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• T-SQL Tuesday #006 Round-up!

  - by Mike C

  T-SQL Tuesday this month was all about LOB (large object) data. Thanks to all the great bloggers out there who participated! The participants this month posted some very impressive articles with information running the gamut from Reporting Services to SQL Server spatial data types to BLOB-handling in SSIS. One thing I noticed immediately was a trend toward articles about spatial data (SQL Server 2008 Geography and Geometry data types, a very fun topic to explore if you haven’t played around with...(read more)

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• Social Engagement: One Size Doesn't Fit Anyone

  - by Mike Stiles

  The key to achieving meaningful social engagement is to know who you’re talking to, know what they like, and consistently deliver that kind of material to them. Every magazine for women knows this. When you read the article titles promoted on their covers, there’s no mistaking for whom that magazine is intended. And yet, confusion still reigns at many brands as to exactly whom they want to talk to, what those people want to hear, and what kind of content they should be creating for them. In most instances, the root problem is brands want to be all things to all people. Their target audience…the world! Good luck with that. It’s 2012, the age of aggregation and custom content delivery. To cope with the modern day barrage of information, people have constructed technological filters so that content they regard as being “for them” is mostly what gets through. Even if your brand is for men and women, young and old, you may want to consider social properties that divide men from women, and young from old. Yes, a man might find something in a women’s magazine that interests him. But that doesn’t mean he’s going to subscribe to it, or buy even one issue. In fact he’ll probably never see the article he’d otherwise be interested in, because in his mind, “This isn’t for me.” It wasn’t packaged for him. News Flash: men and women are different. So it’s a tall order to craft your Facebook Page or Twitter handle to simultaneously exude the motivators for both. The Harris Interactive study “2012 Connecting and Communicating Online: State of Social Media” sheds light on the differing social behaviors and drivers. -65% of women (vs. 59% of men) stay glued to social because they don’t want to miss anything. -25% of women check social when they wake up, before they check email. Only 18% of men check social before e-mail. -95% of women surveyed belong to Facebook vs. 86% of men. -67% of women log in to Facebook once a day or more vs. 54% of men. -Conventional wisdom is Pinterest is mostly a woman-thing, right? That may be true for viewing, but not true for sharing. Men are actually more likely to share on Pinterest than women, 23% to 10%. -The sharing divide extends to YouTube. 68% of women use it mainly for consumption, as opposed to 52% of men. -Women are as likely to have a Twitter account as men, but they’re much less likely to check it often. 54% of women check it once a week compared to 2/3 of men. Obviously, there are some takeaways from this depending on your target. Women don’t want to miss out on anything, so serialized content might be a good idea, right? Promotional posts that lead to a big payoff could keep them hooked. Posts for women might be better served first thing in the morning. If sharing is your goal, maybe male-targeted content is more likely to get those desired shares. And maybe Twitter is a better place to aim your male-targeted content than Facebook. Some grocery stores started experimenting with male-only aisles. The results have been impressive. Why? Because while it’s true men were finding those same items in the store just fine before, now something has been created just for them. They have a place in the store where they belong. Each brand’s strategy and targets are going to differ. The point is…know who you’re talking to, know how they behave, know what they like, and deliver content using any number of social relationship management targeting tools that meets their expectations. If, however, you’re committed to a one-size-fits-all, “our content is for everybody” strategy (or even worse, a “this is what we want to put out and we expect everybody to love it” strategy), your content will miss the mark for more often than it hits. @mikestilesPhoto via stock.schng

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• Still seats available in Athens and Istanbul

  - by Mike Dietrich

  Just if you'll have the chance to come to our Upgrade Workshopsin Greece and Turkey next week we'll still have some seats available for you. Just follow the registration links: Athens, Greece - Tuesday, 15-JUN-2010 Istanbul, Turkey - Wednesday 16-JUN-2010 Hope to see you there!!

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• Moving from C# to Java [closed]

  - by Mike

  I worked over 5 years as C# software developer, but last time I often think, should I learn Java platform (especially Java EE)? On job sites I see that there are much more Java jobs than .NET (financial, corporate sector) and Java salaries 20-25% higher than C#. But on the opposite side I see that job count trend for C# is growing last 7 years, but Java job trend is nearly constant. Is this fact a sign that soon situation will change and C# job became more profitable? I will be grateful for any advice or your opinion! Thank you.

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• Mobile Deals: the Consumer Wants You in Their Pocket

  - by Mike Stiles

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

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• Consolidating multiple domain names

  - by Mike

  I have a client that has three separately hosted copies of their website, each on a separate domain name. The websites are all essentially the same, bar a few discrepancies caused by badly managed updates in the past. I will soon be launching a completely new website for them, at which point, all three domain names are to resolve to the same web server. One domain name will become the default domain name that they refer to in all their literature, and the other two will simply be used as catch-alls for old links, bookmarks, and so on. I would like to know what people consider the best route to achieve this. My plan so far is: Get the new site up and running on the new webserver. Change the relevant A record of the default domain name to point to the new webserver. a) Keep the existing hosting accounts in operation. Create a list of 301 redirects from old page names on the old site to new page names on the new site. or b) Configure CNAME records for the non-default domain names, each pointing to the new webserver. Create a list of 301 redirects on the new site that redirect from old page names to new page names. If my understanding is correct, 3a will help to maintain whatever search engine rankings the sites already have (I know it's not going to be perfect), while at the same time informing search engines that the old domain names are no longer in use. What's a good approach to take here?

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• Oracle Database In-Memory

  - by Mike.Hallett(at)Oracle-BI&EPM

  Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE Larry Ellison unveiled the next major milestone in database technology, Oracle Database In-Memory, on June 10, 2014. Oracle Database In-Memory will be generally available in July 2014 and can be used with all hardware platforms on which Oracle Database 12c is supported. This option will accelerate database performance by orders of magnitude for analytics, data warehousing, and reporting while also speeding up online transaction processing (OLTP). It allows any existing Oracle Database-compatible application to automatically and transparently take advantage of columnar in-memory processing, without additional programming or application changes. Benefits Fast ad-hoc analytics without the need to pre-create indexes Completely transparent to existing applications Faster mixed workload OLTP No database size limit Industrial strength availability and security Robustness and maturity of Oracle Database 12c To find out more see Oracle Database In-Memory Comment from Rittman Mead on Oracle In-Memory Option Launch  ... and I will let you know how this unfolds in regards to advantages for OBI11g and Exalytics and Big Data over the coming months. /* 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-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• Does purposely linking to an invalid URL and then using 301 affect SEO?

  - by Mike

  On a section of my site, I am currently using .htaccess rewrites to put the ID as part of the URL instead of in the query, like so: RewriteRule ^([a-z_]+)?/?tours/([0-9]+)/(.*) /tours/tour_text.php?lang=$1&id=$2&urlstr=$3 [L] For example, if someone goes to /en/tours/12/some-text-here it will rewrite it to /tours/tour_text.php?lang=en&id=12&urlstr=some-text-here. However I don't want the users to be able to put just any text, so if they type in the wrong some-text-here part it will 301 redirect them to the right page. This works perfectly, but I can see a potential problem potential arising when localizing the website, so I just wanted to make sure it's not actually a problem. How it is now, if someone goes to /en/tours/12/some-text-here, the anchor to the Spanish version of that page will be /es/tours/12/some-text-here (i.e. only changing the "en" to "es"), and then the script will then 301 them to the correct Spanish text (something like /es/tours/12/algun-texto-aqui). And the reverse will also be the same. The anchor on the Spanish version to the English version would be /en/tours/12/algun-texto-aqui and then they will be forwarded with 301 back to /en/tours/12/some-text-here. Basically, the anchor changes the language and the 301 changes the string at the end. So I have two questions: Does purposely and permanently having invalid URLs on your site that get 301'ed to the correct ones have any effect on SEO? I could make it just show the correct URL to begin with, but this is a significant amount of work due to how I am handling the translations, so I would prefer just to 301 them. Will the invalid URLs that are contained in the links be added to the search engine indexes even if they get 301'ed to another page?

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• Price Drop for Processor based License on Exalytics

  - by Mike.Hallett(at)Oracle-BI&EPM

  ·       33% reduction in the list `per processor` license pricing for the Oracle BI Foundation Suite ·       New capacity-based licensing which allows customers to think big & start small, significantly lowering the entry price point for an Exalytics. Oracle BI Software List Price changes In response to new powerful platforms like the in-memory Oracle Exalytics with 40 cpu cores (counted under Oracle pricing policy as 20 “processors”), the list price of “Oracle BI Foundation Suite” (BIFS) is reduced by 33% from $450K per processor to $300K per processor. Capacity-based licensing on Exalytics (Trusted Partitions) “Capacity-based pricing” for the BIFS, Endeca, Essbase and Times Ten for Exalytics software is now available for Exalytics systems. This is delivered using “Oracle VM” (OVM).  We still ship a full Exalytics machine to all customers, but they may choose to only use and license a subset of the processors installed in the machine.   Customers can license Exalytics software in units of 5 “processors”: 5, 10, 15 or the full capacity 20.   As the customer’s implementation and workload increases, it is a simple matter to license additional processors and, using OVM, make them available to the BI or EPM application. Endeca Information Discovery now available on Exalytics Oracle has also announced the certification of “Oracle Endeca Information Discovery” (EID) on the Exalytics machine.    EID can be licensed alone or in combination with the BIFS & Times Ten for an Exalytics stack, and also participates in the capacity based pricing outlined above.   The Exalytics hardware is the perfect platform for EID, and provides superb power and performance for this in-memory hybrid text-search-analytics.   For more information : Oracle Price lists Oracle Partitioning Policy Discussion by Mark Rittman (Rittman Mead Consulting ltd.) on Oracle Trusted Partitions for Oracle Engineered Systems, Oracle Exalytics and Updated BI Foundation Pricing.

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• Partner Training for Oracle Business Intelligence Applications 4-Day Bootcamp

  - by Mike.Hallett(at)Oracle-BI&EPM

  Partners 4-Day training from 15th - 18th October 2012, at Oracle Reading (UK) The Oracle Business Intelligence Applications provide pre-built Operational BI solutions for eBusiness Suite, Peoplesoft, Siebel, JDE and SAP; offering out-of-the-box integration. This FREE for Partners 4-Day training will provide attendees with an in-depth working understanding of the architecture, the technical and the functional content of the Oracle Business Intelligence Applications, whilst also providing an understanding of their installation, configuration and extension. The course will cover the following topics: Overview of Oracle Business Intelligence Applications Oracle BI Applications Fundamentals and Features Configuring BI Applications for Oracle E-Business Suite Understanding BI Applications Architecture Fundamentals of BI Applications Security   REGISTER HERE NOW    (acceptance is subject to availability and your place will be confirmed within two weeks: for help see the Partner Registration Guide) Location: Bray Room, at Oracle Corporation UK Ltd Oracle Parkway Thames Valley Park Reading, Berkshire RG6 1RA 15th - 18th October 2012, 4-Days :  9:30 am – 5:00 pm BST Audience The seminar is aimed at BI Consultants and Implementation Consultants within Oracle's Gold and Platinum Partners. Good understanding of basic data warehousing concepts Hands on experience in Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Hands on experience in Informatica Some understanding of  Oracle BI Applications is required (See Sales & Technical Tutorials for OBI, BI-Apps and Hyperion EPM)  Good understanding of any of the following Oracle EBS modules: General Ledger, Accounts Receivables, Accounts Payables Please note that attendees are required to bring a laptop: 4GB RAM Windows 64 bits 80GB free space in Hard drive or External Device CPU Core 2 Duo or Higher Windows 7, Windows XP, Windows 2003 NOT ALLOWED with Windows Vista An Administrator User For more information please contact [email protected].

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• BI&EPM in Focus November 2013

  - by Mike.Hallett(at)Oracle-BI&EPM

  Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE IBM is Embracing Oracle Exalytics: The Velocity of Thought and Action (link) Customers Ambulance Victoria, Australia, uses analytics and modelling to serve the expanding needs of a growing population (link) Cablemás Selects Oracle to Speed Customer Data Insights (link) National Instruments Introduces New Business Intelligence Solutions—Runs Reports up to 30x Faster, and Expands Customer Insight (link) FLSmidth Ensures Precise, Transparent Financial Reporting at All Business Levels, Reduces Financial Consolidation Time by up to 40% (link) Enterprise Performance Management Partner Edgewater Ranzal Webinar Series Mitigate Your Biggest EPM Project Risk - Thursday, 21st November - Register here:  4.00 GMT Capital Planning in the Energy Industry - Tuesday, 26th November - Register here:  4.00 GMT Driving Value in the Retail Industry Using Hyperion Strategic Finance (HSF)  - Tuesday, 10th December - Register here:  7.00 GMT Dec 11, Look Smarter Selling Hyperion Profitability & Cost Management (HPCM) Webcast (link) EPM System Infrastructure Tips & Tricks Support: November EPM Patch Set Updates released Business Analytics Monthly Index - October 2013 Hyperion Smart View Assistance with OBIEE 11.1.1.7 Hyperion Disclosure Management 11.1.2.3.330 PSU 17444967 [Doc ID 1592645.1] Hyperion Financial Close Management (FCM) 11.1.2.3.100 PSU 16989110 [Doc ID 1592644.1] Business  Intelligence BI-Apps Whitepaper: Packaged Analytic Applications: Accelerating Time and Value By Wayne Eckerson (link) BI Apps Blog: A Closer Look at Oracle Price Analytics (link) Blog: Taking Your Business Scorecard Golfing (link) Blog: Practical Uses of Business Scorecards, from Company-Wide to Process Specific (link) Nov 19, Big Data at Work Series: How Delphi Harnesses Big Data to Improve Warranty Response & Customer Satisfaction (link) Rittman Mead Blog: Oracle BI Apps 11.1.1.7.1 – GoldenGate Integration Support: OBIEE Suite Bundle Patches (understand OBIEE naming convention) [Doc ID 1591422.1] Support Blog: Java update alert: Essbase Administration Services (EAS) 11.1.2.3 (link) Support Blog: OBIEE 11.1.1.7.131017 now available (link) /* 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-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;}

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• Brazil is Hot for Social Media

  - by Mike Stiles

  Today’s guest blog is from Oracle SVP Product Development Reggie Bradford, fresh off a visit to Sao Paulo, Brazil where he spoke at the Dachis Social Business Summit and spent some time getting a personal taste for the astonishing growth of social in Brazil, both in terms of usage and engagement. I knew it was big, but I now have an all-new appreciation for why the Wall Street Journal branded Brazil the “social media capital of the universe.” Brazil has the world’s 5th largest economy, an expanding middle class, an active younger demo market, a connected & outgoing culture, and an ongoing embrace of the social media platforms. According to comScore's 2012 Brazil Digital Future in Focus report, 97% are using social media, and that’s not even taking mobile-only users into account. There were 65 million Facebook users in 2012, spending an average 535 minutes there, up 208%. It’s one of Twitter’s fastest growing markets and the 2nd biggest market for YouTube. Instagram usage has grown over 300% since last year. That by itself is exciting, but look at the opportunity for social marketing brands. 74% of Brazilian social users follow brands on Facebook, and 59% have praised a company on either Twitter or Facebook. A 2011 Oh! Panel study found 81% of social networkers there used social to research new products and 75% went there looking for discounts. B2C eCommerce sales in Brazil is projected to hit $26.9 billion by 2015. I bet I’m not the only one who sees great things ahead, and I was fortunate enough give a keynote ABRADI, an association of leading digital agencies in Brazil with 53 execs from 35 agencies attending. I was also afforded the opportunity to give my impressions of what’s going on in Brazil to Jornal Propoganda & Marketing, one of the most popular publications in Latin America for marketers. I conveyed that especially in an environment like Brazil, where social users are so willing to connect and engage brands, marketers need to back away from the heavy-handed, one-way messaging of old school advertising and move toward genuine relationships and trust-building. To aide in this, organizational and operation changes must be embraced inside the enterprise. We've talked often about the new, tighter partnership forming between the CIO and CMO. If this partnership is not encouraged, fostered and resourced, the increasing amount of time consumers spend on mobile and digital, and the efficiencies and integrations offered by cloud-based software cannot be exploited. These are the kinds of changes that can yield social data that, when combined with enterprise data, helps you come to know your social audiences intimately and predict their needs. Consumers are always connected and need your brand to be accessible at any time, be it for information or customer service. And, of course, all of this is happening quite publicly. The holistic, socially-enable enterprise connects social to customer service systems and all other customer touch points, facilitating the kind of immediate, real-time, gratifying response customers are coming to expect. Social users in Brazil are highly active and clearly willing to meet us as brands more than halfway. Empowering yourself with a social management technology platform will have you set up to maximize this booming social market…from listening & monitoring to engagement to analytics to workflow & automation to globalization & language support. Brands, it’s time to be as social as the great people of Brazil are. Obrigado! @reggiebradfordPhoto: Gualberto107, freedigitalphotos.net

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• Clock is Ticking for OBI 10g Supported Customers to move to OBI 11g

  - by Mike.Hallett(at)Oracle-BI&EPM

  Now is a perfect time for Partners to approach existing OBI 10g customers, to encourage and help them to upgrade to all the great new features in the current OBI v 11g; including the ability to go Mobile, to be in-memory on Exalytics, and to get tighter integration with Hyperion applications, Strategic Scorecards and Essbase. Oracle Lifetime Support Policy for Oracle BI Suite, version 10gR3, will end ‘normal’ support in July 2013. The final point release of Oracle Business Intelligence EE & Publisher 10gR3 was 10.1.3.4.x, which was generally available from July 2008 and will end “Premier Support” in July 2013.  From this time, customers may purchase “Extended Support” until July 2015, and from then “Sustaining Support”  indefinitely. For more information : Upgrade to Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g, article on Technet Planning to Upgrade from Oracle BI 10g to BI 11g ?, at docs.oracle.com Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g Oracle Lifetime Support Policy

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• Forking project on Github etiquette

  - by Mike Wills

  There is a project on Github that I mostly like and want to use. There are a few things I want to do differently/remove that doesn't make sense for what I want/need. Also I want to add a few things as well. As I understand it, I should fork the project and I can make whatever changes I want and push back to my fork. From there, I also want to occasionally pull into my fork the changes from the original project so I get the latest bug fixes/features. Am I off-base of how I think it should work? How would bring in the changes from the original project?

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• Advanced Analytics Oracle Data Mining - NEW 2-Day Training Course

  - by Mike.Hallett(at)Oracle-BI&EPM

  A NEW 2-Day Oracle University (OU) Instructor Led Course on Oracle Data Mining has been developed for partners and customers to learn more about data mining, predictive analytics and knowledge discovery inside the Oracle Database. Oracle Data Mining, provides data mining algorithms that run native for high performance in-database model building and model deployment. This OU course is a great way to learn the advantages and benefits of "big data analytics"; mining data, building and deploying "predictive analytics" all inside the Oracle Database and to work with OBI. To register for a class, click here, then click on View Schedule to see the latest scheduled classes and/or submit your information expressing interest in attending a class.

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• How to install "libgtk1.2" on Ubuntu 12.04/64bit?

  - by Mike Redford

  Is there any way to install "libgtk1.2" on Ubuntu 12.04, please? I try to install that in terminal : sudo apt-add-repository ppa:adamkoczur/gtk1.2 sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install libgtk1.2 Output : Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done E: Unable to locate package libgtk1.2 E: Couldn't find any package by regex 'libgtk1.2' any suggestion ?

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• 4 Ways Your Brand Can Jump From the Edge of Space

  - by Mike Stiles

  Can your brand’s social media content captivate the world and make it hold its collective breath? Can you put something on the screen that’s so compelling that your audience can’t look away? Will they want to make sure their friends see it so they can talk about it? If not, you’re probably not with Red Bull. I was impressed with Red Bull’s approach to social content even before Felix Baumgartner’s stunning skydive from the edge of space. And then they did this. According to Visible Measures, videos of the jump scored 50 million views in 4 days. 1,700 clips were generated from both official and organic sources. The live stream was the most watched YouTube Stream of all time (8 million concurrent viewers). The 2nd most watched live stream was…Felix’ first attempt Oct. 9. Are you ready to compete with that? I ask that question because some brands are still out there tying themselves up in knots about whether or not they should tweet. The public’s time and attention are scarce commodities, commodities they value greatly. The competition amongst brands for that time and attention is intense and going up like Felix’s capsule. If you still view your press releases as “content,” you won’t even be counted as being among the competition. Here are 5 lessons learned from Red Bull’s big leap: 1. They have a total understanding of their target market and audience. Not only do they have an understanding of it, they do something about it. They act on it. They fill the majority of their thoughts with what the audience wants. They hunger for wild applause from that audience. They want to do things that embrace the audience’s lifestyle and immerse in it so the target will identify the brand as “one of them.” Takeaway: BE your target market. 2. They deliver content that strikes the audience right where they emotionally live. If you want your content to have impact, you have to make your audience’s heart race, or make them tear up, or make them laugh. Label them “data points” all you want, but humans are emotional creatures. No message connects that’s not carried in on an emotion. Takeaway: You’re on the inside. If your content doesn’t make you say “wow,” it’s unlikely it will register with fans. 3. They put aside old school marketing and don’t let their content be degraded into a commercial. Their execs seem to understand the value in keeping a lid on the hard sell. So many brands just can’t bring themselves to disconnect advertising and social content. The result is, otherwise decent content gets contaminated with a desperation the viewer can smell a mile away. Think the Baumgartner skydive didn’t do Red Bull any good since he wasn’t drinking one on the way down while singing a jingle? Analysis company Taykey discovered that at the peak of the skydive buzz, about 1% of all online conversation was about the jump. Mentions of Red Bull constituted 1/3 of 1% of all Internet activity. Views of other Red Bull videos also shot up. Takeaway: Chill out with the ads. Your brand will get full credit for entertaining/informing fans in a relevant way, provided you do it. 4. They don’t hesitate to ask, “What can we do next”? Most corporate cultures are a virtual training facility for “we can’t do that.” Few are encouraged to innovate or think big, if think at all. Thinking big involves faith, and work. It means freedom and letting employees run a little wild with their ideas. There will always be the opportunity to let fear of everything that moves creep in and kill grand visions dead in their tracks. Experimenting must be allowed. Failure must be allowed. Red Bull didn’t think big. They thought mega. They tried to outdo themselves. Felix could have gone ahead and jumped halfway up, thinking, “This is still relatively high up. Good enough.” But that wouldn’t have left us breathless. Takeaway: Go for it. Jump. In putting up social properties and gathering fans of your brand, you’ve basically invited people to a party. A good host doesn’t just set out warm beer and stale chips because that’s inexpensive and easy. Be on the lookout for ways to make your guests walk away saying, “That was epic.”

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• OTN APAC Tour 2012: Bangkok, Thailand - Oct 22, 2012

  - by Mike Dietrich

  Roy had done some of the South America OTN Tour 2012 dates earlier this year in Peru and Chile. And I'm looking forward to present next Monday, October 22nd, 2012, on the OTN Tour 2012 in Bangkok, Thailand. The event will be held at the Eastin Grand Hotel in Bangkok. Register today for the OTN APAC Tour 2012 in Bangkok, Thailand! Presentations will include: 9:30am - 10:15am:Best Practices for Upgrading to Oracle Database 11.2 1:00pm - 1:45pm:How to improve Upgrade Performance - Real Speed, Real Customers, Real Secrets 2:45pm - 3:30pm:Oracle Data Pump: Overview and Best Practices Plus presentations  about Security, RMAN and other topics by Francisco Alvarez and others. Please find the complete agenda here. Looking forward to meet you on Monday - CU there

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• Get Fanatical About Your Followers

  - by Mike Stiles

  In the fourth of our series of discussions with Aberdeen’s Trip Kucera, we touch on what fans of your brand have come to expect in exchange for their fandom. Spotlight: Around the Oracle Social office, we live for football. So when we think of a true “fan” of a brand, something on the level of a football fan is what comes to mind. But are brands trying to invest fans on that same level? Trip: Yeah, if you’re a football fan, this is definitely your time of year. And if you’ve been to any NFL games recently, especially if you hadn’t been for a few years previously, you may have noticed that from the cup holders to in-stadium Wi-Fi, there’s an increasing emphasis being placed on “fan-focused” accommodations. That’s what they’re known as in the stadium business. Spotlight: How are brands doing in that fan-focused arena? Trip: Remember fan is short for “fanatical.” Brands can definitely learn from the way teams have become fanatical about their fans, or in the social media world, their followers. Many companies consider a segment of their addressable social audience as true fans; I’ve even heard the term “super-fans” used. So just as fans know and can tell you nearly everything about their favorite team, our research shows that there’s a lot value from getting to know your social audience—your followers—at a deeper level. Spotlight: So did your research show there’s a lot to be gained by making fandom a two-way street? Trip: Aberdeen’s new social relationship management research suggests that companies should develop capabilities to better analyze their social audience at a more granular level. Countless “ripped from the headlines” examples, from “United Breaks Guitars” to the most recent British Airways social fiasco we talked about a few weeks ago show how social can magnify the impact of a single customer voice. Spotlight: So how do the companies who are executing social most successfully do that? Trip: Leaders, which are the top-performing companies in Aberdeen’s study, are showing the value of identifying and categorizing your social audience. You should certainly treat every customer as if they have 10,000 followers, because they just might, but you can also proactively engage with high-value customer and high-value influencers. Getting back to the football analogy, it’s like how teams strive to give every guest a great experience, but they really roll out the red carpet for those season ticket and luxury box holders. Spotlight: I’m not allowed in luxury boxes, so you’ll have to tell me what that’s like. But what is the brand equivalent of rolling out the red carpet? Trip: Leaders are nearly three times more likely than Followers to have a process in place that identifies key social influencers for engagement, and more than twice as likely to identify customer advocates for social outreach. This is the kind of knowledge that gives companies the ability to better target social messaging and promotions like we talked about in our last discussion, as well as a basis for understanding how to measure the impact of their social media programs. I’ll give you an example. I hosted an event at one of my favorite restaurants recently. I had mentioned them in a Tweet several weeks before the event, and on the day of the event, they Tweeted out that they were looking forward to seeing me that evening for the event. It’s a small thing, but it had a big impact and I’d certainly go back as a result. Spotlight: So what specifically can brands use and look at to determine where their potential super-fans are? Trip: Social graph analysis, which looks at both the demographic/psychographic trends as well as the behavioral connections, can surface important brand value. Aberdeen’s PR and Brand Management research indicated that top-performing companies are more than three times more likely than Followers to both determine demographic trends through social listening (44% vs. 13%), and to identify meaningful customer segments through social (44% vs. 12%). This kind of brand-level insight can complement and enrich traditional market research. But perhaps even more importantly, it can serve as an early warning system for customer experience failures. @mikestilesPhoto: freedigitalphotos.net

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• Parallel Class/Interface Hierarchy with the Facade Design Pattern?

  - by Mike G

  About a third of my code is wrapped inside a Facade class. Note that this isn't a "God" class, but actually represents a single thing (called a Line). Naturally, it delegates responsibilities to the subsystem behind it. What ends up happening is that two of the subsystem classes (Output and Timeline) have all of their methods duplicated in the Line class, which effectively makes Line both an Output and a Timeline. It seems to make sense to make Output and Timeline interfaces, so that the Line class can implement them both. At the same time, I'm worried about creating parallel class and interface structures. You see, there are different types of lines AudioLine, VideoLine, which all use the same type of Timeline, but different types of Output (AudioOutput and VideoOutput, respectively). So that would mean that I'd have to create an AudioOutputInterface and VideoOutputInterface as well. So not only would I have to have parallel class hierarchy, but there would be a parallel interface hierarchy as well. Is there any solution to this design flaw? Here's an image of the basic structure (minus the Timeline class, though know that each Line has-a Timeline): NOTE: I just realized that the word 'line' in Timeline might make is sound like is does a similar function as the Line class. They don't, just to clarify.

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• Chrome Countdown Extension [migrated]

  - by Mike Saffold

  I have modified this countdown script to countdown to 4:20pm everyday. I have attempted to create a Google Chrome app that displays the countdown. The javascript is supposed replace a paragraph tag with id of "note" with the time left. It works when I load the page in chrome, but does not work when I load the extension. Example, if I put: <p id="note">asdf</a> I get just the text, "asdf", but when I open the html file I get the countdown. Here is the manifest.json file: { "name": "My First Extension", "version": "1.0", "manifest_version": 2, "description": "The first extension that I made.", "browser_action": { "default_icon": "icon.png", "default_popup": "popup.html" } } Here is the popup.html code: <html> <head> <title>4:20PM Countdown</title> <!-- Our CSS stylesheet file --> <link rel="stylesheet" href="http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Open+Sans+Condensed:300" /> <link rel="stylesheet" href="http://treesmoke.com/cd/assets/css/styles.css" /> <link rel="stylesheet" href="http://treesmoke.com/cd/assets/countdown/jquery.countdown.css" /> </head> <body> <p id="note">asdf</p> <!-- JavaScript includes --> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.7.1.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://treesmoke.com/cd/assets/countdown/jquery.countdown.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://treesmoke.com/cd/assets/js/script.js"></script> </body> </html> Here's the popup.html page, showing that the script works. Thanks guys, it isn't that big of a deal if I can't get it to work. I was just bored and decided to learn a little.

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• Slides for Upgrade Workshops in Athens and Istanbul

  - by Mike Dietrich

  I would like to say THANK YOU to everybody who attended yesterday and today to the Upgrade Workshop in Athens and Istanbul. With all the sunny weather outside I'd suppose there are better options then listening to a guy talking the whole day about databases and how to upgrade them - so I really appreciate that everybody stayed so long. And it had 41°C yesterday in Athens ... wow!! You'll be able to download the slides from: http://apex.oracle.com/folien Please use the keyword (Schluesselwort): upgrade112 Hope to see you again soon - thanks again!

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• Launching LibreOffice Files - Unusual Window Behaviour

  - by Mike

  Ubuntu 11.10 Unity. If I launch LibreOffice Files (ODS, ODT, ODP) with a double click in their home folders they launch with the appropriate application (Calc, Writer, Impress) however the application windows do not display the usual Close, Minimize, Restore buttons in the left hand corner. There is just a blank space where they should be. In the Unity launcher on the left there is not the expected white arrow next to the launcher icon and the open app is not seen by the ALT+TAB keystroke when you have multiple windows open. For example: if you have an app open in this way and say Firefox, if you minimize Firefox you are only left with the desktop and you have no way to locate the open LibreOffice app. Clicking the app's icon in the launcher simply opens another instance. A messy workaround is to click [Firefox] to a restored window and the LibreOffice app can be seen behind it allowing a mouse click to bring it forward. If I open the LibreOffice app from the launcher and then Open a file from its menu, it all behaves as expected. I don't find this as convenient; anyone know how to fix the bad behaviour?

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• "A", "an", and "the" in method and function names: What's your take?

  - by Mike Spross

  I'm sure many of us have seen method names like this at one point or another: UploadTheFileToTheServerPlease CreateATemporaryFile WriteTheRecordToTheDatabase ResetTheSystemClock That is, method names that are also grammatically-correct English sentences, and include extra words purely to make them read like prose. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of such "literal" method names, and prefer to be succint, while still being as clear as possible. To me, words like "a", "an", and "the" just look plain awkward in method names, and it makes method names needlessly long without really adding anything useful. I would prefer the following method names for the previous examples: UploadFileToServer CreateTemporaryFile WriteOutRecord ResetSystemClock In my experience, this is far more common than the other approach of writing out the lengthier names, but I have seen both styles and was curious to see what other people's thoughts were on these two approaches. So, are you in the "method names that read like prose" camp or the "method names that say what I mean but read out loud like a bad foreign-language-to-English translation" camp?

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• Business Accelerators for Oracle BI Applications

  - by Mike.Hallett(at)Oracle-BI&EPM

  "Using the Oracle Business Accelerators across projects …, our deliveries are now 50% faster than traditional implementations.” "Oracle Application Implementation is now within reach for Small to Medium Businesses who want a faster, cheaper & better … implementation.   Oracle Business Accelerators (OBA) has made it possible.” Find out more @ OBA for BI Applications   {partner single sign-on required} Oracle Business Accelerator (OBA) kits are now available for BI Applications, configured for both: ·        E-Business Suite, and ·        JD Edwards E1. This has resources to help partners to sell and deliver tightly scoped OBI-Application implementation projects with low risk and high margin in a few weeks; with huge potential to up-sell many add on services to your delighted client. For example, select “Oracle BI Applications ” & “E-Business Suite - R12.1.1”, and then the “OBA Project Consultant” gets the following self-guided tutorials and access to a comprehensive delivery kit:

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