воскресенье, 26 января 2014 г.

Lawmakers, SAP pointing fingers over failed payroll project

The failure of a massive payroll project involving SAP software has California lawmakers, state officials and the vendor pointing fingers of blame at each other. California fired SAP from the project in February and suspended work on it, saying that despite the expenditure of more than $200 million, the system was error-prone and far behind schedule. Officials have been weighing what to do next. Controversy is now mounting anew over who is responsible for the project's woes. The system "suffered from a failure to resolve core issues raised early and often, chronic leadership turnover and lapses in due diligence," states a report released this week by the state Senate Office of Oversight and Outcomes. State Controller John Chiang's office, which sponsored the project, "was not always candid about the difficulties" being faced and "delivered upbeat reports to the Legislature and others that often only hinted at the turmoil churning within the project," the report adds. The Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Subcommittee 4 was expected to discuss the report during a hearing on Thursday. Chiang's office and SAP "blame each other for the project's collapse, with the dispute expected to be settled in court," with as much as $190 million at stake between the $135 million the state wants to recover, and another $55 million SAP believes it is entitled to, the report adds. Dubbed MyCalPays, the system was supposed to modernize the state's payroll for 240,000 workers across 160 departments. An initial pilot was rolled out last year in Chiang's office, covering 1,300 workers, but rampant errors persisted until Chiang halted the project in February. The Senate report cited "frequent turnover at the top" of the Controller's office as a possible contributor to the project's issues. Three different controllers have been in charge of it during the past 10 years, although Chiang accounts for seven of those, it states. "In addition, the Controller's team had at least five different project directors and four different project managers, with half of those leadership changes in the last 18 months alone." A Chiang spokesman fired back at the report, saying it "demonstrates a misunderstanding or oversimplification for some of the key issues involved in MyCalPays." For one, Chiang's office "was forthcoming and had great communication with the legislature" about the project, said spokesman Jacob Roper, via email. "We held nine formal legislative briefings in 2011 and 2012, alone. The report only mentions some PowerPoints used in those briefings, which don't reflect all the information offered to legislative staff." "We have also issued our own, internal, preliminary report on the project's history: what went wrong, what worked, and what lessons can be learned," Roper added. download a star is born download recordpad sound recorder crack download simpo pdf creator pro download usaa 2012 tax documents download mac os x lion theme for windows xp 32 bit download the carpal tunnel of love video download gericom ati mobility radeon 9000 treiber download apple quicktime 64 bit for window 7 download android market flash player 10 1 download epson lq-300+ii printer driver

Oracle pushes into database-as-a-service

Oracle has hyped its new 12c database as faster and more powerful than ones that have come before, and now it's highlighting the release's ability to easily serve up multiple databases of varying size and scope according to a particular user's needs. Many Oracle customers are excited about 12c, and for a particular reason, said Andy Mendelsohn, senior vice president of database server technologies, during a keynote Monday at the OpenWorld conference in San Francisco. "Customers are telling us they want to go to database-as-a-service, on-premise," he said. Version 12c, which became generally available in June, includes an already well-publicized feature called "pluggable" databases, where many discrete databases sit inside a single container database, an approach that Oracle says can radically reduce operational overhead. Mendelsohn described a scenario in which an IT department could offer end users a menu of database options. A bronze tier would be for simple backups of less important databases, while a silver level would add in Oracle's Data Guard for additional security. A top-level gold tier could include Real Application Clusters along with Data Guard. Users would also choose from standard database sizes from the menu. Mendelsohn and another Oracle employee demonstrated a new self-service provisioning tool that is being released along with 12c. "In a couple seconds you're up and running," Mendelsohn said, as the demo showed the selection of a database was possible with a few clicks. "Pretty amazing, right?" Meanwhile, databases could also be easily "unplugged" from various tiers and moved to others as priorities change, Mendelsohn added. The pluggable database architecture also offers a new take on multitenancy, a feature used in SaaS (software-as-a-service). Rather than have all customers share a single application instance, they would each get a pluggable database, Mendelsohn said. "This huge barrier of entry for people to become SaaS providers is all gone," he added. That said, Oracle's technology stack has already served as a foundation for many SaaS vendors, and presumably Oracle will look to move them all onto the latest releases, including Database 12c. One such vendor is Salesforce.com, which recently announced it would commit long term to Oracle technologies. The pact also publicly buried the hatchet between Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. Elsewhere in his keynote, Mendelsohn provided further details on the Oracle Database Backup Logging Recovery Appliance, which was unveiled briefly by Ellison on Sunday. The appliance, which is due out "sometime next year," can scale out to petabytes of data, he said. It differs from and improves on past backup products, allowing users to restore a system back to any point in time they choose. download usbdeview for x64 systems download a was halted before completion. a resumption file download corel dvd movie maker download ati mobility radeon hd 4300 series windows 7 download web ceo full version download video youtube tanpa idm dan keepvid download sims 3 supernatural plants vs zombies download registry first aid 8.0 download drver for bison camera for xp download need for speed underground 2 for android apk

Buried in software licensing

David Steinour is at his wit's end with enterprise software cost increases. In each of the past three years, the CIO at George Washington University (GWU) watched his annual maintenance and support costs for Oracle Financials and related enterprise software jump by at least 10%. "Oracle works very well, but at the end of the day we pay a huge price for that service," Steinour says. Today, 99% of the fixed-cost increases in the university's IT budget come from software maintenance price hikes. "That's just not sustainable," says Steinour, whose IT department supports 20,000 students and 1,600 faculty members. Eric Robinson, CIO at Color Spot Nurseries, a $300 million, 4,000-employee wholesale grower that supplies plants to big-box stores, has been an SAP user since 2000. He says his biggest issue isn't the cost of the perpetual license for the outright purchase of on-premises SAP software, or the annual increases in SAP maintenance fees -- it's the fact that Fallbrook, Calif.-based Color Spot wasn't getting much in return for the money it spent on maintenance. Robinson says SAP has been gradually raising support costs in annual increments from the initial 17% of the original software license price. In 2008, SAP had sent Robinson a letter announcing plans to gradually increase his rate to 22% plus an annual increase based on a cost-of-living index adjustment, and move him from Standard Support to a new Enterprise Support plan. In 2010, Color Spot was paying 18.1% and Robinson decided to drop SAP's maintenance plan and move to a third-party provider. At that time, SAP reintroduced Standard Support. In July, SAP raised the price on Standard Support from 18% of the original license cost to 19% for new contracts. Enterprise Support remains at 22%. Rates started at 15% in the early 1980s, then gradually rose to 17% and stayed there until about 2005, says R "Ray" Wang, an analyst at Constellation Research specializing in enterprise software contract negotiations. They've since risen to 19% and now 22%, he adds. Robinson acknowledges that Color Spot's SAP system is stable and that he didn't need to make many calls for support. But he points out that SAP doesn't support any of his company's customizations, and the support packs and major upgrades his IT organization was required to install to remain in compliance with the maintenance and support contract were expensive and delivered no value to the business. SAP's top clients now spend $2 million to $5 million per year on maintenance and support contracts that average 20% to 25% of the original software cost, Wang says. "Every four years, they're paying the same amount they paid for the license," and most say that they're not getting the features they want for their money, he says. "They wonder whether they're better off not paying maintenance and just buying new software every four or five years." For Robinson, the last straw came when he decided not to upgrade from Version 4.7 and SAP was about to require Color Spot to transition to its extended maintenance program, which is for users of older versions of SAP software. "At that time, SAP was 20% of the IT budget. It was ridiculous," he says. That's when he decided not to renew Color Spot's maintenance contract. An SAP spokesman responds that, historically, standard support customers have paid an additional 2% to 6% for extended maintenance. download samsung galaxy s2 android update mit kies air download flash player 11 standalone installer download autogk windows 7 x64 download pictures slideshow maker software download uc browser 7 8 java software download qr code reader for samsung download es file explorer v3 download bluefire reader for windows download aplikasi yahoo messenger for mobile download smart partition recovery 3.3

среда, 22 января 2014 г.

Aruba has smartphone, iPad-crazy enterprise covered, CEO says

The influx of smartphones, tablets and other wireless devices into businesses is making many employees more productive, but Aruba Networks is seeing firsthand how much strain all of this newfound mobility is putting on the enterprise IT and security staffs that are its customers. In this installment of the IDG Enterprise CEO Interview Series, IDGE Chief Content Officer John Gallant spoke with Aruba CEO Dominic Orr about the changing wired/wireless network architecture, competing with Cisco Systems, exploiting the cloud and the rise of 802.11n. You guys are having a great year financially (and just reported strong Q1 '11 numbers). What's behind the success? Three trends are working in our favor. One is the workforce is getting more virtualized and mobile. Second is this whole explosion of more capable mobile devices people want to bring to work and a significant migration of enterprise application processing capabilities to those devices. The third is this whole cloud computing concept where you're embedding your application servers into an always-on data center. download japanese keyboard windows 8 download sony ericsson c510 pc suite driver download manchester united theme for blackberry 8520 download hand reading pro apk download backup assistant verizon on computer download call recorder for android 2.3 download k lite codec pack full xp download plants vs zombies iphone ipod touch

Closing in on all-wireless enterprise network

Meru Networks claims to have been the first company to deliver an 802.11n access point and is now riding that technology's popularity as enterprises move increasingly to high-speed wireless networks. In this installment of the IDG Enterprise CEO Interview Series, Meru President and Ihab Abu-Hakima speaks with IDGE Chief Content Officer John Gallant about what sets Meru apart from bigger competitors with broader networking product lines such as Cisco and HP as well as what needs to be done by enterprises to manage and secure networks being flooded by iPads, smartphones and other devices. What makes Meru unique? Meru was founded based on a vision that sooner or later most enterprises will operate day to day in an all-wireless environment. For us, a wireless environment is a wired data center, a wired backbone but all wireless everything else, all wireless edge. As we looked forward to what an all-wireless enterprise would look like, we said it would have thousands or tens of thousands of devices, many of them operated by humans, others machine to machine, but they would all be mobile or stationary but working in a wireless environment. And we built an infrastructure from the ground up to support density and mobile or stationary voice, video or data applications. We built this with the end user in mind. We wanted the end user to have an interactive experience accessing the content that they needed or the applications that they needed to get their job done. To continue reading, register here and become an Insider. You'll get free access to premium content from CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, and Network World. See more Insider content or sign in. download mortgage calculator excel template download acer aspire one d270 linpus review download baixar talking tom cat 2 em apk download skype for samsung galaxy s i9003 download plants vs zombies para wine download audio editor gold windows 7 download ea sports fifa 11 for android download hp color laserjet 2600n printer software download adobe photoshop elements 9 manual download jugar plants vs zombies gratis version completa sin descargar

Q&A: Avaya's CEO on how video will change business world

Last Wednesday, Avaya, Inc. made a splash in New York City with a portfolio of new collaboration products, including the Flare Experience multimedia conferencing system, a new tablet designed to support the Flare software and the web.alive virtual reality meeting service, among other offerings. In the latest installment of the IDG Enterprise CEO Interview Series, IDGE Chief Content Officer John Gallant talked with Avaya leader Kevin Kennedy about the company's collaboration strategy, how the new products change the competitive battle with Microsoft Corp. and Cisco Systems, Inc., and what it's going to take to make video a part of everyday life for business users. A lot of the pre-launch buzz about your announcements centered on Avaya developing a tablet in a market that already has a variety of tablet options. But that wasn't really the focus here, was it? How would you encapsulate the key news of the rollout? Today, the fact is that people buy isolated high-def video for enterprises and they probably spend $5,000-$6,000 to put that on their desks. The second fact is that most desktop video consumes a lot of bandwidth, 1.5M to 2M [bit/sec]. That's limiting for global companies that want to go to Asia, South America, and so forth. It's a boundary that can't be crossed at that level. Third, these are disparate systems, so it's hard to do things like forward an unanswered video call into voicemail. Integration is poor because [systems are] isolated. The Avaya Desktop Video Device runs the company's Flare interface. (Photo courtesy of Avaya Inc.) Today was about accessible videoconferencing collaboration, meaning it's a lower acquisition cost and lower bandwidth, so your operating cost is less. We tried to put a fun user interface on this and we called it Flare. It's a user experience that features a lot of integration, whether it's directories from the consumer or the enterprise world, or it's making use of SIP infrastructure. So, number one is innovation; number two is execution for over a year on innovation; number three is a new set of devices that solve a real problem in the enterprise; then lastly a software experience that we can put on any device, we just happened to introduce one [the tablet] today. You made some big claims about the improvements that this brings, one of them being a 10X productivity improvement. How do you support that? Where does that number come from? Let's walk through an audit of what it takes you to have a board call. I don't know about you, but we may all dial in, and the first thing is that everybody comes in differently because the end points have to come onto the call. That process alone can take sometimes five or ten minutes - as opposed to simply dragging a set of people from a directory into a spotlight, which takes seconds. Right off the bat we've got, call it, single-digit seconds versus double-digit seconds. Then you do a roll call in today's world, because you don't know who's actually on. Then, let's say you want to ask the two lawyers to exit so you can have a private company conversation. Then you hear a beep-beep after you've asked, they go away, then you want them to rejoin, and you call them up again. Hopefully, they get it. If they don't get it, you leave a message on their Blackberries, and then they come back in, it's beep-beep-beep, and you do a roll call. Versus swipe, bring them in, swipe, put them into a separate area, and swipe, bring them back. Literally we've done an audit and the improvements could be as much, in some cases, as 20 times faster. download pocket quran for blackberry download lg u8120 mole phone able ringtones download fujifilm finepix s7000 manual download total eclipse of my heart download password protected file php download national debt clock windows download real football 2010 jar download samsung galaxy s4 usb drivers download nokia pc suite 701 download sun microsystems java jdk jre 1.6

вторник, 14 января 2014 г.

Why the enterprise can't shake its email addiction

Atos CEO Thierry Breton caught a lot of flak last year when he announced he wanted his employees to give up email, but he may have been onto something. Kids these days don't use email -- digital market research company comScore found that use of Web-based email dropped 31% among 12- to 17-year-olds and 34% among 18- to 24-year-olds in the period between December 2010 and December 2011. And consumers in general are also off email. The Radicati Group, which tracks use of email and other messaging media, projects the number of consumer emails will decrease by 3% to 4% each year between 2012 and 2016 (see chart, below right). Then again, there was a reason Breton came in for so much derision: Enterprise email isn't going anywhere. Or, more precisely, enterprise email usage isn't going anywhere but up. Radicati is projecting the number of business emails to increase by 13% every single year between now and 2016. For businesspeople, that means more time scrolling through the inbox (not only on PCs and laptops but now on tablets and smartphones) clicking past newsletters, social media notifications and spam in search of the messages they truly need to do their jobs, and then later filing, archiving and retrieving those messages. For IT, that means more complaints from users about storage limits being too low (especially when Google lets them keep everything), as well as worries about security, archiving, retention, e-discovery, deletion and syncing mail between mobile devices. And then there's the cost: In 2010, Gartner estimated that the various costs tied to email add up to $192 per user per year. Why do we subject ourselves to this madness? Because for all its aggravations, email works. "It's still an efficient way of communicating, almost in real time," says Phil Bertolini, CIO of Michigan's Oakland County, who's responsible for 10,000 email boxes. "It does what it's designed to do quite well, which is allow us to securely communicate on a one-to-one or one-to-few basis," says Rob Koplowitz, an analyst at Forrester Research. Simply put, we may hate email, but we can't work without it. But CIOs and messaging experts agree that something must change that if enterprise email volume is going to boom the way Radicati's numbers indicate. Email is going to have to get more sophisticated and, at the same time, easier to use. And the people doing the using, who often make life harder for themselves, need to evolve, too. Why We Love Email We love email because it's useful and ubiquitous. It keeps us connected and updated without requiring sender and recipients to be online at the same time, thanks to its asynchronous nature. Everyone doing business today can reasonably be expected to have an email address, whereas only some people use alternative tools like chat, videoconferencing or SMS texting. Beyond that, email creates a de facto audit trail with a record of who sent what to whom when. And, barring space limitations, that trail is readily available on one's computer. download lingvosoft talking dictionary 2008 english-albanian download bolt browser for symbian belle download enhance my se7en full download wifi hacker for software download ultra mp3 player for nokia 6600 download adobe pdf ebook reader download vaagai sooda vaa songs in tamilwire download 2012 calendar printable one page with holidays download plants vs zombies game of the year edition instant recharge download plants vs zombies trainer using f1

Data analytics: Eye-popping results from Intel, UPS and Express Scripts

Simply put, data is the lifeblood at Express Scripts, a $93 billion pharmacy benefits management company based in St. Louis. The Fortune 100 company processes close to 1.5 billion prescriptions for some 100 million consumers per year, all the while analyzing the wealth of information that accompanies each order. "As we track a prescription through data entry and the pharmacy process and into the fulfillment system, we're tracking all sorts of information that gets fed to an analytics team that is focused on process improvement," says CTO Jim Lammers. Internally, it's how the company speeds delivery and cuts errors, he says. The 1 billion-plus pharmacy claims that Express Scripts processes annually represent a gold mine of information that could help cut healthcare costs and address the multibillion-dollar healthcare problem created by people who don't take their medications as prescribed, says Lammers. Computers, mobile phones, tablet devices, sensors, tweets, texts and posts to social networks, not to mention run-of-the-mill retail and registration transactions online, are all generating potentially valuable data. A lot of data. By 2020, IDC estimates that the number of business-to-business and business-to-consumer online transactions will reach 450 billion per day. We took a look at three organizations that are ahead of the curve in generating big business value from big data and analytics technology. At the top of their lists of lessons learned: A deeply-rooted culture of analytics and a relentless focus on cost efficiency and process improvement are invaluable. The Win: Lower Healthcare Costs At Express Scripts, claims data can show whether patients are filling their prescriptions in the most cost-effective way, which is frequently by mail order. If they aren't, Express Scripts can intercede by providing the patient with additional cost information and offer to switch delivery fulfillment methods for them with a minimum of hassle. "If they're taking a maintenance medication for high cholesterol and we know they've been taking it but they've been taking it from a retail pharmacy, we know if they move to a mail order, they can save," Lammers says. "We'll do proactive emails and drive the patient to our website and use specific messaging to get them to make [a mail order] decision." What it boils down to is "doing the data analysis, creating the interaction and getting out the right message so that the patient can make a different choice," Lammers explains. "One of the key tenets is that if we offer people the right choice, they'll take the right path." It sounds easy, but behind the seemingly effortless redirection is a massive amount of technology, not to mention a strict culture of analytics that permeates virtually all of Express Scripts' operations. download jackie robinson scholarship 2011 download plants vs zombies goty money hack download every time, britney spears able sheet music download currency exchange monitor 1.0 download star wars galactic battlegrounds clone campaigns download utorrent turbo accelerator 2 0 download magnifique themes for mac os x download itunes xp 32 xp download admit card of nicl 2013 download folder lock 7 full version with crack

Worst -- and best -- IT interview questions

You've probably seen them making the rounds on social media: the brain-busting, stutter-inducing questions asked in job interviews at places like Google (How many cows in Canada?), Apple (What are five ways to put a hole in a sheet of metal?), Dell (What songs best describe your work ethic?) and Novell (How would people communicate in a perfect world?). Less likely to be discussed is whether such interview questions actually help employers find the right IT pros. "We've heard candidates tell us that they faced three hours of pure tech-oriented questions that were specific and focused and extensively related to the job. Then at the end of three hours, they're hit with, 'Why is a manhole cover round?'" says Matthew Ripaldi, a senior vice president at IT staffing agency Modis in Houston. "It really put the person off." There's Google, which can get away with asking offbeat questions, and then there are companies that imitate Google -- with mixed results, Ripaldi says. "There are companies asking those questions just to ask them, and it isn't clear whether they know what to do with the responses," he says. TOUGH CUSTOMERS The 10 tech companies with the most difficult job interviews Company Interview difficulty rating (1-5) Interview experience (% positive) Google 3.6 59% Citrix Systems 3.4 62% Amazon 3.4 60% Adobe 3.3 71% Microsoft 3.3 70% Facebook 3.3 67% Salesforce.com 3.3 60% VMware 3.2 75% NetApp 3.2 67% Oracle 3.1 75% Source: Glassdoor. Report based on feedback from at least 25 job candidates who interviewed at a given company between April 2012 and April 2013. Interview difficulty ratings based on a scale of 1 (very easy) to 5 (very difficult). That doesn't mean a challenging -- even difficult -- interview is automatically a turnoff. Over the past year, candidates interviewing for tech jobs rated their interviews as both more difficult and more positive than in the previous 12 months, according to Scott Dobroski, community expert at Glassdoor, a five-year-old social recruiting site that allows job candidates to share interview experiences. "What this tells us is that making a tech interview more positive doesn't mean you need to make it less difficult," Dobroski says. Hiring stakes are high The debate over whether questions out of left field enhance or detract from the interview process is more than just an academic one for companies looking to hire IT talent. The increasingly tight job market ratchets up the pressure to find, hire and retain the right people. And with recruitment and onboarding costs "in the thousands of dollars" per employee, Dobroski says, companies are intent on hiring the right candidate the first time out. By the time a candidate reaches the interview stage, managers say that they're more concerned with learning about the individual's attitude, social skills and compatibility with the company's culture than they are with trying to assess his or her tech skills -- which the screening process should have already gauged. "We might ask a little bit about the tech stuff," says Joe Schmitt, a network support manager at U.S. Bank in St. Paul, Minn. "But really we're looking out for the right mix of curiosity, passion and initiative." download plants vs zombies save game file download grand theft auto 3 c docmarisgta2gta2 .exe download hide window plus 2 download adobe flash player cho win 8 download vtc player windows 7 download videos from youtube wmv download diagnose tools ram memory win 98 download donald duck audio whos your daddy download mortal kombat project 4.1 download virtualbox for linux centos

понедельник, 13 января 2014 г.

It's criminal: Why data sharing lags among law enforcement agencies

In 2008 the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services division (CJIS) embarked on an ambitious effort to enable information sharing among every federal, state, tribal and local law enforcement agency in the United States. It launched the National Data Exchange (N-DEx), an $85 million data warehouse project, and waited for the data to roll in. Kevin Reid, the program manager at that time, expected the majority of agencies to be voluntarily participating by 2009 -- two years ahead of plan. Today, five years later, around 4,200 of the nation's 18,000 law enforcement organizations -- around 23% of agencies -- are contributing data to the system. Money, politics and technology have all played a role in the delays. CJIS has faced a difficult challenge for any IT project: How do you get a diverse array of independent organizations to engage with a new technology for the common good when each has its own priorities -- and when participation requires a substantial investment in both time and money to get connected? Although CJIS does not charge agencies to use the service, software upgrades and integration of existing records cost money -- sometimes in the tens of thousands of dollars, experts say. Launched in the depths of the recession, the program quickly fell behind schedule. There are signs, however, that N-DEx participation may finally be gaining some momentum. The idea behind N-DEx was to establish a set of data sharing standards and a central hub, a giant data warehouse into which CJIS could pull together law enforcement incident reports from thousands of disparate, proprietary and often incompatible federal, state, local and regional databases and data sharing networks. In this way, the theory went, investigators at every level could identify patterns of criminal activity that span multiple jurisdictions to help solve crimes. Authorized users could access N-DEx through a Web portal or by way of their own agency's records management system, once it was configured to do so. Great expectations Although it has yet to reach critical mass, N-DEx has already shown promise in allowing investigators to "connect the dots" across state borders when investigating crimes, says Maury Mitchell, director of the Alabama Criminal Justice Information Center, a major contributor to N-DEx. N-DEx at a glance Who shares Over 4,200 agencies sharing 214 million records, including those from: Federal Bureau of Investigation Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Federal Bureau of Prisons Drug Enforcement Administration Department of Justice and Joint Automated Booking System United States Air Force Office of Special Investigations Department of Homeland Security. Access to 35 million records from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Customs and Border Protection, provided to N-DEx users. D-DEx DoD Exchange. Includes Pentagon police, NCIS, Army and other DoD law enforcement. What's shared Law enforcement incident reports and corrections data. Arrest reports, missing persons reports, calls for service, booking reports, and other incident data. Other information includes data related to pretrial investigations, warrants, supervised releases, citations, probation, corrections departments and more. The federal database augments smaller networks and one-to-one sharing agreements and integrations between jurisdictions with a central point of exchange and a common memorandum of understanding, or legal agreement between parties. Right now, for example, the state of Alabama shares information with Kansas, Wyoming and Nebraska, but has no such arrangement with Florida. "Significant crime crosses the panhandle into Alabama and vice-versa," Mitchell says. CJIS, he says, could make information sharing easier -- if Florida makes the commitment to participate. N-DEx functions as a giant law enforcement search engine, allowing investigators to enter text strings and limit results by geography, date ranges, contributor and other criteria, and it already contains some 180 million records that track over 1 billion people, places and events. Results so far "N-DEx allows law enforcement in another state or city to help solve your crimes for you. It puts the solution to the crime where the criminal is, not where you are," says N-DEx program manager Michael Haas. For example, he says, in 2011 when the suspects in a murder case in the Pacific Northwest suddenly turned up in the Southwest during an unrelated incident, investigators there had immediate access to the incident report containing the homicide details. Detectives were then able to elicit information that resulted in the suspects being returned to the Pacific Northwest, where they were subsequently charged and convicted for murder. In another case, David Heim, a state trooper, now retired, with the Kansas Highway Patrol and an early user of N-DEx, accessed it from his laptop using the FBI's Law Enforcement Enterprise Portal. During one routine traffic stop in 2010, he says N-DEx revealed that one person in the vehicle was wanted for a drive-by shooting. That person was arrested. But in his report he identified another occupant in the vehicle, who had no record. "The other guy, he's not associated with the gang, but the gang task force certainly wants to know that he's associating with a gang member." So they entered him into the system as a known associate. 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IT hiring goes multimedia

Tim Ondrey has glimpsed the future of the job-search market, and it's going multimedia. One of his friends used a blog and a 30-second video to apply for a marketing job, and another, an IT colleague, interviewed via Skype for a developer position. Ondrey figures it's just a matter of time before he -- and everyone else -- uses more than just an old-fashioned resume to land a job. "I'm kind of nervous about it, but we're all going to be in that same boat, figuring out what works and what doesn't," says Ondrey, an active member of the IBM user group Share. An applications report specialist at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., Ondrey isn't currently looking for a job, but, like a lot of people, he keeps an eye on the market. What he's seeing is that video, graphics and social media are becoming part of the job-search landscape. Recruiters and hiring managers say younger workers, who grew up online and use FaceTime more than landlines, are more apt to show off their assets via personal websites, blogs, videos and online portfolios with embedded examples of current work and links to online communities in which they're active. It's no coincidence that LinkedIn recently began encouraging its users to amp up their profiles with videos, illustrations, photography and presentations. And Toronto startup Vizualize.me has attracted 200,000 users to its tool, still in beta, that turns text-based resumes into online infographics. "People are open to new formats, new ways of presenting credentials," says John Reed, senior executive director of Robert Half Technology, an IT staffing firm based in Menlo Park, Calif. "People are trying to figure out how to stand out in the crowd, how to bring life to their profile and experience, and they're using social media tools to do that." Reed says that neither he nor his colleagues have seen many applicants submit videos yet. And the videos they have seen function more like cover letters than resumes. "The videos are, 'Let me introduce myself before you look at my resume,'" Reed says. "The companies look at it and say, 'That's cool, that's an interesting twist, that makes the candidate stand out.'" That's the thinking at Hire IT People, a Washington-based staffing firm. Owner Dan Nandan says Hire IT People is turning to videos as a way to showcase its IT talent. "We felt they'd have a more powerful impact if a video resume was submitted" in addition to the traditional paper CV, Nandan says. "And it's working," he adds, explaining that well-done videos presenting candidates' skills and background "definitely make a big impact." download avi to mpeg 2 video converter download video by google chrome download facebook messenger app for pc download password settings usb disk security download mac os x icon set download super proxy helper 1.05 download panda antivirus pro 2012 full version download software photoscape terbaru 2012 download the beach side of life download pci device treiber xp

How 4 companies use mobile apps to court customers

You don't have to look far to witness the total domination of the mobile device. Whether on the commuter rail or at the soccer field, cruising the mall or navigating a bustling city street, consumers are wedded to their smartphones and tablets to conduct the business of both their personal and professional lives. As a result, the mobile channel is opening up new ways for companies to nurture customer relationships in ways not possible in the past. Via the deployment of strategic apps, mobile presents businesses with a unique opportunity to engage customers with a product or service any time, anywhere, in a manner that is specifically tuned to their individual needs. The mobile experience also delivers a rich set of analytics that provides hard-to-come-by insights into everything from a customer's buying behavior to his or her actual physical location, allowing companies to custom tailor the conversation while also setting the stage for interaction that is all about intention, according to Chris Silva, an independent mobile analyst. "If you've got customers, you've got mobile customers, and it's one of the few places where you can almost replicate the conversion potential that you have when someone walks into a store," he explains. "Anyone using a mobile app or accessing a mobile website is doing it as part of a task, so it's a model built around consumption." Yet hand in hand with this powerful business opportunity come some unique development challenges for enterprise technologists. IT is being tasked with building out an app portfolio that supports a wide range of mobile platforms, including smartphones and tablets, amidst a continuously changing landscape of operating environments, from Apple iOS to Android and Windows 8. Adding to this backdrop of complexity are the vastly accelerated delivery schedules for mobile apps -- weeks as opposed to the months or years of traditional IT projects -- and the fact that many IT staffs, already strapped for core talent, are lacking the requisite mobile development skills, forcing them to hire up or turn to outside partners. "Most mobile strategist roles and groups are in their infancy today," notes Silva, who says internal IT departments need to prove their competency to be taken seriously as mobile players. Despite the scope of the task, the opportunities to leverage mobile as a stepping stone to customer intimacy are too potent to ignore. Read on to discover how four IT organizations in different industries are rising to the challenge and making mobile a centerpiece of how their companies forge tighter customer relationships. (Article continues on next page) Richard Maranville, CIO of Freeman Co., discusses the benefits and challenges related to its Concierge Elite mobile app. download mocha vnc for pc download google app engine sdk download plants vs zombies for youtube download cutepdf writer for vista download of skype software for windows 7 download bad piggies pc version download plants vs zombies 2 version completa gratis download kamus inggris indonesia gratis 2012 download fm 92 3 ariquemes download runescape password cracker v1

пятница, 10 января 2014 г.

Surface RT review: Microsoft's bid for a thing of its own

Microsoft desperately needs a "thing" -- a big thing that transcends the nerdy world of consumer electronics and achieves hero status among mobile-hardware wonks and civilians alike. The iPad is a thing. The Kindle Fire is a thing. Each tablet is a shared cultural experience that's practically effervescent in mainstream consumer appeal.. . . . . . . . . . And now, with its Surface RT tablet, Microsoft is trying to create a thing of its own. Surface RT must fulfill Microsoft's bid for relevance in a world gone hopelessly mobile. Surface RT must demonstrate that Microsoft can compete with Apple, Amazon, and Google in marrying hardware to software to credit card numbers in perfectly stacked ecosystems. And Surface RT must validate a splendiferous marketing spend, estimated by Forbes in excess of $1.5 billion, every dollar dedicated to making people really, really excited about, oh my God, have you seen this, it's Surface RT! When Surface RT was unveiled in June, hands-on reports were unanimous in their praise of the tablet's hardware innovations. With a magnesium chassis, an integrated kickstand, and clever keyboard accessories, Surface RT flouts the standard rules of tablet design and defiantly declares, "There's a better way to build these things. The other guys have it all wrong. We have made things right." The unveiling was four months ago. Today, Surface RT must prove itself against a barrage of new questions: Just how difficult are the Windows touch gestures? Just how competent is Windows RT, the feature-limited version of Windows 8 that gives Surface its name? And what about the $499 price tag of the entry-level Surface RT offering? Is it low enough to compete with the iPad, let alone other Windows tablets? The Surface RT is a fresh, fun reinterpretation of the basic tablet experience. I've been using Surface RT every day for the past week, and I can testify that it's a fresh, fun reinterpretation of the basic tablet experience. But does Surface RT have enough, and do enough, to reach "thing" transcendence? Let's dig in deep to find out. Industrial design Most tablets are simple slabs of glass and aluminum devoid of moving parts. But not Surface RT, which dares to explore its own physicality in a very showy, public way. The integrated rear kickstand props up the tablet at 22 degrees. That's just the right angle for some viewing positions, but the kickstand is not adjustable, and I often found myself drifting out of the angle's sweet spot depending on my table height. Made of the same injection-molded magnesium that's employed throughout the Surface chassis (Microsoft calls the material "VaporMg"), the kickstand opens with a faint metallic ting and closes with a confident click. Both audio cues are satisfying -- and they better be, considering that Microsoft specifically engineered the kickstand to not just work but also sound good. The integrated rear kickstand props up the tablet at 22 degrees. The point of the kickstand, of course, is to turn Surface RT into an effective productivity machine, and to varying degrees that promise is fulfilled via the system's Touch Cover and Type Cover keyboard accessories. Regrettably, neither cover is included in the tablet's entry-level package, but all Surface RT versions are preloaded with a soph-frosh version of Microsoft Office that includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, helping users realize the tablet's productivity promise. At 3mm thick, the Touch Cover lacks physical keys, and instead uses pressure-sensitive touch pads to record keystrokes. The Type Cover features real keys with actual key travel, but extends the thickness to 5.5mm. Can the Touch Cover possibly offer rewarding typing? I answer that question in the section titled "Surface RT as a workstation" below. For now, I can share that the tablet's keyboard docking system is as sweet as Microsoft wants everyone to believe. You never need to worry about aligning finicky connection points. In fact, you don't even need to look at the tablet and keyboard when snapping them together. Just move them toward each other, and magnetic attraction will attach the two sides -- perfectly, every time. The connection interface also provides the data link between tablet and keyboard, and just like the kickstand, it comes with its own mechanical soundtrack that Microsoft expressly designed to push emotional buttons. The build quality throughout Surface RT is sturdy and confident, and exudes the same kind of austere precision we find in German performance cars. VaporMg is silky to the touch, yet inflexible when torqued. And at 0.37 inch thick and 1.5 pounds, Surface RT is essentially identical to the iPad in thickness and weight -- this despite the fact that it supports a slightly larger, 10.6-inch, widescreen display. Quibbles? I frequently worried that the kickstand would scratch wooden tables, and I found the proprietary power connector difficult to insert. But overall I became a quick fan of Microsoft's take on industrial design. The magnesium chassis really does feel like something special, and it's a welcome change from the standard combinations of aluminum and plastic we see throughout the tablet competition. Surface RT is a manifestly tactile device, from its generous (if initially confusing) catalog of touch gestures to its actual moving parts. download currency exchange rates history download nero 7 serial windows 7 download folder lock jar file for mobile download iphone unlocker pro gratis download skype for motorola xoom tablet download samsung kies for mac 10.7 download rockit pro dj v42 download 4 wheel parts in mesa az download key generator for all games download autocad 2012 for students

HTC Droid DNA review: A superphone with flaws

HTC is marketing its new Droid DNA as the "most advanced smartphone yet" -- and on paper, the device certainly looks that way. The Droid DNA, launching this Wednesday, November 21 on Verizon Wireless for $200 with a new two-year contract, has all the specs of a high-end superphone. The Android 4.1-based device has the looks, too, with a sleek and distinctive design and eye-catching 1080p display. Appearances aren't everything, though, and while the Droid DNA has some impressive elements, it also has some troubling drawbacks. I've spent the past several days using the Droid DNA in place of my own personal device to get a feel for how it fares in the real world. Here's a look at where the phone shines -- and where it falls short. Body and display HTC's Droid DNA falls into an interesting spot in the smartphone size spectrum: With a 5-in. display, the device is quite large for a normal phone, but significantly smaller than a plus-sized phone-tablet hybrid like Samsung's Galaxy Note II. The Droid DNA measures 2.8 x 5.6 in. Compared to the Note II -- which, with its 5.5-in. screen, measures 3.2 x 5.9 in. -- the Droid DNA is practically a baby. But compared to a more typical phone like the Droid Razr Maxx HD, which measures 2.7 x 5.2 in., the DNA is decidedly big, especially when it comes to length. The phone feels good in the hand, however, and is right on the upper limit of being comfortably pocketable. The device is pleasantly thin -- 0.38 in. officially, though thinner at the edges thanks to a tapered back design. HTC Droid DNA The Droid DNA's display is a gorgeous 1920 x 1080 Super LCD3 with 440 pixels per inch (ppi), making it the highest resolution screen on any smartphone today. The display looks fantastic, with crisp, sharp details and brilliant colors that delight the eye. Even in sunlight, the Gorilla Glass 2 screen remains perfectly viewable. When it comes to the smartphone display department, it's easy to give the Droid DNA top honors. That said, we're reaching a point where more pixels aren't necessarily a game-changer -- and while the Droid DNA's display is undoubtedly outstanding, the difference between it and the 720p screens on phones like Google's Nexus 4 and HTC's One X is pretty subtle to the naked eye. The Droid DNA has a polycarbonate material on its back that's soft to the touch and not at all cheap-feeling. The material's matte finish looks nice but does seem to pick up an awful lot of scuffs and visible smudges. The back of the phone is basically all black, save for a bright red ring around the camera lens.. . . . . . . . . . That red highlighting carries throughout the phone's design: The sides of the device along with its power button and a thin grille covering its earpiece share the same bold coloring. The black and red contrast creates an eye-catching effect, for sure -- one that, depending on your personal taste, I suspect you'll absolutely love or passionately despise. The Droid DNA's power button is oddly placed on the top of the phone, which makes it rather unnatural to reach during typical use. The volume rocker, meanwhile, sits on the phone's right edge. Both buttons are recessed so low into the phone that you can barely feel them with your finger; they almost blend into the device from a tactile perspective. I found this to be vexing during day-to-day use, as I'd actually have to move the phone around to look for the buttons instead of being able to find them by touch. A 3.5mm headphone jack is on the phone's top, along with a micro-SIM card tray that's locked and accessible only with a small pin tool (included with the phone). The phone's bottom houses a standard micro-USB port that doubles as an HDMI out-port with the use of an MHL adapter. The micro-USB port is curiously covered by a thin plastic flap that has to be pulled off and then clicked back into place with every use. In the grand scheme of things, that process is a fairly minor hassle, but given how often you access the phone's charging port, it gets old fast. The flap's flimsy feel also makes me worry about its durability; within just a few days of use, the material on my review unit became bent and slightly warped -- a detail that was noticeable when the flap was closed and in place. With the Droid DNA, HTC has once again opted for placing capacitive buttons just below the display instead of opting for virtual on-screen buttons, the latter of which provide a far more fluid and user-friendly Android experience. Current versions of Android are designed to use the on-screen button model, after all, and while the software does still support hardware buttons, it's very much a matter of legacy support -- not an ideal usage situation or one that's native to the platform. Interface issues aside, the buttons didn't consistently light up when I was using the device in dimly lit conditions, which made them impossible to see and thus press without just poking around blindly and hoping for good luck. In a rare and interesting twist, the Droid DNA has two LED indicators that alert you to things like missed calls and new messages -- one on the phone's front, at the top-right of the earpiece grille, and one on its back, to the left of the camera lens. Under the hood HTC's Droid DNA has an engine that should be screamingly fast: a 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro quad-core processor along with 2GB of RAM. That's the same setup used in the Nexus 4 and the LG Optimus G, both of which are absurdly speedy devices. That's why I've been very surprised with how inconsistently the Droid DNA performs. While tasks such as app loading are impressively fast, the phone suffers from a lot of jerky and glitch-filled performance in other areas. System animations frequently stutter, and scrolling on the Web is slower and less fluid than what I've come to expect from a high-end phone. Beyond that, the system seems to struggle to keep up at times: When typing, for instance, the phone will often freeze up for a few seconds and ignore my input -- then quickly burst out the backlog of letters it's collected in a rush to catch up. I can't remember the last time I experienced anything like that on a computing device. In general, getting around the system feels like more work on the Droid DNA than on other devices with comparable or even less horsepower. On-screen gestures aren't always responsive, which makes a simple task like trying to swipe away a tab in Chrome feel like a labored effort. And I experienced a shocking amount of hiccups and glitches, including weird flash-frames and blurred graphics when I tried to switch from one app to another. 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Nook HD review: A faster, brighter and better e-reader/tablet

The just-released Nook HD and Nook HD+ are well-designed reading-and-entertainment Android tablets featuring beautiful, high-resolution screens, a significant rewrite of the Nook software and beefed-up video services. In order to see how well the new tablets compare to their predecessors -- and how they fare against their main competitor, the Kindle Fire -- I worked with both, although I concentrated mainly on the Nook HD. Barnes & Noble's Nook HD The Nook HD sports a dual-core 1.3GHz TI processor with 1GB of RAM and a 7-in. display with 1440-x-900-pixel resolution. You can choose a device with either 8GB (for $199) or 16GB (for $229) of built-in memory; there is a micro SD slot for additional storage. It's a Wi-Fi-only device, and comes with Bluetooth connectivity. It weighs in at a very light 11.1 oz. and measures 7.6 x 5.0 x 0.4 in. The larger 9-in. Nook HD+ has a dual-core 1.5Ghz processor, 1GB of RAM, 1920 x 1280 resolution and comes with 16GB (for $269) or 32GB (for $299) of memory. It weighs 18.2 oz. and measures 9.5 x 6.4 x 0.5 in. Neither tablet has a camera. There's also no HDMI port, but you can buy an HDMI connector for $39.. . . . . . . . . . Faster, brighter and better The dual-core processors clearly do their job, because I found the Nook HD's operation to be exceedingly smooth, with no delays or glitches when opening or reading books, opening or running apps, or watching on-tablet video. At times, I experienced slight delays when streaming videos, but that was likely more the result of either a laggy Internet connection or problems with the streaming server, not the device itself. This is enhanced by the fact that the screen is, simply, superb. Not only does it display video content beautifully, but color magazine photos pop, and cartoons and graphic novels are similarly pleasing to the eye. At 1440 x 900, the Nook HD offers higher resolution than the Kindle's 1280 x 800 -- and it shows. The Nook software, built on top of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, has been thoroughly redone since the release of the original Nook Tablet. It's been simplified and new features have been added. For starters, you can now create up to six different customizable profiles so that several people can use the device. There are specific children's profiles that are controlled by a parent, who can limit access to the Web, to apps, to files, and so on. Each profile has its own content library, home screen (containing recently viewed content) and preferences. However, while you can have many profiles, you have to choose a single person to pay for all content on the Nook HD. Content from any profile can be shared with any other profile or all profiles. The overall interface has been improved, primarily by cleaning up the clutter. In the previous version, the Home screen had multiple layers of content and navigation on it, making it somewhat busy. In the new interface, there are fewer navigation buttons and content layers, with notifications moved to the top of the screen. Overall, I found it easier to find and use content. There's another nice touch as well: You can jump to a new Nook Today screen from the main screen with the tap of a button. Nook Today shows local weather as well as book recommendations based on your most recent buying and reading activity. Jump back to the main screen by tapping the button again. One of the Nook HD's primary purposes, of course, is for reading books, magazines and newspapers -- and it does an excellent job. The basic reading capabilities are essentially unchanged from the previous version, which is a good thing, because they're well designed. One new feature is a nifty Scrapbook that lets you save and retrieve magazine pages by swiping down with two fingers. On the other hand, app availability is relatively limited on the Nook HD compared to a pure Android tablet. You can only download apps through the Nook Store, and what's there is an insignificant fraction of the 700,000 apps available in the Google Play store. And although you'll find popular free apps such as Twitter, Evernote and Pulse News, the focus in the store is on for-pay apps. For example, if you're looking for the latest iteration of Angry Birds, you'll find it here, but for $2.99 rather than for free as you can get in Google Play. Web browsing and email In general, I found Web browsing to be speedy, with pages loading extremely fast. The Nook's Web browser is far superior to the previous version, and allows for multi-tabbed browsing, something its predecessor couldn't do. You can now easily save Web pages in addition to bookmarks. There's also a new ArticleView feature that displays a Web page in an article-like view rather than as a Web page. The view strips out ads, navigation and other Web elements, and displays only text itself in a scrolling document. You switch between the views by tapping either the ArticleView button or Browser View button that replaces it at the bottom of the screen. This feature mirrors a similar ArticleView capability for viewing magazines that was introduced in the Nook Tablet. There's another nice addition to the browser: Tap a small icon at the bottom of the screen and an email message is automatically created -- using your default email account -- which includes the URL of the page you're currently visiting, and drops the title of the Web page in as the subject line. Enter the name of the person to which you want to send the message, add text if you want, and send it on its way. The email client has also been improved. It's now much easier to navigate among your mail folders (Inbox, Drafts, Sent and so on). Reading messages is visually more appealing because of a cleaner layout, although the basic functionality remains the same. download macromedia flash player update download sonic the hedgehog 3 for emulator download zune video converter 1.0 download yahoo messenger on android tablet download sequential monte carlo methods in practice download spybot search and destroy francais download samsung galaxy y flash player support download miguel kaleidoscope dream album download zoner photo studio 8.1 professional download photo snap java games

четверг, 9 января 2014 г.

First look: Windows Server Blue beta shows compelling improvements

During the TechEd conference earlier this month, Microsoft announced what it has been working on with its flagship server product and demonstrated a few of its new features. But there is a larger, more detailed story underneath those keynote sound bites and some things you discover only when you work directly with the code.. . . . . . . . . . Late last Friday, I got my hands on a copy of the beta release for Windows Server Blue, which will be formally known as Windows Server 2012 R2 upon its release later this year, and I spent last weekend exploring the build. Here is a first look at the next version of Windows Server, which should be available as a preview today and, as Microsoft announced at TechEd, generally available by year-end. The idea of the cloud OS First, however, it is important to look at what Microsoft is trying to accomplish with this release. Microsoft has long been touting the idea of a cloud operating system; the company sees this as an operating system that pulls together all computing resources -- not just at an individual node level, but across the data center. A related goal is to expose in the same way the pieces that make everything run, no matter where they are physically located. The overarching design goal for Windows Server 2012 R2, therefore, was to provide an operating system platform that basically lets entire data centers be managed just like individual computers -- which in turn allows the applications and tasks being run within those data centers to shift seamlessly between data centers. Overall, Windows Server 2012 Release 2 has much to recommend it, our reviewer finds. According to Microsoft, the goal is one consistent platform between a customer's own data centers, a service provider's private cloud and the public Windows Azure cloud service. The same operating system, Windows Server, should work everywhere in the same way with the same tools no matter where things are hosted. The most explicit example of a feature designed to make one OS work on premises or in the cloud is the Windows Azure Pack for Windows Server. This takes the management portal and capabilities of the Windows Azure service and puts it into a nice, installable package on top of Windows Server 2012 R2. With the Azure Pack living in on-premises data centers, you essentially create a private cloud, where users can create websites, virtual machines, SQL Server-based databases -- not MySQL yet -- Active Directory integration modules and more, all from a self-service web portal. Administrators can configure how resources are distributed and which users can ask for what services, and a powerful REST API opens the door for other applications and services to also request services from the private cloud in the same way they do from Windows Azure itself.. . . . . . . . . . To achieve these goals, there is plenty going on under the hood in Windows Server 2012 R2.

Windows 8.1 deep-dive review: Well, it's a start

With the just-released preview of Windows 8.1, Microsoft has gone a long way towards fixing many of the interface goofs and anomalies of Windows 8; it's also cleaned up the OS's rough edges and introduced some nice new features and apps. Windows 8 remains a dual-interface operating system -- the touch-oriented "Modern" interface (previously called Metro) and the desktop -- but one that is less frustrating to use and a bit better integrated than previously. The changes don't solve all of Window 8's problems, but they make it more palatable to use. At first glance, Windows 8.1 looks very much like Windows 8. Click to view larger image.. . . . . . . . . . The Start screen and the desktop The Start screen and the desktop have been at the core of most complaints about Windows 8. In Windows 8, you're forced to boot into the touch-oriented Start screen, and because it is primarily designed to launch Modern-style apps, many people would prefer to bypass it and head straight to the desktop when they log in. Microsoft made that impossible in Windows 8. Like many people, I was not pleased. Finally, in Windows 8.1, you can bypass the Start screen and go to the desktop when you log in. Oddly enough, to do that, you don't change a setting on the Start screen. Instead, you have to do a bit of tweaking over at the desktop. The Navigation tab lets you go straight to the desktop when you sign in. Click to view larger image. Go to the desktop, then right-click the taskbar. Select Properties and from the screen that appears, click or tap the Navigation tab -- a new tab added in Windows 8.1. Divided into two sections, Core navigation and Start screen, it lets you customize many of the frustrating things about the way the Start screen works. Look for the setting "Go to the desktop instead of Start when I sign in" then check the box next to it. After that, each time you sign into Windows, you hop straight to the desktop. It's simple and straightforward, and desktop fans will be extremely pleased -- me among them. There's more on that little tab that can go towards making the Start screen a more useful tool. If you have no need for the Start screen's tiled interface, and mainly use it as an app launcher, there are several settings that do that for you. Check the box next to "Show the Apps view automatically when I go to Start," and every time you head to the Start screen, you'll instead see the Apps view -- a listing of every Modern and desktop app on your system. Click an app to launch it. I find this far more useful than the Start screen's normal multi-sized tiles. The Apps view is a listing of every Modern and desktop app on your system. Click to view larger image.. . . . . . . . . . If you mainly use desktop apps rather than Modern ones, make sure to check the box next to "List desktop apps first in the Apps view when it's sorted by category." That way, your desktop apps show first on the screen, so it's easier to find them. I have found this small tweak quite helpful, because I frequently head here to launch Office. Now it appears high on the list. Note that even if you leave the normal tiled Start screen intact and don't change the settings on the Navigation tab, there's now an easier way to get to the Apps view. On the Start screen down towards the bottom, there's a new arrow that was introduced in Windows 8.1. When you click it or tap it, you're sent to the Apps view.

5 free Linux text editors for programming and word processing

Today's Linux text editors bridge the gap between the needs of high-end programmers and those of day-to-day users. These applications offer a range of functionality, from clean and user-friendly interfaces (preferred for normal text editing) to power-packed features (required for programming).. . . . . . . . . . Most Linux users I've talked to tell me they want a text editor that can be used for normal text editing (and even some word processing) as well as for hard-core programming and coding. And, of course, they're looking for a low learning curve. In this roundup, I assess five of the most well-known free text editors -- Gedit, GNU Emacs, GNU Nano, KATE and Vim. I have been using Linux for the past six years now, and my views are based on the practical experiences that I have had with each of them. While most review round-ups try to answer the question "Which product is the best?" the real question in this case is: "Which one is best for you?" It all depends on what you require -- whether you are more comfortable with easier, graphic-based interfaces or just want a solid, down-and-dirty text editor. The following should provide some guidance as to where to look. Gedit Developers: Paolo Maggi, Paolo Borelli, Steve Frécinaux, Jesse van den Kieboom, James Willcox, Chema Celorio, Federico Mena Quintero Latest version: 3.8.1 Linux support: Flavors that support Gnome License: GPLv2 Sometimes all you need is a simple text editor with a clean and easy-to-use interface. Gedit -- the official text editor for Linux flavors that support the Gnome desktop environment -- is a simple yet useful graphical text editor that is often the first choice of users who are new to *nix systems. This editor has been part of the Gnome project since the project came into existence in 1997. Gedit What's new Gedit includes a variety of strong features including UTF-8 support, syntax highlighting, the ability to edit files kept at remote machines, text wrapping and tab support. The latest version of Gedit (3.8.1) introduces a Zeitgeist plugin to use the libzeitgeist2 library, some improvements in the documentation and miscellaneous bug fixes.. . . . . . . . . . What's good about it Besides being a good text editor for newbies, Gedit provides many features that make it programmer and developer friendly. These include auto indentation, line numbers, bracket matching, backup files and auto-save files. Another nice feature is its ability to recognize and open most file formats with syntax highlighting. I personally like the ability of Gedit to open files in tabs (as in a browser), which makes switching between files really easy. There are some other nice features. For example, if you are programmer and your manager is very strict about code indentation, you can disable tabulation and opt for auto indentation by checking the corresponding options in the Edit --> Preferences --> Editor menu. Gedit includes a plugin facility through which various plugins -- offered with Gedit or from third parties -- can be added. This flexibility results in enormous power. What needs to be fixed As a programmer, I feel that Gedit could do more by adding features such as code folding into its armory. When handling huge files, it is really useful if you can fold/collapse irrelevant sections and work only on those sections that require editing. Another minor problem: When using #if 0 and #endif to comment on C/C++ code, the comments are the same color as normal text comments. So if you have lots of text comments in your code and somewhere in-between you have a commented block of code, then it sometimes becomes difficult to identify the commented code. Bottom line Gedit is very simple to learn and use -- you only have to learn various configuration options if you need advanced features. 5 Linux text editors Introduction Gedit GNU Emacs GNU Nano KATE Vim Bottom line

Senators call on FTC to investigate Target breach

A U.S. senator has called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Target's security practices after the large retailer reported a data breach affecting 40 million customer credit and debit cards. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) urged the agency to begin an immediate investigation. "If Target failed to adequately and appropriately protect its customers' data, then the breach we saw this week was not just a breach of security; it was a breach of trust," Blumenthal wrote in a Sunday letter to the FTC. The breach could expose Target customers to "significant and potentially permanent harm," Blumenthal wrote."Those Target customers who have their data misused by hackers or thieves could lose their good credit and in turn their ability to purchase the goods and services they need for their well being and the well being of their families," he added. Even customers whose stolen data will never ultimately be misused must live with the fear and uncertainty of knowing that it could be." Blumenthal said he will push to give the agency more authority to penalize companies that have large data breaches. The FTC doesn't have the authority to impose fines for data breaches. In addition, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) called on the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to investigate the breach. Target said last week credit and debit card information, including the name of the customer, the credit or debit card number, the card's expiration date and the three-digit security code, was stolen at its stores between Nov. 27 and Dec. 15. Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel, in an email to customers Saturday, said they will not be responsible for fraudulent charges. Victims will get free credit monitoring from Target, he wrote. The breach "was a crime against Target, our team members and most importantly you -- our valued guest," he added. The FTC doesn't comment on active investigations, but the agency has investigated similar data breaches in the past. In a March 2008 settlement with TJX, which owns T.J. Maxx, Marshalls and other retailers, the agency required the company to establish a comprehensive information security program and submit to biennial data security audits over the next 20 years. The company's 2005 breach, which it reported in 2007, affected more than 45 million customer credit and debit cards. download microsoft word 2011 for mac keeps crashing download windows live on mac download avira antivir update terbaru download nimbuzz for samsung wave y s5380 download utorrent ultra accelerator 2 0 4 download rise and shine blood on the dance floor download xvid converter full version download autodesk maya 2011 tutorials download all office converter platinum 6.5 full serial download slingplayer app for mac

Bosch says the future is the Internet of Things

Bosch, a company best known as a maker of appliances, including stoves, dishwashers, washing machines and coffee makers, is increasing its focus on the Internet of Things. Germany-based Bosch has created a new firm, Bosch Connected Devices and Solutions, "for the Internet of things and services." The Internet of Things will deliver its benefits gradually, one appliance upgrade at a time. Sensor rich devices monitoring Web-enabled apps can put the worried homeowner at ease. 'Did I remember to turn the stove off before leaving the house? Is the refrigerator door open?' The Internet of Things will provide the answer. The Internet of Things will automate many actions. For instance, a smart home can be tied into weather reporting and use the information to automatically close windows and shutters in advance of a storm. The new Bosch firm will develop sensors and actuators. The latter can convert electric signals from sensors or control units into physical action, the company said. A goal of the new firm is to supply "compact electronic products and software expertise" intended to make devices and objects "intelligent and Web-enabled." Bosch is also a tech company that makes MEMS, or microelectromechanical systems. MEMS can detect changes in an environment, such as motion. An accelerometer, used in smartphones to sense when the device has been rotated, is such a sensor. Bosch says it is the world's largest supplier of MEMS sensors in terms of revenue. Bosch will be demonstrating some its ideas at next month's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. "The introduction of MEMS sensors in automotive electronics in the 1980s and 1990s marked the first wave of growth. The second major wave has been their widespread incorporation in smart phones, tablets, and games consoles since the beginning of the 21st century - and the Internet of Things and services now heralds the third wave. We're convinced that it will far surpass the first two waves," said Volkmar Denner, chairman of Robert Bosch GmbH, in a statement. "Sensors, signal processing, batteries, and transmitters have become so small, energy efficient, and inexpensive - even as all-in-one units - that they can be used in their billions. And at the same time radio networks are now available almost everywhere," he added. Patrick Thibodeau covers SaaS and enterprise applications, outsourcing, government IT policies, data centers and IT workforce issues for Computerworld. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @DCgov, or subscribe to Patrick's RSS feed download security templates server 2003 download pdf excel converter software windows 7 download advanced system optimizer v3 trial download eurosport application for blackberry download softonic adobe photo scape download song played during nouman vote out download do animal sounds with myreward board download an error occured during the operation download ati radeon xpress 200m windows xp download uc browser 8 5 android

Security researcher cancels talk at RSA conference in protest

Security researcher Mikko Hypponen has canceled his talk at an RSA security conference in San Francisco, in response to a report that the security division of EMC allegedly received $10 million from the National Security Agency to use a flawed random number generator in one of its products. In an open letter on Monday to Joseph M. Tucci, EMC's chairman and CEO, and Art Coviello, executive chairman of RSA, Hypponen, who is chief research officer at Finnish security company F-Secure, referred to a Reuters news service report which stated that RSA accepted a random number generator from the NSA, and set it as the default option in its product BSafe, in return for the payment from the NSA. The RSA took money "secretly" from the NSA to embed the Dual EC DRBG (Dual Elliptic Curve Deterministic Random Bit Generator) technology into its BSafe toolkit, according to the report on Friday. The number generator used in a 2006 standard from the National Institute of Standards and Technology came under scrutiny after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden suggested it provided back-door entry to NSA snooping, according to reports. RSA denied entering into a secret contract with the NSA. "We made the decision to use Dual EC DRBG as the default in BSAFE toolkits in 2004, in the context of an industry-wide effort to develop newer, stronger methods of encryption. At that time, the NSA had a trusted role in the community-wide effort to strengthen, not weaken, encryption," it said in a statement Sunday. Hypponen said RSA had not denied receiving $10 million from the NSA to use the random number generator. "You had kept on using the generator for years despite widespread speculation that NSA had backdoored it," he wrote. The researcher said he didn't expect EMC or the conference to suffer as a result of the alleged deals with the NSA. Nor did he expect other conference speakers to cancel. Most of the speakers at the conference are American so why would they care about surveillance that's not targeted at them but at non-Americans, Hypponen wrote. Surveillance operations by U.S. intelligence agencies are targeted at foreigners, he added. "However I'm a foreigner. And I'm withdrawing my support from your event," the Finnish researcher wrote. He had earlier tweeted that "If the Reuters story is true, I - for one - will be cancelling my invited talk and my panel participation in the upcoming RSA Conference." The RSA conference runs from Feb 24 to 28. Among the keynote speakers and other speakers, listed on the website for the conference, are executives from Microsoft, Juniper Networks, Cisco, McAfee, Symantec and Hewlett-Packard. Hypponen was to speak on "Governments as Malware Authors" at the conference. The researcher said he had spoken eight times at RSA conferences in the U.S., Europe and Japan. "You've even featured my picture on the walls of your conference walls among the 'industry experts,'" he wrote in the letter. EMC could not be immediately reached for comment on Hypponen's decision. download little registry cleaner sourceforge download mx video player pro full download jlc internet tv 1.0 download windows xp home edition operating system download the donnas fall behind me mp3 download avast internet security activation key download yahoo email password cracker software download route 66 sync samsung download vlc media player activex plugin download nero burner 9 full version

среда, 8 января 2014 г.

Venture capitalist proposes California 2.0, a plan for six new states

IDG News Service - A prominent venture capitalist proposed on Monday a plan to split California into six new states, including one called "Silicon Valley" that would stretch from San Francisco to San Jose and include the entire region where many of the biggest tech companies have their headquarters. Tim Draper presents his plan to break California into six states at a Silicon Valley news conference on Monday. The plan by Tim Draper, who was an early backer of Skype, Baidu and Hotmail, faces multiple hurdles and would require significant support from among the state's 38 million  residents, and from the rest of the country if it makes it any further. He hopes to put the idea plan on the November 2014 ballot, which would require about half a million signatures. On the face of it, the chances of it being realized are low. But Draper said splitting California would bring real benefits. "Something's not working in our state, and I'm convinced that it is with the existing system, the existing breadth of industry and varying interests. California is untenable and un-governable," Draper told a sparsely attended news conference at the Silicon Valley school for entrepreneurship that he created and that bears his name. There were about 20 people in the room, although only six appeared to be reporters. "I'm convinced that the best path for Californians is to create six new states that are unencumbered by trying to balance the interests of people who have very divergent goals and aspirations," he said. Draper said he believes the interests of the tech industry in Silicon Valley, the defense and entertainment industries in and around Los Angeles, the farms of the state's Central Valley, and a growing medical devices business in the south of the state are best served by local governments. For Silicon Valley, he said tech companies would benefit from a state government that was more "tech savvy." When pressed on that assertion, Draper offered regulations covering the tech industry as an example. "Whenever I try to talk to people in [California state capital] Sacramento, they are not really in touch with what we are trying to accomplish in Silicon Valley," he said. "Here we are working on new communications systems that are always several leaps in front of the bureaucracy. So the bureaucracies are all trying to catch up, and we're not quite sure how we should be governed." His proposal comes at a time of growing discontent in San Francisco and Silicon Valley at the apparent impact of the tech industry. The massive amount of wealth created by companies such as Google, Facebook and Twitter has amplified economic disparities in the area and made the local housing market one of the most expensive in the country. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

понедельник, 6 января 2014 г.

Computerworld - LAS VEGAS -- Cloud adopters face serious risk in the next two years because of the strong possibility that their provider will be acquired or forced out of business, according to Gartner. The research firm is predicting a major consolidation in cloud services and estimates that about 25% of the top 100 IT service providers in the infrastructure space won't be around by 2015. "One in four vendors will be gone for whatever reason -- acquisition, bankruptcy," said William Maurer, a Gartner analyst. Most of the time, the changes will come through acquisition. "There is real risk," said Maurer to a packed room for his presentation at the Gartner Data Center Conference. "We're in the phase of buyer beware with cloud," said Michael Salvador, who attended the presentation. He is a technical solutions manager at Belden, which makes cable, connectivity and networking products. "You better do your research -- there's no safety net out there," he said. Concerns about risks may drive some users to large vendors, Salvador said, but smaller providers may offer better prices or some additional guarantee that a large provider may not offer. There is pressure on providers to cut costs, but Maurer told his audience to be gentle with their vendors. "You need to make to make sure that your service providers are successful," said Maurer. "Give them a chance to make a reasonable return on their investments, give them a chance to make some money. Don't take all the money off the table, because if you do, you are not going to have a lot of them around." The standing-room-only audience was already convinced of the risks to cloud, based on their responses to an audience participation question, which recorded answers electronically. The audience question was asked: "At what level do the risks associated with outsourcing some/all of your data center solutions to one or more of the 'aaS' models (meaning infrastructure-as-a-service, software-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service and others) prevent you from making the decision to move forward? (Select one)" Nearly 50% saw cloud-based solutions as having "a great deal of risk" while 33% saw "somewhat" risk. Only 12% indicated there was little risk. Gartner also predicts that the portion of organizations using cloud services will reach 80% by the end of this year. Patrick Thibodeau covers cloud computing and enterprise applications, outsourcing, government IT policies, data centers and IT workforce issues for Computerworld. Follow Patrick on Twitter at  @DCgov or subscribe to Patrick's RSS feed . His e-mail address is pthibodeau@computerworld.com. See more by Patrick Thibodeau on Computerworld.com.

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Computerworld - More than simply bits and bytes, big data is now a multibillion-dollar business opportunity. Savvy organizations, from retailers to manufacturers, are fast discovering the power of turning consumers' ZIP codes and buying histories into bottom-line-enhancing insights. In fact, the McKinsey Global Institute, the research arm of McKinsey & Co., estimates that big data can increase profits in the retail sector by a staggering 60%. And a recent Boston Consulting Group study reveals that personal data can help companies achieve greater business efficiencies and customize new products. But while harnessing the power of data analytics is clearly a competitive advantage, overzealous data mining can easily backfire. As companies become experts at slicing and dicing data to reveal details as personal as mortgage defaults and heart attack risks, the threat of egregious privacy violations grows. Just ask Kord Davis. A digital strategist and author of Ethics of Big Data: Balancing Risk and Innovation, Davis says, "The values that you infuse into your data-handling practices can have some very real-world consequences." Take Nordstrom, for example. The upscale retailer used sensors from analytics vendor Euclid to cull shopping information from customers' smartphones each time they connected to a store's Wi-Fi service -- a move that drew widespread criticism from privacy advocates. (Nordstrom is no longer using the analytics service.) Hip clothing retailer Urban Outfitters is facing a class-action lawsuit for allegedly violating consumer protection laws by telling shoppers who pay by credit card that they had to provide their ZIP codes -- which is not true -- and then using that information to obtain the shoppers' addresses. Facebook is often at the center of a data privacy controversy, whether it's defending its own enigmatic privacy policies or responding to reports that it gave private user data to the National Security Agency (NSA). And the story of how retail behemoth Target was able to deduce that a teenage shopper was pregnant before her father even knew is the stuff of marketing legend. Online finger-wagging, lawsuits, disgruntled customers -- they're the unfortunate byproducts of what many people perceive to be big data abuses. According to a September 2013 study from data privacy management company Truste, 1 of 3 Internet users say they have stopped using a company's website or have stopped doing business with a company altogether because of privacy concerns. Honesty really is the best policy But IT professionals are discovering that balancing the power of sophisticated algorithms with consumer rights is about more than avoiding bad publicity or lost sales. These days, it pays to be honest -- literally. "Organizations that are transparent about their use of data will be able to use that as a competitive advantage," predicts Davis. "People are starting to become very interested in what's going on out there with their data, so organizations that have practices in place to share that information ethically are going to be in a much better position to be trusted." Yet many CIOs and data scientists are struggling with the question of how to derive real value and actionable insights from confidential data while still respecting consumers' rights and even earning their trust. As the store of data grows, and techniques for manipulating data multiply, some IT professionals are taking matters into their own hands with innovative approaches to preventing data abuse. Retention Science is a perfect example. The Santa Monica, Calif.-based data analytics firm uses predictive algorithms and data such as aggregated household income, purchasing histories and credit scores to help companies predict a customer's purchase probability and build retention-marketing campaigns. In addition to the data supplied by a client, Retention Science also relies on the data it licenses from third-party providers to target the right consumers at the right time. To create targeted campaigns while still respecting consumer privacy, Retention Science has established hard-and-fast rules governing its use of consumer data. For one, Retention Science refuses to share data across clients. For example, if Gap Inc. were a client, and had supplied Retention Science with consumer data, that information would never be shared -- even anonymously -- with other retail clients. In another effort to preserve consumer privacy despite handling terabytes of confidential data, Retention Science insists that all of its data scientists, many of whom are professors and researchers, sign confidentiality agreements. "They are not allowed to share or use data anywhere else or for their own publications," says Retention Science CEO Jerry Jao. In addition to holding its own employees accountable, Retention Science also "works only with businesses that are fully committed to getting their consumers' consent in advance to use their data," says Jao. "We don't want to include information from individuals if they didn't grant access in the first place."

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