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• Fidelity Investments Life Insurance Executive Weighs in on Policy Administration Modernization

  - by helen.pitts(at)oracle.com

  James Klauer, vice president of Client Services Technology at Fidelity Investment Life Insurance, weighs in on the rationale and challenges associated with policy administration system replacement in this month's digital issue of Insurance Networking News.    In "The Policy Administration Replacement Quandary"  Klauer shared the primary business benefit that can be realized by adopting a modern policy administration system--a timely topic given that recent industry analyst surveys indicate policy administration replacement and modernization will continue to be a top priority for insurers this year.    "Modern policy administration systems are more flexible than systems of the past," Klauer says in the article. " This has allowed us to shorten our delivery time for new products and product changes.  We have also had a greater ability to integrate with other systems and to deliver process efficiencies."   Klauer goes on to advise that insurers ensure they have a solid understanding of the requirements when replacing their legacy policy administration system. "If you can afford the time, take the opportunity to re-engineer your business processes.  We were able to drastically change our death processes, introducing automation and error-proofing." Click here to read more of Klauer's insights and recommendations for best practices in the publication's "Ask & Answered" column.   You also can learn more the benefits of an adaptive, rules-driven approach to policy administration and how to mitigate risks associated with system replacement by attending the free Oracle Insurance Virtual Summit:  Fueling the Adaptive Insurance Enterprise, 10:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m. EST, Wednesday, January 26.      Insurance Networking News and Oracle Insurance have teamed up to bring you this first-of-its-kind event. This year's theme, "Fueling the Adaptive Insurance Enterprise," will focus on bringing you information about exciting new technology concepts, which can help your company react more quickly to new market opportunities and, ultimately, grow the business.    Visit virtual booths and chat online with Oracle product specialists, network with other insurers, learn about exciting new product announcements, win prizes, and much more--all without leaving your office.  Be sure and attend the on-demand session, "Adapt, Transform and Grow: Accelerate Speed to Market with Adaptive Insurance Policy Administration," hosted by Kate Fowler, product strategy director for Oracle Insurance Policy Administration for Life and Annuity.   Register Now!   Helen Pitts is senior product marketing manager for Oracle Insurance's life and annuities solutions.

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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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• How to create a "retro" pixel shader for transformed 2D sprites that maintains pixel fidelity?

  - by David Gouveia

  The image below shows two sprites rendered with point sampling on top of a background: The left skull has no rotation/scaling applied to it, so every pixel matches perfectly with the background. The right skull is rotated/scaled, and this results in larger pixels that are no longer axis aligned. How could I develop a pixel shader that would render the transformed sprite on the right with axis aligned pixels of the same size as the rest of the scene? This might be related to how sprite scaling was implemented in old games such as Monkey Island, because that's the effect I'm trying to achieve, but with rotation added. Edit As per kaoD's suggestions, I tried to address the problem as a post-process. The easiest approach was to render to a separate render target first (downsampled to match the desired pixel size) and then upscale it when rendering a second time. It did address my requirements above. First I tried doing it Linear -> Point and the result was this: There's no distortion but the result looks blurred and it loses most of the highlights colors. In my opinion it breaks the retro look I needed. The second time I tried Point -> Point and the result was this: Despite the distortion, I think that might be good enough for my needs, although it does look better as a still image than in motion. To demonstrate, here's a video of the effect, although YouTube filtered the pixels out of it: http://youtu.be/hqokk58KFmI However, I'll leave the question open for a few more days in case someone comes up with a better sampling solution that maintains the crisp look while decreasing the amount of distortion when moving.

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• What's the best tool to create high-fidelity wireframes and prototypes?

  - by François

  More than a simple wireframe, I´d like to create a complete prototype, fully functional & dynamic with data and rich interactions... Do you know any tool outthere? i´m looking for something really quick and easy, i don´t want to code. A friend told me about Justinmind Prototyper, any other guess?

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• Performance due to entity update

  - by Rizzo

  I always think about 2 ways to code the global Step() function, both with pros and cons. Please note that AIStep is just to provide another more step for whoever who wants it. // Approach 1 step foreach( entity in entities ) { entity.DeltaStep( delta_time ); if( time_for_fixed_step ) entity.FixedStep(); if( time_for_AI_step ) entity.AIStep(); ... // all kind of updates you want } PRO: you just have to iterate once over all entities. CON: fidelity could be lower at some scenarios, since the entity.FixedStep() isn't going all at a time. // Approach 2 step foreach( entity in entities ) entity.DeltaStep( delta_time ); if( time_for_fixed_step ) foreach( entity in entities ) entity.FixedStep(); if( time_for_AI_step ) foreach( entity in entities ) entity.FixedStep(); // all kind of updates you want SEPARATED PRO: fidelity on FixedStep is higher, shouldn't be much time between all entities update, rather than Approach 1 where you may have to wait other updates until FixedStep() comes. CON: you iterate once for each kind of update. Also, a third approach could be a hybrid between both of them, something in the way of foreach( entity in entities ) { entity.DeltaStep( delta_time ); if( time_for_AI_step ) entity.AIStep(); // all kind of updates you want BUT FixedStep() } if( time_for_fixed_step ) { foreach( entity in entities ) { entity.FixedStep(); } } Just two loops, don't caring about time fidelity in nothing other than at FixedStep(). Any thoughts on this matter? Should it really matters to make all steps at once or am I thinking on problems that don't exist?

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• That Escalated Quickly

  - by Jesse Taber

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/GruffCode/archive/2014/05/17/that-escalated-quickly.aspxI have been working remotely out of my home for over 4 years now. All of my coworkers during that time have also worked remotely. Lots of folks have written about the challenges inherent in facilitating communication on remote teams and strategies for overcoming them. A popular theme around this topic is the notion of “escalating communication”. In this context “escalating” means taking a conversation from one mode of communication to a different, higher fidelity mode of communication. Here are the five modes of communication I use at work in order of increasing fidelity: Email – This is the “lowest fidelity” mode of communication that I use. I usually only check it a few times a day (and I’m trying to check it even less frequently than that) and I only keep items in my inbox if they represent an item I need to take action on that I haven’t tracked anywhere else. Forums / Message boards – Being a developer, I’ve gotten into the habit of having other people look over my code before it becomes part of the product I’m working on. These code reviews often happen in “real time” via screen sharing, but I also always have someone else give all of the changes another look using pull requests. A pull request takes my code and lets someone else see the changes I’ve made side-by-side with the existing code so they can see if I did anything dumb. Pull requests can facilitate a conversation about the code changes in an online-forum like style. Some teams I’ve worked on also liked using tools like Trello or Google Groups to have on-going conversations about a topic or task that was being worked on. Chat & Instant Messaging  - Chat and instant messaging are the real workhorses for communication on the remote teams I’ve been a part of. I know some teams that are co-located that also use it pretty extensively for quick messages that don’t warrant walking across the office to talk with someone but reqire more immediacy than an e-mail. For the purposes of this post I think it’s important to note that the terms “chat” and “instant messaging” might insinuate that the conversation is happening in real time, but that’s not always true. Modern chat and IM applications maintain a searchable history so people can easily see what might have been discussed while they were away from their computers. Voice, Video and Screen sharing – Everyone’s got a camera and microphone on their computers now, and there are an abundance of services that will let you use them to talk to other people who have cameras and microphones on their computers. I’m including screen sharing here as well because, in my experience, these discussions typically involve one or more people showing the other participants something that’s happening on their screen. Obviously, this mode of communication is much higher-fidelity than any of the ones listed above. Scheduled meetings are typically conducted using this mode of communication. In Person – No matter how great communication tools become, there’s no substitute for meeting with someone face-to-face. However, opportunities for this kind of communcation are few and far between when you work on a remote team. When a conversation gets escalated that usually means it moves up one or more positions on this list. A lot of people advocate jumping to #4 sooner than later. Like them, I used to believe that, if it was possible, organizing a call with voice and video was automatically better than any kind of text-based communication could be. Lately, however, I’m becoming less convinced that escalating is always the right move. Working Asynchronously Last year I attended a talk at our local code camp given by Drew Miller. Drew works at GitHub and was talking about how they use GitHub internally. Many of the folks at GitHub work remotely, so communication was one of the main themes in Drew’s talk. During the talk Drew used the phrase, “asynchronous communication” to describe their use of chat and pull request comments. That phrase stuck in my head because I hadn’t heard it before but I think it perfectly describes the way in which remote teams often need to communicate. You don’t always know when your co-workers are at their computers or what hours (if any) they are working that day. In order to work this way you need to assume that the person you’re talking to might not respond right away. You can’t always afford to wait until everyone required is online and available to join a voice call, so you need to use text-based, persistent forms of communication so that people can receive and respond to messages when they are available. Going back to my list from the beginning of this post for a second, I characterize items #1-3 as being “asynchronous” modes of communication while we could call items #4 and #5 “synchronous”. When communication gets escalated it’s almost always moving from an asynchronous mode of communication to a synchronous one. Now, to the point of this post: I’ve become increasingly reluctant to escalate from asynchronous to synchronous communication for two primary reasons: 1 – You can often find a higher fidelity way to convey your message without holding a synchronous conversation 2 - Asynchronous modes of communication are (usually) persistent and searchable. You Don’t Have to Broadcast Live Let’s start with the first reason I’ve listed. A lot of times you feel like you need to escalate to synchronous communication because you’re having difficulty describing something that you’re seeing in words. You want to provide the people you’re conversing with some audio-visual aids to help them understand the point that you’re trying to make and you think that getting on Skype and sharing your screen with them is the best way to do that. Firing up a screen sharing session does work well, but you can usually accomplish the same thing in an asynchronous manner. For example, you could take a screenshot and annotate it with some text and drawings to illustrate what it is you’re seeing. If a screenshot won’t work, taking a short screen recording while your narrate over it and posting the video to your forum or chat system along with a text-based description of what’s in the recording that can be searched for later can be a great way to effectively communicate with your team asynchronously. I Said What?!? Now for the second reason I listed: most asynchronous modes of communication provide a transcript of what was said and what decisions might have been made during the conversation. There have been many occasions where I’ve used the search feature of my team’s chat application to find a conversation that happened several weeks or months ago to remember what was decided. Unfortunately, I think the benefits associated with the persistence of communicating asynchronously often get overlooked when people decide to escalate to a in-person meeting or voice/video call. I’m becoming much more reluctant to suggest a voice or video call if I suspect that it might lead to codifying some kind of design decision because everyone involved is going to hang up the call and immediately forget what was decided. I recognize that you can record and archive these types of interactions, but without being able to search them the recordings aren’t terribly useful. When and How To Escalate I don’t mean to imply that communicating via voice/video or in person is never a good idea. I probably jump on a Skype call with a co-worker at least once a day to quickly hash something out or show them a bit of code that I’m working on. Also, meeting in person periodically is really important for remote teams. There’s no way around the fact that sometimes it’s easier to jump on a call and show someone my screen so they can see what I’m seeing. So when is it right to escalate? I think the simplest way to answer that is when the communication starts to feel painful. Everyone’s tolerance for that pain is different, but I think you need to let it hurt a little bit before jumping to synchronous communication. When you do escalate from asynchronous to synchronous communication, there are a couple of things you can do to maximize the effectiveness of the communication: Takes notes – This is huge and yet I’ve found that a lot of teams don’t do this. If you’re holding a meeting with  > 2 people you should have someone taking notes. Taking notes while participating in a meeting can be difficult but there are a few strategies to deal with this challenge that probably deserve a short post of their own. After the meeting, make sure the notes are posted to a place where all concerned parties (including those that might not have attended the meeting) can review and search them. Persist decisions made ASAP – If any decisions were made during the meeting, persist those decisions to a searchable medium as soon as possible following the conversation. All the teams I’ve worked on used a web-based system for tracking the on-going work and a backlog of work to be done in the future. I always try to make sure that all of the cards/stories/tasks/whatever in these systems always reflect the latest decisions that were made as the work was being planned and executed. If held a quick call with your team lead and decided that it wasn’t worth the effort to build real-time validation into that new UI you were working on, go and codify that decision in the story associated with that work immediately after you hang up. Even better, write it up in the story while you are both still on the phone. That way when the folks from your QA team pick up the story to test a few days later they’ll know why the real-time validation isn’t there without having to invoke yet another conversation about the work. Communicating Well is Hard At this point you might be thinking that communicating asynchronously is more difficult than having a live conversation. You’re right: it is more difficult. In order to communicate effectively this way you need to very carefully think about the message that you’re trying to convey and craft it in a way that’s easy for your audience to understand. This is almost always harder than just talking through a problem in real time with someone; this is why escalating communication is such a popular idea. Why wouldn’t we want to do the thing that’s easier? Easier isn’t always better. If you and your team can get in the habit of communicating effectively in an asynchronous manner you’ll find that, over time, all of your communications get less painful because you don’t need to re-iterate previously made points over and over again. If you communicate right the first time, you often don’t need to rehash old conversations because you can go back and find the decisions that were made laid out in plain language. You’ll also find that you get better at doing things like writing useful comments in your code, creating written documentation about how the feature that you just built works, or persuading your team to do things in a certain way.

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• Certegy Agrees to Settle in Florida Data Breach

  Subsidiary of Fidelity National Information Services has inked an agreement with Florida attorney general to upgrade security technology in the wake of large-scale data breach.

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• Measuring Usability with Common Industry Format (CIF) Usability Tests

  - by Applications User Experience

  Sean Rice, Manager, Applications User Experience A User-centered Research and Design Process The Oracle Fusion Applications user experience was five years in the making. The development of this suite included an extensive and comprehensive user experience design process: ethnographic research, low-fidelity workflow prototyping, high fidelity user interface (UI) prototyping, iterative formative usability testing, development feedback and iteration, and sales and customer evaluation throughout the design cycle. However, this process does not stop when our products are released. We conduct summative usability testing using the ISO 25062 Common Industry Format (CIF) for usability test reports as an organizational framework. CIF tests allow us to measure the overall usability of our released products.  These studies provide benchmarks that allow for comparisons of a specific product release against previous versions of our product and against other products in the marketplace. What Is a CIF Usability Test? CIF refers to the internationally standardized method for reporting usability test findings used by the software industry. The CIF is based on a formal, lab-based test that is used to benchmark the usability of a product in terms of human performance and subjective data. The CIF was developed and is endorsed by more than 375 software customer and vendor organizations led by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), a US government entity. NIST sponsored the CIF through the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standards-making processes. Oracle played a key role in developing the CIF. The CIF report format and metrics are consistent with the ISO 9241-11 definition of usability: “The extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use.” Our goal in conducting CIF tests is to measure performance and satisfaction of a representative sample of users on a set of core tasks and to help predict how usable a product will be with the larger population of customers. Why Do We Perform CIF Testing? The overarching purpose of the CIF for usability test reports is to promote incorporation of usability as part of the procurement decision-making process for interactive products. CIF provides a common format for vendors to report the methods and results of usability tests to customer organizations, and enables customers to compare the usability of our software to that of other suppliers. CIF also enables us to compare our current software with previous versions of our software. CIF Testing for Fusion Applications Oracle Fusion Applications comprises more than 100 modules in seven different product families. These modules encompass more than 400 task flows and 400 user roles. Due to resource constraints, we cannot perform comprehensive CIF testing across the entire product suite. Therefore, we had to develop meaningful inclusion criteria and work with other stakeholders across the applications development organization to prioritize product areas for testing. Ultimately, we want to test the product areas for which customers might be most interested in seeing CIF data. We also want to build credibility with customers; we need to be able to make the case to current and prospective customers that the product areas tested are representative of the product suite as a whole. Our goal is to test the top use cases for each product. The primary activity in the scoping process was to work with the individual product teams to identify the key products and business process task flows in each product to test. We prioritized these products and flows through a series of negotiations among the user experience managers, product strategy, and product management directors for each of the primary product families within the Oracle Fusion Applications suite (Human Capital Management, Supply Chain Management, Customer Relationship Management, Financials, Projects, and Procurement). The end result of the scoping exercise was a list of 47 proposed CIF tests for the Fusion Applications product suite.  Figure 1. A participant completes tasks during a usability test in Oracle’s Usability Labs Fusion Supplier Portal CIF Test The first Fusion CIF test was completed on the Supplier Portal application in July of 2011.  Fusion Supplier Portal is part of an integrated suite of Procurement applications that helps supplier companies manage orders, schedules, shipments, invoices, negotiations and payments. The user roles targeted for the usability study were Supplier Account Receivables Specialists and Supplier Sales Representatives, including both experienced and inexperienced users across a wide demographic range.  The test specifically focused on the following functionality and features: Manage payments – view payments Manage invoices – view invoice status and create invoices Manage account information – create new contact, review bank account information Manage agreements – find and view agreement, upload agreement lines, confirm status of agreement lines upload Manage purchase orders (PO) – view history of PO, request change to PO, find orders Manage negotiations – respond to request for a quote, check the status of a negotiation response These product areas were selected to represent the most important subset of features and functionality of the flow, in terms of frequency and criticality of use by customers. A total of 20 users participated in the usability study. The results of the Supplier Portal evaluation were favorable and exceeded our expectations. Figure 2. Fusion Supplier Portal Next Studies We plan to conduct two Fusion CIF usability studies per product family over the next nine months. The next product to be tested will be Self-service Procurement. End users are currently being recruited to participate in this usability study, and the test sessions are scheduled to begin during the last week of November.

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• What are the best practices for rapid prototyping using exclusively HTML/CSS/JS

  - by charlax

  I'm developing a prototype of a web application. I want to only use HTML, CSS and Javascript. I prefer to use my text editor and not having to learn (or pay, for that matter) a new tool like Axure. What would be, to your mind, the best practices? To me there are many qualities for a good prototype: Quickly developed Easy to improve Fair fidelity as regards UX (this disqualifies tools like Omnigraffle or PowerPoint that are more dedicated to wireframing) I trying to learn as quickly as possible, but I would like to know, based on your experience, on how you managed to be both quick and agile. Reference: http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/prototyping-with

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• Technical Computing

    Today, Microsoft announced our Technical Computing initiative.    Through the Technical Computing initiative, we will enable scientists, engineers and analysts to more easily model the world at much greater fidelity.  The Technical Computing initiative will address a wide range of users.  One of the most critical elements is to help developers create applications that can take advantage of parallelism on their desktop, in a cluster, and in public and private clouds. ...Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• AutoVue 20.2.1 is Now Available!

  - by Pam Petropoulos

  Oracle’s AutoVue Enterprise Visualization 20.2.1, a minor release within the 20.2 product family, has just been made available on the Oracle Software Delivery Cloud. AutoVue release 20.2.1 includes the following new capabilities and improvements: Enhancements to the Augmented Business Visualization framework to connect documents and business data in enterprise applications and create rich, actionable visual-decision making environment. AutoVue now allows hotspots in 2D drawings and images to be defined as polygons, rather than only by text strings or boxes. Improved Documentation on Augmented Business Visualization and Hotspotting Optimize business process efficiency by integrating AutoVue and Oracle BPM to: Initiate interactive document reviews by the appropriate reviewer in a workflow Automate printing and conversion operations at the appropriate stage of a workflow Timely support for new MCAD and  ECAD formats Fidelity and performance improvements for a wide range of formats Click here to read about the latest features and their corresponding benefits. Click here to access the latest AutoVue Format Support Sheet.

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• Regex Question ...

  - by kate

  Hi, Could someone help me with the following RegEx query: based on the following rules: 1) 1 letter followed by 4 letters or numbers, then 2) 5 letters or numbers, then 3) 3 letters or numbers followed by a number and one of the following signs: ! & @ ? You will have to allow customers to input the fidelity card code as a 15-character string, or as 3 groups of 5 chars, separated by one space.

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• For the python derivatives, does the version number correlate with the syntax version

  - by mglmnc

  for example Jython is at version 2.5.1, does that imply a parallel fidelity to cpython syntax when it was at version 2.5.1?

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• Do alternate python implementation version numbers imply that they provide the same syntax?

  - by mglmnc

  for example Jython is at version 2.5.1, does that imply a parallel fidelity to cpython syntax when it was at version 2.5.1?

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• Zabbix server sends too many notifications

  - by anselmdk

  I've recently installed Zabbix server on a VPS and am very happy with it. I've installed the client on appr. 6-7 other VPSs and everything works fine. The interface is smooth, and it produces some very nice graphs. My only problem with the software is that I've set it up to send notifications on problems, but im receiving between 30 and 60 emails every day. Always something along "Server XXX is unreachable: PROBLEM", and a minute later: "Server XXX is unreachable: OK". Off course, Zabbix also recognizes when there are real problems, and e.g. when a server has been restarted. It just seems to me as if Zabbix very fast "gives up", or maybe times out faster than what suits my needs. I've been trying to google this problem several times, but given up, so now I'm trying this approach. Does anyone know of how to adjust the fidelity of these notifications/triggers?

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• Load Balancing a UDP server

  - by Hellfrost

  Hello StackOverflow, I have a udp server, it is a central part in my business process. in order to handle the loads I'm expecting in the production environment I'll probably need 2 or 3 instances of the server. The server is almost entirely stateless, it mostly collects data, and the layer above it knows how to handle the minimal amount of stale data that can arise from the the multiple server instances. My question is, how can I implement load balancing between the servers? I would prefer to distribute the requests as evenly as possible between the servers. I would also would like to have some fidelity, I mean if client X was routed to server y, then I want all of X's subsequent requests to go to server Y, as long as it is sensible and not overloads Y. By the way it is a .NET system... what would you recommend?

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• Do you need all that data?

  - by BuckWoody

  I read an amazing post over on ars technica (link: http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/03/the-software-brains-behind-the-particle-colliders.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss) abvout the LHC, or as they are also known, the "particle colliders". Beyond just the pure scientific geek awesomeness, these instruments have the potential to collect more data than you can (or possibly should) store. Actually, this problem has a lot in common with a BI system. There's so much granular detail available in the source systems that a designer has to decide how, and how much, to roll up the data. Whenver you do that, you lose fidelity, but in many cases that's OK. Take, for example, your car's speedometer. You don't actually need to track each and every point of speed as it happens. You only need to know that you're hovering around the speed limit at a certain point in time. Since this is the way that humans percieve data, is there some lesson we should take in the design of data "flows" - and what implications does this have for new technologies like StreamInsight? Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Partner Webcast - Oracle Reports to BI Publisher migration

  - by dmitry.nefedkin(at)oracle.com

  Normal 0 false false false RU X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} Monday, March 21, 2011 9 a.m. CET (10 a.m. EET) Description Oracle Reports, a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware is Oracle's classic, high-fidelity enterprise reporting tool. Oracle remains committed to the development of this technology, and to the ongoing release as a component of the Oracle Fusion Middleware platform, but also enables conversion of Oracle Reports to Oracle BI Publisher. Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher (BI Publisher)--Oracle's enterprise reporting server to author, manage, and deliver all types of highly formatted documents. Extremely efficient and highly scalable, BI Publisher can generate tens of thousands of documents per hour with minimal impact to transactional systems. After a quick introduction to BI Publisher we will look at the process of Oracle Reports to BI Publisher convestion. AgendaOracle Reports strategy & support policyReporting challengesBenefits of BI PublisherOracle Reports -> BI Publisher Conversion UtilityDemoUpgrade BI Publisher to 11gQ&A Delivery Format This Free online Live Internet Seminar will be delivered over the Web and Conference Call. Duration: 1hour To register, click HERE. For any questions please contact [email protected].

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• Which Devices Support Javascript Geolocation via navigator.geolocation ?

  - by Maciek

  The iPhone supports geolocation in mobile Safari via the following call: navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition( function(pos){ var lat = pos.coords.latitude; var long = pos.coords.longitude; }, function(){ /* Handler if location could not be found */ } ); I'd like to build a good list of devices that have one of the following: support this feature out of the box, or support this feature with an upgrade, or support geolocation with equivalent fidelity of data with some other snippet of Javascript. I'm only familiar with my own device, so this is my list so far: Out of the box: iPhone 3GS Supported, but only with an update iPhone 3G iPhone 2G (?) PC or Mac computer with Firefox 3.5 Supported with some other snippet ? What is the level of support in Blackberry, Android phones, etc?

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• Solving Inbound Refinery PDF Conversion Issues, Part 1

  - by Kevin Smith

  Working with Inbound Refinery (IBR)  and PDF Conversion can be very frustrating. When everything is working smoothly you kind of forgot it is even there. Documents are cheeked into WebCenter Content (WCC), sent to IBR for conversion, converted to PDF, returned to WCC, and viola your Office documents have a nice PDF rendition available for viewing. Then a user checks in a bunch of password protected Word files, the conversions fail, your IBR queue starts backing up, users start calling asking why their document have not been released yet, and your spend a frustrating afternoon trying to recover and get things back running properly again. Password protected documents are one cause of PDF conversion failures, and I will cover those in a future blog post, but there are many other problems that can cause conversions to fail, especially when working with the WinNativeConverter and using the native applications, e.g. Word, to convert a document to PDF. There are other conversion options like PDFExportConverter which uses Oracle OutsideIn to convert documents directly to PDF without the need for the native applications. However, to get the best fidelity to the original document the native applications must be used. Many customers have tried PDFExportConverter, but have stayed with the native applications for conversion since the conversion results from PDFExportConverter were not as good as when the native applications are used. One problem I ran into recently, that at least has a easy solution, are Word documents that display a Show Repairs dialog when the document is opened. If you open the problem document yourself you will see this dialog. This will cause the conversion to time out. Any time the native application displays a dialog that requires user input the conversion will time out. The solution is to set add a setting for BulletProofOnCorruption to the registry for the user running Word on the IBR server. See this support note from Microsoft for details. The support note says to set the registry key under HKEY_CURRENT_USER, but since we are running IBR as a service the correct location is under HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT. Also since in our environment we were using Office 2007, the correct registry key to use was: HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word\Options Once you have done this restart the IBR managed server and resubmit your problem document. It should now be converted successfully. For more details on IBR see the Oracle® WebCenter Content Administrator's Guide for Conversion.

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• Wireframing: A Day In the Life of UX Workshop at Oracle

  - by ultan o'broin

  The Oracle Applications User Experience team's Day in the Life (DITL) of User Experience (UX) event was run in Oracle's Redwood Shores HQ for Oracle Usability Advisory Board (OUAB) members. I was charged with putting together a wireframing session, together with Director of Financial Applications User Experience, Scott Robinson (@scottrobinson). Example of stunning new wireframing visuals we used on the DITL events. We put on a lively show, explaining the basics of wireframing, the concepts, what it is and isn't, considerations on wireframing tool choice, and then imparting some tips and best practices. But the real energy came when the OUAB customers and partners in the room were challenge to do some wireframing of their own. Wireframing is about bringing your business and product use cases to life in real UX visual terms, by creating a low-fidelity drawing to iterate and agree on in advance of prototyping and coding what is to be finally built and rolled out for users. All the best people wireframe. Leonardo da Vinci used "cartoons" on some great works, tracing outlines first and using red ochre or charcoal dropped through holes in the tracing parchment onto the canvas to outline the subject. (Image distributed under Wikimedia commons license) Wireframing an application's user experience design enables you to: Obtain stakeholder buy-in. Enable faster iteration of different designs. Determine the task flow navigation paths (in Oracle Fusion Applications navigation is linked with user roles). Develop a content strategy (readability, search engine optimization (SEO) of content, and so on) Lay out the pages, widgets, groups of features, and so on. Apply usability heuristics early (no replacement for usability testing, but a great way to do some heavy-lifting up front). Decide upstream which functional user experience design patterns to apply (out of the box solutions that expedite productivity). Assess which Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF) or equivalent technology components can be used (again, developer productivity is enhanced downstream). We ran a lively hands-on exercise where teams wireframed a choice of application scenarios using the time-honored tools of pen and paper. Scott worked the floor like a pro, pointing out great use of features, best practices, innovations, and making sure that the whole concept of wireframing, the gestalt, transferred. "We need more buttons!" The cry of the energized. Not quite. The winning wireframe session (online shopping scenario) from the Applications UX DITL event shown. Great fun, great energy, and great teamwork were evident in the room. Naturally, there were prizes for the best wireframe. Well, actually, prizes were handed out to the other attendees too! An exciting, slightly different aspect to delivery of this session made the wireframing event one of the highlights of the day. And definitely, something we will repeat again when we get the chance. Thanks to everyone who attended, contributed, and helped organize.

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• Looking for "bitmap-vector" image editor

  - by Borek

  I used to use PhotoImpact which is no longer developed so I'm looking for a replacement. What made PhotoImpact great to me was the ability to work in both bitmap and vector modes. What I mean by that: I could have an image or screenshot and easily add arrows, text captions or shapes to it. These shapes were vector objects so I could come back to them later and amend their properties easily. Software I know of: Paint.NET is purely bitmap so please don't recommend it - layers are not enough for my needs Drawing tools in MS Office work pretty much the way I'd like - you can paste an image and then add vector objects on top of it. It just doesn't feel right to have the full-fidelity original images stored as .docx or .pptx (I don't fully trust Word/Powerpoint that they don't compress the image) I'm not sure about GIMP but if it's just "better Paint.NET" (i.e., layers but no vector objects) I'm not interested Photoshop is out of question purely because of its price tag Corel killed PhotoImpact because they already had a competing product (Paint Shop Pro) but AFAIK it lacks vector features. Any tips for PhotoImpact alternatives would be very welcome.

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• So No TECH job so far.

  - by Ratman21

  O I found some temp work for the US Census and I have managed to keep the house (so far) but, it looks like I/we are going to have to do a short sale and the temp job will be ending soon.   On top of that it looks like the unemployment fund for me is drying up. I will have about one month left after the Census job is done. I am now down to Appling for work at the KFC.   This is type a work I started with, before I was a tech geek and really I didn’t think I would be doing this kind of work in my later years but, I have a wife and kid. So I got to suck it up and do it.   Oh and here is my new resume…go ahead I know you want to tare it up. I really don’t care any more.   Scott L. Newman 45219 Dutton Way, Callahan, FL32011 H: (904)879-4880 C: (352)356-0945 E: [email protected] Web:  http://beingscottnewman.webs.com/                                                       ______                                                                                 OBJECTIVE To obtain a Network or Technical support position     KEYWORD SUMMARY CompTIA A+, Network+, and Security+ Certified., Network Operation, Technical Support, Client/Vendor Relations, Networking/Administration, Cisco Routers/Switches, Helpdesk, Microsoft Office Suite, Website Design/Dev./Management, Frame Relay, ISDN, Windows NT/98/XP, Visio, Inventory Management, CICS, Programming, COBOL IV, Assembler, RPG   QUALIFICATIONS SUMMARY Twenty years’ experience in computer operations, technical support, and technical writing. Also have two and half years’ experience in internet / intranet operations.   PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE October 2009 – Present*   Volunteer Web site and PC technician – Part time       True Faith Christian Fellowship Church – Callahan, FL, Project: Create and maintain web site for Church to give it a worldwide exposure Aug 2008 – September 2009:* Volunteer Church sound and video technician – Part time      Thomas Creek Baptist Church – Callahan, FL   *Note Jobs were for the learning and/or keeping updated on skills, while looking for a tech job and training for new skills.   February 2005 to October 2008: Client Server Dev/Analyst I, Fidelity National Information Services, Jacksonville, FL (FNIS acquired Certegy in 2005 and out of 20 personal, was one of three kept on.) August 2003 to February 2005: Senior NetOps Operator, Certegy, St.Pete, Fl. (August 2003, Certegy terminated contract with EDS and out of 40 personal, was one of six kept on.) Projects: Creation and update of listing and placement for all raised floor equipment at St.Pete site. Listing was made up of, floor plan of the raised floor and equipment racks diagrams showing the placement of all devices using Visio. This was cross-referenced with an inventory excel document showing what dept was responsible for each device. Sole creator of Network operation and Server Operation procedures guide (NetOps Guide).  Expertise: Resolving circuit and/or router issues or assist circuit carrier in resolving issue from the company Network Operation Center (NOC). As well as resolving application problems or assist application support in resolution of it.     July 1999 to August 2003: Senior NetOps Operator,EDS (Certegy Account), St.Pete, FL Same expertise and on going projects as listed above for FNIS/Certegy. (Equifax outsourced the NetOps dept. to EDS in 1999)         January 1991 to July 1999: NetOps/Tandem Operator, Equifax, St.Pete & Tampa, FL Same as all of the above for FNIS/Certegy/EDS except for circuit and router issues   EDUCATION ? New Horizons Computer Learning Center, Jacksonville, Florida - CompTIA A+, Security+, and     Network+ Certified.                        Currently working on CCNA Certification 07/30/10 ? Mott Community College, Flint, Michigan – Associates Degree - Data Processing and General Education ? Currently studying Japanese

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• Do We Indeed Have a Future? George Takei on Star Wars.

  - by Bil Simser

  George Takei (rhymes with Okay), probably best known for playing Hikaru Sulu on the original Star Trek, has always had deep concerns for the present and the future. Whether on Earth or among the stars, he has the welfare of humanity very much at heart. I was digging through my old copies of Famous Monsters of Filmland, a great publication on monster and films that I grew up with, and came across this. This was his reaction to STAR WARS from issue 139 of Famous Monsters of Filmland and was written June 6, 1977. It is reprinted here without permission but I hope since the message is still valid to this day and has never been reprinted anywhere, nobody will mind me sharing it. STAR WARS is the most pre-posterously diverting galactic escape and at the same time the most hideously credible portent of the future yet.While I thrilled to the exploits that reminded me of the heroics of Errol Flynn as Robin Hood, Burt Lancaster as the Crimson Pirate and Buster Crabbe as Flash Gordon, I was at the same time aghast at the phantasmagoric violence technology can place at our disposal. STAR WARS raised in my mind the question - do we indeed have a future?It seems to me what George Lucas has done is to masterfully guide us on a journey through space and time and bring us back face to face with today's reality. STAR WARS is more than science fiction, I think it is science fictitious reality.Just yesterday, June 7, 1977, I read that the United States will embark on the production of a neutron bomb - a bomb that will kill people on a gigantic scale but will not destroy buildings. A few days before that, I read that the Pentagon is fearful that the Soviets may have developed a warhead that could neutralize ours that have a capacity for that irrational concept overkill to the nth power. Already, it seems we have the technology to realize the awesome special effects simulations that we saw in the film.The political scene of STAR WARS is that of government by force and power, of revolutions based on some unfathomable grievance, survival through a combination of cunning and luck and success by the harnessing of technology -  a picture not very much at variance from the political headlines that we read today.And most of all, look at the people; both the heroes in the film and the reaction of the audience. First, the heroes; Luke Skywalker is a pretty but easily led youth. Without any real philosophy to guide him, he easily falls under the influence of a mystical old man believed previously to be an eccentric hermit. Recognize a 1960's hippie or a 1970's moonie? Han Solo has a philosophy coupled with courage and skill. His philosophy is money. His proficiency comes for a price - the highest. Solo is a thoroughly avaricious mercenary. And the Princess, a decisive, strong, self-confident and chilly woman. The audience cheered when she wielded a gun. In all three, I missed qualities that could be called humane - love, kindness, yes, I missed sensuality. I also missed a sense of ideals and faith. In this regard the machines seemed more human. They demonstrated real affection for each other and an occasional poutiness. They exhibited a sense of fidelity and constancy. The machines were humanized and the humans conversely seemed mechanical.As a member of the audience, I was swept up by the sheer romantic escapsim of it all. The deering-dos, the rope swing escape across the pit, the ray gun battles and especially the swash buckle with the ray swords. Great fun!But I just hope that we weren't too intoxicated by the escapism to be able to focus on the recognizable. I hope the beauty of the effects didn't narcotize our sensitivity to violence. I hope the people see through the fantastically well done futuristic mirrors to the disquieting reflection of our own society. I hope they enjoy STAR WARS without being "purely entertained".

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• Podcast Show Notes: Collaborate 10 Wrap-Up - Part 1

  - by Bob Rhubart

  OK, I know last week I promised you a program featuring Oracle ACE Directors Mike van Alst (IT-Eye) and Jordan Braunstein (TUSC) and The Definitive Guide to SOA: Oracle Service Bus author Jeff Davies. But things happen. In this case, what happened was Collaborate 10 in Las Vegas. Prior to the event I asked Oracle ACE Director and OAUG board member Floyd Teter to see if he could round up a couple of people at the event for an impromtu interview over Skype (I was here in Cleveland) to get their impressions of the event. Listen to Part 1 Floyd, armed with his brand new iPad, went above and beyond the call of duty. At the appointed hour, which turned out to be about hour after the close of Collaborate 10,  Floyd had gathered nine other people to join him in a meeting room somewhere in the Mandalay Bay Convention Center. Here’s the entire roster: Floyd Teter - Project Manager at Jet Propulsion Lab, OAUG Board Blog | Twitter | LinkedIn | Oracle Mix | Oracle ACE Profile Mark Rittman - EMEA Technical Director and Co-Founder, Rittman Mead,  ODTUG Board Blog | Twitter | LinkedIn | Oracle Mix | Oracle ACE Profile Chet Justice - OBI Consultant at BI Wizards Blog | Twitter | LinkedIn | Oracle Mix | Oracle ACE Profile Elke Phelps - Oracle Applications DBA at Humana, OAUG SIG Chair Blog | LinkedIn | Oracle Mix | Book | Oracle ACE Profile Paul Jackson - Oracle Applications DBA at Humana Blog | LinkedIn | Oracle Mix | Book Srini Chavali - Enterprise Database & Tools Leader at Cummins, Inc Blog | LinkedIn | Oracle Mix Dave Ferguson – President, Oracle Applications Users Group LinkedIn | OAUG Profile John King - Owner, King Training Resources Website | LinkedIn | Oracle Mix Gavyn Whyte - Project Portfolio Manager at iFactory Consulting Blog | Twitter | LinkedIn | Oracle Mix John Nicholson - Channels & Alliances at Greenlight Technologies Website | LinkedIn Big thanks to Floyd for assembling the panelists and handling the on-scene MC/hosting duties.  Listen to Part 1 On a technical note, this discussion was conducted over Skype, using Floyd’s iPad, placed in the middle of the table.  During the call the audio was fantastic – the iPad did a remarkable job. Sadly, the Technology Gods were not smiling on me that day. The audio set-up that I tested successfully before the call failed to deliver when we first connected – I could hear the folks in Vegas, but they couldn’t hear me. A frantic, last-minute adjustment appeared to have fixed that problem, and the audio in my headphones from both sides of the conversation was loud and clear.  It wasn’t until I listened to the playback that I realized that something was wrong. So the audio for Vegas side of the discussion has about the same fidelity as a cell phone. It’s listenable, but disappointing when compared to what it sounded like during the discussion. Still, this was a one shot deal, and the roster of panelists and the resulting conversation was too good and too much fun to scrap just because of an unfortunate technical glitch.   Part 2 of this Collaborate 10 Wrap-Up will run next week. After that, it’s back on track with the previously scheduled program. So stay tuned: RSS del.icio.us Tags: oracle,otn,collborate 10,c10,oracle ace program,archbeat,arch2arch,oaug,odtug,las vegas Technorati Tags: oracle,otn,collborate 10,c10,oracle ace program,archbeat,arch2arch,oaug,odtug,las vegas

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