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  • debootstrap or virt-install Ubuntu Server Maverick fails

    - by poelinca
    Oki so running any kind of variation of debootsrap i get the following error I: Extracting zlib1g... W: Failure trying to run: chroot /lxc/iso/dodo mount -t proc proc /proc debootstrap.log : mount: permission denied if i manualy chroot into the directory then i get promted with: id: cannot find name for group ID 0 I have no name!@...# i tryed addgroup but it's not installed , apt-get/aptitude : command not found , so i can't do anything with it . I've tryed ubuntu-vm-builder but since it's calling debootstrap i get the same error . Played with it for a few days and then i stoped and gaved virt-install a try , everithing works till i get to the console to finish the install witch shows only : Escape character is ^] and nothing more , no matter what i type . So basicly what i'm trying to do is build a usable chroot system so i can use it with lxc or libvirt . What are my options to get containers/virtualisation up and running ? I've read somewhere that i can use openvz templates with lxc or libvirt ? but how ? Let me know if you need aditional info ( p.s. doing all this on a dedicated server so i can't access it by hand , only ssh , plus on my local pc running ubuntu desktop maverick everithing works ) . EDIT Getting closer , i managed to understand how to use an openvz template with lxc , now the problem comes with the network bridge lxc-start: invalid interface name: br0 # Use same bridge device used in your controlling host setup lxc-start: failed to process 'lxc.network.link = br0 # Use same bridge device used in your controlling host setup ' lxc-start: failed to read configuration file i followed the exact steps to create a bridge and lxc conf looks like: lxc.network.type = veth lxc.network.flags = up lxc.network.link = br0 # Use same bridge device used in your controlling host setup lxc.network.hwaddr = {a1:b2:c3:d4:e5:f6} # As appropiate (line only needed if you wish to dhcp later) lxc.network.ipv4 = {10.0.0.100} # (Use 0.0.0.0 if you wish to dhcp later) lxc.network.name = eth0 # could likely be whatever you want Since it's not working i know smth is wrong so could somebody guyde me ? EDIT , looks like the base install was using an custom kernel ( bzImage-2.6.34.6-xxxx-grs-ipv6-65 ) for witch you i didn't found the headers , i did a update-grub after i installed a new kernel , edited menu.lst and no it's using 2.6.35-23-server and now debootstrap is working just fine same as ubuntu-vm-builder .

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  • Backup Your Windows Home Server Off-Site with Asus Webstorage

    - by Mysticgeek
    Windows Home Server lets you backup machines on your network easily. But what about backing up the server data? Today we take a look at ASUS WebStorage for Windows Home Server, which provides you with secure off-site backup for WHS. To use the ASUS WebStorage service you’ll need to sign up for a free account. It offers 1GB of free storage, then you can purchase an unlimited backup package for $39.99 for a year subscription. Note: They also offer online storage for individual PCs as well. Install ASUS WebStorage for WHS Browse to your shared folders on the server and open the Add-Ins folder and copy over the WHSConnectorSetup2.2.4.088.msi file (link below) then close out of the folder. Now launch Windows Home Server Console from one of the computers on your network, click Settings, then Add-ins. Under Available Add-ins click the Available tab and you’ll see the Asus WebStorage installer file we just copied over. Click the Install button. Installation kicks off and when it’s complete, you’ll need to close out of the console and reconnect. Using ASUS WebStorage WHS Connector  When you reconnect to WHS Console, scroll over to the ASUS WebStorage icon and click on Settings. Now log into your ASUS account… Now select the folders you want to backup to the WebStorage service. Select the radio button next to Enable to initialize the backup process… The backup process begins. You can change which folders are backed up simply by disabling the backup process, uncheck the folder(s), then enable the backup again. ASUS WebStorage Site After you have files backed up to the ASUS site, log into your account, and your presented with an overview of the amount of storage you’re using. It also shows what type of files are taking certain amounts of space.   You can browse through your backed up files and folders. It allows you to share and sync backed up data as well. Navigate to the file you want and you can easily download it by clicking on it, or share it out by clicking the share link below it. If you choose to share it, you’re provided with a link to the file to send out to other users.   Conclusion Users of Windows Home Server have been looking for an inexpensive cloud backup solution for quite some time. There are services such as JungleDisk, KeepVault, Wuala…etc. These services probably do a better job, but can start getting expensive once you start uploading a GBs of data. Another disappointment of ASUS WebStorage is you can only backup your WHS shares (from what we’ve been able to determine), it’s an “all or nothing” type of thing. You cannot go in and select individual files and folders. The initial upload speeds can be a bit slow as well, although that might have something to do with limited upload speeds on the DSL connection we used to test it. Retrieving your data from the ASUS site is a breeze though, and all the data files are organized quite well. The WHS Addin is very easy to install and use. If you’re looking for an off-site solution to backup your WHS data, you can test out ASUS WebStorage for free with a 1GB limit. This is good for testing the service and it might be exactly what you’re looking for. Other users may want a more advanced solution like KeepVault or CloudBerry…which is a front end for Amazon S3 storage. Download ASUS WebStorage WHS Addin Other WHS Offsite Backup Solutions CloudBerry, JungleDisk, KeepVault, Wuala Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Restore Files from Backups on Windows Home ServerGMedia Blog: Setting Up a Windows Home ServerCreate A Windows Home Server Home Computer Restore DiscRemove a Network Computer from Windows Home ServerShare Ubuntu Home Directories using Samba 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 DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Gadfly is a cool Twitter/Silverlight app Enable DreamScene in Windows 7 Microsoft’s “How Do I ?” Videos Home Networks – How do they look like & the problems they cause Check Your IMAP Mail Offline In Thunderbird Follow Finder Finds You Twitter Users To Follow

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  • Scan Your Thumb Drive for Viruses from the AutoPlay Dialog

    - by Mysticgeek
    It’s always a good idea to scan someone’s flash drive for viruses when you use it on your PC. Today we look at how to use Microsoft Security Essentials to scan thumb drives via the AutoPlay dialog. Editor Note: This technique was created by our friend Ramesh Srinivasan from the winhelponline tech blog. If you haven’t done so already, download and install Microsoft Security Essentials (link below), which has earned the How-To Geek official endorsement. Next download the mseautoplay.zip (link below). Unzip the file to view its contents. Then move the msescan.vbs script file into the Windows directory. Next double-click on the mseautoplay.reg file… Click Yes to the warning dialog window asking if you’re sure you want to add to the registry. After it’s added you’ll get a confirmation message…click OK. Now when you pop in a thumb drive, when AutoPlay comes up you will have the options to scan it with MSE first. MSE starts the scan of the thumb drive…   You can use this to scan any removable media. Here is an example of the ability to scan a DVD with MSE before opening any files. You can also go into Control Panel and set it as a default option of AutoPlay. Open Control Panel, View by Large icons, and click on AutoPlay. Notice that now when you go to change the default options for different types of media, Scanning with MSE is now included in the dropdown lists. Remove Settings If you want to remove the MSE AutoPlay Handler, Ramesh was kind enough to create an undo registry file. Double-click on undo.reg from the original MSE AutoPlay folder and click yes to the message to remove the setting.   Then you will need to go into the Windows directory and manually delete the msescan.vbs script file. This is an awesome trick which will allow you to scan your thumb drives and other removable media from the AutoPlay dialog. We tested it out on XP, Vista, and Windows 7 and it works perfectly on each one. Download mseautoplay.zip Download Microsoft Security Essentials Read Our Review of MSE Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Disable AutoPlay in Windows VistaFind Your Missing USB Drive on Windows XPDisable Autoplay of Audio CDs and USB DrivesHow To Remove Antivirus Live and Other Rogue/Fake Antivirus MalwareScan Files for Viruses Before You Download With Dr.Web 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 Sculptris 1.0, 3D Drawing app AceStock, a Tiny Desktop Quote Monitor Gmail Button Addon (Firefox) Hyperwords addon (Firefox) Backup Outlook 2010 Daily Motivator (Firefox)

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  • Parner Webcast - Innovations in Products Program

    - by Richard Lefebvre
    We are pleased to invite you to join the Innovations in Products –webcast. Innovations in Products will present Oracle Applications' Product's new functions and features including sales positioning. The key objectives of these webcasts are to inspire System Integrator's implementation personnel to conduct successful after sales in their Customer projects. Innovations in Products will be presented on the 1st Monday of each quarter after the billable day (4:00 to 5:00 PM CET). The webcast is intended for System Integrator's Implementation Certified Specialists but Innovations in Products is open for other interested Oracle Applications system Integrator's personnel as well. At first, two Oracle representatives will discuss Oracle's contribution to Partners. Then you will see product breakout session followed by Q&A with Oracle Experts. Each session will last for maximum 1 hour. A Q&A document covering all questions and answers will be made available after the webcast. What are the Benefits for partners? Find out how Innovations in Products helps you to improve your after sales Discover new functions and features so you can enrich your Customers's solution Learn more about Oracle Applications products, especially sales positioning Hear crucial questions raised by colleague alike, learn from their interest Engage and present your questions to subject experts Be inspired of the richness of Oracle Application portfolio – for your and your customer’s benefit Note: Should you already be familiar with a specific Product, then choose another one. Doing so you would expand your knowledge of the overall Applications portfolio. Some presentations contain product demonstration, although these presentations are not intended to be extremely detailed technical presentations. Note: At the latter part of this email you have also 17 links into the recent Applications Products presentations and 6 links into the Public Sector Value Proposition presentations that were presented in Innovations in Industries -program. Product breakout sessions: Topics Speaker To Register Fusion Applications Technology and Extensibility: A next-generation platform that adapts to client needs. Matthew Johnson, Sr. Director, SCM Product Development, EMEA CLICK HERE Fusion Applications - Transforming your Back-Office Accounting Function: Changing how people work in back office functions to drive value add Liam Nolan, Director, ERP Product Development, EMEA CLICK HERE Fusion HCM & Talent Overview & Extensibility: A more in-depth look into a personalized HCM solution Synco Jonkeren, Vice-President HCM Product Development & Management, EMEA CLICK HERE Fusion HCM Compensation Planning: Compensate To Compete Rosie Warner, Director, HCM Sales Development CLICK HERE Enterprise PLM for the Product Value Chain: Oracle Enterprise PLM offers Industry specific solutions that cover the Product Value Chain Ulf Köster, Sales Development Leader Enterprise PLM, Oracle Western Europe CLICK HERE Oracle's Asset Management and Maintenance Solution: What you need to know to successfully implement Oracle Asset Management solutions within Oracle Installed Base Philip Carey, Asset Management and Maintenance Solution Specialist CLICK HERE For more details please visit Innovations in Products and other breakout sessions on OPN page. Delivery Format Innovations in Products –program is a series of FREE prerecorded Applications product presentations followed by Q&A. It will be delivered over the Web. Participants have the opportunity to submit questions during the web cast via chat and subject matter experts will provide verbal answers live. Innovations in Products consists of several parallel prerecorded product breakout sessions, each lasting for max. 1 hour. At first, two Oracle representatives will discuss Oracle’s contribution to Partners. Then you’ll see the product breakout sessions followed by Q&A with Oracle Experts. A Q&A document covering all questions and answers will be made available after the webcast. You can also see Innovations in Products afterwards as its content will be available online for the next 6-12 months. The next Innovations in Products web casts will be presented as follows: July 2nd 2012 October 1st 2012 January 14th 2013 April 8th 2013. Note: Depending on local network bandwidth please allow some seconds time the presentations to download. You might want to refresh your screen by pressing F5. Duration Maximum 1 hour For further information please contact me Markku Rouhiainen. Recent Innovations in Products presentations Applications Products presented on April the 2nd, 2012 Speaker To Register Fusion CRM: Effective, Efficient and Easy James Penfold , Senior Director, Applications Product Development and Product Management CLICK HERE Fusion HCM: Talent management overview performance, goals, talent review Jaime Losantos Viñolas, Director, HCM Sales Development CLICK HERE Distributed Order Management - Fusion SCM Solution Vikram K Singla, Business Development Director, Supply Chain Management Applications, UK CLICK HERE Oracle Transportation Management Dominic Regan, Senior Director Oracle Transportation Management EMEA CLICK HERE Oracle Value Chain Planning: Demantra Sales & Operation Planning and Demantra Demand Management Lionel Albert, Senior Director Value Chain Planning, EMEA CLICK HERE Oracle CX (Customer Experience) - formerly CEM: Powering Great Customer Experiences Maria Ramirez , CRM Presales Consultant, EPC CLICK HERE EPM 11.1.2.2 Overview Nicholas Cox , EMEA Sales Development Director - Enterprise Performance Management CLICK HERE Oracle Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management, 11.1.2.1 Daniela Lazar , Senior EPM Sales Consultant, EPC CLICK HERE January the 16th 2012 Speaker To Register CRM / ATG: Best-in-Class CRM & Commerce Maria Ramirez , Associate CRM Presales Consultant, EPC CLICK HERE CRM / Automate Business Rules for Maximum Efficiency with OPA (Oracle Policy Automation) Marco Nilo, Associate CRM Presales Consultant, EPC CLICK HERE CRM / InQuira Toby Baker, Principal Sales Consultant, CRM Product Specialist Team CLICK HERE EPM / Business Intelligence Foundation Suite – Sales and Product Updates Liviu Nitescu, Senior BI Sales Consultant, EPC CLICK HERE EPM / Hyperion Planning 11.1.2.1 - Sales & Product Updates Andreea Voinea, EPM Sales Consultant, EPC CLICK HERE ERP / JDE EnterpriseOne Fulfillment Management Overview Mirela Andreea Nasta , ERP Presales Consultant, EPC CLICK HERE ERP / Spotlights on iExpenses Elena Nita ,ERP Presales Consultant, EPC CLICK HERE MDM / Master Data Management Martin Boyd , Senior Director Product Strategy CLICK HERE Product break through session Fusion Applications Human Capital Management Rosie Warner , Director, HCM Sales Development CLICK HERE Recent Innovations in Industries Value Proposition presentations January the 16th 2012 Speaker To Register Process Modernisation Iemke Idsingh Public Sector Solutions Director CLICK HERE Shared Services Ann Smith Business Development Director, Shared Services CLICK HERE Strengthening Financial Discipline Whilst Delivering Cashable Savings Philippa Headley UK Sales Development Director Public Sector - EPM Solutions CLICK HERE Social Welfare Industry Solutions Christian Wernberg-Tougaard Industry Director - Social Welfare CLICK HERE Police Industry Solutions Jeff Penrose Solution Sales Director CLICK HERE Tax and Revenue Management Industry Solutions Andre van der Post Global Director - Tax Solutions and Strategy CLICK HERE  

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  • MySQL for Excel 1.1.0 GA has been released

    - by Javier Treviño
    The MySQL Windows Experience Team is proud to announce the release of MySQL for Excel version 1.1.0 GA, one of our newest products contained in the MySQL Installer suite. You can download it from our official Downloads page at http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/installer/. The 1.1.0 release of MySQL for Excel introduces the following features: Edit MySQL Data. Edit MySQL Data This may be the coolest feature so far; users will be able to edit the data in a MySQL table using MS Excel in a very friendly and intuitive way.  Edit Data supports inserting new rows, deleting existing rows and updating existing data as easy as playing with data in an Excel’s spreadsheet and pushing changes back to the server.  Also this version contains the following bug fixes: Enabled the following checkboxes in the Append Data's Advanced Options dialog and added code in the Append Data dialog to use the checkboxes as follows: Automatically store the column mapping for the given table     If checked the current mapping will be stored automatically after clicking the Append button if the append operation is successful and there is no mapping for the current connection.schema.table already; the new mapping is stored with a proposed name of Mapping. Reload stored column mapping for the selected table automatically     If checked the first Stored Mapping found where all column names in the source grid match all column names in the target grid is automatically selected and applied when the Append Data dialog is loaded. Fixed code in Append Data that applies a stored column mapping to skip target columns where the associated mapping is empty (saved as a -1). Enclosed the Add-In's startup code in a try-catch block in order to log any possible error thrown during startup; and added information messages to the log at the beginning of the Add-In's startup code and at the end of the shutdown code.  Also changed the wrapper method that calls the MySQLUtility to write messages to the log to make logging easier, thus changed the log call throughout all the code that contains a try-catch block. Added code to the main wix configuration file to check if a newer version is already installed and if so abort the installation Fixed code to refresh the Import Procedure Form's preview grid's data source to repaint its contents every time the Call button is pressed. Added code to re-pull connections after connections are migrated from Excel to Workbench. Fixed code so when the Append Data's Automatic Mapping is performed any subsequent change on a mapping resets the mapping to a Manual Mapping. Added code to the InfoDialog class to set the button text to "Show Details" or "Hide Details" depending on the status of the Details text container. Fixed a GUID in the main wix configuration file so now previous versions are uninstalled during a new installation. Added an option to the Export Data's Advanced Options dialog to remove columns with no data, by default the Export Dialog will only flag those columns as Excluded. Added code to display a warning and paint a column red if the column name in the Export Data dialog is not set, display a warning if the table name is not set, and stack warnings but not display them if a column is Excluded, warnings are displayed normally for columns if they are not Excluded anymore.  Added code to prevent the Append and Export of Data if more than 1 selection is made (selecting more than 1 area holding the Ctrl key while selecting Excel cells). Fixed problem that prevented MySQL for Excel from loading when Display settings in Windows 7 is set to Adjust to Best Performance (Oracle bug 14521405 - UNHANDLED EXCEPTION IS THROWN WHEN LOADING MYSQL FOR EXCEL). Fixed code that renames the auto-generated Primary Key column when the Table name changes since it was not detecting if a column with the same name already existed in the table. The column duplication was not actually happening, it looked that way because the automatically generated PK column was not detecting a column had that same name. Fixed code in Export Data dialog to always set an empty string instead of null to the MySQLDataColumn properties that stores MySQL data types (MySQLDataType, RowsFrom1stDataType and RowsFrom2ndDataType). Added code to display a warning and color red a column which Data Type has not been set by the user or has been manually cleared. Added code to output to the application log exception messages consistently in all places where exceptions are catched. A series of blog posts explaining the new Edit MySQL Data feature and the other existing features are coming in this blog. You can access the MySQL for Excel documentation at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/mysql-for-excel.html You can also post questions on our MySQL for Excel forum found at http://forums.mysql.com/. You can also post questions on our MySQL for Excel forum found at http://forums.mysql.com/. Enjoy and thanks for the support!

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  • Character Stats and Power

    - by Stephen Furlani
    I'm making an RPG game system and I'm having a hard time deciding on doing detailed or abstract character statistics. These statistics define the character's natural - not learned - abilities. For example: Mass Effect: 0 (None that I can see) X20 (Xtreme Dungeon Mastery): 1 "STAT" Diablo: 4 "Strength, Magic, Dexterity, Vitality" Pendragon: 5 "SIZ, STR, DEX, CON, APP" Dungeons & Dragons (3.x, 4e): 6 "Str, Dex, Con, Wis, Int, Cha" Fallout 3: 7 "S.P.E.C.I.A.L." RIFTS: 8 "IQ, ME, MA, PS, PP, PE, PB, Spd" Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (1st ed?): 12-ish "WS, BS, S, T, Ag, Int, WP, Fel, A, Mag, IP, FP" HERO (5th ed): 14 "Str, Dex, Con, Body, Int, Ego, Pre, Com, PD, ED, Spd, Rec, END, STUN" The more stats, the more complex and detailed your character becomes. This comes with a trade-off however, because you usually only have limited resources to describe your character. D&D made this infamous with the whole min/max-ing thing where strong characters were typically not also smart. But also, a character with a high Str typically also has high Con, Defenses, Hit Points/Health. Without high numbers in all those other stats, they might as well not be strong since they wouldn't hold up well in hand-to-hand combat. So things like that force trade-offs within the category of strength. So my original (now rejected) idea was to force players into deciding between offensive and defensive stats: Might / Body Dexterity / Speed Wit / Wisdom Heart Soul But this left some stat's without "opposites" (or opposites that were easily defined). I'm leaning more towards the following: Body (Physical Prowess) Mind (Mental Prowess) Heart (Social Prowess) Soul (Spiritual Prowess) This will define a character with just 4 numbers. Everything else gets based off of these numbers, which means they're pretty important. There won't, however, be ways of describing characters who are fast, but not strong or smart, but absent minded. Instead of defining the character with these numbers, they'll be detailing their character by buying skills and powers like these: Quickness Add a +2 Bonus to Body Rolls when Dodging. for a character that wants to be faster, or the following for a big, tough character Body Building Add a +2 Bonus to Body Rolls when Lifting, Pushing, or Throwing objects. [EDIT - removed subjectiveness] So my actual questions is what are some pitfalls with a small stat list and a large amount of descriptive powers? Is this more difficult to port cross-platform (pen&paper, PC) for example? Are there examples of this being done well/poorly? Thanks,

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  • Space partitioning when everything is moving

    - by Roy T.
    Background Together with a friend I'm working on a 2D game that is set in space. To make it as immersive and interactive as possible we want there to be thousands of objects freely floating around, some clustered together, others adrift in empty space. Challenge To unburden the rendering and physics engine we need to implement some sort of spatial partitioning. There are two challenges we have to overcome. The first challenge is that everything is moving so reconstructing/updating the data structure has to be extremely cheap since it will have to be done every frame. The second challenge is the distribution of objects, as said before there might be clusters of objects together and vast bits of empty space and to make it even worse there is no boundary to space. Existing technologies I've looked at existing techniques like BSP-Trees, QuadTrees, kd-Trees and even R-Trees but as far as I can tell these data structures aren't a perfect fit since updating a lot of objects that have moved to other cells is relatively expensive. What I've tried I made the decision that I need a data structure that is more geared toward rapid insertion/update than on giving back the least amount of possible hits given a query. For that purpose I made the cells implicit so each object, given it's position, can calculate in which cell(s) it should be. Then I use a HashMap that maps cell-coordinates to an ArrayList (the contents of the cell). This works fairly well since there is no memory lost on 'empty' cells and its easy to calculate which cells to inspect. However creating all those ArrayLists (worst case N) is expensive and so is growing the HashMap a lot of times (although that is slightly mitigated by giving it a large initial capacity). Problem OK so this works but still isn't very fast. Now I can try to micro-optimize the JAVA code. However I'm not expecting too much of that since the profiler tells me that most time is spent in creating all those objects that I use to store the cells. I'm hoping that there are some other tricks/algorithms out there that make this a lot faster so here is what my ideal data structure looks like: The number one priority is fast updating/reconstructing of the entire data structure Its less important to finely divide the objects into equally sized bins, we can draw a few extra objects and do a few extra collision checks if that means that updating is a little bit faster Memory is not really important (PC game)

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  • Stumbling Through: Making a case for the K2 Case Management Framework

    I have recently attended a three-day training session on K2s Case Management Framework (CMF), a free framework built on top of K2s blackpearl workflow product, and I have come away with several different impressions for some of the different aspects of the framework.  Before we get into the details, what is the Case Management Framework?  It is essentially a suite of tools that, when used together, solve many common workflow scenarios.  The tool has been developed over time by K2 consultants that have realized they tend to solve the same problems over and over for various clients, so they attempted to package all of those common solutions into one framework.  Most of these common problems involve workflow process that arent necessarily direct and would tend to be difficult to model.  Such solutions could be achieved in blackpearl alone, but the workflows would be complex and difficult to follow and maintain over time.  CMF attempts to simplify such scenarios not so much by black-boxing the workflow processes, but by providing different points of entry to the processes allowing them to be simpler, moving the complexity to a middle layer.  It is not a solution in and of itself, development is still required to tie the pieces together. CMF is under continuous development, both a plus and a minus in that bugs are fixed quickly and features added regularly, but it may be difficult to know which versions are the most stable.  CMF is not an officially supported K2 product, which means you will not get technical support but you will get access to the source code. The example given of a business process that would fit well into CMF is that of a file cabinet, where each folder in said file cabinet is a case that contains all of the data associated with one complaint/customer/incident/etc. and various users can access that case at any time and take one of a set of pre-determined actions on it.  When I was given that example, my first thought was that any workflow I have ever developed in the past could be made to fit this model there must be more than just this model to help decide if CMF is the right solution.  As the training went on, we learned that one of the key features of CMF is SharePoint integration as each case gets a SharePoint site created for it, and there are a number of excellent web parts that can be used to design a portal for users to get at all the information on their cases.  While CMF does not require SharePoint, without it you will be missing out on a huge portion of functionality that CMF offers.  My opinion is that without SharePoint integration, you may as well write your workflows and other components the old fashioned way. When I heard that each case gets its own SharePoint site created for it, warning bells immediately went off in my head as I felt that depending on the data load, a CMF enabled solution could quickly overwhelm SharePoint with thousands of sites so we have yet another deciding factor for CMF:  Just how many cases will your solution be creating?  While it is not necessary to use the site-per-case model, it is one of the more useful parts of the framework.  Without it, you are losing a big chunk of what CMF has to offer. When it comes to developing on top of the Case Management Framework, it becomes a matter of configuring what makes up a case, what can be done to a case, where each action on a case should take the user, and then typing up actions to case statuses.  This last step is one that I immediately warmed up to, as just about every workflow Ive designed in the past needed some sort of mapping table to set the status of a work item based on the action being taken definitely one of those common solutions that it is good to see rolled up into a re-useable entity (and it gets a nice configuration UI to boot!).  This concept is a little different than traditional workflow design, in that you dont have to think of an end-to-end process around passing a case along a path, rather, you must envision the case as central object with workflow threads branching off of it and doing their own thing with the case data.  Certainly there can be certain workflow threads that get rather complex, but the idea is that they RELATE to the case, they dont BECOME the case (though it is still possible with action->status mappings to prevent certain actions in certain cases, so it isnt always a wide-open free for all of actions on a case). I realize that this description of the Case Management Framework merely scratches the surface on what the product actually can do, and I dont think Ive conclusively defined for what sort of business scenario you can make a case for Case Management Framework.  What I do hope to have accomplished with this post is to raise awareness of CMF there is a (free!) product out there that could potentially simplify a tangled workflow process and give (for free!) a very useful set of SharePoint web parts and a nice set of (free!) reports.  The best way to see if it will truly fit your needs is to give it a try did I mention it is FREE?  Er, ok, so it is free, but only obtainable at this time for K2 partnersDid 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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  • Au revoir, Python?

    - by GuySmiley
    I'm an ex-C++ programmer who's recently discovered (and fallen head-over-heels with) Python. I've taken some time to become reasonably fluent in Python, but I've encountered some troubling realities that may lead me to drop it as my language of choice, at least for the time being. I'm writing this in the hopes that someone out there can talk me out of it by convincing me that my concerns are easily circumvented within the bounds of the python universe. I picked up python while looking for a single flexible language that will allow me to build end-to-end working systems quickly on a variety of platforms. These include: - web services - mobile apps - cross-platform client apps for PC Development speed is more of a priority at the time-being than execution speed. However, in order to improve performance over time without requiring major re-writes or architectural changes I think it's imperative to be able to interface easily with Java. That way, I can use Java to optimize specific components as the application scales, without throwing away any code. As far as I can tell, my requirement for an enterprise-capable, platform-independent, fast language with a large developer base means it would have to be Java. .NET or C++ would not cut it due to their respective limitations. Also Java is clearly de rigeur for most mobile platforms. Unfortunately, tragically, there doesn't seem to be a good way to meet all these demands. Jython seems to be what I'm looking for in principle, except that it appears to be practically dead, with no one developing, supporting, or using it to any great degree. And also Jython seems too married to the Java libraries, as you can't use many of the CPython standard libraries with it, which has a major impact on the code you end up writing. The only other option that I can see is to use JPype wrapped in marshalling classes, which may work although it seems like a pain and I wonder if it would be worth it in the long run. On the other hand, everything I'm looking for seems to be readily available by using JRuby, which seems to be much better supported. As things stand, I think this is my best option. I'm sad about this because I absolutely love everything about Python, including the syntax. The perl-like constructs in Ruby just feel like such a step backwards to me in terms of readability, but at the end of the day most of the benefits of python are available in Ruby as well. So I ask you - am I missing something here? Much of what I've said is based on what I've read, so is this summary of the current landscape accurate, or is there some magical solution to the Python-Java divide that will snuff these concerns and allow me to comfortably stay in my happy Python place?

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  • Delving into design patterns, and what that means for the Oracle user experience

    - by Kathy.Miedema
    By Kathy Miedema, Oracle Applications User Experience George Hackman, Senior Director, Applications User Experiences The Oracle Applications User Experience team has some exciting things happening around Fusion Applications design patterns. Because we’re hoping to have some new offerings soon (stay tuned with VoX to see what’s in the pipeline around Fusion Applications design patterns), now is a good time to talk more about what design patterns can do for the individual user as well as the entire company. George Hackman, Senior Director of Operations User Experience, says the first thing to note is that user experience is not just about the user interface. It’s about understanding how people do things, observing them, and then finding the patterns that emerge. The Applications UX team develops those patterns and then builds them into Oracle applications. What emerges, Hackman says, is a consistent, efficient user experience that promotes a productive workplace. Creating design patterns What is a design pattern in the context of enterprise software? “Every day, people use technology to get things done,” Hackman says. “They navigate a virtual world that reaches from enterprise to consumer apps, and from desktop to mobile. This virtual world is constantly under construction. New areas are being developed and old areas are being redone. As this world is being built and remodeled, efficient pathways and practices emerge. “Oracle's user experience team watches users navigate this world. We measure their productivity and ask them about their satisfaction. We take the most efficient, most productive pathways from the enterprise and consumer world and turn them into Oracle's user experience patterns.” Hackman describes the process as combining all of the best practices from every part of a user’s world. Members of the user experience team observe, analyze, design, prototype, and measure each work task to find the best possible pattern for a particular work flow. As the team builds the patterns, “we make sure they are fully buildable using Oracle technology,” Hackman said. “So customers know they can use these patterns. There’s no need to make something up from scratch, not knowing whether you can even build it.” Hackman says that creating something on a computer is a good example of a user experience pattern. “People are creating things all the time,” he says. “On the consumer side, they are creating documents. On the enterprise side, they are creating expense reports. On a mobile phone, they are creating contacts. They are using different apps like iPhone or Facebook or Gmail or Oracle software, all doing this creation process.” The Applications UX team starts their process by observing how people might create something. “We observe people creating things. We see the patterns, we analyze and document, then we apply them to our products. It might be different from phone to web browser, but we have these design patterns that create a consistent experience across platforms, and across products, too. The result for customers Oracle constantly improves its part of the virtual world, Hackman said. New products are created and existing products are upgraded. Because Oracle builds user experience design patterns, Oracle's virtual world becomes both more powerful and more familiar at the same time. Because of design patterns, users can navigate with ease as they embrace the latest technology – because it behaves the way they expect it to. This means less training and faster adoption for individual users, and more productivity for the business as a whole. Hackman said Oracle gives customers and partners access to design patterns so that they can build in the virtual world using the same best practices. Customers and partners can extend applications with a user experience that is comfortable and familiar to their users. For businesses that are integrating different Oracle applications, design patterns are key. The user experience created in E-Business Suite should be similar to the user experience in Fusion Applications, Hackman said. If a user is transitioning from one application to the other, it shouldn’t be difficult for them to do their work. With design patterns, it isn’t. “Oracle user experience patterns are the building blocks for the virtual world that ensure productivity, consistency and user satisfaction,” Hackman said. “They are built for the enterprise, but incorporate the best practices from across the virtual world. They empower productivity and facilitate social interaction. When you build with patterns, you get all the end-user benefits of less training / retraining from the finished product. You also get faster / cheaper development.” What’s coming? You can already access design patterns to help you build Dashboards with OBIEE here. And we promised you at the beginning that we had something in the pipeline on Fusion Applications design patterns. Look for the announcement about when they are available here on VoX.

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  • Ubuntu 12.04 LTS installation problem

    - by Zxy
    I am trying to install Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on my PC using WUBI. However, I keep getting this error: An error occured: *Error executing command >>command=C:\\System32\bcdedit.exe /set {2708afc0-9ffa-11e1-bc51-d167219ffa25} device partition=E: >>retval=1 >>stderr=An error has occured setting the element data. The request is not supported. >>stdout= For more information, please see the logfile:* Logfile: 06-11 10:57 DEBUG TaskList: ## Finished choose_disk_sizes 06-11 10:57 DEBUG TaskList: ## Running expand_diskimage... 06-11 10:59 DEBUG TaskList: ## Finished expand_diskimage 06-11 10:59 DEBUG TaskList: ## Running create_swap_diskimage... 06-11 10:59 DEBUG TaskList: ## Finished create_swap_diskimage 06-11 10:59 DEBUG TaskList: ## Running modify_bootloader... 06-11 10:59 DEBUG TaskList: New task modify_bcd 06-11 10:59 DEBUG TaskList: ### Running modify_bcd... 06-11 10:59 DEBUG WindowsBackend: modify_bcd Drive(C: hd 51255.1171875 mb free ntfs) 06-11 10:59 ERROR TaskList: Error executing command >>command=C:\Windows\System32\bcdedit.exe /set {2708afc0-9ffa-11e1-bc51-d167219ffa25} device partition=E: >>retval=1 >>stderr=An error has occurred setting the element data. The request is not supported. >>stdout= Traceback (most recent call last): File "\lib\wubi\backends\common\tasklist.py", line 197, in __call__ File "\lib\wubi\backends\win32\backend.py", line 697, in modify_bcd File "\lib\wubi\backends\common\utils.py", line 66, in run_command Exception: Error executing command >>command=C:\Windows\System32\bcdedit.exe /set {2708afc0-9ffa-11e1-bc51-d167219ffa25} device partition=E: >>retval=1 >>stderr=An error has occurred setting the element data. The request is not supported. >>stdout= 06-11 10:59 DEBUG TaskList: # Cancelling tasklist 06-11 10:59 DEBUG TaskList: New task modify_bcd 06-11 10:59 ERROR root: Error executing command >>command=C:\Windows\System32\bcdedit.exe /set {2708afc0-9ffa-11e1-bc51-d167219ffa25} device partition=E: >>retval=1 >>stderr=An error has occurred setting the element data. The request is not supported. >>stdout= Traceback (most recent call last): File "\lib\wubi\application.py", line 58, in run File "\lib\wubi\application.py", line 132, in select_task File "\lib\wubi\application.py", line 158, in run_installer File "\lib\wubi\backends\common\tasklist.py", line 197, in __call__ File "\lib\wubi\backends\win32\backend.py", line 697, in modify_bcd File "\lib\wubi\backends\common\utils.py", line 66, in run_command Exception: Error executing command >>command=C:\Windows\System32\bcdedit.exe /set {2708afc0-9ffa-11e1-bc51-d167219ffa25} device partition=E: >>retval=1 >>stderr=An error has occurred setting the element data. The request is not supported. >>stdout= 06-11 10:59 DEBUG TaskList: New task modify_bcd 06-11 10:59 DEBUG TaskList: New task modify_bcd 06-11 10:59 DEBUG TaskList: ## Finished modify_bootloader 06-11 10:59 DEBUG TaskList: # Finished tasklist*

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  • Upcoming User Group Events in 2011

    - by john.orourke(at)oracle.com
    At a recent customer event, someone asked me if Oracle had any plans to re-create the Hyperion Solutions Conference.  Unfortunately the answer is no.  With so many different product lines it would be challenging and costly for Oracle to run separate user conferences for every product line, and it would create too many events for customers with multiple products to attend.  So Oracle Open World is the company's main event for showcasing what's new and what's coming across all product lines.  If customers find Oracle OpenWorld too overwhelming or if the timing is bad, there are a number of other conferences, which are run by Oracle user groups and include a number of sessions focused on Oracle Hyperion EPM and BI products.  Here's a sneak preview of what's coming up for conferences in 2011 where you can network with other Hyperion users and learn what's new and what's coming in our products. Alliance 2011:  This conference is run by the Oracle Higher Education User Group (HEUG).  It's being held March 27 - 30th in lovely Denver, Colorado.  (a great location and time for skiers!)  This event is targeted at customers in Higher Education and Public Sector organizations and is expecting to draw over 3,500 attendees.  There will be a number of sessions focusing on Oracle Hyperion EPM and BI products in the Budgeting track, as well as the Reporting & BI track.  This includes product-focused sessions delivered by Oracle and partners, as well as case studies delivered by customers.  Here's a link to the registration page where you can get more information: http://www.heug.org/p/cm/ld/fid=255 Collaborate 2011:  This conference is run by three different user groups;  OAUG, IOUG and Quest.  It's being held April 10 - 14th in sunny Orlando, Florida.  (yes, sunshine and warmth!)  This event is targeted to customers with Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Hyperion, Primavera and other products and is expected to draw over 5,000 attendees.  You'll find a number of sessions focused on Oracle Hyperion EPM and BI products in the BI/Data Warehousing/EPM track.  This includes product-focused sessions delivered by Oracle, our partners, and customers as well as a number of customer case studies.  There will also be an exhibit area with a number of demo pods focused on EPM and BI products.  Here's a link to the conference web site where you can get more information: http://collaborate.oaug.org/ Also, please note that the OAUG has a Hyperion SIG that runs focused EPM/Hyperion events throughout the year.  Here's a link to their web site where you can get more information: http://hyperionsig.oaug.org/ Kscope 2011:  Formerly the Kaleidoscope conference, this one is run by the Oracle Developer Tools User Group (ODTUG).  This conference is being held June 26 - 30th in Long Beach, CA. (surf's up!)  Historically, this event has focused on Oracle Development tools, but over the past few years the EPM and BI content has grown with over 100 sessions planned this year.  So this event is becoming a great venue for existing Hyperion customers to learn about the latest developments with Oracle Essbase, Hyperion Planning, Hyperion Financial Management, Oracle BI and other products.   You'll also find hands-on workshops, product demonstrations as well as EPM and BI Symposiums run by Oracle Development staff.  Here's a link to the web site where you can get more details.  http://www.kscope11.com/biepm UKOUG Conference Series:  EPM and Hyperion 2011:  For Hyperion customers in the UK, the UKOUG has a Hyperion SIG that runs a focused conference for EPM and Hyperion products.  The 2011 event is planned for June in London.  Here's a link to the web site for this event where you can get more information: http://hyperion.ukoug.org/default.asp?p=8461 In addition to these conferences, you can also find Oracle EPM and BI content at regional user group meetings globally as well as Marketing events run by Oracle.  Check the events page at www.oracle.com for the details on upcoming Marketing and regional User Group events.  So while Oracle will not be trying to replicate the Hyperion Solutions conference, the good news is that there are a number of other events available where customers can find out what's new and what's coming with Oracle EPM and BI products.  And these events are running at different times of the year in different locations - so you can pick the event that makes the most sense for your company from a timing and location standpoint. I'll be delivering a number of sessions at the Alliance and Collaborate conferences and hope to see many of our loyal customers and partners at these events.  And there's always Oracle OpenWorld coming up in October, for which the planning has already started.  I look forward to seeing you in 2011.

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  • I still think Twitter is dead &hellip; but

    - by Randy Walker
    Twitter finally hit the mainstream about 8 months ago, but I’ve been saying for a couple of years now, without a real way for the company to earn money, what’s the future fate of Twitter?  On the personal side, where is the real value for the users?  For the most part, Twitter has replaced most people’s IM (instant messaging), at least in the technology circles I run in.  It still has value for users as a communication tool.  But I see it more as a fad.  My prediction is over the next 6 months we’ll start seeing a usage drop (if we haven’t already started to see it). On the business side, how does Twitter make money?  It doesn’t.  If you use the text messaging capabilities, you see a few ads.  But most smart phone and PC users, won’t ever see them.  I still think Twitter has the best chance to make money by forcing the “collectors” to pay money.  You know what I mean by “collector”, those people that collect tons of followers or friends.  If Twitter caps the number of followers and makes you pay to have more, would you?  The normal twitter user doesn’t have that many followers, and this is where my title comes in … BUT The financial value for Twitter is really seen through businesses connecting with their customers.  I’ve seen 3 effective ways this has been accomplished. 1. Giving your customers a coupon or announcing a sale My favorite is @amazonmp3, Being a huge music lover, I get notified when they put music on sale. Various restaurants like @ruthschris_ARK will let their favorite customers know about certain specials @BluefinMemphis I was traveling through Memphis once looking for a sushi restaurant when they had %50 off if we mentioned we saw them on Twitter.  It was their first attempt at trying to encourage customers in the door, and after talking with the management, it was a huge success 2. Giveaways @namecheap Several companies have started huge marketing campaigns, but my favorite is watching companies post trivia questions, and the first person to respond wins a prize. 3. Responding to Customer Complaints I once posted a complaint about American Express (a company that I have slowly come to really dislike) but they actually had someone contact me to try and resolve the issue.  I give them credit for paying attention, but still dislike them for their horrible credit practices.

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  • Oracle WebCenter at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference

    - by Brian Dirking
    We had a great week at the E20 Conference, presenting in four sessions – Andy MacMillan gave a session titled Today’s Successful Enterprises are Social Enterprises and was on a panel that Tony Byrne moderated; Christian Finn spoke on a panel on Unified Communications Unified Communications + Social Computing = Best of Both Worlds?, Mark Bennett spoke on a panel on The Evolution of Talent Management. The key areas of focus this year were sentiment analysis, adoption and community building, the benefits of failure, and social’s role in process applications. Sentiment analysis. This was focused not on external audiences but more on employee sentiment. Tim Young showed his internal "NikoNiko" project, where employees use smilies to report their current mood. The result was a dashboard that showed the company mood by department. Since the goal is to improve productivity, people can see which departments are running into issues and try and address them. A company might otherwise wait until the end of the quarter financials to find out that there was a problem and product didn’t ship. This is a way to identify issues immediately. Tim is great – he had the crowd laughing as soon as he hit the stage, with his proposed hastag for his session: by making it 138 characters long, people couldn’t say much behind his back. And as I tweeted during his session, I loved his comment that complexity diffuses energy - it sounds like something Sun Tzu would say. Another example of employee sentiment analysis was CubeVibe. Founder and CEO Aaron Aycock, in his 3 minute pitch or die session talked about how engaged employees perform better. It was too bad he got gonged, he was just picking up speed, but CubeVibe did win the vote – congratulations to them. Internal adoption, community building, and involvement. On this topic I spoke to Terri Griffith, and she said there is some good work going on at University of Indiana regarding this, and hinted that she might be blogging about it in the near future. This area holds lots of interest for me. Amongst our customers, - CPAC stands out as an organization that has successfully built a community. So, I wonder - what are the building blocks? A strong leader? A common or unifying purpose? A certain level of engagement? I imagine someone has created an equation that says “for a community to grow at 30% per month, there must be an engagement level x to the square root of y, where x equals current community size, and y equals the expected growth rate, and the result is how many engagements the average user must contribute to maintain that growth.” Does anyone have a framework like that? The net result of everyone’s experience is that there is nothing to do but start early and fail often. Kevin Jones made this the focus of his keynote. He talked about the types of failure and what they mean. And he showed his famous kids at work video: Kevin’s blog also has this post: Social Business Failure #8: Workflow Integration. This is something that we’ve been working on at Oracle. Since so much of business is based in enterprise applications such as ERP and CRM (and since Oracle offers e-Business Suite, Siebel, PeopleSoft, and JD Edwards, as well as Fusion Applications), it makes sense that the social capabilities of Oracle WebCenter is built right into these applications. There are two types of social collaboration – ad-hoc, and exception handling. When you are in a business process and encounter an exception, you immediately look for 1) the document that tells you how to handle it, or 2) the person who can tell you how to handle it. With WebCenter built into these processes, people either search their content management system, or engage in expertise location and conversation. The great thing is, THEY DON’T HAVE TO LEAVE THE APPLICATION TO DO IT. Oracle has built the social capabilities right into the applications and business processes. I don’t think enough folks were able to see that at the event, but I expect that over the next six months folks will become very aware of it. WebCenter also provides the ability to have ad-hoc collaboration, search, and expertise location that folks need when they are innovating or collaborating. We demonstrated Oracle Social Network. It’s built on our Oracle WebCenter product to provide social collaboration inside and outside of your company. When we showed it to people, there were a number of areas that they commented on that were different from the other products being shown at the conference: Screenshots from within the product Many authors working on documents simultaneously Flagging people for follow up Direct ability to call out to people Ability to see presence not just if someone is online, but which conversation they are actively in Great stuff, the conference was full of smart people that that we enjoy spending time with. We’ll keep up in the meantime, but we look forward to seeing you in Boston.

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  • Architect Day: Boston - Agenda Update

    - by Bob Rhubart
    Here's the latest information on the session schedule and content for Oracle Technology Network Architect Day in Boston, MA on September 12, 2012. Registration is open, but seating is limited. When: September 12, 2012 8:30am – 5:00pm Where: Boston Marriott Burlington One Burlington Mall Road Burlington, MA 01803 Register now Agenda Time Session Title Room 8:30 am - 9:00 am Registration and Continental Breakfast Salon E Foyer 9:00 am - 9:15 am Welcome and Opening Comments | Bob Rhubart Salon E 9:15 am - 10:00 am Engineered Systems: Oracle's Vision for the Future | Ralf Dossmann Oracle's Exadata and Exalogic are impressive products in their own right. But working in combination they deliver unparalleled transaction processing performance with up to a 30x increase over existing legacy systems, with the lowest cost of ownership over a 3 or 5 year basis than any other hardware. In this session you'll learn how to leverage Oracle's Engineered Systems within your enterprise to deliver record-breaking performance at the lowest TCO. Salon E 10:00 am - 10:30 am Securing Public and Private Clouds | Anton Nielsen Long before the term "Cloud Computing" existed, Oracle technologies supported and promoted the concept. Centralized data with remote users has been at the core of these technologies for decades. The public cloud, and extending private clouds to the internet, though, has added security challenges never imagined decades ago. This presentation will examine a real life security breach and introduce architecture, technologies and policies to secure public and private clouds.  Salon E 10:30 am - 10:45 am Break 10:45 am - 11:30 am Breakout Sessions (pick one) Cloud Computing - Making IT Simple | Scott Mattoon The road to Cloud Computing is not without a few bumps. This session will help to smooth out your journey by tackling some of the potential complications. We'll examine whether standardization is a prerequisite for the Cloud. We'll look at why refactoring isn't just for application code. We'll check out deployable entities and their simplification via higher levels of abstraction. And we'll close out the session with a look at engineered systems and modular clouds. Salon E Innovations in Grid Computing with Oracle Coherence | Rob Misek Learn how Coherence can increase the availability, scalability and performance of your existing applications with its advanced low-latency data-grid technologies. Also hear some interesting industry-specific use cases that customers had implemented and how Oracle is integrating Coherence into its Enterprise Java stack. Salon C 11:30 am - 12:15 pm Breakout Sessions (pick one) Enterprise Strategy for Cloud Security | Dave Chappelle Security is high on the list of concerns for many organizations as they evaluate their cloud computing options. This session will examine security in the context of the various forms of cloud computing. We'll consider technical and non-technical aspects of security, and discuss several strategies for cloud computing, from both the consumer and producer perspectives. Salon E Oracle Enterprise Manager | Avi Huber Much more than a DB management tool, Oracle Enterprise Manager provides management and monitoring coverage for the entire Oracle stack, and beyond. This session will concentrate on the middleware management functionality in OEM, starting with Real User Experience monitoring, through AppServer management, and into deep-dive Java diagnostics. We’ll discuss Business Driven Application Management (BDAM) and the benefits of top-down monitoring. Lastly, we’ll demonstrate how to trace a specific user experience problem, through a multitier SOA application, to its root cause, deep in the JVM. Salon C 12:15 pm - 1:15 pm Lunch Salon E Foyer 1:15 pm - 2:00 pm Panel Discussion - Q&A with session speakers Salon E 2:00 pm - 2:45 pm Breakout Sessions (pick one) Oracle Cloud Reference Architecture | Anbu Krishnaswamy Cloud initiatives are beginning to dominate enterprise IT roadmaps. Successful adoption of Cloud and the subsequent governance challenges warrant a Cloud reference architecture that is applied consistently across the enterprise. This presentation will answer the important questions: What exactly is a Cloud, why you need it, what changes it will bring to the enterprise, and what are the key capabilities of a Cloud infrastructure are - using Oracle's Cloud Reference Architecture, which is part of the IT Strategies from Oracle (ITSO) Cloud Enterprise Technology Strategy (ETS). Salon E 21st Century SOA | Peter Belknap Service Oriented Architecture has evolved from concept to reality in the last decade. The right methodology coupled with mature SOA technologies has helped customers demonstrate success in both innovation and ROI. In this session you will learn how Oracle SOA Suite's orchestration, virtualization, and governance capabilities provide the infrastructure to run mission critical business and system applications. And we'll take a special look at the convergence of SOA & BPM using Oracle's Unified technology stack. Salon C 2:45 pm - 3:00 pm Break 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm Roundtable Discussion Salon E 4:00 pm - 4:15 pm Closing Comments & Readouts from Roundtables Salon E 4:15 pm - 5:00 pm Networking / Reception Salon E Foyer Note: Session schedule and content subject to change.

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  • Changing the sequencing strategy for File/Ftp Adapter

    - by [email protected]
    The File/Ftp Adapter allows the user to configure the outbound write to use a sequence number. For example, if I choose address-data_%SEQ%.txt as the FileNamingConvention, then all my files would be generated as address-data_1.txt, address-data_2.txt,...and so on. But, where does this sequence number come from? The answer lies in the "control directory" for the particular adapter project(or scenario). In general, for every project that use the File or Ftp Adapter, a unique directory is created for book keeping purposes. And since this control directory is required to be unique, the adapter uses a digest to make sure that no two control directories are the same. For example, for my FlatStructure sample, the control information for my project would go under FMW_HOME/user_projects/domains/soainfra/fileftp/controlFiles/[DIGEST]/outbound where the value of DIGEST would differ from one project to another. If you look under this directory, you will see a file control_ob.properties and this is where the sequence number is maintained. Please note that the sequence number is maintained in binary form and you hence you might need a hex editor to view its content. You will also see another zero byte file, SEQ_nnn, but, ignore that for now. We'll get to it some other time. For now, please remember that this extra file is maintained as a backup. One of the challenges faced by the adapter runtime is to guard all writes to the control files so no two threads inadverently try to update them at the same time. And, it does so with the help of a "Mutex". For now, please remember that the mutex comes in different flavors: In-memory DB-based Coherence-based User-defined Again, we will talk about these mutexes some other time. Please note that there might be scenarios, particularly under heavy load, where the mutex might become a bottleneck. The adapter, however,  allows you to change the configuration so that the adapter sequence value comes from a database sequence or a stored procedure and in such situation, the mutex is acually by-passed and thereby resulting in better throughputs. In later releases, the behavior of the adapter would be defaulted to use a db-sequence.  The simplest way to achieve this is by switching your JNDI for the outbound JCA file to use "eis/HAFileAdapter" as shown   But, what does this do? Internally, the adapter runtime creates a sequence on the oracle database. For example, if you do a "select * from user_sequences" in your soa-infra schema, you will see a new sequence being created with name as SEQ_<GUID>__ where the GUID will differ from one project to another. However, if you want to use your own sequence, then it would require you to add a new property to your JCA file called SequenceName as shown below. Please note that you will need to create this sequence on your soainfra schema beforehand.     But, what if we use DB2 or MSSQL Server as the dehydration support? DB2 supports sequences natively but MSSQL Server does not. So, the adapter runtime uses a natively generated sequence for DB2, but, for MSSQL server, the adapter relies on a stored procedure that ships with the product. If you wish to achieve the same result for SOA Suite running DB2 as the dehydration store, simply change your connection factory JNDI name in the JCA file to eis/HAFileAdapterDB2 and for MSSQL, please use eis/HAFileAdapterMSSQL. And, if you wish to use a stored procedure other than the one that ships with the product, you will need to rely on binding properties to override the adapter behavior. Particularly, you will need to instruct the adapter that you wish to use a stored procedure as shown:       Please note that if you're using the File/Ftp Adapter in Append mode, then the adapter runtime degrades the mutex to use pessimistic locks as we don't want writers from different nodes to append to the same file at the same time.                    

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  • MDM for Tax Authorities

    - by david.butler(at)oracle.com
    In last week’s MDM blog, we discussed MDM in the Public Sector. I want to continue that thread. After all, no industry faces tougher data quality problems than governmental organizations, and few industries suffer more significant down side consequences to poor operations than local, state and federal governments. One key challenge area is taxation. Tax Authorities face a multitude of IT challenges. Firstly, the data used in tax calculations is increasing in volume and complexity. They must improve service by introducing multi-channel contact centers and self-service capabilities. Security concerns necessitate increasingly sophisticated data protection procedures. And cost constraints are driving Tax Authorities to rely on off-the-shelf software for many of their functional areas. Compounding these issues is the fact that the IT architectures in operation at most revenue and collections agencies are very complex. They typically include multiple, disparate operational and analytical systems across which the sum total of data about individual constituents is fragmented. To make matters more complicated, taxation is not carried out by a single jurisdiction, and often sources of income including employers, investments and other sources of taxable income and deductions must also be tracked and shared among tax authorities. Collectively, these systems are involved in tax assessment and collections, risk analysis, scoring, tracking, auditing and investigation case management. The Problem of Constituent Data Management The infrastructure described above makes it very difficult to create a consolidated representation of a given party. Differing formats and data models mean that a constituent may be represented in one way in one system and in a different way in another. Individual records are frequently inaccurate, incomplete, out of date and/or inconsistent with other records relating to the same constituent. When constituent data must be aggregated and scored, information within each system must be rationalized and normalized so the agency can produce a constituent information file (CIF) that provides a single source of truth about that party. If information about that constituent changes, each system in turn must be updated. There have been many attempts to solve this problem with technology: from consolidating transactional systems to conducting manual systems integration projects and superimposing layers of business intelligence and analytics. All these approaches can be successful in solving a portion of the problem at a specific point in time, but without an enterprise perspective, anything gained is quickly lost again. Oracle Constituent Data Mastering for Tax Authorities: A Single View of the Constituent Oracle has a flexible and long-term solution to the problem of securely integrating and managing constituent data. The Oracle Solution for mastering Constituent Data for Tax Authorities is based on two core product offerings: Oracle Customer Hub and – optionally – Oracle Application Integration Architecture (AIA). Customer Hub is a master data management (MDM) product that centralizes, de-duplicates, and enriches constituent data. It unifies fragmented information without disrupting existing business processes or IT investments. Role based data access and privacy rules guarantee maximum security and privacy. Data is continuously and automatically synchronized with all source systems. With the Oracle Customer Hub managing the master constituent identity, every department can capture transaction activity against the same record, improving reporting accuracy, employee productivity, reliability of constituent analytics, and day-to-day constituent relationships. Oracle Application Integration Architecture provides a collection of core pre-built processes to support out of the box Master Data Governance across Oracle Customer Hub, Siebel CRM, and Oracle E-Business Suite. It also provides a framework to enable MDM integrations with other Oracle and non-Oracle applications. Oracle AIA removes some of the key inhibitors to implementing a service-oriented architecture (SOA) by providing a pre-built SOA-based middleware foundation as well as industry-optimized service oriented applications, all built around a SOA governance model that encourages effective design and reuse. I encourage you to read Oracle Solution for Mastering Constituents Data for Public Sector – Tax Authorities by Roberto Negro. It is an outstanding whitepaper that describes how the Oracle MDM solution allows you to create a unified, reconciled source of high-quality constituent data and gain an accurate single view of each constituent. This foundation enables you to lower the costs associated with data quality and integration and create a tax organization that is efficient, secure and constituent-centric. Also, don’t forget the upcoming webcast on Thursday, February 10th: Deliver Improved Services to Citizens at Lower Cost to your Organization Our Guest Speaker is Ruben Spekle, from Capgemini. He will also provide insight into Public Sector Master Data Management and Case Management implementations including one that was executed for a Dutch Government Agency. If you are interested in how governmental organizations from around the world are using MDM to advance their cause, click here to register for the webcast.

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  • Desktop Fun: Google Themed Icon Packs

    - by Asian Angel
    Are you an avid user of Google’s online services, but the icons for your desktop and app launcher shortcuts leave something to be desired? Now you can make those shortcuts shine with style using our Google Themed Icon Packs collection. Note: To customize the icon setup on your Windows 7 & Vista systems see our article here. Using Windows XP? We have you covered here. Sneak Preview For this week’s sneak preview we set up a Google Chrome themed desktop using the Simply Google Icon Collection shown below. Note: Original full-size wallpaper can be found here. We used Chromium to create a set of app shortcuts for various Google services on our desktop. Anyone who has done the same knows that the original icons do not look very good, so these icon packs can make those shortcuts look spectacular. Once the new icons were arranged for our desktop app shortcuts, we then pinned them to our Taskbar. Those are definitely looking nice! The Icon Packs Simply Google Icon Collection *.ico and .png format Download Google icons *.ico and .png format Download Tango Google Icon Set Vol. 1 *.png and .svg format Download Google Tango Icon Set Vol. 2 *.png and .svg format Download New Google Product Icons *.ico, .png, and .gif format Note: This icon pack contains 657 icons of various sizes. The best selection of individual icon types in the same size (i.e. 48, 128, etc.) from this pack is a mixture of .png and .gif formats. Download New google docs icons *.png format only Download Google Docs pack Icons *.ico, .png, and .gif format Download GCal *.png format only (original favicon .ico file included) Download Google Earth Icon Color Pack *.png format only Download Google Earth Dock Icons *.ico, .png, and .icns format Download Gtalk Color Icons *.png format only Download Google Buzz Icons *.png format only Download Google Chrome icon pack *.png format only Download Google Chrome X *.ico, .png, and .icns format Download Google Chrome icon pack *.png format only Download Wanting more great icon sets to look through? Be certain to visit our Desktop Fun section for more icon goodness! Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How To Boot 10 Different Live CDs From 1 USB Flash Drive The 20 Best How-To Geek Linux Articles of 2010 The 50 Best How-To Geek Windows Articles of 2010 The 20 Best How-To Geek Explainer Topics for 2010 How to Disable Caps Lock Key in Windows 7 or Vista How to Use the Avira Rescue CD to Clean Your Infected PC Enjoy Old School Style Video Game Fun with Chicken Invaders Hide the Twitter “Litter” in Twitter’s Sidebar Area (Chrome and Iron) Public Domain Day: Reflections on Copyright and the Importance of Public Domain Angry Birds Coming to PS3 and PSP This Week I Hate Mondays Wallpaper for That First Day Back at Work Tune Pop Enhances Android Music Notifications

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  • SQLAuthority News – SQL Server Wait Stats – eBook to Download on Kindle – Answer to FREE PDF Download Request

    - by pinaldave
    Being a book author is a completely new experience for me. I am yet to come across the issues faced by expert book authors. I assume that these interesting issues can be routine ones for expert book authors. One of the biggest requests I am getting for my SQL Server Wait Stats [Amazon] | [Flipkart] | [Kindle] book is my humble attempt to write a book. This is our very first experiment, and the book is beginning of the subject of SQL Server Wait Stats; we will come up with a new version of the book later next year when we have enough information for the SQL Server 2012 version. Following are the top 2 requests that I keep on receiving in emails, on blogs, Twitter, and Facebook. “Please send us FREE PDF of your book so we do not have to purchase it.” “If you can share with us the eBook (free and downloadable) format of your book, we will share it with everybody we know and you will get additional exposure.” Here is my response for the abovementioned requests: If you really need my book and cannot purchase it due to financial trouble, then feel free to let me know and I will purchase it myself and ship it to you. If you are in a country where the print book not available, then you can buy the Kindle book, which is available online in any country, and you can just read it on your computer and mobile devices. You DO NOT have to own a Kindle to read a Kindle format book. You can freely download Kindle software on your desired format and purchase the book online. For next 5 days, the kindle book is available at 3.99 in USA, and in other countries, the price is anywhere between 3.99 and 5.99. The price will go up by USD 2 everywhere across the world after 1st November, 2011. Here is the link to download Kindle Software for free PC, WP7, and in marketplace for various other mobile devices. I thank you for giving warm response to SQL Server Wait Stats book. I am motivated to write the next expanded version of this book. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: About Me, Database, Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • Introducing sp_ssiscatalog (v1.0.0.0)

    - by jamiet
    Regular readers of my blog may know that over the last year I have made available a suite of SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) reports that provide visualisations of the data in the SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) 2012 Catalog. Those reports are available at http://ssisreportingpack.codeplex.com. As I have built these reports and used them myself on a real life project a couple of things have dawned on me: As soon as your SSIS Catalog gets a significant amount of data in it the performance of the reports degrades rapidly. This is hampered by the fact that there are limitations as to the SQL statements that I can embed within a SSRS report. SSIS professionals are data guys at heart and those types of people feel more comfortable in a query environment rather than having to go through the rigmarole of standing up a reporting server (well, I know I do anyway) Hence I have decided to take a different tack with the reporting pack. Taking my lead from Adam Machanic’s sp_whoisactive and Brent Ozar’s sp_blitz I have produced sp_ssiscatalog, a stored procedure that makes it easy to get at the crucial data in the SSIS Catalog. I will spend the rest of this blog explaining exactly what sp_ssiscatalog does and how to use it but if you would rather just download the bits yourself and start to play you can download v1.0.0.0 from DB v1.0.0.0. Usage Scenarios Most Recent Execution I find that the most frequent information that one needs to get from the SSIS Catalog is information pertaining to the most recent execution. Hence if you execute sp_ssiscatalog with no parameters, that is exactly what you will get. EXEC [dbo].[sp_ssiscatalog] This will return up to 5 resultsets: EXECUTION - Summary information about the execution including status, start time & end time EVENTS - All events that occurred during the execution OnError,OnTaskFailed - All events where event_name is either OnError or OnTaskFailed OnWarning - All events where event_name is OnWarning EXECUTABLE_STATS - Duration and execution result of every executable in the execution All 5 resultsets will be displayed if there is any data satisfying that resultset. In other words, if there are no (for example) OnWarning events then the OnWarning resultset will not be displayed. The display of these 5 resultsets can be toggled respectively by these 5 optional parameters (all of which are of type BIT): @exec_execution @exec_events @exec_errors @exec_warnings @exec_executable_stats Any Execution As just explained the default behaviour is to supply data for the most recent execution. If you wish to specify which execution the data should return data for simply supply the execution_id as a parameter: EXEC [dbo].[sp_ssiscatalog] 6 All Executions sp_ssiscatalog can also return information about all executions: EXEC [dbo].[sp_ssiscatalog] @operation_type='execs' The most recent execution will appear at the top. sp_ssiscatalog provides a number of parameters that enable you to filter the resultset: @execs_folder_name @execs_project_name @execs_package_name @execs_executed_as_name @execs_status_desc Some typical usages might be: //Return all failed executions EXEC [dbo].[sp_ssiscatalog] @operation_type='execs',@execs_status_desc='failed' //Return all executions for a specified folder EXEC [dbo].[sp_ssiscatalog] @operation_type='execs',@execs_folder_name='My folder' //Return all executions of a specified package in a specified project EXEC [dbo].[sp_ssiscatalog] @operation_type='execs',@execs_project_name='My project', @execs_package_name='Pkg.dtsx' Installing sp_ssicatalog Under the covers sp_ssiscatalog actually calls many other stored procedures and functions hence creating it on your server is not simply a case of running a CREATE PROCEDURE script. I maintain the code in an SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) database project which means that you have two ways of obtaining it. Download the source code You can download the latest (at the time of writing) source code from http://ssisreportingpack.codeplex.com/SourceControl/changeset/view/70192. Hit the download button to download all the source code in a zip file. The contents of that zip file will include an SSDT database project which you can open up in SSDT and publish just like any other SSDT database project. You can publish to a new database or any existing database, even [SSISDB] if you prefer. Download a dacpac Maintaining the code in an SSDT database project means that it can all get packaged up into a dacpac that you can then publish to your SQL Server. That dacpac is available from DB v1.0.0.0: Ordinarily a dacpac can be deployed to a SQL Server from SSMS using the Deploy Dacpac wizard however in this case there is a limitation. Due to sp_ssiscatalog referring to objects in the SSIS Catalog (which it has to do of course) the dacpac contains a SqlCmd variable to store the name of the database that underpins the SSIS Catalog; unfortunately the Deploy Dacpac wizard in SSMS has a rather gaping limitation in that it cannot deploy dacpacs containing SqlCmd variables. Hence, we can use the command-line tool, sqlpackage.exe, instead. Don’t worry if reverting to the command-line sounds a little daunting, I assure you it is not. Simply open a Visual Studio command-prompt and cd to the folder containing the downloaded dacpac: Type: "%PROGRAMFILES(x86)%\Microsoft SQL Server\110\DAC\bin\sqlpackage.exe" /action:Publish /TargetDatabaseName:SsisReportingPack /SourceFile:SSISReportingPack.dacpac /Variables:SSISDB=SSISDB /TargetServerName:(local) or the shortened form: "%PROGRAMFILES(x86)%\Microsoft SQL Server\110\DAC\bin\sqlpackage.exe" /a:Publish /tdn:SsisReportingPack /sf:SSISReportingPack.dacpac /v:SSISDB=SSISDB /tsn:(local) remembering to set your server name appropriately (here mine is set to “(local)” ). If everything works successfully you will see this: And you’re done! You’ll have a new database called [SsisReportingPack] which contains sp_ssiscatalog:   Good luck with sp_ssiscatalog. I have been using it extensively on my own projects recently and it has proved to be very useful indeed. Rest-assured however, I will be adding many new capabilities in the future. Feedback is welcome. @Jamiet

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  • XNA: Networking gone totally out of sync

    - by MesserChups
    I'm creating a multiplayer interface for a game in 2D some of my friends made, and I'm stuck with a huge latency or sync problem. I started by adapting my game to the msdn xna network tutorial and right now when I join a SystemLink network session (1 host on PC and 1 client on Xbox) I can move two players, everything is ok, but few minutes later the two machines start being totally out of synchronization. When I move one player it takes 10 or 20 seconds (increasing with TIME) to take effect on the second machine. I've tried to : Create a thread which calls NetworkSession.Update() continuously as suggested on this forum, didn't worked. Call the Send() method one frame on 10, and the receive() method at each frame, didn't worked either. I've cleaned my code, flushed all buffers at each call and switched the host and client but the problem still remain... I hope you have a solution because I'm running out of ideas... Thanks SendPackets() code : protected override void SendPackets() { if ((NetworkSessionState)m_networkSession.SessionState == NetworkSessionState.Playing) //Only while playing { //Write in the packet manager m_packetWriter.Write(m_packetManager.PacketToSend.ToArray(), 0, (int)m_packetManager.PacketToSend.Position); m_packetManager.ResetPacket(); //flush //Sends the packets to all remote gamers foreach (NetworkGamer l_netGamer in m_networkSession.RemoteGamers) { if (m_packetWriter.Length != 0) { FirstLocalNetGamer.SendData(m_packetWriter, SendDataOptions.None, l_netGamer); } } m_packetWriter.Flush();//m m_packetWriter.Seek(0, 0); } } ReceivePackets() code : public override void ReceivePackets() { base.ReceivePackets(); if ((NetworkSessionState)m_networkSession.SessionState == NetworkSessionState.Playing) //Only while playing { if (m_networkSession.LocalGamers.Count > 0) //Verify that there's at least one local gamer { foreach (LocalNetworkGamer l_localGamer in m_networkSession.LocalGamers) { //every LocalNetworkGamer must read to flush their stream // Keep reading while packets are available. NetworkGamer l_oldSender = null; while (l_localGamer.IsDataAvailable) { // Read a single packet, even if we are the host, we must read to clear the queue NetworkGamer l_newSender; l_localGamer.ReceiveData(m_packetReader, out l_newSender); if (l_newSender != l_oldSender) { if ((!l_newSender.IsLocal) && (l_localGamer == FirstLocalNetGamer)) { //Parsing PacketReader to MemoryStream m_packetManager.Receive(new MemoryStream(m_packetReader.ReadBytes(m_packetReader.Length))); } } l_oldSender = l_newSender; m_packetReader.BaseStream.Flush(); m_packetReader.BaseStream.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin); } } m_packetManager.ParsePackets(); } } }

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  • Did I lost my RAID again?

    - by BarsMonster
    Hi! A little history: 2 years ago I was really excited to find out that mdadm is so powerful so it even can reshape arrays so you can start with a smaller array and the grow it as you need. I've bought 3x1Tb drives and made RAID-5. It was fine for a year. Then I bought 2x more, and tried to reshape to RAID-6 out of 5 drives, and due to some mess with superblock versions, lost all content. Had to rebuild it from scratch, but 2Tb of data were gone. Yesterday I bought 2 more drives, and this time I had everything: properly built array, UPS. I've disabled write intent map, added 2 new drives as a spare and run a command to grow array to 7-disk. It started working, but speed was ridiculously slow, ~100kb/sec. AFter processing first 37Mb at such an amasing speed, one of old HDDs fails. I properly shutdown PC and disconnected failed drive. After bootup it appeared it recreated intent map as it was still in mdadm config, so I removed it from config and rebooted again. Now all I see is that all mdadm processes deadlocks, and don't do anything. PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 1937 root 20 0 12992 608 444 D 0 0.1 0:00.00 mdadm 2283 root 20 0 12992 852 704 D 0 0.1 0:00.01 mdadm 2287 root 20 0 0 0 0 D 0 0.0 0:00.01 md0_reshape 2288 root 18 -2 12992 820 676 D 0 0.1 0:00.01 mdadm And all I see in mdstat is: $ cat /proc/mdstat Personalities : [linear] [multipath] [raid0] [raid1] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4] [raid10] md0 : active raid6 sdb1[1] sdg1[4] sdf1[7] sde1[6] sdd1[0] sdc1[5] 2929683456 blocks super 1.2 level 6, 1024k chunk, algorithm 2 [7/6] [UU_UUUU] [>....................] reshape = 0.0% (37888/976561152) finish=567604147.2min speed=0K/sec I've already tried mdadm 2.6.7, 3.1.4 and 3.2 - nothing helps. Did I lost my data again? Any suggestions how can I make it work? OS is Ubuntu Server 10.04.2... PS. Needless to say that data is unaccessible - I cannot mount /dev/md0 as save the most valuable data. You can see my disappointment - the very specific thing I was excited about failed twice taking 5Tb of my data with it.

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  • Leveraging Social Networks for Retail

    - by David Dorf
    For retailers, social media is all about B2C2C. That is, Business to Consumer to Consumer, or more specifically, retailer to influencer to consumer. Traditional marketing targeted mass media, trying to expose the message to as many people as possible. While effective, this approach has never been very efficient, with high costs for relatively low penetration. Then it was thought that marketers should focus their efforts on a relative few super-influencers that would then sway the masses. History shows a few successes with this approach but lacked any consistency or predictability. After all, if super-influencers were easy to find, most campaigns would easily go viral. Alas, research shows that most wide-spread trends were the result of several fortunate events, including some luck. So do people exert influence over each other when it comes to purchase decisions? Of course they do, all the time. But that influence is usually limited to a small set of friends and specific specialization. For instance, although I have 165 friends on Facebook, I am only able to influence my close friends and family on PC purchases, and I have no sway at all for fashion purchases. People trust my knowledge on technology, but nobody asks my advice on shoes. How then should retailers leverage social networks in order to reinforce brand image and push promotions? Two obvious ways are Like and Share. Online advertisements or wall-postings receive more clicks when the viewer sees that friends have "liked" the posting. That's our modern-day version of word-of-mouth advertising. Statistics show that endorsements from friends make it more likely a person will engage. If my friends and I liked it, then I might also "share" (or "retweet" in the case of Twitter) it with other friends. In that case the retailer has paid for X showings of the advertisement, but sharing has pushed it to an additional Y people at no cost. And further, the implicit endorsement by the sharer makes it more likely the recipient will engage. So a good first step is to find people active in social networks that will Like and Share in order to exert influence. Its still tough to go viral, but doubling engagement is still a big step in the right direction. More complex social graph analysis would be a second step, but I'll leave that topic for another day. If you're interested in the academic side of social dynamics, I suggest reading Duncan Watts' work.

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  • WinMo&rsquo;s Demise: Notifying Next of &ldquo;Kin&rdquo;

    - by andrewbrust
    This past Monday, April 12th, Visual Studio 2010 was launched.  And on that same day, Microsoft also launched a new line of  mobile phone handsets, called Kin.  The two product launches are actually connected, but only by what they do not have in common, and what they commonly lack. On the former point: VS 2010 had released to manufacturing a couple weeks prior to its launch.  The Kin phones, meanwhile are not yet available.  We don’t even know what they will cost.  (And I think cost will be a major factor in Kin’s success…I told ChannelWeb’s Yara Souza so in this article). What do the two products both lack? Simple: Windows Mobile 6.x. For example, Kin seems to be based on the same platform as Windows Phone 7 (albeit a subset).  And VS 2010 does not support .NET Compact Framework development, which means no .NET development support for WinMo 6.x and earlier. So I guess April 12th marks Windows Phone “clean slate day.”  If you want to develop for the old phone platform, you will need to use the old version of Visual Studio (i.e. 2008).  Luckily VS 2010 and 2008 can be installed side-by-side.  But I doubt that’s much consolation to developers who still target WinMo 6.5 and earlier. Remember, WinMo isn’t just about the phone.  There are all sorts of non-telephony mobile devices, including ruggedized Pocket PC-style instruments, bar code readers and shop-floor-deployed units that don’t run Windows Phone 7 and couldn’t, even if they wanted to. Where will developers in these markets go?  I would guess some will stick with WinMo 6.x and earlier, until Windows Phone 7 can handle their workloads, assuming that does indeed happen.  Others will likely go to Google’s Android platform. For OEMs and developers who need a customizable mobile software stack, Android is turning out to be out-WinMo-ing WinMo.  As I wrote in this post, Google took Microsoft’s model (minus the licensing fees) and combined it with a modern SmartPhone feature set (rather than a late 90s/early oughts PDA paradigm), to great success.  You might say Google embraced and extended. You might also say Microsoft shunned and withdrew.

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  • Deep in the Heart of Texas

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

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