Web Page Tools and Browser CGI flash Plugins and Dynamic Controls

Appsfire Tracks Hot Apps with AppTrends

It's been 75 silent days since iPhone app sharing service Appsfire submitted version 2.0 to Apple for entry into the App Store, but in the meantime, the company has released a new way of finding apps. Instead of solely relying on recommendations from friends, Appsfire now offers recommendations on your next downloads with a popular app tracker called AppTrends.

The introduction of AppTrends comes alongside announcements that ex-Jaiku co-founder Jyri Engestrom has joined on as an adviser and that the company has received a new round of funding from Lerer Ventures.

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AppTrends is the first live ranking of iPhone apps outside of the App Store, according to the company. The rankings are determined by looking at Twitter and seeing what apps people are talking about most. The service looks at iTunes URLs (even those shrunk using URL shorteners like Bit.ly) contained in tweets, ranking not only by the number of mentions but also by the influence of the Twitter user. The list of apps, which currently sits at 20 but will soon expand to 100, updates every hour and shows how apps have moved up or down in the listing in the last one, 12 and 24 hours. In addition to the listing, clicking on each app will show what people are saying about it on Twitter. For each, a link is provided to preview the app, read a description and download or buy the app.

Aside from offering a list of what's hot to the consumer, AppTrends also looks to provide insight to app developers on why their app is moving up or down in the listing, by seeing what people are saying about the app. According to the company, the App Store ranking is "updated at best once a day" and AppTrends has shown trends quicker than the App Store on several occasions.

For now, the site is just a list of 20 top apps, but soon it will include localization with rankings by country, rankings by category (such as games or health and fitness), access to a history of app rankings and notifications for developers.

Part of what we like most about this new service is that it offers some insight behind why something is popular, beyond Apple says so. Looking at how apps move up and down within the rankings, and being able to see why, is a step beyond a simple list of top downloads. Beyond that, we hope that looking at tweets might move past those simple app rankings provided in the App store, which we can't help but look at with suspicion.

AppTrends is live as of today and already showing the hot of the hot. At the top of today's list? The just-released Hulu Plus, of course.

OSB - B2B Integration - EDIFACT

;

B2B Configuration

;

Oracle B2B 11g PS2 release has exposed webservices to translate XML document to Native document. This service needs an outbound agreement in B2B configured with appropriate document ; targeted for a specific trading partner.

;

For e.g FromTP - MarketInc, ; and toTP -OracleServices ( these value has to be updated in OSB configuration - File-In ProxyService). From EDIFACT XML document, we can identify the document type and document revision. ; These details used to identify the agreement in B2B.

;

B2B translation webservice can be used in two modes, one for only translation and another for translation and routing.

;

OSB-B2B integration sample are developed based on the B2B sample "b2b-003-EDIFACT" in OTN, which deals with the creation/management of B2B configuration in detail.

;

Path structure:

b2b_003_edifact_1.0.zipSOASamplesb2bb2b_003_edifactartifactsb2b

b2b_003_MI_EDIFACT_ORDERS_CONTRL_v1.zipAS2_M_O_EDIFACT_D3_CONTRL_Agr.zip

;

;

A Giant Tent to Call Home

iPhone 4 gyroscope to redefine mobile gaming?

How Microsoft crowdsourced Office 2010

W3C Pleased With Semantic Web Adoption by Facebook, Best Buy & Others

At the Semantic Technology conference in San Francisco last week, I met up with two W3C representatives to discuss the current state of the Semantic Web - a Web of added meaning and structured data. W3C, the World Wide Web Consortium, is the official standards organization of the Web and is led by Sir Tim Berners-Lee. I spoke with W3C Semantic Web Activity Lead Ivan Herman and W3C eGovernment Interest Group leader Sandro Hawke.

The main takeaway from the conversation was the rapid adoption of RDFa, by big commercial companies such as Facebook and Best Buy. It's come as a "very pleasant surprise" to Ivan Herman.

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RDFa Adoption in 2010

RDFa is a simpler version of the primary language of the Semantic Web: RDF (Resource Description Framework). RDF is a complex and production-heavy language, so it has struggled to gain adoption over the past decade. The main purpose of RDFa is to add metadata to existing HTML or XHTML webpages, so it is easier to deploy than RDF.

I opened by saying that at last year's SemTech event, adoption of Open Data was the big theme. This year, adoption of RDFa seemed to attract the most chatter in the hallways.

Ivan Herman agreed, saying that it was a "very pleasant surprise [that] there is a buzz around RDFa." Herman remarked that "RDFa is suddenly picking up and it may become the single biggest source of RDF data, aside from relational databases." He added that RDFa is "easy to add and when you see Facebook or others adding RDFa data it's really exciting."

How Facebook is Using RDFa

Indeed, Facebook's adoption of RDFa is exciting. However it should be noted that Facebook is not using pure RDFa; and this is where a new standard called RIF comes in.

At SemTech, W3C announced RIF: Rule Interchange Format. According to Ivan Herman, it is "two standards in one." Firstly, it's a format for exchanging rules between one rules system and another. For example a set of email spam rules that can be exported for another person to use. Secondly, RIF defines a rule language for semantic web data - similar to what can be done with ontologies. Herman said that it enables "simpler things than major ontologies."

Simplicity is a key attribute in the adoption of RDFa. It's also something that Facebook emphasizes (which we will explore more in a follow-up post based on interviews with Facebook people).

According to Sandro Hawke from W3C, Facebook's Open Graph platform uses RDFa "in an abbreviated, not really good modeling way." He said it's because "they [Facebook] need to make it simple enough that everyone can use it." He thinks though that Facebook made the right choice. Hawke explained that RIF "is a way to bridge from that [Open Graph markup] to the more standard modeling that we see in the rest of the Semantic Web."

Hawke sees Facebook's Open Graph as "the real killer app for RIF right now."

Others Adopting RDFa

Another example of RDFa adoption is Best Buy adding RDFa to their entire product catalog, which has resulted in benefits in SEO and cost savings. We will write more about this in a follow-up post.

UK retailer Tesco is doing the same as Best Buy. Drupal 7 is also adding significant support for RDFa. It's the next version of Drupal, a publishing system used by websites like the White House and World Heath Organization. So if you're the manager of a site that runs on Drupal 7, you won't have to do anything - data will automatically be in RDFa format. Other adopters of RDFa include the Library of Congress and eGovernment.

W3C started a new RDFa working group at the end of January, to make a 1.1 version of RDFa. The main goal is to simplify the job of authoring RDFa within HTML. Also, an API for RDFa will be defined.

So overall, the W3C is very pleased with RDFa adoption - although Herman added with smile that "we are never pleased enough."

Image credit: Semantic Web Rubik's Cube, dullhunk

What If You Could Reduce Service Time By 75%?

Wouldn't it be great if you could reduce service request processing time by 75%? That is what Marsh Insurance achieved with Oracle's industry-leading CRM On Demand. By leveraging Oracle's cloud-based, enterprise grade insurance CRM and analytics, Marsh managers were able to gain new insight into service request volume and aging. Consequently, staff now complete requests within 3 days instead of the previous 12 day average -- increasing customer satisfaction and retention, which is so important in this economy. Congratulations to Marsh on this achievement! Watch Janet Muse, VP of Operations, explain more in this 3 minute video.

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MapQuest's Major Overhaul Goes Live

MapQuest, the one-time leader in online mapping, has been completely revamped as of today with a fresh new look and added functionality. The updated website is available now, in beta format, at new.mapquest.com.

The beta site offers a clean and uncluttered design, more discovery options and social networking integration, among other things.

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Old Maps, New Tricks

With the new Mapquest, you can plot a route from point A to point B, as you could before, but you can also add additional stops to your trip and drag the directional points around to reorder the route. With the route mapped out, the "one box" search box at the top of the page then becomes a tool to discover points of interest and other stops along the way, like parks, gas stations, hotels, restaurants, etc. - everything you need to plan the perfect vacation or road trip.

The site's search functionality has also been overhauled, letting you enter as much as you know about an address...or as little. If you only know the intersection, for example, you can type that in. Or if you're looking for the location of a particular landmark, all you have to do is enter in the landmark's name. You can even enter in just a business name and the city. (In fact, we just tested this, entering in the misspelled restaurant name "Los Vallartos" instead of "Los Vallarta," and MapQuest figured it out, returning the correct listing. Handy!).

Going Social

But MapQuest doesn't want to just reclaim its name as the leader in online mapping, a title it lost to Google Maps, now dominating the space with 63.3 million uniques in May to MapQuest's 49.1 (figures, ComScore). It wants wants to function as a resource that "inspires and instigates discovery," says Christian Dwyer, MapQuest's GM.

To this end, MapQuest has now integrated with fellow AOL property, Patch, which provides news, business and event info for select areas in the U.S. (CA, NY, CN, MA and NJ). Online restaurant review and reservation site OpenTable has also been integrated, allowing visitors to make reservations directly from MapQuest. 

On the social front, MapQuest implemented a new feature called My Maps which allows for social sharing with services like Facebook and Twitter. Using MapQuest's "My Maps" feature, you can save a collection of your favorite places or create an itinerary and then share it with your friends on these social networks.

You can even use MapQuest itself as a sort of vacation diary itself, notes the company blog post, annotating a particular trip with notes which are stored under the "My Maps" section. (In our opinion, that feature is probably a bit more useful for storing personalized direction-related notes instead, like "look for the new McDonald's on the left then turn left." But yes, you could use it for trip diaries too.)

Cleaner, Uncluttered

The updated site features a new look as well. The familiar - and to some, unattractive - red lettering used to spell out the name "MapQuest" in the company logo has been replaced with a more modern and understated sans serif font in a deep blue-ish purple and green.

The site itself has foregone its usual clutter, with an enhanced focus on maps and directions, and not the surrounding ads.

This is the first redesign for MapQuest in 5 years. The beta period extends until August, at which point the beta will become the new default homepage.

Virtual Box 3.0.2

Enterprise 2.0 -- From A Different Angle

Please look at my next videoblog here. It is about a different view on Enterprise 2.0. Not about wiki's and social networks, but about the underlying architecture, security and business applications.

frank

Facebook's "Hovercards" Go Live with Extra Features

Earlier this year, Twitter rolled out a new feature called hovercards, which offer a preview of a user's information when you "hover" your mouse pointer over their username. Today, Facebook is getting its own version of hovercards and the feature looks to be going live site-wide.

The feature, first noticed last April, gives Facebook users a quick way to get info and interact with users without leaving the current page and could alter the way we interact on (and off) the site.

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While the "hovercards" don't seem to be live for everyone quite yet, an informal poll shows that the feature has gone live for many of you. According to Facebook, the feature went live in April but it now uses a larger box with a larger profile picture view and thumbnails of mutual friends. Simply hover your mouse pointer over a person's name and a little box will appear after a few seconds that shows the larger picture, their name and a link to send them a message. If you're not friends yet, you can also send a friend request directly from the box.

If, in your daily (hourly?) Facebook navigtion, you've ever wondered who someone was but didn't want to lose your place in the timeline, then you've likely opened up their profile in a new tab. The hovercards make this quick and simple now, offering a base level of information and some social context on how you may or may not know them.

The feature increases the likelihood for users to make even more connections on the site, as a simple mouseover suddenly gives social context and increases the chance that you'll click that "Add as Friend" link. Does someone look familiar? Maybe they have five mutual friends that you know from riding bikes around town or maybe they know the same people you know from college.

Facebook's hovercards go one step further in increasing interaction between its users and moving the site to a fully real-time experience, such as by making it even easier to send a message and interact without having to leave what you're doing. Clicking on "Send a Message" opens up a window in the middle of the page without interrupting your browsing of the site.

At the same time, we have to wonder why the new feature doesn't go a few steps further. For example, you can see who someone knows, but why not what school they go to or where they work? Pending their privacy settings, wouldn't these be helpful contextual clues on figuring out whether or not you want to interact with someone?

The next step we wonder about, of course, is if we'll begin to see this functionality offered off-site. Look just below this post, for example, and you'll see Facebook's "Like" button. If any of your friends like this article, you'll see a picture of them and their name. How long will it be until the hovercard will make it here too?

Kindle App for iPhone, iPad Now Does Audio and Video

Amazon announced today its Kindle application for Apple mobile devices including the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, now offers embedded video and audio clips within its e-books. At launch time, there are just thirteen titles sporting the new functionality, including a cookbook augmented by video demos and a nature guide called Bird Songs that lets you read about - and hear - various bird calls.

But this is only the beginning, says Amazon. "We look forward to seeing what authors and publishers create...using the new functionality," said Dorothy Nicholls, director of Amazon's Kindle unit.

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While seemingly minor, the update gives Amazon an immediate advantage in the race to be the e-reader of choice for digital customers. In Amazon's world, it's not necessarily about having the number one hardware device for consuming digital text, it's about having the number one platform, which is where the iPhone and iPad apps come into play.

On the hardware front, Amazon last week dropped prices for the Kindle 3G to $189 from $259, to better compete with Barnes & Noble's Nook device, now $199 for its 3G version. Now, on the software side, Amazon is ushering in a new era for digital books, with these "augmented editions" that offer more than just text.

Beyond the "Accompanying CD-ROM"

Of course, the idea to sell multimedia content along with a book is not, in and of itself, a new idea. Over the years, plenty of books have been sold with accompanying CD-ROMs or DVDs with additional material, especially in educational texts where study guides, video tutorials, practice tests and digital references come in handy.

But it hasn't been until the e-reader era that the ability to view these extras has been so seamlessly integrated with the reading experience itself. You no longer have to place the book down, insert a physical disk into a computer and then launch the book's extras. It's all blended into one package.

Reinventing Reading?

Already, the technology is enabling new experiences, such as in the digital guidebook, Rick Steves' London, which offers five narrated audio tours of famous landmarks like the British Museum and St. Paul's Cathedral. You can read the book on your iPhone or iPad then pop in your headphones to take a tour.

But will these new augmented digital experiences truly usher in a new way to read? It may be too early to tell the broader impact the technology will have on the world at large, but outside Amazon's universe, there are several publishers who are embracing the new digital format, both in e-books and e-magazines, with innovative offerings.

The Alice in Wonderland iPad App, for example, was recently touted as a "reinvention" of reading, with its animations and interactive content. But really it's just a pop-up book re-imagined for the digital age. There's also a collection of digital magazines for the iPad, each experimenting with how best to incorporate media like video, audio and music, along with their text-based content. Wired's iPad edition, for instance, offers video and audio in addition to news articles, leading to initial sales rivaling that of its newsstand counterpart. Entertainment Weekly, on the other hand, pared down its magazine for the iPad, with its launch of the EW "Must List," a weekly top 10 featuring the best in film, books, TV and music where each item is linked to associated media like song clips or movie trailers.

For book publishers, there are numerous possibilities to offer multimedia extras similar to these. But outside of reference books and nonfiction, writers will need to be careful about overindulging in these media bonuses. The point of reading - well, reading fiction at least - is not to see, but see with your mind's eye. Imagination will always surpass media, no matter how new and glossy it is. Publishers should not fear the technology, though, but implement it thoughtfully and carefully going forward.

Want to understand MySQL indexes?

1. OurSQL Episode 13: The Nitty Gritty of Indexes
2. OurSQL Episode 17: Hashing it out
3. OurSQL Episode 18: De-myth-tifying Indexes

Back

Google Moves Encrypted Search to New Domain

Google announced today that it was moving domains for its encrypted search from https://www.google.com to https://encrypted.google.com.

In May Google launched an encrypted version of its Web search, allowing users to enable a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) connection to encrypt their information as they searched.

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As ReadWriteWeb reported, this move ran afoul of some school districts' web filtering requirements, forcing them to possibly block access to other parts of the Google secure domain.

Today's move was a response to educators' concerns, says Google, noting in the announcement that "if school network administrators decide to block encrypted searches, the blocking will no longer affect Google authenticated services like Google Apps for Education."

Top 5 Reasons Why Your Startup Needs an API

There is a long list of things people will tell you that you need as a startup: You need a working product. You need a business plan. You need a lawyer. You need a good coffee maker, a video game system, and beer on Fridays.

Here's one more thing for the list: you need an API. And here are the top five reasons why:

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1. It's Good BizDev 2.0

Having an API is, as Caterina Fake calls it, BizDev 2.0. In other words, in a web-oriented world, it's the way business development is done. APIs facilitate business-to-business relations by opening data and systems to business partners, either freely or via a commercial license. The integration with other services provided by APIs makes doing business, in Fake's words, "much much better."

2. It Builds a Strong Developer Ecosystem

An API allows you to interact with developers outside your team, adding expertise and innovation to your product. Releasing an API also adds to the proverbial tool in a developer's toolbox.

3. An API Facilitates Data Accessibility

Having an API makes new queries easier, making information discovery easier for you and for others.

4. Investors Are Going to Want One

In a talk in February at the Future of Web Apps conference, VC Fred Wilson spoke about the "10 Golden Principles of Successful Web Apps," one of which was, indeed, a programmable API.

"Not all of our companies, by the way, have launch read/write API's, and we're constantly hounding them to do that," said Wilson, "but the important thing about programmability is that when people can add value to your application, they are in effect adding energy to your application, bringing more users to your application, and also bringing more data and more richness to your applications."

5. APIs Make Mashups

...And mashups are awesome. Facilitated by APIs, mashups bring together information and applications in unique ways, expanding the reach of your data and product. A mashup that combines data from Google Maps plus YouTube plus World Cup, for example. A tool to automatically add all Nicholas Cage movies to your Netflix queue. Powerful stuff.

As Fred Wilson notes, you don't necessarily need to have an API ready at launch. But it should be on the short list of things your startup needs to implement.

Photo credits: Flickr users Patrick Hoesley, Jon Aquino

Oracle VM VirtualBox 3.2.6 is released.

Smart Measures and Smart Grids: Meeting European Union Targets

In a new roadmap outlined the UK's Centre for Alternative Energy, the body states that by taking steps such as switching to electric power, replacing domestic flights with road and rail services and reducing long haul flights that use kerosene fuel, the UK can achieve zero carbon status by 2030. This is extremely positive to hear, especially since these are simple, yet smart measures that can be easily and immediately introduced in order to meet stringent European Union targets (which aim to reduce CO2 emissions by 20 per cent by 2020.)

However, according to Bastian Fischer, vice president and general manager EMEA for Oracle Utilities, "The two vital 'steps' overlooked by the report are the need to roll out smart meters and the smart grid on a national scale. These two technologies are key tools for a country wanting to reduce carbon use." Why? Because smart grids allow utilities, one of the biggest contributors of CO2 emissions, to manage their distribution grids more efficiently, which means less power needs to be generated, creating fewer emissions. Smart meters, on the other hand, help consumers think more wisely when it comes to their personal energy use, as it informs them of how much energy is being used and when the best times to use it are (so they can adjust their energy usage accordingly).

Furthermore, the report by the Centre of Alternative Energy rightly states that the move to electric vehicles (EVs) will play a pivotal role in the UK's "zero-carbon" future. However, there is no mention of the excessive pressure EVs will place on energy grids, as large volumes of electricity will need to be directed to charging points, which in turn must handle fluctuating demand at peak times. This is where smart grids come into play... by having a smart grid infrastructure; utilities can meet the demands of EVs intelligently. A smart grid is critical to meeting the electricity requirements of EVs, as it will ensure the successful deployment by providing a reliable foundation for the data handling required to record and manage electricity distribution - from recording and assessing energy usage, to analysing data and sharing information with consumers (via green billing for instance).

So yes, a zero carbon future is a definite possibility for the UK and one we look forward to seeing in 20 years time. But, as energy conscious individuals and businesses, we must think more widely than the steps outlined by the Centre of Alternative Energy's report, by taking into consideration the benefits delivered by alternative, "smart" technologies, which will help make a carbon free future an even greater possibility.

AIA Vorträge auf der DOAG SIG SOA?

Crosstalk: Retail Innovation is Thriving

At this year's Oracle Retail Crosstalk user conference the theme was "retail redefined," and Duncan Angove wasted no time looking backwards. He began by describing now as an "inflection point" where in the future we will look back and realize this was the point when our industry underwent massive changes. He then went on to showcase innovation and customer success stories.

I asked a customer that had attended previous Crosstalks how this year's ranked. He said the event gets better each year as we continue to add more customers. This year there were 124 retail executives from 63 companies. Another person pointed out that what makes Crosstalk so valuable is that its a retail conference, not a product conference. The breakouts were delivered by retailers and focused on real-world examples of solving business problems. The general session painted the strategic vision using a combination of retailer presentations, panels, and a forward-looking keynote speaker (Jeff Jarvis). I heard several times that this combination of here-and-now and what's-on-the-horizon provided tremendous value.

My favorite highlights were:

1. The iPOS demo showed how partners are innovating around Oracle Retail products. In this case, iPOS provides essentially the same capabilities as found in the Apple store, using the same iPod Touch hardware to provide a low-cost mobile POS.

2. For the last several years Oracle Retail has offered a scientific approach to analyzing retail businesses, discovering opportunities, and quantifying possible ROI. Duncan announced our intent to productize this offering so that retailers can re-run it throughout the year.

3. Intuit demonstrated their integration with Oracle Retail's POS to enable their forthcoming (next month) QuickReceipts program. Home Depot and Best Buy have already committed to the program.

4. Jon Kubo of Wet Seal described his approach to adding social media to Wet Seal's customer engagement model, including the use of Facebook, Twitter, co-shopping, and a future Facebook game not unlike popular games Farmville and Mafia Wars.

5. The Technology Trends Panel featured forward-looking companies Google, Buzzient, and Digby each of which described their innovative solutions for the retail industry.

6. Jeff Jarvis, author of What Would Google Do?, showed the audience how to think and act like Google, explaining the demise of certain industries that couldn't adapt fast enough, and citing emerging companies that are taking us in new directions.

7. Lastly, Duncan applied Jarvis' principles directly to the retail industry with a provocative demonstration of what retail could look like in the future. The Democratization of Retail, a term he coined, called for retailers to share information that allowed customers greater control over merchandising.

Clearly innovation is occurring throughout the retail industry, and I look forward to telling my future grandkids I was part of it.

See also:
Wet Seal's Jon Kubo takes Oracle's CIO of the Year Award
Jeff Jarvis talks retail, privacy & the link economy
David Dorf on "Meet R&D Team" room at Oracle Retail Crosstalk 2010

Are you someone who doesn’t like a stereotype?

Hello, my name is Tomas and I am a member of the Internship program at Oracle Czech.

I am a third year student of the Faculty of Informatics and Statistics at the University of Economics in Prague and I am currently preparing for Bachelor exams.

Every semester, my school organises the Expo, Chance. It is the Expo of Graduate jobs where each company involved in the Expo presents on what opportunities they have available for Students . The Expo also has a database of students where you can leave your details to be included. During my second year of I added my e-mail to this database and after one year, Oracle Czech contacted me!

At the time, Oracle were looking for a Student for a position in the Customer Intelligence team. I submitted my CV and after an interview process I was accepted. Now I am working in Oracle Czech as a Customer Intelligence Specialist and I am happy I work here. Oracle is a very dynamic company so there is no room for boredom. I always look for an opportunity to improve my English and as Oracle is a multicultural and multinational company, this was the best choice for me.

When looking for a career opportunity, ask yourself these questions: Are you someone who doesn’t like a stereotype? Do you want to meet a lot of friendly people and work in a dynamic organisation? If your answers are YES, then don’t hesitate! Become the part of the Oracle team.

If you have any questions related to this article feel free to contact illya.pavlov@oracle.com. You can find our job opportunities via http://campus.oracle.com.

PHP generated code tricks

$sql = "select * from publications";

$res = $mysqli->query($sql);

while($row = $res->fetch_assoc()){

 ; ; ; $pubs[$row["publication_id"]] = $row;

}

$pubs_ser = str_replace("'", "'", serialize($pubs));

$php_code = "";

file_put_contents("/some/path/publications.php", $php_code);

?>

$sql = "select * from publications";

$res = $mysqli->query($sql);

while($row = $res->fetch_assoc()){

 ; ; ; $pubs[$row["publication_id"]] = $row;

 ; ; ; $constants[$row["publication_id"]] = strtoupper($row["name"]);

}

$pubs_ser = str_replace("'", "'", serialize($pubs));

$php_code = "
$php_code.= "global $PUBLICATIONS;n";

$php_code.= "$PUBLICATIONS = unserialize('$pubs_ser');n";

foreach($constants as $id=>$const){

 ; ; ; $php_code.= "define('$const', $id);n";

}

$php_code.= "?>";

file_put_contents("/some/path/publications.php", $php_code);

?>

//load a publication

require_once "publications.php";

echo $PUBLICATIONS[DEALNEWS]["name"];

?>

$sql = "select * from publications";

$res = $mysqli->query($sql);

while($row = $res->fetch_assoc()){

 ; ; ; $pubs[$row["publication_id"]] = $row;

 ; ; ; $constants[$row["publication_id"]] = strtoupper($row["name"]);

}

$pubs_ser = str_replace("'", "'", serialize($pubs));

$php_code = "
$php_code.= "class PUB_DATA {n";

foreach($constants as $id=>$const){

 ; ; ; $php_code.= " const $const = $id;n";

}

$php_code.= " ; ; ; protected $pubs_ser = '$pubs_ser';n";

$php_code.= "}";

$php_code.= "?>";

file_put_contents("/some/path/pub_data.php", $php_code);

?>

require_once "pub_data.php";

class Publication extends PUB_DATA {

 ; ; ; private $pub;

 ; ; ; public function __construct($pub_id) {

 ; ; ; ; ; ; ; $pubs = unserialize($this->pubs_ser);

 ; ; ; ; ; ; ; $this->pub = $pubs[$pub_id];

 ; ; ; }

 ; ; ; public function __get($var) {

 ; ; ; ; ; ; ; if(isset($this->pub[$var])){

 ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; return $this->pub[$var];

 ; ; ; ; ; ; ; } else {

 ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; // Exception

 ; ; ; ; ; ; ; }

 ; ; ; }

}

?>

$pub = new Publication(Publication::DEALNEWS);

echo $pub->name;

As Online Video Continues to Boom, Fox Goes Mobile with Bitbop

Numbers released from comScore today show that U.S. Internet users watched nearly 34 billion videos online in the month of May, up from just over 30 billion in April. Hulu served up nearly 1.2 billion videos last month, nearly 3.5% of the overall market, while Google remained supreme, accounting for 43% of the market - a whopping 14.6 billion videos - with its powerhouse property, YouTube. Still, Hulu, a place where many watch full episodes of network television, is slowly inching from the pack, and Fox Interactive Media, sitting near the bottom of comScore's rankings, wants a piece of the action. They're target? Mobile.

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Back in January, Hulu managed just over 900 million videos, 2.8% of the overall market and nearly twice as much as the next highest ranked provider, Microsoft. Since then, they've grown slightly to 3.5%, fending off the other providers and cementing their position as a leading online video provider. Hulu's 43.5 million unique visitors in May watched an average of 27 videos each, which is more than a quarter of the number watched by YouTube visitors.

Fox Launches Mobile Hulu-esque Subscription Service

Fox Interactive Media, which ranks 9th on comScore's top 10 based on total videos served, announced today that it is taking a stab at mobile video subscription service with what it calls Bitbop. Is it an iPhone app? No. An Android app? No. A mobile website? No. It's an application for the BlackBerry.

BitBop, available on the BlackBerry Bold, Curve and Tour models, is a free application that allows users to watch many of the same TV shows and movies they know from Hulu directly on their phones. While the app is free to download, it comes with a subscription fee - $9.99 a month - to access content. Family Guy, The Office, 30 Rock, Glee, CSI, Friday Night Lights - all the major players are present and accounted for.

If you're asking yourself why the service is only available on the Blackberry - and why wouldn't you - it's because Fox has inked an exclusive deal with BlackBerry makers RIM (Research In Motion). It's a curious partnership, since the majority of BlackBerry owners use their devices mainly for work and enterprise functionality - not exactly the kind of people who are more like to watch online video on their mobile device, if you asked me.

Still, it will be interesting to see how it plays out and if Fox can boost their low video market share numbers. There is certainly a market for on-demand mobile video - the success of Netflix's iPad app and the anticipation of its iPhone app can speak to that thread. Whether that market is on BlackBerry devices is yet to be seen, but this partnership could bode well for both parties.

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Oracle Database 11g Release 2?1???????
Oracle Database 10g Express Edition?2???????
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Oracle Database 11g Release 1?4???'5???

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??????!? Oracle Database 11g Release2 - Windows? ???????????(PDF)

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Running IBM DB2 in Oracle VM Server for SPARC (LDoms)

Yo Frankie!!!

New CSS Reference Guide and Improved JavaFX API docs

iPhone 4: Your Burning Questions Answered

Congratulations, you're a new iPhone 4 owner! Now what do you do with it? The iPhone 4 operating system introduces a number of new features, some, like FaceTime video calls, which are entirely unique to the iPhone 4 hardware itself.

Plus, there are several reports now surfacing about issues with the iPhone 4's hardware. Are these credible? Should you be concerned? How do you resolve these issues?

Below, we'll answer these and more of the most burning questions new users may have about their iPhone 4.

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1. Is There Really an Issue with the iPhone 4's Antenna?

Yes. Apple has officially gone on record with a statement that reads as follows:

Gripping any mobile phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna performance, with certain places being worse than others depending on the placement of the antennas. This is a fact of life for every wireless phone. If you ever experience this on your iPhone 4, avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band, or simply use one of many available cases.

This comes after an outpouring of reports from new users, gadget sites and technology news outlets, all discussing the same exact problem with the new Apple phone. Left-handed users have it the worst, due to the antenna placement. (The issue is worst when gripped in your left hand, with your skin pressed against the outside steel band.) Even Steve Jobs himself is now responding to user email complaints with the simple advice: "Just avoid holding it in that way."

What way? The way the Apple commercials show? Yes, that's right. Apple's own marketing material shows people happily chatting on their iPhone 4's while holding the phone in the way that would actually lead to signal loss.

Instead, here is the proper method.

Is there a solution? Of course. Why do you think Apple got into the bumper biz? Reportedly, using a plastic iPhone bumper (the outer rubberized protection product sold for around $30 at the Apple Store) solves the problem.

2. How Do You Use FaceTime?

FaceTime, the video calling feature introduced in the new Apple operating system can only be used on iPhone 4 hardware. Simply upgrading your iPhone 3G or 3GS is not enough - you must purchase the new phone. That's because FaceTime takes advantage of the iPhone 4's new dual-camera system, allowing to you to broadcast your face while watching your screen.

To actually use FaceTime, when you're on a phone call, move the phone away from your face and press the FaceTime button that appears on screen amid the menu of choices (like Keypad, Hold, etc.).

The recipient, assuming they also have an iPhone 4, will receive a request to initiative the FaceTime session, which they can then either accept or deny.

You can also start a FaceTime call directly from your Contacts list. Just scroll to the bottom of a contact card and tap the FaceTime button.

Remember though, FaceTime is a Wi-Fi only application for now (Jobs said it's Wi-Fi only "in 2010," hinting at Apple's future plans), which limits its functionality for the time being. However, FaceTime calls don't eat up your wireless minutes, as we recently found out. You can also test FaceTime out by calling 1-888-FACETIME.

3. How Do You Kill a Multi-Tasking App?

The iPhone 4 operating system (iOS) offers a new feature called multi-tasking. This works on the iPhone 3GS as well, but not the 3G. Not all apps multi-task - they must be designed that way by their developers first. To launch the multi-tasking interface, double-tap the "Home" button (the round button at the bottom of the screen). To kill an app that's running in the background, press and hold the app in the multi-task interface until it starts jiggling. Then, you'll see a red minus icon appear on the app icon's top-left. Tap the minus icon and the app closes. All the multi-task enabled applications stay open after you close them, so this menu can get filled up quickly if you're a heavy app user.

4. Does the iPhone 4 Record 1080p HD Video?

No, it records 720p HD video, up to 30 frames per second.

5. How Do I Make Sure an App isn't Tracking My Location?

Location services, which use information from the phone's GPS, cellular and Wi-Fi data to determine your location, are used in applications like Maps and Compass, as well as in other Apple apps like Camera and any number of third-party applications, too. If the Big Brother-esque tracking has you worried, you can turn location services off using the global switch located in Settings > General > Location Services. Otherwise, you can use the settings below this switch to individually shut off location services for select apps.

6. How Do I Access My Playback Controls? (The double-tap now launches the app switcher!)

The multi-tasking interface is now revealed when you double-tap the home button, but your playback controls are still there. Just swipe to the right from within the app switcher to reveal them.

7. How do I Make the iPhone 4 Stay in Portrait Mode?

Follow the instructions in step six above to reveal the playback controls. To the left of the controls is a black icon with an arrow making a circle. Tap this button to lock the screen into portrait or landscape mode. You'll know the screen is locked because an icon appears next to the battery meter at the top right of your screen.

8. How Many Applications Can I Install?

Given disk space, you can theoretically install up to 2,160 applications on your iPhone now, using the new "Folders" feature. Folders let you organize apps into folders simply by dragging one app on top of another and then providing that folder with a name of your choosing (or keeping the suggested name that appears).

Hulu Said to Get Pay Service...Again

You guessed it folks, it's that time again - one more rousing rendition of "Hulu is going to offer a pay service", this time as told by Peter Kafka of All Things Digital.

"Hulu Plus", as Kafka has called it, would be an additional paid version of the website, not a paywall behind which all content would be hidden, and could be available to as many as 10,000 people starting early next week.

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The new service would offer "access to a deeper catalog of shows than the free service currently offers, plus the ability to watch it on devices other than a laptop or PC, including Apple's iPad", as well as the Sony PlayStation for $9.95 a month.

As Kafka notes, the new service could help to assuage fears of network owners such as ABC and Fox, which have content on the site, that Hulu is cutting into their core business. The move, were it to succeed, could also prove that there are other ways (such as subscription models) to sell television content online that were more viable than mere advertising. Already, Viacom pulled the Daily Show and the Colbert Report from Hulu earlier this year because they weren't earning enough through advertising.

According to the last time we wrote about rumors of a Hulu Plus, the five most recent episodes of current shows would be available for free, but older shows would require membership. Surely, Hulu would be doing more than this, right?

Win a Free OpenWorld Pass

Nominate Your Company for the Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards

Hey! Do you use any of these products?

*Oracle application grid products
*Oracle SOA Suite
*Oracle Identity Manager
*Oracle Fusion Middleware with Oracle Applications
*Enterprise 2.0

If so, nominate your company for the Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards! If you win, you'll get all of these great prizes:

*FREE pass to Oracle OpenWorld 2010 in San Francisco for select winners in each category. Special honors at Innovation Awards ceremony, held during Oracle OpenWorld 2010 in San Francisco.
*13 meetings with Oracle executives during Oracle OpenWorld 2010
*Oracle Middleware Innovation Award Winner Plaque
*And lots more

To be considered for the award, submit your nominations to Innovation-Middleware_us@oracle.com by August 6, 2010.

Winners will be chosen based on, but not limited to, the following criteria:

*Uniqueness of business use case
*Project ROI/level of impact (ROI/soft benefits) relative to the size of the organization
*Complexity/magnitude of implementation
*Originality of architecture

Good luck!

Get more information about the Awards.

Smashing the Passive TV: New Check-in Apps Make Entertainment Social Again

Do you want to chat with friends who are watching the same TV shows you are or reading the same books? Do you want to check in to record and share a history of your offline entertainment activities? Many startups think you will and the number of apps for that is growing fast.

The latest entry into the field is from GetGlue, a startup that offers a popular plugin for social Web browsing, that just announced its iPhone app for entertainment check-ins today. The service stands out in the field as one of the only offerings that features books and other activities, and it has an excellent recommendation feature that's sure to be adopted by competitors in time. What are other startups doing in this market? Below we offer a feature comparison between GetGlue and competitors HotPotato, Kickfour, Tunerfish, Miso and Philo.

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How The Apps Work

Are you having fun watching a TV show, listing to a song, reading a book or just thinking about something? Entertainment check-in apps will let you find the title of what you're engaged with, and then "check in" to record the experience, leave a comment, see what other people and your friends are doing at the time, and more. Most of these services offer badges, rewards and elite status designations, sometimes with editorial benefits. Additional promotional activities are sure to come from advertisers in time as well. It's an emerging field, but one that's beginning to feel crowded already.

From a user's perspective, there is potential for fundamental change in the way we do entertainment. "TV as a form factor does not natively invite interaction," Berkley says, "but it is an ideal consumption experience for rich media. That's why mobile and iPad are so important, as the input devices."

In several cases, entertainment check-in apps are going beyond TV, as well.

Which App to Use?

Here's how six of the players in this market look, feature by feature, as far as we can tell so far.

Beyond Checking In

What's the biggest problem with most of these apps? Not enough people use them yet, so it's not terribly social. There are a few apparent exceptions. Miso has Google funding and is already well on its way towards popularity. World Cup games are actively discussed on Miso, in real time. The iPad app Miso announced yesterday is absolutely dreamy looking.

HotPotato is the best designed, and at tech events can provide a common back channel. GetGlue already has a popular Web presence, so it's far more active than some of the others.

Still, they need something more. That's where GetGlue is strongest: It offers personalized recommendations, including among new releases from the world of music, movies and books. That means it provides immediate value, even if no one else you know uses the app. GetGlue even includes a section for topics you're thinking about, complete with viewable YouTube movies about those topics.

Long term as well, check ins alone are unlikely to prove sufficiently captivating. "The critical thing," says social mobile engineer and researcher Nitya Narasimhan, "will be the kinds of add-on features (beyond check-in) that can create stickiness. Right now, the focus seems to be just shared experiences but I think that features like the social discovery credits where you are credited for incentivizing someone else to watch the program - those are interesting."

That's what the Comcast-built Tunerfish does, in fact. If someone else clicks on a link to a show that you've shared, you get credit for that in the system.

What will all of this look like in the future? "It's hard to say," says Comcast's Berkley, "because there is so much rapid change at the moment. The TV screen is about to explode. There will be tons of innovation coming to TV over the next 12 months - TV will be dramatically redefined."

Are you ready to get social, via mobile, with your offline activities?

Install VLC 1.0.0 Final

sudo sh -c "echo 'deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/c-korn/vlc/ubuntu jaunty main' >> /etc/apt/sources.list"

For Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex:

sudo sh -c "echo 'deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/c-korn/vlc/ubuntu intrepid main' >> /etc/apt/sources.list"

sudo sh -c "echo 'deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/c-korn/vlc/ubuntu hardy main' >> /etc/apt/sources.list"

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 7613768D

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install vlc vlc-plugin-esd mozilla-plugin-vlc

Antivirus Product Testing is Changing, Whether Vendors Like it or Not

This week NSS Labs released their Q2 2010 Corporate Endpoint Protection Products report. NSS has only publicly announced the two products it specifically recommends against: Panda's Internet Security 2010 (Enterprise) and AVG's Internet Security Business Edition 9. However, it takes only a quick look at Trend Micro's web site to guess how NSS rated Office Scan (hint: very well). Some vendors have protested NSS's ratings in the past, but like it or not NSS is changing the way security testing is conducted.

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As security threats evolve, e-mail has been displaced by the Web as the primary delivery mechanism for malicious code. The old model of virus definition based antivirus software has been increasingly called into question. In 2007, Australia's Computer Emergency Response Team claimed that leading products missed 80% of new viruses. To compensate, companies like Trend Micro and Kaspersky are developing cloud based "reputation services" to evaluate URLs and code.

NSS president, and former VP of marketing at antivirus vendor ESET, Rick Moy explained in a phone interview: cybercriminals now typically use social engineering to trick users into downloading malware from web sites and run it voluntarily. Malware creators run "campaigns" on Twitter and other social media sites baiting users with anything from pornography to free iPads.

Even the most savvy of users can occasionally be tricked by social engineering - we posted our own list of tech savvy Twitter users who fell for phishing scam last year. For an explanation of how such savvy users get fooled, read Cory Doctorow's recent Lotus Magazine piece explaining why he fell for a phishing scam.

Trend Micro recently published an independent report claiming the IT industry is being lulled into a false sense of security by vendors. The report cites an NSS survey which found half of respondents thought their antivirus solutions would protect them from threats 100% of the time, and that another 10% of respondents thought their solutions would protect them 99% of the time.

Moy says there's also a perception in the enterprise that anti-malware products are essentially interchangeable, but that's turning out not be the case: NSS's testing found wild disparities between the efficacy of different products, and found that a company's previous track record is no indication of how well it will perform.

NSS tests differ from most other testers, such as AV-Comparatives for example, in that NSS's test computers that are actually connected to the Internet - something the company calls "live testing." NSS tested PCs, running up-to-date copies of Windows 7 and using Internet Explorer 8 with SmartScreen disabled, by visiting known malicious sites to verify whether each product tested could successfully blocks malware from being downloaded and/or executed.

According to Moy, typical testing involves using malware sets from Wildlist or Antivirus Bulletin - both of which use samples provided by the antivirus protection industry, some of which might be quite old. The results of AV-Comparatives' most recent report, its "Retrospective/Proactive Test," are radically different from NSS's. Trend Micro did fairly poorly in this test, while Panda did quite well. AVG out performed Trend Micro. Peter Stelzhammer of AV-Comparatives confirmed via e-mail that the NSS and AV-Comparatives tests are not comparable, and that AV-Comparatives is working on a test similar to NSS's.

A consensus is forming in the security industry that there's a need for new prevention techniques - and new testing methodologies to evaluate those techniques. The need for new testing methodologies was the theme of the "Measuring The Actual Security Anti-Virus Products Provide Customers" panel at SOURCE 2010 Boston in May, which included Stelzhammer, NSS CEO Vik Phatak, and representatives from CheckVir Labs, Dennis Technology Labs, PC Security Labs and West Coast Labs. Stelzhammer detailed the difficulties involved in doing live, Internet-connected testing and explained the methodologies for AV-Comparatives' future NSS-like tests.

AV-Test has released a test based on methodologies similar to NSS's, with comparable results. According to the report published by Trend Micro: "ICSA and others such as Virus Bulletin state they will be evolving their certification practices in coming months to include real-time testing and/or testing against today's threats."

NSS has a recent history of raising eyebrows in the security industry.

In March of 2009 NSS published the results of a Microsoft sponsored test that found Internet Explorer 8 was more effective in blocking malicious web sites than Firefox, Safarai, Chrome, and Opera. This lead to many skeptical articles and accusations of bias. However, when looking at what was actually being tested, the results aren't particularly radical: NSS found that Microsoft's blacklist blocked more sites than the blacklists used by other browsers. NSS was not tested for other browser vulnerabilities.

In September 2009, Network World reported that NSS was shifting its focus towards conducting self-funded tests instead of vendor sponsored tests. NSS would sell the reports and consult vendors, but would not take money for testing.

One of NSS's first self-funded tests found 3com TippingPoint 10 firewall to be deficient. Moy told TechWorld he thought that Tipping Point must not have been investing enough in improving its products. Some commenters were, shall we say, skeptical about NSS's rating.

That same month, NSS released its first Corporate Endpoint Protection Products test, unfunded and using its new live testing methodology. It ranked AVG, Panda and Moy's former employers ESET at the bottom of the heap. It gave top marks to Trend Micro.

In March of this year NSS released a free report detailing the failure of many commercial products to defeat variants of the infamous Aurora virus that infected Google's computers. McAfee was the only product NSS tested that successfully blocked variants of the virus, and NSS found AVG was the only product tested that didn't block the original exploit.

In an entry on the company blog, AVG protested the results of the Aurora test and called a few things into question. It noted that the report initially indicated that NSS had tested AVG 8 instead of the newer AVG 9, and that NSS later claimed this was a typo and that it had tested version 9. AVG also claimed NSS gave them different information about the results of the testing before the publication of the report and that NSS was slow providing methodology before publication. AVG also provided a screenshot showing AVG blocking the Aurora virus.

ESET also fired back at NSS, claiming that NSS's report didn't comply with two of the Anti-Malware Testing Standards Organization's Fundamental Principles of Testing. ESET also complained that NSS did not provide access to samples used in its testing.

Since NSS has moved ESET out of "caution" category in the newest report, we asked ESET if it had made any changes to its product to improve its ratings with NSS. "ESET was unable to get any useful feedback on its performance in the previous test without paying a substantial sum to NSS for 'consultancy,'" replied David Harley, ESET Research Fellow & Director of Malware Intelligence via e-mail. "Even when ESET offered to pay the agreed-upon sum, the fee kept escalating. To this day, information on the test samples has never been supplied, so we are unable to assess the competence and validity of the test, let alone make any changes that would impact our performance in the more recent test."

Moy answered critics on the NSS blog. First, he addressed AVG's objections. Moy disputed AVG's claims that NSS withheld information and points out that the methodology and steps for reproducing its Aurora testing was available in the published report. He provided a video showing AVG 9 failing to protect against the Aurora exploit, and pointed out that the screenshot AVG provided depicted Firefox, even though Aurora was an Internet Explorer virus.

In a post seemingly in response to ESET, Moy wrote:

Some vendors used the anti-malware testing standards organization (AMTSO) to try to discredit the test. One of their objections was that we recommend against buying products that scored on the bottom third of our test. Sorry, we unabashedly believe malware protection should indeed be the key purchasing criteria for an AV product. And for vendors who claim their anti-spam on the corporate desktop will improve their protection against socially-engineered malware hosted on web sites, that's just stretching it.

Moy told us that all the NSS test methodology is available for free on the company's web site and that ESET was mostly upset NSS didn't release its malware sample set.

Although NSS has received money from vendors for past tests, and does do security consulting, Phatak told us NSS did not receive money from Trend Micro or McAfee before the tests were conducted.

Conclusion

Science is about repeatable, verifiable results. The only way to glean a better understanding of the efficacy of various endpoint protection products is for more labs to employ cutting edge testing methodologies. The more tests released in the future, the more information enterprises will have in making informed decisions.

Google Activates Android "Kill Switch," Zaps Useless Apps

This week the engineers at Google remotely activated the so-called Android "kill switch," a technology which allows the company to remotely remove applications installed on users' phones. The applications in question, designed by a security expert for research purposes, were described as "practically useless." They were not used maliciously nor did they access private data, or so says Android's Security Lead Rich Cannings in a company blog post. Instead, the apps simply misrepresented their purpose to encourage downloads.

"Most users uninstalled the applications shortly after downloading them," Cannings wrote, dismissing the impact of these questionable apps. But if the apps were effectively harmless, why zap them?

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Zap that App!

Unlike smartphone rival, Apple, Google's transparency in the matter is actually refreshing. Apple very seldom makes any official announcement regarding applications which are removed or rejected from its App Store, unless it's responding to public outcry, such as was the case with the Pulitizer-prize winning satirist, cartoonist Mark Fiore's app or the banned web comic version of James Joyce's Ulysses, both of which Apple later admitted were mistakes. (Censorship is a slippery slope, is it not?)

But with the Android kill switch situation, it's still seems a little odd. If the apps weren't malicious, were generally uninstalled by the duped users and were already voluntarily removed from the Market by the researcher in question, why zap them off everyone's phones, too?

The kill switch is designed to remove dangerous applications from phones - those that steal or access private user data, contain malware or viruses, or access system resources without permission...is it not?

Well, actually, no. The kill switch, per the Android Developer Terms of Service, may be used against any app "that violates the Android Market Developer Distribution Agreement or other legal agreements, laws, regulations or policies." If that's the case, then "Google retains the right to remotely remove those applications from your Device at its sole discretion."

Interesting Timing on that Kill Switch, Google...Very Interesting

But what's really interesting about this news is the timing.

The Google blog post arrived only one day after news broke about a frightening, but perhaps inflated, report from security firm SMobile Systems that described how one-fifth of Android applications expose private user data. This means, SMobile decided, these apps could be used for malicious purposes.

It was quite a leap, though, to claim that because an app accessed private info, it was dangerous. A contact organizer, for example, would have access to your phone's address book, but is that really a concern? No.

A Google spokesperson also responded to CNET's coverage of the news, refuting the report's claims and reminding the public that Android apps "must get users' permission to access sensitive information," something worthy of noting, to say the least. "Developers must also go through billing background checks to confirm their real identities, and we will disable any apps that are found to be malicious," the spokesperson said, seemingly referring to the kill switch technology.

And yet, in this case, Google removed "non-malicious" apps. Yes, of course there was the obvious misrepresentation by the researcher as to the apps' purposes, the general uselessness of the apps in question and the need to enforce a Marketplace where developers play by the rules, but it's still worth pointing out that Google has activated its kill switch for non-malicious applications the company itself described as "useless." And it did so just one day after a security firm, albeit a questionable one which apparently has ties to AT&T, blasted the company for the growing number of spyware apps on the market.

If anything, the remote app zapping looks like a response to those (reportedly bogus) claims, which is either a case of very coincidental and/or bad timing on Google's part, or...well...could it be that there was actually some truth behind all that hype?

Is asking for permission not really the panacea Google claims it should be on Android?

After all, over the years, putting the onus on the user to be mindful of their own security concerns has led to pop-up ads that resemble computer error messages, Facebook "recommendations" that instantly publicize your private data, user agreements and EULAs that install spyware, adware and toolbars on your computer and a number of other undesirable situations for end users.

It seems like, when it comes to Android security, there's a fine line between safe applications politely accessing your private data with permission and those that could do a bit more, perhaps, than you had originally intended. The question is now, how much of this will be the user's responsibility to manage and how much can the user rely on Google - and its Android kill switch technology - to manage for them?

Webilder

For Ubuntu Hardy (i386, amd64, powerpc of sparc):

deb http://debian.websterwood.com/ hardy main
deb-src http://debian.websterwood.com/ hardy main

   For Ubuntu Feisty (i386, amd64, powerpc of sparc):
   deb http://debian.websterwood.com/ feisty main
deb-src http://debian.websterwood.com/ feisty main

In terminal:

sudo apt-get update

apt-get install webilder webilder-gnome



   

Custom Validated Data Types Using Domains

Faceblocked? Broken Twitter App Adds to Service's Troubles (Updated)

Earlier today, the popular micro-blogging service Twitter attempted to launch a new application on Facebook that would allow users to easily begin following their friends, family and contacts from the massive social network. Many were excited to see the new connections that could be made on Twitter with this application, but so far, the app has failed to connect correctly with Facebook, rendering it useless and leaving some convinced that Facebook has outright blocked the application.

Update: Twitter has contacted us and explained that it's not a technical matter at issue, but that "Facebook has notified us that they have blocked the update to our application, and we are working on a resolution with them."

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Connectin' Ain't Easy

Almost every social Web service these days has a feature that allows users to find other users based on Facebook contacts and Twitter follows, but these services do not. Since not everybody connects their Facebook and Twitter accounts, it is not necessarily easy to draw these connections without some help from the two services.

Before Twitter's attempts today to connect these profiles, the easiest way to see some of your mutual Facebook and Twitter friends was to view the Twitter application on Facebook (which every Twitter user does not necessarily use). Since I use the Twitter app to sync my updates to Facebook, by viewing that application I can see a list of my Facebook friends that also use the app. In fact, I just discovered some Facebook friends that I had no idea were on Twitter.

But this is an imperfect system, and the list doesn't show those friends' usernames, making it much harder to track them down and follow them on Twitter. What Twitter was attempting to do was to have users connect their accounts so that connections could more easily be made, and users could follow their Facebook contacts with a few clicks.

Twitter Plays the Blame Game?

"Our Facebook app, which launched in 2007, now shows which of your Facebook friends are on Twitter and lets you follow them instantly and save them to a list. The app also lets you post your Tweets to your Facebook profile and now, to one of your Facebook pages too," the company said in a blog post today.

The only problem is, the app doesn't work. When users try to connect their accounts, the app says it has succeeded in doing so, but the list of friends is replaced with an error message. "It appears that the connection between Facebook and Twitter isn't working, we are working with Facebook to resolve the problem," says the message.

This is actually a different message than originally appeared - one that suggested Facebook was blocking the application from working properly. "An error has occurred because Facebook has blocked your ability to allow this application to look up your friends. Twitter has requested that Facebook remove the block," it said previously.

Additionally, a giant frowning face emoticon which was previously shown below the error message has disappeared. It seems Twitter has done an about-face on the application, removing remarks blaming Facebook for the problems and the sad emoticon of failure. Despite this, Twitter has also updated its blog post to alert people to the problem, citing they believed it "is an issue on Facebook's end."

More Trouble for Twitter

So what's really going here? It's impossible to tell from the outside looking in, but we have inquiries sent to both companies for further comment on the issue. The "blocking" could be a simple mistake or privacy control settings error on Facebook's part, because it would seem unlikely that they would so swiftly block the new version of the app. As far as I know, connecting accounts isn't a violation of any Facebook app privacy policy, but perhaps there's some fine print that proves otherwise. Otherwise it could simply be an API overload as people jump on and try it out.

For Twitter, this is just more bad news on top of an already poor period of publicity. The service is barely staying afloat as the World Cup is ravaging Twitter's servers, and now they're new Facebook app is broken, whoever's fault it is. I'm curious that Twitter would decide to rely on Facebook's own webpage to connect users between the networks. Just as other services do, Twitter could have easily connected the accounts using Facebook's APIs, and they would have had full control over the look and feel of the experience.

It seems they took the opportunity when upgrading the Facebook app to also connect friends, but something has apparently gone wrong. More information surrounding this "incident" will likely come to light over the next few hours and into tomorrow.

Judge Throws Out $1 Billion Copyright Suit Against YouTube

Google just announced that a U.S. district court has granted the company's motion for summary judgment in Viacom's $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube. The court argued that YouTube is protected by the so-called "safe harbor" provision. Viacom first sued Google in 2007 and the court case continued to simmer ever since. Viacom accused YouTube of deliberately withholding filtering technologies and knowingly infringing on the company's copyright.

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Today's judgment once again reaffirms the importance of the DMCA's safe harbor provision, which protects Google and other media companies from lawsuits that are based on content that their users upload to their services. According to the DMCA, these companies are protected, as long as they delete infringing copyrighted material if they receive a notification from the copyright holder.

Viacom Plans to Appeal

According to CNET, Viacom intents to appeal this judgement as soon as possible:

"We believe that this ruling by the lower court is fundamentally flawed and contrary to the language of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The intent of Congress, and the views of the Supreme Court as expressed in its most recent decisions. We intend to seek to have these issues before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit as soon as possible.

Viacom Didn't Help Its Own Case

It is worth noting that - in the end - Viacom probably did not help its own case by secretly uploading its own videos to YouTube while still complaining about the face that YouTube hosted these videos. Often, Viacom even "roughed up" these videos to make them look stolen, which YouTube's chief counsel Zahavah Levine noted earlier this year.

Japan and Back in Two Days

Recently, Judson and I took off for a whirlwind trip to Japan. We enjoyed two days packed morning and night with partner events and meetings. What did we find? OPN Specialized adoption is strong. Partners believe in the specialization value proposition and are excited about opportunity with Oracle - Software, Hardware, Complete. The 48 hour trip included:

- Keynote at Japan's OPN Forum
- Keynotes at (2) Oracle + Sun Welcome Events (Tokyo and Osaka)
- Keynote at Japan's Partner Leadership Circle
- Shooting two Japan Partner Interview Videos
- Shooting two Oracle Executive Interview Videos
- Conducting several key executive partner meetings

What were the Japan Oracle and partner perspectives? I captured them first hand in this video.

Thanks! We welcome your feedback.
Lydia Smyers
Vice President, WWA&C Communications, Programs, and Portal
www.twitter.com/lydiasmyers

How to Jailbreak iOS 4.0 for iPhone 3G or 3GS (To Keep a Jailbreak)

Apple has released its latest iPhone operating system, iOS 4.0 and already the hacker community has managed to jailbreak it. Earlier we published a guide on how to jailbreak the iPhone 3G or iPod Touch (2nd generation) using the jailbreak tool known as "redsn0w." However that tool, still in beta format at the time of publishing, did not support a jailbreak for owners of an iPhone 3GS.

But there's a second tool called "sn0wbreeze," which does. This software also supports jailbreaking the iPhone 3G and iPod Touch second generation. However, sn0wbreeze is a Windows-only tool and even more importantly, it is meant just for devices which have already been jailbroken. If you upgraded to the new iOS 4.0, you cannot use sn0wbreeze.

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Jailbreaking vs. Unlocking

For the uninitiated, "jailbreaking" refers to the ability to open up a device in order to install unapproved, third-party applications. Given both AT&T and Apple's restrictions regarding the iPhone, this process is a must for many Apple device owners.

Jailbreaking allows access to many new functions, including turning the phone into a Wi-Fi hotspot, being able to fully customize the phone down to its icons, forcing Wi-Fi only apps to run over 3G and, for those whose older devices don't support all of iOS 4's new features, jailbreaking offers some viable alternatives. 

Jailbreaking and unlocking the iPhone are two different hacks which allow you to take control of your mobile device in different ways. Jailbreaking, as noted above, is a type of hack that lets you install unapproved third-party applications on your iPhone or iPod Touch from searchable repositories provided by apps like Cydia and Icy. Unlocking, on the other hand, is a hack that lets you use your iPhone on another cellular network. Here in the U.S., that means you can use the iPhone on T-Mobile instead of AT&T. You have to first jailbreak your phone before you can unlock it, but you don't have to unlock a phone in order to jailbreak it.

How to Jailbreak with Sn0wbreeze

The "sn0wbreeze" jailbreak software has a very specific use case. You can only use it if your phone has already been jailbroken and if that jailbreak was not performed using the popular jailbreak tool called "Spirit." It is also a Windows-only software program.

To be clear, if you have an iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS or iPod Touch that's already jailbroken with redsn0w or the Mac software called Pwnage Tool, you can use sn0wbreeze. It also does not work on "MC" model iPods - those whose model numbers begin with the characters "MC." To check your device, go into "Settings," "General," "About," then scroll down to "Model Number."

If your device fits these specific parameters, here's how to do it:

1. Download and install the most recent version of iTunes first and back up your phone. Do not upgrade your phone's firmware to 4.0 at this time.
2. Download sn0wbreeze from the ih8sn0w.com homepage here.
3. Download the iOS 4.0 firmware. (Links available here and here and elsewhere on the net. Remember, you're downloading the iOS 4.0 firmware for your device, older versions or those for other devices don't work.)
4. Run the sn0wbreeze executable you downloaded.
5. Choose "Simple Mode" from the first screen of the setup program.
6. When prompted, point it to the iOS 4 firmware file you just downloaded. The software will verify the file and then you can click "Next" to continue.
7. On the following screen, click "No" on the pop-up message that appears if you are using your phone on an official carrier (like AT&T in the U.S). Click "Yes" if you want to use your phone on a different carrier.
8. The software will then proceed to jailbreak your iOS 4.0 software file.
9. The final step is to restore your phone to the now-jailbroken software. Connect your phone to your computer, launch iTunes and select your phone in the left-side menu of iTunes.
10. Hold down the SHIFT button on your keyboard while clicking on the "Restore" button in iTunes. Then let go of the SHIFT button. 
11. iTunes will now prompt you to select the location of your custom firmware file (the now-jailbroken iOS 4.0 software). Direct it to wherever you had originally downloaded that file and click "open."
12. iTunes will now "restore" your phone to that jailbroken version of the iOS 4.0 firmware. Do not do anything else on the computer while this is taking place.
13. When the process completes, your phone is jailbroken. Those who then want to then "unlock" their phone for use on a non-standard carrier (like T-Mobile in the U.S.) will need to follow further instructions to do an unlock. This guide can help.

Keep in mind that if you have a jailbroken phone, you can't get support from Apple for any issues you may have. However, jailbreaking isn't permanent. You can revert your phone to its factory settings at any time via iTunes with no one the wiser.

Strength and Vision of Management Team Key Factor for VC Backing, Claims Study

Consulting firm Spencer Stuart and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) released the results of a study on VC-backed company leadership today. The study includes data from interviews and from a survey of NVCA members on their attitudes regarding the CEOs who run their companies.

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The survey is a follow-up to a similar one conducted in 2001 and points to some of the trends regarding VC backing over the past decade. In both the 2001 and 2010 studies, for example, VCs listed the strength of the management team as the most important factor when deciding whether or not to fund a company. The market sector, a proprietary product, and the business model trail in significance in that order, the study finds.

Vision and fundraising skills are more important skills for CEOs today than they were a decade ago. While vision ranks fourth among important CEO skills in 2010, it was only seventh in the 2001 study. The study's authors suggest that these results "reflect shifting priorities in an environment where both raising funds and the path to liquidity have become more challenging for VC-backed companies."

Other key findings from the study include:

"As they strive to build their next generation of game-changing companies, VCs are starting to take a more scientific approach to recruiting and assessing CEOs and directors," said Spencer Stuart consultant and study contributor Ben Holzemer. "As they face mounting challenges, firms also have a tremendous opportunity to become more successful in selecting the innovative, entrepreneurial leaders who can guide the industry profitably into the future."

A LocusTree to search genomic loci using Berkeley DB Java Edition

Pierre Lindenbaum has adapted Jan Aerts' LocusTree implementation written in Ruby to work on top of Berkeley DB Java Edition. In his blog post he writes about using this combination to build a genome browser.

Genomic research is rapidly growing. There is an explosion of new data and along with that an explosion of new questions to be asked of and answered by that data. George Church is behind the Personal Genome Project working to collect huge amounts of new data, but gathering this data is only the first step. Storing and analyzing it is where the discovery process needs technological advancements. To compound the issue even more, today we examine base pairs within genes by understanding their proximity to other sections of the genome, there is new work to examine the proximity of base pairs which are near each other in the folds of a DNA strand rather than their proximity along the length of the strand. Could it be important to understand how two segments overlap? For both problems the solution is a sturdy technical foundation which allows you to search quickly and find interesting features within the data.

One area where there is always a need for more work is that of drug discovery. The central question of this article in the Economist is that "a toxic mix of science and economics" is preventing research and discovery. A large piece of the economics half has to do with the cost associated with making discoveries. Using new techniques which are faster and manage more data can help to change that by lowering the cost of research.

In this case, searching genomic data sets, the use of the Berkeley DB Java Edition database make perfect sense. It is a non-relational dataset, this data isn't tabular or relational at all rather it's commonly organized in key/value pairs. BDB JE is a spectacular database for indexing large data sets without the overhead of other more complex systems and a perfect fit for Pierre's visualization project.

Microsoft's IP Ventures Program Opens Microsoft IP to Entrepreneurs

Today marks the fifth anniversary of IP Ventures, Microsoft's program that opens up technologies developed internally at Microsoft to entrepreneurs and new businesses.

The IP Ventures team within Microsoft identifies technology not being used by the company - or that could be used in a different way - and treats this IP as a form of currency that can be invested in other businesses. While the new companies that take advantage of these technologies still need to find financial backing, the Microsoft program helps provide ample technology support and business guidance throughout the process.

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Microsoft's IP Ventures is the subject of a Harvard Business School profile. According to author of the study, Professor Josh Lerner, "We think it's an interesting model and believe that students, as well corporations that invest heavily in research, could benefit from looking into what Microsoft has done." As Microsoft cannot work all the IP it creates into its product portfolio, IP Ventures allows Microsoft to transfer those technologies into the hands of other entrepreneurs.

According to program director Sharieff Mansour, "When you're dealing with new technologies and there aren't established players, it lends itself to starting new ventures and creating tangible job opportunities around the IP. IP Ventures works with entrepreneurs and venture capitalists to get those technologies to market quickly. The program also serves as a vehicle for the venture capitalist community to work with us in a meaningful way."

Over the last five years, IP Ventures has helped support the launch of several new companies including the mobile media company Zumobi, the children's learning game company Sabi, and Inrix, a Seattle-based traffic reporting company.

Pat Brazel, whose company Zignals participated in the program says, "From a technical point of view, frankly it's inconceivable that any small company could build the stuff that we got from IP Ventures. We're standing on the shoulders of giants in terms of the technology we got from Microsoft."

While the companies that IP Ventures has supported are still in their infancy, the end goal of the program is to help develop sizable, stand-alone businesses based on the IP Microsoft provided and according to Mansour, a couple of companies in the IP Ventures portfolio are "nearly at that point."

Running Photoshop CS4 with Wine!! Finally

Looking for More? The Definitive Guide is here

I have received a few comments asking for more blog entries on the inner workings of the JRockit JVM. One reason for the lack of updates has been that I've been busy developing the recently released JRockit Mission Control 4.0, the set of tools that gives you inside information about both the JVM and your Java application. Give the new JRockit Flight Recorder feature a spin and you will see what we have been up to.

Another reason is that I knew something even better than a few blog entries was on its way: Oracle JRockit: The Definitive Guide, published a couple of weeks ago. I have yet only seen it from afar, but the table of contents looks promising and considering the expertise of the authors, it should be exactly what the title says - the definitive guide to JRockit. I am looking forward to laying my hands on a copy soon.

The British Are Coming! (To Serve Google a DMCA Notice)

The music and movie industries have been on a quest to place blame ever since they realized they were losing sales to Internet piracy. The RIAA in the United States went as far as to sue and fine individual users for downloading songs on peer-to-peer services like Napster and Limewire, or websites like The Pirate Bay or SendSpace. Others went after the services themselves, and in most cases were successful, though many others still exist. Now, BPI (British Recorded Music Industry), the U.K.'s version of the RIAA, is going after the middle man, Google, by serving the search giant with a DMCA take-down notice.

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"Part of our work involves monitoring the internet and taking action against persons that use, facilitate, enable and/or authorise the use of material in a manner that infringes the rights of the members of BPI and [Phonographic Performance Limited]. We have identified the following links that are available via Google's search engine, and request the following links be removed as soon as possible as they directly link to sound recordings owned by our members," the notice says.

The BPI identified 38 links to 17 songs that they found from Google links to various file sharing services, including works from Christina Aguilera, Lady Gaga, Michael Bublee, Usher, Ke$ha and the cast of Glee to name a few. They even went as far as to identify the 38 various search terms that could lead one to find these files, including phrases like "lady gaga alejandro zippyshare," and "the pretty reckless make me wanna die free download."

Google has been quick to remove copyrighted material from services like YouTube where it hosts the content, but it has not been so quick to remove infringing sites entirely from its search index. Google has, however, removed the 38 requested links at the behest of BPI, but many other file sharing site links remain among the results. In the image above, the third page of results for "dizzee rascal dirtee disco" shows Google's notice that the requested results have been removed. This, of course, is displayed directly below results where the song can be found at other sites.

In section 4 of the DMCA notice, BPI lists 9 different sites that contain these copyrighted files. BPI should have sent 9 different DMCA notices to these sites, not to Google. For better or for worse, Google has become a launch pad from which many people surf the Web. We learned this the hard (and amusing) way earlier this year when a story of ours displaced the typical top result for "Facebook login" on Google, sending wayward Web surfers to our article.

When Googling something is the equivalent of entering the URL in an address bar for many people, you can't place the blame for illegal content on Google. If BPI wants to sue someone over illegal access to music, it should be the sites providing that service, not those simply linking to it.

Kicking it Up A Notch with a Java Persistence API Quiz

Google Docs Now Does OCR for Images & PDFs (Sort Of)

OCR (optical character recognition) fans that are frustrated with the current offering of online services may be pleased to learn that Google Docs will now grab text from images and PDFs quickly and cost free. According to the blog Google Operating System, the new feature has quietly been pushed live by Google after several months of experimentation and development, but will it replace commercial software or online solutions?

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When uploading files to their account, Docs users will now see an option to run an OCR scan, which will extract characters and place them within a new text document. As far as accuracy goes, PDFs fair much better than images, especially basic black text on a white background.

I uploaded a picture of my business card and Google Docs had trouble recognizing the largest text and clearest text on the card, but surprisingly did better with smaller text. A test of a PDF document turned up nearly perfect recognition results, but Google Docs strips nearly all of the formatting out, spewing out the text in a stream of letters and spaces. Other examples from Google Operating System produced decent results, but far from perfect or useful.

Additionally, when scanning a PDF, Google Docs does not save a copy of the PDF, so scanning to text and saving an original file requires two separate uploads. This feature is great for casual OCR users that want to quickly grab text from PDFs and some images or business cards. Those who rely on OCR heavily will likely be disappointed with the features and may have better results with commercial solutions.

Web Makes the Difference for New Orleans Musicians

"It's almost impossible to describe how important the Web was for getting the New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund off the ground," said co-founder Karen Dalton-Beninato. Karen and her husband Jeff, who grew up playing music in the Ninth Ward, used Web technologies and social media to reach out to music fans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Now, almost exactly five years later, another crisis is hitting the shore, the Gulf oil spill.

"With the current state of the economy, we get more used instrument donations than anything else these days, but it's been an amazing ride. New Orleans is going to have a rough summer with Gulf Coast tourism dropping already after the oil spill. Hopefully people will keep the city and its music in their hearts."

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Karen and Jeff started the fund in a Chicago FEMA room when it became clear that many musicians and others wouldn't be able to return to New Orleans for weeks if not months. Jeff, who grew up playing in the Ninth Ward and was a member of the 80s pop band the dBs, as well as playing with roots and jazz outfits, turned to the Internet. He and Karen put together a Website with an online donation function.

Podcasts were a powerful way to reach out to both a distributed public and a fractured musical scene, as was the blog they started. They used social media and more old school Web tools to beat the bushes and pass the hat. Straight out donations, walkathons, downloads and t-shirt sales. Money came in to help get people home, to help them repair storm damage and to pay rent and, above all, to give them back their means of making a living: get them back their bones. In addition to money, people donated trumpets and trombones, traps and guitars and even pianos.

Joannie Hughes, a New Orleans native who became a volunteer with NOMRF, said after Katrina, the most disconcerting thing was the absence of music.

"The one thing that struck me in my heart and soul when I returned was the silence. Having lived here all of my life and grown up in a music household I just was not prepared for the lack of live music that usually poured into the streets. The entire city owes (Jeff and Karen) a great deal of gratitude for bringing back our cherished music."

There's a feeling that once a certain amount of time passes after a disaster, people should have the decency to be OK. Unfortunately, given the sheer bulk of the mess, both physically and politically, that's just not been the case with New Orleans, as co-founder Jeff Beninato reminds us.

"If you think this tragedy is over think again. There are still families out there in corners of this country trying to figure out what they are going to do to get their lives back to some normalcy. There are so many musicians who were well known in New Orleans that are totally unknown where they are now. Imagine building your fanbase or your work base in your workplace and suddenly it all disappears."

And now what promises to become the single largest ecological catastrophe in the nation's history, the Gulf oil spill, is bearing down on the city. The travelers and the money they bring are starting to dry up again. The resource economy, fishing, shrimping and crabbing, that all funnels into the city, is faltering. The need to plug in to this newest of technologies - the Web - to save the oldest - music - is pressing, again. There is some truth to the notion that this technology we cover levels and democratizes. NOMRF is using it to make the process of helping the men and women who provide the soundtrack to your hopes and dreams more egalitarian and more direct.

Think trading tracks and files is "peer-to-peer"? Pass the hat at the Green Dragon and buy a guy a trumpet so he can gig and get his kids new shoes. That's peer-to-peer, brothers and sisters. Can I get an amen?

I said...

Can I get an amen?

Alright, then.

CDs, Radio Still Reign Supreme in Music: Who Are These People?

Some surveys come out and my first response is the people asking the questions obviously weren't talking to me or my friends. A perfect example of this is the latest survey by mobile entertainment company Myxer, which tells us that the CD still reigns supreme, the radio is the top source for music discovery and Pandora - the website designed to play music customized to your expressed taste - ranks second to last in how we find new tunes to add to our collections.

While the survey tries to tell us that things haven't changed as much as we'd like to think, we believe that the scales have tipped and the end of days are near for the old guard.

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According to the survey, which gathered responses on Poll Daddy from 1,049 users, 74% of respondents still buy CDs and 47% of users said that the regular old radio was still the most popular way for them to discover new music.

That television beats out social networks and Pandora is only slightly more surprising than the absence of such sources as the Web or music magazines. Where is the yearly zeitgeist The Machine or tried and true favorites like Rolling Stone and Blender?

The question on where people get their music from, however, was less surprising. While 42% said they got their music from iTunes, the category entitled "Other" came in second place with 23% and we're willing to bet that "Other", for many, could stand for Bit Torrents and any other number of illegal methods of acquiring music.

One explanation for this, of course, might be the demographic involved - the largest response group, 32% of respondents, was between 35 and 54 years old, while the second largest group, ages 25 to 34 came in at 23%. Or perhaps we still just run in a crowd that tends toward the fringes of music acquisition and discovery, relying on blogs, memory sticks and recommendation systems rather than morning Djs and physical media.

"While we have long known that entertainment is inherently social, making word-of-mouth and social media important avenues of discovery for new music, we were surprised to find that radio is still so relevant for discovery among those polled," said Myk Willis, CEO of Myxer, in a release. "Social media and the mobile internet have NOT killed the radio star, not yet at least."

On this point, we still believe, as many do, that the end is near. A recent report by analyst firm Forrester predicts that the end of the Mayan calendar may not predict the apocalypse, but rather the death of the CD in the 2012.

Changing the Way We Shop

In the article 14 Sites Changing the Way We Shop, Mashable's Stephanie Marcus describes how online sites have changed the way we shop. She organizes the sites as follows:

1. Tweeting Deals: Cheap Tweet


2. Group Buying: Groupon, Living Social, Tippr, Yipit


3. Coupons: Retail Me Not, Coupon Cabin


4. Personal Shopper: Shop It To Me, My Perfect Sale


5. Sample Sales: Ideeli, Gilt


6. The Big Ones: Amazon, Craigslist, eBay

Ignoring Amazon, Craigslist, and eBay for the moment, the remaining sites are fairly recent successes and each seems to be predicated on some level of social interaction. None of these sites work well for an audience of one -- they all rely on groups of shoppers for price leverage, wisdom of crowds, or communication. Its nice to see varied ways in which social commerce is being adopted by non-retailers.

While Amazon, Craigslist, and eBay are already well-established, there was a time when they were as new as the other companies, and now the emerging companies mentioned have the potential to create new business models as well. I think Groupon is there, and the others may not be far behind.

How Good Is Your Database Storage Management?

By answering a few quick, simple questions about your storage practices, this nifty little assessment will help you determine how well you are managing your storage, whether you're doing everything possible to optimize performance and to mitigate the risk of information loss - all while keeping costs under control.

You'll learn how you can use Oracle's storage management solutions to optimize your storage infrastructure and deliver a cost-effective, scalable information management platform that is easy to manage and that delivers the performance and availability required today and in the future.

Salesforce.com Heralds The Activity Stream - Chatter Comes out of Beta

Salesforce.com is launching Chatter to its entire customer base today. The adoption means that Chatter will now be part of the entire Salesforce.com stack, available as a stand alone application and as a platform for application development.

Chatter is now integrated into the entire Salesforce.com product line, including its sales and support offeirngs; Force.com and AppExchange, its marketplace for enterprise cloud computing offerings.

We hear a lot these days about Facebook and its connection to the enterprise. Salesforce.com seems to have imprinted Facebook into its DNA. That may infruriate many who see Facebook as something entirely different, compared to an enterprise service. But for Salesforce.com it's Facebook that we hear about over again in its briefings.

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It's the activity stream that matters here. An activity stream that is also an application stream. That is the fast moving trend. The ability for people to communicate effectively in the deep stream of data. We are in a time where machines communication is a must in order to organize and share information in the flow of a dynamic supply chain.

Sugar CRM has an activity stream. Success Factors recently acquired CubeTree for its contact centered service built with an activity stream environment. The Enterprisre 2.0 world has its share of companies with activity streams. Soclaltext is moving its concept of the activity stream forward with its adoption of the Twitter Annotations spec. Socialcast, one of the earliest adopters of real-time activity streams, has been making headway with its service that combines real-time conversations with intergration into back-end legacy applications.

Chatter has had its fair share of skeptics. But customers do speak for themselves. Going into the launch, Salesforce.com has 5,000 customers in private beta and more than 50 applications that have built Chatter into its product infrastructure.Less Software has built an app that enables customers to bring in FedEx package updates to their Salesforce CRM and Chatter when its status changes.

BMC is using the Chatter platform for a real-time feed designed for IT departments and with internal users.

For the launch, Salesforce.com has implemented the capability for anyone to create groups inside the Chatter environment. That's already a primary feature with services like Status.net and Yammer. People need to break out streams into smaller trickles that apply to their own group.

Salesforce.com has come to dominate the CRM category. But it has not created its own category in the market like a company such as Success Factors, which has a place on every employees desktop. It has done that by positioning itself as a employee production service.

The company has a host of competitors, including Microsoft Sharepoint and IBM Lotus collaboration services. But with Chatter, Salesforce.com is increasing its odds of being more universal, providing real-time feed to employees across the organization.

The Future of Location Data, Beyond Social Networking

Data about the geographic locations of people and things will in the near-term future become a massive flow of sensor, satellite and citizen input made freely available to developers through government and other collaboration programs. It will be available in real time, to and from mobile devices, and be machine processed to pick out objects and patterns that can be used as hooks for mashups.

That's the vision of geospatial specialist Matt Ball, articulated in a high-value blog post today titled How will the geospatial data market evolve over the next ten years? The post provides a great look at the way the future may take shape, if current trends unfold as expected.

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"The next ten years," Ball writes, "will be a time of many changes, but will also bring a greater empowerment of the GIS [geographic information systems] user given the amount of available data, with much of it for free."

Volunteered Data

Ball points to Open Street Map as a free, collaborative location platform that "nearly matches that of the commercial providers, and in some cases it surpasses it for accuracy and level of detail."

Open Street Map is a good example of an emerging location platform. See, for example, TopOSM, a collection of topographical maps based on Open Street Map. Blogger Leszek Pawlowicz described the state of that project in detail last month.

Along with web-based volunteered data, mobile is aimed to become a force of deep disruption. Ball puts it very well, like this:

The better location precision of these devices will help greatly in both the collection of accurate geospatial data, and the delivery of helpful location-aware applications. The mobile platforms are quickly dwarfing all other computing platforms in terms of their number, and their pace of innovation. This trend will continue to the point where we have less robust computing platforms, but much greater connectivity to each other and the details that are of interest to us.

Higher-Level Developments

Ball also offers inspiring descriptions of the rise of sensor data, machine processing ("machine learning and automated extraction tools that pull information from data"), real-time data, standards and government mashup contests. (To take a peek into the conversation about remote sensing and machine extraction of geographic entities for mapping, check out this forthcoming conference by the International Cartographic Association in November.)

The resulting landscape is one that could look like this, he says: "The 'app for that' mentality could easily take hold toward a 'data for that' ability, with the software developer orchestrating the different data feeds in order to create custom solutions."

It's an awesome vision of location data as a platform for innovation, something we've discussed before specifically in reference to location based social networks and aerial surveillance video APIs.

Ball believes this will emerge as a key area of specialization, knowledge work and innovation. We're apt to agree, which is why we track developments in location technology closely and so appreciate articulations like Ball's of the space.

Additional reporting by Justin Houk.

Top 10 YouTube Videos About Soccer

Now that World Cup soccer has become the most popular Web event ever, we wanted to help you understand what it is about this sport that's so effective at capturing the world's attention.

From the number one video of soccer celebrities Ronaldinho and Ronaldo showing their best tricks, to the 50 best goals of all time, to street soccer on rooftops, these are our picks for the best videos with the greatest number of views. As a bonus we've included two honorable mentions. These two aren't the most popular videos, but they do much to explain the world-unifying force that the World Cup is. If we've left out any of your favorite soccer videos, please post your links in the comments below.

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1. Ronaldinho vs Ronaldo


36,325,333 views





2. Comedy Football


28,494,116 views





3. Funny Football


22,034,332 views





4. 2 Goals in a 30 Seconds Amazing


21,261,830 views





5. Top 50 Soccer (Football) Goals


10,636,828 views





6. Football skills


9,026,128 views





7. Best soccer football compilation ever


5,991,685 views





8. Joga Bonito Compilation


5,769,194 views





9. Insane street soccer


5,128,513 views





10. Great goals


2,925,153 views





Honorable mention:

11. K'naan - Wavin' Flag - South Africa FIFA World Cup 2010 Official Theme Song


735,042 views





12. World Cup song "South Africa 2010" (Freddy Mix)


280,209 views

Basics of Church Web Design

P6 Analytics Featured in BIWA this week

On Wednesday, June 23, Oracle's special interest group for BI & DW users (BIWA) will be holding an online webinar. Karl Prutzer and I are going to dive into details of how we used Oracle's OBIEE to build out the product with business intelligence, dashboards, analytics and data warehouse.

This will be a deep-dive into the technologies used behind the P6 Analytics product, not a focus on the value it brings to your business.

If you would like to join us, registration is free. Just click here.

See ya there! Thanks, Mark

Why you won't pay for Facebook

Audio Recording Tips

UPK 3.6.1 provides the tools that you need to create and edit sound to deploy in your content without any specialized audio applications. You can add sound during topic recording using the Recorder or to an existing topic using the Topic Sound Recorder. Once recorded, you can use the Sound Editor to make adjustments to recordings. Recording good quality audio requires planning and care. Here are some important things to consider when adding audio to your UPK content.

Choose the microphone you use to record with care. Microphones come in many different types for various applications. Common computer headset style microphones can provide you with good quality sound if used properly. Use a microphone that utilizes noise canceling in its design, these are also known as directional or cardioid pick up pattern microphones. Make sure to practice with your microphone before doing the final recording. Place the microphone close to your mouth but not pointing directly at it to achieve a good signal level and avoid overloading the pickup.

The environment you choose to record in is as important as the microphone. Try to find a quiet place away from ambient and external noise. Listen to the room for its tone; determine if there is an air handling noise or other systems in the facility that may get picked up by the microphone. Once you pick a room, make sure to use it for each recording session needed for a given project. Audio recorded in different rooms that is played in sequence can be very distracting to the listener.

If you have recorded audio in a project you will need to choose to publish the project with audio in the publishing wizard. The publishing wizard provides you with an option for low, medium and high quality sound with the published content. Note that the higher the quality the larger the audio file and consequently the longer it will take the users to download the content over a network. While the audio files are compressed, even at the high quality, there is always a tradeoff between quality and file size. I suggest you experiment by publishing a sample using each quality setting to determine which setting is acceptable for your purposes. You should also consider the network connectivity of your users to determine if using a higher quality and larger file will impact their user experience when trying to access the content.

Peter Maravelias - Principal Product Strategy Manager UPK

Forrst: Stack Overflow Meets Tumblr

When asked if he would mind his startup being described as "a Tumblr for designers and developers," Forrst founder and developer Kyle Bragger said he wasn't sure, but that he probably wouldn't mind. After all, that is precisely what his product is - a community where users can share their links, pictures and text in a micro-blog format, with a little Stack Overflow-style Q&A thrown in. This budding startup has quickly gathered a unique and loyal community of designers and developers that are sharing thousands of posts and comments each day, and today I had to chance to chat with its founder.

Sponsor

Built On Inspiration

Just as Tumblr users can pick from text, pictures, videos and other media to publish, members of Forrst can choose from links, screenshots of projects, bits of code and questions. They can follow one another and view a stream of posts on their dashboard where they can "like" and comment on activity. Sound familiar? That's the point.

When he was inspired to create Forrst, Bragger was happy sharing random items of information on various social networks and blogging services, but he felt his needs as a developer were being underserved. He didn't feel that Tumblr was the right place to share bits of code and screenshots of projects in hopes of getting constructive feedback, so he created Forrst.

Other inspiration, he says, came from services offering similar solutions, but not the full range of features he included in Forrst. One such service, Dribbble, lets users share just screenshots (no larger than 400x300 pixels) for feedback on projects. Stack Overflow is a great place for developers to find questions and answers, but that's it. With Forrst, Bragger is combining these ideas, and then some, and is pleased that many Forrst users also use Dribbble or Stack Overflow as well.

Slow and Steady Wins the Race

Since launching as a rough prototype at the end of January, the invite-only service features over 3,200 users. According to Bragger, Forrst features a strong blend of U.S. and international users, with the majority of users - around 65% - registered as designers, he estimates. So far, over 5,000 posts have been published on the site, but the majority of the site's activity - some 1,500 to 2000 items a day - comes from users liking and commenting on posts.

As for being an invite-only service, Bragger says he never plans to change this setting, opting instead for a steadily growing more close-knit community that lets users "establish rapport," as he puts it. Around 18% of the users are active each day on Forrst, and the users, he says, are kind, polite, helpful and encouraging of one another. With this very targeted audience, Forrst features highly relevant ads on its homepage - just one of several ways Bragger plans to monetize the service.

The Future: Deeper Into the Forrst

One of the ways he hopes to bring in revenue while also serving the designers and developers of Forrst is to create a service through which freelancers can find clients, and vice versa. Back in March, we mentioned another service - Pick.im - that is trying to help these two parties connect easier online. Bragger says while he is hesitant to force revenue streams on his users, he thinks including this service can simultaneously provide for the users and keep the site running into the future.

Right now, Bragger has investment and support from brothers Gary and A.J. Vaynerchuk, who are also his partners in the business. He originally met Gary in 2007 and eventually worked for his company Cork'd before leaving to run Forrst full-time.

Bragger, who began coding at age 11 with Visual Basic before eventually building his own graphing calculator applications, has been a freelancer since leaving high-school. He also previously worked in New York for the Huffington Post.

If you'd like to sign up for Forrst, you can apply for an invitation, of which a limited number are sent out daily. Or, you can beg one of the sites users for an invite, who earn invitations by actively posting and contributing to the site.

Or, you can leave a comment below requesting one of a limited number of invites provided to ReadWriteWeb. Please leave your email address and a link to some of your design or code work (or some other proof that you are a designer or developer!)

DBA Command line options

There are a number of database utilities supplied with the installation of the Oracle Utilities Application Framework based products. These are typically run in interactive mode where the utility prompts you for the values and then executes the required functionality. Did you know that the utilities also have command line options that allow you to run the utility in silent mode as well?

You can assess the command line options by specifying the -h option on the command line.

Here is an example of the oragensec command line options:

oragensec -d -u -r -l -h

where:

The command line options allow the DBA to automate the exeucution either via a script or some utility can than execute utilities. This option can apply to the majority of DBA utilities supplied with the product. Take a look at others.

links for 2010-06-18

• Archbeat Podcast: Oracle Coherence and Data Grid Technology - Part 1
  Cameron Purdy, Oracle ACE Director Aleksandar Seovic (author of "Oracle Coherence 3.5" from Packt Publishing) and Oracle ACE John Stouffer talk data grid technology and Oracle Coherence.
  (tags: oracle otn archbeat podcast grid coherence)
• Jürgen Kress: Call for Papers SOA and Cloud Symposium by Thomas Erl
  Jürgen Kress shares information on how you can make your mark on SOA guru Thomas Erl's upcoming bash in Germany.?
  (tags: oracle otn soa cloud thomaserl)
• ORACLE CERTIFIED PROFESSIONALS: Voting for Session Proposals Heats Up on Oracle Mix
  "Voting for session proposals for Oracle OpenWorld 2010 on Oracle Mix is in full swing with just 3 days to go for polls to end, " says OCP Advisor. "There are over 150 session submission and perhaps the top 25 will be selected for presentation."
  (tags: oracle otn oow10)
• @ORACLENERD: Exadata Learning Resources
  Oracle ACE Chet "ORACLENERD" Justice gives up the link love for some Exadata resources.
  (tags: oracle otn oracleace exadata database)
• Raimonds Simanovskis: Please vote for my Ruby session proposals at Oracle OpenWorld
  "I would be grateful if my blog readers and Ruby on Oracle supporters would vote for my sessions Fast Web Applications Development with Ruby on Rails on Oracle and PL/SQL Unit Testing Can Be Fun!," says Oracle ACE?Raimonds Simanovskis
  (tags: oracle otn oow10 oracleace)
• Julien Schneider: Advanced reporting in Oracle Service Bus
  "Sometimes though, what you want to is a bit more complicated," says Schneider. "I recently had a case where the key was built from the message type (XML) and the id of the message. Seems quite simple but the id could be any element anywhere in the message depending on its type."
  (tags: oracle soa otn servicebus)
• Vijay Tatkar: Two new Whitepapers on Studio and Solaris on SPARC
  Vijay shares info on new whitepapers covering "the synergy between SPARC, Solaris and Studio tools."
  (tags: oracle sun sparc solaris)

ReadWriteStart Events & Deadlines for Startups, 19 June 2010

There are a lot of great activities happening in the startup world, and we would like to help you make sure you're on top of these opportunities. The ReadWriteStart Calendar tracks both startup-oriented events as well as application deadlines (for competitions, grants, and incubators, for example).

If you'd like to add something to the calendar, leave a comment here or email us.

Sponsor

Here are some of the upcoming deadlines and events that caught our eye this past week:

Women 2.0 Labs

Women 2.0 is sponsoring Women 2.0 Labs, a new 5-week program (July 6 - August 5, 2010) for engineers, developers, biz dev folks, and marketing mavens to develop high-growth technology ventures in San Francisco, CA. Applications due June 20.

Transfer Summit UK

Transfer Summit will be held June 24-25 at Keble College in Oxford, England. The event, which includes a BarCamp, is focused on on Open Source technology/collaboration/innovation as it intersects industry, research, and academia. Our attendees are an amalgam of business executives and technologists, interested in streamlining the innovation and resource discovery process, cultivating partnerships, and accelerating the process of commercializing products.

Edmonton Startup Weekend

Edmonton, Alberta's Startup Weekend will take place June 25-27. As with the other Startup Weekend events, it promises to bring together "developers, designers, marketers, inventors, and anyone else interested in ideas and startups to see what they can build in 54 hours. "

Creative Commons Catalyst Grants

As we reported this week, Creative Commons is accepting applications for their Catalyst Grants through the end of the month. These grants are meant to seed activities that support the Creative Commons mission. Applications due June 30.

Photo credits: Keble College photo by Flickr user Dimitry B

Firefox with Antialiasing!!!

It's not just teens who text and drive

Oracle Certification To Retire "SOA Foundations" Exam (1Z0-114)

Effective October 1, 2010, the "SOA Foundations" exam (1Z0-114) will be retired.

Exam 1Z0-114 is a single exam required to earn the Oracle SOA Architect Certified Expert (OCE) certification. The exam will remain available for registration and testing at Pearson VUE Testing Centers through September 30, 2010.

CREDENTIAL VALIDITY
Please note that that the credential remains valid indefinitely for those holding the Oracle SOA Architect Certified Expert certification. This retirement therefore has no effect on those who complete the certification requirements before October 1, 2010.

QUICK LINKS

• Certification Exam: SOA Foundations" (1Z0-114)
  
• Certification Track: Oracle SOA Architect Certified Expert (OCE)
  
• Learn More: Oracle Certification Retirements

ReadWriteWeb Events Guide, 19 June 2010

For those of you with your head in the cloud, we've got two big events for you in the next few weeks. Salesforce.com is holding Cloudforce 2010, which will have "more than 35 Cloud Leaders on the tradeshow floor and 18 expert-led breakout sessions." A few days later, the Cloud Computing World Forum will take place in London, which will "provide a focused platform for the global cloud and SaaS industry."

You can import individual events in the Events Guide into Google Calendar using the link beside each entry, or download the entire thing as an iCal file (which is importable into Google Calendar, Outlook, Windows Live Calendar, etc.) or even view it as a world map. Know of something cool taking place that should appear here? Let us know in the comments below or contact us.

Sponsor

21 - 25 June 2010: San Francisco, California

SemTech 2010

SemTech 2010 is the world's largest, most authoritative conference on semantic technology. The programs covers semantics in enterprise computing, consumer applications, search, Linked Data and social networking. SemTech is the place where the entire community gathers to do business - entrepreneurs and investors, researchers and product developers, marketers and customers.

This year we have in-depth focus on industry applications in Healthcare, Life Sciences, Open Government, Publishing, Finance and Advertising. Case studies will be provided by early adopters including Best Buy, Biogen, Blue Cross, Boeing, Cleveland Clinic, DoD, Group M, Merck, Nokia, Pearson, Pfizer, Salesforce.com, US Air Force, University of Texas and the World Bank. The conference hashtag is #SemTech.

22 June 2010: San Jose, California

Cloudforce 2010

Salesforce.com, the enterprise cloud computing company, announces Cloudforce 2010, the largest cloud computing event of the year. This industry, customer and developer event is being held at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, Calif. With the arrival of Cloud 2, the next generation of cloud computing that is collaborative, real-time and mobile, an entirely new economy has emerged.

Some of the biggest names in technology are participating in Cloudforce 2010 - from the world's largest software companies like BMC and CA, to technology pioneers like Dell and VMware and several surprise guests - all to educate the technology community on how they can realize tremendous success with Cloud 2. Cloudforce 2010 will provide the roadmap for the cloud computing industry with more than 35 Cloud Leaders on the tradeshow floor and 18 expert-led breakout sessions. Salesforce.com will also announce the arrival of Salesforce Chatter. Register here.

22 - 24 June 2010: Santa Clara, California

Now in its third year, Velocity - the Web Performance and Operations Conference from O'Reilly Media - is dedicated to helping people build a better Internet that is Fast by Default. Join hundreds of web developers and experts under one roof from June 22-24, 2010 in Santa Clara, CA Velocity packs a wealth of big ideas, know-how, and connections into three concentrated days. You'll be able to apply what you've learned immediately for high impact results and you'll come away prepared for what's ahead. O'Reilly Velocity 2010 is the premier conference dedicated to building industrial strength sites, at internet speed. Velocity">Register Now and save 25% with discount code "vel10rww".

29 - 30 June 2010: London

Cloud Computing World Forum

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
• Free-to-attend evening awards presentation
• Hear from leading case studies on how they have integrated cloud computing and SaaS into their working practices
• Learn from the key players offering cloud and SaaS services
• Evening networking party for all attendees

5 - 7 July 2010: Marseilles, France

Lift France '10

Lift France gathers pioneers from all over the world to explore how the technologies and concepts of the Web are changing the real world. Through a combination of workshops, inspiring talks, and innovative demos, Lift offers a chance to anticipate the major shifts ahead, and meet the people who drive them.

Together we will explore 4 major topics:

Speakers include Sam Pitroda, advisor to India's PM on innovation; Alma Whitten, Google's privacy lead; Haakon Karlsen, Fab Labs Foundation; Michael Cross, FreeOurData.org; Amit Zoran, MIT Smart Cities Lab; Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, French minister for the Digital Economy; Geoff Mulgan, the Young Foundation.

7 July 2010: Melbourne, Australia

Digital Sport Summit

Digital Sport Summit is Australia's premier sport and digital media event. Hear from social media pioneers who are changing the face of Australian sport. Learn how social media and mobile technology is taking fan engagement to a whole new level.

Speakers on the day will cover a variety of topics including:

• iPhone application development for sport
• Convincing management of the case for social media
• How to monetize social media
• Fantasy sports
• Social media from an athlete's perspective

With speakers representing Essendon Football Club, Cricket Victoria, Herald Sun, Football Federation Australia and more. Digital Sport Summit will take place at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

22 - 23 September 2010: Singapore

Social Media World Forum Asia

Social Media World Forum Asia is back for 2010. The event will be taking place at the larger venue - The Suntec Conference Centre - before the F1 Singapore night race. Two days of interactive and engaging conference featuring leading key figure keynotes, brand case studies, topical Q&A and debates, exhibition hall, workshops and networking. Speakers include:

5 October 2010: New York City

FinovateFall

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.

29 - 30 March 2011: London

Social Media World Forum Europe

Social Media World Forum Europe: Two days of interactive & engaging conference featuring leading key figure keynotes, brand case studies, topical Q&A and debates, exhibition hall, workshops and networking.

Social Media World Forum Europe is continuing to evolve and deliver an event which is second to none, ensuring our audience receive the maximum potential from attending our shows. New for 2011 we have introduced interactive panel discussions, live streamed debate sessions, collaborative learning, break-out group discussions, open Q&A portions in every session, open workshops, with group discussions and interactive zones within the exhibition hall. We have introduced the Online Marketing Toolbox Workshops, educating in all elements of the online marketing mix, such as SEO, Paid Search, Affiliate, Mobile & Apps. The perfect toolbox to complete your online marketing strategy.

Download this entire events calendar in iCal format.

NetBeans 6.9 Feature-cast

New Rules of Retail

I've been on vacation and preparing for Crosstalk, so its been a while since I've posted. I've seen the agenda, and I can assure you Crosstalk will be lots of fun. In addition to hearing from lots of retailers, we'll also be doing a little bowling and racing on the track. I'll be around for the sessions, the ORUG meetings, and our Customer Advisory Board so please be sure to say hello.

I also just completed a white paper based on a previous blog posting which in turn was based on learnings from reading What Would Google Do? For each of Jarvis' ten rules, I discuss the concept in the context of retail and provide real-world examples. No mention of products or sales pitches at all. You can download the paper here. It will put you in the right frame of mind for hearing Jeff Jarvis speak at Crosstalk. For those that can't make it, I'll post some highlights afterwards.

Skygone Launches Marketplace for Cloud GIS Apps

Skygone, an GIS cloud computing company, has launched a marketplace today for pre-configured GIS applications hosted on their cloud infrastructure. TheGISMarketplace.com allows users to search, compare, and buy hosted solutions from many leading GIS vendors.

Currently, the software offerings include MapServer, ArcGIS Server , and GeoServer. Skygone says its working with other GIS software vendors and will add new apps to the marketplace as they become available.

Sponsor

The pricing includes hosting, but in some cases the apps are proprietary and additional licensing fees apply.

Skyline offers a number of enterprise services, including SaaS and system design. Part of their focus is on GIS services, including hosting, map caching, and app-enablement for GIS developers.

With the increasing interest in and capabilities of GIS technologies, many GIS services are moving to the cloud to solve both hardware and software needs. And in response, many businesses are offering simple deployment tools and turnkey solutions for cloud-based GIS services. ReadWriteWeb reported last month, for example, that ESRI was offering a bundle with its ArcGIS Server instance launched on Amazon's E3 infrastructure.

Parliament of Things

In a resolution adopted Tuesday, the European Parliament officially endorsed the development of the Internet of Things. This resolution frankly encourages the development of an Internet of Things in the European Union. It even calls on the European IoT Commission to "secure co-financing for the implementation of these technologies" and "continue funding pilot projects."

The resolution also sets out instructions to factor in issues of privacy while building out the European IoT.

"(The European Parliament) takes the view that the development of new applications and the actual functioning and business potential of the Internet of Things will be intrinsically linked to the trust European consumers have in the system, and points out that trust exists when doubts about potential threats to privacy and health are clarified"

Sponsor

Resolution author Maria Badia i Cutchet, member of the European Parliament from Spain, said "information and communication technologies are important in that they promote social development and economic growth and encourage research, innovation and creativity among European public and private bodies."

However, the resolution also directs the Commission on IoT to make an exhaustive survey of the effects of this technology on "health, privacy and data protection." It was further instructed to ensure that users have the option to use products that are not connected equipped for Internet connection.

Fabrice Epelboin, the editor of ReadWriteWeb France and a European digital entrepreneur, sees the EUP move as a corrective to the more restrictive attitudes of the individual states.

"The willingness of the EU parliament to help bring consumer awareness to the IoT is obviously a good thing. From a French POV, it stresses the gap between a local government which sees the Internet as a bad thing and is building a repressive digital regime and a European level political leadership who obviously has a clear vision on technologies.

"'Censorship, filtering and surveillance should not be practiced,'" he said, quoting the press release that accompanied the resolution. "This is precisely the opposite of what is taking place as we speak in France, showing how Europe is in its infancy and needs more power over the states if technology is to have a future here"

Andrew Lyons, an American web developer and online media strategist in the U.K., warns that given people's confusion about something as "simple" as Facebook privacy settings, IoT privacy needs to be simplified.

"A real set of consumer-controlled standards needs to be established, so those opting into data-chip products have the ability to view exactly what is being shared about them from with outside sources and to choose how much of it actually goes out. A solution could be found in both the OpenID and microformat movements."

Zoho Wiki Adds Enterprise Features: Access Controls, Workspaces, Dashboards

Zoho updated its Zoho Wiki to version 2.0 today, adding features such as granular access controls and the ability to create individual workspaces for different business units, departments, or teams. This represents a shift in Zoho's positioning of the product from a simple app to an enterprise-level platform for intranets, knowledge bases and collaboration.

Sponsor

To this end, the new enterprise-grade access controls are the most significant addition. Groups, individuals, domains and the public can be given differing levels of access at the wiki, workspace and page level.

Other new features include:

Dashboards - Users can use the new widget functionality to build custom dashboards.

Notifications - E-mail notifications and RSS updates are now supported.

Visual customization - Zoho Wiki now supports custom logos, background images, and custom CSS pages.

Zoho faces competition in the hosted enterprise collaboration and knowledge management space from many players, including Socialtext. The solution will appeal mostly to existing Zoho customers, and enterprises looking for a low cost hosted wiki.

CBS.com Publicly Testing iPad-Ready Video

CBS.com is experimenting with HTML5 video, the plugin-free video technology supported by Apple mobile devices including the iPhone and iPad. With HTML5 running on the CBS website's back-end, visitors from these and other Internet-connected devices could stream videos without having to install the Adobe Flash plugin, something that Apple CEO Steve Jobs is known to be vehemently against, having penned a public statement giving half a dozen reasons why Apple mobile devices won't include its support.

According to CBSi's SVP and GM of entertainment, Anthony Soohoo, CBS.com plans to reach HTML5 parity with the plugin-based Flash video, but is still trying to find the right mix of tools in order to do so.

How appropriate that these current tests utilize Star Trek Enterprise episodes for the experiments with this futuristic video technology.

Sponsor

CBS.com Tests HTML5, but Still Not iPad-Ready

Staci Kramer of MocoNews caught up with Soohoo in the hallways of the ongoing video game conference E3 to ask him about the apparently iPad-friendly videos she had inadvertently stumbled upon.

He told her, "What you see right now is a small, little experiment," and one that, as of this moment, appears to only be partly functional in our own tests. Select Star Trek videos now appear with overlaid buttons that read "play video" - an improvement at least over the blank pages informing you that the videos aren't supported on your device. However, click the "play video" button and nothing happens. No Star Trek, no spaceships, nothing but a play arrow button with a line over it.

This isn't the first time CBS.com has been caught running HTML5 video tests on its public site, a decision that either implies limited resources for internal testing or, perhaps, a desire for media attention.

In March of this year, CBS.com ran another HTML5 experiment, just prior to the iPad's release. At that time, numerous bloggers caught glimpse of video tests both on the CBS.com homepage and elsewhere on the site. The captions alongside these videos read, tantalizingly, "iPad - test," giving no doubt as to the reasons why CBS.com was toying with the new technology.

When pressed for comment, CBS.com would only say that the company was "ready to test any idea that brings that content to the widest possible audience."

HTML5 Support Goes Beyond iPad

The iPad's potential to help sites reach the "widest possible audience" is still up for debate. On the one hand, analysts believe Apple will sell 7 to 8 million units this year. And, so far, sales are strong, especially considering the economy and the device's "luxury" status. As of May 31, Apple announced it has sold more than 2 million iPads worldwide in only 60 days. However, not everyone is convinced of the iPad's game-changing potential. News reporter for the blog TechCrunch, Sarah Lacy, recently called the iPad "a beautiful toy," citing survey data from U.K. consulting firm YouGov, which found that the majority of iPad owners (98%) already own another Apple product, a trend that implies, as she sees it, it's a device that does not "reach across the aisle" to attract a wide, mainstream audience.

While that may end up being true for the iPad itself - it's too soon to say - the tablet form factor is being touted as the next major breakthrough in computing. According to the latest Forrester research report, nearly one in four personal computers sold by 2015 will be a tablet. And it's likely that tablets, en masse, will go the way of the iPad when it comes which technologies they will support or reject, especially, for example, battery-intensive plugins like Adobe's Flash. In other words, betting on HTML5-enabled video isn't just a vote for the iPad, it's potentially a vote for computing's future.

We asked CBS.com about this new round of video tests and, this time, received a more informative response. According to a company representative, the Star Trek episodes were part of ongoing experiments, which is why they may have been functional earlier today but are now broken. It's unknown at this time when or if they will work again.

June 24th Live Webcast: Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database 11g

Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database
If You Need Low-Latency And Real-Time Access To Data, This Is The Webcast For You.

Register Today for this live Webcast!
Thursday, June 24th at 10:00am PT | 1:00pm ET

Sometimes having the right data is not enough. If that data takes too long to access, customers can be unhappy, business opportunities can be lost, and additional costs can be incurred. If you need extremely fast transaction processing speed for mission-critical applications such as real-time billing, low-latency trading, and risk/fraud analysis, Oracle has a solution.

Join us for a complimentary live Webcast featuring Oracle Vice President Marie-Anne Neimat who will discuss how to:

• Achieve microsecond response to SQL transactions by leveraging in-memory database technology in your response-time critical applications
• Deploy Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database standalone, or as an in-memory cache to accelerate your Oracle database applications

Guest Speakers
Marie-Anne Neimat, Vice President Oracle TimesTen
Peter Jeffcock, Senior Principal Product Director

Web Design Doesn't Need To Be Complicated - Remember The Basics

Layar Celebrates 1st Birthday With New Features and Partnerships

Today in Amsterdam, popular augmented reality (AR) mobile browser maker Layar is celebrating the one year anniversary of its launch with an event called NEXT. In the company's brief lifetime, it has attracted millions of users to the Layar mobile application on Android and iPhone devices with its impressive catalog of layers. Today, the company made several announcements including additional international pre-load deals with handset manufacturers, new features for its browser, and partnerships with major brands.

Sponsor

Making the biggest splash today at NEXT was a pair of announcements saved for the end of the opening keynotes by the Layar founders. CEO Raimo van der Klein announced that Layar will be opening up to user generated content, a feature popular among other browsers that lets users place tags in virtual space. Additionally, Layar is currently developing image recognition technology which it hopes to implement into its browser by the end of the year.

The user placed objects will feature the ability to interact, connect, communicate and play with each other. Animated digital objects, which Layar is dubbing "Floaticons," can be placed in virtual space and fed with "health" to keep it around - increasing the likelihood of user interaction. Image recognition - a highly requested feature that could help bring desktop style AR to the mobile phone - is being developed in collaboration with Kooaba, a leading developer of the technology.

Matt Miesnieks, in charge of distribution at Layar, announced that LG, one of the world's largest makers of handsets, would be pre-loading Layar onto all of its upcoming Android devices. A few weeks ago, LG announced it would be stepping up its Android game with plans to release 20 new handsets worldwide by year's end. Layar has previously partnered with other manufacturers, like Samsung, and with this LG partnership the company will be on 1 in 3 new Android smartphones shipped this year.

Layar also announced some additional features that will soon be available on the browser, including background actions and flexible refresh rates for more dynamic layers and moving points of interest (POI). Additionally, developers will be able to fully customize their layer's AR experience by deciding what items to show and what to do when users click on objects. Finally, Layar will also now support animations and textures on 3D objects within layers.

Also of note, Layar has formed its first major brand partnership with the sandwich franchise Quiznos - a brand known for fun and edgy marketing. Users of Layar will be able to find restaurant locations through the AR browser, as well as view promotional 3D objects at various U.S. landmarks like the New York Stock Exchange bull, and the Hollywood sign.

Eventually, Quiznos hopes to allow for more functionality on Layar, possibly including ordering capabilities and location-based coupons. The partnership will benefit both companies, as Quiznos can extend its brand into AR and emerging social technologies, and Layar will likely benefit from further exposure via the Quiznos brand.

Another important partnership announced today is with National Geographic, which will be using Layar to create AR travel guides. The first one will launch in Washington D.C. and will let users see photos, 3D objects and other items to help them discover interesting facts about the city as they travel through it.

These announcements are encouraging to the greater augmented reality community as Layar makes progress not only within itself but with partnerships with brands and handset makers. According to Layar, it has 716,000 active users and will soon surpass 1,000 layers on its platform. Competition within the mobile AR browser space is heating up, which will drive innovation forward in the coming months and years.

Apple Quietly Updates Mac Anti-Malware Feature in New OS Release

In the Mac OS X (10.6.4) update which arrived earlier this week, Apple has made a change to its anti-malware feature to include an additional set of definitions, bringing the total number of built- in protections to three. The latest update now protects Mac users against a backdoor trojan that would allow hackers to take control of infected computers in order to send spam email.

Sponsor

Apple Anti-Malware Protections Updated to Three

The change is notable for the simple reason that Apple, unlike its highly-targeted competitor Windows, has typically sold itself as a safe, secure OS where anti-malware protection is not really needed. This mindset apparently enrages security researchers, who aren't as interested in the number of Mac malware programs (OS X certainly has few of those), but are worried about how Apple is training its users to be unconcerned with security.

Writes security expert Graham Cluley on his blog at Sophos, "Mac users seem oblivious to security threats which can run on their computers. And that isn't helped when Apple issues an anti-malware security update like this by stealth, rather than informing the public what it has done." He even goes so far as to suggest that the reason Apple keeps updates like these hush-hush is because the company doesn't want to taint its "secure OS" image. "Shh! Don't tell folks that we have to protect against malware on Mac OS X!," Cluley writes tongue-in-cheek about his discovery of the new anti-malware protections, describing what he believes to be the Apple marketing mindset. 

Although Cluley still admits that there's a lot less malicious software for Mac out there than there is for Windows, the lack of concern regarding security issues among Mac users makes them a potential "soft target for hackers in the future," he warns.

Security by Stealth

The other reason why this news is worth mentioning is not just due to the security angle itself, but also the way Apple handles these sorts of issues. And that is very, very quietly. Most mainstream Mac users are probably wholly unaware that their operating system includes, by default, simple anti-malware protection by way of a file called "XProtect.plist," the same file that has now been updated to block against the newly detected threat, a trojan called HellRTS.

Arguably, Mac users have far less reason to worry about viruses, trojans and malware than their Windows counterparts, as any Apple user will quickly tell you. But despite this fact, the question remains: should consumers call for the company to be more forthcoming about its security protections, instead of leaving them to be unearthed by researchers hacking through Mac files? Or is the stealth status-quo OK, so long as the threats are minimal? 

Image credit: Sophos; Disclosure: Sarah Perez freelances for Microsoft's Channel 10, but it is not a Microsoft employee. She owns four (soon to be five!) Apple products including the iPad, but runs Windows on her primarily blogging machine. She's also very forthcoming about her affiliations here. Discuss

PTA-Endorsed SocialShield Keeps Kids Safe on Facebook and More

A company called SocialShield has launched new technology aimed at keeping children and teens safe on social networking sites like Facebook. Using patent-pending "Safety Engines", the service scans a child's social networking profile to look for inappropriate, dangerous or otherwise suspicious content or behavior. When it finds questionable material, parents are alerted immediately via email.

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Protecting Children on Social Networks with SocialShield

SocialShield works across a number of sites, including popular outlets such as Facebook and Twitter. But it also supports several other social networks available today, like MySpace, Flickr, Photobucket - even LinkedIn - and dozens more.

Wait, kids wouldn't be on LinkedIn, the business networking site for adults, would they? No, probably not. But their new "friend" may be. SocialShield will actually check the friends a child adds against a number of databases, including LinkedIn, Costco.com's customer list and lists of registered sex offenders in order to determine if a child's friend is who they say they are. If, for example, if a child's new friend is found on LinkedIn, they might not be the 13-year old boy they claim to be. In total, one hundred different data points are used to in these comparisons.

In addition to friend verification, also included in the $99-a-year service are tools for parents like cyberbullying detection and reputation management.

Parents are alerted if their child is a victim of cyberbullying (or is the bully), and the service even goes so far as to assist the parents of victims in identifying the cyberbully, documenting the problem incident and reporting the bully to a school, his or her parents, and law enforcement, if necessary.

Meanwhile, SocialShield's reputation management service looks for potentially risky behavior on the child's part, including the posting of inappropriate photos or other content that could hurt the child's future job search efforts or college acceptance. In these cases, the algorithm itself doesn't make the determination about what's considered "risky," it's left up the parents to decide. The service simply alerts parents photos have been posted.

PTA Backs SocialShield

This news of the service's launch comes on the heels of a Facebook partnership with the National PTA, "a formal collaboration geared towards kids, parents and teachers to promote responsible and safe Internet use," notes the social networking site in a company press release posted June 10. Both organizations will utilize their respected resources to raise awareness as well as provide tools and resources regarding online safety, good citizenship and cyberbullying.

But being aware of the problem is only half the battle, the other half is taking action. Today, that means parents often obtain their child's social networking password, and then have to scan the site on a regular basis in order to stay informed of the child's activities. Socialshield automates this process, a benefit not only to time-crunched parents but also to those who aren't as tech-savvy as their children.

Comparisons with Other Services

Although no automated service is going to be 100% effective, something like SocialShield is considered a worthy enough solution that the PTA has partnered with the company.

Like its primary competitor, SafetyWeb, SocialShield requires no software installation - the service is completely online. But SocialShield claims it can access private data, too, while SafetyWeb focuses more on what's publicly available. The company also claims it will offer a more comprehensive educational community via its Knowledge Center which will connect parents with experts like best-selling author and former bullying victim, Jodee Blanco, as well as psychologists and law enforcement officials for help in understanding what to look for and what to do when troubling content is found. At the moment, however, the Center is sparse in comparison to SafetyWeb's, which houses dozens of articles in addition to an informative company blog. The pricing for both services is the same as well: $10 per month (or $99 a year for SocialShield if paying annually). But it's the PTA endorsement that may be SocialShield's biggest selling point, at least until more comparative testing can be done between the two services.

Free Trial

SocialShield has been in beta testing since April and publicly launched just this week. The name "SocialShield" has also been associated with another, similar company in the past, but that was a different entity altogether, with a different board of directors.

Interested parents can sign up for SocialShield here and try it for 14 days, free of charge.

7 Basics of Good Web Design

Google Scholar Now With 100% More Blog

Today Google Scholar, the search service for academic literature, has launched a blog.

The fact of Google Scholar having proven popular enough to merit a blog is surely an indication of the importance of Web and Internet technology to the academic world at large. This is a trend ReadWriteWeb has long recognized.

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Google Scholar allows interested users to make a search on, say "oil spills," and receive research articles and patents or legal opinions and journals. The nature of the results are very different than a standard Google Web or news search.

The blog's first post covered the Google Scholar Alerts. The post was written by Anurag Acharya, who certainly has best job title in the entirety of the Googleplex: "Distinguished Engineer."

Advanced reporting in Oracle Service Bus

Reporting in OSB is useful, it allows you to audit message going through OSB. The service bus console allows you to view the content that you reported.

To report data you simply use the Report action in your proxy. The action itself is rather straightforward. You specify the content to report ($body for example), an optional key for easier search (for example the id of the record) and that's it.

Sometimes though, what you want to is a bit more complicated. I recently had a case where the key was built from the message type (XML) and the id of the message. Seems quite simple but the id could be any element anywhere in the message depending on its type.

This could be handled by 'if' statement but adding new cases would mean changing the proxy service and if you have lots of message types this can get boring so I wanted the solution to be as dynamic as possible (read "just change a configuration file and that's it").

The following entry details how you can make this dynamic in your proxy by using XQuery/XSLT.

;

First step the XQuery

We're going to use an XQuery to make the mapping between the XML message type and the location of the identifier in it.

We assume here that the message type is the first node of the input XML and use a rather simple Xpath to find the identifier.

;The XQuery looks like this ;for two messages :

; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;

; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; messageType1

; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; MT1

; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; //customID

; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;

; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;

; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; messageType2

; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; MT2

; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; //theOtherIDLocation

; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;

;

;

Second step the XSLT

To get the identifier value of the dynamic path, we're going to use an XSLT transformation. This XSLT takes an XML parameter as input which contains our xpath (coming from the previous XQuery).

The XSLT looks like this ;:

xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:xalan="http://xml.apache.org/xalan">

; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;

; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;

; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;

; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;

; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;

; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;

(note the use of a xalan function here. Xalan is the XSLT processor used in weblogic server)

;

Last step, the proxy service

We're now going to wire everything in the proxy service. First we assign the XQuery to a variable.

We then get the entry in the XQuery corresponding to the record we're treating.

We're then extracting the id of the message using the XSLT transformation

Final assign is to built the final variable that will be used as the reporting key.

The report action is then called with this variable.

Everything is setup. We're now ready to test.

;

Testing the solution

Using the test console, we're sending our first XML ...

; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; test console 1

; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ID12345

; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;

; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; value of field 1

; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;

;

... and a second one of another supported type

; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;

; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; Test data

; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;

;

Reporting result is :

;

Conclusion

Report is done as expected. Now if a new message type must be supported we only have to modify the XQuery and nothing at the proxy service level.

;

Sample project attached to this entry.

;

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YouTube Gets a Cloud-Based Video Editor

If you have found yourself like I recently have - stuck with video on an iPhone and a netbook, but no real way to edit it - then fret no more, because YouTube has added an editor.

While the YouTube Video Editor is certainly nothing to compete with the likes of Final Cut Pro or Premiere, it has the basic functionality needed to finally make it possible for those living the ultra-mobile, ultra-lightweight lifestyle to put their videos online without having to leave all the unwieldy odds and ends.

Sponsor

The editor is simple and intuitive, with a drag-and-drop interface showing a full thumbnail inventory of all of your videos. Editing a video consists of setting a starting and stopping point for each clip, so if you want to select multiple clips from the same video, you simply drag that video to the bar below and repeat the process for each clip. In much the same way, different videos, or clips from those videos, can be spliced together.

Of course, rough editing like this can leave some interesting audio, so YouTube also provides you with audio tracks to overlay over the entire video from its AudioSwap library. Two caveats come with using the audio overlay - adding an audio track from the AudioSwap library will permanently erase the audio track on the mashed-up video and YouTube says that it may display advertisements on videos using these audio tracks.

BPM11g Launch - Spotlight on Innovation: A Unified Business Process Management Solution June 17th 2010 19:00 CET

Spotlight on Innovation: A Unified Business Process Management Solution
Thursday, June 17th, 2010 10 a.m. PT / 18:00 UK / 19:00 CET
Presented by: Hasan Rizvi Senior Vice President Oracle Product Management
Business Process Management (BPM) is essential for managing change and increasing business visibility, agility, and efficiency. To make the most of BPM, businesses today need to benefit from a new generation of process management solutions.

Join Hasan Rizvi, Senior Vice President, Oracle Product Development, as he discusses Oracle’s innovations in the new BPM Suite 11g which will define the next generation of process management. Discover how you can leverage this complete, open, and integrated BPM solution that delivers:

• Management of all types of processes; including system, human, document, and decision-centric
• A simplified path to achieving greater business visibility, agility, and efficiency
• A unified process foundation that simplifies process management with a unified process engine and preintegration of process subsystems
• User-centric design that simplifies process modeling and interaction
• Social BPM interaction that provides social computing in the context of BPM to simplify and add richness to collaboration

Register today for this live Webcast, another edition in a series introducing the next wave of products in Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g.

Did you missed our BPM 11g webcast with Clemens Utschig-Utschig? The recorded version is now available! Here is your feedback:

• First experience with BPMN 2.0 in Oracle BPM Studio 11g by Hajo Normann
• Warum Oracle BPM Studio 11g? by Torsten Winterberg
• Oracle BPM 11g, less is more by Léon Smiers
• Oracle BPM 11g Integration with ADF and WebCenter Suite by Andrejus Baranovskis
• Oracle BPM11g available! by Guido Schmutz

Listen to more feedback here. If you are working on BPM 11g projects and you would like to attend a hands-on training session, please contact Jürgen Kress.

YOUR FREE, EXCLUSIVE, ONLINE UPDATE ON FANTASTIC NEW ORACLE PARTNER OPPORTUNITIES - REGISTER TODAY!

How Can You Work Smarter In Life Sciences Sales?

One major reason why executives keep choosing Oracle CRM On Demand and Siebel CRM is our ongoing investments that deliver comprehensive business process support, tailored "at the factory" for specific industries. For example, life sciences sales in many cases globally follows an indirect, "influence" model, where a medical clinician uses expert working knowledge to prescribe products that are sold by independent pharmacies. Smarter, presentations to clinicians can increase sales.

Oracle's life sciences CRM is built for sales reps by sales reps. We worked with representatives at 15 of the top 20 pharmaceutical firms on our latest release. Oracle helps reps work smarter from planning their day to delivering samples and rapidly presenting details to busy clinicians. Watch Piers Evans, Industry Strategy Director, show what this looks like in the day of a typical pharmaceutical sales representative.

JÖN JÖN JÖN!!! Oracle BI EE 11g Launch júliusban

A bejelentésre már nem kell sokat várni. Minden rajongó mélyet lélegezhet.
JÖN JÖN JÖN az Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g!
Az Oracle INFORMATION INDEPTH NEWSLETTERS, Enterprise Performance Management and Business Intelligence Edition, June 2010 számában is olvashatunk a témáról:
Oracle Readies for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g Launch . Ki tudja pontosan megmondani, hányat kell addig aludni a bejelentésig? :) A válaszokat comment formájában kérem!
Mind funkciókban, mind külalakban és használhatóságban nagy lépés lesz az új verzió.
A bejelentés: London: Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g Launch
Miért is NAGY UGRÁS ez? Még visszatérek a témára. Addig is várom a kommenteket.

BIP 10.1.3.4.x June 2010 Update Available

A new patchset for 10.1.3.4.0 and 10.1.3.4.1 is available on Metalink. some notes:

• The patch number is 9791839.


• This patchset includes 28 new bug fixes since the last patchset release on March 31.


• This is a culmulative update that includes all the fixes and enhancements from previous updates.


• The patch will supercede the other two updates.


• Install instructions are in the readme inside the patch

There is also a new BIP client patch available, 9821068. No new template building features to my knowledge but there is an update to the template viewer to allow you to test and debug you siny new Excel templates.