Search Results

Search found 3318 results on 133 pages for 'social gaming'.

Page 37/133 | < Previous Page | 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44  | Next Page >

• If You Could Cut Your Meeting Times in ½ Would You?

  - by [email protected]

  By Brian Dayton on April 22, 2010 2:02 PM I know it sounds like a big promise. And what I'm thinking about may not cut a :60 minute meeting into :30 minutes, but it could make meetings and interactions up to 2X more productive. How? Social Media for the Enterprise, Not Social Media In the Enterprise Bear with me. I'm not talking about whether or not workers should or shouldn't have access to Facebook on corporate networks. That topic has been discussed @ length. I'm also not talking about the direct benefits of Social Networking tools like Presence (the ability to see someone online and ask a question in real-time), blogs, RSS feeds or external tools like Twitter. The Un-Measurable Benefits Would you do something that you believe will have a positive effect--but can't be measured? It's impossible to quantify the effectiveness of a meeting. However, what I am talking about would be more of a byproduct of all of the social networking tools above. Here's the hypothesis: As I've gotten more and more busy with work, family, travel and kids--and the same has happened to my friends and family--I'm less and less connected. But by introducing Facebook to my life I've not only made connections with longtime friends whom I haven't spoken to in years--but I've increased the pace and quality of interactions, on and offline, with close friends who I see and speak to every week. In some cases it even enhances the connections and interactions with those I see or speak to every day. The same holds true in an organization. Especially a larger one with highly matrixed organizational structures. You work with people on a project, new people come in with each different project and a disproportionate amount of time is spent getting oriented and staying current. Going back to the initial value proposition--making meetings shorter/more effective--a large amount of time is spent: - At Project Kick-off: Meeting and understanding team member's histories, goals & roles - Ongoing: Summarizing events since the last meeting or update email In my personal, Facebook life today I know that: - My best friend from college - has been stranded in India for 5 days because of the volcano in Iceland and is now only 250 miles from home - One of my co-workers started conference calls at 6:30 this morning - My wife wasn't terribly pleased with my painting skills in our new bathroom (disclosure: she told me this face to face too) Strengthening Weak Links A recent article in CIO Magazine, Three Dangerous Social Media Misconceptions (Kristen Burnham, March 12, 2010) calls out the #1 misconception as follows: 1. "Face-to-face relationships are far more valuable than virtual ones." While some level of physical interaction will always add value to relationships, Gartner says that come 2020, most relationships and teams will be based on "weak links"--that is, you may not have personally met a contact, but you'll know of or may have interacted with him via social sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. The sooner your enterprise adopts these tools, the sooner your employees will learn them, and the sooner you'll begin to cultivate these relationships-of-the-future. I personally believe that it's not an either/or choice between face-to-face and virtual interactions. In fact, I'll be as bold as saying it doesn't matter. I can point to two extremely valuable work relationships that I've had over the past 5 years: - I shared an office with one of them - I met the other person, face-to-face, only once Both relationships were very productive. The dynamics were similar. The communication tactics differed immensely. What does matter is the quality, frequency and relevance of interactions. Still sound like too much? An over-promise? Stay tuned for my next post The Gap Between Facebook and LinkedIn. I'll also connect some of the dots with where Oracle Applications and technologies are headed.

  Read the article

• Gartner PCC: A Shovel & Some Ah-Ha's

  - by kellsey.ruppel

  When Gartner Vice President and leading analyst Whit Andrews kicked off the Gartner Portals, Content & Collaboration Summit on Monday, March 12 at the Gaylord Palms in Orlando, FL by bringing a shovel to the stage, eyebrows raised and a few thoughts went through my head. Either this guy plans to go help the construction workers outside construct that new pool at the Gaylord or he took a wrong turn and is at the wrong conference. Oh and how did he get that shovel through airport security? As Whit explained more his objective became more clear…take everything anyone has ever told you about portals and throw it out the window, as portals have evolved and times they are most certainly changing. The future Web is here, available not only on browsers but also via a broad spectrum of access points, including automobiles, consumer electronics and more and more mobile devices. Not merely prevalent, the future Web is also multimedia-driven and operates in real time, driven by mobility, social media, streaming video and other dynamic services. Applications and user experiences are in the midst of an evolution — from the early, simple mobile Web models to today’s Web 2.0 mobile apps and, ultimately, to a world of predominantly Web apps. Additionally, cloud services will forever change how portals and user experience are designed, built, delivered, sourced and managed. So what does this mean for you? Today’s organizations need software that will enable them to not just do their jobs, but to do it in a way that is familiar and easy for them.  What does this mean for IT? Use software and technology as an enabler, not as a roadblock. Overall, we had a great week in Orlando learning about how to improve the user experience, manage content explosion, launch social initiatives, transition to mobile environments and understand cloud and SaaS options.  We had some great conversations throughout the conference and at the Oracle booth. Lots of demonstrations were given of Oracle WebCenter Sites and Oracle Social Network. And as Christie mentioned earlier this week, our Vice President of Product Management and Strategy for WebCenter Loren Weinberg presented on the topic of customer engagement and talked about how organization’s relationships with their customers have fundamentally changed today and the resulting impact that has on their priorities.  Loren also talked about the importance of customer engagement, why that matters now more than ever, and what you can do to help your company or organization succeed in this new world. The question asked in every keynote and session was a simple one: What is your “ah-ha” moment? I personally had quite a few, some of which I’ve captured below. 70% of internal social initiatives eventually fail. By 2014, refusing to communicate with consumers via social media will be as harmful as ignoring emails/phone calls is today. Customer engagement = multi-channel + social & interactive + personal & relevant + optimized. If people choose to talk about your product/company/service, it's because it's remarkable. -- Seth Godin's keynote (one of the highlights of the conference!) The Web will become the primary method used for delivering content and applications to mobile devices. By 2015, 20% of smart phone users worldwide will conduct commerce using context-enriched services on a weekly basis.  86% of customers will pay more for a better customer experience. 6 P's of Quality User Experience. Product. Enabled by: People, Patterns, Process, Profit, Priorities. Did you attend the Gartner Summit? What were your ah-ha moments?

  Read the article

• Mobile Deals: the Consumer Wants You in Their Pocket

  - by Mike Stiles

  Mobile deals offer something we talk about a lot in social marketing, relevant content. If a consumer is already predisposed to liking your product and gets a timely deal for it that’s easy and convenient to use, not only do you score on the marketing side, it clearly generates some of that precious ROI that’s being demanded of social. First, a quick gut-check on the public’s adoption of mobile. Nielsen figures have 55.5% of US mobile owners using smartphones. If young people are indeed the future, you can count on the move to mobile exploding exponentially. Teens are the fastest growing segment of smartphone users, and 58% of them have one. But the largest demographic of smartphone users is 25-34 at 74%. That tells you a focus on mobile will yield great results now, and even better results straight ahead. So we can tell both from statistics and from all the faces around you that are buried in their smartphones this is where consumers are. But are they looking at you? Do you have a valid reason why they should? Everybody likes a good deal. BIA/Kelsey says US consumers will spend $3.6 billion this year for daily deals (the Groupons and LivingSocials of the world), up 87% from 2011. The report goes on to say over 26% of small businesses are either "very likely" or "extremely likely" to offer up a deal in the next 6 months. Retail Gazette reports 58% of consumers shop with coupons, a 40% increase in 4 years. When you consider that a deal can be the impetus for a real-world transaction, a first-time visit to a store, an online purchase, entry into a loyalty program, a social referral, a new fan or follower, etc., that 26% figure shows us there’s a lot of opportunity being left on the table by brands. The existing and emerging technologies behind mobile devices make the benefits of offering deals listed above possible. Take how mobile payment systems are being tied into deal delivery and loyalty programs. If it’s really easy to use a coupon or deal, it’ll get used. If it’s complicated, it’ll be passed over as “not worth it.” When you can pay with your mobile via technologies that connects store and user, you get the deal, you get the loyalty credit, you pay, and your receipt is uploaded, all in one easy swipe. Nothing to keep track of, nothing to lose or forget about. And the store “knows” you, so future offers will be based on your tastes. Consider the endgame. A customer who’s a fan of your belt buckle store’s Facebook Page is in one of your physical retail locations. They pull up your app, because they’ve gotten used to a loyalty deal being offered when they go to your store. Voila. A 10% discount active for the next 30 minutes. Maybe the app also surfaces social references to your brand made by friends so they can check out a buckle someone’s raving about. If they aren’t a fan of your Page or don’t have your app, perhaps they’ve opted into location-based deal services so you can still get them that 10% deal while they’re in the store. Or maybe they’ve walked in with a pre-purchased Groupon or Living Social voucher. They pay with one swipe, and you’ve learned about their buying preferences, credited their loyalty account and can encourage them to share a pic of their new buckle on social. Happy customer. Happy belt buckle company. All because the brand was willing to use the tech that’s available to meet consumers where they are, incentivize them, and show them how much they’re valued through rewards.

  Read the article

• How to create a MVC 2 DisplayTemplate for a field whose display format is dependent on another field

  - by Glenn

  If I have a property whose display format is dependent on the value of another property in the view model how do I create a display template for it? The combination of field1's display being dependent on field2's value will be used throughout the app and I would like to encapsulate this in a MVC 2 display template. To be more specific, I've already create a display template (Social.ascx) for custom data type Social that masks a social security number for display. For instance, XXX-XX-1234. [DataType("Social")] public string SocialSecurityNumber { get; set; } All employees also have an employeeID. Certain companies use the employee's social security number as either the whole employee id or as part of it. I need to also mask the employeeID if it contains the social. I'd like to create another display template (EmpID.ascx) to perform this task. [DataType("EmpID")] public string EmployeeID { get; set; } The problem is that I don't know how to get both properties in the "EmpID" template to be able to perform the comparison. Thanks for the help.

  Read the article

• AJAX or a server side framework?

  - by Romansky

  I am working with a friend on building a web site, in general this web site will be a custom web app along with a very custom social network type of thing.. Currently I have a mock-up site that uses simple PHP with AJAX and JSON and JQUERY and I love how it works, I love the way it all fits together. But for a mock-up I did not implement any of the Social Network design patterns such as a login, rating, groups etc.. This brought me to a higher level of decision making requirement, I need to decide if I want to develop all this functionality by hand or use some kind of a framework. I spent this entire day researching, and it would seem that using Drupal and such frameworks will make the Social Network part easy (overlooking the customization requirement for now..) but will make client side Web App development less so. I found some other frameworks that are more developer friendly (customizable) such as Zend and Symfony etc.. but these seem to take allot of the power from the client and implement it in the server side, to me this seems a waste (and an unjustified performance bottleneck) .. Finally I found Aptana Jaxer framework that seems to think the same way I feel. That said it seems a bit under-developed, I didn't find modules for a social network and the community around it seems thin.. (searching Jaxer in StackOverflow returns few results) So other then making server side DB comm a bit simpler it does not help me greatly.. My requirements are a good facility to develop web apps on while containing all the user centric logic usually used for social networks in advance. What would you recommend? EDIT: OK, lats fine tune this question, after considering this abit further, is there a good down loadable source of a social network site in PHP that I can work around in building my web app? (I really like using JQUERY AJAX JSON etc..)

  Read the article

• Racing MMO for Linux - 2D or 3D - Massively Multiplayer Online Racing Games for Linux

  - by Paulocoghi

  I really like multiplayer racing games, like Need for Speed World or similar. I wonder if there is any MMO racing game for Linux (2D or 3D). Browser-based games are also accepted. Note: I tried this question in the Gaming Q&A of StackExchange (see link below), but one user said that my question was off-topic. http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/16329/racing-mmo-for-linux-2d-or-3d-massively-multiplayer-online-racing-games

  Read the article

• Identifying languages used by particular industries

  - by user66146

  I am new to programming and I don't know the differences between the major languages. I desperately want to get into the gaming industry because I have so many stories I want to tell and so many experiences I want to create. I currently do 3D modeling/animation, so any similarities would be helpful. What steps should I take to investigate an industry (gaming) and the companies within that industry? How do I identify what programming languages they use, so I can study them?

  Read the article

• HTG Explains: Should You Build Your Own PC?

  - by Chris Hoffman

  There was a time when every geek seemed to build their own PC. While the masses bought eMachines and Compaqs, geeks built their own more powerful and reliable desktop machines for cheaper. But does this still make sense? Building your own PC still offers as much flexibility in component choice as it ever did, but prebuilt computers are available at extremely competitive prices. Building your own PC will no longer save you money in most cases. The Rise of Laptops It’s impossible to look at the decline of geeks building their own PCs without considering the rise of laptops. There was a time when everyone seemed to use desktops — laptops were more expensive and significantly slower in day-to-day tasks. With the diminishing importance of computing power — nearly every modern computer has more than enough power to surf the web and use typical programs like Microsoft Office without any trouble — and the rise of laptop availability at nearly every price point, most people are buying laptops instead of desktops. And, if you’re buying a laptop, you can’t really build your own. You can’t just buy a laptop case and start plugging components into it — even if you could, you would end up with an extremely bulky device. Ultimately, to consider building your own desktop PC, you have to actually want a desktop PC. Most people are better served by laptops. Benefits to PC Building The two main reasons to build your own PC have been component choice and saving money. Building your own PC allows you to choose all the specific components you want rather than have them chosen for you. You get to choose everything, including the PC’s case and cooling system. Want a huge case with room for a fancy water-cooling system? You probably want to build your own PC. In the past, this often allowed you to save money — you could get better deals by buying the components yourself and combining them, avoiding the PC manufacturer markup. You’d often even end up with better components — you could pick up a more powerful CPU that was easier to overclock and choose more reliable components so you wouldn’t have to put up with an unstable eMachine that crashed every day. PCs you build yourself are also likely more upgradable — a prebuilt PC may have a sealed case and be constructed in such a way to discourage you from tampering with the insides, while swapping components in and out is generally easier with a computer you’ve built on your own. If you want to upgrade your CPU or replace your graphics card, it’s a definite benefit. Downsides to Building Your Own PC It’s important to remember there are downsides to building your own PC, too. For one thing, it’s just more work — sure, if you know what you’re doing, building your own PC isn’t that hard. Even for a geek, researching the best components, price-matching, waiting for them all to arrive, and building the PC just takes longer. Warranty is a more pernicious problem. If you buy a prebuilt PC and it starts malfunctioning, you can contact the computer’s manufacturer and have them deal with it. You don’t need to worry about what’s wrong. If you build your own PC and it starts malfunctioning, you have to diagnose the problem yourself. What’s malfunctioning, the motherboard, CPU, RAM, graphics card, or power supply? Each component has a separate warranty through its manufacturer, so you’ll have to determine which component is malfunctioning before you can send it off for replacement. Should You Still Build Your Own PC? Let’s say you do want a desktop and are willing to consider building your own PC. First, bear in mind that PC manufacturers are buying in bulk and getting a better deal on each component. They also have to pay much less for a Windows license than the $120 or so it would cost you to to buy your own Windows license. This is all going to wipe out the cost savings you’ll see — with everything all told, you’ll probably spend more money building your own average desktop PC than you would picking one up from Amazon or the local electronics store. If you’re an average PC user that uses your desktop for the typical things, there’s no money to be saved from building your own PC. But maybe you’re looking for something higher end. Perhaps you want a high-end gaming PC with the fastest graphics card and CPU available. Perhaps you want to pick out each individual component and choose the exact components for your gaming rig. In this case, building your own PC may be a good option. As you start to look at more expensive, high-end PCs, you may start to see a price gap — but you may not. Let’s say you wanted to blow thousands of dollars on a gaming PC. If you’re looking at spending this kind of money, it would be worth comparing the cost of individual components versus a prebuilt gaming system. Still, the actual prices may surprise you. For example, if you wanted to upgrade Dell’s $2293 Alienware Aurora to include a second NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 graphics card, you’d pay an additional $600 on Alienware’s website. The same graphics card costs $650 on Amazon or Newegg, so you’d be spending more money building the system yourself. Why? Dell’s Alienware gets bulk discounts you can’t get — and this is Alienware, which was once regarded as selling ridiculously overpriced gaming PCs to people who wouldn’t build their own. Building your own PC still allows you to get the most freedom when choosing and combining components, but this is only valuable to a small niche of gamers and professional users — most people, even average gamers, would be fine going with a prebuilt system. If you’re an average person or even an average gamer, you’ll likely find that it’s cheaper to purchase a prebuilt PC rather than assemble your own. Even at the very high end, components may be more expensive separately than they are in a prebuilt PC. Enthusiasts who want to choose all the individual components for their dream gaming PC and want maximum flexibility may want to build their own PCs. Even then, building your own PC these days is more about flexibility and component choice than it is about saving money. In summary, you probably shouldn’t build your own PC. If you’re an enthusiast, you may want to — but only a small minority of people would actually benefit from building their own systems. Feel free to compare prices, but you may be surprised which is cheaper. Image Credit: Richard Jones on Flickr, elPadawan on Flickr, Richard Jones on Flickr     

  Read the article

• Does it help to be core programmer of a product (product meant for social good ) for getting into Ph. D. in top university in USA say top 20?

  - by Maddy.Shik

  Hey i am working upon a product as core developer which will be launched in USA market in few months if successful. Can this factor improve my chance to get Ph.D. in good university(say top 20 in US). Normally good universities like CMU, standford, MIT, Cornell are more interested in student's profile like research work, under graduate school etc. I am not passed out from very good university its ranked in top 20 of India only. Neither did i do research work till now. But being one of founding member of company and developing product for same, i want to know if this factor can help and to what extent. For university with ranking lower than 20 what matters most is GRE General score and GPA but i guess top university must be appreciating a person's real efforts.

  Read the article

• Why Healthcare Today Needs BPM and SOA by Avio

  - by JuergenKress

  Within the past couple years, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has led to significant changes in the healthcare industry. A highly-complex supply chain between patients, providers, buyers and insurance companies has led to a lack of overall collaboration when it comes to processes. The first open enrollment deadline for products on the Health Insurance Exchange has passed. So what now? Let’s take a brief look at how things have changed and what organizations can do to stay in (and ahead of) the game. New requirements, new processes Organizations that have not adapted processes to meet new regulatory requirements will fall further behind. New regulatory requirements effectively make some legacy applications obsolete, require batch process to move to real-time, and more. Business Process Management (BPM) can help organizations bring data processes in line while helping IT redesign processes rather than change code or replace existing applications. BPM fills in application gaps and links critical information systems for a more visible, efficient and auditable organization. Social and mobile solutions BPM technology also facilitates social and mobile solutions that can help meet new needs. Patients are dependent on a network of doctors, pharmacists, families and others. Social solutions can connect members of the patient’s community in ways never seen before - enabling real-time, relevant communication. Likewise, mobile technology supports social solutions, and BPM is the most efficient way to make processes simple and role-based. It unties medical professionals from their offices by enabling them to access timely information and alerts anywhere. Why SOA is also needed Integrating BPM with Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) also plays a critical role in the development of healthcare solutions that work. SOA can create a single end-to-end process, integrate applications and move them into a common workflow. While SOA enables the reutilization of existing IT infrastructure, BPM supports the process optimization, monitoring and social aspects. SOA and BPM applications support business analysts as they model, create and monitor processes - providing real-time insight and a unified workflow of process activities. Read “New” Solutions for a New Healthcare Landscape on our blog to learn more. SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Wiki Technorati Tags: Avio,Healthcare,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress

  Read the article

• Google Games Chat #5

  Google Games Chat #5 The Google Games Chat (official motto: "Still not cancelled") is back for yet another rousing debate about industry trends, the state of gaming in general, and, frankly, any other random thoughts that happen to cross our minds. We don't really filter what we say very much. Ask us questions in the moderator link! We might even get around to answering them! From: GoogleDevelopers Views: 0 0 ratings Time: 00:00 More in Gaming

  Read the article

• Optimal Networking Setup for a 2-Story unit?

  - by user29336

  I am moving into a 4 bedroom two-story unit. It’s roughly 2,200 sq ft. I want absolute max throughput possible to be achieved in all focal points. We’re all in internet related industries. Between gaming and web-development latency and throughput are major factors for us. Here’s our main focal points: 1) Garage (office). downstairs 2) Each bedroom x4. upstairs 3) Living room. downstairs The fastest line we can get is Comcast 50mbdown/5up (Wideband). I am looking for the best way to achieve wireless and wired performance for our setup. Our gaming computers may be in our bedroom, and we also may bring it down to the office every now and then for “LAN” sessions. Most wireless will be happening downstairs with our laptops, but since we may do LAN sessions then hard wired latency may be important there too. My concerns: If we do only wireless there would be too much latency for gaming. I don’t know if placing one D-link DGL 4500 on the top floor would be enough; which I currently own. (http://dlink.com/us/en/home-solutions/support/product/dgl-4500-xtreme-n-gaming-router) As far as I’m aware wireless signals transfer best top down. Would this wireless router be enough on top floor and that’s it? My second strategy was a combination of wiring and wireless but I’m not sure what’s easiest way to do this? This is a place we’re renting, so I’m not sure how much leeway we have with wiring, but we’re all pretty competent... if we can’t drill through a wall we can probably “stitch” them across the edges wherever needed. Thoughts on the optimal way to do this?

  Read the article

• how to set auto redirection in tomcat

  - by Registered User

  I have a site http://social.openitup.in right now what you are seeing is a default Tomcat6 page. I am using mod_ajp as a front end and Apache vhost configuration for same is <VirtualHost *:80 > ServerName social.openitup.in ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost ProxyRequests off <Proxy *> Order deny,allow Allow from all </Proxy> ProxyPreserveHost On ProxyPass / ajp://192.168.1.19:8009/ ProxyPassReverse / ajp://192.168.1.19:8009/ </VirtualHost> How ever I have an application running on it http://social.openitup.in/olat what I want to do is when some one opens http://social.openitup.in then rather than seeing Tomcat6 home page from /var/lib/tomcat6/webapps/ROOT/index.html the person is redirected to olat application which is in /var/lib/tomcat6/webapps/olat how can this be achived? The above vhost configuration is on a machine separate than where OLAT is running.

  Read the article

• ACER ASPIRE V3-571G-9435 Fan not kicking in leading to overclocking

  - by brythespy

  This laptop has always had this problem. The temperatures kick up to the thermal ceiling of 99C for the CPU (i7-3610QM) and 94C for the GPU (GT 640M). Problem is, the FAN doesn't give a damn. It's actually QUIETER when the temperatures are that high, than when it's at 60C or so. I figured it was a problem with the BIOS, so I updated that, no change. So maybe it was a problem with windows? Nope, same result on gaming with Ubuntu. The major problem of this, is that after gaming for ten minutes the CPU throttles itself to 1197MHz(as opposed to 3193), and the GPU goes down to 135MHz( as opposed to 843MHz). The problem is that the fan won't kick in like I know it can, because when the laptop is in POST, like at BIOS setup, the fan is like a vacuum cleaner it's so loud! I don't really care about noise, so I'd love to have the fan like that all the time as long as the temperatures don't fly through the roof... So, things I've tried so far, to avoid possible duplicate answers. Checked for dust: It's been this way since the laptop was new, and I've since then taken it apart. No dust buildup. Background stuff running?: No, problem persists across OS'es, and it happens while gaming anyways Manually underclocking both CPU/GPU: Using windows, I can force the CPU to stay at 1.1GHz, but the temperature STILL easily hits 99C after 5 min of gaming Contacted Acer support?: No help at all. They told me to update and reset the BIOS, which I have done multiple times. There are only about 6 changeable things anyway, none of which should affect the FAN control Third party fan control program?: None detect the fan So, I'm screwed until I can afford to replace this laptop, but I am very satisfied with performance in games... Whenever the CPU/GPU aren't being throttled. Anyone that can offer advice to solve this problem would be greatly appreciated. Hell, if you solved my problem I'd send you some monies through paypal.

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, June 13, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, June 13, 2010New ProjectsCurve Drawer: A Java project to explore the possibilities of drawing curves and knots.File Manager Redux: .NET version of the original File Manager.Hierachical Gantt Chart In SharePoint 2010: This solution makes it easier for shedule management. We will provide a wsp including a list definition and a custom gantt control. The list defi...Light Box Control for Asp.Net: Lightbox control for asp.net is used to display the thumbnail images. on clicking the thumbnail images the original images is displayed in the ligh...Linquify: Linquify is a Visual Studio 2008/2010 Addin and C# .NET business class / DTO generator for LINQ to SQL and the Entity Framework. It supports rapid ...Microsoft Dynamics CRM Query - T4 Template: A T4 Template that generates code that leverages LINQ to SQL and the Microsoft Dynamics CRM API to give a CRM data access solution. There is also ...Open Sound Control Library: A .NET Library for the Open Sound Control Protocol. This library makes it easy to use devices which communicate via OSC.Questionable Content Screensaver: A screensaver for the questionable content comic. It is written in C#, and uses the windows presentation foundation. See the comic at http://ww...Reflect: Reflect is an open source .NET reflection tool used for viewing metadata of .NET assemblies.runescape 602 client tools and server: runescape 602 client tools and serverSharpCrack: Hash cracker written in managed code.SilverCAT project: This is my Windows Azure study project. So far I did not find any value to share it to the public. If I find it out one day, I will add hereSilverStackAPI: My entry for the Stack Exchange API contest. A silverlight library and demo app.social bookmark control for asp.net: social bookmark control for asp.net, This control is used to bookmark the current asp.net page into popular social networking sites like facebook, ...SSIS Event Log Source: An SSIS 2005 Data Source component for loading Windows 2003/XP event logs (*.evt) into SQL Server 2005 for analysisUnOfficial ActiveWorlds Wrapper.Net: UnOfficial ActiveWorlds Wrapper .Net makes it easier for programmers to make active worlds bots. You'll no longer have to make it by yourself. It'...Using Named Pipe and self-elevation feature of Vista in a console application.: NPipeWithElevatedProc, make it easier for console application users, running programs with administrator privileges. The processing messages are al...Virtual Keyboard control for asp.net: Virtual Keyboard control for asp.net, This control is used to get the secured inputs through virtual keyboards.Visual Studio 2010 PowerShell Code Generator: Brings rich PowerShell functionalities into VS Templating. You can access the file system, the registry, and many other PowerShell features. You ca...WatchersNET.UrlShorty: This Module allows users to shorten a long URL and share it, this is a similiar service to web services like bit.ly, tinyurl.com and others. It als...New ReleasesBD File Hash: BD File Hash 1.0.5: The first public release of BD File Hash.Cassandraemon: Cassandraemon 0.6.0: Cassandraemon is LINQ Provider for Apache Cassandra. This is first release of Cassandraemon. Features You can Query by LINQ Support Regist, Del...Community Forums NNTP bridge: Community Forums NNTP Bridge V36: Release of the Community Forums NNTP Bridge to access the social and anwsers MS forums with a single, open source NNTP bridge. This release has ad...Curve Drawer: Alpha 1: Basic functionality is available to draw curves and clear them.CycleMania Starter Kit EAP - ASP.NET 4 Problem - Design - Solution: Cyclemania 09.32: see Source Code tab for recent change historyDEWD: DEWD for Umbraco v1.0 (beta-2): Beta release of the package. Functional feature set and fairly stable. Since the last release: Default values (support for dynamic values such as t...Fiddler TreeView Panel Extension: FiddlerTreeViewPanel 0.71: Added support for double-click to expand/collapse all child nodes. Keep selected node when losing focus from the TreeView. Please refer to http://...HKGolden Express: HKGoldenExpress (Build 201006130200): New features: User can reply to message with quoting others' message. Bug fix: Incorrect format of dynamically generated Sitemap XML. Improveme...Liekhus ADO.NET Entity Data Model XAF Extensions: Version 1.1.2: Latest patches and changes.Light Box Control for Asp.Net: Light Box Control for asp.net: Lightbox control for asp.net is used to display the thumbnail images. on clicking the thumbnail images the original images is displayed in the ligh...Lightweight Fluent Workflow: Objectflow 1.1.0.0: This release has support for multi-threaded operations. As this required significant changes to the fluent interface I have introduced breaking ch...Linquify: Linquify 1.6: Linquify 1.6 Includes: - Support for Entity Framework foreign keys - TransactionsLiteFx: LiteFx Alpha: Versão alpha do LiteFx.Microsoft Dynamics CRM Query - T4 Template: MS CRM Query T4 Template Version 0.5 Beta: Initial ReleaseNHibernate Membership Provider: NHibernate Membership Provider 0.9c: This is an updated source package with updated unit tests and some minor refactoring.NLog - Advanced .NET Logging: Nightly Build 2010.06.12.001: Changes since the last build:2010-06-12 10:42:41 Jarek Kowalski Added Width, Height, AutoScroll and MaxLines parameters to RichTextBoxTarget. 2010...Radical: Radical 1.0.1 (Vacuum): First drop with support for Windows Phone 7SharpCrack: SharpCrack v0.8: First release of SharpCrack. It does not support brute-force mode.social bookmark control for asp.net: social bookmark control for asp.net: social bookmark control for asp.net, This control is used to bookmark the current asp.net page into popular social networking sites like facebook, ...StardustExtensions: Simple hello: This is a very simple hello world script. Is just a basic script, is not packaged and works on IronPythonTiledLib: TiledLib 1.5: This release introduces breaking changes from 1.2. If you upgrade to this version from 1.2, you may have compiler errors and/or runtime differences...UDC indexes parser: UDC Parser RC1: Обновлена библиотека токенов, добавлены xml-doc комментарии, обновлен и исправлен код, обновлена логика лексера, обновлена грамматика парсера. Доба...UnOfficial ActiveWorlds Wrapper.Net: UnOfficial ActiveWorlds Wrapper.Net V0.5.85.1: NewLogin Structure. LaserBeam. ChangedOld Functions Changes Function Names Old New WorldInstanceSet SetWorldInstance WorldInstanceGet GetWo...UrzaGatherer: UrzaGatherer v2.0.2a: Inegration of VS Installer.VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30612.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVirtual Keyboard control for asp.net: virtual keyboard control: Virtual Keyboard control for asp.net, This control is used to get the secured inputs through virtual keyboards.Visual Studio 2010 PowerShell Code Generator: PSCodeGenerator: How to install PowerShell Code GeneratorDownload the zip Unzip Run .\Install-PSCodeGenerator.ps1 at the PowerShell console prompt Copies the te...VsTortoise - a TortoiseSVN add-in for Microsoft Visual Studio: VsTortoise Build 25 Beta: Build 25 (beta) New: Added support for Filter items (virtual folders) in Solution Explorer. New: Added "Get Lock..." to Solution Explorer context...WatchersNET.UrlShorty: WatchersNET.UrlShorty 01.00.00: First BETA Release Please Read the Readme or the Online Documentation for Install Instructions.Yet Another GPS: Release Beta 2.1: Release Beta 2.1: - Fix KML Template with Google Map Mobile Version - Add Signal Strength indecator - Add Time indecator - Fix Sound Language Prob...Most Popular ProjectsWBFS ManagerRawrAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)patterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryPHPExcelMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesASP.NETMost Active Projectspatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleRhyduino - Arduino and Managed CodeBlogEngine.NETCommunity Forums NNTP bridgeCassandraemonMediaCoder.NETAndrew's XNA HelpersMicrosoft Silverlight Media Framework

  Read the article

• The Grenelle II Act In France: A Milestone Towards Integrated Reporting

  - by Evelyn Neumayr

  By Elena Avesani, Principal Product Strategy Manager, Oracle In July of 2010, France took a significant step towards mandating integrated sustainability and financial reporting for all large companies with a new law called Grenelle II. Article 225 of Grenelle II requires that many listed companies on the French stock exchanges incorporate information on the social and environmental consequences of their activities into their annual reports, as well as their societal commitments for sustainable development. The decree that implements Article 225 of Grenelle II was passed in April 2012. Grenelle II is the strongest governmental mandate yet in support of sustainability reporting. The law defines the phase-in process, with large listed companies expected to comply in their 2012 reports and smaller companies expected to comply with their 2014 annual reports. This extra-financial information will have to be embedded in the annual management report, approved by the Board of Directors, verified by a third-party body and given to the annual general meeting. The subjects that must be reported on are grouped into Environmental, Social, and Governance categories. Oracle solutions can help organizations integrate financial and sustainability reporting and provide a more accurate and auditable approach to collecting, consolidating, and reporting such environmental, social, and economic metrics. Through Oracle Environmental Accounting and Reporting and Oracle Hyperion Financial Management Sustainability Starter Kit organizations can collect environmental, social and governance data and collect and consolidate corporate sustainability reporting data from multiple systems and business units. For more information about these solutions please contact [email protected].

  Read the article

• Using SocialCounter.NET with ASP.NET MVC

  - by DigiMortal

  I found small library called SocialCounter.NET that is able to display some data from popular social sites. Although it is possible to use widgets offered by social networks there are also scenarios when you don’t want or can’t use these JavaScript based widgets. In this posting I will show you how to use SocialCounter.NET. Start with downloading SocialCounter.NET. You can also use NuGet package manager to download SocialCounter.NET. Using SocialCounter.NET is very easy as you can see from this example view: @using SocialCounter.NET; @{      ViewBag.Title = "Home Page"; } <h2>Social</h2> <p>     Twitter followers: @Counter.GetTwitterFollowersCount("gpeipman")<br />     Facebook friends: @Counter.GetFacebookFriendsCount("gpeipman")<br />     Facebook likes: @Counter.GetFacebookLikes("http://www.eindhovenmetalmeeting.nl/")<br />     Delicious saves count: @Counter.GetDeliciousSaveCount("http://youreffectiveleadership.com/")<br /> </p> And the result is shown on image on right. You can use SocialCounter.NET by example on user profile pages and on your content pages where you want to show how many people have saved current page as bookmark. SocialCounter.NET supports also LinkedIn, RSS-feeds and Google Plus accounts. In future – I hope – they will add support for more social networks to their library.

  Read the article

• Customize Your WordPress Blog & Build an Audience

  - by Matthew Guay

  Want to quickly give your blog a fresh coat of paint and make it stand out from the pack?  Here’s how you can customize your WordPress blog and make it uniquely yours. WordPress offers many features that help you make your blog the best it can be.  Although it doesn’t offer as many customization features as full WordPress running on your own server, it still makes it easy to make your free blog as professional or cute as you like.  Here we’ll look at how you can customize features in your blog and build an audience. Personalize Your Blog WordPress make it easy to personalize your blog.  Most of the personalization options are available under the Appearance menu on the left.  Here we’ll look at how you can use most of these. Add New Theme WordPress is popular for the wide range of themes available for it.  While you cannot upload your own theme to your blog, you can choose from over 90 free themes currently available with more added all the time.  To change your theme, select the Themes page under Appearance. The Themes page will show random themes, but you can choose to view them in alphabetical order, by popularity, or how recently they were added.  Or, you can search for a theme by name or features. One neat way to find a theme that suites your needs is the Feature Filter.  Click the link on the right of the search button, and then select the options you want to make sure your theme has.  Click Apply Filters and WordPress will streamline your choices to themes that contain these features. Once you find a theme you like, click Preview under its name to see how your blog will look. This will open a popup that shows your blog with the new theme.  Click the Activate link in the top right corner of the popup if you want to keep this theme; otherwise, click the x in the top left corner to close the preview and continue your search for one you want.   Edit Current Theme Many of the themes on WordPress have customization options so you can make your blog stand out from others using the same theme.  The default theme Twenty Ten lets you customize both the header and background image, and many themes have similar options. To choose a new header image, select the Header page under Appearance.  Select one of the pre-installed images and click Save Changes, or upload your own image. If you upload an image larger than the size for the header, WordPress will let you crop it directly in the web interface.  Click Crop Header when you’ve selected the portion you want for the header of your blog. You can also customize your blog’s background from the Background page under Appearance.  You can upload an image for the background, or can enter a hex value of a color for a solid background.  If you’d rather visually choose a color, click Select a Color to open a color wheel that makes it easy to choose a nice color.  Click Save Changes when you’re done. Note: that all themes may not contain these customization options, but many are flexible.  You cannot edit the actual CSS of your theme on free WordPress blogs, but you you can purchase the Custom CSS Upgrade for $14.97/year to add this ability. Add Widgets With Extra Content Widgets are small addons for your blog, similar to Desktop Gadgets in Windows 7 or Dashboard widgets in Mac OS X.  You can add widgets to your blog to show recent Tweets, favorite Flickr pictures, popular articles, and more.  To add widgets to your blog, open the Widgets page under Appearance. You’ll see a variety of widgets available in the main white box.  Select one you want to add, and drag it to the widget area of your choice.  Different themes may offer different areas to place Widgets, such as the sidebar or footer. Most of the widgets offer configuration options.  Click the down arrow beside its name to edit it.  Set them up as you wish, and click Save on the bottom of the widget. Now we’ve got some nice dynamic content on our blog that’s automatically updated from the net. Choose Blog Extras By default, WordPress shows previews of websites when visitors hover over links on your blog, uses a special mobile theme when people visit from a mobile device, and shows related links to other blogs on the WordPress network at the end of your posts.  If you don’t like these features, you can disable them on the Extras page under Appearance. Build Your Audience Now that your blog is looking nice, we can make sure others will discover it.  WordPress makes it easy for you to make your site discoverable on search engines or social network, and even gives you the option to keep your site private if you’d prefer.  Open the Privacy page under Tools to change your site’s visibility.  By default, it will be indexed by search engines and be viewable to everyone.  You can also choose to leave your blog public but block search engines, or you can make it fully private. If you choose to make your blog private, you can enter up to 35 usernames of people you want to be able to see it.  Each private visitor must have a WordPress.com account so they can login.  If you need more than 35 private members, you can upgrade to allow unlimited private members for $29.97/year. Then, if you do want your site visible from search engines, one of the best ways to make sure your content is discovered by search engines is to register with their webmaster tools.  Once registered, you need to add your key to your site so the search engine will find and index it.  On the bottom of the Tools page, WordPress lets you enter your key from Google, Bing, and Yahoo! to make sure your site is discovered.  If you haven’t signed up with these tools yet, you can signup via the links on this page as well. Post Blog Updates to Social Networks Many people discover the sites they visit from friends and others via social networks.  WordPress makes it easy to automatically share links to your content on popular social networks.  To activate this feature, open the My Blogs page under Dashboard. Now, select the services you want to activate under the Publicize section.  This will automatically update Yahoo!, Twitter, and/or Facebook every time you publish a new post. You’ll have to authorize your connection with the social network.  With Twitter and Yahoo!, you can authorize them with only two clicks, but integrating with Facebook will take several steps.   If you’d rather share links yourself on social networks, you can get shortened URLs to your posts.  When you write a new post or edit an existing one, click the Get Shortlink button located underneath the post’s title. This will give you a small URL, usually 20 characters or less, that you can use to post on social networks such as Twitter.   This should help build your traffic, and if you want to see how many people are checking out your site, check out the stats on your Dashboard.  This shows a graph of how many people are visiting, and popular posts.  Click View All if you’d like more detailed stats including search engine terms that lead people to your blog. Conclusion Whether you’re looking to make a private blog for your group or publish a blog that’s read by millions around the world, WordPress is a great way to do it for free.  And with all of the personalization options, you can make your it memorable and exciting for your visitors. If you don’t have a blog, you can always signup for a free one from WordPress.com.  Also make sure to check out our article on how to Start Your Own Blog with WordPress. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Manage Your WordPress Blog Comments from Your Windows DesktopAdd Social Bookmarking (Digg This!) Links to your Wordpress BlogHow-To Geek SoftwareMake a Backup Copy of your Production Wordpress Blog on UbuntuOops! Sorry About the Feed Errors TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup Windows Firewall with Advanced Security – How To Guides Sculptris 1.0, 3D Drawing app AceStock, a Tiny Desktop Quote Monitor Gmail Button Addon (Firefox) Hyperwords addon (Firefox) Backup Outlook 2010

  Read the article

• links for 2010-05-06

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Podcast: Collaborate 10 Wrap-Up - Conclusion #c10 More Collaborate 2010 Las Vegas highlights and hijinks from this ten-member panel, including OAUG and ODTUG board members, members of the Oracle ACE program, and OAUG President Dave Ferguson. (tags: otn oracle collaborate2010) Peter Scott: Realtime Data Warehouse Loading Rittman-Mead's Peter Scott looks at putting data in to a data warehouse in real time. (tags: oracle datawarehousing businessintelligence) Live Webcast: Social BPM - Integrating Enterprise 2.0 with Business Applications - May 12, 2010 at 11:00 a.m. PT Business Process Management with integrated Enterprise 2.0 collaboration can improve business responsiveness and enhance overall enterprise productivity. Learn how to take your business to the next level with a unified solution that fosters process-based collaboration between employees, partners, and customers. (tags: oracle otn bpm enterprise2.0 webcast) Management Pack for Identity Management Viewlet A screencast produced by the Grid Control team showing the features of the Identity Management Pack for Grid Control 11g. Grid Control 11g now works with Oracle Virtual Directory 11g. (tags: oracle otn security identitymanagement) @pevansgreenwood: Having too much SOA is a bad thing (and what we might do about it) "The problem is usually too much flexibility, as flexibility creates complexity, and complexity exponentially increases the effort required to manage and deliver the software." -- Peter Evans-Greenwood (tags: soa complexity flexibility) @vampbenepe: Integration patterns for social data: the Open Social Data Bus "The main point is about defining the right integration pattern for social data: is it a 'message bus' pattern or a 'shared database' pattern?" -- William Vampbenepe (tags: oracle otn enterprise2.0 enterprisearchitecture)

  Read the article

• Enterprise 2.0 Conference: November 14-17

  - by kellsey.ruppel

  Oracle is proud to be a Gold sponsor of the Enterprise 2.0 West Conference, November 14-17, 2011 in Santa Clara, CA. You will see the latest collaboration tools and technologies, and learn from thought leaders in Enterprise 2.0's comprehensive conference. You won’t want to miss this opportunity to learn about Oracle WebCenter, the user engagement platform for social business—connecting people and information. Oracle WebCenter brings together the most complete portfolio of portal, web experience management, content, social, and collaboration technologies into a single integrated product suite, and it provides the foundation for Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Fusion Applications to deliver a next-generation user experience. If you're attending the conference, you'll want to be sure to catch Andy MacMillan at these 2 sessions. Market Leaders Theater Session "Today's Successful Enterprises are Social Enterprises" Featuring: Andy MacMillan, Vice President, Oracle WebCenter Product Management Tuesday, November 15, 1:00 p.m. – 1:20 p.m.  Technology Landscape Panel "Marketplace Choices: Platforms vs. Products" Moderator: Tony Byrne, President, Real Story Group Featuring: Andy MacMillan, Vice President, Oracle WebCenter Product Management Tuesday, November 15, 2:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. Enterprise 2.0 conference attendees will also have the opportunity to meet with Oracle WebCenter experts and see live demonstrations of Oracle WebCenter and Oracle Social Network by visiting Oracle booth #209. Exhibit show floor hours: Tuesday, November 15, 12:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. and Wednesday, November 16, 12:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. Be sure to follow @oraclewebcenter and #e2conf for the latest updates! We look forward to seeing you this week in Santa Clara!

  Read the article

• Applying to a company while personally working on a comparable project

  - by Developer Art

  That's going to be an unusual question but here it goes. I'm entertaining the thought to send my docs to a place which develops a large web project of a social type. Social meaning people, communities, interaction and all that usual stuff. The issue is that I myself am working on something that falls into the category of social in my private time. Now the question. Is it wise to apply there under these circumstances? I think there may be issues of intellectual ownership if I develop something similar that exists or will exist in that company's work. On the other hand, the web of full of social places (even this site is one of them), many of them utilize the same ideas and move in the same direction and it seems to work for everyone. It's hard to come up with something which hasn't been tried yet by somebody else so it's all basically reuse of the commonly available ideas and experience. What I'm working on is not a functional equivalent, it's rather largely off. There may be some intersections, but on a large scale this is not an equivalent. And whatever features might coincide, they already exist everywhere on the web anyway. Also technology stacks are entirely different so the issue with directly copying out parts of the code is probably not applicable. I plan to say it up front that I'm engaged in a personal project of mine and let them see if it represents a problem for them. What do you think? Am I making things up or is there really an issue?

  Read the article

• The balance between client and server functionality

  - by Eugen Martynov

  I want to bring the discussion that started in our teams and get your opinion about it. Assume we have an user account which could have different credentials for authentication and associated email to recover. An user has possibility to do signup with an email or use his social profile to complete signup process. As an Rest API from the backend to client looks like: Create account Authorise Update user data Link social account Register email Verify email In addition our BE is distributed and divided between several services/servers/clusters. So different calls are related to different end points. In case of the social sign up some of steps should be skipped or simplified. For example, with Facebook signup we could already skip email registration and verification step (we ask email permission form user), linking the social account and pre-fill user displayed name. So we proposed to have another end point which will hide/combine different calls on BE and return whole process result to the clients. The pros for this approach: No more duplication of functionality between clients Speed up the networking and user experience The cons for this approach: Additional work for backend Probably most complex scenarios in future updates I would like to get your opinion or experience with this situation. Especially if you already experienced point #2 from against reasons.

  Read the article

• Underwriting in a New Frontier: Spurring Innovation

  - by [email protected]

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* 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:"Calibri","sans-serif";} Susan Keuer, product strategy manager for Oracle Insurance, shares her experiences and insight from the 2010 Association of Home Office Underwriters (AHOU) Annual Conference, April 11-14, in San Antonio, Texas    How can I be more innovative in underwriting?  It's a common question I hear from insurance carriers, producers and others, so it was no surprise that it was the key theme at the recent 2010 AHOU Annual Conference.  This year's event drew more than 900 insurance professionals involved in the underwriting process across life and annuities, property and casualty and reinsurance from around the globe, including the U.S., Canada, Australia, Bahamas, and more, to San Antonio - a Texas city where innovation transformed a series of downtown drainage canals into its premiere River Walk tourist destination.   CNN's Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta kicked off the conference with a phenomenal opening session that drove home the theme of the conference, "Underwriting in a New Frontier:  Spurring Innovation."   Drawing from his own experience as a neurosurgeon treating critically injured medical patients in the field in Iraq, Gupta inspired audience members to think outside the box during the underwriting process. He shared a compelling story of operating on a soldier who had suffered a head-related trauma in a field hospital.  With minimal supplies available Gupta used a Black and Decker saw to operate on the soldier's head and reduce pressure on his swelling brain. Drawing from this example, Gupta encouraged underwriters to think creatively, be innovative, and consider new tools and sources of information, such as social networking sites, during the underwriting process. So as you are looking at risk take into consideration all resources you have available.    Gupta also stressed the concept of IKIGAI - noting that individuals who believe that their life is worth living are less likely to die than are their counterparts without this belief.  How does one quantify this approach to life or thought process when evaluating risk?  Could this be something to consider as a "category" in the near future? How can this same belief in your own work spur innovation?   The role of technology was a hot topic of discussion throughout the conference.  Sessions delved into the latest in underwriting software to the rise of social media and how it is being increasingly integrated into underwriting process and solutions.  In one session a trio of panelists representing the carrier, producer and vendor communities stressed the importance to underwriters of leveraging new technology and the plethora of online information sources, which all could be used to accurately, honestly and consistently evaluate the risk throughout the underwriting process.   Another focused on the explosion of social media noting:  1.    Social media is growing exponentially - About eight percent of Americans used social media five years ago. Today about 46 percent of Americans do so, with 85 percent of financial services professionals using social media in their work.  2.    It will impact your business - Underwriters reconfirmed over and over that they are increasingly using "free" tools that are available in cyberspace in lieu of more costly solutions, such as inspection reports conducted by individuals in the field.  3.    Information is instantly available on the Web, anytime, anywhere - LinkedIn was mentioned as a way to connect to peers in the underwriting community and producers alike.  Many carriers and agents also are using Facebook to promote their company to customers - and as a point-of-entry to allow them to perform some functionality - such as accessing product marketing information versus directing users to go to the carrier's own proprietary website.  Other carriers have released their tight brand marketing to allow their producers to drive more business to their personal Facebook site where they offer innovative tools such as Application Capture or asking medical information in a more relaxed fashion.     Other key topics at the conference included the economy, ongoing industry consolidation, real-estate valuations as an asset and input into the underwriting process, and producer trends.  All stressed a "back to basics" approach for low cost, term products.   Finally, Connie Merritt, RN, PHN, entertained the large group of atttendees with audience-engaging insight on how to "Tame the Lions in Your Life - Dealing with Complainers, Bullies, Grump and Curmudgeon." Merritt noted "we are too busy for our own good." She shared how her overachieving personality had impacted her life.  Audience members then were asked to pick red, yellow, blue, or green shapes, without knowing that each one represented a specific personality trait.  For example, those who picked blue were the peacemakers. Those who choose yellow were social - the hint was to "Be Quiet Longer."  She then offered these "lion taming" steps:   1.    Admit It 2.    Accept It 3.    Let Go 4.    Be Present (which paralleled Gupta's IKIGAI concept)   When thinking about underwriting I encourage you to be present in the moment and think creatively, but don't be afraid to look ahead to the future and be an innovator.  I hope to see you at next year's AHOU Annual Conference, May 1-4, 2011 at The Mirage in Las Vegas, Nev.     Susan Keuer is the product strategy manager for new business underwriting.  She brings more than 20 years of insurance industry experience working with leading insurance carriers and technology companies to her role on the product strategy team for life/annuities solutions within the Oracle Insurance Global Business Unit  

  Read the article

• How do I prevent a website being misclassified by Websense?

  - by Jeff Atwood

  I received the following email from a user of one of our websites: This morning I tried to log into example.com and I was blocked by Websense at work because it is considered a "social networking" site or something. I assume the websense filter is maintained by a central location, so I'm hoping that by letting you guys know you can get it unblocked. per Wikipedia, Websense is web filtering or Internet content-control software. This means one (or more) of our sites is being miscategorized by Websense as "social networking" and thus disallowed for access at any workplace that uses Websense to control what websites their users can and cannot access during work hours. (I know, they are monsters!) How do we dispute this Websense classification error, as our websites should generally be considered "information technology" and never "social networking"? How do we know what category Websense has put our sites in, so we can pro-actively make sure they're not wrong?

  Read the article

• Oracle Launches Something Cool for CRM

  - by andrea.mulder

  By Esteban Kolsky, CRM Intelligence and Strategy, March 31 Remember CRM? That stuff we used to do before Social CRM? The stuff that most people still do and need to continue to improve? Oracle does. Today they announced three CRM things: Siebel OnDemand release 17 with some clever life sciences complements, additions to the Oracle eBusiness Suite, and the Social Services Suite for Governments (part of a Siebel 8.2 release). I used to cover CRM and Government in a past life and I know that Social Services delivery is very complicated. For additional insights, read here.

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44  | Next Page >