Based on the success of the OAM / WCI integration webinar, the second in our series of Technical Support "brown bag" webinars will be delivered on Tuesday, March 30 at 8AM Pacific Daylight Time.
Please review the details below, if you would like to attend the webinar, please take a moment to send an email to the address provided for registration and you will be enrolled in the meeting.
What are the best practices for installing and configuring Analytics for the WebCenter Interaction (formerly "ALUI") Portal Application?
What are some of the most common failures that occur in this implementation and what can be done to correct these common issues?
What are the most common reasons for the tables to be "empty" when I try to produce utilization reports?
These are just some of the main areas that will be covered in this one hour webinar which will demonstrate the WCI Analytics installation and configuration in action.
Our demonstration will focus on areas where Technical Support sees the largest numbers of customer questions become support incidents in an effort to
help avoid the need to create an incident to get the implementation working properly in the customer environment. We will demonstrate the most recent version of WCI Analytics (10.3.0.1) for this presentation, but naturally specific issues known to specific versions will be covered as well.
Please join us for what we know will be a valuable and relevant learning session.
If you would like to attend this session please send an email to WCIWEBINAR_US@ORACLE.COM indicating your interest, and we will respond to you with a meeting invitation including all of the required access information.
http://blogs.oracle.com/WCI/2010/03/wci_analytics_installation_con.html
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Lately at ReadWriteStart we have talked with a few people working with startups in the co-creation and mass customization industry. Some of these startups use on-demand production techniques to minimize overhead costs and create early cash flow for their businesses. Of course, this business technique is nothing new; larger companies have put this to practice for years, like Dell which custom fits computers to customer specifications.
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More recently, however, startups have begun to jump on the mass customization bandwagon. Cafe Press and Spreadshirt allow customers to custom design t-shirts, and others allow users to make bags, jewelry, perfume, games and even food to order. While these kinds of startups have become more popular in recent years, they have been more successful in nations with smaller markets, such as Germany, and have not taken off in larger markets like America.
For those looking to begin a startup and who want to learn more about mass customization, we've compiled a quick list of a few books to get a crash course on the basics. Bear in mind the following list is in no particular order and is not a ranking, but merely a run-down of some of the more popular books on mass customization and co-creation. If you have any further suggested reading that people interested in this topic might find useful, by all means please let us know in the comments.
Once upon a time, smartphones were mostly about connecting busy professionals with their email accounts while on the go. Now that smartphones have reached the mainstream consumer market, however, people are looking for more than just email access - and a surprisingly large number of smartphones hardly ever leave their owners' homes.
According to a new study from Web analytics firm Compete, 74% of smartphone owners now primarily use their devices for personal reasons, and they often spent the most amount of time with the device at home.
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As we noted last October, when they leave their homes, a lot of consumers with iPhones and phones that use Google's Android operating system are now also using their devices to compare prices and look up reviews while they are out shopping. Compete looked a bit further into this market and found that more than 35% of consumers with smartphones would be interested in receiving coupons on their devices. Another 29% would like to be able to scan barcodes with their phones and get more information about the product as well as access to coupons and other promotions.
Location-Aware Coupons
While it doesn't come as a surprise that a lot of consumers would like to receive coupons, one surprising result from Competes report is that 21% of respondents would like to get SMS alerts with promotions when they walk by a store. Another 15% also would like to receive ads via SMS. Chances are that a lot of marketers would like to offer these kinds of location-aware ads and coupons that catch a consumer while they are already out shopping and close to a retailer. At the same time, though, most modern smartphones don't allow developers to create these kind of applications. The iPhone, for example, doesn't (yet) allow developers to run application in the background, which would be necessary if a developer wanted to create a service that could send out ads via SMS based on your location.
Posted on: March 13, 2010 [Editor: ; This guest article has been contributed by Anne Carlson]
Premier Support for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i ends in November 2010. ; At Oracle OpenWorld last fall, it was standing room only at several EBS upgrade sessions. ; Responding to the increased interest in upgrades, I set to work on a new Release 12.1 version of our popular whitepaper, Best Practices for Adopting E-Business Suite, Release 12 (Note 580299.1).
Here is that new whitepaper, which features the latest Release 12.1 upgrade planning advice from Oracle's Support, Consulting, Development and IT organizations:
The paper is directed at IT professionals who are planning, managing, or running a Release 12.1 upgrade project. ; After briefly reviewing the Release 12.1 value proposition, the paper launches into specific upgrade planning tips to help you:
http://blogs.oracle.com/stevenChan/2010/03/ebs_121_upgrade_whitepaper.html
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Aviary, the online creative platform is a visionary tool. When it launched a few years back, the irony of a Flash based Photoshop competitor was, well, ironic.
With the launch of Aviary in Google's App Marketplace, we can say that the company is close to making lightening strike twice, this time around creating a home for the creative professional and their most important assets.
We want this to work - so we ran it through the paces. Here we got a front-line view on where cloud app meets cloud. We looked forward to counting the pixels that get wasted in the process.
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Aviary and Google will disrupt Microsoft (the default filesystem for the world), and along side it Apple and Abobe, with this simple joining of services that allows users to create, share, publish and present with a simple Web based client and "always available" files.
It feels like the tide has changed and soon it will be hard to imagine an app not defaulting to file storage in the cloud. In a world of cloud-hosted apps, writing to a PC filesystem just seems wrong and goes against the grain of a mobile workforce. The creative professional's cloud is going to be in vivid color and available from the local coffee shop.
As a clear sign of preparation for these applications, Google Docs recently started accepting files of any type.
If you're a user, you'll likely see this headline at the top of your account, like we do.
Google Supports a Virtual File System for Business Documents
For images, this is useful for people who use Google's presentation software. Today, all of your other files are online. Now you can have your images close at hand, so it's easy to use all files whene you need them, as shown here in this piece by Aviary and Google.
In this Google Docs upload feature demonstration, we see that Google interprets certain filetypes and offers a way to convert into a native Google file format upon uploading. When this happens with an Office-based document, for example an .docx file, Google will process it as needed to be usable in the Google Docs document editor.
Aviary is part of Google Apps Marketplace and part of the Google Docs application.
Coming from the Aviary side of the world, we see this as a natural extension to the work the company has done in joining accounts with Flickr, Facebook, and others. Images need editing. And to be shared many times over. Aviary makes it easy to get started with Google using a third-party login capability to join accounts with Google.
When this sharing hits productivity apps like presentations., that's where we start to see an interesting landscape emerging. Google is playing the role as a peer (e.g. share images with multiple editors) and also is moving towards the "cloud of choice" for consumer document management.
Below is a Google Apps-powered Google Docs listing after Aviary has been installed. Aviary is now available as an editor, a library has been created for Aviary documents, and when saving a document in a properly configured Aviary-Google account, a list of Aviary docs will show up in the main listing.
A page opens with a view of the image and the option open the image in Aviary.
Our ninja file is edited and saved...
Mime Type 2.0
In practice, all of this marketplace integration is harder than it might first look.
This is a a few of the features and or landscape issues that make this experience "not quite" the same as saving a file from Photoshop to Windows.
Multiple entry points can be confusing to newcomers. We found that by going to Aviary.com and launching versus launching from Google docs that there were subtle features and connections that worked differently (in our account, it offered different views of the total image library). Also, which repository was setup as the default. In a way, both models need to be supported, but even subtle differences can make the overall solution more error-prone.
What are the the default for saving new file. We notice this especially when moving files from Google and expecting to see them in Aviary. Like setting up a specific application to open for certain files, in the case that there are dual masters (or apps), this becomes much more difficult to edit on. We would like (at least) Google to recognize more about the file post-Aviary and launch it when I bring in new images (or at least offer to). This begs the interesting question of whether a person's files should have a default home.
On the reverse side, "Save As" to your Google Docs from Aviary may need fine tuning. This is a software and workflow challenge that didn't exist when there was an implied "master" of all the files. We see this challenge existing also with the desktop experiences and how the apps react to changes from these repositories. In a way, if Google Apps was master for all the docs, it would move the experience forward. But, Windows, Photoshop, and even Aviary, may feel different.
Does the likelihood of failure increase due to interdependencies as well as other factors that make the services less predictable? After a brief error or two in getting Aviary to Save to Google rather than Save to Aviary, a few things of note. 1: Helping the user know what is happening is going to be important, especially if two (or more) ways are supported. 2: This needs to be as easy as finding "My Documents" on the PC, or adoption will suffer.
This is Aviary in "Google mode" and trying to save the document to Google Docs account, but not completing the job. ( We're not saying it doesn't work, just that it doesn't work sometimes.)
Creative professionals may not use Aviary as their default tool... yet. And Google Docs may not be as fast or be as reliable as a PC. But for those of us who do light image edits and are Google Doc users, this is a major leap forward.
We see this as an unlocking of the desktop (both machine and software) and love the promise of creating anywhere, storing anywhere, getting paid.
As this starts to work, it's clear that Google, Aviary, and cloud applications will continue to encroach in the workflow of things to come.
Where's your limit to what you do with Aviary and Google Apps in a Google Cloud?
It's SXSW weekend so you may be pretty burnt out on conferences - or just sick and tired of hearing about them - but if you're in New York City this week, don't miss what's sure to be a profound and fascinating conversation between Chinese digital activist and artist Ai Weiwei, Twitter co-founder and chairman Jack Dorsey, and ReadWriteWeb's Richard MacManus.
How do you like your events calendar? As a world map? As an iCal (and Google Calendar-importable) file? You can also import individual events using the link beside each entry. Know of something cool taking place that should appear here? Let us know in the comments below or contact us.
An incubator of cutting-edge technologies, the SXSW Interactive Festival offers five days of captivating keynote presentations, panel sessions, book readings, Salons and Core Conversations that provide hands-on training as well as big-picture analysis. In addition to the business opportunities at the Trade Show and Exhibition and the hands-on gaming fun at the ScreenBurn Arcade, SXSW Interactive provides an array of exciting evening events including the SXSW Web Awards Ceremony. More to the point, coming to SXSW Interactive is a great way to recharge your creativity.
The variety of programming offered at SXSW Interactive means that the event focuses as much on creativity as it does on technology. This focus is augmented by SXSW Film, which runs concurrently with SXSW Interactive and SXSW Music. Moreover, a full slate of parties and receptions during the evening hours help to accelerate the social aspect of the event.
For more information, visit sxsw.com, or for a handy survival guide click here.
On March 15, at the prestigious Paley Center in New York City, a conversation will take place between Chinese digital activist and artist Ai Weiwei, Twitter co-founder and chairman Jack Dorsey, and ReadWriteWeb's Richard MacManus, ReadWriteWeb founder and editor in chief. The moderator will be Orville Schell, the director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York.
The topic of the event is the emergence of digital activism for fostering positive social change. The onsite event is invitation only, but it will be live streamed exclusively on ReadWriteWeb on Monday, March 15, at 6:30 PM EST (-5 GMT), from the Paley Center for Media, New York City.
The 2nd Annual Social Networking World Forum takes place at the Olympia Conference Centre in London. The two-day event features four dedicated conference streams:
Social Networking World Forum
Enterprise social media
Social TV World Forum
Mobile Social Networking Forum
The event features key speakers from global brands, organizations, social networking publishers and developers, pioneering social media leaders, top agencies, content producers, and more.
Go beyond search at Search Engine Strategies New York. Learn the newest trends, strategic action plans, and technology that industry leaders are employing today. Our experts will trace the natural evolution of search exploring topics such as: digital asset optimization, mobile application development, transition from search to discovery and more.Book your pass today. Enter RWW15 to save 15% off the registration. Sessions include:
After a long winter's hiatus, S.F. Beta is back, for its forth year straight! Join hundreds of founders, investors, developers, and technologists for a lively evening of demos, drinks, conversation, and new connections. Early bird tickets are available, and they're going fast. Register now for discounted admission. As always, we feature startup demos all night. This time around, the theme is Search & Discovery. If you're building the next Google (or the next Google acquisition), we want you here! Email cperry@sfbeta.com for more info.
The first Freemium Summit is a one day event focused on exploring what it takes to succeed under the freemium business model. Across all segments of the media landscape, entrepreneurs and executives are pioneering models that combine a free offering with a premium, paid offering. This hybrid business model is one of the most exciting areas of business model innovation impacting the world of media and the Freemium Summit will explore the most important topics on the minds of leading practitioners.
Confirmed Speakers: Toni Schneider, Automattic (WordPress); Matt Brezina, Xobni; Aaron Levie, Box.net; Phil Libin, Evernote; Tom Conrad, Pandora; Drew Houston, Dropbox; Ranjith Kumaran, YouSendIt; Ben Chestnut, Mailchimp; Lance Walley, Chargify; Isaac Hall, Recurly; and Lincoln Murphy, Sixteen Ventures.
The social media conference for marketers, Social Fresh is not about concept, but focused purely on case studies from the front lines. Learn what social media can really do for business bottom lines. Over the course of the day, you'll hear from 35 speakers from companies like Intel, Ford, Comcast, Nike and many more, as well as keynote Peter Shankman. Register now and use coupon code RWW15 for 15% off.
4 April 2010: Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania
TEDx CMU is an independently organized TEDx event that will be held on April 4th, 2010 at Carnegie Mellon University and will feature a full day of talks by prominent speakers as well as recorded videos from past TEDTalks. Confirmed speakers include Jonathan Fields (author, blogger and entrepreneur), Stacey Monk (founder of Epic Change, a startup nonprofit), Chase Jarvis (photographer, director and social artist) and Nathan Martin (CEO of Deeplocal, an innovation studio in Pittsburgh).
The theme of the event is "Fearless", and we are inviting speakers from cross-disciplinary backgrounds to talk about their experiences, and tell us a little about what inspires them to be fearless in the pursuit of goals. We hope to spark discussions and foster connections between participants, encouraging aspiring individuals to follow their dreams and make a difference. The event is free to attend, and the application deadline is March 21, 2010.
For more information about the event, visit tedxcmu.com or email info@tedxcmu.com. You can also find TEDx CMU on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.
ConnectNow brings together international specialists and thought leaders in social media, emerging technologies and their intersection with business. Learn how the realtime web, location based services, augmented reality, ubiquitous computing and personalised services are changing marketing and communications. Understand the importance of trust in relationship marketing and what is "social currency". For more info email info@connectnow.net.au.
PubCon, the premier search and social media conference, features the industry's biggest names and key players shaping the future of the Web. PubCon South will include cutting-edge panel sessions exploring tracks dedicated to search, social media and affiliate marketing, an intensive professional search and social media training program, and some of the world's top keynote speakers. PubCon South at Dallas will also hold a one-day, two-track slate of intensive educational training programs led by some of the industry's most respected search professionals. The event takes place at the Richardson Conference and Civic Center. Register here.
Under the Radar: Cloud is must-attend event for dealmakers and heads of IT from large enterprises, SMBs, service providers, carriers and media companies who are responsible for helping their companies leverage new technology and innovation in the fast-evolving IT ecosystem. Join us for the 15th Under the Radar conference, featuring a hand-picked selection of the world's most innovative cloud startups among 350 top tech, media, telcom and finance executives. For ticket and more information, visit http://undertheradarblog.com.
FutureMidwest is the region's largest technology and knowledge conference. Founded by Adrian Pittman, Jordan Wolfe and Zach Lipson, FutureMidwest is the fusion of two successful conferences held in Michigan in 2009 - the Module Midwest Digital Conference and TechNow.
Both conferences highlighted how technology and digital tools have dramatically changed the way we do business and the effect this transition has had on companies. FutureMidwest kicks things up a notch with presentations, group breakout sessions, relationship-building opportunities and influencers who are taking action to redefine business in the digital age. Register here.
The social media conference for marketers, Social Fresh is not about concept, but focused purely on case studies from the front lines. Learn what social media can really do for business bottom lines. Over the course of the day you'll hear from 35 speakers from companies like Ford, Best Buy, Scottrade, Hardees, CMT and many more. Register now and use coupon code RWW15 for 15% off.
DrupalCon is the premier conference focused on Drupal, the award-winning open source content management framework that is galvanizing social publishing and web development today. For a registration fee of $195, attendees get three full days of sessions led by the best and brightest Drupal experts.
Drupal has been downloaded over 2 million times since its inception, and project growth has doubled annually for several years. Drupal is used to deliver a wide variety of application types including blogs, wikis, community networks, digital media portals, and web content publishing and management.
The Future of Money & Technology Summit will bring together the best and brightest thinkers around money, including visionaries, entrepreneurial business people, developers, press, investors, authors, solution/service providers, and organizations who work where cash and commerce collide. We meet to discuss the evolving ecosystem around money in a proactive, conducive to dealmaking environment. Featured speakers include Jolie O'Dell from ReadWriteWeb, as well as representatives from Wells Fargo Bank, Kiva, SharesPost, Jambool, Founders Fund, Outright.com, SoftTech VC, and many more.
Use discount code "rww" to get 10% off registration.
The ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit 2010 will be an exploration of the latest Mobile development trends - both the technology and the emerging business applications. Get ready to explore, think and create the future of Mobile with the brightest in the industry, your peers! As in our last Summit, The Real-Time Web, the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit is an unconference.
An unconference is a participant driven conference where the agenda is created on the day, in real-time and discussions are lead by conference participants. Read about the history of unconferences.
We will have two main tracks at this Summit - Development and Business - so the Summit will be of interest to managers, marketers, developers, innovators, entrepreneurs and thought leaders alike. Here's a sample of some of the topics we'll explore in both of these tracks.
FinovateSpring 2010 will again showcase the most cutting-edge financial and banking technology innovations to Silicon Valley and the world. With Finovate's signature mix of short, fast-paced onstage demos (no slides are allowed) from handpicked companies and intimate networking time with their executives, this conference packs a ton of unique value into a single day.
Come see the cutting edge of banking and financial technology and network with hundreds of the leading financial executives, venture capitalists, press, industry analysts, bloggers and fintech entrepreneurs. Early bird registration rates are available.
The SF MusicTech Summit will bring together 700-plus visionaries in the music/technology space - the best and brightest entrepreneurs, developers, investors, service providers, journalists, musicians and organizations who work with them at the convergence of culture and commerce. We meet to discuss the evolving music, business and technology ecosystem in a proactive, conducive-to-dealmaking environment. Enter the discount code "rww" to get 10% off.
Glue is the only conference devoted solely to exploring the problem-sets facing architects, developers and IT professionals in a "post-cloud" world. Glue focuses on the APIs and protocols (Twitter, Facebook, Websockets, PubSubHubBub, XMPP), formats and standards (RDF/Linked Data, JSON, Microformats, HTML5), platforms and providers (Amazon, Rackspace, Google App Engine, Salesforce.com, Eucalyptus), Identity Protocols (OAuth/WRAP, SAML, OpenID, SPML) emerging NoSQL data models (Cassandra, CouchDB, MongoDB, Riak, HBase), and other mechanisms that are building the post-cloud world.
ReadWriteCloud will be blogging live from Gluecon and CloudCamp, and ReadWriteWeb's Alex Williams will be moderating the "Managing Complexity in the Cloud" session. Please join us May 25-27 in Denver, Colorado. ReadWriteWeb readers can receive 10% off of registration by using the code "RWW12".
The Corporate Social Media Summit is a two day conference focused exclusively on how big businesses can take advantage of social media to enhance their marketing/comms strategy. Featuring:
Practical and relevant insights from peers who have already used social media successfully
20-plus corporate speakers (including PepsiCo, Whole Foods, Dell, McDonald's, General Motors, Citi, Johnson & Johnson),
Best practice, benchmarks and practical next steps you can use to take advantage of social media in your business
A tightly-focused agenda with 14 in-depth, practical workshops giving you knowledge on only the most critical business issues surrounding corporate use of social media
Save $400 if you quote RWW400 when booking. Book here.
The 2nd annual Cloud Computing World Forum is the perfect event to learn and discuss the development, integration, adoption and future of cloud computing and SaaS. Building on the success of the 2009 show, this two day conference and free-to-attend exhibition will provide a focused platform for the global cloud and SaaS industry. Show highlights include:
Co-located with CloudCamp London
Co-located with Green IT conference
Free-to-attend exhibition with seminar and scenario theatre
FinovateFall will return to Manhattan on Tuesday, October 5 to showcase dozens of the biggest and most innovative new ideas in financial and banking technology from established leaders and hot young companies. The Fall event is the original and largest Finovate and features a single day packed with our special blend of short, fast-paced onstage demos (no slides are allowed) and intimate networking time with top executives from the innovative demoing companies.
FinovateFall is a unique chance to see the future of finance and banking before your competition and find the edge you need in today's market. Early bird registration rates are available.
Download this entire events calendar in iCal format.
When MySpace announced earlier this week that they had now established themselves as the number one social networking application on the Android platform and the number three download overall, needless to say, we were a bit shocked. After all, (with no offense to MySpace intended), there are more Facebook users than MySpace users in the world. It's just a simple fact.
So how did this happen? Is the MySpace Android app that much better than Facebook's? Are Android users more interested in MySpace for some reason? Are they younger than other mobile users and therefore choosing MySpace over Facebook?
As it turns out, the truth is that measuring the mobile downloads of official applications may not be mean anything when it comes to measuring the success of social networking sites.
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After scratching our heads for a good ten minutes, we decided to reach out to a mobile expert for help. Peter Farago of mobile analytics firm Flurry had a few ideas, all of which seem more than plausible.
Theory #1: Third-Party Apps
On the Android platform, there are over ten third-party applications which allow social networking users access to Facebook outside of the Facebook official app or mobile website. This means that thousands upon thousands of Facebook users are downloading other Facebook applications which are not being counted towards the official app's total.
Meanwhile, there is only one third-party MySpace application, so most of the downloads from MySpace users are going to the official app.
Theory #2: Facebook Pre-Installs
The Facebook application is pre-installed on the Droid, the most popular Android handset. It's highly likely that those pre-installed copies of the Facebook app are not being counted as downloads on the Android marketplace.
In addition, the Facebook application is included on the Android 2.0 mobile platform, alongside other popular apps like Amazon and Pandora. So again, that's another potential area where Facebook application downloads are not being counted.
Theory #3: Mobile Web Use
Another theory, (this one ours not Farago's), is that some Facebook and MySpace users don't access the sites via apps - they do so via the customized mobile websites. Facebook, for example, has two mobile alternatives to the official app - m.facebook.com and touch.facebook.com. For personal reasons, some Android owners may actually prefer accessing Facebook via these sites instead of by way of the app itself - an app which, unlike its iPhone counterpart, points to the mobile website when you interact with some of its functions, a regular complaint among Android users. In fact, many users actually consider the MySpace app to be the more polished of the two.
Theory #4: All of the Above
MySpace claims that its popularity on the Android is due to "deep integration with the Android platform" and, in their press release, the company mentions the multiple MySpace homescreen widgets for things like voice-enabled updates and photo uploads. The release also notes that the MySpace user base is highly engaged, with 70% of the mobile app users checking in three or more times per day.
However, these are probably not the major reasons contributing to the app's popularity on the charts, where it now ranks #3 overall. It's more likely that the combination of factors described above have more to do with where MySpace stands today on Android. Mystery solved.
Over the past couple days, we've been able to put together a decent picture and identify some knowledge gaps and points of confusion for many would-be social media experts. But first, let's address why some of the RWW staff - and many of our readers, some of whom must hire social media experts - feel it's important for even the most marketing-oriented of consultants to have a rudimentary understanding of the workings of the Web, including its ecosystem of companies and applications.
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You will always need to know more about the Web.
Konqueror is a popular browser among Linux users. The browser Mozilla hasn't been supported since 2006, having been replaced by Firefox and, to a lesser extent SeaMonkey, both products of the Mozilla Foundation.
The Web does a lot more and a lot less than the average bear would think.
For the most part, we humans have a hard time admitting that we're "average bears," though. Before you earn the moniker of "guru" or "expert" or even "professional/consultant," you need to be far above average in your knowledge of the Web, not just how to get a few thousand Twitter followers or how to increase sales by X percent through Facebook promotions. Those things can come down to common sense or secondhand advice from true pioneers in social media.
Generally speaking, a social media expert will have been around the block long enough to know a CMS from a CPU, to know a bit about servers and DDoS attacks, to know what kinds of operating systems and browsers and even hardware the tech elite prefer to use (or debate over). And the good ones will remain humble enough to keep learning and will always admit there's more to know. Some of the wisest social media advisors I've know will ask to not be called experts, in fact, for how can any one person truly be an expert on something as vast as the Internet?
Flip Side of the Coin: Imagine someone telling you he was a broadcast media expert. That includes television - national, local, cable, satellite, you name it - and all kinds of AM/FM and satellite radio. It might also include pre-show advertisements in movie theaters. That also includes media spend, account management and metrics for all kinds of ads, from branding to direct response. Essentially, the person is claiming to be a one-man ad agency - an impossible claim at best and a fraudulent one at worst.
How to Fill the Knowledge Gap: Start listening to people who disagree with you. Search the farthest corners of the Web for new people and new ideas. Stop hanging out in echo chambers and start telling yourself every day, "I know that I know nothing." That phrase seems to have done Socrates some good; chances are it could help you, too.
You need to communicate with developers.
Haskell is a rare and complicated programming language. .NET sounds more familiar, but it's a framework, not a language.
In almost every social media project that doesn't involve something as simple as setting up a Twitter account, you'll have to work with and rely on the expertise of developers.
You might not want to learn a programming language yourself - it can take a lot of time, which is a precious commodity. But if you don't know the basics of what programming languages can and cannot do, as well as what languages your developer colleagues use, you'll end up frustrated and inefficient. And the aforementioned developer colleagues might feel disrespected as well; being asked to deliver fantastical products or results from someone with no understanding of your work isn't a fun experience.
Flip Side of the Coin: Imagine a CTO telling you, an interactive marketer, to run a direct mail campaign and get 500,000 new registrations. It could be done, perhaps, but it's not efficient or a good way to use your skills. Even if he told you he wanted 500,000 new signups, is that a realistic goal? Is it based on current adoption trends? Does this guy have any idea what he's asking for?
How to Fill the Knowledge Gap: Read up on the basics of programming languages; spend a few hours here and there on Wikipedia and O'Reilly books. Then, ask questions of developers you trust. Don't be afraid to "sounds dumb" or be inquisitive.
You need to rely on hard data and facts, not gut feelings.
It may seem to be the ad-free fluffy bunny of the social networking world, but Twitter turned a profit through search deals in 2009.
On occasion, we social media folks make intuitive choices that turn out to be dead wrong. While there's a lot to be said for making bold choices for your users and clients, there's much more value in making solid choices based on observed trends, analyzed data and tested outcomes. In fact, it's plain irresponsible to make recommendations to clients based on feelings rather than facts.
Always challenge yourself to make sure your opinions and advice line up with facts, not the other way around. As a wise man once wrote, "You don't use science to prove that you're right, you use science to become right."
Flip Side of the Coin: Rather than looking at marketing budgets or user traffic, your CEO tells you to spend $1 million on an AdWords campaign because "Google and advertising are where's the money's at online, right?" It seems like a ridiculous gamble with no logical reason or rhyme.
How to Fill the Knowledge Gap: Test everything you might suggest. Test it over a reasonable period of time, making sure to take peak times into account, and get a reasonable data sample. Learn about A/B and multivariate testing, website analytics, SEO and all the dirty details of traffic and user responses. Most of all, never, ever assume.
You need to know about the finance and investment market to identify competitors, potential partners and pitching opportunities.
Friends and family (and fools) will always be the first to invest in any startup.
Especially if you're communicating with or about startups, you need to understand a little bit about venture capital, if for no other reason than to understand an app or company's place in the market. VCs can sometimes be good barometers of a startup's health or the likelyhood of future success.
Likewise, with regard to our survey question about profitable social media apps and companies, knowing about various stages of development can help you know when to suggest key partnerships. Collaboration between two entities can give a boost to both.
As a strategist, a consultant or any kind of expert, you need to be able to spot a sure bet just as quickly as a sinking ship. And in the startup-filled world of social media, few are better at this all-important task than those with an understanding of tech investment.
Flip Side of the Coin: Your CEO informs you that the company is about to start a marketing campaign on a website that, through your social and industry connections, you know is about to go out of business. In fact, every website of its kind if flailing; you're surprised he wasn't aware of the situation.
How to Fill the Knowledge Gap: Read ReadWriteStart, of course! We recommend (and frequently interview and comment on) various brilliant VCs, angels and experienced entrepreneurs on this channel.
We hope you've found this information entertaining and informative. The remaining questions on the poll were, by and large, answered correctly. There still seems to be some confusion on the definition of the word "hacker," but I'm convinced that one will simply take more soapboxing on my part.
What words of advice do you have to share with your less technical colleagues in social media? How can we all improve our game online while making the Internet a better, smarter place? Let us know in the comments.
We had a great day with +50 customers in Perth - so thanks to everybody! We hope you'd enjoy the day as well. And thanks to Tim for the excellent organization!!! And - again as always - please download the most recent version of the slides (and we've changed a few of them during the Perth workshop) from here: http://apex.oracle.com/folien
Use the keyword (Schluesselwort): upgrade112
Posted on: March 12, 2010 if you want to use antialiased fonts you can do it by hand , you should edit /etc/fonts/fonts.conf file, and add the following:
In terminal:
sudo gedit /etc/fonts/fonts.conf
and add this:
http://ubuntudoitall.blogspot.com/2009/06/firefox-with-antialiasing-part-2.html
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Today, the California Health and Human Services convened a summit with an expected three hundred people in the interest of a state HIE (Health Information Exchange). This project has been tasked by volunteers and state groups and led by Jonah Frolich, deputy secretary of California Health and Human Services. The teams formed have met a series of hurdles already in preparation for the next big phase of executing the next generation system and raising an initial seed of $38.8m to move the effort forward.
At stake is at least $3 billion by connecting to these services for doctors and hospitals that qualify by using the HIE as built. This means that doctors can bill for more Medi-Cal and Medicare payments that are expected to be available in coming years from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds while using HIE services. Additionally, the services being created will need to support applications that engage consumers as they play a role.
We see the opportunity for California's investment to touch many interesting areas of cloud computing, identity management, and mobile - right as it is getting interesting.
Sponsor
Last week, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and California Health and Human Services Agency Secretary Kim Belshé named a new nonprofit entity called Cal eConnect to oversee the development of Health Information Exchange services. One of the first tasks at hand is to finish the CA HIE Operational plan and to finalize details in budget, technical, and engagement plans to execute with the recent first grant by ONC for $38.8m.
Today's meeting and web conference is part of a process kicked off last July and offers monthly reports towards a state plan to direct funding for building a next generation model of HIE.
Leading up to this point, the CHHS efforts were led by Jonah Frohlich and comprised of many organizations and individuals contributing time to the effort to get the funding for the state. In addition to work group updates, the meeting included major parts of the organizations impacted the most, including quick fire discussion with CalPSAB's Bobbie Holm, Medi-Cal's Kim Ortiz, and for Public Health, Linette Scott.
Internet of Services, or, a Big Private Pub/Sub/Hub/Sub Cloud?
Shown here is the different core services that exist and how they provide links through HIE secure practices. And, how secondary services are build from there. This framework is focused on simplifying the overlay with existing services in a complex environment.
Here are some of the goals for the technical architecture:
Provide a trust infrastructure for the electronic exchange of health information across organizations that have no pre-existing data-sharing arrangements
Provide a directory infrastructure for providers to locate each other and to determine the format(s) that they mutually support for health information exchanges
Assist organizations to match exchanged health information to the correct patient records
Determining what to offer and model the core services was a major part of the discussions in the technical work group.
One challenge the group faces in how to straddle this difficult issue is that identity and assertions for a person to live at the edge today, they are embedded in each application today in the form of passwords or tokens. Therefore, the CA HIE wants to be pragmatic in approach and have the first phases of architecture mirror the situation today.
At the same time, it was noted in the meeting today that the absence of a citizen registry is absent from the core services may be fatal. In this model, authorization, access, and consent is dealt with in the architectures as being "best effort" to integrate the patient data, but not "guaranteed". This is due to the practical challenge that all the endpoints aren't perfectly aligned in data, nor practices. And, that the HIE itself isn't a panacea for identity on the Internet.
On high level, the question becomes: Is the HIE a services where citizens are registered "agents" and have a requirement to be joined directly to each message about themselves, or is there information about people in the system being exchanged is by agents? We think the more people are engaged the better and solving for this will lead to a citizen registry concept in the future.
Here we show the planned services, networks, registries and directories architecture view.
A New Network Forms Around Providers and Documents
The CA HIE project aligns with the work at the federal level with NHIN.
We got a briefing from Brian Behlendorf on the recent work from the NHIN Connect project. He gave some context of the base thinking going into the models.
The NHIN standards are, in a way, DNS (who has records for this patient? etc) and HTTP (transfer this data, securely) for health IT. Building as much as possible upon pre-existing components (SOAP standards, HL7, etc), using a document-exchange-oriented paradigm that matches the use cases closely. It encourages the use of information models for health IT, to make the data as computable as possible, but it does not require it. It is being used for needs as diverse as patient record search, public health reporting, and disability determinations. The trust model is the least well developed portion of it - every node on the network signs an agreement called the DURSA that sets a high bar for patient privacy, consent, auditing, and such - but it is agnostic to who a node is.
Shown here CA HIE is both a supporter of NHIN and also has several suggestions for modifying the scope to include a tighter link to Provider registries and communication practices, for the practical reasons of insuring end-to-end provider to provider communications.
This seems like a good balance where the state is more focused on the entities doing business and should have a tighter link with these entities and the business they conduct on HIE.
People: The Hardest Service
While moving forward with HIE for California, an important question is being raised. Do clouds consist information about citizens, or do they contain user identity services that join and connect individuals?
This is something that is somewhat hard to grasp, but we feel it will play a role in how the experience of HIE is for the person who is coming into the system. We'd like to see third party authorizations and trusted identity federation for citizens evolve and HIE seems liek the right backdrop to get it done. As reported earlier, third party logon can work, with the right incentives.
Jokingly, we ask ourselves will HIE work with RSS for all my provider feeds.
And with a more critical eye, we ask the same question. Shouldn't all the services of HIE be using the best sharing technologies and patterns already in use? If I have a health concern, it seems that it should be as easy as "following" "Mike's ashtma" to get every update from providers in a real time feed. It should be mash it up with other personal data, devices, and social forces.
We hope that the architecture gives extra consideration to the person, so they can do just as much, if not more, "mashing" of their own data streams.
We Worked Extra Hard to Weave in Lady Gaga
Celebrities, even ones not from California, are people with trials and tribulations too. In fact, in her recent video released today, "Telephone", she addresses the access and issue of too much interruption and the benefits of both glamor and lifestyle.
She was spotted in California recently. The pictures of her hanging out at a SoCal mall reminded us that she is very much human.
Considering Gaga, we have added a few practical questions that the health cloud will need to manage as final food for thought.
Will it work for traveling citizens and non-citizens alike that may have different records, languages, and locations.
How will it enable care providers who manage children or elderly and will sign in and out of systems to pick up medications, for example.
Does it work with mobile communications and social networks?
Can it really offer true privacy for superstars, and everyday citizens with their health information? Is this even the right question?
We bet Jonah, the work groups, and the new team at Cal eConnect will be working hard to find answers.
Those answers may us to a next evolution. A health cloud - that powers the Internet at large.
Why does Health Information Exchange seem harder than colonizing Mars?
Right after Oracle OpenWorld 2009 we went right into planning for our 2010 World Tour. An ambitious 90+ city tour visiting cities on every continent.
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The Oracle Applications Strategy Update Tour ;started January 19th and is ;in full swing right now. ;We've put some heavy hitters on the road. If you didn't get a chance to see Steve Miranda, Senior Vice President of Oracle Application Development in Tokyo, Anthony Lye, Senior Vice President of Oracle CRM Development in New Delhi or Sonny Singh, Senior Vice President of Oracle Industries Business Unit in Stockholm don't worry...we're not done yet.
The theme, Smart Strategies: Your Roadmap to the Future is a nod to the fact that everyone needs to be smart about what's going on in their business and industry right now. But just as important---how to make sure that you're on the course to ;where you need to be down the road. Get the big picture and key trends in "The New Normal" of today's business climate and drill down and find out about the latest and greatest innovations in Oracle Applications.
Plancast, the plan-sharing startup with big-name angel investors and "future as platform" aspirations, has just had its iPhone app accepted into the iTunes store. The app was built by contracted star developer Leah Culver. It's simple, functional, attractive and useful. It's going to be very good for SXSW and probably beyond, if the service continues to stick with users as it has so far.
See also:Hot Potato also has a new iPhone app just released today (iTunes link) which may come in handy for discussing the events that you attend via Plancast and otherwise.
That didn't take long. Leave it to marketers to find a way to use any innovative new web service to promote their own ends. The latest example? A Chatroulette contest launched by international clothing brand French Connection. According to contest rules, participants are asked if they can "conquer the sinister world of Chatroulette" by charming a member of the opposite sex. (Initially, the contest was for men only, but due to protests, the rules were adjusted to permit women the opportunity to try and seduce men, too. Oh joy.)
Sponsor
According to the initial company blog post about the contest, "if you rise above the seas of failing men and charm a woman on Chatroulette," the company promises to give you a voucher worth 250 pounds which you can spend at the company's retail stores. The blog post then provides an example of what they mean by a "seduction attempt" by way of a screenshot of a Chatroulette chat session - and be warned, it's not what we would consider safe for work. Instead, what French Connection is promoting is essentially a nod to the often perverse nature of the popular webcam-surfing site.
Chatroulette for Marketing: Risky or Brilliant?
Although the French Connection brand may pride themselves on their youthful, hip nature, it's an arguably risky move to promote themselves via a service as odd, off-the-wall, and yes, occasionally very disturbing as Chatroulette. Like Casey Neistat recently explained in a charming video demo of this latest Internet craze, on any given day, Chatroulette is 71% male, 15% female and 14% pervert.
In fact, it's the possibility of running into something odd - or rather someone odd doing something odd- that makes Chatroulette so exciting for its users. Like the game of Russian Roulette from which its name is derived, most of the time nothing remarkable happens - you run into another bored voyeur looking back and you and maybe even have a casual conversation. But every now and then...bang!
And it's the bang that seems to appeal to French Connection. They want to send out their customers into the wild, wild west of Chatroulette to become the very sort of creepy perverts that make the site so darned intriguing. So now, dear Chatroulette users, you'll have to wonder whether that freaky guy/gal hitting on you is doing so because they're actually a weirdo or if they're just trying to win a few bucks to spend at a clothing store.
Thanks to French Connection's bravery, they have the honor of being the first brand to attempt using Chatroulette for marketing purposes. However, if the contest goes well (i.e., it generates a lot of press), other marketers will likely soon follow suit.
Is that a good thing? We're not so sure. At least, it's not good for us, the Chatroulette surfers. Marketers, though, may think it's a downright brilliant move. And maybe it is - after all, who would have thought that anyone could have figured out how to promote a brand on a service like this? Still, we sort of wish the marketers would leave this one alone. Stick to Facebook and Twitter and the other straight-laced social sites of the Internet - leave Chatroulette and all its unrestricted debauchery alone.
If you're reading this, hopefully it's because you have been following our series of webcasts on Oracle 11gR2 that we've been hosting on Wordpress. If you found us some other way, well that's even better - the more the merrier as they say.
In either case, welcome to our new blog!!! Over the next few days, Ill move the old posts from wordpress to here its all in the one location.
Right! Who are we? The authors of this blog are the ANZ Inside Consulting Team.
Currently, this is made of of:
Tom Jurcic
Yasin Mohammed
Andrew Clarke
Rene Poels and
me - Alex Blyth
Basically, our role in Oracle is to help users of our technologies get the most of their existing investments as well as what's new, old, blue, what have you...
Ideally, this is all going to be technical in nature and not of a marketing nature (we'll leave the marketing up to others).
For now, there's obviously not much here. But that won't last too long. In the mean time, those who are interested can find replays and slides of our previous webcasts on the "Oracle 11g Webcasts" page.
Till next time
Alex
http://blogs.oracle.com/techtalk/2010/03/greetings.html
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Ya están disponibles las presentaciones del Customers Day sobre E-Business Suite, celebrado el pasado 9 de marzo de 2010. En ellas se tratan temas como la política de soporte de por vida de Oracle, la Release 12 del software, las Aplicaciones Analíticas Preconstruidas e Hyperion.
El siguiente enlace recoge todas las presentaciones del evento en un mismo archivo. Además, también puede verlas a través de las presentaciones integradas que hay más abajo.
When it comes to tech conferences, the first thing most people think about is the parties.
They might think about networking opportunities or learning experiences, but all too often, these are brushed off as mutual admiration societies and redundant, unoriginal chatter. I've heard every critique imaginable about some of the best-known tech conferences
- but are there still valid reasons for shelling out a thousand dollars or more to spend a few days "partying" with your peers?
Sponsor
The greatest thing I've ever gotten out of conferences is friendship - mutually beneficial, educational friendship. And the greatest task a conference organizer can hope to accomplish - swag, parties and panels be damned - is getting the right people into the same set of rooms so those friendships can be formed.
Aside from the pure serendipity of meeting new people (or meeting online friends in real life), I have found that the main benefits of conferences are those I create for myself.
In other words, when I have complained that the content was boring, I am to be blamed for not seeking out content that was interesting or, in a single-track show, for not participating in the conversation and helping to make it more interesting for me and my fellow attendees. When we say that a given show is good for nothing but parties, well, that's a pretty good sign that partying is more of a priority for us than gaining real value. If we say a conference is populated by "the same old douchebags," as one person recently said to me, then perhaps we're not taking the time to socialize and network outside our zone of comfort and familiarity.
To be blunt, bad attendees make bad conferences. An engaged, interesting and curious person can go to the exact same show and, in most cases, can derive huge benefits from it though a little effort and a lot of great attitude. There's no show too big, too small, too boring for that person to not be able to learn something from it.
What do you think? Have you ever been to a truly, in-and-of-itself bad conference? Would a shift in your own focus have helped? How would you characterize the best conferences of your career to date? Let us know your opinions in the comments.
Since the announcement went live yesterday about the Google Marketplace, we've had a number of companies come to us about how its applications will fit with the service.
We'll do a fuller look at these companies this week but for some immediate perspective we decided to take a look at Zoho, a service that competes with Google Apps. So it is it interesting that the company joined Google Apps Marketplace in its launch.
Sponsor
Buy why would Zoho offer its applications to integrate with Google? Yes, the companies compete. But Raju Vegesna of Zoho says that it is far more important to complement Google Apps. Over the past few years the company has worked to make it simple for Zoho customers to use its services in tandem with Google Apps. Zoho offers Google Sign-in, Google Apps Sign-in and recently it integrated with Google Docs.
Vegesna gave us three reasons why Zoho decided to be part of the launch. His perspectives should provide some insights about the symbiotic relationship Google Apps Marketplace will foster.
Extending The Relationship
For many developers, integrating with Google Apps represents a significant business opportunity. Google announced at its launch that it passed the 25 million customer mark over the weekend.
Vegesna:
"First, we have 50% more apps than Google, especially on the business side (CRM, Project Management, Web Conferencing etc). This means, these additional apps can really complement Google Apps. Google has over 20 million users on G Apps and our Business apps can be sold to those customers. "
Google Dominates The Landscape
To play in this era, you have to play with Google. They dominate as much as any company has in the past 30 years. The domination in large part is now solidified by its investment in its cloud infrastructure.
Vegesna:
"Second, we understand that this is going to be a Google dominated eco-system (IBM dominated Mainframe era, Microsoft dominated PC era and Google will dominate the web era) and we wanted to be an important player in this web era. We talked more about this here and here."
A Platform Built On Email, Not CRM
Yesterday, we touched on why the marketplace makes sense for companies standardized on Google Apps. With all the contacts in one place, people can add applications to fine tune Google Apps. Does a company start with the same foundation if the platform is built on CRM?
Vegesna:
"Third, when someone builds a platform, email is a great app to build the platform around, rather than CRM (which salesforce did). We think it'll be a good and succesful platform for online apps which will move the web app momentum forward and we want to be a key player (the same way Adobe was a key player in PC era)."
"Internal information technology with its dedicated users, applications, licenses, client-server, data-centric and close coupled integration architecture cannot support externally oriented business technology where almost every condition is different. Internet connectivity and the emergence of people centric services in the web 2.0 world has led business and user expectations to shift dramatically and give rise to the expectation of a new and completely different working environment, based in the cloud, or more correctly, clouds." -- Andy Mulholland, CTO Blog, Capgemini
"If the application server/container of your choice is a Java EE compliant one, you are on the right track. This list is not too long these days, if you look for Java EE 6 compliant servers. The most prominent and well-known is also the Java EE 6 reference implementation (RI): The Oracle GlassFish v3." -- Oracle ACE Markus "@myfear" Eisele
"Could it be that everyone out there believes that the sole purpose of a database is to store data? That it can't do anything else?" -- Chet "@oraclenerd" Justice
"SOA is an anagram for OSA, which means female bear in spanish. It is a well-known fact in the spanish-speaking world that female bears are able to model business processes and optimize reusable IT assets better than any other hibernating animal." -- One of the surprisingly funny nuggets of wisdom available in the Encyclopedia of SOA.
This 1.5-hour session is recommended for technical and functional
users who have to clone an E-Business Suite Installation of Release 11i
and Release 12.
Topics will include:
What is cloning?
Cloning methods
Needed Requirements
Enterprise Manager - Advanced Management Pack - available cloning options
A short, live demonstration (only if applicable) and question and answer period will be included.