Web Page Tools and Browser CGI flash Plugins and Dynamic Controls

Springpad Takes on Evernote with Semantic Technology, Barcode Scanner

Springpad, a rival to Evernote's popular cross-platform note-taking service, has just bumped the competition up a notch with a new release that integrates semantic technology to automatically enhance the notes you save with relevant info. What this means is that if you save a movie, Springpad is smart enough to know it's a movie and it will offer you showtimes. If you save a product, Springpad displays price comparisons and links to shopping sites. Save a recipe and you get menu suggestions. And the list goes on. In other words, Springpad doesn't want to just be a note-taking app, it wants to be a fully realized digital assistant.

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Evernote vs Springpad: the iPhone App

While Evernote is, at this point, still the more robust product when it comes to supported platforms -the company offers Windows, Mac, iPhone, Android and Blackberry versions in addition to a platform-agnostic "web clipper" - Springpad is starting to catch up. Along with the numerous enhancements launching today, the company now offers their own "web clipper" browser bookmarklet (previously in beta) along with an iPhone application for mobile note-taking and reminders.

Like Evernote's iPhone app, Springpad's app (iTunes link) lets you input text or snap a photo, but it also integrates a barcode scanner which takes advantage of the phone's camera in order to record and save a specific product. In addition, the iPhone app lets you browse items by type in case there's something you want to remember, but don't have it right in front of you. This is ideal for adding things like restaurants or movies - the sort of things that come up in conversation ("You really should rent this movie - it's great!") but are later forgotten as we return to our busy lives.

The Smart Web Clipper Knows What You're Bookmarking

Also new today is the web clipper. Now out of beta, this bookmarking tool lets you save anything you see on the Internet to your notes. This can be a product, a restaurant, a book, a movie, a recipe, a wine, a business or just a simple bookmark of a page which you can choose to annotate if desired.

What's different about this tool is the way it uses semantic technology to understand what it is that you're saving and offer relevant links to other information when you view it again in Springpad. For example, after adding a recipe, you'll be provided with "quick links" for actions like "add to shopping list," "search for coupons," "send to me" (an email option) and "print recipe." You can also add your own notes or personal tags (e.g., "March dinner party") if desired.

The App Store: Do Something with your Notes

Springpad users also have an included app store that helps you do things with the items you save. Although not listed among today's updates, this is arguably one of the company's standout features which should appeal both to new users or those switching from Evernote. Instead of just providing a searchable repository of notes and saved items, Springpad lets you add apps that help you actually do something with the items you collected. There's a wine notebook for those who want to record wine reviews and selections, a weekly meal planner for recipe snippers, a movie tracker for film aficionados, a travel checklist for vacation planning and even a blog post planner for scribes like us. And there are dozens more, too. Additionally, later this year, Springpad will launch an API for developers who want to build their own apps for this directory.

More of What's New: Sharing Tools & a Smart Quick-Add Bar

Other new features today include social sharing option which lets you post to Facebook and Twitter, a personalized email address for sending in thoughts, notes, itineraries and confirmation numbers, and a smart "quick-add bar." This bar lets you type in anything into Springpad's web interface to receive a list of suggestions from across a number of web services and the publicly shared notes from other Springpad users. If you find yourself always coming across suggestions from particular users, you may want to "friend" them on Springpad. The friending model used here is one that mimics Twitter's involving one-way connections betweens followers and "followees." This makes Springpad more social than Evernote without the pressures of having to accept or reject requests like on Facebook.

As of now, Springpad has a lot to offer those interested in a web-based and mobile note-taking application. However, you may find Evernote to be a slightly more stable service. We ran into a couple of slowdowns when using Springpad's website today. In addition, the suggestions displayed in the quick-add bar aren't as speedy as your typical search engine's autosuggest feature is. However, if you're looking to do more with your notes than simply collect them, Springpad is shaping up to be a viable alternative to Evernote. It's no longer a mere note-taking app - it's more of a digital assistant...and who couldn't use one of those?

Plastic boat to set sail with environmental message

Thanks Melbourne!!!

We had a great time today with you all - and thanks to the local Oracle folks as well who'd organize everything so well. And the view from the top floor was the best we've ever had in a workshop so far :-) Hope you all start your upgrade to 11g Release 2 pretty soon - and we'll be very happy to get your feedback once you've gone live.

And - as always - please download the most recent version of the slides from here:
http://apex.oracle.com/folien
Use the keyword (Schluesselwort): upgrade112

Anatomy of Innovation

Sustaining innovation while growing is difficult for most companies, but some seem to consistently deliver like Apple, Amazon, and Walmart. Take Amazon for example. After reading several interviews with Jeff Bezos, I took these things away:

• A key difference b/w entrepreneurs and professional managers is that entrepreneurs have a strong vision and won't compromise on it. Jeff is stubborn on strategy, and flexible on tactics. For example, he demands vast selection, low prices, and fast delivery because he knows his customers will always want that. He compromises on how to deliver on those promises over time, but won't bend on the three pillars.
• Entrepreneurs are good at invention because they are willing to fail, think long-term, and can deal with being misunderstood while people catch-up to their thinking. If you're not good at those things, then focus on sustaining innovation, which is making incremental improvements to the business. Any company needs both invention and incremental innovation to be successful.
• Jeff extends his business model in two ways. Amazon Web Services is a good example of thinking forward, leveraging existing skills to do something new and grab new customers. The Kindle is a good example of thinking backward from a customer need, then acquiring the necessary skills to build the product.

While the stock market seems to value his company differently from year to year, Jeff ignores conventional wisdom and continues to invest in innovation, in good times and bad. A similar retailer is Best Buy. They've been innovating on several fronts. You can read about the genesis of Twelpforce in this posting. Not only does Best Buy look to their employees for ideas, they also look to customers via their IdeaX website (which was recently open-sourced, BTW).

Both of these companies now offer wish list functionality that is independent of their e-commerce operations. That tells me it must be a good idea. I've discussed Amazon's Universal Wish List before, and Best Buy now has a similar offering called Giftag. It allows you to capture gift ideas from all over the web, store them in one place, and share them via various mediums.

Amazon and Best Buy are easy examples, but this blog is full of stories about retailers that are innovating either internally or by partnering with interesting solution providers. If you want to be around in ten years, you can't stop innovating.

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Cisco in the Core: Preparing for the Next Generation Internet

Today, Cisco announced the CSR-3 product, a game-changing system to managing the network core. But for CEO John Chambers, the news is about market transition forces and being ready for the next generation of the Internet.

The company invested $1.6 billion research and development in CRS-3 to be ready for the next phase of market growth that merges video, cloud, and mobile trajectories. When asked, he said when his team looks out 3-5 years that network growth may be 300 to 500%. Cisco is investing that another revolution is on the way for consumer access and enterprise productivity.

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Getting a handle on scale

According it's' own estimates the CRS-3 could offer bandwidth for:

• Every man woman and child in China the ability to make a simultaneous video call.
• All movies ever made to be downloaded in 4 minutes (if you had enough disk to store them).
• 1 GB link to every household in San Francisco.

Virtualization and Cloud: Moving from Plumber to Business Architecture

The network has many touch points. Chambers said that this has been moving Cisco from being a technology partner to a trusted business partner for nearly all its enterprise and service provider accounts. He views this as a tipping point in how Cisco engages customers and innovates.

To that end, the major market transformation underway in the cloud, and Cisco has positioned its network, including the CRS-3 to offer tight linkage between data center and virtualized services.

Chambers mentioned "It's all about the cloud, the CRS-3 family talks directly to the UCS in the data center." To that end, it's nice to consider the end-to-end network being prepared for the connections in the data center, especially for physically distributed environments that benefit from fast links between them.

Chambers continued: "We kept our partners VMware and EMC in mind in this solution, to be ready to fulfill our vision in the data center".

Here it is a summary diagram on CRS-3 connects data centers.

Service provider: Critical Network Backbone

Keith Cambron, President and CEO, AT&T labs added. "AT&T was the first user of CRS-1 with it's 40 GB interfaces and have been using them to manage their network growth. We are testing the 100GB interface in the labs and real production environments."

Chambers mentioned that Cisco's goal is to have long-term partners and to never compete with pervice provider. With a company like AT&T, Cisco's product goals are to help be ready for where things are headed, to be there when it's needed. Cisco does not want to be the bottleneck for the Internet.

He continued "Service providers are our partners, if our goal is to bring this technology to everyone in the world, we must work in a tight fashion and follow the market transitions with them"

Q&A

Some of the best parts of this dialog was the question and answer session, a few excerpts below show the depth of thinking Cisco is moving forward with the intelligent network.

Q: How does this impact the mobile data flow?
A: The team was asked about how this innovation impacts consumers and the mobile data flow.

Chambers added, "As a consumer, I want any video any time. To share it on any device in the living room and to bring it with me when I'm on the go. The network has an important role in enabling that future"

Cambron spoke from AT&T's goals with this technology "It provides a single network design for around the globe. Particularly important for important customers who are using private networks and deploying mobile applications. A common network design that is highly video centric is central to our business"

Q: Is Cisco an on open vs. closed company, will core innovations from CSR-3 be open source?
A: Chambers responded "Interoperability is one thing we don't debate in Cisco. We believe we need to bring together all of these protocols into one network. We will of course be an open architecture."

Q: What do you think about Google's service provide announcement?
A: Chambers responded "Google is a great company. We love anyone who adds loads to networks. We think the question here is how do we find the "and" here and find ways to build load and also built great networks with the right partners."

Q: Why is Cisco building in silicon?
A: Chambers was excited to talk about how important silicon was to the company in the products. "Cisco's investments in ASICS has been a key part of many of the core products. The reason that Cisco does our own, is that silicon ties all of the key components together. Cisco had to change the way its working style to have a collaborative team to build this next generation of silicon."

Cisco is in a unique position to see the future of bandwidth better than anyone.

We wonder if Cisco will be rewarded for avoiding future network bottlenecks and propel the network forward with CRS-3?

FourWhere Mashes Up Foursquare and Google Maps

Sooner or later, every popular web service with an API spawns a Google Maps mashup. FourWhere, which launches today, combines data from the increasingly popular location-based social network Foursquare with a Google Maps-based interface. Thanks to this, you can now easily find Foursquare venues around your current location or a location you plan to visit. The site was developed by social media analytics service Sysomos.

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The FourWhere service itself is pretty basic. You simply browse the Google Maps interface and a right-click anywhere on the map will bring up a menu that allows you to either see nearby venues on the map or user comments about these nearby venues. In the future, Sysomos also plans to add additional services based on the company's extensive database of social media sources.

First Step Towards Integrating LBS Analytics Into Sysomos' Main Services

As Sysomos co-founder Nilesh Bansal told us, the company plans to bring location-based sources - including Foursquare - to Heartbeat and MAP, Sysomos' professional social media and analytics and media monitoring applications. For Sysomos, launching a free service is just a first stop towards learning more about this space.

As services like Foursquare, Gowalla and others continue to gain momentum and slowly inch towards the mainstream, social media monitoring services like Sysomos or Radian6 need to give their customers to monitor these communities. If these services go mainstream, a bad comment on Foursquare about a restaurant could easily have the same effect as a negative Twitter message or Yelp review.

Digital Activism: An Interview with Mary Joyce

Digital activism is defined by the newly launched Meta-Activism Project as "the practice of using digital technology for political and social change." One of the leaders in the field of digital activism is Mary Joyce, the founder and executive director of the Meta-Activism Project. Joyce is among the most knowledgeable and experienced digital activists in the world.

As a lead-up to the upcoming event in New York City with Chinese digital activist Ai Weiwei, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and yours truly, I interviewed Mary Joyce about the strategies and success stories of digital activism.

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RWW: You recently moved on from DigiActive in order to create a new organization for digital activism. Can you tell us more about what that will be?

MJ: The new organization is called the Meta-Activism Project (MAP) and its goal is to build the field of digital activism by catalyzing a body of strategic knowledge unique to the field.? Today's digital activist is in an untenable position: caught between the 100-ton rock of pre-digital strategy and the thousand slippery pebbles of highly-contextual tactical knowledge that focuses on a seemingly endless stream of new social media applications.? We want to build a new body of activism strategy that recognizes the radically different communications infrastructure of the digitally networked world.

I am really excited to announce the official launch of the Meta-Activism Project on ReadWriteWeb! The site - http://meta-activism.org - went live at the end of last week and, though it is pretty bare now, we'd like it to be a central location for people interested in building a body of knowledge about the fundamental mechanics of digital activism.

RWW: We've heard a lot about Twitter being used in Iran last year, and the subsequent blocking of social media services like Twitter and Facebook in China. What other countries have social media tools had a big impact in, for digital activism?

MJ: Judging impact is quite tricky in the field of digital activism, as few cases of digital activism are actual successes.? Usually we judge the success of an activism campaign by whether the activists achieved their campaign goal.? However, in almost all of the famous cases of digital activism "success" - the post-election mobilizations in Iran and Moldova in 2009 or the 2008 general strike in Egypt - while activists did successfully mobilize using social media, they did not achieve their campaign goal, be it to overturn an allegedly fraudulent election result or the wide range of social and political reforms demanded by the strike organizers.?

Mary doing digital activism training at Video Camp Goa

The measuring of impact thus becomes extremely subjective.? Digital activism proponents want to count mobilization as success even when the goal is not achieved, while skeptics and pessimists point out that, by traditional measures, most digital activism campaigns are failures.? Though I am certainly a proponent of digital activism, I would actually side with the skeptics here.? In order to really push the field forward, we need to set high standards for digital activism success and not be satisfied with half-measures.?

RWW: Facebook and Twitter are the two most high profile social media tools being used for digital activism. Are there any other Internet tools that have had success, that perhaps people aren't as aware of?

MJ: I could tell you, but that tool would probably become outdated in a few months, or would prove useless out of its original context.? That's the problem with tactical knowledge: tools change, contexts change, and activists are forever playing catch-up.?

Probably the greatest factor which determines the utility of an application to activists is scale and "use neutrality."? Scale means that the tool needs to reach a certain critical mass of users before you will have the network effects that will either make it likely that activists will become aware of it (in the case of something like Tor or proxy servers) or, in the case of social platforms, that enough people will be on the platform to constitute a meaningful audience for an activist message. "Use neutrality" means that it can be easily co opted, that its architecture can facilitate a wide variety of interactions and does not dictate the content of hosted files.? YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Blogger are use neutral, LastFM and Bloglines are not.?

Mary at the Women's Leadership and Technology Conference, Sharjah, UAE

RWW: Over the past year or so, can you describe a couple of success stories for digital activism using web tools.

MJ: Ha! More about measuring success. With the lack of true success, it is no wonder that people are so eager for these stories.? I think the traditionally-defined successes in this field (i.e. when the campaign goal is achieved) are much smaller and less dramatic - NGO meets fundraising goal through online donations (multiple cases), bloggers get a corporation to withdraw an offensive advertisement (e.g. Motrin), a social network lifts a questionable national block (e.g. LinkedIn in Syria).?

In the high-stakes activism campaigns that intend to make dramatic changes at the national and international level, I would say that we have cases of successful mobilization - Iran, Moldova, Egypt - without successful campaigns.

RWW: In terms of China, a lot has been written about the censorship there - both the Great Firewall that blocks certain sites and domains, and the self-censorship that many companies have to do in order to survive. Currently Google is trying to challenge censorship, but we're not sure how successful even a hugely influential company like Google will be. So what, if anything, can ordinary people do in terms of digital activism to support the freeing up of the Chinese Internet??

MJ: I am not an expert on China, but it seems like the best strategy for defeating the Great Firewall is to make it obsolete: create so many ways of getting around it that it no longer successfully censors Chinese Internet users.? This means both creating new circumvention tools - more Psiphons, proxies, Tors, FreeGates - and finding new and innovative ways to get those tools to Chinese users.

RWW: Thanks Mary for this illuminating interview. We at ReadWriteWeb wish you the best with the newly launched Meta-Activism Project!

Police: Couple raised virtual child, ignored real one

ReadWriteStart Weekly Wrapup

Wow! It's March already? 2010 is chugging along and as we head into the second week of March its time to look back on the highlights from this week on ReadWriteStart. In this installment of the Weekly Wrapup we talk about how startups make use of crowdsourcing, how outsiders see startup culture, and we even glean some useful lessons from one man and his dancing. And finally we take a look at South by Southwest for startups as the even draws nearer.

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Are Crowdsourcing and Outsourcing No-Nos For Startups?

Chances are, if you've called customer service to enough companies, you've come across a representative who works for a call-center which has been contracted to handle a comapany's account. Large corporations that don't want to employ their own agents and maintain their own facilities will often outsource customer service to a third party, which at times can mean a company in another part of the world. Bangalore, India was famously portrayed for its role in call-center outsourcing in the Thomas Friedman book The World Is Flat, servicing many large American companies. But tools like outsourcing or crowdsourcing are not always beneficial to every breed of company.

Follow the Hippie: Leadership Lessons Through Dance

When Sigma Partners' Richard Dale posted a video of a random dancing guy to his Venture Cyclist blog I was skeptical. I'd seen the original video sans narration and dismissed it as a strange sociological phenomenon condensed into a quick three minute clip. Nevertheless, when the same video is narrated by MuckWork and CDBaby founder Derek Sivers, it provides some valuable leadership lessons for entrepreneurs.

The Startup Bus: Is This How Outsiders See Startup Culture?

Monday evening I was made aware of a particularly interesting promotion that will be taking place over the course of two days before South by Southwest (SXSW). The event, or tour, is called The Startup Bus, and will challenge 12 participants to create as many tech

Never Mind the Valley: Here's SXSW 2010

For all of our startup friends from coast to coast and around the world, we look forward to seeing you at SXSW Interactive!

More and more, we're seeing good folks creating great products outside the SF Bay Area, and we love highlighting and showcasing vibrant startup communities in unexpected areas. As it turns out, we're not the only ones who have a penchant for non-Valley startups! While you're in Austin, check out these ten panels, parties and events focusing on entrepreneurialism outside Silicon Valley.

Build up multi-role development environment in OWB

Oracle Warehouse Builder enables multiple users working on the same repository during the whole lifecycle of warehouse development. As a well-organized group, these users are usually grouped by different roles: some are in charge of developing ETL metadata; others are responsible for testing these objects (mappings, process flows, etc) and making sure their correctness. In this article I'd like to provide a simple example on building up multi-role development environment in OWB - with OWB Security.

OWB Security enables us to define security on the objects stored in repository (object privileges) and control access to system-level services (system privileges). With OWB Security we are able to define multiple users/roles, and apply a different security strategy to each. I will implement a 2-role environment utilizing OWB Security: DEVELOPER, who develops ETL objects; and QA, who tests those developed objects and verify their correctness. I will also create users as DEVELOPER or QA. Then we will see how we benefit from this 2-roles environment during warehouse development.

1. Set up a new workspace

Let's start by creating a new workspace. A workspace is the place where all ETL objects live. In OWB 11.2, workspaces are stored in a single schema and it's simple to create one - using the Repository Assistant.

Here I create a workspace named "wksp1" with user "admin" as its owner. Understand that the workspace owner is the super user of the workspace, just like root in Linux. We would proceed with subsequent steps using this account.

2. Revoke all privileges from EVERYONE role

As we have the workspace prepared, we are able to log into the Design Client as workspace owner "admin". Before creating any role/user, we should do one thing immediately - revoke all privileges from EVERYONE role.

OWB automatically creates two predefined roles for each workspace - ADMINISTRATOR and EVERYONE. ADMINISTRATOR owns ALL object privileges and system privileges to the workspace. Workspace owner ("admin" in our case) is by default the granted ADMINISTRATOR role. EVERYONE is by default granted to every workspace user and it cannot be revoked for any user.

EVERYONE role has many default system privileges and object privileges. As each OWB user is by default granted with EVERYONE role, they would also inherit privileges from EVERYONE. Since we will create users with security strategy inherit from our own roles, we don't want it affected by role EVERYONE. So we should de-select all privileges from EVERYONE role immediately after we log into the new workspace. The following lists what we should do:

• Edit role EVERYONE to de-select all system privileges from the role.

• Edit user ADMIN to revoke all object privileges from role EVERYONE, so that EVERYONE has no privileges to objects created by user ADMIN. Notice that we would need to repeat this each time one new user is created.

3. Define roles inside workspace

Now we can start defining roles inside the workspace. But I would talk about basic concepts of default object privileges and system privileges before going on.

Default object privileges define the access other users and roles have to objects the selected user creates. There defined following object privileges in OWB: FULL_CONTROL, EDIT, COMPILE and READ. They are additive, which means when you select COMPILE you apply both COMPILE and READ. Notice that FULL_CONTROL means EDIT plus the ability to grant and revoke privilege on an object.

System privileges define user access to workspace-wide service. For example, CREATE_PROJECT allows user to create projects, while CONTROL_CENTER_DEPLOYMENT allows user to deploy to the Control Center and then run those procedure.

For more details on object privileges and system privileges, please refer to OWB Installation and Administration Guide.

In our case we should define two roles: DEVELOPER, who is responsible for developing all ETL objects inside the workspace; and QA, who is responsible for testing ETL objects created by the developer.

As for DEVELOPER, they should be able to create and edit projects and all ETL objects under them, and to deploy and execute them inside the control center. But they do not need to grant and revoke privilege of other users/roles, or view created objects in the browser, etc. So we should grant EDIT as default object privilege, and all system privilege except ACCESS_PUBLICVIEW_BROWSER.

As for QA, they should NOT be able to create/edit ETL objects inside the workspace. But they should be able to compile, deploy and execute the ETL objects in order to test them. So we would grant COMPILE as its default object privilege, and grant all control center system privileges to it.

Here we create new roles DEVELOPER and QA, and grant system privileges to the roles. We will set default object privileges later on when we create users.

4. Create users and grant them with different roles

As roles are defined, we are able to create users and grant proper role to them. Remember that we should also set default object privileges after creating users.

Firstly let's create user DEV1, assign role DEVELOPER to it, and user QA1, with role QA.

Then we grant default object privileges to roles DEVELOPER and QA for users DEV1 and QA1. Pay attention we should also revoke all privileges from role EVERYONE! (See preceding section: Revoke all privileges from EVERYONE role)

Here for DEV1, we allow users with role DEVELOPER to EDIT all objects created by it, and only allow users with role QA to COMPILE.

Settings for user QA1 looks somewhat strange - we revoke all default object privileges from all roles! Remember that QA cannot create/edit ETL objects inside workspace? And it's save to revoke all default object privileges for all roles, as there will be no objects created by QA1!

Now there comes out another question - how we guarantee that QA1 is not allowed to create ANY objects inside workspace? The answer is as follows.

• For objects created by DEV1, user QA1 cannot edit them. And OWB guarantees that the same default privileges pass to children objects. As QA1 cannot edit project created by DEV1, they cannot create any new objects under those projects.
• We revoke system privilege CREATE_PROJECT from role QA (Remember?), and hence QA1 cannot create its own project and all objects under it.
• There is also a predefined project MY_PROJECT, and we can revoke all privileges for role EVERYONE from its Security Panel (By select menu "View-> Security" to open the panel). So now user QA1 cannot create any objects under MY_PROJECT.

5. Verify the final result and enjoy our multi-role workspace

Now we've done with all settings for workspace "wksp1" and can proceed with our warehouse development tasks on it. Let's check it out.

Firstly let's log in the workspace as user DEV1, and we are able to start our ETL development. We can create new project and oracle module, import tables, create mapping, deploy and execute the mapping created.

Then let's log into the workspace with user QA1.

If we double-click to open mapping MAP_SRC_TO_TGT created by user DEV1, it would pop-up warning message showing that we can only open the object in Read-Only mode.

Meanwhile we are able to compile and deploy the same mapping as user QA1. That's what we desired as QA.

And if we try to create a new mapping under same oracle module ORA_TARGET, it would warn us that we are not allowed to do so - also what we wanted in this case!

In summary this article illustrates a simple example on building up a multi-role development environment in OWB. We hope you find it helpful in building up your own environment - possibly with more complex roles and users.

It's Back! Layar's Mobile AR Browser Relaunches On iPhone

In December of last year, augmented reality (AR) browser makers Layar chose to pull its iPhone app from the App Store due to frequent crashes reported by users. They thought it was better for their brand to remove the application than to promote a faulty product. As we've mentioned in the past, Layar had hinted that a revamped iPhone app would be out near the end of February, and earlier this week they released just that.

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With the relaunch of their iPhone app, Layar rejoins acrossair, Wikitude and others now vying for elbow room in the mobile AR space. Layar boasts one of the largest collections of points-of-interest (POI) data sets and now that library is available again on the iPhone. The usual suspects can be found on Layar, such as Flickr photos, Google search, YouTube videos and Wikipedia articles, but one of the more unique layers on the app is Foursquare integration.

Users can use the Layar AR viewfinder to find nearby Foursquare locations and by linking the app to their account can check in without leaving Layar. There is also a feature in each layer to view entries on a map, or in list view. The map is especially handy for Foursquare integration because Foursquare's own app disappointingly doesn't support a map view. An equally interesting layer to investigate is the Recovery.org layer which shows you which U.S. organizations in your area received funding (and the amount they received) from the Recovery Act.

"The new Layar Reality Browser has a re-engineered engine under the hood. This new engine makes the application light, stable and very quick," the company said on its blog. "It is ready to handle all the current layers and it is a good base to realize all of our exciting future plans."

Layar's return to the iPhone platform comes just in time for the company's new layer marketplace which will allow developers to charge users for their content; in other words, an App Store for mobile AR. If Subway wants to create a layer with all of their locations and charge $.99 for it's use, they or any other company will easily be able to do that. One could assume that Layar will make use of Apple's in-app purchase functionality on the iPhone, but it would be sad to see Layar lose a percentage of their cut on the purchases to Apple. If anything, that could raise prices on the layers themselves, but that's a whole other argument.

This could be a huge step forward for the mobile AR space. As these applications become more useful, more refined and more popular, companies will be excited to participate in providing branded content in an AR experience. Expect an announcement from Layar in the next few weeks about the launch of this exciting new platform, but in the meantime, iPhone users (3GS only) can go snag Layar's free app (iTunes link) in the App Store.

Propuesta de Valor de WebCenter Suite 11g

Green living with Ed Begley Jr.

Két hét múlva HOUG

Residents use social media to fight crime in Mexico

20 Reasons Why Oracle is the World’s Largest Open Source Company

Interesting article summarizing the many areas where Oracle has significant engagement with open source. Many of the areas outlined are important for the application grid architecture and approach, including Java, GlassFish, and Oracle VM.

Countdown: Oracle Spatial User Conference

Mark your calendar for the 2010 Oracle Spatial User Conference, April 29 in Phoenix. This annual event, held in tandem with the GITA Geospatial Infrastructure Solutions Conference, continues to grow in popularity. Check out this year's agenda for some great case studies from the US Census Bureau, AngloAshanti Gold, and lots more. Oracle's hosting some cool new technical workshops, too. Register here.

Get more information about Oracle Spatial 11g on oracle.com and OTN.

Forum da Comunidade de Parceiros de Segurança de EMEA - 24-26/Mar/10 (Londres)

We are pleased to invite you to attend the Oracle EMEA Security Partner Community Forum #2, which will take place on the 24^th-26^th of March in London.

This event will provide you with a great opportunity to listen to our Oracle Senior Executives & Specialists strategic keynotes and also to join forces and drive incremental revenue by delivering the solutions that help customers achieve those goals.

Attending this event gives you a unique opportunity to:

• Discover Oracle's strategy and road map for Security Management from Oracle senior executives and leading security figures
• Understand the market drivers and business opportunities
• Hear why Oracle Security and Role Management solutions deliver a powerful proposition for addressing customers' security and compliance challenges
• Find out how we can work together to deliver deal-winning solutions
• Learn more about the new OPN Specialized Program

*On the evening of Thursday 25th March you are invited to attend our dinner, where you will also have the opportunity to informally share and discuss experiences and ideas with senior executives from Oracle along with other partners.

Please see agenda below for more details:

;

Please register to reserve your place!

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LOCATION:
Dexter House Conference Centre,

2 Royal Mint Court, Tower Hill, London, EC3N 4QN
Telephone: +44 20 7977 5300

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Goodbye Singapore :-)

Today is travel day taking the red-eye from Singapore to Melbourne. We've had a bit time to see something of Singapore - very nice city :-) Still some time until the flight will depart but the first time for me in an Airbus A380. This plane site a maximum of 853 people. Roy's comment: "That's why they call it an AirBUS!!". Got a window seat and just realized that a windows seat in the "main" deck is the worst seat you can get because it has limited legspace due to the curve of the cabin. And mine was right in front of a lavatory with limited seat reclinde. Glad that I could change it to an aisle seat Hope we won't feel like cattle on our way to Down Under :-)

7 Precious Snowflakes That Almost Melted Away (Our Favorite Low Profile Stories This Week)

Every one of our blog posts around here is like a delicate, magical snowflake that we nurture lovingly (if quickly) before we push it out the door into the harsh lonely world of the web. Many of them are well received (otherwise we couldn't do this for a living) but sometimes we write something we're really proud of and it just melts into the river of news without being read by as many people as we wished.

Thus we present to you, our staff's hand-picked posts this week that we think you may have missed but would likely enjoy quite a bit:

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Frederic Lardinois has been covering the e-book market closely for months. This week he wrote up...
E-Books: After the Hype and Before the iPad

The e-book hype reached its apex just before the holiday season. Now seems like a good time to take a closer look at the e-book market, especially given that this business is heading for another disruption once Apple's iPad launches.

Richard MacManus has been focusing on an emerging trend called The Internet of Things. Check out this interview he put up at the end of last month:
Everyware: Interview with Adam Greenfield, Part 1

Last week I had the privilege of meeting Adam Greenfield, author of Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing. It's one of my favorite books about the Internet of Things and is still ahead of the curve, even though it was written in 2005 and published in 2006. Greenfield was in my city Wellington for the week, so I sat down with him at a local cafe to get his views on the current state of Internet of Things and where it's headed.

Sarah Perez lives in Florida and she's regularly got super smart content posted before the rest of us have even rolled out of bed in the morning. Her latest sleeper fave?
Beyond Twitter Search: Semantic Analysis of the Real-Time Web

Many of you probably never heard of the Ellerdale project until this week, when Twitter announced it was one of the company's new partners in receiving the "firehose" of Twitter data, a full feed stream of tweets that was, prior to Monday, only available to the major players like Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft.

What Ellerdale is now doing with Twitter's 50 million tweets per day is definitely interesting - the service uses an intelligent data-parsing engine to analyze the context of tweets and the links they contain and combines that with other data sources like RSS feeds and Wikipedia to create a real-time search engine and trends tracker that provides more than just a list of tweets - it provides an understanding of the world's conversations.

What would a new newsman say is news if a new newsman could say news was news? We asked Mike Melanson, our newest addition to the news writing team. He said his favorite under-read post this week was...
Ads with Eyes: Keeping Digital Signage in Check

While geolocation based services have been in the forefront of our minds lately, with websites like PleaseRobMe making us second guess announcing our whereabouts, another industry has been quietly ramping up its data collection practices.

The Center for Democracy & Technology issued a report yesterday addressing the growing "digital signage" industry, suggesting a number of privacy practices it might adopt.

Alex Williams helps make Enterprise tech news interesting and he posted some very important coverage of enterprise innovation this week in....

Will StatusNet Be Another Open-Source Star in the Enterprise?

What a week for StatusNet, the open-source, microblogging service that serves as the foundation for identi.ca, one of the first services to emerge as a focal player in the movement around the real-time Web.

Last week, the company launched StatusNet Enterprise Network, a microblogging service with a support program for the corporate market. Initial customers include Motorola Corporation and Canonical Ltd.

Kaliya Hamlin is a frequent guest contributor, events partner and friend of the family here at ReadWriteWeb. She wrote a great post this week titled...
Bending the Identity Spectrum: Verifiable Anonymity at RSA

Today at the RSA security conference in San Francisco, Microsoft's Corporate VP of Trustworthy Computing, Scott Charney, spoke - opening his talk with this question: "Do you want anonymity or accountability? YES!"

But how can you have both? I created a spectrum of identity to help understand the different forms that exist on the internet. On one end is Anonymous Identity. Basically you use an account or identifier every time go to a Web site - no persistence, no way to connect the search you did last week with the one you did this week.

Finally, my personal pick from my own archive. I've been having a great time writing up narrative tales of leading technology innovators. This is one you may not be familiar with but I think it's really a moving and important story.
What Does it Mean to Make 5 Million Maps? Platial's Legacy

It's not every day that a business shuts down but declares itself a success in helping kick off an unstoppable movement to change the world.

Community mapping service Platial announced this week that it is turning off its servers and asking users to move their content onto the servers of other providers. Just short of 5 years old, Platial raised some venture capital, bought other small companies and made a name for itself, but in the end wasn't able to build a business. Co-founder Di-Ann Eisnor defiantly says that Platial changed the world anyway. Cartography used to be an elite practice of drawing borders around resources and power. Platial helped transform it into an accessible practice for millions of people to share how they have experienced the world around them.

Those are our picks for this week! Come back daily for the best tech blog coverage we can provide.

Snowflake photo CC by Flickr user YellowCloud

links for 2010-03-05

• @fteter: There’s No Pop Left In Big Bang
  "[The] ERP big bang is dead. And the strength of the ERP implementation market has gone with it. It’s not the lousy economy as much as it as that the market as matured – and there ain’t no coming back from that. If you make your living with big bang ERP implementations, stop hanging onto a shriveled market…long past time to find a new gig! Like an old firecracker, there’s no pop left in big bang." Oracle ACE Director Floyd (@fteter) Teter
  (tags: oracle otn oracleace erp entarch)

The Minimalist Approach to Content Governance - Retire Phase

Good news - the Retire Phase is actually more fun than the Manage Phase. During the Retire Phase our content management team should not have to track down content creators if the Request Phase of this process was completed successfully. The ownership meta data, success criteria and time stamp that was applied to the original content submission will help to manage content at the end of the content life cycle. The Retire Phase will provide the opportunity for us to prune irrelevant content items through archiving or deletion, keeping the content system clear of irrelevant information, streamlining users ability to browse and search for content.

1. Act on Metrics Established during the Request Phase
Why - Some information is only relevant for a given amount of time. In Content Platform Migration Strategy - Artifacts vs Perishable Content we examined two content types - Artifacts and Perishable content. Understanding the differences between Artifacts and Perishable content will allow us to explicitly respect their various lifespans. Additionally, some content may have been part of a project that failed to meet the success criteria outlined in the Request Phase. Any content that did not meet the metrics outlined in the Request Phase should be considered for deletion.

How - Thankfully by adhering to to The Minimalist Approach to Content Governance our content should have some level of meta data associated with it that will allow us to quickly sort and understand how to deal with it. Content Management Systems like Oracle's Universal Content Management (UCM) natively allow you to create and save advanced searches that can use content meta data like folders, author, expiration date, security settings and custom meta data to pull back listings of content for examination. Additionally, analytics are available for all content items that allow us to determine if the usage is meeting success criteria that may have been previously outlined during the request phase. The lists that are produced from these approaches can be quickly reviewed for each project with the content owners and based on the nature of the content and success criteria undergo archiving or deletion.

Impact - Retiring content that is no longer relevant will allow end users to have fast and relevant access to information across your enterprise.

As we mentioned in our first post in this series - it is easy to quickly start producing content, but the challenge is ensuring that the environment is easy to navigate and use on the third week and during the third year. The light level of effort that was placed into the Request Phase of this process will set us up to keep content clean and relevant for a long time to come. With an up-to-date content repository users will be able to quickly find access to the information that is critical to their work processes. You might not get a holiday named in your honor managing the content system, but will appreciate their quick access to quality information.

BidModo Takes the Pain Out of B2B Classifieds

If you've ever used Craigslist before (and who hasn't?) then you know it can be amazingly useful for some things and a terrible waste of time for others. If you're a small business looking for an accountant or the best and cheapest way to outsource your HR, for example, then Craigslist might be asking for trouble.

Austin-based startup BidModo is launching a public beta today that hopes to simplify this process for small businesses and provide them with better information to make better decisions, instead of simply relying on word of mouth referrals.

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BidModo is a bit like the offspring of Yelp, the Better Business Bureau and Craigslist, but much shinier. In reality, comparing it to Craigslist is a bit of a disservice, as it offers so much more than text classified ads and email responses.

Instead of just putting an ad out there and getting back simple replies, the responses come from registered companies and are organized on a dashboard. Each company has an on-site profile, containing contact information, a company history, provided services, previous clients, certificates and licenses, and a list of references. Each company also has a rating card, which shows how that business rates with its clients on ten different characteristics, from bid timeliness to industry knowledge.

If you've ever used something like Craigslist, then you realize how hard, or even impossible, getting all of this information would be. You would practically need to hire a private investigator.

For end users - those posting the job - the service is entirely free and provides the user with information about bidders, vendor ratings and a dashboard comparing bids. Vendors only pay for selected leads. A vendor dashboard provides information on ROI, monthly sales data, ratings feedback and industry stats. And part of BidModo's focus is on local business, so service requests only come from the region, which is something we think people, wherever they are, will stand behind.

"Prior to BidModo, I ran a video production company," said founder Toby Schwartz in a press release. "I would regularly hear of companies in town turning to New York or San Francisco to hire for their video needs. And I can't tell you how many times I'd meet people in Austin who would comment that they wished they knew I was here."

Currently, BidiModo is live nationally, with over 80 cities and connections in more than 100 different categories.

Creating a Title In Designer - Assignable Units and Sections

When you are creating a title, follow a consistent format for the organization of your outline. This includes structure as well as naming conventions for Assignable Units (AUs), sections and questions. Defining the structure includes determining the number of outline levels and whether a level will be an AU or a section, as well as where to insert questions, assessments and Knowledge Checks in the outline.

Names should be consistent and appropriate. Although you can name AUs, sections, and questions what ever you want, keep in mind that the A names are what the users see. If the names are not consistent, it is much more difficult for users to find the content they want to view.

AUs provide the primary organizational structure of a title and is required for creating knowledge paths. AUs provide the ability of check-out/check-in, and permit the inclusion of Assessments and Knowledge Checks.

To ensure the most flexibility and best system performance a Title should contain a Title AU and one Sub-AU. By adding the Sub-AU below the Title AU, you can copy or link the Sub-AU contents to other Title AU's. When a Title AU is published it appears in Manager under the Titles heading. When you associate an Title AU with a knowledge path, any Sub-AUs of the Title AU will be available. When creating a Knowledge Path in Manager, you can use as many AUs as are required.

If content is attached to the AU and the AU has AUs or Sections below it, it is recommended that you uncheck the Show Objectives Page on the Advanced tab. Doing so will eliminate a split horizontal screen with objectives in the upper pane and the content below.

A section provides the secondary organizational structure for content in the title. A Section can contain other sections, content, and questions, but cannot contain AUs or assessments. Any outline item that does not require the functionality of an AU should be a section.

If content is attached to the section and the section has sections below it, it us usually recommended to uncheck the Show Objectives Page on the Advanced tab. As with AU's, doing so will eliminate a split horizontal screen with objectives in the upper pane and the content below.