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• When your field-terminating char appears within field values

  - by Jonathan Sampson

  I've had a very colorful morning learning the innerparts of Linux's sort command, and have come across yet another issue that I can't seem to find an answer for in the documentation. I'm currently using -t, to indicate that my fields are split by the comma character, but I'm finding that in some of my files, the comma is used (between double-quotes) within values: Jonathan Sampson,,[email protected],0987654321 "Foobar CEO,","CEO,",[email protected],, How can I use a comma to terminate my fields, but ignore the occurences of it within values? Is this fairly simple, or do I need to re-export all of my data using a more-foreign field-terminator?

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• SORT empties my file?

  - by Jonathan Sampson

  I'm attempting to sort a csv on my machine, but I seem to be erasing the contents each time I use the sort command. I've basically created a copy of my csv lacking the first row: sed '1d' original.csv > newcopy.csv To confirm that my new copy exists lacking the first row I can check with head: head 1 newcopy.csv Sure enough, it finds my file and shows me the original second now (now first row). My csv consists of numerous values seperated by commas: Jonathan Sampson,,,,[email protected],,,GA,United States,, Jane Doe,Mrs,,,[email protected],,,FL,United States,32501, As indicated above, some fields are empty. I want to sort based upon the email address field, which is either 4, or 5 - depending on whether the sort command uses a zero-based index. So I'm trying the following: sort -t, +4 -5 newcopy.csv > newcopy.csv So I'm using -t, to indicate that my fields are terminated by the comma, rather than a space. I'm not sure if +4 -5 actually sorts on the email field or not - I could use some help here. And then newcopy.csv > newcopy.csv to overwrite the original file with new sort results. After I do this, if I try to read in the first line: head 1 newcopy.csv I get the following error: head: cannot open `1' for reading: No such file or directory == newcopy.csv <== Sure enough, if I check my directory the file is now empty, and 0 bytes.

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• IASA Sessions on Social Networking Note Influence of Millennial Generation on Insurance Technology

  - by [email protected]

  Helen Pitts, senior product marketing manager for Oracle Insurance is blogging from the 2010 IASA Annual Conference and Business Show this week. Social networking continues to be a buzzword for many in the industry. Erin Esurance, the Geico Gecko and even Nationwide's "The World's Greatest Spokesperson in the World" all have a prominent presence in the social media world. Sessions at the 2010 IASA Annual Conference and Business Show this week in Grapevine, Texas, highlighted how the millennial generation's exploding use of social media is spurring more carriers to leverage tools like Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networks to engage prospect and customers. While panelists encouraged carriers to leverage social networking tools for marketing and communications, they expressed the need for caution and corporate governance when it comes to using the tools as a part of claims, underwriting, and human resources recruitment business practices, and interactions with producers. (A previous Oracle Insurance blog entry by my colleague Susan Keuer noted that social networking and its impact on the underwriting process was also a hot topic at the recent AHOU conference.) Speaking of the millennial generation, IASA announced a new scholarship program and awarded three scholarships during the association's conference this week. The IASA Insurance Industry Collegiate Scholarship Program awards $2,000 scholarships to students in their second or third year of college who are studying an insurance-related field at a four-year college or university. The IASA scholarship committee is co-chaired by Wendy Gibson, vice president of business development for Oracle Insurance. Gibson, a long time IASA volunteer, is completing her second term on IASA's volunteer management team as vice president of industry relations. Helen Pitts is senior product marketing manager for Oracle Insurance.

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• Access Insurance Company Wins 2010 Technology Innovation Award at IASA

  - by [email protected]

  Helen Pitts, senior product marketing manager for Oracle Insurance, is blogging from the 2010 IASA Annual Conference and Business Show this week. For the second time in two weeks an Oracle Insurance customer has earned recognition at an insurance industry event for its innovative use of technology to transform their business. Access Insurance Company received the 2010 Technology Innovation Award during the 2010 IASA Annual Conference and Business Show this week in Grapevine, Texas. The company earned the recognition for its "Instant Access" application, which executes all the business rules and processes needed to provide a quote, bind, and issue a policy. CIO Andy Dunn and Tim Reynolds stopped by the Oracle Insurance Booth at IASA to visit with the team, show their award, and share how the platform has provided a strategic advantage to the company and helped it increase revenue by penetrating new markets, increasing market share and improving customer retention. Since implementing Instant Access in 2009 - a platform that leverages both Oracle Insurance Insbridge Rating and Underwriting and Oracle Documaker - the carrier has: Increased policies in force by 22%, from 140,185 to more than 270,000 Grown market share by 4.6% Increased 2009 revenue by 26.5% Increased ratio of policyholders per CSR by 30% Increased its appointed independent producers by 43 percent Now that's true innovation! You can learn more about the company's formula for success by reading Access Insurance Holdings CEO and president Michael McMenamin's interview with Insurance & Technology, Data Mastery Drives Access Insurance's 'Instant Access' Business Technology Platform. Congratulations to Michael, Andy, Tim and the entire team at Access Insurance on this well deserved honor - and for your role as a technology leader for the industry. Helen Pitts is senior product marketing manager for Oracle Insurance.

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• Innovation, Adaptability and Agility Emerge As Common Themes at ACORD LOMA Insurance Forum

  - by [email protected]

  Helen Pitts, senior product marketing manager for Oracle Insurance is blogging from the show floor of the ACORD LOMA Insurance Forum this week. Sessions at the ACORD LOMA Insurance Forum this week highlighted the need for insurance companies to think creatively and be innovative with their technology in order to adapt to continuously shifting market dynamics and drive business efficiency and agility.  LOMA President & CEO Robert Kerzner kicked off the day on Tuesday, citing how the recent downtown and recovery has impacted the insurance industry and the ways that companies are doing business.  He encouraged carriers to look for new ways to deliver solutions and offer a better service experience for consumers.  ACORD President & CEO Gregory Maciag reinforced Kerzner's remarks, noting how the industry's approach to technology and development of industry standards has evolved over the association's 40-year history and cited how the continued rise of mobile computing will change the way many carriers are doing business today and in the future. Drawing from his own experiences, popular keynote speaker and Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak continued this theme, delving into ways that insurers can unite business with technology.  "iWoz" encouraged insurers to foster an entrepreneurial mindset in a corporate environment to create a culture of creativity and innovation.  He noted that true innovation in business comes from those who have a passion for what they do.  Innovation was also a common theme in several sessions throughout the day with topics ranging from modernization of core systems, automated underwriting, distribution management, CRM and customer communications management.  It was evident that insurers have begun to move past the "old school" processes and systems that constrain agility, implementing new process models and modern technology to become nimble and more adaptive to the market.   Oracle Insurance executives shared a few examples of how insurers are achieving innovation during our Platinum Sponsor session, "Adaptive System Transformation:  Making Agility More Than a Buzzword." Oracle Insurance Senior Vice President and General Manager Don Russo was joined by Chuck Johnston, vice president, global strategy and alliances, and Srini Venkatasantham, vice president of product strategy.  The three shared how Oracle's adaptive solutions for insurance, with a focus on how the key pillars of an adaptive systems - configurable applications, accessible information, extensible content and flexible process - have helped insurers respond rapidly, perform effectively and win more business. Insurers looking to innovate their business with adaptive insurance solutions including policy administration, business intelligence, enterprise document automation, rating and underwriting, claims, CRM and more stopped by the Oracle Insurance booth on the exhibit floor.  It was a premiere destination for many participating in the exhibit hall tours conducted throughout the day. Finally, red was definitely the color of the evening at the Oracle Insurance "Red Hot" customer celebration at the House of Blues. The event provided a great opportunity for our customers to come together and network with the Oracle Insurance team and their peers in the industry.  We look forward to visiting more with of our customers and making new connections today. Helen Pitts is senior product marketing manager for Oracle Insurance. 

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• Bancassurers Seek IT Solutions to Support Distribution Model

  - by [email protected]

  Oracle Insurance's director of marketing for EMEA, John Sinclair, attended the third annual Bancassurance Forum in Vienna last month. He reports that the outlook for bancassurance in EMEA remains positive, despite changing market conditions that have led a number of bancassurers to re-examine their business models. Vienna is at the crossroads between mature Western European markets, where bancassurance is now an established best practice, and more recently tapped Eastern European markets that offer the greatest growth potential. Attendance at the Bancassurance Forum was good, with 87 bancassurance attendees, most in very senior positions in the industry. The conference provided the chance for a lively discussion among bancassurers looking to keep abreast of the latest trends in one of Europe's most successful distribution models for insurance. Even under normal business conditions, there is a great demand for best practice sharing within the industry as there is no standard formula for success.  Each company has to chart its own course and choose the strategies for sales, products development and the structure of ownership that make sense for their business, and as soon as they get it right bancassurers need to adapt the mix to keep up with ever changing regulations, completion and economic conditions.  To optimize the overall relationship between banking and insurance for mutual benefit, a balance needs to be struck between potentially conflicting interests. The banking side of the house is looking for greater wallet share from its customers and the ability to increase profitability by bundling insurance products with higher margins - especially in light of the recent economic crisis, where margins for traditional banking products are low and completion high. The insurance side of the house seeks access to new customers through a complementary distribution channel that is efficient and cost effective. To make the relationship work, it is important that both sides of the same house forge strategic and long term relationships - irrespective of whether the underlying business model is supported by a distribution agreement, cross-ownership or other forms of capital structure. However, this third annual conference was not held under normal business conditions. The conference took place in challenging, yet interesting times. ING's forced spinoff of its insurance operations under pressure by the EU Commission and the troubling losses suffered by Allianz as a result of the Dresdner bank sale were fresh in everyone's mind. One year after markets crashed, there is now enough hindsight to better understand the implications for bancassurance and best practices that are emerging to deal with them. The loan-driven business that has been crucial to bancassurance up till now evaporated during the crisis, leaving bancassurers grappling with how to change their overall strategy from a loan-driven to a more diversified model.  Attendees came to the conference to learn what strategies were working - not only to cope with the market shift, but to take advantage of it as markets pick up. Over the course of 14 customer case studies and numerous analyst presentations, topical issues ranging from getting the business model right to the impact on capital structuring of Solvency II were debated openly. Many speakers alluded to the need to specifically design insurance products with the banking distribution channel in mind, which brings with it specific requirements such as a high degree of standardization to achieve efficiency and reduce training costs. Moreover, products must be engineered to suit end consumers who consider banks a one-stop shop. The importance of IT to the successful implementation of bancassurance strategies was a theme that surfaced regularly throughout the conference.  The cross-selling opportunity - that will ultimately determine the success or failure of any bancassurance model - can only be fully realized through a flexible IT architecture that enables banking and insurance processes to be integrated and presented to front-line staff through a common interface. However, the reality is that most bancassurers have legacy IT systems, which constrain the businesses' ability to implement new strategies to maintaining competitiveness in turbulent times. My colleague Glenn Lottering, who chaired the conference, believes that the primary opportunities for bancassurers to extract value from their IT infrastructure investments lie in distribution management, risk management with the advent of Solvency II, and achieving operational excellence. "Oracle is ideally suited to meet the needs of bancassurance," Glenn noted, "supplying market-leading software for both banking and insurance. Oracle provides adaptive systems that let customers easily integrate hybrid business processes from both worlds while leveraging existing IT infrastructure." Overall, the consensus at the conference was that the outlook for bancassurance in EMEA remains positive, despite changing market conditions that have led a number of bancassurers to re-examine their business models. John Sinclair is marketing director for Oracle Insurance in EMEA. He has more than 20 years of experience in insurance and financial services.    

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• Spotlight on Claims: Serving Customers Under Extreme Conditions

  - by [email protected]

  Oracle Insurance's director of marketing for EMEA, John Sinclair, recently attended the CII Spotlight on Claims event in London. Bad weather and its implications for the insurance industry have become very topical as the frequency and diversity of natural disasters - including rains, wind and snow - has surged across Europe this winter. On England's wettest day on record, the county of Cumbria was flooded with 12 inches of rain within 24 hours. Freezing temperatures wreaked havoc on European travel, causing high speed TVG trains to break down and stranding hundreds of passengers under the English Chanel in a tunnel all night long without heat or electricity. A storm named Xynthia thrashed France and surrounding countries with hurricane force, flooding ports and killing 51 people. After the Spring Equinox, insurers may have thought the worst had past. Then came along Eyjafjallajökull, spewing out vast quantities of volcanic ash in what is turning out to be one of most costly natural disasters in history. Such extreme events challenge insurance companies' ability to service their customers just when customers need their help most. When you add economic downturn and competitive pressures to the mix, insurers are further stretched and required to continually learn and innovate to meet high customer expectations with reduced budgets. These and other issues were hot topics of discussion at the recent "Spotlight on Claims" seminar in London, focused on how weather is affecting claims and the insurance industry. The event was organized by the CII (Chartered Insurance Institute), a group with 90,000 members. CII has been at the forefront in setting professional standards for the insurance industry for over a century. Insurers came to the conference to hear how they could better serve their customers under extreme weather conditions, learn from the experience of their peers, and hear about technological breakthroughs in climate modeling, geographic intelligence and IT. Customer case studies at the conference highlighted the importance of effective and constant communication in handling the overflow of catastrophe related claims. First and foremost is the need to rapidly establish initial communication with claimants to build their confidence in a positive outcome. Ongoing communication then needs to be continued throughout the claims cycle to mange expectations and maintain ownership of the process from start to finish. Strong internal communication to support frontline staff was also deemed critical to successful crisis management, as was communication with the broader insurance ecosystem to tap into extended resources and business intelligence. Advances in technology - such web based systems to access policies and enter first notice of loss in the field - as well as customer-focused self-service portals and multichannel alerts, are instrumental in improving customer satisfaction and helping insurers to deal with the claims surge, which often can reach four or more times normal workloads. Dynamic models of the global climate system can now be used to better understand weather-related risks, and as these models mature it is hoped that they will soon become more accurate in predicting the timing of catastrophic events. Geographic intelligence is also being used within a claims environment to better assess loss reserves and detect fraud. Despite these advances in dealing with catastrophes and predicting their occurrence, there will never be a substitute for qualified front line staff to deal with customers. In light of pressures to streamline efficiency, there was debate as to whether outsourcing was the solution, or whether it was better to build on the people you have. In the final analysis, nearly everybody agreed that in the future insurance companies would have to work better and smarter to keep on top. An appeal was also made for greater collaboration amongst industry participants in dealing with the extreme conditions and systematic stress brought on by natural disasters. It was pointed out that the public oftentimes judged the industry as a whole rather than the individual carriers when it comes to freakish events, and that all would benefit at such times from the pooling of limited resources and professional skills rather than competing in silos for competitive advantage - especially the end customer. One case study that stood out was on how The Motorists Insurance Group was able to power through one of the most devastating catastrophes in recent years - Hurricane Ike. The keys to Motorists' success were superior people, processes and technology. They did a lot of upfront planning and invested in their people, creating a healthy team environment that delivered "max service" even when they were experiencing the same level of devastation as the rest of the population. Processes were rapidly adapted to meet the challenge of the catastrophe and continually adapted to Ike's specific conditions as they evolved. Technology was fundamental to the execution of their strategy, enabling them anywhere access, on the fly reassigning of resources and rapid training to augment the work force. You can learn more about the Motorists experience by watching this video. John Sinclair is marketing director for Oracle Insurance in EMEA. He has more than 20 years of experience in insurance and financial services.

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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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• ACORD LOMA Session Highlights Policy Administration Trends

  - by [email protected]

  Helen Pitts, senior product marketing manager for Oracle Insurance, attended and is blogging from the ACORD LOMA Insurance Forum this week. Above: Paul Vancheri, Chief Information Officer, Fidelity Investments Life Insurance Company. Vancheri gave a presentation during the ACORD LOMA Insurance Systems Forum about the key elements of modern policy administration systems and how insurers can mitigate risk during legacy system migrations to safely introduce new technologies. When I had a few particularly challenging honors courses in college my father, a long-time technology industry veteran, used to say, "If you don't know how to do something go ask the experts. Find someone who has been there and done that, don't be afraid to ask the tough questions, and apply and build upon what you learn." (Actually he still offers this same advice today.) That's probably why my favorite sessions at industry events, like the ACORD LOMA Insurance Forum this week, are those that include insight on industry trends and case studies from carriers who share their experiences and offer best practices based upon their own lessons learned. I had the opportunity to attend a particularly insightful session Wednesday as Craig Weber, senior vice president of Celent's Insurance practice, and Paul Vancheri, CIO of Fidelity Life Investments, presented, "Managing the Dynamic Insurance Landscape: Enabling Growth and Profitability with a Modern Policy Administration System." Policy Administration Trends Growing the business is the top issue when it comes to IT among both life and annuity and property and casualty carriers according to Weber. To drive growth and capture market share from competitors, carriers are looking to modernize their core insurance systems, with 65 percent of those CIOs participating in recent Celent research citing plans to replace their policy administration systems. Weber noted that there has been continued focus and investment, particularly in the last three years, by software and technology vendors to offer modern, rules-based, configurable policy administration solutions. He added that these solutions are continuing to evolve with the ongoing aim of helping carriers rapidly meet shifting business needs--whether it is to launch new products to market faster than the competition, adapt existing products to meet shifting consumer and /or regulatory demands, or to exit unprofitable markets. He closed by noting the top four trends for policy administration either in the process of being adopted today or on the not-so-distant horizon for the future: Underwriting and service desktops New business automation Convergence of ultra-configurable and domain content-rich systems Better usability and screen design Mitigating the Risk When Making the Decision to Modernize Third-party analyst research from advisory firms like Celent was a key part of the due diligence process for Fidelity as it sought a replacement for its legacy policy administration system back in 2005, according to Vancheri. The company's business opportunities were outrunning system capability. Its legacy system had not been upgraded in several years and was deficient from a functionality and currency standpoint. This was constraining the carrier's ability to rapidly configure and bring new and complex products to market. The company sought a new, modern policy administration system, one that would enable it to keep pace with rapid and often unexpected industry changes and ahead of the competition. A cross-functional team that included representatives from finance, actuarial, operations, client services and IT conducted an extensive selection process. This process included deep documentation review, pilot evaluations, demonstrations of required functionality and complex problem-solving, infrastructure integration capability, and the ability to meet the company's desired cost model. The company ultimately selected an adaptive policy administration system that met its requirements to: Deliver ease of use - eliminating paper and rework, while easing the burden on representatives to sell and service annuities Provide customer parity - offering Web-based capabilities in alignment with the company's focus on delivering a consistent customer experience across its business Deliver scalability, efficiency - enabling automation, while simplifying and standardizing systems across its technology stack Offer desired functionality - supporting Fidelity's product configuration / rules management philosophy, focus on customer service and technology upgrade requirements Meet cost requirements - including implementation, professional services and licenses fees and ongoing maintenance Deliver upon business requirements - enabling the ability to drive time to market for new products and flexibility to make changes Best Practices for Addressing Implementation Challenges Based upon lessons learned during the company's implementation, Vancheri advised carriers to evaluate staffing capabilities and cultural impacts, review business requirements to avoid rebuilding legacy processes, factor in dependent systems, and review policies and practices to secure customer data. His formula for success: upfront planning + clear requirements = precision execution. Achieving a Return on Investment Vancheri said the decision to replace their legacy policy administration system and deploy a modern, rules-based system--before the economic downturn occurred--has been integral in helping the company adapt to shifting market conditions, while enabling growth in its direct channel sales of variable annuities. Since deploying its new policy admin system, the company has reduced its average time to market for new products from 12-15 months to 4.5 months. The company has since migrated its other products to the new system and retired its legacy system, significantly decreasing its overall product development cycle. From a processing standpoint Vancheri noted the company has achieved gains in automation, information, and ease of use, resulting in improved real-time data edits, controls for better quality, and tax handling capability. Plus, with by having only one platform to manage, the company has simplified its IT environment and is well positioned to deliver system enhancements for greater efficiencies. Commitment to Continuing the Investment In the short and longer term future Vancheri said the company plans to enhance business functionality to support money movement, wire automation, divorce processing on payout contracts and cost-based tracking improvements. It also plans to continue system upgrades to remain current as well as focus on further reducing cycle time, driving down maintenance costs, and integrating with other products. Helen Pitts is senior product marketing manager for Oracle Insurance focused on life/annuities and enterprise document automation.

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• ACORD LOMA 2010: Building Insurance Companies in the Clouds

  - by [email protected]

  Chuck Johnston, vice president of global strategy and alliances for Oracle Insurance, participated in a featured speaking session at ACORD LOMA 2010. He provides an update on his discussions with insurers at the show and after his presentation. Every year I always make a point of walking the show floor at the ACORD LOMA technology conference to visit with colleagues and competitors, and try to get a feel for which way the industry will move over the next 12 months. Insurers are looking for substance in cloud (computing), trying to mix business with pleasure (monetizing social networks), and expect differentiation through commodity (Software as a Service). The disconnect at this show is that most vendors are still struggling with creating a clear path from Facebook to customer intimacy, SaaS to core cost savings and clouds to ubiquitous presence. Vendors need to find new ways to help insurers find the real value in these potentially disruptive technologies by understanding the changes coming to the insurance business and how these new technologies impact the new insurance business. Oracle's approach to understanding the evolving insurance industry comes from a discussion with our customers in our Insurance CIO Council, where one of our customers suggested we buy an insurance company to really understand our customers. We have decided to do the next best thing and build our own model of an insurance company, Alamere Insurance, that uses the latest technologies to transform its own business. Alamere will never issue an actual policy, but it does give us a framework to consider the impacts of changes in the insurance landscape and how Oracle technology meets the challenge or needs to evolve to help our customers be successful. In preparing for my talk at the conference using Alamere as my organizing theme, I found myself reading actuarial memoranda on CSO table changes and articles on underwriting theory that really made me think about my customer's problems first and foremost, and then how Oracle technology can provide answers. As much as I prefer techno-thrillers and sci-fi novels to actuarial papers for plane reading, I got very excited about the idea of putting myself back in the customer shoes I haven't worn in a decade, and really looking at how Oracle can power the Adaptive Insurance Enterprise. Talking to customers and industry people after the session, the idea of Alamere seemed to excite people and I got a lot of suggestions as to what lines of business we should model and where we should focus first on technology uptake. One customer said to a colleague that Oracle's attempt to "share their pain" was unique among vendors. More about Alamere, and the Adaptive Insurance Enterprise next time. Chuck Johnston is vice president of global strategy and alliances for Oracle Insurance.

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• Download and Share Visual Studio Color Schemes

  - by ScottGu

  As developers we often spend a large part of our day staring at code within Visual Studio.  If you are like me, after awhile the default VS text color scheme starts to get a little boring. The good news is that Visual Studio allows you to completely customize the editor background and text colors to whatever you want – allowing you to tweak them to create the experience that is “just right” for your eyes and personality.  You can then optionally export/import your color scheme preferences to an XML file via the Tools->Import and Export Settings menu command. [In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu] New website that makes it easy to download and share VS color schemes Luke Sampson launched the http://studiostyles.info/ site a week ago (built using ASP.NET MVC 2, ASP.NET 4 and VS 2010). Studiostyles.info enables you to easily browse and download Visual Studio color schemes that others have already created.  The color schemes work for both VS 2008 and VS 2010 (all versions – including the free VS express editions): Color schemes are sorted by popularity and voting (you can vote on whether you find each “hot or not”).  You can click any of the schemes to see screen-shots of it in use for common coding scenarios.  You can then download the color settings for either VS 2010 or VS 2008: You can also optionally upload color schemes of your own if you have a good one you want to share with others.  If you haven’t visited it yet – check it out: http://studiostyles.info/  And thank you Luke Sampson for building it! Hope this helps, Scott

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• Silverlight Cream for January 11, 2011 -- #1024

  - by Dave Campbell

  1,000 blogposts is quite a few, but to die-hard geeks, 1000 isn't the number... 1K is the number, and today is my 1K blogpost! I've been working up to this for at least 11 months. Way back at MIX10, I approached some vendors about an idea I had. A month ago I contacted them and others, and everyone I contacted was very generous and supportive of my idea. My idea was not to run a contest, but blog as normal, and whoever ended up on my 1K post would get some swag... and I set a cut-off at 13 posts. So... blogging normally, I had some submittals, and then ran my normal process to pick up the next posts until I hit a total of 13. To provide a distribution channel for the swag, everyone on the list, please send me your snail mail (T-shirts) and email (licenses) addresses as soon as possible.   I'd like to thank the following generous sponsors for their contributions to my fun (in alphabetic order): and Rachel Hawley for contributing 4 Silverlight control sets First Floor Software and Koen Zwikstra for contributing 13 licenses for Silverlight Spy and Sara Faatz/Jason Beres for contributing 13 licenses for Silverlight Data Visualization controls and Svetla Stoycheva for contributing T-Shirts for everyone on the post and Ina Tontcheva for contributing 13 licenses for RadControls for Silverlight + RadControls for Windows Phone and Charlene Kozlan for contributing 1 combopack standard, 2 DataGrid for Silverlight, and 2 Listbox for Silverlight Standard And now finally...in this Issue: Nigel Sampson, Jeremy Likness, Dan Wahlin, Kunal Chowdhurry, Alex Knight, Wei-Meng Lee, Michael Crump, Jesse Liberty, Peter Kuhn, Michael Washington, Tau Sick, Max Paulousky, Damian Schenkelman Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Demystifying Silverlight Dependency Properties" Dan Wahlin WP7: "Using Windows Phone Gestures as Triggers" Nigel Sampson Expression Blend: "PathListBox: making data look cool" Alex Knight From SilverlightCream.com: Using Windows Phone Gestures as Triggers Nigel Sampson blogged about WP7 Gestures, the Toolkit, and using Gestures as Triggers, and actually makes it looks simple :) Jounce Part 9: Static and Dynamic Module Management Jeremy Likness has episode 9 of his explanation of his MVVM framework, Jounce, up... and a big discussion of Modules and Module Management from a Jounce perspective. Demystifying Silverlight Dependency Properties Dan Wahlin takes a page from one of his teaching opportunities, and shares his knowledge of Dependency Properties with us... beginning with what they are, defining them in code, and demonstrating their use. Customizing Silverlight ChildWindow Style using Blend Kunal Chowdhurry has a great post up about getting your Child Windows to match the look & feel of the rest of youra app... plus a bunch of Blend goodness thrown in. PathListBox: making data look cool File this post by Alex Knight in the 'holy crap' file along with the others in this series! ... just check out that cool Ticker Style Path ListBox at the top of the blog... too cool! Web Access in Windows Phone 7 Apps Wei-Meng Lee has the 3rd part of his series on WP7 development up and in this one is discussing Web Access... I mean *discussing* it... tons of detail, code, and explanation... great post. Prevent your Silverlight XAP file from caching in your browser. Michael Crump helps relieve stress on Silverlight developers everywhere by exploring how to avoid caching of your XAP in the browser... (WPFS) MVVM Light Toolkit: Soup To Nuts Part I Jesse Liberty continues his Windows Phone from Scratch series with a new segment exploring Laurent Bugnion's MVVMLight Toolkit beginning with acquiring and installing the toolkit, then proceeds to discuss linking the View and ViewModel, the ViewModel Locator, and page navigation. Silverlight: Making a DateTimePicker Peter Kuhn attacks a problem that crops up on the forums a lot -- a DateTimePicker control for Silverlight... following the "It's so simple to build one yourself" advice, he did so, and provides the code for all of us! Windows Phone 7 Animated Button Press Michael Washington took exception to button presses that gave no visual feedback and produced a behavior that does just that. Using TweetSharp in a Windows Phone 7 app Tau Sick demonstrates using TweetSharp to put a twitter feed into a WP7 app, as he did in "Hangover Helper"... all the instructions from getting Tweeetshaprt to the code necessary. Bindable Application Bar Extensions for Windows Phone 7 Max Paulousky has a post discussing some real extensions to the ApplicationBar for WP7.. he begins with a bindable application bar by Nicolas Humann that I've missed, probably because his blog is in French... and extends it to allow using DelegateCommand. How to: Load Prism modules packaged in a separate XAP file in an OOB application Damian Schenkelman posts about Prism, AppModules in separate XAPs and running OOB... if you've tried this, you know it's a hassle.. Damian has the solution. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Keep Fullscreen Flash/Silverlight Video opened on Monitor 2

  - by Jonathan Sampson

  Like many of you, I'm working with two monitors. I'm trying to watch an episode on Channel9's vid-cast, but every time I click back onto my other monitor, the video exits fullscreen-mode, and goes back to a tiny box on the page. Is it possible to keep a video in full screen, while working on the second monitor?

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• Intranet Video-streaming

  - by Jonathan Sampson

  What's a good option for home-video-streaming. For example, somebody may use a laptop webcam to stream their baby's crib allowing them to monitor it from the main home PC. In this case, I wouldn't want to do it across the wire with skype, but instead keep it on my local network. What options exist to make this easy to achieve?

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• "Must-Have" Firefox Addons?

  - by Jonathan Sampson

  Only one addon per answer, please. What are some of the best addons when it comes to Firefox? My current favorites include: Firebug Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of web development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page. Greasemonkey Allows you to customize the way a webpage displays using small bits of JavaScript. What am I missing?

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• Lightweight IRC Client

  - by Jonathan Sampson

  What is a good option for somebody who wants to participate in IRC, but doesn't want to download a large application, register with any group, etc? Preferably something lite, having a nice feature-set, and easy to get up-and-running. I'm on Windows, and I'd prefer something very easy and non-esoteric to work with.

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• Second Monitor Gets Bright, and then Blank.

  - by Jonathan Sampson

  I recently added a second LCD monitor to my home-computer. It was working fine for the first couple of days, but then it started having problems. Every 10-20 minutes it would get really bright, and then instantly go black. The power was still connected, so it wasn't turned off. If I turned the power off for a few minutes, I could turn it back on and get another 10-20 minutes of work done before it would happen again. What could cause this behavior?

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• SMTP Server Times Out for 1 of 2 ISPs

  - by Jonathan Sampson

  For months I've been using a 5g sprint card for my laptop to check email. I have gmail, and three other accounts all configured in Thunderbird. Recently, I got AT&T internet service at my house and I discovered that I cannot send email when connected to my home service. I can receive just fine, but I can't send. If I plugin my 5g card, I can sent/receive with no problems. At home I'm connected wirelessly through a router. What could be causing this interruption? I even tried pinging my smtp server only to see it timeout when connected via AT&T. If more details are needed, I'll be happy to share.

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• Recording Audio from WMP Stream

  - by Jonathan Sampson

  I'm sitting here listening to a radio show that is being broadcast live over an internet stream, but I would like to keep bits and pieces for later-enjoyment. Is there a way I can easily record streams in real-time? I should note also (not sure if it's necessary or not) that this stream requires me to first login before listening.

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• Bringing Google Docs to the Desktop.

  - by Jonathan Sampson

  Is there a stable way of accessing Google Docs (application) from my desktop without having to use a browser on Windows? On my accepted answer... While I did stipulate that I wanted to not use my browser, I didn't really mean I wanted to avoid browser technology. I meant I didn't want to open my browser, type in the web address for google docs, etc. TheTXI's answer required me to download/install nothing more than what I already had (Chrome) to acheive this. It created a desktop icon (similar to an application) that launches me right into my docs (similar to an application), without extra browser-items on the screen. This was an excellent suggestion, and won by virtue of parsimony.

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• CentOS and Snapshots

  - by Jonathan Sampson

  I'm planning on purchasing a virtual-dedicated server today and would like to pass a quick question by the community here before I do. I'm likely going to be getting CentOS, as that seems to be a pretty stable, and popular distro from what I can tell. One of the companies I contacted (MediaTemple) mentioned they provide snapshots just incase I start doing something that could potentially cripple my server - I could always restore the last snapshot. Another company (GoDaddy) said they would provide routine snapshots once a day, week, or month and back it up to a remote FTP for me to download. My question is this, is the "snapshot" capability provided in the OS itself? I'm not super-confident in my abilities yet to manage a server, so this functionality would be very attractive. Or, do I need to pick a host that provides this as an extra addon to the already rendered services?

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• USB-Powered Speakers

  - by Jonathan Sampson

  I use a set of external USB speakers at the office which have no power-source other than my laptop USB port. Sometimes they're silent, and at others it sounds like an electric moth is fluttering around inside one of the speakers (the main speaker). This doesn't happen when my machine is doing any heavy crunching, it just comes and goes. This has happened with other USB speakers on other laptops too in my experience. Any idea on what causes this, and how I can fix it?

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• Best portable apps to keep on a thumbdrive for developers.

  - by Jonathan Sampson

  Like many developers, I keep a thumbdrive with me wherever I go. Generally a 2gb drive. What portable apps should I keep on it?

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• Have a Microsoft Exchange and Google Apps Email Running on the Same Domain

  - by Joe Sampson

  A company that I work for just acquired another company that was using Google Apps for it's email. We use Microsoft Outlook Exchange. The founders of the company (who are leaving) want to maintain a few email addresses on Google Apps for them to use over the next year. Does anyone know if it's possible to have just a few Google Apps email addresses working on a domain and the rest of the domain running on Outlook Exchange?

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• Pointing Domain to VDS Directory

  - by Jonathan Sampson

  I've got a domain name that is managed through 000Domains.com. I also have a virtual dedicated server hosted with GoDaddy.com. Within my VDS, I created a folder /mysite and placed all of my website files there. I can test this through the ipaddress of my VDS, but I would now like to point my domain from 000Domains over to my sub-directory hosted on GoDaddy. How do I do this? Do I need to make any specific modifications to my VDS to inform it that one of the directories will be accessible from a domain name? I have access to Simple Control Panel, if that is of any relevance.

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