglect the second one, because if you’re doing this for fun you want to get what you want. In my case, I focused on three things: performance, longevity, and aesthetics. The performance aspect is important for gaming and Photoshop. This will drive what components you get. For example, heavy gaming use is going to drive your choice of graphics card. Longevity is relevant to me, because I don’t want to be changing things out anytime soon for the next hot game. The consequence of performance and longevity is cost. Finally, aesthetics was my next consideration. I could have just built a box, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as fun for me. Aesthetics might not be important to you. They are for me. I also like gadgets and that played into at least one purchase for this build. I used PC Part Picker to put together my component list. I found it invaluable during the process and I’d recommend it to everyone. One caveat is that I wouldn’t trust the compatibility aspects. It does a pretty good job of not steering you wrong, but do your own research. The rest of it isn’t really sexy. I started out with what appealed to me and then I made changes and additions as I dived deep into researching each component and interaction I could find. The resources I used are innumerable. I used reviews, product descriptions, forum posts (praises and problems), et al. to assist me. I also asked friends into gaming what they thought about my component list. And when I got near the end I posted my list to the Reddit /r/buildapc forum. I cannot stress the value of extra sets of eyeballs and first hand experiences. Some of the resources I used: PC Part Picker Tom’s Hardware bit-tech Reddit Purchase PC Part Picker favors certain vendors. You should look at others too. In my case I found their favorites to be the best. My priorities were out-the-door price and shipping time. I knew that once I started getting parts I’d want to start building. Luckily, I timed it well and everything arrived within the span of a few days. Here are my opinions on the vendors I ended up using in alphabetical order. Amazon.com is a good, reliable choice. They have excellent customer service in my experience, and I knew I wouldn’t have trouble with them. However, shipping time is often a problem when you use their free shipping unless you order expensive items (I’ve found items over $100 ship quickly). Ultimately though, price wasn’t always the best and their collection of sales tax in my state turned me off them. I did purchase my case from them. I ordered the mouse as well, but I cancelled after it was stuck four days in a “shipping soon” state. I purchased the mouse locally. Best Buy is not my favorite place to do business. There’s a lot of history with poor, uninterested sales representatives and they used to have a lot of bad anti-consumer policies. That’s a lot better now, but the bad taste is still in my mouth. I ended up purchasing the accessories from them including mouse (locally) and headphones. NCIX is a company that I’ve never heard of before. It popped up as a recommendation for my CPU cooler on PC Part Picker. I didn’t do a lot of research on the company, because their policy on you buying insurance for your orders turned me off. That policy makes it clear to me that the company finds me responsible for the shipment once it leaves their dock. That’s not right, and may run afoul of state laws. Regardless they shipped my CPU cooler quickly and I didn’t have a problem. NewEgg.com is a well known company. I had never done business with them, but I’m glad I did. They shipped quickly and provided good visibility over everything. The prices were also the best in most cases. My main complaint is that they have a lot of exchange only return policies on components. To their credit those policies are listed in the cart underneath each item. The visibility tells me that they’re not playing any shenanigans and made me comfortable dealing with that risk. The vast majority of what I ordered came from them. Coming Next In the next part I’ll tackle my build experience.

  Read the article

• Topeka Dot Net User Group (DNUG) Meeting &ndash; April 6, 2010

  - by Robz / Fervent Coder

  Topeka DNUG is free for anyone to attend! Mark your calendars now! SPEAKER: Troy Tuttle is a self-described pragmatic agilist, and Kanban practitioner, with more than a decade of experience in delivering software in the finance and health industries and as a consultant. He advocates teams improve their performance through pursuit of better practices like continuous integration and automated testing. Troy is the founder of the Kansas City Limited WIP Society and is a speaker at local area groups on team related topics. He currently works as a Project Lead Consultant with AdventureTech Group of Kansas City, KS. TOPIC: Why Kanban? Kanban is receiving a large amount of attention recently. What does it offer compared to other approaches? Answering that question may require you to hit the “reset” button on previously held biases and assumptions. Kanban blends Lean thought with ideas from first generation agile methodologies. To get started with Kanban, we will examine what steps are necessary to establish a transparent, work-limited, pull system. We will highlight the perils of allowing too much work-in-progress and how it affects development performance. Once established, Kanban teams need only a few metrics and tools to monitor their performance and improvement. WHERE: Federal Home Loan Bank Topeka on the Security Benefit Campus – Directions? WHEN: 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM on April 6th, 2010 REGISTER: http://topekadotnet.wufoo.com/forms/topeka-dnug-meeting-attendance/ ADDITIONAL INFO: As always, please sign in and out of FHLBank to help them with their accountability. Please park in the visitors section at the front of the building when you arrive. If  there are no spots in visitors you may park in the overflow lot at the far east end of the facility.  Lunch will be provided and we will have some great door prizes!

  Read the article

• Why CFOs Should Care About Big Data

  - by jmorourke

  The topic of “big data” clearly has reached a tipping point in 2012.  With plenty of coverage over the past few years in the IT press, we are now starting to see the topic of “big data” covered in mainstream business press, including a cover story in the October 2012 issue of the Harvard Business Review.  To help customers understand the challenges of managing “big data” as well as the opportunities that can be created by leveraging “big data”, Oracle has recently run and published the results of a customer survey, as well as white papers and articles on this topic.  Most recently, we commissioned a white paper titled “Mastering Big Data: CFO Strategies to Transform Insight into Opportunity”. The premise here is that “big data” is not just a topic that CIOs should pay attention to, but one that CFOs should understand and take advantage of as well.  Clearly, whoever masters the art and science of big data will be positioned for competitive advantage in their industries or markets.  That’s why smart CFOs are taking control of big data and business analytics projects, not just to uncover new ways to drive growth in a slowing global economy, but also to be a catalyst for change in the enterprise.  With an increasing number of CFOs now responsible for overseeing IT investments and providing strategic insight to the board, CFOs will be increasingly called upon to take a leadership role in assessing the value of “big data” initiatives, building on their traditional skills in reporting and helping managers analyze data to support decision making. Here’s a link to the white paper referenced above, which is posted on the Oracle C-Central/CFO web site, as well as some other resources that can help CFOs master the topic of “big data”: White Paper “Mastering Big Data:  CFO Strategies to Transform Insight into Opportunity CFO Market Watch article:  “Does Big Data Affect the CFO?” Oracle Survey Report:  “From Overload to Impact – An Industry Scorecard on Big Data Industry Challenges” Upcoming Big Data Webcast with Andrew McAfee Here’s a general link to Oracle C-Central/CFO in case you want to start there: www.oracle.com/c-central/cfo Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or need additional information:  [email protected]

  Read the article

• Upgrading Oracle Siebel CRM Application Without Downtime

  - by Doug Reid

  Oracle’s Siebel Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software helps organizations differentiate their businesses to achieve top- and bottom-line growth. Siebel CRM delivers comprehensive solutions that are tailored to more than 20 different industries. As Siebel CRM implementations have evolved into mission critical, operational business processes that must operate 24/7, companies are finding it increasingly difficult to afford the downtime typically required to perform an in-place upgrade. Without these upgrades, businesses loose out on critical new features and functionality. With Oracle GoldenGate, customers don’t have to choose between upgrades and outages. Oracle GoldenGate allows Siebel CRM customers to perform upgrades with zero downtime. Now Siebel customers can always take advantages of the latest innovations in customer relationship management without having to worry about potential lost revenue due to downtime. Oracle GoldenGate provides three different deployment models for Siebel CRM zero downtime upgrades that are designed to meet differing customer requirements. These range from a basic unidirectional model, which is designed to work out-of-the-box, to the most sophisticated active-active model for phased migrations. If you have mission-critical Siebel CRM implementations I recommend that you watch the screencast below to learn how you can begin taking advantage of all the latest Siebel enhancements without having any downtime. This screencast is also available on Oracle Media Network and Oracle's YouTube channel. For even more details I recommend reading the whitepaper Upgrading Siebel CRM with Zero Downtime .

  Read the article

• How is software used in critical life-or-death systems tested?

  - by waiwai933

  An airplane, as opposed to, for example, a website, is a system where any failure in certain systems is completely unacceptable, since errors in e.g. flight monitoring can cause the autopilot to malfunction and do a dive. Obviously, this doesn't happen since the brilliant engineers at Boeing and Airbus have checks in the autopilot to make sure it doesn't suddenly decide a dive is a perfectly acceptable and safe maneuver. Or perhaps the computer crashes, and the pilots in the newer fly-by-wire aircraft can no longer actually fly the plane. Of course, there are various safety procedures and redundancies built into these systems to prevent a crash (of both the software and the aircraft). However, on the other hand, it's quite obvious that software isn't perfect—both open source and closed source software do crash regularly, and only the simplest "Hello World" program doesn't fail. How can the engineers who design the software systems in the aeronautic, medical, and other life-or-death industries manage to test their software so that it doesn't fail (and if it does fail, at least fail gracefully)? I'm desperately hoping that you're not all going to go: "Oh, I work for Boeing/Airbus/(some other company) and it's not! Have fun on your next flight/hospital visit."

  Read the article

• PeopleSoft and PeopleTools at Oracle OpenWorld 2012

  - by PeopleTools Strategy

  From Jeff Robbins PeopleTools 8.52 Gregory Sawyer October 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} Oracle Open World is once again just around the corner.  This is a huge event for Oracle with thousands of individual sessions that cover all sorts of topics.  Here’s a link to a note from Paco Aubrejuan about PeopleSoft’s plans for this year’s conference: [link: http://www.oracle.com/us/industries/utilities/pfst-oow12-letter-1841052.pdf] Each year, PeopleTools sessions prove to be among the highest rated and best attended sessions of the conference. Once again we’ve put together a broad program of sessions and a great Hands on Lab, so be sure to use the Open World Schedule Builder to pre-register for the sessions you think will be of greatest value to you: [link: https://www.oracle.com/webapps/token/scheduler] Highlights of our program include: · Customer success with PeopleTools 8.52 · Great new features of the upcoming PeopleTools 8.53 · PeopleSoft’s new mobile solutions · Innovative technologies for your PeopleSoft system: Integration, User Experience, Lifecycle Management and more We’re excited about all that we have planned and look forward to seeing you there.  Stop by the DEMOGrounds to ask questions, see new features or just say hello. See you all there Jeff

  Read the article

• Data Center Modernization: Harness the power of Oracle Exalogic and Exadata with PeopleSoft

  - by Michelle Kimihira

  Author: Latha Krishnaswamy, Senior Manager, Exalogic Product Management   Allegis Group - a Hanover, MD-based global staffing company is the largest privately held staffing company in the United States with more than 10,000 internal employees and 90,000 contract employees. Allegis Group is a $6+ billion company, offering a full range of specialized staffing and recruiting solutions to clients in a wide range of industries.   The company processes about 133,000 paychecks per week, every week of the year. With 300 offices around the world and the hefty task of managing HR and payroll, the PeopleSoft system at Allegis  is a mission-critical application. The firm is in the midst of a data center modernization initiative. Part of that project meant moving the company's PeopleSoft applications (Financials and HR Modules as well as Custom Time & Expense module) to a converged infrastructure.     The company ran a proof of concept with four different converged architectures before deciding upon Exadata and Exalogic as the platform of choice.   Performance combined with High availability for running mission-critical payroll processes drove this decision.  During the testing on Exadata and Exalogic Allegis applied a particular (11-F) tax update in production environment. What job ran for roughly six hours completed in less than 1.5 hours. With additional tuning the second run of the Tax update 11-F reduced to 33 minutes - a 90% improvement!     Not only that, the move will help the company save money on middleware by consolidating use of Oracle licensing in a single platform.   Summary With a modern data center powered by Exalogic and Exadata to run mission-critical PeopleSoft HR and Financial Applications, Allegis is positioned to manage business growth and improve employee productivity. PeopleSoft applications run on engineered systems platform minimizing hardware and software integration risks. Additional Information Product Information on Oracle.com: Oracle Fusion Middleware Follow us on Twitter and Facebook Subscribe to our regular Fusion Middleware Newsletter

  Read the article

• How to begin? Windows 8 Development

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  Ok. I convinced you in my last post to do some Win8 development. You want a piece of that cake, or whatever your reasons may be. Good! Welcome to the club! Now let me ask you a question: what are you going to write? Ah. That’s the big one, isn’t it? What indeed? If you have been creating applications for computers before you’re in for quite a shock. The way people perceive apps on a tablet is quite different from what we know as applications. There’s a reason we call them apps instead of applications! Yes, technically they are applications but we don’t call them apps only because it sounds cool. The abbreviated form of the word applications itself is a pointer. Apps are small. Apps are focused. Apps are more lightweight. Apps do one thing but they do that one thing extremely good. In the ‘old’ days we wrote huge systems. We build ecosystems of services, screens, databases and more to create a system that provides value for the user. Think about it: what application do you use most at work? Can you in one sentence describe what it is, or what it does and yet still distinctively describe its purpose? I doubt you can. Let’s have a look at Outlouk. We all know it and we all love or hate it. But what is it? A mail program? No, there’s so much more there: calendar, contacts, RSS feeds and so on. Some call it a ‘collaboration’  application but that’s not really true as well. After all, why should a collaboration application give me my schedule for the day? I think the best way to describe Outlook is “client for Exchange”  although that isn’t accurate either. Anyway: Outlook is a great application but it’s not an ‘app’ and therefor not very suitable for WinRT. Ok. Disclaimer here: yes, you can write big applications for WinRT. Some will. But that’s not what 99.9% of the developers will do. So I am stating here that big applications are not meant for WinRT. If 0.01% of the developers think that this is nonsense then they are welcome to go ahead but for the majority here this is not what we’re talking about. So: Apps are small, lightweight and good at what they do but only at that. If you’re a Phone developer you already know that: Phone apps on any platform fit the description I have above. If you’ve ever worked in a large cooperation before you might have seen one of these before: the Mission Statement. It’s supposed to be a oneliner that sums up what the company is supposed to do. Funny enough: although this doesn’t work for large companies it does work for defining your app. A mission statement for an app describes what it does. If it doesn’t fit in the mission statement then your app is going to get to big and will fail. A statement like this should be in the following style “<your app name> is the best app to <describe single task>” Fill in the blanks, write it and go! Mmm.. not really. There are some things there we need to think about. But the statement is a very, very important one. If you cannot fit your app in that line you’re preparing to fail. Your app will become to big, its purpose will be unclear and it will be hard to use. People won’t download it and those who do will give it a bad rating therefor preventing that huge success you’ve been dreaming about. Stick to the statement! Ok, let’s give it a try: “PlanesAreCool” is the best app to do planespotting in the field. You might have seen these people along runways of airports: taking photographs of airplanes and noting down their numbers and arrival- and departure times. We are going to help them out with our great app! If you look at the statement, can you guess what it does? I bet you can. If you find out it isn’t clear enough of if it’s too broad, refine it. This is probably the most important step in the development of your app so give it enough time! So. We’ve got the statement. Print it out, stick it to the wall and look at it. What does it tell you? If you see this, what do you think the app does? Write that down. Sit down with some friends and talk about it. What do they expect from an app like this? Write that down as well. Brainstorm. Make a list of features. This is mine: Note planes Look up aircraft carriers Add pictures of that plane Look up airfields Notify friends of new spots Look up details of a type of plane Plot a graph with arrival and departure times Share new spots on social media Look up history of a particular aircraft Compare your spots with friends Write down arrival times Write down departure times Write down wind conditions Write down the runway they take Look up weather conditions for next spotting day Invite friends to join you for a day of spotting. Now, I must make it clear that I am not a planespotter nor do I know what one does. So if the above list makes no sense, I apologize. There is a lesson: write apps for stuff you know about…. First of all, let’s look at our statement and then go through the list of features. Remove everything that has nothing to do with that statement! If you end up with an empty list, try again with both steps. Note planes Look up aircraft carriers Add pictures of that plane Look up airfields Notify friends of new spots Look up details of a type of plane Plot a graph with arrival and departure times Share new spots on social media Look up history of a particular aircraft Compare your spots with friends Write down arrival times Write down departure times Write down wind conditions Write down the runway they take Look up weather conditions for next spotting day Invite friends to join you for a day of spotting. That's better. The things I removed could be pretty useful to a plane spotter and could be fun to write. But do they match the statement? I said that the app is for spotting in the field, so “look up airfields” doesn’t belong there: I know where I am so why look it up? And the same goes for inviting friends or looking up the weather conditions for tomorrow. I am at the airfield right now, looking through my binoculars at the planes. I know the weather now and I don’t care about tomorrow. If you feel the items you’ve crossed out are valuable, then why not write another app? One that says “SpotNoter” is the best app for preparing a day of spotting with my friends. That’s a different app! Remember: Win8 apps are small and very good at doing ONE thing, and one thing only! If you have made that list, it’s time to prepare the navigation of your app. The navigation is how users see your app and how they use it. We’ll do that next time!

  Read the article

• Master Data Management – A Foundation for Big Data Analysis

  - by Manouj Tahiliani

  While Master Data Management has crossed the proverbial chasm and is on its way to becoming mainstream, businesses are being hammered by a new megatrend called Big Data. Big Data is characterized by massive volumes, its high frequency, the variety of less structured data sources such as email, sensors, smart meters, social networks, and Weblogs, and the need to analyze vast amounts of data to determine value to improve upon management decisions. Businesses that have embraced MDM to get a single, enriched and unified view of Master data by resolving semantic discrepancies and augmenting the explicit master data information from within the enterprise with implicit data from outside the enterprise like social profiles will have a leg up in embracing Big Data solutions. This is especially true for large and medium-sized businesses in industries like Retail, Communications, Financial Services, etc that would find it very challenging to get comprehensive analytical coverage and derive long-term success without resolving the limitations of the heterogeneous topology that leads to disparate, fragmented and incomplete master data. For analytical success from Big Data or in other words ROI from Big Data Investments, businesses need to acquire, organize and analyze the deluge of data to make better decisions. There will need to be a coexistence of structured and unstructured data and to maintain a tight link between the two to extract maximum insights. MDM is the catalyst that helps maintain that tight linkage by providing an understanding about the identity, characteristics of Persons, Companies, Products, Suppliers, etc. associated with the Big Data and thereby help accelerate ROI. In my next post I will discuss about patterns for co-existing Big Data Solutions and MDM. Feel free to provide comments and thoughts on above as well as Integration or Architectural patterns.

  Read the article

• Managing products on a an ecommerce site [closed]

  - by John

  I've had a site that sells widgets for many years. I do not inventory my widgets, but the cost of adding them to the site and makings sure the site is current is becoming cost prohibitive. Here are the facts: I sell a single class of widget. I have about 50,000 widgets on my site. I have about 100 vendors that create and dropship the products when they get an order from me via email. Each vendor carries from 50 to 5000 types of widgets. Vendors all have websites with images and descriptions of their products. Each widget is produced in limited supply and usually sell out in 1-5 years. Prices of the widget often go up, sometimes more than 50% before they sell out. My vendors aren't very tech sophisticated. They have websites with their products, but most can't supply an api or database dump. Their websites usually display retail prices to the public, but I login or refer to a price list (usually excel) for wholesale prices. As it stands now, I hire local people to add and describe each widget to our website. It usually takes a person 4 minutes to add a widget to the site. This doesn't include moving to a new vendor. I feel like the upload/edit process is as good as it can get via a form/website. The problem is that it is getting very expensive to upload and keep the widget inventory current. I often get orders for something after it's sold out from the vendor or the price is wrong. This seems like it would be a problem in many industries. Can anyone suggest the cheapest way to upload inventory and ensure prices are current from my vendors? I'm assuming it will involve outsourcing, but I would like ideas on how to setup the compensation model.

  Read the article

• Partner Webcast - Oracle Taleo Cloud Service - 12 Dec 2012

  - by Thanos

  Talent Intelligence is the insight companies need to unlock the power of their most critical asset – their people. CEOs are charged with driving growth, and the one ingredient to growth that’s common across all industries and regions - both in good economic times and in bad – is people. In every economic environment, Talent Intelligence is a company’s biggest lever for driving growth, innovation and customer success. Oracle Taleo Cloud Service provides a comprehensive suite of SaaS products that help companies manage their investment in people by improving their Talent Intelligence. The Oracle Taleo Cloud Service enables enterprises and midsize businesses to recruit top talent, align that talent to key goals, manage performance, develop and compensate top performers, and turn today's best performers into tomorrow's leaders. Join us to find out more about the industry's broadest cloud-based talent management platform. Agenda: Oracle HCM Footprint Taleo value proposition Taleo quick tour Why invest in Taleo resources Demonstrating Taleo Q&A REGISTER NOW 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 For any questions please contact us at [email protected]. Visit our ISV Migration Center blog Or Follow us @oracleimc to learn more on Oracle Technologies, upcoming partner webcasts and events. Existing content available YouTube - SlideShare - Oracle Mix.

  Read the article

• Testing of visualization projects

  - by paxRoman

  We develop small to large visualization projects for different tasks and industries and sometimes while rewriting them a couple of times in the process we hit walls because we discover that we need to add a lot of code to support new requirements. Now we have established a design process that seems to work well (at least we reduced the development time for each new project quite a bit), but we're still left scratching our heads around this question: what exactly should we test when testing visualizations? If everything that we want to explore is on the screen (bounded visualizations)? If the data is ok - if data is valid (that's one of the nice things about visualizations you can spot errors in your datasets)? Usability? User interaction? Code quality? I can tell you for sure that a simple check of the code quality is certainly not enough! Is there a classic paper / book about how to test visualizations? Also do you happen to know about classic design patterns for visualizations (except the obvious ones like Pub-Sub)?

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 356 357 358 359 360 361 362 363 364 365 366 367  | Next Page >