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  • What's the value of a Facebook fan?

    - by David Dorf
    In his blog posting titled "Why Each Facebook Fan Is Worth $2,000 to J. Crew," Joe Skorupa lays out a simplistic calculation for assigning a value to social media efforts within Facebook. While I don't believe the metric, at least its a metric that can be applied consistently. Trying to explain the ROI to management to start a program, then benchmarking to show progress isn't straightforward at all. Social media isn't really mature enough to have hard-and-fast rules around valuation (yet). When I'm asked by retailers how to measure social media efforts, I usually fess-up and say I can't show an ROI but the investment is so low you might was well take a risk. Intuitively, it just seems like a good way to interact with consumers, and since your competition is doing it, you better do it as well. Vitrue, a social media management company, has calculated a fan as being worth $3.60 per year based on impressions generated in Facebook's news feed. That means a fan base of 1 million translates into at least $3.6 million in equivalent media over a year. Don't believe that number either? Fine, Vitrue now has a tool that let's you adjust the earned media value of a fan. Jump over to http://evaluator.vitrue.com/ and enter your brand's Facebook URL to get an assessment of the current value and potential value. For fun, I compared Abercrombie & Fitch (1,077,480 fans), Gap (567,772 fans), and Wet Seal (294,479 fans). The image below shows the results assuming the default $5 earned media value for a fan. The calculation is more complicated than just counting fans. It also accounts for postings and comments. Its possible for a brand with fewer fans to have a higher value based on frequency and relevancy of posts. The tool gathers data via the Social Graph API for the past 30 days of activity. I'm not sure this tool assigns the correct value either, but hey, its a great start.

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  • Paying by Cash

    - by David Dorf
    I'll grant you paying by cash in the context of stores isn't particularly interesting, but in my quest to try new payment methods I decided to pay by cash at an online store. Using a credit card means I have to hoist myself off the couch, find the card, and enter all those digits. Google Checkout certainly makes that task easier by storing my credit card information, but what happens to all those people that don't have a credit card? What about the ones that are afraid to use credit cards over the internet. There are three main options for cash payment, not all of which are accepted by every merchant. The most popular is PayPal. The issue I have with them is that returns and disputes have to be handled with PayPal, not the merchant. I once used PayPal at a shady online store and lost my money. Yeah, my bad but they wouldn't help me at all. PayPal was purchased by eBay in 2002. BillMeLater is best for larger purchases, because at checkout they actually run a credit check to make sure you're credit worthy. Assuming you are, they pay the merchant on your behalf and mail you a bill, which you better pay quickly or interest will start to accrue. That's nice for the merchant because they get paid right away, and I presume there's no charge-backs. BillMeLater was purchased by eBay in 2008. Last night I tried eBillMe for the first time. After checkout, they send you a bill via email and expect you to pay either via online banking (they provide the instructions to set everything up) or walk-in locations across the US (typically banks). The process was quick and easy. The merchant doesn't ship the product until the bill is paid, so there's a day or two delay. For the merchant there are no charge-backs, and the fees are less than credit cards. For the shopper, they provide buyer protection similar to that offered by credit cards, and 1% cashback on purchases. Once the online bill-pay is setup, its easy to reuse in the future. Seems like a win-win for merchants and shoppers.

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  • Solaris 11 pkg fix is my new friend

    - by user12611829
    While putting together some examples of the Solaris 11 Automated Installer (AI), I managed to really mess up my system, to the point where AI was completely unusable. This was my fault as a combination of unfortunate incidents left some remnants that were causing problems, so I tried to clean things up. Unsuccessfully. Perhaps that was a bad idea (OK, it was a terrible idea), but this is Solaris 11 and there are a few more tricks in the sysadmin toolbox. Here's what I did. # rm -rf /install/* # rm -rf /var/ai # installadm create-service -n solaris11-x86 --imagepath /install/solaris11-x86 \ -s [email protected] Warning: Service svc:/network/dns/multicast:default is not online. Installation services will not be advertised via multicast DNS. Creating service from: [email protected] DOWNLOAD PKGS FILES XFER (MB) SPEED Completed 1/1 130/130 264.4/264.4 0B/s PHASE ITEMS Installing new actions 284/284 Updating package state database Done Updating image state Done Creating fast lookup database Done Reading search index Done Updating search index 1/1 Creating i386 service: solaris11-x86 Image path: /install/solaris11-x86 So far so good. Then comes an oops..... setup-service[168]: cd: /var/ai//service/.conf-templ: [No such file or directory] ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ This is where you generally say a few things to yourself, and then promise to quit deleting configuration files and directories when you don't know what you are doing. Then you recall that the new Solaris 11 packaging system has some ability to correct common mistakes (like the one I just made). Let's give it a try. # pkg fix installadm Verifying: pkg://solaris/install/installadm ERROR dir: var/ai Group: 'root (0)' should be 'sys (3)' dir: var/ai/ai-webserver Missing: directory does not exist dir: var/ai/ai-webserver/compatibility-configuration Missing: directory does not exist dir: var/ai/ai-webserver/conf.d Missing: directory does not exist dir: var/ai/image-server Group: 'root (0)' should be 'sys (3)' dir: var/ai/image-server/cgi-bin Missing: directory does not exist dir: var/ai/image-server/images Group: 'root (0)' should be 'sys (3)' dir: var/ai/image-server/logs Missing: directory does not exist dir: var/ai/profile Missing: directory does not exist dir: var/ai/service Group: 'root (0)' should be 'sys (3)' dir: var/ai/service/.conf-templ Missing: directory does not exist dir: var/ai/service/.conf-templ/AI_data Missing: directory does not exist dir: var/ai/service/.conf-templ/AI_files Missing: directory does not exist file: var/ai/ai-webserver/ai-httpd-templ.conf Missing: regular file does not exist file: var/ai/service/.conf-templ/AI.db Missing: regular file does not exist file: var/ai/image-server/cgi-bin/cgi_get_manifest.py Missing: regular file does not exist Created ZFS snapshot: 2012-12-11-21:09:53 Repairing: pkg://solaris/install/installadm Creating Plan (Evaluating mediators): | DOWNLOAD PKGS FILES XFER (MB) SPEED Completed 1/1 3/3 0.0/0.0 0B/s PHASE ITEMS Updating modified actions 16/16 Updating image state Done Creating fast lookup database Done In just a few moments, IPS found the missing files and incorrect ownerships/permissions. Instead of reinstalling the system, or falling back to an earlier Live Upgrade boot environment, I was able to create my AI services and now all is well. # installadm create-service -n solaris11-x86 --imagepath /install/solaris11-x86 \ -s [email protected] Warning: Service svc:/network/dns/multicast:default is not online. Installation services will not be advertised via multicast DNS. Creating service from: [email protected] DOWNLOAD PKGS FILES XFER (MB) SPEED Completed 1/1 130/130 264.4/264.4 0B/s PHASE ITEMS Installing new actions 284/284 Updating package state database Done Updating image state Done Creating fast lookup database Done Reading search index Done Updating search index 1/1 Creating i386 service: solaris11-x86 Image path: /install/solaris11-x86 Refreshing install services Warning: mDNS registry of service solaris11-x86 could not be verified. Creating default-i386 alias Setting the default PXE bootfile(s) in the local DHCP configuration to: bios clients (arch 00:00): default-i386/boot/grub/pxegrub Refreshing install services Warning: mDNS registry of service default-i386 could not be verified. # installadm create-service -n solaris11u1-x86 --imagepath /install/solaris11u1-x86 \ -s [email protected] Warning: Service svc:/network/dns/multicast:default is not online. Installation services will not be advertised via multicast DNS. Creating service from: [email protected] DOWNLOAD PKGS FILES XFER (MB) SPEED Completed 1/1 514/514 292.3/292.3 0B/s PHASE ITEMS Installing new actions 661/661 Updating package state database Done Updating image state Done Creating fast lookup database Done Reading search index Done Updating search index 1/1 Creating i386 service: solaris11u1-x86 Image path: /install/solaris11u1-x86 Refreshing install services Warning: mDNS registry of service solaris11u1-x86 could not be verified. # installadm list Service Name Alias Of Status Arch Image Path ------------ -------- ------ ---- ---------- default-i386 solaris11-x86 on i386 /install/solaris11-x86 solaris11-x86 - on i386 /install/solaris11-x86 solaris11u1-x86 - on i386 /install/solaris11u1-x86 This is way way better than pkgchk -f in Solaris 10. I'm really beginning to like this new IPS packaging system.

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  • QotD: Matt Stephens on OpenJDK in 2012 at the Register

    - by $utils.escapeXML($entry.author)
    While Java SE churns and gets pushed back, the new initiatives do at least show OpenJDK is reinvigorating the Java space. The project has picked up speed just a little too late for the fifth anniversary of the open-sourcing of Java, but if these promised developments really do come together then that means next year should see a series of “one last things” missing from 2011.Matt Stephens in an article in the Register.

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  • Doing Time Limited Flight Recordings Using Start Up Parameters

    - by Marcus Hirt
    Just like with the old JRockit Runtime Analyzer, it is possible to start up recordings using command line parameters to JRockit. The parameter is called -XX:StartFlightRecording in R28. Below is an example that starts a flight recording half a minute after the JVM has been started. The recording will last for a minute. The name when viewing the ongoing recordings will be MyRecording, and the resulting file will be written to C:\tmp\myrecording.jfr. The recording will use the settings in jre\lib\jfr\profile.jfs. -XX:StartFlightRecording=delay=30s,duration=60s,name=MyRecording,filename=C:\tmp\myrecording.jfr,settings=profile For more information, see the JRockit R28 command line parameter documentation.

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  • Class Loading Deadlocks

    - by tomas.nilsson
    Mattis follows up on his previous post with one more expose on Class Loading Deadlocks As I wrote in a previous post, the class loading mechanism in Java is very powerful. There are many advanced techniques you can use, and when used wrongly you can get into all sorts of trouble. But one of the sneakiest deadlocks you can run into when it comes to class loading doesn't require any home made class loaders or anything. All you need is classes depending on each other, and some bad luck. First of all, here are some basic facts about class loading: 1) If a thread needs to use a class that is not yet loaded, it will try to load that class 2) If another thread is already loading the class, the first thread will wait for the other thread to finish the loading 3) During the loading of a class, one thing that happens is that the <clinit method of a class is being run 4) The <clinit method initializes all static fields, and runs any static blocks in the class. Take the following class for example: class Foo { static Bar bar = new Bar(); static { System.out.println("Loading Foo"); } } The first time a thread needs to use the Foo class, the class will be initialized. The <clinit method will run, creating a new Bar object and printing "Loading Foo" But what happens if the Bar object has never been used before either? Well, then we will need to load that class as well, calling the Bar <clinit method as we go. Can you start to see the potential problem here? A hint is in fact #2 above. What if another thread is currently loading class Bar? The thread loading class Foo will have to wait for that thread to finish loading. But what happens if the <clinit method of class Bar tries to initialize a Foo object? That thread will have to wait for the first thread, and there we have the deadlock. Thread one is waiting for thread two to initialize class Bar, thread two is waiting for thread one to initialize class Foo. All that is needed for a class loading deadlock is static cross dependencies between two classes (and a multi threaded environment): class Foo { static Bar b = new Bar(); } class Bar { static Foo f = new Foo(); } If two threads cause these classes to be loaded at exactly the same time, we will have a deadlock. So, how do you avoid this? Well, one way is of course to not have these circular (static) dependencies. On the other hand, it can be very hard to detect these, and sometimes your design may depend on it. What you can do in that case is to make sure that the classes are first loaded single threadedly, for example during an initialization phase of your application. The following program shows this kind of deadlock. To help bad luck on the way, I added a one second sleep in the static block of the classes to trigger the unlucky timing. Notice that if you uncomment the "//Foo f = new Foo();" line in the main method, the class will be loaded single threadedly, and the program will terminate as it should. public class ClassLoadingDeadlock { // Start two threads. The first will instansiate a Foo object, // the second one will instansiate a Bar object. public static void main(String[] arg) { // Uncomment next line to stop the deadlock // Foo f = new Foo(); new Thread(new FooUser()).start(); new Thread(new BarUser()).start(); } } class FooUser implements Runnable { public void run() { System.out.println("FooUser causing class Foo to be loaded"); Foo f = new Foo(); System.out.println("FooUser done"); } } class BarUser implements Runnable { public void run() { System.out.println("BarUser causing class Bar to be loaded"); Bar b = new Bar(); System.out.println("BarUser done"); } } class Foo { static { // We are deadlock prone even without this sleep... // The sleep just makes us more deterministic try { Thread.sleep(1000); } catch(InterruptedException e) {} } static Bar b = new Bar(); } class Bar { static { try { Thread.sleep(1000); } catch(InterruptedException e) {} } static Foo f = new Foo(); }

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  • QotD: Justin Kestelyn, Editor in Chief of Java Magazine on OpenJDK

    - by $utils.escapeXML($entry.author)
    Things have changed now. Java SE 7 is available, and Java SE 8 is on the way; Java developer conferences around the world are selling out in short order; Java skills are in high demand by recruiters; and the Java community is reinvigorated thanks to efforts including the OpenJDK project, the Adopt-a-JSR program, and—if I may be so bold—even this publication.Justin Kestelyn, Editor in Chief of the Java Magazine, in the opening 'from the editor' article in the magazine's March/April edition.

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  • Getit serves up local search in India with Java ME tech

    - by hinkmond
    Did you ever wonder where to get a good lamb vindaloo while you are visiting in Mumbai? Well, you need to get Getit then. See: Getit gets it on Java ME Here's a quote: Getit, the company which provides local search facility and free classifieds services in India, has announced the official release of the Getit Local Search Mobile app for Indian users. The app can be downloaded from the Mobango app store, ... [and]... is available for all platforms like [blah-blah-blah], [yadda-yadda-yadda], Java, Blackberry, Symbian etc... Getit gets it because they ported to the Java ME platform, the most ubiquitous mobile platform out there, and because they know when you want to find a good vindaloo, you want to find a good vindaloo! Hinkmond

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  • Webcenter book review

    - by angelo.santagata
    Hi all, just had the opportunity to read Peter Moskovits Webcenter Handbook and I must say even for someone who has been involved with webcenter for a couple of years now I was pleasantly pleased with this book and still came away with some nuggets.. checkout my review on amazon.com

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  • When Less is More

    - by aditya.agarkar
    How do you reconcile the fact that while the overall warehouse volume is down you still need more workers in the warehouse to ship all the orders? A WMS customer recently pointed out this seemingly perplexing fact in a customer conference. So what is going on? Didn't we tell you before that for a warehouse the customer is really the "king"? In this case customers are merely responding to a low overall low demand and uncertainty. They do not want to hold down inventory and one of the ways to do that is by decreasing the order size and ordering more frequently. Overall impact to the warehouse? Two words: "More work!!" This is not all. Smaller order sizes also mean challenges from a transportation perspective including a rise in costlier parcel or LTL shipments instead of cheaper TL shipments. Here is a hypothetical scenario where a customer reduces the order size by 10% and increases the order frequency by 10%. As you can see in the following table, the overall volume declines by 1% but the warehouse has to ship roughly 10% more lines. Order Frequency (Line Count)Order Size (Units)Total VolumeChange (%)10010010,000 -110909,900-1% If you want to see how "Less is More" in graphical terms, this is how it appears: Even though the volume is down, there is going to be more work in the warehouse in terms of number of lines shipped. The operators need to pick more discrete orders, pack them into more shipping containers and ship more deliveries. What do you do differently if you are facing this situation?In this case here are some obvious steps to take:Uno: Change your pick methods. If you are used to doing order picks, it needs to go out the door. You need to evaluate batch picking and grouping techniques. Go for cluster picking, go for zone picking, pick and pass...anything that improves your picker productivity. More than anything, cluster picking works like a charm and above all, its simple and very effective. Dos: Are you minimize "touch" points in your pick process? Consider doing one step pick, pack and confirm i.e. pick and pack stuff directly into shipping cartons. Done correctly the container will not require any more "touch" points all the way to the trailer loading. Use cartonization!Tres: Are the being picked from an optimized pick face? Are the items slotted correctly? This needs to be looked into. Consider automated "pull" or "push" replenishment into your pick face and also make sure that high demand items are occupying the golden zones.  Cuatro: Are you tracking labor productivity? If not there needs to be a concerted push for having labor standards in place. Hope you found these ideas useful.

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  • Sorting: TransientVO Vs Query/EO based VO

    - by Vijay Mohan
    In ADF, you can do a sorting on VO rows by invoking setSortBy("VOAttrName") API, but the tricky part is that, this API actually appends a clause to VO query at runtime and the actual sorting is performed after doing VO.executeQuery(), this goes fine for Query/EO based VO. But, how about the transient VO, wherein the rows are populated programmatically..?There is a way to it..:)you can actually specify the query mode on your transient VO, so that the sorting happens on already populated VO rows.Here are the steps to go about it..//Populate your transient VO rows.//VO.setSortBy("YourVOAttrName");//VO.setQueryMode(ViewObject.QUERY_MODE_SCAN_VIEW_ROWS);//VO.executeQuery();So, here the executeQuery() is actually the trigger which calls for VO rows sorting.QUERY_MODE_SCAN_VIEW_ROWS flag makes sure that the sorting is performed on the already populated VO cache.

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  • Rychlejší aplikace i bez zmen dotazu - 3.díl - vliv hromadných operací a shrnutí

    - by david.krch
    V predchozích dvou dílech jsme si ukázali, jak lze vzorový príklad vkládání 100.000 záznamu zrychlit, pokud se nám podarí minimalizovat pocet commitu a zacít používat v dotazech vázané promenné. Temito dvema zmenami jsme puvodní cas 167 sekund snížili postupne na 105 a následne na 19 sekund. Ke slibovanému osmdesátinásobnému zrychlení potrebujeme dosáhnout ješte cca desetinásobného zrychlení. Provedeme to tím, že se 100.000 jednotlivých operací pokusíme prevést na menší pocet hromadných operací.

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  • Iterative Conversion

    - by stuart ramage
    Question Received: I am toying with the idea of migrating the current information first and the remainder of the history at a later date. I have heard that the conversion tool copes with this, but haven't found any information on how it does. Answer: The Toolkit will support iterative conversions as long as the original master data key tables (the CK_* tables) are not cleared down from Staging (the already converted Transactional Data would need to be cleared down) and the Production instance being migrated into is actually Production (we have migrated into a pre-prod instance in the past and then unloaded this and loaded it into the real PROD instance, but this will not work for your situation. You need to be migrating directly into your intended environment). In this case the migration tool will still know all about the original keys and the generated keys for the primary objects (Account, SA, etc.) and as such it will be able to link the data converted as part of a second pass onto these entities. It should be noted that this may result in the original opening balances potentially being displayed with an incorrect value (if we are talking about Financial Transactions) and also that care will have to be taken to ensure that all related objects are aligned (eg. A Bill must have a set to bill segments, meter reads and a financial transactions, and these entities cannot exist independantly). It should also be noted that subsequent runs of the conversion tool would need to be 'trimmed' to ensure that they are only doing work on the objects affected. You would not want to revalidate and migrate all Person, Account, SA, SA/SP, SP and Premise details since this information has already been processed, but you would definitely want to run the affected transactional record validation and keygen processes. There is no real "hard-and-fast" rule around this processing since is it specific to each implmentations needs, but the majority of the effort required should be detailed in the Conversion Tool section of the online help (under Adminstration/ The Conversion Tool). The major rule is to ensure that you only run the steps and validation/keygen steps that you need and do not do a complete rerun for your subsequent conversion.

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  • Stretching an ADF Faces Component to (near) 100%

    - by Christian David Straub
    In the past, many users would want their component to stretch to fill 100% of a horizontal area. However, to account for scrollbars that may or may not have been there, they would set the percentage to 98%, etc.A much better way to do this is to use the new "AFStretchWidth" style class, which will do this automatically for you.For instance, avoid this:<af:foo inlineStyle="98%" />and instead do this:<af:foo styleClass="AFStretchWidth" />You can learn more about ADF Faces layout management here.

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  • La búsqueda de la eficiencia como Santo Grial de las TIC sanitarias

    - by Eloy M. Rodríguez
    Las XVIII Jornadas de Informática Sanitaria en Andalucía se han cerrado el pasado viernes con 11.500 horas de inteligencia colectiva. Aunque el cálculo supongo que resulta de multiplicar las horas de sesiones y talleres por el número de inscritos, lo que no sería del todo real ya que la asistencia media calculo que andaría por las noventa personas, supongo que refleja el global si incluimos el montante de interacciones informales que el formato y lugar de celebración favorecen. Mi resumen subjetivo es que todos somos conscientes de que debemos conseguir más eficiencia en y gracias a las TIC y que para ello hemos señalado algunas pautas, que los asistentes, en sus diferentes roles debiéramos aplicar y ayudar a difundir. En esa línea creo que destaca la necesidad de tener muy claro de dónde se parte y qué se quiere conseguir, para lo que es imprescindible medir y que las medidas ayuden a retroalimentar al sistema en orden de conseguir sus objetivos. Y en este sentido, a nivel anecdótico, quisiera dejar una paradoja que se presentó sobre la eficiencia: partiendo de que el coste/día de hospitalización es mayor al principio que los últimos días de la estancia, si se consigue ser más eficiente y reducir la estancia media, se liberarán últimos días de estancia que se utilizarán para nuevos ingresos, lo que hará que el número de primeros días de estancia aumente el coste económico total. En este caso mejoraríamos el servicio a los ciudadanos pero aumentaríamos el coste, salvo que se tomasen acciones para redimensionar la oferta hospitalaria bajando el coste y sin mejorer la calidad. También fue tema destacado la posibilidad/necesidad de aprovechar las capacidades de las TIC para realizar cambios estructurales y hacer que la medicina pase de ser reactiva a proactiva mediante alarmas que facilitasen que se actuase antes de ocurra el problema grave. Otro tema que se trató fue la necesidad real de corresponsabilizar de verdad al ciudadano, gracias a las enormes posibilidades a bajo coste que ofrecen las TIC, asumiendo un proceso hacia la salud colaborativa que tiene muchos retos por delante pero también muchas más oportunidades. Y la carpeta del ciudadano, emergente en varios proyectos e ideas, es un paso en ese aspecto. Un tema que levantó pasiones fue cuando la Directora Gerente del Sergas se quejó de que los proyectos TIC eran lentísimos. Desgraciadamente su agenda no le permitió quedarse al debate que fue bastante intenso en el que salieron temas como el larguísimo proceso administrativo, las especificaciones cambiantes, los diseños a medida, etc como factores más allá de la eficiencia especifica de los profesionales TIC involucrados en los proyectos. Y por último quiero citar un tema muy interesante en línea con lo hablado en las jornadas sobre la necesidad de medir: el Índice SEIS. La idea es definir una serie de criterios agrupados en grandes líneas y con un desglose fino que monitorice la aportación de las TIC en la mejora de la salud y la sanidad. Nos presentaron unas versiones previas con debate aún abierto entre dos grandes enfoques, partiendo desde los grandes objetivos hasta los procesos o partiendo desde los procesos hasta los objetivos. La discusión no es sólo académica, ya que influye en los parámetros a establecer. La buena noticia es que está bastante avanzado el trabajo y que pronto los servicios de salud podrán tener una herramienta de comparación basada en la realidad nacional. Para los interesados, varios asistentes hemos ido tuiteando las jornadas, por lo que el que quiera conocer un poco más detalles puede ir a Twitter y buscar la etiqueta #jisa18 y empezando del más antiguo al más moderno se puede hacer un seguimiento con puntos de vista subjetivos sobre lo allí ocurrido. No puedo dejar de hacer un par de autocríticas, ya que soy miembro de la SEIS. La primera es sobre el portal de la SEIS que no ha tenido la interactividad que unas jornadas como estas necesitaban. Pronto empezará a tener documentos y análisis de lo allí ocurrido y luego vendrán las crónicas y análisis más cocinados en la revista I+S. Pero en la segunda década del siglo XXI se necesita bastante más. La otra es sobre la no deseada poca presencia de usuarios de las TIC sanitarias en los roles de profesionales sanitarios y ciudadanos usuarios de los sistemas de información sanitarios. Tenemos que ser proactivos para que acudan en número significativo, ya que si no estamos en riesgo de ser unos TIC-sanitarios absolutistas: todo para los usuarios pero sin los usuarios. Tweet

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  • Is Master Data Management CRM's Secret Sauce?

    - by divya.malik
    This was the title of a recent blog entry by our colleagues in EMEA. Having a good master data management system enables organizations to get a unified, accurate and complete understanding of their customers. Gartner Group's John Radcliffe explains why MDM is destined to be at the heart of future CRM and social CRM projects. Experts are predicting big things for master data management (MDM) in the immediate future. While far from being a new kid on the block, its potential benefits at a time when organisations are drowning in data mean that it is in the right place at the right time. "MDM is not 'nice to have'," explains John Radcliffe, research vice president at Gartner. "If tackled in the right way it can provide near term business value that plays into an organisation's new focus on cost efficiencies, risk management and regulatory compliance, while supporting growth and future transformative strategies." The complete article can be found here.

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  • This is the End of Business as Usual...

    - by Michael Snow
    This week, we'll be hosting our last Social Business Thought Leader Series Webcast for 2012. Our featured guest this week will be Brian Solis of Altimeter Group. As we've been going through the preparations for Brian's webcast, it became very clear that an hour's time is barely scraping the surface of the depth of Brian's insights and analysis. Accordingly, in the spirit of sharing Brian's perspective for all of our readers, we'll be featuring guest posts all this week pulled from Brian's larger collection of blog postings on his own website. If you like what you've read here this week, we highly recommend digging deeper into his tome of wisdom. Guest Post by Brian Solis, Analyst, Altimeter Group as originally featured on his site with the minor change of the video addition at the beginning of the post. This is the End of Business as Usual and the Beginning of a New Era of Relevance - Brian Solis, Principal Analyst, Altimeter Group The Times They Are A-Changin’ Come gather ’round people Wherever you roam And admit that the waters Around you have grown And accept it that soon You’ll be drenched to the bone If your time to you Is worth savin’ Then you better start swimmin’ Or you’ll sink like a stone For the times they are a-changin’. - Bob Dylan I’m sure you are wondering why I chose lyrics to open this article. If you skimmed through them, stop here for a moment. Go back through the Dylan’s words and take your time. Carefully read, and feel, what it is he’s saying and savor the moment to connect the meaning of his words to the challenges you face today. His message is as important and true today as it was when they were first written in 1964. The tide is indeed once again turning. And even though the 60s now live in the history books, right here, right now, Dylan is telling us once again that this is our time to not only sink or swim, but to do something amazing. This is your time. This is our time. But, these times are different and what comes next is difficult to grasp. How people communicate. How people learn and share. How people make decisions. Everything is different now. Think about this…you’re reading this article because it was sent to you via email. Yet more people spend their online time in social networks than they do in email. Duh. According to Nielsen, of the total time spent online 22.5% are connecting and communicating in social networks. To put that in perspective, the time spent in the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube is greater than online gaming at 9.8%, email at 7.6% and search at 4%. Imagine for a moment if you and I were connected to one another in Facebook, which just so happens to be the largest social network in the world. How big? Well, Facebook is the size today of the entire Internet in 2004. There are over 1 billion people friending, Liking, commenting, sharing, and engaging in Facebook…that’s roughly 12% of the world’s population. Twitter has over 200 million users. Ever hear of tumblr? More time is spent on this popular microblogging community than Twitter. The point is that the landscape for communication and all that’s affected by human interaction is profoundly different than how you and I learned, shared or talked to one another yesterday. This transformation is only becoming more pervasive and, it’s not going back. Survival of the Fitting But social media is just one of the channels we can use to reach people. I must be honest. I’m as much a part of tomorrow as I am of yesteryear. It’s why I spend all of my time researching the evolution of media and its impact on business and culture. Because of you, I share everything I learn in newsletters, emails, blogs, Youtube videos, and also traditional books. I’m dedicated to helping everyone not only understand, but grasp the change that’s before you. Technologies such as social, mobile, virtual, augmented, et al compel us adapt our story and value proposition and extend our reach to be part of communities we don’t realize exist. The people who will keep you in business or running tomorrow are the very people you’re not reaching today. Before you continue to read on, allow me to clarify my point of view. My inspiration for writing this is to help you augment, not necessarily replace, the programs you’re running today. We must still reach those whom matter to us in the ways they prefer to be engaged. To reach what I call the connected consumer of Geneeration-C we must too reach them in the ways they wish to be engaged. And in all of my work, how they connect, talk to one another, influence others, and make decisions are not at all like the traditional consumers of the past. Nor are they merely the kids…the Millennial. Connected consumers are representative across every age group and demographic. As you can see, use of social networks, media sharing sites, microblogs, blogs, etc. equally span across Gen Y, Gen X, and Baby Boomers. The DNA of connected customers is indiscriminant of age or any other demographic for that matter. This is more about psychographics, the linkage of people through common interests (than it is their age, gender, education, nationality or level of income. Once someone is introduced to the marvels of connectedness, the sensation becomes a contagion. It touches and affects everyone. And, that’s why this isn’t going anywhere but normalcy. Social networking isn’t just about telling people what you’re doing. Nor is it just about generic, meaningless conversation. Today’s connected consumer is incredibly influential. They’re connected to hundreds and even thousands of other like-minded people. What they experiences, what they support, it’s shared throughout these networks and as information travels, it shapes and steers impressions, decisions, and experiences of others. For example, if we revisit the Nielsen research, we get an idea of just how big this is becoming. 75% spend heavily on music. How does that translate to the arts? I’d imagine the number is equally impressive. If 53% follow their favorite brand or organization, imagine what’s possible. Just like this email list that connects us, connections in social networks are powerful. The difference is however, that people spend more time in social networks than they do in email. Everything begins with an understanding of the “5 W’s and H.E.” – Who, What, When, Where, How, and to What Extent? The data that comes back tells you which networks are important to the people you’re trying to reach, how they connect, what they share, what they value, and how to connect with them. From there, your next steps are to create a community strategy that extends your mission, vision, and value and it align it with the interests, behavior, and values of those you wish to reach and galvanize. To help, I’ve prepared an action list for you, otherwise known as the 10 Steps Toward New Relevance: 1. Answer why you should engage in social networks and why anyone would want to engage with you 2. Observe what brings them together and define how you can add value to the conversation 3. Identify the influential voices that matter to your world, recognize what’s important to them, and find a way to start a dialogue that can foster a meaningful and mutually beneficial relationship 4. Study the best practices of not just organizations like yours, but also those who are successfully reaching the type of people you’re trying to reach – it’s benching marking against competitors and benchmarking against undefined opportunities 5. Translate all you’ve learned into a convincing presentation written to demonstrate tangible opportunity to your executive board, make the case through numbers, trends, data, insights – understanding they have no idea what’s going on out there and you are both the scout and the navigator (start with a recommended pilot so everyone can learn together) 6. Listen to what they’re saying and develop a process to learn from activity and adapt to interests and steer engagement based on insights 7. Recognize how they use social media and innovate based on what you observe to captivate their attention 8. Align your objectives with their objectives. If you’re unsure of what they’re looking for…ask 9. Invest in the development of content, engagement 10. Build a community, invest in values, spark meaningful dialogue, and offer tangible value…the kind of value they can’t get anywhere else. Take advantage of the medium and the opportunity! The reality is that we live and compete in a perpetual era of Digital Darwinism, the evolution of consumer behavior when society and technology evolve faster than our ability to adapt. This is why it’s our time to alter our course. We must connect with those who are defining the future of engagement, commerce, business, and how the arts are appreciated and supported. Even though it is the end of business as usual, it is the beginning of a new age of opportunity. The consumer revolution is already underway, and the question is: How do you better understand the role you play in this production as a connected or social consumer as well as business professional? Again, this is your time to define a new era of engagement and relevance. Originally written for The National Arts Marketing Project Connect with Brian via: Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook | Google+ --- Note from Michael: If you really like this post above - check out Brian's TEDTalk and his thought process for preparing it in this post: 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} http://www.briansolis.com/2012/10/tedtalk-reinventing-consumer-capitalism-screw-business-as-usual/

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  • Dynamic Data Connections

    - by Tim Dexter
    I have had a long running email thread running between Dan and David over at Valspar and myself. They have built some impressive connectivity between their in house apps and BIP using web services. The crux of their problem has been that they have multiple databases that need the same report executed against them. Not such an unusual request as I have spoken to two customers in the last month with the same situation. Of course, you could create a report against each data connection and just run or call the appropriate report. Not too bad if you have two or three data connections but more than that and it becomes a maintenance nightmare having to update queries or layouts. Ideally you want to have just a single report definition on the BIP server and to dynamically set the connection to be used at runtime based on the user or system that the user is in. A quick bit of digging and help from Shinji on the development team and I had an answer. Rather embarassingly, the solution has been around since the Oct 2010 rollup patch last year. Still, I grabbed the latest Jan 2011 patch - check out Note 797057.1 for the latest available patches. Once installed, I used the best web service testing tool I have yet to come across - SoapUI. Just point it at the WSDL and you can check out the available services and their parameters and then test them too. The XML packet has a new dynamic data source entry. You can set you own custom JDBC connection or just specify an existing data source name thats defined on the server. <pub:runReport> <pub:reportRequest> <pub:attributeFormat>xml</pub:attributeFormat> <pub:attributeTemplate>0</pub:attributeTemplate> <pub:byPassCache>true</pub:byPassCache> <pub:dynamicDataSource> <pub:JDBCDataSource> <pub:JDBCDriverClass></pub:JDBCDriverClass> <pub:JDBCDriverType></pub:JDBCDriverType> <pub:JDBCPassword></pub:JDBCPassword> <pub:JDBCURL></pub:JDBCURL> <pub:JDBCUserName></pub:JDBCUserName> <pub:dataSourceName>Conn1</pub:dataSourceName> </pub:JDBCDataSource> </pub:dynamicDataSource> <pub:reportAbsolutePath>/Test/Employee Report/Employee Report.xdo</pub:reportAbsolutePath> </pub:reportRequest> <pub:userID>Administrator</pub:userID> <pub:password>Administrator</pub:password> </pub:runReport> So I have Conn1 and Conn2 defined that are connections to different databases. I can just flip the name, make the WS call and get the appropriate dataset in my report. Just as an example, here's my web service call java code. Just a case of bringing in the BIP java libs to my java project. publicReportServiceService = new PublicReportServiceService(); PublicReportService publicReportService = publicReportServiceService.getPublicReportService_v11(); String userID = "Administrator"; String password = "Administrator"; ReportRequest rr = new ReportRequest(); rr.setAttributeFormat("xml"); rr.setAttributeTemplate("1"); rr.setByPassCache(true); rr.setReportAbsolutePath("/Test/Employee Report/Employee Report.xdo"); rr.setReportOutputPath("c:\\temp\\output.xml"); BIPDataSource bipds = new BIPDataSource(); JDBCDataSource jds = new JDBCDataSource(); jds.setDataSourceName("Conn1"); bipds.setJDBCDataSource(jds); rr.setDynamicDataSource(bipds); try { publicReportService.runReport(rr, userID, password); } catch (InvalidParametersException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } catch (AccessDeniedException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } catch (OperationFailedException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } } Note, Im no java whiz kid or whizzy old bloke, at least not unless Ive had a coffee. JDeveloper has a nice feature where you point it at the WSDL and it creates everything to support your calling code for you. Couple of things to remember: 1. When you call the service, remember to set the bypass the cache option. Forget it and much scratching of your head and taking my name in vain will ensue. 2. My demo actually hit the same database but used two users, one accessed the base tables another views with the same name. For far too long I thought the connection swapping was not working. I was getting the same results for both users until I realized I was specifying the schema name for the table/view in my query e.g. select * from EMP.EMPLOYEES. So remember to have a generic query that will depend entirely on the connection. Its a neat feature if you want to be able to switch connections and only define a single report and call it remotely. Now if you want the connection to be set dynamically based on the user and the report run via the user interface, thats going to be more tricky ... need to think about that one!

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  • Pivotal Announces JSR-352 Compliance for Spring Batch

    - by reza_rahman
    Pivotal, the company currently funding development of the popular Spring Framework, recently announced JSR 352 (aka Batch Applications for the Java Platform) compliance for the Spring Batch project. More specifically, Spring Batch targets JSR-352 Java SE runtime compatibility rather than Java EE runtime compatibility. If you are surprised that APIs included in Java EE can pass TCKs targeted for Java SE, you should not be. Many other Java EE APIs target compatibility in Java SE environments such as JMS and JPA. You can read about Spring Batch's support for JSR-352 here as well as the Spring configuration to get JSR-352 working in Spring (typically a very low level implementation concern intended to be completely transparent to most JSR-352 users). JSR 352 is one of the few very encouraging cases of major active contribution to the Java EE standard from the Spring development team (the other major effort being Rod Johnson's co-leadership of JSR 330 along with Bob Lee). While IBM's Christopher Vignola led the spec and contributed IBM's years of highly mission critical batch processing experience from products like WebSphere Compute Grid and z/OS batch, the Spring team provided major influences to the API in particular for the chunk processing, listeners, splits and operational interfaces. The GlassFish team's own Mahesh Kannan also contributed, in particular by implementing much of the Java EE integration work for the reference implementation. This was an excellent example of multilateral engineering collaboration through the standards process. For many complex reasons it is not too hard to find evidence of less than amicable interaction between the Spring ecosystem and the Java EE standard over the years if one cares to dig deep enough. In reality most developers see Spring and Java EE as two sides of the same server-side Java coin. At the core Spring and Java EE ecosystems have always shared deep undercurrents of common user bases, bi-directional flows of ideas and perhaps genuine if not begrudging mutual respect. We can all hope for continued strength for both ecosystems and graceful high notes of collaboration via efforts like JSR 352.

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  • What Error Messages Reveal

    - by ultan o'broin
    I love this blog entry Usability doesn't mean UI Especially the part: Ask for a list of all error messages when you do your next vendor evaluation. You will learn more about the vendor's commitment to usability and product quality than you will fathom from a slick demo. Not so sure about the part about error messages not being "hip" or "glamorous" though. I know... I should get out more...:)

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