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• Oracle Customer Hub - Directions, Roadmap and Customer Success

  - by Mala Narasimharajan

   By Gurinder Bahl With less than a week from OOW 2012, I would like to introduce you all to the core Oracle Customer MDM Strategy sessions. Fragmentation of customer data across disparate systems prohibits companies from achieving a complete and accurate view of their customers. Oracle Customer Hub provide a comprehensive set of services, utilities and applications to create and maintain a trusted master customer system of record across the enterprise. Customer Hub centralizes customer data from disparate systems across your enterprise into a master repository. Existing systems are integrated in real-time or via batch with the Hub, allowing you to leverage legacy platform investments while capitalizing on the benefits of a single customer identity. Don’t miss out on two sessions geared towards Oracle Customer Hub:   1) Attend session CON9747 - Turn Customer Data into an Enterprise Asset with Oracle Fusion Customer Hub Applications at Oracle Open World 2012 on Monday, Oct 1st, 10:45 AM - 11:45 AM @ Moscone West – 2008. Manouj Tahiliani, Sr. Director MDM Product Management will provide insight into the vision of Oracle Fusion Customer Hub solutions, and review the roadmap. You will discover how Fusion Customer MDM can help your enterprise improve data quality, create accurate and complete customer information,  manage governance and help create great customer experiences. You will also understand how to leverage data quality capabilities and create a sophisticated customer foundation within Oracle Fusion Applications. You will also hear Danette Patterson, Group Lead, Church Pension Group talk about how Oracle Fusion Customer Hub applications provide a modern, next-generation, multi-domain foundation for managing customer information in a private cloud. 2)  Don't miss session  CON9692 - Customer MDM is key to Strategic Business Success and Customer Experience Management at Oracle Open World 2012 on Wednesday, October 3rd 2012 from 3:30-4:30pm @ Westin San Francisco Metropolitan 1. JP Hurtado, Director, Customer Systems, will provide insight on how RCCL overcame challenges of data quality, guest recognition & centralized customer view to provide consolidated customer view to multiple reservation, CRM, marketing, service, sales, data warehouse and loyalty systems. You will learn how Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines (RCCL), which has over 30 million customer and maintain multiple brands, leveraged Oracle Customer Hub (Siebel UCM) as backbone to customer data management strategy for past 5 years. Gurinder Bahl from MDM Product Management will provide an update on Oracle Customer Hub strategy, what we have achieved since last Open World and our future plans for the Oracle Customer Hub. You will learn about Customer Hub Data Quality capabilities around data analysis, cleansing, matching, address validation as well as reporting and monitoring capabilities. The MDM track at Oracle Open World covers variety of topics related to MDM. In addition to the product management team presenting product updates and roadmap, we have several Customer Panels, and Conference sessions. You can see an overview of MDM sessions here.  Looking forward to see you at Open World, the perfect opportunity to learn about cutting edge Oracle technologies. 

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• Friday Fun: Snow Crusher

  - by Asian Angel

  It has probably been a long week whether you have already returned to work or are finishing up the last of your vacation time. If you are in need of some stress relief, then we have we the perfect game for you. This week you get to be totally fiendish and use a monster size snowball to destroy as many cars as possible at the local snow lodge. Snow Crusher The object of the game is simple…create as large of a monster snowball as you can and then send it down over the side of the mountain to destroy the cars at the snow lodge. You can choose from three different sizes of monster snowballs to create. We chose the “Snowflake Size” for our reign of destruction. Once you have chosen a monster snowball size, all that is left to do is select the control method that works best for you. As soon as you select the control method, your monster snowball creation will automatically begin. Keep in mind that the faster your snowball goes the harder it can become to steer if you make sudden movements… At the top you can watch your progress towards the drop-off point and the green boxes highlighted at the bottom indicate how large of an item (such as trees or boulders) your snowball can roll over and add to the total mass. Snowball speed is shown in the lower right corner. Time to roll! As soon as the first green box is lit up you can start adding small trees to your snowball’s mass. You will want to avoid larger items as you go because they will penalize your score, slow you down, and reduce the size of your snowball! Halfway to the drop-off point and our snowball is now able to grab up larger trees. If you have not hit any large items along the way, your snowball will definitely be moving along at a good rate by now. When you reach the end of the mass building area, your snowball will pop out into the open and get ready to drop off over the side of the mountain. Go snowball go! Yes! Thirteen cars crushed and ready for the scrap yard… If the “Snowflake Size” snowball can do this, just think what the “Avalanche Size” can do with three minutes of time to build up mass! Have fun with those monster snowballs! Play Snow Crusher Latest Features How-To Geek ETC 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 The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials Classic Super Mario Brothers Theme for Chrome and Iron Experimental Firefox Builds Put Tabs on the Title Bar (Available for Download) Android Trojan Found in the Wild Chaos, Panic, and Disorder Wallpaper Enjoy Christmas Beyond the Holiday with Christmas Eve Crisis Parrotfish Extends the Number of Services Accessible in Twitter Previews

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• American Modern Insurance Group recognized at 2010 INN VIP Best Practices Awards

  - by [email protected]

  Below: Helen Pitts (right), Oracle Insurance, congratulates Bruce Weisgerber, Munich Re, as he accepts a VIP Best Practices Award on behalf of American Modern Insurance Group.     Oracle Insurance Senior Product Marketing Manager Helen Pitts is attending the 2010 ACORD LOMA Insurance Forum this week at the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas, Nevada, and will be providing updates from the show floor. This is one of my favorite seasons of the year--insurance trade show season. It is a time to reconnect with peers, visit with partners, make new industry connections, and celebrate our customers' achievements. It's especially meaningful when we can share the experience of having one of our Oracle Insurance customers recognized for being an innovator in its business and in the industry. Congratulations to American Modern Insurance Group, part of the Munich Re Group. American Modern earned an Insurance Networking News (INN) 2010 VIP Best Practice Award yesterday evening during the 2010 ACORD LOMA Insurance Forum. The award recognizes an insurer's best practice for use of a specific technology and the role, if feasible, that ACORD data standards played as a part of their business and technology. American Modern received an Honorable Mention for leveraging the Oracle Documaker enterprise document automation solution to: Improve the quality of communications with customers in high value, high-touch lines of business Convert thousands of page elements or "forms" from their previous system, with near pixel-perfect accuracy Increase efficiency and reusability by storing all document elements (fonts, logos, approved wording, etc.) in one place Issue on-demand documents, such as address changes or policy transactions to multiple recipients at once Consolidate all customer communications onto a single platform Gain the ability to send documents to multiple recipients at once, further improving efficiency Empower agents to produce documents in real time via the Web, such as quotes, applications and policy documents, improving carrier-agent relationships Munich Re's Bruce Weisgerber accepted the award on behalf of American Modern from Lloyd Chumbly, vice president of standards at ACORD. In a press release issued after the ceremony Chumbly noted, "This award embodies a philosophy of efficiency--working smarter with standards, these insurers represent the 'best of the best' as chosen by a body of seasoned insurance industry professionals." We couldn't agree with you more, Lloyd. Congratulations again to American Modern on your continued innovation and success. You're definitely a VIP in our book! To learn more about how American Modern is putting its enterprise document automation strategy into practice, click here to read a case study. Helen Pitts is senior product marketing manager for Oracle Insurance.

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• Sites To Download Free eBooks For Kindle

  - by Gopinath

  Amazon Kindle is the top selling gadget of this holiday season and many of you would have received it as a gift. For those who got a Amazon Kindle here are few websites that offer free eBooks to fulfil reading appetite at no cost. 1. Free Kindle Books – Amazon Website – This page on Amazon lists nice collection of free books available for Kindle that includes Serial by Jack Kiborn, The Wild’s Call by Jeri Smith, Star Wars by John Jackson MIller and several other books from a list of 40 books. 2. Project Gutenberg: This site as 33,000 + free books that not work let you read on Kindle but also on iPad, PCs and smart phones.  This site is very popular for free ebooks. 3. Google E-Bookstore: Google’s eBookStore has thousands of free ebooks for Kindle in their free books section. 4. Internet Archive: Here you find millions of rare print works that are especially useful for academic research. Multiple language books are also available for Kindle. 5. Open Library: This site is sort of Wikipedia for eBooks with over 20 million user-contributed books and magazines. They are all Kindle friendly. 6. ManyBooks.net: Nearly 30,000 titles, many of which have been pulled from Project Gutenberg. Has a good collection of little-known Creative Commons works. 7. Freebooks.com – the public domain section of this site contains many free ebooks that are perfect for your Kindle. 8. freecomputerbooks.com, freetechbooks.com and onlinecomputerbooks.com - if you are geek and looking for technology books, this is the site you should visit to grab free books. Image credit: bike/flickr This article titled,Sites To Download Free eBooks For Kindle, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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• Play a New Random Game Each Day in Chrome

  - by Asian Angel

  Being able to unwind for a few moments each day can make the time pass so much better and help you feel refreshed. If your favorite method for relaxing is playing a quick game, then join us as we take a look at the Random Games from MyGiochi.net extension for Google Chrome. Random Games from MyGiochi.net in Action The really great thing about this extension is that each day you can have a new random game to play. If you love variety this is definitely going to be a perfect match for you. We got “Power Golf” as our random game of the day. Here is a look at things once we got started…this one can be a lot of fun to play. Time to move on to the third hole now… What if you want something different from the game available on any given day? In the upper right corner you will find links for “game categories” that you can look through (clicking on the links will open a new tab). Since the links are in Italian you might need to experiment a little bit to find the category that you want to browse through. We chose the “Games for Girls Category”. With Chrome’s new built in “Translation Bar” you can easily switch the page over to the language of your choice. Note: Translation Bar available in Dev Channel releases. Ready to choose a fun game to play! You really can have a lot of fun with the games available at My Giochi. With our “game of the day” we had a second option for other games to try. More games equals more fun! Conclusion If playing online games is your favorite way to relax then the MyGiochi.net extension will make a great addition to your browser. Have fun with all of those new games each day! Links Download the Random Games from MyGiochi.net extension (Google Chrome Extensions) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Geek Fun: Play Alien Arena the Free FPS GamePlay Avalanche!! in Google ChromeFriday Fun: Get Your Mario OnFriday Fun: Play Bubble QuodFriday Fun: 13 Days in Hell 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 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional How to Browse Privately in Firefox Kill Processes Quickly with Process Assassin Need to Come Up with a Good Name? Try Wordoid StockFox puts a Lightweight Stock Ticker in your Statusbar Explore Google Public Data Visually The Ultimate Excel Cheatsheet

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• Miracle Growth Of Organs From Our Own Cells

  - by Rekha

  At the current situation, there is a shortage of healthy organs. The donor and patient also have to be closely matched and there are chances for the patient’s immune system may reject the transplant. Right now, researchers are seriously involved in a new kind of solution: "bioartifical" organs are being grown from the patient’s own cells. There are a few people who have already received lab-grown bladders. Bladder technique was developed by Anthony Atala of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The healthy cells from the patient’s diseased bladder is taken and cause them to multiply profusely in petri dishes. The muscle cells go on the outside, urothelial cells on the inside by layering the cells one layer at a time. The bladder-to-be is then incubated at body temperature until the cells form functioning tissue. This process could take six to eight months. Organs with lots of blood vessels, such as kidneys or livers, are harder to grow than hollow ones like bladders. Atala’s group works on 22 organs and tissues including ears, recently made a functioning piece of human liver. Others in the list includes:  Columbia University – Jawbone, Yale University – Lung, University of Minnesota – Rat heart, University of Michigan – Artificial Kidney There are possibilities that growing a copy of patient’s organ is not always possible – for instance, when the original is completely damaged by cancer. By using stem cell bank collected without harming human embryos from amniotic fluid in the womb, those cells are coaxed into becoming heart, liver and other organ cells. A bank of 1,00,000 stem cell samples would have enough genetic variety to match nearly any patient. Surgeons can order organs grown as needed instead of waiting for the perfect donor. "There are few things as devastating for a surgeon as knowing you have to replace the tissue and you’re doing something that’s not ideal," says Atala, a urologic surgeon himself. "Wouldn’t it be great if they had their own organ?" Great for the patient especially, he means. Via National Geographic  and cc image credit This article titled,Miracle Growth Of Organs From Our Own Cells, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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• Live CD / Live USB much faster than full install

  - by user29347

  I've observed it on both laptops I own! HP Compaq nx6125 and Ubuntu 11.04 x64 - somewhat solved Lenovo Thinkpad T500 and Ubuntu 11.10 x64 - help needed! I'm still struggling with the Thinkpad to get performance level similar to that of 10 y.o. laptops... All in all a really serious issue with multiple versions of Ubuntu that renders computers with perfectly compatible hardware unusable, as far as out of the box experience is concerned. Troubleshooting resultant issues seems to be a hard case even for users with some experience with installing graphics drivers. EDIT: I can't really post additional details. Two different ubuntu versions, two laptops, two different set of graph. drivers (OS vs ATI prop.) - all with the same symptoms. Also I can't stress enough how massive the performance degradation is compared to a healthy system. For that reason I ask for input from people who may know roughly what are we dealing with here. I can post more details if we were to focus on my current Thinkpad T500. In that case my current system details: Lenovo Thinkpad T500 Ubuntu 11.10 x64 ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650 (also see the "What I have already tried" section about Intel graphics tested) ATI Catalyst 11.10 drivers OCZ Agility 3 SSD but! same with the default driver for ATI the card same with the prop. driver for the ATI card from Jockey (Additional drivers applet) What I have already tried: 0. Switching to Intel integrated card (Intel GMA 4500M HD) with the default driver - same effects = may indicate not driver related problem but a problem with something of global influence like e.g. nomodeset or other I don't even know about. (What you can read above) ATI Catalyst 11.10 and radeon.modeset=0 boot parameter + disabled Wait for VBlank. Unity 2D Ubuntu 10.04 LTS tested (ubuntu-10.04.3-desktop-i386.iso): Both live USB and installed version blazing fast! (on the default drivers - without even installing the proprietary fglrx drivers). re2 a) seems to give me the only significant results (still poor) - perfect Unity elements performance with the same crawling stuttering/lagging when dragging windows around. re2 b) this happens often http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b68/Bucic/ubuntuforumsorg/Screenshotat2011-10-28083140.png re2 c) Sometimes I am able to witness a normal performance when dragging a window around but only for a second or two. When I try to shake it longer it starts to lag and it will keep lagging like that with an increased probability of what you see in the sshot in point re2 b). re2 d) I can't establish the radeon.modeset=0 influence though. Once it seems to work be smooth with it, the other time - without it. Really can't tell.

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• Set Custom Reload Times for Individual Webpages in Chrome

  - by Asian Angel

  Do you have a webpage that needs to be reloaded every so often or perhaps you have multiple webpages that each need their own individual reload time? Now you can have the best of both with the AutoReloader extension for Google Chrome. Using AutoReloader When you first look at the drop-down window everything will be in a neutral “waiting” state. You can start using the extension immediately by simply entering the desired “time frame” for reloading a webpage. Notice for the “Repeat Option” that “0 = Continuous”… You may want to have a quick look through the “Options” to see if there are any “operational changes” that you would like to make. Once you enter a time click on the “Set Link” to start the timer. Notice that you can view the time remaining on the “Toolbar Button” unless you disabled the feature in the “Options”. Clicking on the “Toolbar Button” will show a larger version of the timer in the drop-down window along with a “Cancel Current Timer Link”. Here is the best part of all with AutoReloader…you can set up your own customized list of “Reload Times” and then access them through the drop-down window. Using the two times shown here we were able to set the “Productive Geek Webpage” up for 30 second reloads and the “TinyHacker Webpage” up for 1 minute reloads at the same time. There was no conflict whatsoever in running both “reload times” simultaneously. This is a really terrific feature! Conclusion Whether you have only one webpage or multiple pages that need periodic reloading (such as tracking a Woot-Off or an Ebay auction) the AutoReloader extension is the perfect tool for the job. Running custom reload times simultaneously have never been easier. Links Download the AutoReloader extension (Google Chrome Extensions) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Set Up Automatic Timed Page Reloading on Your Webpages in FirefoxRemove Custom about:config Entries the Easy WayEnable Vista Black Style Theme for Google Chrome in XPActivate the Redesigned New-Tab Interface in Google ChromeModify Tab Ordering in Google Chrome 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 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional The Growth of Citibank Quickly Switch between Tabs in IE Windows Media Player 12: Tweak Video & Sound with Playback Enhancements Own a cell phone, or does a cell phone own you? Make your Joomla & Drupal Sites Mobile with OSMOBI Integrate Twitter and Delicious and Make Life Easier

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• How To Approach 360 Degree Snake

  - by Austin Brunkhorst

  I've recently gotten into XNA and must say I love it. As sort of a hello world game I decided to create the classic game "Snake". The 90 degree version was very simple and easy to implement. But as I try to make a version of it that allows 360 degree rotation using left and right arrows, I've come into sort of a problem. What i'm doing now stems from the 90 degree version: Iterating through each snake body part beginning at the tail, and ending right before the head. This works great when moving every 100 milliseconds. The problem with this is that it makes for a choppy style of gameplay as technically the game progresses at only 6 fps rather than it's potential 60. I would like to move the snake every game loop. But unfortunately because the snake moves at the rate of it's head's size it goes way too fast. This would mean that the head would need to move at a much smaller increment such as (2, 2) in it's direction rather than what I have now (32, 32). Because I've been working on this game off and on for a couple of weeks while managing school I think that I've been thinking too hard on how to accomplish this. It's probably a simple solution, i'm just not catching it. Here's some pseudo code for what I've tried based off of what makes sense to me. I can't really think of another way to do it. for(int i = SnakeLength - 1; i > 0; i--){ current = SnakePart[i], next = SnakePart[i - 1]; current.x = next.x - (current.width * cos(next.angle)); current.y = next.y - (current.height * sin(next.angle)); current.angle = next.angle; } SnakeHead.x += cos(SnakeAngle) * SnakeSpeed; SnakeHead.y += sin(SnakeAngle) * SnakeSpeed; This produces something like this: Code in Action. As you can see each part always stays behind the head and doesn't make a "Trail" effect. A perfect example of what i'm going for can be found here: Data Worm. Not the viewport rotation but the trailing effect of the triangles. Thanks for any help!

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• Performance problems loading XML with SSIS, an alternative way!

  - by AtulThakor

  I recently needed to load several thousand XML files into a SQL database, I created an SSIS package which was created as followed: Using a foreach container to loop through a directory and load each file path into a variable, the “Import XML” dataflow would then load each XML file into a SQL table.       Running this, it took approximately 1 second to load each file which seemed a massive amount of time to parse the XML and load the data, speaking to my colleague Martin Croft, he suggested the use of T-SQL Bulk Insert and OpenRowset, so we adjusted the package as followed:     The same foreach container was used but instead the following SQL command was executed (this is an expression):     "INSERT INTO MyTable(FileDate) SELECT   CAST(bulkcolumn AS XML)     FROM OPENROWSET(         BULK         '" + @[User::CurrentFile]  + "',         SINGLE_BLOB ) AS x"     Using this method we managed to load approximately 20 records per second, much faster…for data loading! For what we wanted to achieve this was perfect but I’ll leave you with the following points when making your own decision on which solution you decide to choose!      Openrowset Method Much faster to get the data into SQL You’ll need to parse or create a view over the XML data to allow the data to be more usable(another post on this!) Not able to apply validation/transformation against the data when loading it The SQL Server service account will need permission to the file No schema validation when loading files SSIS Slower (in our case) Schema validation Allows you to apply transformations/joins to the data Permissions should be less of a problem Data can be loaded into the final form through the package When using a schema validation errors can fail the package (I’ll do another post on this)

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• The best Bar on the globe is ... in Seoul/Korea

  - by Mike Dietrich

  As you know already sometimes I write about things which really don't have to do anything with a database upgrade. So if you are looking for tips and tricks and articles about that topic please stop reading now Actually I'm not a lets-go-to-a-bar person. I enjoy good food and a fine dessert wine afterwards. But last week in Seoul/Korea Ryan, our local host, did ask us after a wonderful dinner at a Korean Barbecue place if we'd like to visit a bar. I was really tired as I flew into Seoul overnight from Sunday to Monday arriving Monday early morning, getting shower, breakfast - and then a full day of very good and productive customer meetings. But one thing Ryan mentioned catched my immediate attention: The owner of the bar collects records and has a huge tube amp stereo system - and you can ask him to play your favorite songs. The bar is called "Peter, Paul and Mary" - honestly not my favorite style of music. And I even coulnd't find a webpage or an address - only that little piece of information on Facebook. But after stepping down the stairs to the cellar my eyes almost poped out of my head. This is the audio system: Enourmus huge corner horn loudspeakers from Western Electric. Pretty old I'd suppose but delivering an incredible present dynamics into the room. And plenty of tube equipment from Jadis, NSA Labs and Shindo Laboratories Western Electric 300B Limited amps from Tokyo. And the owner (I was so amazed I had simply forgotten to ask for his name) collects records since 40 years. And we had many wishes that night. Actually when we did enter Peter, Paul and Mary he played an old Helloween song. That must have been destiny. A German entering a bar in Korea and the owner is playing an old song by one of Germany's best heavy metal bands ever. And it went on with the Doors, Rainbow's Stargazer, Scorpions, later Deep Purple's Perfect Strangers, a bit of Santana, Carly Simon, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie ...Ronnie James Dio's Holy Diver, Gary Moore, Peter Gabriel's San Jacinto ... and many many more great songs ... Of course we were the last guests leaving the place at 2am in the morning - and I've never ever had a better night in a bar before ... I could have stayed days listening to so many records  ... Thanks Ryan, that was a phantastic night! -Mike

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• Implement Negascout Algorithm with stack

  - by Dan

  I'm not familiar with how these stack exchange accounts work so if this is double posting I apologize. I asked the same thing on stackoverflow. I have added an AI routine to a game I am working on using the Negascout algorithm. It works great, but when I set a higher maximum depth it can take a few seconds to complete. The problem is it blocks the main thread, and the framework I am using does not have a way to deal with multi-threading properly across platforms. So I am trying to change this routine from recursively calling itself, to just managing a stack (vector) so that I can progress through the routine at a controlled pace and not lock up the application while the AI is thinking. I am getting hung up on the second recursive call in the loop. It relies on a returned value from the first call, so I don't know how to add these to a stack. My Working c++ Recursive Code: MoveScore abNegascout(vector<vector<char> > &board, int ply, int alpha, int beta, char piece) { if (ply==mMaxPly) { return MoveScore(evaluation.evaluateBoard(board, piece, oppPiece)); } int currentScore; int bestScore = -INFINITY; MoveCoord bestMove; int adaptiveBeta = beta; vector<MoveCoord> moveList = evaluation.genPriorityMoves(board, piece, findValidMove(board, piece, false)); if (moveList.empty()) { return MoveScore(bestScore); } bestMove = moveList[0]; for(int i=0;i<moveList.size();i++) { MoveCoord move = moveList[i]; vector<vector<char> > newBoard; newBoard.insert( newBoard.end(), board.begin(), board.end() ); effectMove(newBoard, piece, move.getRow(), move.getCol()); // First Call ****** MoveScore current = abNegascout(newBoard, ply+1, -adaptiveBeta, -max(alpha,bestScore), oppPiece); currentScore = - current.getScore(); if (currentScore>bestScore){ if (adaptiveBeta == beta || ply>=(mMaxPly-2)){ bestScore = currentScore; bestMove = move; }else { // Second Call ****** current = abNegascout(newBoard, ply+1, -beta, -currentScore, oppPiece); bestScore = - current.getScore(); bestMove = move; } if(bestScore>=beta){ return MoveScore(bestMove,bestScore); } adaptiveBeta = max(alpha, bestScore) + 1; } } return MoveScore(bestMove,bestScore); } If someone can please help by explaining how to get this to work with a simple stack. Example code would be much appreciated. While c++ would be perfect, any language that demonstrates how would be great. Thank You.

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• Go Big or Go Special

  - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

  Watching Shark Tank tonight and the first presentation was by Mango Mango Preserves and it highlighted an interesting contrast in business trends today and how to capitalize on opportunities.  <Spoiler Alert> Even though every one of the sharks was raving about the product samples they tried, with two of them going for second and third servings, none of them made a deal to invest in the company.</Spoiler>  In fact, one of the sharks, Kevin O’Leary, kept ripping into the owners with statements to the effect that he thinks they are headed over a financial cliff because he felt their costs were way out of line and would be their downfall if they didn’t take action to radically cut costs. He said that he had previously owned a jams and jellies business and knew the cost ratios that you had to have to make it work.  I don’t doubt he knows exactly what he’s talking about and is 100% accurate…for doing business his way, which I’ll call “Go Big”.  But there’s a whole other way to do business today that would be ideal for these ladies to pursue. As I understand it, based on his level of success in various businesses and the fact that he is even in a position to be investing in other companies, Kevin’s approach is to go mass market (Go Big) and make hundreds of millions of dollars in sales (or something along that scale) while squeezing out every ounce of cost that you can to produce an acceptable margin.  But there is a very different way of making a very successful business these days, which is all about building a passionate and loyal community of customers that are rooting for your success and even actively trying to help you succeed by promoting your product or company (Go Special).  This capitalizes on the power of social media, niche marketing, and The Long Tail.  One of the most prolific writers about capitalizing on this trend is Seth Godin, and I hope that the founders of Mango Mango pick up a couple of his books (probably Purple Cow and Tribes would be good starts) or at least read his blog.  I think the adoration expressed by all of the sharks for the product is the biggest hint that they have a remarkable product and that they are perfect for this type of business approach. Both are completely valid business models, and it may certainly be that the scale at which Kevin O’Leary wants to conduct business where he invests his money is well beyond the long tail, but that doesn’t mean that there is not still a lot of money to be made there.  I wish them the best of luck with their endeavors!

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• Add a non-Google Tasks List to Chrome

  - by Asian Angel

  Most people rely on a task list to help them remember what they need to do but not everyone wants one that is tied to a Google account. If you have been wanting an independent tasks list then join us as we look at the Tasks extension for Google Chrome. Tasks in Action As soon as you have finished installing the extension you are ready to start adding new tasks to your list. Enter your task into the “Text Area” and press “Enter” to add the task to the list. Note: Your tasks list will be retained (in the order you set) when you close and then reopen your browser. In just moments you can have your task list ready to go. Notice that there is also a “numerical indicator” attached to the “Toolbar Button” so that you will always know how many tasks you have left to complete. You can use the “drag and drop” function to rearrange your list into a more proper order if needed. When you are finished with a task all that you will need to do is click on the “Checkmark” to remove it from the list. If you need to make a new entry similar to an existing one simply right click and the text is automatically pasted into the “Text Area”. Make any desired changes and press “Enter” to add your new task to the list. Prefer to skip using the drop-down window? Click on “Tasks” at the top to open your list in a new tab instead. The tasks list looked very nice in our new tab. Being able to use the style that best suits your needs makes this a very convenient extension. Conclusion The Tasks extension is a perfect fit for anyone who needs a tasks list available but does not want to be tied down with an online account. Quick, simple and best of all hassle free. Links Download the Tasks extension (Google Chrome Extensions) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Turn Chrome’s New Tab Page into a Google Tasks PageAccess Google Tasks in Chrome the Easy WayHow to Make Google Chrome Your Default BrowserAdd a To-Do List to Chrome’s New Tab PageAccess Remember The Milk in Google Chrome the Easy Way 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 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Test Drive Mobile Phones Online With TryPhone Ben & Jerry’s Free Cone Day, 3/23/10 New Stinger from McAfee Helps Remove ‘FakeAlert’ Threats Google Apps Marketplace: Tools & Services For Google Apps Users Get News Quick and Precise With Newser Scan for Viruses in Ubuntu using ClamAV

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• Oracle User Productivity Kit Translation

  - by ultan o'broin

  Oracle's customers just love the User Productivity Kit (UPK). I hear only great things about it from our international customers at the Oracle Usability Advisory Board meetings too. The UPK is the perfect solution for enterprise applications training needs (I previously reviewed a fine book about UPK btw). One question I am often asked is how source content created using the UPK can be translated into another language. I spoke with Peter Maravelias, Principal Product Strategy Manager for UPK about this recently. UPK is already optimized for easy source-target translation already. There is even a solution for re-recording demos. Here's what you can do to get your source content into another language: Use UPK's ability to automatically translate events and actions. UPK comes with XML templates that allow you to accomplish this in 21 languages with a simple publishing action switch. These templates even deal with the tricky business of using gender-based translations. Spanish localization template sample Japanese localization template sample Use the Import and Export localization features to export additional custom content in a format like XLIFF, easily handled by translation tools. You could also export and import in Word format. Re-record the sound (audio) files that go with the recordings, one per screen. UPK's granular approach to the sound files means that timing isn't an option. Retiming demos isn't required. A tip here with sound files and XLFF-exported custom content is to facilitate translation context by avoiding explicit references to actions going on in the screen recordings. A text based storyboard with screenshots accompanying the sound files should also be provided to the translators. Provide a glossary of terms too. Use the re-record option in UPK to record any demo from a translated application. This will allow all the translated UI labels to be automatically captured. You may be required to resize any action events here due to text expansion issues. Of course, you will need translated data in the translated application too, so plan for this in advance. However, source-target language skills aren't required for the re-recording. The UPK Player itself, of course, is also available from Oracle along with content and doc in 21 languages. The Developer and Setup is also translated in a smaller number of languages. Check the Oracle UPK website for latest details. UPK is a super solution for global enterprise applications training deployments allowing source content to be translated into multiple languages easily. See this post on the UPK blog for more insight too!

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• Is my computer slow due to lack of swap

  - by Kristian Jensen

  A few months ago, I installed Ubuntu 12.04 alongside with Windows 7 on my Asus EEE-PC 1015bx. It has a tendency of freezing and when trying to investigate I found that a swap partition of only 256 MB had been created. The Asus EEE-PC 1015bx is born with 1 GByte RAM only and it is not possible to add further or exchange the existing 1 GByte with a larger card. When looking at the system monitor, it looks like all swap is being utilized along with 70-75% of the RAM, even with very few applications running. Can the lack of much swap space be the reason for my computer running slowly and at times freezing? How can I add a swap partition? Or should I add a swap file instead? At the moment, I see two partitions when viewing the system monitor: one 28.6 GByte ext4 partition which must be the one containing Ubuntu and one 100 GByte fuseblk partition which I assume is the one holding Windows. It shows that I have 18.6 GByte free space on the ext4 partition. Can I "take a bite" from the ext4 partition and convert this into a swap partition? I was thinking something like 3 GBytes for swap considering my limited RAM. I hope that someone can guide me through. Thank you. 20th Oct 2012 - Further details Thank you for below answer which I find very useful. I am certainly considering switching to one of your suggested shells as I can see from the Internet that many have posted that these require much fewer resources than ubuntu. It seems to me that lubuntu is the perfect match for my very limited computer. I will have to wait a few days, though, as I am presently limited by a very slow and restricted Internet connection via satellite. But will lubuntu install as simply another shell replacing unity or will it replace ubuntu all together? Will the software that I have installed under ubuntu still be accessible in lubuntu? And can I return to ubuntu if required? Regarding the actual question of swap: When I run gparted, it shows me that there is one ntfs partition of 100 GBytes from where it boots and the before mentioned ext4 partition of 28.6 GBytes is not mentioned. Could it be that my ubuntu installation resides inside this 100 GBytes ntfs partiotion? And if so, can I take a bite of this for my swap partition? Realising that gparted is shown in Danish, I hope that you can make out what I mean. System monitoring shows below details: Once again I sincerely hope that you can help. Thank you.

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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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• Interviews: Going Beyond the Technical Quiz

  - by Tony Davis

  All developers will be familiar with the basic format of a technical interview. After a bout of CV-trawling to gauge basic experience, strengths and weaknesses, the interview turns technical. The whiteboard takes center stage and the challenge is set to design a function or query, or solve what on the face of it might seem a disarmingly simple programming puzzle. Most developers will have experienced those few panic-stricken moments, when one’s mind goes as blank as the whiteboard, before un-popping the marker pen, and hopefully one’s mental functions, to work through the problem. It is a way to probe the candidate’s knowledge of basic programming structures and techniques and to challenge their critical thinking. However, these challenges or puzzles, often devised by some of the smartest brains in the development team, have a tendency to become unnecessarily ‘tricksy’. They often seem somewhat academic in nature. While the candidate straight out of IT school might breeze through the construction of a Markov chain, a candidate with bags of practical experience but less in the way of formal training could become nonplussed. Also, a whiteboard and a marker pen make up only a very small part of the toolkit that a programmer will use in everyday work. I remember vividly my first job interview, for a position as technical editor. It went well, but after the usual CV grilling and technical questions, I was only halfway there. Later, they sat me alongside a team of editors, in front of a computer loaded with MS Word and copy of SQL Server Query Analyzer, and my task was to edit a real chapter for a real SQL Server book that they planned to publish, including validating and testing all the code. It was a tough challenge but I came away with a sound knowledge of the sort of work I’d do, and its context. It makes perfect sense, yet my impression is that many organizations don’t do this. Indeed, it is only relatively recently that Red Gate started to move over to this model for developer interviews. Now, instead of, or perhaps in addition to, the whiteboard challenges, the candidate can expect to sit with their prospective team, in front of Visual Studio, loaded with all the useful tools in the developer’s kit (ReSharper and so on) and asked to, for example, analyze and improve a real piece of software. The same principles should apply when interviewing for a database positon. In addition to the usual questions challenging the candidate’s knowledge of such things as b-trees, object permissions, database recovery models, and so on, sit the candidate down with the other database developers or DBAs. Arm them with a copy of Management Studio, and a few other tools, then challenge them to discover the flaws in a stored procedure, and improve its performance. Or present them with a corrupt database and ask them to get the database back online, and discover the cause of the corruption.

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• Brendan Gregg's "Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud"

  - by user12608550

  Long ago, the prerequisite UNIX performance book was Adrian Cockcroft's 1994 classic, Sun Performance and Tuning: Sparc & Solaris, later updated in 1998 as Java and the Internet. As Solaris evolved to include the invaluable DTrace observability features, new essential performance references have been published, such as Solaris Performance and Tools: DTrace and MDB Techniques for Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris (2006)  by McDougal, Mauro, and Gregg, and DTrace: Dynamic Tracing in Oracle Solaris, Mac OS X and FreeBSD (2011), also by Mauro and Gregg. Much has occurred in Solaris Land since those books appeared, notably Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems in 2010 and the demise of the OpenSolaris community. But operating system technologies have continued to improve markedly in recent years, driven by stunning advances in multicore processor architecture, virtualization, and the massive scalability requirements of cloud computing. A new performance reference was needed, and I eagerly waited for something that thoroughly covered modern, distributed computing performance issues from the ground up. Well, there's a new classic now, authored yet again by Brendan Gregg, former Solaris kernel engineer at Sun and now Lead Performance Engineer at Joyent. Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud is a modern, very comprehensive guide to general system performance principles and practices, as well as a highly detailed reference for specific UNIX and Linux observability tools used to examine and diagnose operating system behaviour.  It provides thorough definitions of terms, explains performance diagnostic Best Practices and "Worst Practices" (called "anti-methods"), and covers key observability tools including DTrace, SystemTap, and all the traditional UNIX utilities like vmstat, ps, iostat, and many others. The book focuses on operating system performance principles and expands on these with respect to Linux (Ubuntu, Fedora, and CentOS are cited), and to Solaris and its derivatives [1]; it is not directed at any one OS so it is extremely useful as a broad performance reference. The author goes beyond the intricacies of performance analysis and shows how to interpret and visualize statistical information gathered from the observability tools.  It's often difficult to extract understanding from voluminous rows of text output, and techniques are provided to assist with summarizing, visualizing, and interpreting the performance data. Gregg includes myriad useful references from the system performance literature, including a "Who's Who" of contributors to this great body of diagnostic tools and methods. This outstanding book should be required reading for UNIX and Linux system administrators as well as anyone charged with diagnosing OS performance issues.  Moreover, the book can easily serve as a textbook for a graduate level course in operating systems [2]. [1] Solaris 11, of course, and Joyent's SmartOS (developed from OpenSolaris) [2] Gregg has taught system performance seminars for many years; I have also taught such courses...this book would be perfect for the OS component of an advanced CS curriculum.

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• Oracle releases new Java Embedded products

  - by Henrik Stahl

  With less than one week to go to JavaOne 2012, we've spiced things up a little by releasing not one but two net new embedded Java products. This is an important step towards realizing the vision of Java as the standard platform for the Internet of Things that I outlined in a recent blog post. The two new products are: Java ME Embedded 3.2. Based on same code as the widely deployed Oracle Java Wireless Client for feature phones, this new product provides a Java ME implementation optimized for very small microcontroller-based devices and adds - among other things - a new Device Access API that enables interaction with peripherals common in edge devices such as various types of sensors. In addition to the new Java ME Embedded platform, we have also released an update of the Java ME SDK which adds support for the development of small embedded devices. Java Embedded Suite 7.0. This is an integrated middleware stack for embedded devices, incorporating Java SE Embedded and versions of JavaDB, GlassFish and a Web Services stack optimized for remote operation and small footprint. A typical Internet of Things (or M2M) infrastructure contains three types of compute nodes: The edge device which is typically a sensor or control point of some kind. These devices can be connected directly to a backend through a mobile network if they are installed in - for example - a remote vending machine; or, they can be part of a local short-range network and be connected to the backend through a more powerful gateway device. A gateway is the second type of compute node and acts as an aggregator and control point for a local network. A good example of this could be a generalized home Internet access point, or home gateway. Gateways are mostly using normal wall power and are used for multiple applications, deployed by multiple service providers. Finally, the last type of compute node is the normal enterprise or cloud backend. Java ME Embedded and Java Embedded Suite are perfect base software stacks for the edge devices and the gateway respectively, providing the Java promise of a platform independent runtime and a complete set of libraries as well as allowing a programmer to focus on the business logic rather than plumbing. We are very thrilled with these new releases that open up exciting opportunities for Java developers to extend services and enterprise applications in ways that will make organizations more efficient and touch our daily lives. To find out more, come to the JavaOne conference (for technical content) and to the Java Embedded @ JavaOne subconference (for business content). There will be plenty of cool demos showing complete end-to-end applications, provided by Oracle and our partners, as well as keynotes and numerous sessions where you can learn more about the technology and business opportunities.

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• What constitutes a "substantial, good-faith effort to remove the links"

  - by Luke McCallum

  We engaged the services of a 3rd party SEO consultant to assist us in managing our Meta data and to write regular blogs on our site http://cyberdesignworks.com.au Without our authorisation, the SEO also ran a link building campaign which has seen us Penguin slapped and we no longer appear in Google for a number of our core keywords. Since notification by Google that we have "unnatural links" back in March we have undertaken a significant campaign to rid ourselves of these dodgy backlinks by a number of methods. I have just received feedback on my 4th or 5th resubmission which is still advising that we need to make a "substantial, good-faith effort to remove the links" before Google will reconsider us for inclusion. After the effort that I have gone through to get links removed, I am now at a loss as to what else I can do to demonstrate "substantial, good-faith effort to remove the links". Below is a summary of the actions that we have taken to date. According to http://removem.com we had about 5584 back-linking domains. Of those we have successfully contacted and had removed links from 344 domains We ignored links from 625 domains as they were either legitimate press releases, natural backlinks or client websites containing an attribution link in the footer that points back to us. Due to our efforts, or the sites simply becoming defunct, removem.com reports that links from 3262 domains have been removed. We have contacted but are yet to receive feedback from 1666 domains so we can assume that the backlinks remain. We have configured an automatic 301 redirect for each of the links from these 1666 domains to point to http://redirects.sanscode.com/ which we are calling our Bad Link Catcher (a stroke of genius I thought). i.e http://www.mysimplewebdesign.com/create-a-perfect-webpage-with-four-important-tips-from-sydney-web-development-service-companies.php As we are a web design agency, we have a large number of client websites which contain an attribution link in their footer which points back to us. We have gone through the vast majority of these and updated these links to replace anchor text with an image and rel="nofollow" link. i.e <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.cyberdesignworks.com.au/"><img src="https://sessions.sanscode.com/site/assets/media/badges/Badge_CDW_SANSCODE.png"></a> See http://www.milkatwork.com.au/ An export from http://removem.com detailing the number of times we have contacted each link and whether it is still found or not was also supplied with each resubmission. The total back links reported in Google Web Master Tools has dropped from over 100K to 87K and I expect it to drop significantly lower once Google re-crawls each back-linking page. Based on all of the above, I am not sure what else I can do to to demonstrate a "substantial, good-faith effort to remove the links". I would sincerely appreciate any feedback or suggestions that you may have as I am out of ideas.

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• SSIS Expression Editor & Tester

  Published today on CodePlex is the SSIS Expression Editor & Tester project. If you want to try it just pop over to CodePlex and download it. About five years ago I developed my own expression editor control. It first got used in our custom tasks as the MS editor didn’t become available until SQL 2005 SP1, but even then it had some handy features I preferred. For example resizable panes so that if your expression result was more than two lines you could see them all. It also meant I could change the functions available in the tree view, the most obvious use being to add some handy snippets and samples that I used a lot. This quickly developed into a small expression testing tool. I’d develop complex expressions using my editor and then copy it back into the package itself. I have been meaning to make the tool available for some time and finally made the effort, the code is checked-in and the signed downloads are published on CodePlex. There are two flavours, SQL 2005 or 2008, and just a simple zip file to download and extract. The tool doesn’t need installing, and is completely portable. It does need SSIS to be installed on the local machine though. Each zip file contains two files: ExpressionTester.exe – The tool itself, run this. ExpressionEditor.dll – The reusable editor control. A while ago the gentlemen behind BIDS Helper noticed the editor on a task and asked about using it. This became incorporated into their variable window extensions feature. To try and help them and anyone else that wants to use the editor control, it is available as a single assembly that you can reference yourself, and of course all the source code is on CodePlex too. Just add a reference to the ExpressionEditor.dll assembly and you should be up and running in no time. There is a sample project Package Test in the source code which shows how to use the editor control form in it’s simplest form, or if you want to host control directly then the tester tool is a perfect example.

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• Convert Chrome Bookmark Toolbar Folders to Icons

  - by Asian Angel

  So you have your regular bookmarks reduced to icons but what about the folders? With our little hack and a few minutes of your time you can turn those folders into icons too. Condensing the Folders Reducing bookmark folders to icons is a little more tricky than regular bookmarks but not hard to do. Right click on the folder and select “Rename…”. The folder’s name should already be highlighted/selected as shown here. Delete the text…notice that the “OK Button” has become unusable for the moment. Now what you will need to do is: Hold down the “Alt Key” Type in “0160” (without the quotes) using the numbers keypad on the right side of your keyboard Release the “Alt Key” after you have finished typing in the number above Once you have released the “Alt Key” you will notice two things…the “cursor” has moved further into the text area and you can now click on the “OK Button” again. There is our folder after editing. And it works just as well as before but without taking up so much room. Here is how our “iconized” folder looks next to our bookmarks. Perfect! What if you want to reduce multiple folders to icons? Perform the same exact steps shown above for each folder and pack your “Bookmarks Toolbar” full of folder goodness! As seen here the folders will have a little more space between them in comparison with singular bookmarks due to the “blank name” for each folder. For those who may be curious this is what your bookmarks will look like in the “Bookmark Manager Page”. Note: If you export your bookmarks all bookmarks contained in multiple blank name folders will be combined into a single folder. Conclusion With just a little bit of work you can pack a lot of goodness into your “Bookmarks Toolbar”. No more wasted space… Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Condense the Bookmarks in the Firefox Bookmarks ToolbarAccess Your Bookmarks with a Toolbar Button in Google ChromeAdd the Bookmarks Menu to Your Bookmarks Toolbar with Bookmarks UI ConsolidatorAdd a Vertical Bookmarks Toolbar to FirefoxReduce Your Bookmarks Toolbar to a Toolbar Button 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 OutlookStatView Scans and Displays General Usage Statistics How to Add Exceptions to the Windows Firewall Office 2010 reviewed in depth by Ed Bott FoxClocks adds World Times in your Statusbar (Firefox) Have Fun Editing Photo Editing with Citrify Outlook Connector Upgrade Error

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• Transparent Technology from Amazon

  - by David Dorf

  Amazon has been making some interesting moves again, this time in the augmented humanity area.  Augmented humanity is about helping humans overcome their shortcomings using technology.  Putting a powerful smartphone in your pocket helps you in many ways like navigating streets, communicating with far off friends, and accessing information.  But the interface for smartphones is somewhat limiting and unnatural, so companies have been looking for ways to make the technology more transparent and therefore easier to use. When Apple helped us drop the stylus, we took a giant leap forward in simplicity.  Using touchscreens with intuitive gestures was part of the iPhone's original appeal.  People don't want to know that technology is there -- they just want the benefits.  So what's the next leap beyond the touchscreen to make smartphones even easier to use? Two natural ways we interact with the world around us is by using sight and voice.  Google and Apple have been using both in their mobile platforms for limited uses cases.  Nobody actually wants to type a text message, so why not just speak it?  Any if you want more information about a book, why not just snap a picture of the cover?  That's much more accurate than trying to key the title and/or author. So what's Amazon been doing?  First, Amazon released a new iPhone app called Flow that allows iPhone users to see information about products in context.  Yes, its an augmented reality app that uses the phone's camera to view products, and overlays data about the products on the screen.  For the most part it requires the barcode to be visible to correctly identify the product, but I believe it can also recognize certain logos as well.  Download the app and try it out but don't expect perfection.  Its good enough to demonstrate the concept, but its far from accurate enough.  (MobileBeat did a pretty good review.)  Extrapolate to the future and we might just have a heads-up display in our eyeglasses. The second interesting area is voice response, for which Siri is getting lots of attention.  Amazon may have purchased a voice recognition company called Yap, although the deal is not confirmed.  But it would make perfect sense, especially with the Kindle Fire in Amazon's lineup. I believe over the next 3-5 years the way in which we interact with smartphones will mature, and they will become more transparent yet more important to our daily lives.  This will, of course, impact the way we shop, making information more readily accessible than it already is.  Amazon seems to be positioning itself to be at the forefront of this trend, so we should be watching them carefully.

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• Find a Faster DNS Server with Namebench

  - by Mysticgeek

  One way to speed up your Internet browsing experience is using a faster DNS server. Today we take a look at Namebench, which will compare your current DNS server against others out there, and help you find a faster one. Namebench Download the file and run the executable (link below). Namebench starts up and will include the current DNS server you have configured on your system. In this example we’re behind a router and using the DNS server from the ISP. Include the global DNS providers and the best available regional DNS server, then start the Benchmark. The test starts to run and you’ll see the queries it’s running through. The benchmark takes about 5-10 minutes to complete. After it’s complete you’ll get a report of the results. Based on its findings, it will show you what DNS server is fastest for your system. It also displays different types of graphs so you can get a better feel for the different results. You can export the results to a .csv file as well so you can present the results in Excel. Conclusion This is a free project that is in continuing development, so results might not be perfect, and there may be more features added in the future. If you’re looking for a method to help find a faster DNS server for your system, Namebench is a cool free utility to help you out. If you’re looking for a public DNS server that is customizable and includes filters, you might want to check out our article on helping to protect your kids from questionable content using OpenDNS. You can also check out how to speed up your web browsing with Google Public DNS. Links Download NameBench for Windows, Mac, and Linux from Google Code Learn More About the Project on the Namebench Wiki Page Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Open a Second Console Session on Ubuntu ServerShare Ubuntu Home Directories using SambaSetup OpenSSH Server on Ubuntu LinuxDisable the Annoying “This device can perform faster” Balloon Message in Windows 7Search For Rows With Special Characters in SQL Server 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 How to Add Exceptions to the Windows Firewall Office 2010 reviewed in depth by Ed Bott FoxClocks adds World Times in your Statusbar (Firefox) Have Fun Editing Photo Editing with Citrify Outlook Connector Upgrade Error Gadfly is a cool Twitter/Silverlight app

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