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  • Getting Things Done for Programmers

    - by thycotic
    Ben has posted about one of my favorite topics – Getting Things Done from a programmer’s perspective.   Jonathan Cogley is the CEO of Thycotic Software, an agile software services and product development company based in Washington DC.  Secret Server is our flagship web-based password management product.

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  • SAP se lance dans le Cloud Computing et présente la première application de sa nouvelle gamme « On-Demand »

    SAP se lance dans le Cloud Computing Et présente la première application de sa nouvelle génération d'applications « On-Demand » Cette année, la participation de SAP au très prestigieux salon CeBIT s'articule autour de la promotion de la nouvelle génération de ses solutions « On-Demand », alliant la puissance du Cloud Computing à la flexibilité du paiement à l'utilisation en mode SaaS. Pour répondre aux attentes des entreprises qui cherchent aujourd'hui à optimiser leurs processus business et les adapter à leurs métiers sans réinvestir dans leurs systèmes d'informations, SAP introduit une nouvelle gamme de solutions On-Demand, intégrée à la suite logicielle SAP Business Suite.

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  • John Hitchcock of Pace Describes the Oracle Agile PLM Customer Experience

    John Hitchcock, Senior Manager of Configuration Management at Pace (formerly 2Wire, Inc.), sat down for an interview during Oracle's Innovation Summit with Kerrie Foy, Manager of PLM Product Marketing at Oracle. Learn why his organization upgraded to the latest version of Agile and expanded the footprint to achieve impressive savings and productivity gains across the global, networked product value-chain.

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  • John Hitchcock of Pace Describes the Oracle Agile PLM Customer Experience

    John Hitchcock, Senior Manager of Configuration Management at Pace (formerly 2Wire, Inc.), sat down for an interview during Oracle's Innovation Summit with Kerrie Foy, Manager of PLM Product Marketing at Oracle. Learn why his organization upgraded to the latest version of Agile and expanded the footprint to achieve impressive savings and productivity gains across the global, networked product value-chain.

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  • Open Source NoSQL Databases Ramp Up

    <b>Database Journal:</b> "For most of the Web era, Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS) based on SQL have dominated the database landscape. But over the course of the last year, a new approach has begun to take hold known as NoSQL, offering an alternative to the traditional RDBMS."

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  • SQL SERVER – PREEMPTIVE and Non-PREEMPTIVE – Wait Type – Day 19 of 28

    - by pinaldave
    In this blog post, we are going to talk about a very interesting subject. I often get questions related to SQL Server 2008 Book-Online about various Preemptive wait types. I got a few questions asking what these wait types are and how they could be interpreted. To get current wait types of the system, you can read this article and run the script: SQL SERVER – DMV – sys.dm_os_waiting_tasks and sys.dm_exec_requests – Wait Type – Day 4 of 28. Before we continue understanding them, let us study first what PREEMPTIVE and Non-PREEMPTIVE waits in SQL Server mean. PREEMPTIVE: Simply put, this wait means non-cooperative. While SQL Server is executing a task, the Operating System (OS) interrupts it. This leads to SQL Server to involuntarily give up the execution for other higher priority tasks. This is not good for SQL Server as it is a particular external process which makes SQL Server to yield. This kind of wait can reduce the performance drastically and needs to be investigated properly. Non-PREEMPTIVE: In simple terms, this wait means cooperative. SQL Server manages the scheduling of the threads. When SQL Server manages the scheduling instead of the OS, it makes sure its own priority. In this case, SQL Server decides the priority and one thread yields to another thread voluntarily. In the earlier version of SQL Server, there was no preemptive wait types mentioned and the associated task status with them was marked as suspended. In SQL Server 2005, preemptive wait types were not listed as well, but their associated task status was marked as running. In SQL Server 2008, preemptive wait types are properly listed and their associated task status is also marked as running. Now, SQL Server is in Non-Preemptive mode by default and it works fine. When CLR, extended Stored Procedures and other external components run, they run in Preemptive mode, leading to the creation of these wait types. There are a wide variety of preemptive wait types. If you see consistent high value in the Preemptive wait types, I strongly suggest that you look into the wait type and try to know the root cause. If you are still not sure, you can send me an email or leave a comment about it and I will do my best to help you reduce this wait type. Read all the post in the Wait Types and Queue series. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL, Technology

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  • Customization: It’s Wanted in Enterprise Tech Platforms Too

    - by Mike Stiles
    Did you know that every customer service person does their job the exact same way in every business organization?  And did you know that every business organization cares about the exact same metrics? I hope not, because both those things couldn’t be farther from the truth. And if there are different needs and approaches in different enterprises, it stands to reason technology platforms must become increasingly customizable. Oracle Social Cloud sees that coming and is doing something about it, at least in terms of social media management. Today we introduce Social Station, a customizable user experience workspace within the Oracle Social Relationship Management (SRM) platform. We think a lot about customer-centricity and customer experience around here, and we know our own customers are ready to start moving forward in being able to set up their work environments in the ways that work best for them. That kind of thing increases productivity, helps deliver on social objectives faster, and generally just makes life more pleasant. A recent IDG Enterprise report says that enterprises currently investing in more consumerized, easy-to-use technologies experience a 56% increase in employee productivity and a 46% increase in customer satisfaction. Imagine that. When you make it easier and more pleasant for employees to help customers, more customers get helped and everyone ends up happier. So what does this Social Station do and what does it mean, exactly? It’s an innovative move to take some pretty high-end tech (take a bow developers) and simplify it, making things more intuitive: Drag and drop lets you easily build out and personalize your social workspace with different modules. The new Custom Analytics module can mix and match over 120 metrics with thousands of customizable reporting options. You can check constantly refreshed updates and keep a real-time eye on the numbers you’re trying to move. One-click sharing and annotation in the Custom Analytics module improves sharing and collaboration across teams, departments and executives. Multi-view layout helps you leverage social insights by letting you monitor conversations by network, stream, metric, graph type, date range, and relative time period. The Enhanced Calendar is a better visual representation of content, posts, networks and views, letting you easily toggle between functions and views. The Oracle Social Station sets us up to always be developing & launching additional social modules for you, covering areas like content curation, influencer engagement, and command center creation. Oracle Social Cloud Group VP Meg Bear says, “Consumers today have high expectations of their technology application capabilities and usability, and those expectations don’t stop when they enter their workplaces.” In other words, internal enterprise technology platforms must reflect the personalization and customization being called for in consumer products and marketing. “One size fits all” is becoming an endangered concept. @mikestiles @oraclesocial

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  • Moesion Webinar: Managing BizTalk Server from your Smartphone or Tablet Without Upsetting your Boss

    - by gsusx
    BizTalkers, This Thursday we will be hosting a webinar to highlight how to use Moesion to manage your BizTalk Server environment from your mobile device. We will walk through the complete feature set of Moesion HTML5 BizTalk management console as well as complementary features of the Moesion platform that can be used to manage your BizTalk environment from your mobile device. More importantly, if you are a BizTalk developer or IT Pro we REALLY REALLY REALLY would love to get your feedback about the...(read more)

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  • An open source FileManagement component helps developing file-required systems easier in .NET

    The component is designed to save the effort on developing file-required systems through its easy APIs and integration with ASP.NET web development, e.g. a product requires attachments and thumbnails in a product management system....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.

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  • What to Do When Windows Won’t Boot

    - by Chris Hoffman
    You turn on your computer one day and Windows refuses to boot — what do you do? “Windows won’t boot” is a common symptom with a variety of causes, so you’ll need to perform some troubleshooting. Modern versions of Windows are better at recovering from this sort of thing. Where Windows XP might have stopped in its tracks when faced with this problem, modern versions of Windows will try to automatically run Startup Repair. First Things First Be sure to think about changes you’ve made recently — did you recently install a new hardware driver, connect a new hardware component to your computer, or open your computer’s case and do something? It’s possible the hardware driver is buggy, the new hardware is incompatible, or that you accidentally unplugged something while working inside your computer. The Computer Won’t Power On At All If your computer won’t power on at all, ensure it’s plugged into a power outlet and that the power connector isn’t loose. If it’s a desktop PC, ensure the power switch on the back of its case — on the power supply — is set to the On position. If it still won’t power on at all, it’s possible you disconnected a power cable inside its case. If you haven’t been messing around inside the case, it’s possible the power supply is dead. In this case, you’ll have to get your computer’s hardware fixed or get a new computer. Be sure to check your computer monitor — if your computer seems to power on but your screen stays black, ensure your monitor is powered on and that the cable connecting it to your computer’s case is plugged in securely at both ends. The Computer Powers On And Says No Bootable Device If your computer is powering on but you get a black screen that says something like “no bootable device” or another sort of “disk error” message, your computer can’t seem to boot from the hard drive that Windows was installed on. Enter your computer’s BIOS or UEFI firmware setup screen and check its boot order setting, ensuring that it’s set to boot from its hard drive. If the hard drive doesn’t appear in the list at all, it’s possible your hard drive has failed and can no longer be booted from. In this case, you may want to insert Windows installation or recovery media and run the Startup Repair operation. This will attempt to make Windows bootable again. For example, if something overwrote your Windows drive’s boot sector, this will repair the boot sector. If the recovery environment won’t load or doesn’t see your hard drive, you likely have a hardware problem. Be sure to check your BIOS or UEFI’s boot order first if the recovery environment won’t load. You can also attempt to manually fix Windows boot loader problems using the fixmbr and fixboot commands. Modern versions of Windows should be able to fix this problem for you with the Startup Repair wizard, so you shouldn’t actually have to run these commands yourself. Windows Freezes or Crashes During Boot If Windows seems to start booting but fails partway through, you may be facing either a software or hardware problem. If it’s a software problem, you may be able to fix it by performing a Startup Repair operation. If you can’t do this from the boot menu, insert a Windows installation disc or recovery disk and use the startup repair tool from there. If this doesn’t help at all, you may want to reinstall Windows or perform a Refresh or Reset on Windows 8. If the computer encounters errors while attempting to perform startup repair or reinstall Windows, or the reinstall process works properly and you encounter the same errors afterwards, you likely have a hardware problem. Windows Starts and Blue Screens or Freezes If Windows crashes or blue-screens on you every time it boots, you may be facing a hardware or software problem. For example, malware or a buggy driver may be loading at boot and causing the crash, or your computer’s hardware may be malfunctioning. To test this, boot your Windows computer in safe mode. In safe mode, Windows won’t load typical hardware drivers or any software that starts automatically at startup. If the computer is stable in safe mode, try uninstalling any recently installed hardware drivers, performing a system restore, and scanning for malware. If you’re lucky, one of these steps may fix your software problem and allow you to boot Windows normally. If your problem isn’t fixed, try reinstalling Windows or performing a Refresh or Reset on Windows 8. This will reset your computer back to its clean, factory-default state. If you’re still experiencing crashes, your computer likely has a hardware problem. Recover Files When Windows Won’t Boot If you have important files that will be lost and want to back them up before reinstalling Windows, you can use a Windows installer disc or Linux live media to recover the files. These run entirely from a CD, DVD, or USB drive and allow you to copy your files to another external media, such as another USB stick or an external hard drive. If you’re incapable of booting a Windows installer disc or Linux live CD, you may need to go into your BIOS or UEFI and change the boot order setting. If even this doesn’t work — or if you can boot from the devices and your computer freezes or you can’t access your hard drive — you likely have a hardware problem. You can try pulling the computer’s hard drive, inserting it into another computer, and recovering your files that way. Following these steps should fix the vast majority of Windows boot issues — at least the ones that are actually fixable. The dark cloud that always hangs over such issues is the possibility that the hard drive or another component in the computer may be failing. Image Credit: Karl-Ludwig G. Poggemann on Flickr, Tzuhsun Hsu on Flickr     

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  • CMS et interopérabilité, nouvelles priorités de la fondation Apache, « Chemistry » intègre API et librairies pour Java, Python, DotNET et PHP

    CMS et interopérabilité, nouvelles priorités de la fondation Apache « Chemistry » intègre API et librairies pour Java, Python, DotNET et PHP La fondation Apache vient de mettre le projet Chemistry en tête de ses priorités. Chemistry est une implémentation open-source de la spécification CMIS (Content Management Interoperability Services) destinée à harmoniser l'interopérabilité entre les différents systèmes de gestion de contenu d'entreprise (EMS). Le standard CMIS, initié et géré par le consortium OASIS offre un ensemble de « binding » facilitant l'accès entre plusieurs systèmes compatibles CMIS, et sans devoir cerner l'interface spécifique de chacun d'entre eux (g...

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  • SAP dévoile Business Object 4.0, la nouvelle version de sa solution BI intègre la mobilité, les réseaux sociaux et le « in-memory »

    SAP dévoile Business Object 4.0 La nouvelle version de sa solution BI intègre la mobilité, les réseaux sociaux et le « in-memory » SAP vient de dévoiler Business Object 4.0, la prochaine version de sa plate-forme de nouvelle génération de Business Intelligence et de Gestion d'Information d'Entreprise (EIM). [IMG]http://ftp-developpez.com/gordon-fowler/SAP/Slide-5-SAP-BusinessObjects-4.0-Event-Insight2.jpg[/IMG] Après SAP ByDesign 2.6, sa suite ERP en mode SaaS (qui arrive avec un tout nouveau SDK), Business Object 4.0 est la deuxième très grosse annonce de cette année 2011 que Nicolas Sekkaki, Direc...

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  • Performance Improvement: Session State

    Performance is critical to today's successful applications and web sites. If you design with an awareness of the session state management challenges you can always change your strategies to match your performance needs.

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  • Performance Improvement: Session State

    Performance is critical to today's successful applications and web sites. If you design with an awareness of the session state management challenges you can always change your strategies to match your performance needs.

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  • Oracle on iPad

    - by Aaron Lazenby
    This came across the Twitter-sphere from Steve Wilson (aka @virtualsteve), Oracle Vice President, Systems management:"One of the engineers on the Ops Center team just sent me a pic of OC running on an iPad. Neat!"And here's proof:

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  • SO-Aware sessions in Dallas and Houston

    - by gsusx
    Our WCF Registry: SO-Aware keeps being evangelized throughout the world. This week Tellago Studios' Dwight Goins will be speaking at Microsoft events in Dallas and Houston ( https://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/EventDetail.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032469800&IO=ycqB%2bGJQr78fJBMJTye1oA%3d%3d ) about WCF management best practices using SO-Aware . If you are in the area and passionate about WCF you should definitely swing by and give Dwight a hard time ;)...(read more)

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  • Week in Geek: New Security Hole Found in Windows 8 UEFI ‘Secure Boot’

    - by Asian Angel
    This week’s edition of WIG is filled with news link coverage on topics such as Virgin Mobile USA customers are vulnerable to a password security flaw, Google Chrome will use a single profile on Windows 8, the Raspberry Pi gets a turbo mode, and more. How To Create a Customized Windows 7 Installation Disc With Integrated Updates How to Get Pro Features in Windows Home Versions with Third Party Tools HTG Explains: Is ReadyBoost Worth Using?

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  • 24+ Coda Alternatives for Windows and Linux

    - by Matt
    Coda plays an important role in designing layout on Mac. There are numerous coda alternatives for windows and Linux too. It is not possible to describe each and everyone so some of the coda alternatives, which work on both windows and Linux platforms, are discussed below. EditPlus $35.00 Good thing about EditPlus is that it highlights URLs and email addresses, activating them when you ‘crtl + double-click’. It also has a built in browser for previewing HTML, and FTP and SFTP support. Also supports Macros and RegEx find and replace. UltraEdit $49.99 It is another good coda alternative for windows and Linux. It is the best suited editor for text, HTML and HEX. It also plays an advanced PHP, Perl, Java and JavaScript editor for programmers. It supports disk-based 64-bit or standard file handling on 32-bit Windows platforms or window 2000 and later versions. HippoEdit $39.95 HippoEDIT has the best autocomplete it gives pop a ‘tooltip’ above your cursor as you type, suggesting words you’ve already typed. It does syntax highlighting for over 2 dozen language. Sublime Text $59.00 Sublime Text awesome ‘zoomed out’ view of the file lets you focus on the area you want. It lets you open a local file when you right-click on its link, and there are a few automation features, so this would make a solid choice of a text editor. Textpad $24.70 TextPad is simple editor with nifty features such as column select, drag-and-drop text between files, and hyperlink support. It also supports large files. Aptana Free Aptana Studio is one of the best editors working on both windows and Linux. It is a complete web development setting that has a nice blend of powerful authoring tools with a collection of online hosting and collaboration services. It is quite helpful as it support for PHP, CSS, FTP, and more. SciTE Free It is a SCIntilla based Text Editor. It has gradually developed as a generally useful editor. It provides for building and running programs. It is best to be used for jobs with simple configurations. SciTE is currently available for Intel Win32 and Linux compatible operating systems with GTK+. It has been run on Windows XP and on Fedora 8 and Ubuntu 7.10 with GTK+ 2.12 E Text Editor $34.96 E Text Editor is a new text editor for Windows, which also works on Linux as well. It has powerful editing features and also some unique abilities. It makes text manipulation quite fast and easy, and makes user focus on his writing as it automatically does all the manual work. It can be extend it in any language. It supports Text Mate bundles, thus allows the user to tap into a huge and active community. Editra Free Editra is an upcoming editor, with some fantastic features such as user profiles, auto-completion, session saving, and syntax highlighing for 60+ languages. Plugins can extend the feature set, offering an integrated python console, FTP client, file browser, and calculator, among others. PSPad Free PSPad is a good Template for writing CSS, as it an internal web browser, and a macro recorder to the table. It also supports hex editing, and some degree of code compiling. JEdit Free It is a mature programmer’s text editor and has taken a good deal of time to be developed as it is today. It is better than many costlier development tools due to its features and simplicity of use. It has been released as free software with full source code, provided under the terms of the GPL 2.0. Which also adds to its attractiveness. NEdit Free It is a multi-purpose text editor for the X Window System, which also works on Linux. It combines a standard, easy to use, graphical user interface with the full functionality and stability required by users who edit text for long period a day. It also provides for thorough support for development in various languages. It also facilitates the use of text processors, and other tools at the same time. It can be used productively by anyone who needs to edit text. It is quite a user-friendly tool. Its salient features include syntax highlighting with built in pattern, auto indent, tab emulation, block indentation adjustment etc. As of version 5.1, NEdit may be freely distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. MadEdit Free Mad Edit is an Open-Source and Cross-Platform Text/Hex Editor. It is written in C++ and wxWidgets. MadEdit can edit files in Text/Column/Hex modes. It also supports many useful functions, such as Syntax Highlighting, Word Wrap, Encoding for UTF8/16/32,and others. It also supports word count, which makes it quite a useful text editor for both windows and Linux. It has been recently modified on 10/09/2010. KompoZer Free Kompozer is a complete web authoring system that has a combination of web file management and easy-to-use WYSIWYG web page editing. KompoZer has been designed to be completely and extensively easy to use. It is thus an ideal tool for non-technical computer users who want to create an attractive, professional-looking web site without knowing HTML or web coding. It is based on the NVU source code. Vim Free Vim or “Vi IMproved” is an advanced text editor. Its salient features are syntax highlighting, word completion and it also has a huge amount of contributed content. Vim has several “modes” on offer for editing, which adds to the efficiency in editing. Thus it becomes a non-user-friendly application but it is also strength for its users. The normal mode binds alphanumeric keys to task-oriented commands. The visual mode highlights text. More tools for search & replace, defining functions, etc. are offered through command line mode. Vim comes with complete help. NotePad ++ Free One of the the best free text editor for Windows out there; with support for simple things—like syntax highlighting and folding—all the way up to FTP, Notepad++ should tick most of the boxes Notepad2 Free Notepad2 is also based on the Scintilla editing engine, but it’s much simpler than Notepad++. It bills itself as being fast, light-weight, and Notepad-like. Crimson Editor Free Crimson Editor has the ability to edit remote files, using a built-in FTP client; there’s also a spell checker. TotalEdit Free TotalEdit allows file comparison, RegEx search and replace, and has multiple options for file backup / versioning. For cleanup, it offers (X)HTML and XML customizable formatting, and a spell checker. In-Type Free ConTEXT Free SourceEdit Free SourceEdit includes features such as clipboard history, syntax highlighting and autocompletion for a decent set of languages. A hex editor and FTP client. RJ TextED Free RJ TextED supports integration with TopStyle Lite. Provides HTML validation and formatting. It includes an FTP client, a file browser, and a code browser, as well as a character map and support for email. GEDIT Free It is one of the best coda alternatives for windows and Linux. It has syntax highlighting and is best suitable for programming. It has many attractive features such as full support for UTF-8, undo/redo, and clipboard support, search and replace, configurable syntax highlighting for various languages and many more supportive features. It is extensible with plug ins. Other important coda alternatives for windows and Linux are Redcar, Bluefish Editor, NVU, Ruby Mine, Slick Edit, Geany, Editra, txt2html and CSSED. There are many more. Its up to user to decide which one suits best to his requirements. Related posts:10 Useful Text Editor For Developer Applications to Install & Run Windows on Linux Open Source WYSIWYG Text Editors

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  • Looking for BIND web interface

    - by Olivier Lalonde
    I currently manage the domains of many clients and would like to setup a BIND server so I can all manage them from one place. Now, I'm looking for a web interface to BIND that would let my clients manage their domains by themselves in case they wanted to. What web apps would be well suited for this? I'm looking for something that will only do DNS management, not something more complete like Webmin.

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  • Finalists for the Microsoft Accelerator for Windows Azure

    - by ScottGu
    Today, I am pleased to announce the ten finalists for the Microsoft Accelerator for Windows Azure powered by TechStars. These startups are about to launch into a three-month program where they will develop new products and businesses using Windows Azure. The response to the program has been fantastic - we received nearly 600 applications from entrepreneurs in 69 countries around the world, spanning a host of industries including retail, travel, entertainment, banking, real estate and more.  There were so many innovative ideas and amazing teams that it really made the selection process hard.  We finally landed on 10 finalists, based on their experience, qualifications, and innovative business ideas built on the cloud. This fall’s Windows Azure class includes: Advertory – Berlin, Germany. Advertory helps local businesses increase revenue and build customer loyalty. Appetas – Seattle, WA. Appetas' mission is to make restaurants look as beautiful online as they do on the plate! BagsUp – Sydney, Australia. Find great places from people you trust. Embarke – San Diego, CA. Embarke allows developers and companies the ability to integrate with any human communication channel (Facebook, Email, Text Message, Twitter) without having to learn the specifics, write code, or spend time on any of them. Fanzo – Seattle, WA. Fanzo puts sports fans in the spotlight. Find other fans, show off your fanswagger and get rewarded for your passion. MetricsHub – Bellevue, WA. A service providing cloud monitoring with incident detection and prebuilt workflows for remedying common problems. Mobilligy – Bellevue, WA. Mobilligy revolutionizes how people pay their bills by bringing convenient, secure, and instant bill payment support to mobile devices. Realty Mogul – Los Angeles, CA. Realty Mogul is a crowdfunding platform for real estate where accredited investors pool capital and invest in properties that are acquired, managed and eventually resold by professional private real estate companies and their management teams. Staq – San Francisco, CA. Back-end as a service for APIs. Socedo – Bellevue, WA. A simple and effective web application for lead generation and relationship management on Twitter. Each startup will be hosted in Seattle and mentored by entrepreneurs and venture capitalists as well as leaders from Windows Azure and other Microsoft organizations. The teams will spend the first month ideating and refining their business concepts with input and advice from their mentors as well as Microsoft customers, followed by two months of design and development. They will present their results to investors and Microsoft partners at an event in mid-January. We are really looking forward to seeing how their businesses evolve.  These teams have demonstrated incredible energy, passion, and innovative capabilities – and they are ready to show the world what’s possible with Windows Azure. Thanks, Scott P.S. And if you are new to Twitter you can also optionally follow me: @scottgu

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  • Prioritizing Product Features

    - by Robert May
    A very common task in Agile Environments is prioritization.  Teams that are functioning well will prioritize new features, old features, the backlog, and any other source of stories for the team, and they’ll do it regularly. Not all teams are good at prioritizing according to the real return on investment that building stories will yield to the company.  This is unfortunate.  Too often, teams end up building features that are less valuable, and everyone seems to know it except perhaps the product owner!  Most features built into software are never even used.  Clearly, not much return for features that go unused. So how does a company avoid building features that add little value to the company?  This is a tough question to answer, but usually, this prioritization starts at the top with the executives of the company.  After all, they’re responsible for the overall vision of the company. Here’s what I recommend: Know your market. Know your customers and users. Know where you’re going and what you want to achieve. Implement the Vision Know Your Market We often see companies that don’t know their market.  Personally, I’m surprised by this.  These companies don’t know who their competitors are, don’t know what features make their product desirable in the market, and in many cases, get by with saying, “I’ve been doing this for XX years.  I know what the market wants!”  In many cases, they equate “marketing” with “advertising” and don’t understand the difference. This is almost never true.  Good companies will spend significant amounts of time and money finding out who they’re competing against and what makes their competitors successful in the marketplace.  Good companies understand that marketing involves more than just advertising.  Often, marketing is mostly research and analysis, not sales.  Until you understand your market, you cannot know what features will give you the best return on your investment dollar. Good companies have a marketing department and can answer the next important step which is to know your customers and your users. Know your Customers and Users First, note that I included both customers and users.  They’re often not the same thing.  Users use the product that you build.  Customers buy the product that you build.  It’s a subtle difference, but too often, I’ve seen companies that focus exclusively on one or the other and are not successful simply because they ignore an important part of the group. If your company is doing appropriate marketing, you know that these are two different aspects of your product and that both deserve attention to have a product that is successful in your target market.  Your marketing department should be spending a lot of time understanding these personas and then conveying that information to the company. I’m always surprised when development teams think that they can build a product that people want to use without understanding the users of that product.  Developers think differently than most people in the world.  They know what the computer is doing.  The computer isn’t magic to them.  So when they assume that they know how to build something, they bring with them quite a bit of baggage.  Never assume that you know your customer unless you’re regularly having interaction with them.  Also, don’t just leave this to Marketing or Product Management.  Take them time to get your developers out with the customers as well.  Developers are very smart people, and often, seeing how someone uses their software inspires them to make a much better product. Very often, because the users and customers aren’t know, teams will spend a significant amount of time building apps that are super flexible and configurable so that any possible combination of feature can be used.  This demonstrates a clear lack of understanding of the customer.  Most configuration questions can quickly be answered by talking to the customer.  In most cases, if your software requires significant setup and configuration before its usable, you probably don’t know your customers and users very well. Until you know your customers, you cannot know what features will be most valuable to your customers and you cannot build those features in a way that your customers can use. Know Where You’re Going and What You Want to Achieve Many companies suffer from not having a plan.  Executives will tell the team to make them a plan.  The team, not knowing their market and customers and users, will come up with a plan that doesn’t reflect reality and doesn’t consider ROI.  Management then wonders why the product is doing poorly in the market place. Instead of leaving this up to the teams, as executives, work with Marketing to understand what broad categories of features will sell the most product in the marketplace.  Then, once you’ve determined that, give this vision to the team and let them run with it.  Revise the vision as needed, but avoid changing streams frequently.  Sure, sometimes you need to, but often, executives will change priorities many times a month, leading to nothing more than confusion.  If the team has a vision, they’ll be able to execute that vision far better than they could otherwise. By knowing what products are most important, you can set budgetary goals and guidelines that will help you achieve the vision that was created. Implement the Vision Creating the vision is often where the general executives stop participating in the plan.  The team is responsible for implementing that vision.  Executives should attend showcases and and should remain aware of the progress that the team is making towards meeting the vision, however. Once a broad vision has been created, the team should break that vision down into minimal market features (MMF).  These MMFs should be sized using story points so that, using the team’s velocity, an estimated cost can be determined for each feature.  The product management team should then try to quantify the relative value of the MMFs based on customer feedback and interviews.  Once the value and cost of creating the feature is understood, a return on investment can be calculated.  The features should then be prioritized with the MMF’s that have the highest value and lowest cost rising to the top of features to implement.  Don’t let politics get in the way! Once the MMF’s have been prioritized, they should go through release planning to schedule them for implementation. Conclusion By having a good grasp on the strategy of the company, your Agile teams can be much more effective.  Each and every story the team is implementing will roll up into features that matter to the company and provide ROI to them.  The steps outlined in this post should be repeated on a regular basis.  I recommend reviewing them at least once per quarter to make sure that the vision hasn’t shifted and that the teams are still working on what matters most to the company. Technorati Tags: Agile,Product Owner,ROI

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  • Build Open JDK 7 on Mac OSX (TOTD #172)

    - by arungupta
    The complete requirements, pre-requisites, and steps to build OpenJDK 7 port on Mac OSX are described here. The steps are very clearly explained and here are the exact ones I followed on my MacBook Pro 10.7.2: Confirm the version of pre-installed Java as: > java -versionjava version "1.6.0_26"Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_26-b03-383-11A511c)Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 20.1-b02-383, mixed mode) Download and install Mercurial from mercurial.berkwood.com (zip bundle for 10.7 is here). It gets installed in the /usr/local/bin directory. Get the source code as (commands highlighted in bold): hg clone http://hg.openjdk.java.net/macosx-port/macosx-port destination directory: macosx-port requesting all changes adding changesets adding manifests adding file changes added 437 changesets with 364 changes to 33 files updating to branch default 31 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved cd macosx-port chmod 7555 get_source.sh ./get_source.sh # Repos:  corba jaxp jaxws langtools jdk hotspot Starting on corba Starting on jaxp Starting on jaxws Starting on langtools Starting on jdk Starting on hotspot # hg clone http://hg.openjdk.java.net/macosx-port/macosx-port/corba corba requesting all changes adding changesets adding manifests adding file changes added 396 changesets with 3275 changes to 1379 files . . . # exit code 0 # cd ./corba && hg pull -u pulling from http://hg.openjdk.java.net/macosx-port/macosx-port/corba searching for changes no changes found # exit code 0 # cd ./jaxp && hg pull -u pulling from http://hg.openjdk.java.net/macosx-port/macosx-port/jaxp searching for changes no changes found # exit code 0 Install Xcode from the App Store. Include /Developer/usr/bin in PATH. Note: JDK 1.6.0_26 ame pre-installed on my laptop and I installed Xode after that. The compilation went fine and there was no need to re-install the Java for Mac OS X as mentioned in the original steps. Build the code as: make ALLOW_DOWNLOADS=true SA_APPLE_BOOT_JAVA=true ALWAYS_PASS_TEST_GAMMA=true ALT_BOOTDIR=`/usr/libexec/java_home -v 1.6` HOTSPOT_BUILD_JOBS=`sysctl -n hw.ncpu` The final output is shown as: >>>Finished making images @ Sat Nov 19 00:59:04 WET 2011 ... >>>Finished making images @ Sat Nov 19 00:59:04 WET 2011 ...############################################################################# Leaving jdk for target(s) sanity all docs images ################################################################################## Build time 00:17:42 jdk for target(s) sanity all docs images ############################################################################### Build times ##########Target all_product_buildStart 2011-11-19 00:32:40End 2011-11-19 00:59:0400:01:46 corba00:04:07 hotspot00:00:51 jaxp00:01:21 jaxws00:17:42 jdk00:00:37 langtools00:26:24 TOTAL######################### Change the directory and verify the version: >cd build/macosx-universal/j2sdk-image/1.7.0.jdk/Contents/Home/bin >./java -version openjdk version "1.7.0-internal" OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0-internal-arungup_2011_11_19_00_32-b00) OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 21.0-b17, mixed mode) Now go fix some bugs, file new bugs, or discuss at the macosx-port-dev mailing list.

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  • Alloy Navigator 6 Automates Reports Integrates with Exchange

    Alloy Software has released Alloy Navigator 6, an update to its Navigator integrated IT operations management application....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.

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  • Drupal Webhosting

    Drupal is often regarded as one of the most popular Content Management System (CMS) that manages web contents pages, and other online projects such as online publications for writers, graphic designe... [Author: Scheygen Smith - Computers and Internet - March 21, 2010]

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