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• Kauffman Foundation Selects Stackify to Present at Startup@Kauffman Demo Day

  - by Matt Watson

  Stackify will join fellow Kansas City startups to kick off Global Entrepreneurship WeekOn Monday, November 12, Stackify, a provider of tools that improve developers’ ability to support, manage and monitor their enterprise applications, will pitch its technology at the Startup@Kauffman Demo Day in Kansas City, Mo. Hosted by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the event will mark the start of Global Entrepreneurship Week, the world’s largest celebration of innovators and job creators who launch startups.Stackify was selected through a competitive process for a six-minute opportunity to pitch its new technology to investors at Demo Day. In his pitch, Stackify’s founder, Matt Watson, will discuss the current challenges DevOps teams face and reveal how Stackify is reinventing the way software developers provide application support.In October, Stackify had successful appearances at two similar startup events. At Tech Cocktail’s Kansas City Mixer, the company was named “Hottest Kansas City Startup,” and it won free hosting service after pitching its solution at St. Louis, Mo.’s Startup Connection.“With less than a month until our public launch, events like Demo Day are giving Stackify the support and positioning we need to change the development community,” said Watson. “As a serial technology entrepreneur, I appreciate the Kauffman Foundation’s support of startup companies like Stackify. We’re thrilled to participate in Demo Day and Global Entrepreneurship Week activities.”Scheduled to publicly launch in early December 2012, Stackify’s platform gives developers insights into their production applications, servers and databases. Stackify finally provides agile developers safe and secure remote access to look at log files, config files, server health and databases. This solution removes the bottleneck from managers and system administrators who, until now, are the only team members with access. Essentially, Stackify enables development teams to spend less time fixing bugs and more time creating products.Currently in beta, Stackify has already been named a “Company to Watch” by Software Development Times, which called the startup “the next big thing.” Developers can register for a free Stackify account on Stackify.com.###Stackify Founded in 2012, Stackify is a Kansas City-based software service provider that helps development teams troubleshoot application problems. Currently in beta, Stackify will be publicly available in December 2012, when agile developers will finally be able to provide agile support. The startup has already been recognized by Tech Cocktail as “Hottest Kansas City Startup” and was named a “Company to Watch” by Software Development Times. To learn more, visit http://www.stackify.com and follow @stackify on Twitter.

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• How to Share Files/Folders Between Windows XP, Vista, 7 and Fedora Linux

  - by Akshay Deep Lamba

  Getting started:   To get started, logon to Windows XP and click Start –> then right click ‘My Computer’ and select ‘Properties’.       Then select ‘Computer Name’ tab and click ‘Change’       Enter the Computer and Workgroup name and click OK. Make sure all systems use the same Workgroup name. You will have to restart your computer for the change to take effect.       After restarting, click Start –> Control Panel.       Select Security Center –> Windows Firewall.       When Windows Firewall opens, select ‘Exceptions’ tab and check the box to enable File and Printer Sharing. Close out when done.         Next, logon to Fedora and go to System –> Administration –> Add/Remove Software.       Then search for and install system-config-samba. Install all additional packages when prompted. Ensure that the Network Settings along with Correct Gateway is Mentioned so that your System can Access the Internet. system-config-samba     After installing, go to System –> Administration –> Samba.       Then select Preferences –> Server Settings.         Enter the Workgroup name here and click OK.       Select Preferences –> Samba Users.       Edit or Add User to samba database and click OK.       To create shares, click File –> Create Add Shares, then select the folder you wish to share and check: Writable Visible       Then select ‘Access’ tab and give users access to the shares, then click OK to save.       Next, go to System –> Administration –> Firewall.       Select ‘Samba’ under ‘Trusted Services’ and enable Samba.       Next, select ‘ICMP’ and enable ‘Echo Reply (pong) and Echo Request (ping)’      Also add the eth0 interface to the trusted interfaces.     After that go to Applications –> System Tools –> Terminal and run the command below:   su -c 'chkconfig smb on'     Restart your computer and if everything is setup correctly, you should be able to view shares from either system.           At the terminal: Quote: su setenforce 0 service smb restart service nmb restart exit   ENJOYYY....

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• Viewing at Impossible Angles

  - by kemer

  The picture of the little screwdriver with the Allen wrench head to the right is bound to invoke a little nostalgia for those readers who were Sun customers in the late 80s. This tool was a very popular give-away: it was essential for installing and removing Multibus (you youngsters will have to look that up on Wikipedia…) cards in our systems. Back then our mid-sized systems were gargantuan: it was routine for us to schlep around a 200 lb. desk side box and 90 lb. monitor to demo a piece of software your smart phone will run better today. We were very close to the hardware, and the first thing a new field sales systems engineer had to learn was how put together a system. If you were lucky, a grizzled service engineer might run you through the process once, then threaten your health and existence should you ever screw it up so that he had to fix it. Nowadays we make it much easier to learn the ins and outs of our hardware with simulations–3D animations–that take you through the process of putting together or replacing pieces of a system. Most recently, we have posted three sophisticated PDFs that take advantage of Acrobat 9 features to provide a really intelligent approach to documenting hardware installation and repair: Sun Fire X4800/X4800 M2 Animations for Chassis Components Sun Fire X4800/X4800 M2 Animations for Sub Assembly Module (SAM) Sun Fire X4800/X4800 M2 Animations for CMOD Download one of these documents and take a close look at it. You can view the hardware from any angle, including impossible ones. Each document has a number of procedures, that break down into steps. Click on a procedure, then a step and you will see it animated in the drawing. Of course hardware design has generally eliminated the need for things like our old giveaway tools: components snap and lock in. Often you can replace redundant units while the system is hot, but for heaven’s sake, you’ll want to verify that you can do that before you try it! Meanwhile, we can all look forward to a growing portfolio of these intelligent documents. We would love to hear what you think about them. –Kemer

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• Follow the How-To Geek Writers on Twitter

  - by The Geek

  Ever wonder what the How-To Geek writers are up to? If you’re a Twitter user, you can connect with us directly. We’ve also setup a new @howtogeeknews account if you just want to keep up with the latest articles. So if you want just the latest articles… click the image below and then click the Follow button. Otherwise, if you’d like to connect with the rest of us that actually use Twitter, you can follow each of us separately through  the links below. Note: Let’s try to stick to discussion, and leave the tech support questions for our forum. the How-To Geek (that’s me!) -  @howtogeek Matthew Guay – @maguay Trevor Bekolay – @TrevorBekolay Asian Angel – @asian_angel  Andrew Gehman – @andrewgehman Some of the HTG writers are not currently using Twitter… but I’m gonna list their accounts just in case you wanted to follow them. Mark Virtue – @markvirtue Mysticgeek – @mysticgeek  (He’s far too productive to waste time on Twitter!) Enjoy the conversation! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Got Awesome Geek Skills? The How-To Geek is Looking for WritersGot Awesome Skills? Why Not Write for How-To Geek?Integrate Twitter With Microsoft OutlookState of the Geek 2009: Behind the Scenes and Other GeekeryAnnouncing the How-To Geek Blogs TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Download Videos from Hulu Pixels invade Manhattan Convert PDF files to ePub to read on your iPad Hide Your Confidential Files Inside Images Get Wildlife Photography Tips at BBC’s PhotoMasterClasses Mashpedia is a Real-time Encyclopedia

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• Find a Faster DNS Server with Namebench

  - by Mysticgeek

  One way to speed up your Internet browsing experience is using a faster DNS server. Today we take a look at Namebench, which will compare your current DNS server against others out there, and help you find a faster one. Namebench Download the file and run the executable (link below). Namebench starts up and will include the current DNS server you have configured on your system. In this example we’re behind a router and using the DNS server from the ISP. Include the global DNS providers and the best available regional DNS server, then start the Benchmark. The test starts to run and you’ll see the queries it’s running through. The benchmark takes about 5-10 minutes to complete. After it’s complete you’ll get a report of the results. Based on its findings, it will show you what DNS server is fastest for your system. It also displays different types of graphs so you can get a better feel for the different results. You can export the results to a .csv file as well so you can present the results in Excel. Conclusion This is a free project that is in continuing development, so results might not be perfect, and there may be more features added in the future. If you’re looking for a method to help find a faster DNS server for your system, Namebench is a cool free utility to help you out. If you’re looking for a public DNS server that is customizable and includes filters, you might want to check out our article on helping to protect your kids from questionable content using OpenDNS. You can also check out how to speed up your web browsing with Google Public DNS. Links Download NameBench for Windows, Mac, and Linux from Google Code Learn More About the Project on the Namebench Wiki Page Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Open a Second Console Session on Ubuntu ServerShare Ubuntu Home Directories using SambaSetup OpenSSH Server on Ubuntu LinuxDisable the Annoying “This device can perform faster” Balloon Message in Windows 7Search For Rows With Special Characters in SQL Server TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 How to Add Exceptions to the Windows Firewall Office 2010 reviewed in depth by Ed Bott FoxClocks adds World Times in your Statusbar (Firefox) Have Fun Editing Photo Editing with Citrify Outlook Connector Upgrade Error Gadfly is a cool Twitter/Silverlight app

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• Webcast Q&A: Cisco's Platform Approach to Identity Management

  - by Tanu Sood

  Thanks to all who attended the live webcast we hosted on Cisco: Best Practices for a Platform Approach on Wed, March 14th. Those of you who couldn’t join us, the webcast replay is now available. Many thanks to our guest speaker, Ranjan Jain, Security Architect at Cisco for walking us through Cisco’s drivers and rationale for the platform approach, the implementation strategy, results, roadmap and recommendations. We greatly appreciate the insight he shared with us all on the deployment synergies with a platform approach to Identity Management. A forward looking organization, Cisco also has plans for secure cloud and mobile access enablement so it was interesting to learn how the Platform approach to Identity Management today is laying down the foundation for those future initiatives. While we tackled a good few questions during the webcast, we have captured the responses to those that we weren’t able to get to: Q.Can you provide insight into how you approached developing profiles for each user groupA. At Cisco, the user profile was already available to IT before the platform consolidation started. There is a dedicated business team that manages the user profiles. Q. What is the current version of Oracle Identity Manager in the market?A. Oracle Identity Manager 11gR1 is the latest version of our industry leading user provisioning/identity administration solution. Q. Is data resource segmentation part of the overall strategy at Cisco?A. It is but it is managed by the business teams and not at the IT level. Q. Does Cisco also have an Active Directoy LDAP? Do they sync AD from OID or do the provision to AD as another resource?[A. Yes, we do. AD is provisioned using in-house tools and not via Oracle Identity Manager (OIM). Q. If we already have a point IDM solution in place (SSO), can the platform approach still work?A. Yes, the platform approach calls for a seamless, standardized framework for identity management to support the enterprise’s entire infrastructure, both on-premise or in the cloud. Oracle Identity Management solutions are standards based so they can easily integrate and interoperate with existing Oracle or non-Oracle solutions. Hope you enjoyed the webcast and we look forward to having you join us for the next webcast in our Customers Talk: Identity as a Platform webcast series:ING: Scaling Role Management and Access Certification to Thousands of ApplicationsWednesday, April 11th at 10 am PST/ 1 pm ESTRegister Today We are also hosting a live event series in collaboration with the Aberdeen Group. To hear first-hand, the insights from the recently released Aberdeen Report and to discuss the merits of the Platform approach, do join us at this event. You can also connect with Oracle Identity Management SMEs and get your questions answered live. Aberdeen Group Live Event Series: IAM Integrated - Analyzing the "Platform" vs. "Point Solution" ApproachNorth America, April 10 - May 22Register for an event near you And here’s the slide deck from our Cisco webcast:   Oracle_Cisco identity platform approach_webcast View more presentations from OracleIDM

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• Oracle Developer Day, Poland, 2012

  - by Geertjan

  Oracle Developer Day took place in Poland today. Oracle's Gregor Rayman did the keynote, where NetBeans was positioned, yet again, as Oracle's IDE for the Java Platform, via the JavaFX Roadmap: Well, it's not so clear from my pic above, but NetBeans is closely tied to the JavaFX Roadmap, as well as the JDK Roadmap too. Then the tracks started, one of which was the Java Track (the other two tracks were on ADF/WebLogic and SOA/BPM/BAM), where among other things I demonstrated the Java EE 6 Platform via tools in NetBeans IDE at some length. The room could hardly have been fuller, chairs had to be brought in and people were standing along the walls. The above pic shows the session being set up, with the room full of developers ready to hear about Java EE 6. I also did a session on pluggable Java desktop development (i.e., NetBeans Platform) and on "What's New in NetBeans IDE 7.1?", while Martin Grebac had a session on Java EE Web Services. Some of the many questions asked during the day that I thought were interesting: Is there localization support for the @Pattern annotation? I.e., what if I want to display the error message in Polish, what do I do? Is there filtering/sorting support for the DataTable component in JSF? Why is there no visual editor for ejb-jar.xml, in the same way that there is for web.xml? "Would be handy if there were to be a JSR for IDE Keyboard Shortcuts." (Two different people asked this question, separately, without knowing about each other. The second didn't know about the Eclipse and IntelliJ keyboard shortcut support in NetBeans IDE and was happy when I told them about it.) Wouldn't it be cool if, on start up, or during installation, there'd be a question: "Are you migrating from Eclipse/IntelliJ?" Then, if "yes", reset the keyboard shortcuts to match the IDE they're coming from.Is there a way in NetBeans to find subclasses of a class? "Would be cool if HTML or JSF files could be visualized in the same way as JavaFX and Swing classes." I.e., Visual Debugger for web developers. I had a great day and am looking at the Oracle Developer Day that will be held in Cluj, Romania, on Friday.

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• Hey You! Stop Using the Apply Button and Just Click OK! [Geek Rants]

  - by The Geek

  As a computer geek, I often find myself helping people, and watching them change settings on their PC… and they almost always click the Apply button, and then the OK button. Why? Whenever you encounter a dialog box in Windows, there are the standard OK, Cancel, Apply buttons—but you don’t actually have to click the Apply button first. The OK button does the same thing, saves the settings, and then closes the dialog box… saving you an extra click. Don’t believe me? Try it out for yourself. Only the worst possible application won’t behave that way, and you probably don’t want to use that type of application to begin with. The only exception to this rule is a multiple tab dialog box, on a badly written application. Sometimes… your settings on one tab won’t stick unless you click Apply. Note that in this particular case, you can make changes in any one of the tabs, and they will carry through without having to click Apply, because this dialog window is well written. We’re just using the screenshot as an example of a multiple tab setting interface. So now that you know better, you can tell us… do you always use the Apply button first? Have you ever found an instance where it behaves differently? Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Got Awesome Skills? Why Not Write for How-To Geek?Customize Your Windows Vista Logon ScreenUse Outlook Rules to Prevent "Oh No!" After Sending EmailsGot Awesome Geek Skills? The How-To Geek is Looking for WritersQuick Firefox UI Tweaks TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Recycle ! Find That Elusive Icon with FindIcons Looking for Good Windows Media Player 12 Plug-ins? Find Out the Celebrity You Resemble With FaceDouble Whoa ! Use Printflush to Solve Printing Problems

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• Justification for learning/implementing newer Microsoft technologies

  - by Darren

  I work at a large healthcare organization as a mid-level software developer. I have over 10 years experience in the IT industry using Microsoft technologies (ASP.NET & SQL Server). When I go to conferences, code camps, .net user group meetings, I hear of all kinds of new tools and technologies: MVC, LINQ, Entity Framework, WCF Web Services, etc. I guess you could say I'm in my comfort zone using the same old stuff from asp.net 2.0. I use typed datasets for my data access layer. I use web forms and feature rich server controls with master pages. I know how to use plain old SQL and create queries in my typed datasets to get at data my applications need. Throughout my career, I'm always sensitive to not become obsolete with my skill set. What I currently use works fine and my development time is fast. But I'm concerned that if I were to be laid off, I would be asked in interviews how many MVC apps I've written. Or how I am with LINQ or WCF web services. I know that it doesn't matter how many conferences, books, or videos I watch on some new technology...I have to implement/use it or it simply won't sink in. Also, managers who interview don't care how much someone reads up on something, only real use and experience with a technology. I have a new project to write. I've gone to my manager and have asked for additional time for the project for learning/implementing technology I may not be familiar with. Our organization encourages its employees to "learn and grow" and to continue are education. But I always get resistance when I ask for more time to ramp up on something new to implement. My manager is asking for concrete business reasons for implementing these new technologies. I don't have business reasons. My reasons are because I don't want to become obsolete. I could say it would make the project more maintainable in the future by other developers since at some point people could stop using these older technologies, but that' about all I can think of. Does Linq/Entity Framework/MCV apps perform better? So much so that the customers (users in departments I'm creating this app for) need? I doubt it. I'm interested in you guy's thoughts on this. Do many of you have similar plights with trying to use newer upcoming technologies? I doubt I'm on the bleeding edge of technology, either. Are there "business reasons" that you would bring to light for using these technologies? Thanks in advance! Sorry for the long wall of text.

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• Clone an Azure VM using Powershell

  - by jamiet

  In a few months time I will, in association with Technitrain, be running a training course entitled Introduction to SQL Server Data Tools. I am currently working on putting together some hands-on lab material for the course delegates and have decided that in order to save time in asking people to install software during the course I am simply going to prepare a virtual machine (VM) containing all the software and lab material for each delegate to use. Given that I am an MSDN subscriber it makes sense to use Windows Azure to host those VMs given that it will be close to, if not completely, free to do so. What I don’t want to do however is separately build a VM for each delegate, I would much rather build one VM and clone it for each delegate. I’ve spent a bit of time figuring out how to do this using Powershell and in this blog post I am sharing a script that will: Prompt for some information (Azure credentials, Azure subscription name, VM name, username & password, etc…) Create a VM on Azure using that information Prompt you to sysprep the VM and image it (this part can’t be done with Powershell so has to be done manually, a link to instructions is provided in the script output) Create three new VMs based on the image Remove those three VMs Simply download the script and execute it within Powershell, assuming you have an Azure account it should take about 20minutes to execute (spinning up VMs and shutting the down isn’t instantaneous). If you experience any issues please do let me know. There are additional notes below. Hope this is useful! @Jamiet  Notes: Obviously there isn’t a lot of point in creating some new VMs and then instantly deleting them. However, this demo script does provide everything you need should you want to do any of these operations in isolation. The names of the three VMs that get created will be suffixed with 001, 002, 003 but you can edit the script to call them whatever you like. The script doesn’t totally clean up after itself. If you specify a service name & storage account name that don’t already exist then it will create them however it won’t remove them when everything is complete. The created image file will also not be deleted. Removing these items can be done by visiting http://manage.windowsazure.com. When creating the image, ensure you use the correct name (the script output tells you what name to use): Here are some screenshots taken from running the script: When the third and final VM gets removed you are asked to confirm via this dialog: Select ‘Yes’

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• Silverlight Cream for June 15, 2010 - 2 -- #883

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Vibor Cipan, Chris Klug, Pete Brown, Kirupa, and Xianzhong Zhu. Shoutouts (thought I gave up on them, didn't you?): Jesse Liberty has the companion video to his WP7 OData post up: New Video: Master/Detail in WinPhone 7 with oData Michael Scherotter who made the first Ball Watch SL1 app back in the day, has a Virtual Event: Creating an Entry for the BALL Watch Silverlight Contest... sounds like the thing to do if you want in on this :) Even if you don't speak Portuguese, you can check this out: MSN Brazil Uses Silverlight to Showcase the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa Erik Mork and crew have their latest up: This Week in Silverlight – Teched and Quizes Michael Klucher has a post up to give you some relief if you're having Trouble Installing the Windows Phone Developer Tools Portuguese above and now French... Jeremy Alles has a post up about [WP7] Windows Phone 7 challenge for french readers ! Just a note, not that it makes any difference, but Adam Kinney turned @SilverlightNews over to me today. I am the only one that has ever posted on it, but still having it all to myself feels special :) From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight 4 tutorial: HOW TO use PathListBox and Sample Data Crank up that new version of Blend and follow along with Vibor Cipan's PathListBox tutorial ... oh, and sample data too. Cool INotifyPropertyChanged implementation Chris Klug shows off some INotifyPropertyChange goodness he is not implementing, and credits a blog by Manuel Felicio for some inspiration. Check out that post as well... I've tagged his blog... I needed *another* one :) Silverlight Tip: Using LINQ to Select the Largest Available Webcam Resolution With no Silverlight Tip of the Day today, Pete Brown stepped up with this tip for finding the largest available webcam resolution using LINQ ... and read the comment from Rene as well. Creating a Master-Detail UI in Blend Kirupa has a very nice Master/Detail UI post up with backrounder info and the code for the project. There's a running example in the post for you to get an idea what you're learning. Get started with Farseer Physics 2.1.3 in Silverlight 3 Xianzhong Zhu has a Silverlight 3 tutorial up for Farseer Physics 2.1.3 ... might track for Silverlight 4, but hey, WP7 is kinda/sort Silverlight 3, right? ... lots of code and external links. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Six Unusual Blogs I Like

  - by Bill Graziano

  I subscribe to and read over 100 SQL Server blogs every day.  I link to posts that I think are interesting.  I also read a fair number of non-SQL Server blogs.  Here are a few that I think are interesting. danah boyd. She is a researcher with Microsoft and writes about privacy, social media and teenagers.  I discovered her blog while looking for strategies to keep my personal and professional life separate.  (I haven’t found a good solution to that yet.)  Her stories of how teenagers use Facebook and other social media tools are fascinating. Clayton’s Web Snacks.  Steve Clayton works at Microsoft and has a variety of blogs out there.  This one focuses on … hmmm.  His latest posts are on graffiti, infographics, paper tweets, cartoons and slow motion videos.  It’s mostly visual and you never really know what you’ll get.  It’s always interesting though and I like what he posts.  It’s good creative stuff. Seth Godin.  Seth writes about Marketing.  I read him for motivation to get off my butt and get things done.  He’s a great motivator who encourages you to think big.  And do something! Ask the Pilot.  Patrick Smith is a commercial airline pilot writing about the airline industry.  He’s a great debunker of myths (no they don’t reduce oxygen in the cabin to keep you docile).  My favorite topics include the TSA, flying myths, airport reviews and flight delays. My old favorite flight blog used to be enplaned.  No one knew who wrote it.  It focused on the economics of the airline industry.  It was fascinating stuff.  One day it was gone.  The entire blog was deleted.  Someone tracked down some partial archives and put them online. The Agent’s Journal.  Jack Bechta is an NFL agent.  He writes about the business side of the NFL, the draft and free agency.  Lately he’s been writing about the potential lockout.  He has a distinct lack of hype which I find very refreshing.  xkcd.  I call this the comic for smart people.  A little math, some IT and internet privacy thrown in all make an unusual comic. Funny and intelligent.

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• Finance: Friends, not foes!

  - by red@work

  After reading Phil's blog post about his experiences of working on reception, I thought I would let everyone in on one of the other customer facing roles at Red Gate... When you think of a Credit Control team, most might imagine money-hungry (and often impolite) people, who will do nothing short of hunting people down until they pay up. Well, as with so many things, not at Red Gate! Here we do things a little bit differently.   Since joining the Licensing, Invoicing and Credit Control team at Red Gate (affectionately nicknamed LICC!), I have found it fantastic to work with people who know that often the best way to get what you want is by being friendly, reasonable and as helpful as possible. The best bit about this is that, because everyone is in a good mood, we have a great working atmosphere! We are definitely a very happy team. We laugh a lot, even when dealing with the serious matter of playing table football after lunch. The most obvious part of my job is bringing in money. There are few things quite as satisfying as receiving a big payment or one that you've been chasing for a long time. That being said, it's just as nice to encounter the companies that surprise you with a payment bang on time after little or no chasing. It's always a pleasure to find these people who are generous and easy to work with, and so they always make me smile, too. As I'm in one of the few customer facing roles here, I get to experience firsthand just how much Red Gate customers love our software and are equally impressed with our customer service. We regularly get replies from people thanking us for our help in resolving a problem or just to simply say that they think we're great. Or, as is often the case, that we 'rock and are awesome'! When those are the kinds of emails you have to deal with for most of the day, I would challenge anyone to be unhappy! The best thing about my work is that, much like Phil and his counterparts on reception, I get to talk to people from all over the world, and experience their unique (and occasionally unusual) personality traits. I deal predominantly with customers in the US, so I'll be speaking to someone from a high flying multi-national in New York one minute, and then the next phone call will be to a small office on the outskirts of Alabama. This level of customer involvement has led to a lot of interesting anecdotes and plenty of in-jokes to keep us amused! Obviously there are customers who are infuriating, like those who simply tell us that they will pay "one day", and that we should stop chasing them. Then there are the people who say that they ordered the tools because they really like them, but they just can't afford to actually pay for them at the moment. Thankfully these situations are relatively few and far between, and for every one customer that makes you want to scream, there are far, far more that make you smile!

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• How far is too far?

  - by David Dorf

  Previously I've talked about Safeway's personalized pricing as well as Target's use of analytics to learn about customers.  Then last week I read about Orbitz tailoring their hotel offers based on the browser used.  (Orbitz claims that Mac users are 40% more likely than PC users to book four- or five-star hotels.)  So just how far is too far when tailoring the retail experience? When most consumers read about these types of tactics, they tend to feel violated, as if someone was reading their personal diary.  Nobody wants to be tricked into buying things.  Walking into a grocery store and seeing crates of apples stacked high looks enticing, but the crates are just for display and the apples may be over a year old.  Even though its much cheaper to print markdown tags, many retailers manually write the price tags because consumers think they deal is better if the price is hand-written. The technology already exists to personalize prices and experiences for consumers.  People get upset thinking they paid more for something than a neighbor, but it already happens all the time with cars, flights, and the use of loyalty programs and coupons. There are many variables at play for any purchase.  They only difference is that the customer segments are getting smaller, sometimes reaching a size of one. There's two ways to look at this.  Retailers have always manipulated the environment to get consumers to buy more -- or -- Retailers are getting better at tuning the shopping experience for consumers.  I choose the latter, and so do most consumers by spending their money in the stores they like.  Consumers like to see fresh flowers at the entrance to the grocery store, and they like to see specials scrawled on chalkboards. The key is making sure that consumers benefit from the experience as well.  I'm willing to give up some personal information in exchange for discounts and more relevant marketing, and the next-generation of shoppers are even less concerned about privacy.  Retailers need to use all the tools available to differentiate their offers and connect with their customers. So if Orbitz wants to put three-star hotels at the top of the list for me because I'm using a PC, that's fine by me.

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• Star rating not showing in rich snippets

  - by Danny R

  We've recently been doing a lot of work on our site's SEO (www.betterthanreviews.com). We recently did a push to update the rich snippets breadcrumb, meta description, and star rating. After giving Google some time to index the site, it has updated the breadcrumbs and meta descriptions for our review pages, but the stars are still not showing. This is currently how it appears on a Google search (link to the actual page: http://www.betterthanreviews.com/home-security/livewatch): This is what the Rich Snippets is supposed to look like, and how it appears in Google's testing tool: More context: As seen in our html, we are using schema.org language. We initially were using schema.org/Corporation for the site, but we now have the page labeled as schema.org/HomeAndConstructionBusiness because Google will not show star ratings for the Corporation language. However, in our Webmaster Tools, the Structured Data is still showing the Corporation language, which could be a potential issue. Here is a look at some of the coding that we used. But it can be looked at closer by inspecting the element: <div class="aggregate-rating" itemprop="aggregateRating" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/AggregateRating"> <div class="review row_fluid" itemprop="review" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Review"> <div class="row_fluid rating" itemprop="reviewRating" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Rating"> <meta content="4.5" itemprop="ratingValue" title="4.5 out of 5 stars" class="star-rating-readonly"> <meta content="2013-12-05" itemprop="datePublished"> <p class="review-headline" itemprop="headline">Way better than my previous system</p> <div> <p class="reviewer" itemprop="author">Scott H. </p> <span class="bullet">•</span> <p class="created_at">2 months ago</p> <p class="content" itemprop="description">I love it! The experience I have had so far is extremely positive. I had another alarm system before and I didn't like it but this one is really nice. I am telling everybody about it.</p> </div> </div> Any suggestions for how to fix this?

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• Convert Chrome Bookmark Toolbar Folders to Icons

  - by Asian Angel

  So you have your regular bookmarks reduced to icons but what about the folders? With our little hack and a few minutes of your time you can turn those folders into icons too. Condensing the Folders Reducing bookmark folders to icons is a little more tricky than regular bookmarks but not hard to do. Right click on the folder and select “Rename…”. The folder’s name should already be highlighted/selected as shown here. Delete the text…notice that the “OK Button” has become unusable for the moment. Now what you will need to do is: Hold down the “Alt Key” Type in “0160” (without the quotes) using the numbers keypad on the right side of your keyboard Release the “Alt Key” after you have finished typing in the number above Once you have released the “Alt Key” you will notice two things…the “cursor” has moved further into the text area and you can now click on the “OK Button” again. There is our folder after editing. And it works just as well as before but without taking up so much room. Here is how our “iconized” folder looks next to our bookmarks. Perfect! What if you want to reduce multiple folders to icons? Perform the same exact steps shown above for each folder and pack your “Bookmarks Toolbar” full of folder goodness! As seen here the folders will have a little more space between them in comparison with singular bookmarks due to the “blank name” for each folder. For those who may be curious this is what your bookmarks will look like in the “Bookmark Manager Page”. Note: If you export your bookmarks all bookmarks contained in multiple blank name folders will be combined into a single folder. Conclusion With just a little bit of work you can pack a lot of goodness into your “Bookmarks Toolbar”. No more wasted space… Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Condense the Bookmarks in the Firefox Bookmarks ToolbarAccess Your Bookmarks with a Toolbar Button in Google ChromeAdd the Bookmarks Menu to Your Bookmarks Toolbar with Bookmarks UI ConsolidatorAdd a Vertical Bookmarks Toolbar to FirefoxReduce Your Bookmarks Toolbar to a Toolbar Button TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 OutlookStatView Scans and Displays General Usage Statistics How to Add Exceptions to the Windows Firewall Office 2010 reviewed in depth by Ed Bott FoxClocks adds World Times in your Statusbar (Firefox) Have Fun Editing Photo Editing with Citrify Outlook Connector Upgrade Error

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• Why learn Flash Builder 4 (Flex) when I can just use Flash Professional?

  - by Jason McKenna

  I want to learn Flash Builder 4 (Flex) because I see sooo many jobs requesting experience with it. i also just like knowing stuff. I am also very interested in focusing on RIA development now. BUT... can anyone tell me CLEARLY why the heck I would ever use FLEX over Flash Pro?? it is a time investment, so is it worth it? All I read are misguided posts about how Flash Pro is for games and banner ads, and Flex is for programmers and RIAs blah blah... this simply isn't so from my 9 years of contracting experience. I'm 99.9% certain that I can build anything a flex developer can build, but using Flash Pro. I can build powerful AS3-driven apps for the desktop, mobile device, or browser, and I can link to databases with XML and I can import text files and communicate with ColdFusion and everything. The advantage with Flash Pro is that I can also easily and clearly animate transitions and build custom elements that look the way I want/need them to look for my specific client. Why would I want to use a bunch of pre-built components that drive my file sizes to the moon?? Who is happy with a drag-n-drop button?? Is Flex just a thing made for programmer people with no artistic inclination? What is the advantage of using it?? It takes me back to Visual Basic class. Seems like a pain to have to use multiple tools to import crap from Flash Pro into Flex and yada yada... why when I can do it all nicely in Flash Pro to begin with. Am I clueless, or missing some major piece of the puzzle? Thanks for any clarity. PS, I couldn't care less about the code editors. It aint that bad people. They make it out like the thing doesn't even respond to keyboard input or something. Does everthing I need it do anyways. Please help out here. If I just dont need to learn it, I dont want to waste the time. Jase

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• Debugging .NET code called from X++ code in AX 2012

  - by ssmantha

  A very intriguing issue came to me to debug .Net code called from X++ code in AX 2012. This was indeed a challenge to be nailed down. Luckily the tools and some concepts helped me to achieve this task. Here it goes... We need to do a seamless debugging from AX debugger to Visual Studio back and forth. To enable this we need to first see if the dll to be debug is present in GAC then we might need to uninstall it from it due to the order of preference .NET loads the assemblies. The assemblies are first loaded from GAC and then the runtime checks for Public and Private Assemblies. Since the assembly in GAC is always compiled with runtime optimizations it is difficult to debug. We need to unhook this assembly from GAC and then move further relying on >NET assembly loading patterns. Step 1: Remove the target assembly to debug from GAC. Before that stop all the AOS servers and close all the instances of programs which rely on AOT e.g. all clients and even visual studio now. Step 2: Build your sample code which is present in AOT in debug mode and get the dll file along with PDB files. Step 3: Place these files in the Server\..\Bin and Client\bin directories of AX installation. Step 4: Configure Visual Studio: Step 4.1: Configure Debugging Options. In Visual Studio Go to Debug -> Options and Settings -> Debug node -> General sub node and disable “Enable Just My Code (managed)” Step 4.2: Specify the symbol loading directory options. Specify the locations for Client bin and server bin directories of the installation, remember to specify the correct instance of Server bin directory corresponding to your AOS. Step 4.3: Configure the project for debugging Step 5: Ready to go place your breakpoints in X++ and in .Net wherever necessary before this process... Run the Visual studio project and it will invoke the AX client with your breakpoint hitting X++ code.. and when you do a step-in using F11 the Visual studio debugger will be active and from here onwards you would be able to debug the complete flow. Debugging in seamless manner across debuggers is really very good feature and mostly underutilized, but by doing so we can have improved troubleshooting and saves a hell lot of time.. Stay tuned for more in Advanced Debugging..

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• ATG Live Webcast March 21 Reminder: Network, WAN, and PC Performance Tuning (Performance Series Part 3 of 3)

  - by BillSawyer

  A quick reminder about tomorrow's webcast:  Andy Tremayne, Senior Architect, Applications Performance, and co-author of Oracle Applications Performance Tuning Handbook from Oracle Press, and Uday Moogala, Senior Principal Engineer, Applications Performance, will discuss network performance for E-Business Suite. Andy and Uday will cover tuning the client and tuning the network. They will share real-life examples of network performance, and show you tools and techniques that you can use to estimate or simulate performance on your own network.The agenda for the Performance Tuning - Part 3 of 3 webcast includes the following topics: Tuning the Client Tuning the Network Date:               Thursday, March 21, 2012Time:              8:00 AM - 9:00 AM Pacific Standard TimePresenters:  Andy Tremayne, Senior Architect, Applications Performance                        Uday Moogala, Senior Principal Engineer, Applications PerformanceWebcast Registration Link (Preregistration is optional but encouraged)To hear the audio feed:   Domestic Participant Dial-In Number:           877-697-8128    International Participant Dial-In Number:      706-634-9568    Additional International Dial-In Numbers Link:    Dial-In Passcode:                                              99341To see the presentation:    The Direct Access Web Conference details are:    Website URL: https://ouweb.webex.com    Meeting Number:  591264961If you miss the webcast, or you have missed any webcast, don't worry -- we'll post links to the recording as soon as it's available from Oracle University.  You can monitor this blog for pointers to the replay. And, you can find our archive of our past webcasts and training here.

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• Why learn Flash Builder 4 (Flex) when I can just use Flash Professional?

  - by Jason McKenna

  I want to learn Flash Builder 4 (Flex) because I see so many jobs requesting experience with it. I also just like knowing stuff. I am also very interested in focusing on RIA development now. BUT... can anyone tell me CLEARLY why the heck I would ever use FLEX over Flash Pro? It is a time investment, so is it worth it? All I read are misguided posts about how Flash Pro is for games and banner ads, and Flex is for programmers and RIAs blah blah... this simply isn't so from my 9 years of contracting experience. I'm 99.9% certain that I can build anything a flex developer can build, but using Flash Pro. I can build powerful AS3-driven apps for the desktop, mobile device, or browser, and I can link to databases with XML and I can import text files and communicate with ColdFusion and everything. The advantage with Flash Pro is that I can also easily and clearly animate transitions and build custom elements that look the way I want/need them to look for my specific client. Why would I want to use a bunch of pre-built components that drive my file sizes to the moon? Who is happy with a drag-n-drop button? Is Flex just a thing made for programmer people with no artistic inclination? What is the advantage of using it? It takes me back to Visual Basic class. Seems like a pain to have to use multiple tools to import crap from Flash Pro into Flex and yada yada... why when I can do it all nicely in Flash Pro to begin with. Am I clueless, or missing some major piece of the puzzle? Thanks for any clarity. PS, I couldn't care less about the code editors. It ain't that bad people. They make it out like the thing doesn't even respond to keyboard input or something. Does everything I need it do anyways. Please help out here. If I just don't need to learn it, I don't want to waste the time.

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• schedule compliance and keeping technical supports and resolving issues

  - by imays

  I am an entrepreneur of a small software developer company. The flagship product is developed by myself and my company grew up to 14 people. One of pride is that we've never have to be invested or loaned. The core development team is 5 people. 3 are seniors and 2 are juniors. After the first release, we've received many issues from our customers. Most of them are bug issues, customization needs, usage questions and upgrade requests. The issues from customers are incoming many times everyday, so it takes little time or much time of our developers. Because of our product is a software development kit(SDK) so most of questions can be answered only from our developers. And, for resolving bug issues, developers must be involved. Estimating time to resolve bug is hard. I fully understand it. However, our developers insist they cannot set the any due date of each project because they are busy doing technical supports and bug fixes by issues from customers everyday. Of course, they never do overwork. I suggested them an idea to divide the team into two parts: one for focusing on development by milestones, other for doing technical supports and bug fixes without setting due days. Then we could announce release plan officially. After the finish of release, two parts exchange the role for next milestone. However, they say they "NO, because it is impossible to share knowledge and design document fully." They still say they cannot set the release date and they request me to alter the due date flexibly. They does not fix the due date of each milestone. Fortunately, our company is not loaned and invested so we are not chocked. But I think it is bad idea to keep this situation. I know the story of ant and grasshopper. Our customers are tired of waiting forever of our release date. Companies consume limited time and money. If flexible due date without limit could be acceptable, could they accept flexible salary day? What is the root cause of our problem? All that I want is to fix and achieve precisely due date of each milestone without losing frequent technical supports. I think there must be solution for this situation. Please answer me. Thanks in advance. PS. Our tools and ways of project management are Trello, Mantis-like issue tracker, shared calendar software and scrum(collected cards into series of 'small and high completeness' projects).

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• Why is there nobody talking about an alternative to HTML & CSS? [closed]

  - by Nic

  HTML is such an old and cumbersome language, which was intended just to markup text. Today it's very rare to see a static HTML website, or a site with only text or a very simple layout. As a web developer I find it inconvenient to use HTML & CSS, very repetitive and cumbersome. I think that for a lot of website it could be simplified a lot. Tim Berners-Lee (W3) wrote a document named "The World Wide Web: Past, Present and Future" in August 1996 ... though HTML will be considered part of the established infrastructure (rather than an exciting new toy), there will always be new formats coming along, and it may be that a more powerful and perhaps a more consistent set of formats will eventually displace HTML. So, more than 15 years later, HTML is still here and it's here to stay. Why? Why searching for xml alternatives brings so much relevant result, but searching for html alternatives brings almost none relevant results? Answers like "it's too hard to change a standard" aren't answering the question since a lot of new standards emerged since the initiation of the web. I'm also not searching for answers that suggest using tools to simplify the process or formats that anyhow depends on HTML or CSS, technologies that currently require a plugin and not even trying to become an open standards (like Flash) aren't an answer neither. BTW, here are 2 articles written more than two years ago as food for thought, it might help with writing a better answers. "HTML, CSS, and Web Development Practices: Past, Present, and Future" describing a very related problem, by Jens O. Meiert. "A Brief History of HTML" by Scott Reynen, Here is a quote from the end: So now you can answer questions about HTML5 without even looking at the draft, which is handy, because the draft is 400+ pages long. Why is there a new tag in HTML5? Because some browser vendor (maybe the one that also owns a large video site) wanted it. Why are there so many scriptable interface elements in HTML5? Because some browser vendor (maybe the one selling phones without Flash support) wants them. Why is there no support for RDFa in HTML5? Apparently no browser vendor wanted it. Is that the future?

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• How much freedom should a programmer have in choosing a language and framework?

  - by Spencer

  I started working at a company that is primarily a C# oriented. We have a few people who like Java and JRuby, but a majority of programmers here like C#. I was hired because I have a lot of experience building web applications and because I lean towards newer technologies like JRuby on Rails or nodejs. I have recently started on a project building a web application with a focus on getting a lot of stuff done in a short amount of time. The software lead has dictated that I use mvc4 instead of rails. That might be OK, except I don't know mvc4, I don't know C# and I am the only one responsible for creating the web application server and front-end UI. Wouldn't it make sense to use a framework that I already know extremely well (Rails) instead of using mvc4? The two reasons behind the decision was that the tech lead doesn't know Jruby/rails and there would be no way to reuse the code. Counter arguments: He won't be contributing to the code and is frankly, not needed on this project. So, it doesn't really matter if he knows JRuby/rails or not. We actually can reuse the code since we have a lot of java apps that JRuby can pull code from and vice-versa. In fact, he has dedicated some resources to convert a Java library to C#, instead of just running the Java library on the JRuby on Rails app. All because he doesn't like Java or JRuby I have built many web applications, but using something unfamiliar is causing some spin-up and I am unable to build an awesome application in as short of a time that I'm used to. This would be fine, learning new technologies is important in this field. The problem is, for this project, we need to get a lot done in a short period of time. At what point should a developer be allowed to choose his tools? Is this dependent on the company? Does my company suck or is this considered normal? Do greener pastures exist? Am I looking at this the wrong way? Bonus: Should I just keep my head down and move along at a snails pace, or defy orders and go with what I know in order to make this project more successful? Edit: I had actually created a fully function rails application (on my own time) and showed it to the team and it did not seem to matter. I am currently porting it to mvc4 (slowly).

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• Exciting product releases (and one disappointing thing) with Mix10

  - by Jeff

  Sadly, I'm not at Mix this year, for the first time in a few years. It's a little harder to go if you work for Microsoft, oddly enough. And then there's this little guy next to me, who at ten days old really needs his daddy to be around! But oh, the excitement of what Microsoft has in store! It's great to finally see all of these major releases coming together for Microsoft developer products. There is a great deal of excitement among people internally no matter where you work, because there is so much cool stuff in the pipe. In case you live under a rock...Visual Studio 2010 - Great to see all of the positive feedback on the Twitter and what not. I've been using it on one of my home products for awhile, and I really like it. The newer nightly builds of ReSharper also seem to be gaining speed in quality as well. I like the new debugging features, and the text readability is not imagined. Love it.Silverlight 4 - I've been running a couple of minor SL3 apps on my personal sites for awhile now, and I'm thrilled with the platform. With a couple of key concepts down, .NET folk like you and me can do some stellar things with this, and if you're a Mac nerd (like me), it's all kinds of awesome to be able to build stuff for it without the agony of Objective-C and X Code.Windows Phone 7 Series - A few weeks ago you got to see the shiny new UI that went beyond the icon grid, and now you've got the developer story as well. That I can adapt my existing Silverlight apps with minimal effort to work on the phone is pretty powerful. Millions of .NET devs just because phone developers, using the tools they already know. How great is that?ASP.NET MVC2 - The final bits shipped last week, and there was much rejoicing. I love this framework because of the testability and the real ability to get to the true mechanics of HTTP. The other cool thing is the speed at which the framework has evolved. v2 in less than a year is pretty "un-Microsoft" in a lot of eyes.The video of keynotes and sessions is starting to appear on the Mix site, but for reasons I can't understand, they're WMV downloads. For real? Not that helpful for Mac folk. Why wouldn't they be using a Silverlight player?In any case, the thing that continues to motivate me is that getting what you imagine on to the Internet gets easier every year. This is not a new revelation for me. I've only been at Microsoft for four months, but I've felt this way for years. I'm thrilled to be a part of it.

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-06-22

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Guide to integration architecture | Stephanie Mann "The landscape of integration architecture is shifting as service-oriented and cloud-based architecture take the fore," says Stephanie Mann. "To ensure success, enterprise architects and developers are turning to lighter-weight infrastructure to support more complex integration projects." FY13 Oracle PartnerNetwork Kickoff - Tues June 26, 2012 Join us for a one-hour live online event hosted by the Oracle PartnerNetwork team as we kickoff FY13. Other dates/times for EMEA/LAD/JAPAN/APAC. Click the link for details. Why should you choose Oracle WebLogic 12c instead of JBoss EAP 6? | Ricardo Ferreira Okay, you would expect an Oracle guy to make this argument. But Ferreira takes a very deep, very detailed technical dive into the issue. So hear the man out, will ya? Hibernate4 and Coherence | Rene van Wijk According to Oracle ACE Rene van Wijk, "there are two ways to integrate Hibernate and Coherence." In this post he illustrates one of them. Simple Made Easy | Rich Hickey Rich Hickey discusses simplicity, why it is important, how to achieve it in design and how to recognize its absence in the tools, language constructs and libraries in this presentation from QCon London 2012. Starting a cluster | Mark Nelson Fusion Middleware A-Team blogger Mark Nelson looks at Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle BPM, and Oracle Coherence, three products that are " commonly clustered, and which have somewhat different requirements." Why building SaaS well means giving up your servers | GigaOM The biggest benefit to PaaS, reports GigaOM's Derrick Harris, "might be a better product because the company is able to focus on building the app rather than managing servers." Personas - what, why & how | Mascha van Oosterhout "To be able to create a successful, user-friendly website or application," says Mascha van Oosterhout, "every decision you take, whether you are part of the marketing team, the design team or the development team, should be based on what you know about the user." Thought for the Day "Machines take me by surprise with great frequency." — Alan Turing(June 23, 1912 - June 7, 1954) Source: Brainy Quote

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