Tech Bytes - Daily Digest: July 2012

July 31, 2012

Good IT architecture means knowing when to take control
Last week's Advice Line took the position that ETAM (enterprise technical architecture management) is a regulatory function, and that this is a good thing. Regulation is, in other words, what businesses call compliance, and IT calls enforcing standards. While it might not be obvious, ETAM-as-regulator and decentralized ETAM are one and the same.

Multi-Language Big Data and the Role of Linguistic Technology: A Spotlight Q&A with Jonathan Litchman of SAIC
This BeyeNETWORK spotlight features Ron Powell's interview with Jonathan Litchman, SAIC Senior Vice President. Ron and Jonathan discuss how governments and enterprises throughout the world are increasingly challenged by big data the need to understand and communicate with other cultures and other languages.

How to use big data to transform your company
We’re being propelled into the era of “big data.” Organizations are getting the kind of insight into their businesses, customers, and employees at levels that were unimaginable in the past. But they’re also running head first into tough new challenges.

Yahoo unveils version 3.0 of its IntoNow social TV app
The latest version of Yahoo’s social TV app lets users caption and share still images from shows, and it IDs music being played in broadcasts, even if the tune isn’t performed by the original artists.

Should Cloud and Mobility Alter Your Approach to EA?
Do traditional technology adoption model like “Technology Adoption Lifecycle” formulated by Everett Rogers & Geoffrey Moore or the “Hype-Cycle” formulated by Gartner reflect the current reality?

Health Infrastructure NSW pushes for digital hospitals
Speaking at the Digital Hospital Design conference in Sydney yesterday, Rust said that the use of Building Information Modelling (BIM) when building hospitals and other medical facilities will be instrumental in creating better healthcare facilities.

Optus launches 4G in Sydney, Perth
Optus has today launched long-term evolution (LTE) services in Sydney and Perth for business customers, following the completion of upgrades to its 3G network in those areas.

India biz laud govt's IT tax review
The Indian government's move to review tax laws of the sector has been welcomed by local IT companies, saying it will give more clarity in taxation and make India an investment-friendly center.

XenServer Performance and Scalabilitiy Tuning
When more than 65 machines were loaded on a single XenApp host, it has been noticed that the dom0 was at capacity and the PVS driver showed poor throughput of 4MB/s or less. Once 65 VMs were loaded, the user experience dropped dramatically. This scenario is explained in an article on the Citrix Blogs.

This Emotional Attachment Will Destroy Your Business!
An emotional attachment is a desire for something or someone, and the inability to release or do without that thing or person. We tend to think about this when it comes to relationships, but have you ever thought about whether you are emotionally attached to say ….a line item on your P&L?

New Programming Jargon
Here are the top 30 Stack Overflow New Programming Jargon entries below, as judged by the Stack Overflow community

Quote for the day:
"The best preparation for tomorrow is to do today's work superbly well." ~ William Osler

July 30, 2012

Illustrated Design Patterns: More real-time examples in C#
In software engineering, a design pattern is a general repeatable solution to a commonly occurring problem in software design. A design pattern isn't a finished design that can be transformed directly into code. It is a description or template for how to solve a problem that can be used in many different situations.

Three Schools of Thought for Enterprise Architecture
Mostly the online discussion focused around the role of the newest domain of Enterprise Architecture… the domain of Business Architecture. Depending on how Business Architecture is understood, the role of EA can be dramatically different.

Setup of ThinApp Factory in vSphere
The following article was published on the vmWare Blog and outlines the steps to install the ThinApp Factory Appliance in a vSphere environment using the Setup Executable.

Homemade tech to reduce India's cyber threats
Cybersecurity analyst calls on government to promote use of local IT products to prevent cyberespionage caused by foreign-made equipment.

Chores to consider before and after upgrading to OS X Mountain Lion
A prominent Mac storage developer recently pitched its software as the path to "a smooth upgrade to Apple's Mountain Lion." Whether or not one buys the program, the recommended list of chores — both before and after the OS upgrade — make sense, especially for the new SSD-only MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs.

Is Windows 8 a catastrophe or a success?
Windows 8 is basically, in my humble opinion, Windows 7 R2 with a new interface dubbed 'Metro.' Admittedly, I wasn't a big fan of '8' in the beginning. I've changed my mind--in spite of what some fanboys think--without a penny coming to my bank account from Microsoft.

In Columbus, a hospital designed for purposeful distraction
A thoughtful design strategy that is not meant to be noticed is placing computer stations, work areas, and educational spaces away from the patient rooms. This reduces foot traffic and stressful distractions directly around patient rooms.

Fraudsters tempt Olympic fans with bogus streaming websites
"Other fake live streaming sites when clicked will redirect to another site requiring an email address," wrote Maela Angeles, a fraud analyst with Trend Micro. "As such, cybercriminals can harvest email addresses, which may be used for their spamming activities."

Apple earns a place on Chinese blacklist
Guangdong's watchdog has placed Apple on a "company integrity" blacklist due to after-care and policy concerns.

Custom Functions in Excel: Part V, XLL-RTDs
Why would you want to call an RTD from an XLL? Recall that the way to call an RTD is through the RTD function in Excel, so the user needs to somehow remember how many parameters your function takes and in what order to supply them and even what the function is called. Good luck explaining that to your users!

How to set up and use the RTD function in Excel
Just in case you wonder what is RTD and how to have it setup, here is the microsoft knowledge base article on the subject.

Quote for the day:

"Enduring setbacks while maintaining the ability to show others the way to go forward is a true test of leadership." ~Nitin Nohria

July 29, 2012

Can Creativity be Automated?
Music lends itself naturally to being parsed by algorithms—mathematics is mixed up in every chord, beat, and harmony that we hear. But can computer programming hack something as subjective as grading English papers?

Captchas Are Becoming Ridiculous
Andrew Munsell is having tough time with CAPTCHAs. Read on to see how it is and may be we all are experiencing the same trouble.

Vertical Is The New Horizontal: How The Cloud Makes Domain Expertise More Valuable In The Enterprise
While there are still a few providers for whom the “all-things-to-all-people” approach is quite successful (Microsoft, Oracle), the vast majority of successful cloud solution providers have struck gold by picking one thing and doing it extremely well.

Human Error Cited in Hosting.com Outage
Hosting.com said human error was responsible for a data center power outage that left more than 1,100 customers without service. The downtime occurred as the company was conducting preventive maintenance on a UPS system in the company’s data center in Newark, Del.

University of Groningen Offers Repertory Grid Tool for Capturing Architecture Decisions
Dan Tofan from the University of Groningen provides the open source software tool RGT (Repertory Grid Tool) to software architects for capturing and evaluating their architecture decisions. Using the tool architects can better document their decisions and reflect about them.

The Titleless Leader
Leading without a title is about taking personal responsibility. We—the world—is in desperate need of people who will choose to lead whenever and wherever they can.

Database Security Testing In the Light of SQL Injection Attack
This article basically focuses on providing clear, simple, actionable guidance for preventing SQL Injection flaws in the database applications under test.

How Companies Will Googlefy Your Career
Global giants like IBM, Amazon and Google have already begun importing predictive performance analytics to manage their human capital portfolios. Their efforts are arguably more sophisticated than these new college tries.

Introduction to Security Troubleshooting
This post is the first part of a multi-part series (I haven't decided how many parts there will be) on effective Cisco security deployment troubleshooting. While later posts will focus more on either a particular device or technology, I'll cover some general guidelines and concepts here.

Quote for the day:

"Practice Golden-Rule 1 of Management in everything you do. Manage others the way you would like to be managed." ~Brian Tracy

July 28, 2012

GPS accuracy to improve in EU with new augmentation service
EGNOS, a system providing data that makes GPS readings even more accurate, can now be used through the internet as well as via satellite

Black Hat hacker gains access to 4 million hotel rooms with Arduino microcontroller
Bad news: With less than $50 of off-the-shelf hardware and a little bit of programming, it’s possible for a hacker to gain instant, untraceable access to millions of key card-protected hotel rooms.

Hate Small Talk? These 5 Questions Will Help You Work Any Room
Do you love going to events, but find yourself stranded during happy hour, tongue-tied and tucked in a corner? Initiating and maintaining conversations while networking is a necessary skill, and one you can easily improve with these simple tips.

Format a ESX & ESXi VMFS file system manually
Recently I came across a query in the VMware communities, the query was “How to reformat a VMFS file system or Datastore manuallly” The preferred method of reformat the VMFS file system is from a console or SSH session as you can simply recreate the file system without having to make any changes to the disk partition.

No Silver Business Intelligence Bullets, But Still a Bright Upside
Likewise, the BI market finds itself awash in really cool reporting tools (seriously!) whose ads imply quick results with little effort. The reality is that success on the scale envisioned by many customers requires the planning, coordination, and integration associated with an IT project.

Leadership: It is not about you! Get over it.
What a leader needs to remember is that they are not the most important person in the organisation. A great leader is more concerned with the vision and cause of the organisation

Is Apple taking a financial interest in Twitter?
The New York Times reports that the two companies have talked in recent months, but they are not in talks at this time. Apple could potentially invest several hundred million dollars into Twitter, which has already gathered close to $1 billion in funding

Microsoft Paid $1.2B for Yammer, But You Can Have It for Free
According to Sacks, Yammer will stick with this “freemium” model as it moves under Microsoft’s wing, and it will use the strategy to encourage adoption not only of its own products, but existing Microsoft tools as well. Microsoft declined to comment for this story, but clearly, the company is working to change the way its core business operates in order to keep up with the latest wave of tech outfits.

Predictive analytics might not have predicted the Aurora shooter
Certainly any law enforcement officer who knew of the pattern of activity for this individual would have flagged it as suspicious and investigated. But data mining, also called machine learning, doesn't work the same way.

Ask The Entrepreneurs: 15 Ways to Incorporate Fitness Into Your Company Culture
Ask The Entrepreneurs is a regular series where members of those involved in the Young Entrepreneur Council are asked a single question that aims to help Lifehack readers level up their own lives, whether in a area of management, communication, business or life in general. Here’s the is what the entrepreneurs say for the question related to the topic

Quote for the day:

Success is not built on success. It's built on failure. It's built on frustration. Sometimes its built on catastrophe -Sumner Redstone

July 27, 2012

Will Enterprise Architecture Ever “Cross the Chasm?”
While the field has grown, the proliferation of voices, methods, frameworks, and generally inconsistent advice in the field of EA has also grown. The number of “EA Frameworks” has grown to include a wide array of overlapping bodies of work.

OAuth 2.0 and the Road to Hell
... Our standards making process is broken beyond repair. This outcome is the direct result of the nature of the IETF, and the particular personalities overseeing this work. To be clear, these are not bad or incompetent individuals. On the contrary – they are all very capable, bright, and otherwise pleasant. But most of them show up to serve their corporate overlords, and it’s practically impossible for the rest of us to compete. ...

Payment terminal flaws shown at Black Hat
Criminals can also leverage these vulnerabilities to trick store clerks into thinking that a transaction was authorized by the bank when in fact it wasn't, allowing them to buy things without actually paying.

Avoid These 6 Recipes for Business Disaster
Why would anyone want to know the formula for failure? Because you may be blind to the fact you are already following it, at least in part. And if you know the ingredients to avoid, you'll save your business before it's too late.

4 Reasons Why IT Matters More Than Ever
The argument that IT no longer matters has resurfaced. In this age of consumerization, BYOD and the cloud, IT departments are, in fact, vital to any business, able to create value and sort the wheat from the chaff as stakeholders eye new investments or money-saving ideas.

Lithium-Air Batteries Get a Recharge
Lithium-air batteries work, at least in theory, by exposing a lithium anode to an electrolyte that grabs its positively charged lithium ions and drives them toward the cathode, made of a different, porous material that allows oxygen from the air to form the crucial lithium peroxide.

LaCie 2Big NAS offers 6TB of network storage
If you think that LaCies latest network attached storage product, the 2Big NAS, looks like something youve seen before, youre right. But beneath the familiar appearance (the basic design of the 2Big has been around since 2007), there are a number of differences under the hood.

How To Be A Horrible Leader – 50 Bad Leadership Traits
Of course this is done in the hope that one can avoid the ill effects on an organization from any of bad leadership behaviors. We cannot all be perfect, but all it takes is a few of these in the right combination to kill moral and create a horribly run organization.

Losing Can Be Useful, If You Learn To Get Good At It
Successful entrepreneurs are crazy risk-takers, right? Not so much. The best know precisely how much they can lose--and what they can gain from the process.

Microsoft announces finalists for startup accelerator programme in India
Microsoft has unveiled the names of the 11 tech startups that will be incubated at the Microsoft Accelerator for Windows Azure in Bangalore. The program was announced in May this year and received more than 200 applications from startups.

Enterprise & IT Architecture Global Excellence Awards 2012
Check out the nominees to the various categories of Enterprise & IT Architecture Globa Excellence awards 2012 for the year 2012 instituted by iCMG and hope to have the winners published out there soon.

Quote for the day:

"Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely." -- Auguste Rodin

July 26, 2012

Third Largest Botnet Ring Shut Down
"The takedown, while long overdue, is another welcome example of what the security industry can accomplish cooperatively and without the aid of law enforcement officials," said Brian Krebs, a computer security expert and blogger.

Warning: New Android malware tricks users with real Opera Mini
The devil is in the details: in the background, the malicious app sends expensive international text messages to earn its creators revenue. The malicious app does the dirty work to incur costs on the victim.

Windows Azure now offers HIPAA BAA compliance for healthcare-industry users
Microsoft is offering healthcare users and partners needing HIPAA guarantees the ability to store more information in public and/or hybrid Azure clouds.

Apple looked to Sony for iPhone design inspiration, court documents show
Apple founder Steve Jobs' admiration for Sony isn't a secret, and the court filing appears to show that as part of the design process for the first iPhone, Apple asked one of its designers to answer the question: "What would Sony do?"

Physician robot to begin making rounds
With a video screen for a head, a microphone and speaker for a mouth and two high-definition cameras for eyes, RP-VITA offers a more human-like interaction for physicians who can't be on site.

Building a Performance Analytics Environment
It quickly became clear that, while most of the recent data surrounding program growth, enrollment, and faculty loads existed, access was very paper-centric — little or none of this historic information existed in electronic form. Mining this information would be a challenge, but the overarching problem was rooted in access, reliability, and the amount of time required to have each academic office search for, gather, and summarize their own data.

IT careers: Do you need an executive coach?
CEOs have long used executive coaches to take their leadership to the next level. Now IT pros are following suit.

Programming languages even a business analyst can use
A key advantage to this type of DSL is that business analysts who speak the jargon of the business, but who are not necessarily programmers, can write business rules on their own.

Be a “Karma Yogi”- The Leadership of Thoughts and Action
What really causes people to follow leaders to the journeys unknown, to pledge lives, to follow without a second thought?

Why the Latest Senate Cybersecurity Bill is a Joke
A new version of the controversial Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protect Act (CISPA) is about to be put to vote in the U.S. Senate., and it could very well pass. But the modified bill is no better than earlier versions, according to CIO.com blogger Constantine von Hoffman. Here's why.

Quote for the day:
Receiving is good but giving is much better. Nevertheless, sharing is the best. -- Shahrizad Shafian

July 25, 2012

Is Big Data big hype?
Management guru Peter Drucker saw increasingly available IT as a threat to corporate decision making, not due to cost or some perceived evil, but because IT made it so easy for management to focus on the past rather than attempting to determine and react to future trends.

NSW Govt SAP roll-out to be cloud test case: Ovum
Ovum Asia Pacific research director for IT, Steve Hodgkinson, said that government departments around the country (Australia) would be watching the deal to see if cloud services will be a better way of providing shared services.

Silicon Valley Says Step Away From the Device
“If you put a frog in cold water and slowly turn up the heat, it’ll boil to death — it’s a nice analogy,” said Mr. Crabb, who oversees learning and development at Facebook. People “need to notice the effect that time online has on your performance and relationships.”

EC opens cybersecurity consultation
The EC is seeking the views of governments, businesses and citizens about their experiences and possible EU responses to cyber incidents that disrupt essential networks and information systems.

Compliance In The Cloud Era
The bad news is that we can't get too comfortable. The dynamics of compliance are changing as we grant third parties more access to sensitive and critical data, and the damage if there is a major security breach at one of your key external partners.

Top 50 Innovation Tweeters of 2012
We knew we follow a lot of great innovation people on twitter (including a lot of the great Innovation Excellence authors) and were curious to see whom should be followed to learn most on innovation. Read on to see the list.

The Future of Customer Relationships: Where is all this heading?
Dr. Michael Wu, Chief Scientist, of Lithium Technologies, has been doggedly trying to uncover the meaning of influence, its impact on relationships, and ultimately corporate profit structures. Target the influencers, and you can move the crowd. There are seemingly vast opportunities in understanding and leveraging influencers within networked communities.

Java Vulnerabilities Increasingly Targeted By Attackers, Researchers Say
One clear trend is that Web exploit toolkit developers are increasingly focusing on Java exploits, Jones said. They are also integrating exploits for new Java vulnerabilities at a much faster pace than before.

5 Features in Android Jelly Bean To Drool Over
Google has released a worthy successor to Android 4.0, which brings improvements in fluidity and responsiveness, a cool predictive keyboard, better notifications, offline maps and Apple Siri's nemesis --Google Now

5 Things That Keep App Developers Up At Night
Compounding the stress: The ever-present possibility that a bug will be detected by a journalist, potential investor, or a celebrity with a large Twitter following.

Quote for the day:

"Playing it safe is the most popular way to fail" --Elliott Smith

July 24, 2012

ASP.NET - Password Strength Indicator using jQuery and XML
ASP.NET Password Strength Indicator somewhat similar to AJAX PasswordStrength extender control behavior and implemented by using jQuery and XML.

Flexibility: A Foundation for Responsive Design
If you haven’t been living under a rock for the past year or so, you know that responsive Web design is one of the biggest trends these days. Introduced by Ethan Marcotte, the concept is simple: develop a site using methods that enable it to adapt and respond to different devices and resolutions.

Why does the IT industry continue to listen to Gartner?
Another day, another provocative research report from Gartner, which has a long track record of spectacularly wrong predictions. I've collected some of their greatest hits. Er, misses.

After Infy, TCS, Cognizant in fray to buy Lodestone
TCS and Cognizant have joined Infosys in the race to take over Swiss firm Lodestone Management Consultants, a management and technology consulting firm.

Samsung adopts Windows Azure for Smart TV cloud structures
Samsung announced on Monday its decision to use Windows Azure technology to manage the Smart TV system through cloud-based technology. The company cited a reduction in costs, increased productivity and a flexible, scalable model which can be expanded to meet its growing customer base.

Harley-Davidson deal win spurs Infosys to open new US delivery centre
Outsourcer Infosys has decided to open a delivery centre in Milwaukee, after it won a five-year deal with motorbike maker Harley-Davidson to supply tech services such as applications management

Facebook's Zuckerberg wins privacy patent, 6 years on
The patent, number 8,225,376, was first applied for on July 25, 2006. Zuckerberg and Facebook's former chief privacy officer Chris Kelly are credited as inventors for the patent, which is titled "Dynamically generating a privacy summary."

Microsoft's Lync: Unified Communications Made Easy
Microsoft Lync offers Instant, Messaging Audio/Video Conferencing and Telephony Services, making it the complete unified communications tool SMEs need, says Microsoft's Sukhvinder Ahuja

How to Handle Relational Data in a Distributed Cache
Although distributed caching is great, one challenge it presents is how to cache relational data that has various relationships between data elements. This is because a distributed cache provides you a simple, Hashtable-like (key, value) interface ...

Robert's Rules: The Four Commitments
Here are Robert Thompson's four leadership traits rather commitments.

Quote for the day:

"Out of clutter, find simplicity. From discord find harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity." -- Albert Einstein

July 23, 2012

Applying 'Fail Fast' in development
This is a very good read for all developers and it is about how the 'fail fast' approach can help you produce reliable systems.

The 6 People You Need in Your Corner
Nothing incredible is accomplished alone. You need others to help you, and you need to help others. With the right team, you can form a web of connections to make the seemingly impossible practically inevitable.

The 11 Leadership Secrets You've Never Heard About
The old distinctions between leaders and followers are gone. Great followers follow by leading. Here’s 11 ways to make sure you do just that.

Google Glass controls and Artificial Intelligence detailed
Google’s cautious approach to allowing people to play with Project Glass means the UI of the wearable computer is something of a mystery, but a new patent application could spill some of the secrets.

The art of transparency
In a CGMA survey of CEOs from 21 countries, 87% of respondents said they view transparency as an opportunity. The CEOs sharing more information could help burnish a business’s reputation with customers, improve decision making and lead to greater innovation. Still 13% of CEOs said they view transparency as a threat.

Apple foe Proview finds itself sued by own legal counsel
Grandall Law Firm, which represented the Chinese company in its action over the iPad trademark, sues for its 4 percent of the $60 million settlement.

Multitasking's Real Victims
It's a well-cited observation that juggling two or more things at once depletes our health and harms our productivity. As we clock in more hours on smartphones and social networks, we've ushered in the "provisional conversation": a face-to-face discussion that falls apart as one or more participants default to checking their phones, only to restart as the handsets are put back away.

Rackspace: OpenStack could be the Linux of the cloud
OpenStack has the potential to become to the cloud what the LAMP stack is to servers, Rackspace's chief has said, while blasting VMware and Amazon for not participating in the scheme

Is ‘Big Data’ good or evil? New survey exposes growing debate
Tech experts believe the vast quantities of data — so-called “digital exhaust” — that humans and machines will be creating by the year 2020 could enhance productivity, improve organizational transparency, and expand the frontier of the “knowable future.”

Quote for the day:

"Lead and inspire people. Don't try to manage and manipulate people. Inventories can be managed but people must be lead." —-- Ross Perot

July 22, 2012

HostGee Innovates Cloud Hosting with Cloud Servers in Saudi Arabia
Designed to give users the power they need rapidly, Cloud Servers in Saudi Arabia combines convenient control panels, a strong infrastructure and frequently used features, like firewalls and load balancers – all at a fraction of the cost of other services.

VMware Clusters – Scale up or out?
Is is it better to Scale up or out? The answer is of course, it depends. First lets define the two terms. Put simply, Scale Up is having larger hosts, and less of them. Scale Out is having more smaller hosts.

Power Pwn: This DARPA-funded power strip will hack your network
The Power Pwn may look like a power strip, but it's actually a DARPA-funded hacking tool for launching remotely-activated Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Ethernet attacks. If you see one around the office, make sure to ask if it's supposed to be there.

Big Data: The Coming Sensor Data Driven Productivity Revolution
... “Boeing jet engines can produce 10 terabytes of operational information for every 30 minutes they turn. A four engine jumbo jet can create 640 terabytes of data on just one Atlantic crossing ...

Act Bigger than You Are
Not bigger in the bad sense, with the arrogance and complacency that has made some banks, for example, feel they are above the rules. But bigger in terms of having the confidence to propel growth and set courageous goals.

Whitepaper archive for Business Analysts
Here is a collection of Whilte paper archives published by DEA, which would be useful for those handling the Business Analysis functions.

Which EA tools? – and why?
Question about EA Tools… What tools do you use to help you with EA tasks and why? What do you perceive their Pros and Cons to be?

Top 20+ change management mistakes to avoid
Driving and managing change will remain the number one priority for leaders according to a recently published study. But the reality is that most change efforts fail. Many of these failures can be traced to these common mistakes:

Enterprise Spring Best Practices – Part 2 – Application Architecture
This blog presents a look at the overall application components and architecture.

Quote for the day:
"Punctuality is one of the cardinal business virtues: always insist on it in your subordinates." ~Don Marquis

July 21, 2012

IT: Becoming less about tech skills, more about integration
The term “enterprise architect” has become a bit hackneyed, but the analogy is a good one. An architect may not be the best person to swing a hammer, but does have a good idea of modern materials, construction techniques, and vendors who can execute their vision.

Google Keep(ing) Secrets? What is Google Keep?
We will see Google Keep I think once Google Now catches on. Google Keep will be a feature where you can select the sites you want to “Keep” updated to be in the “Now” and not some static offline version point in time.

10 Disaster Preparedness Questions to Ask Your Cloud Services Provider
While the typical cloud contract contains uptime clauses and credits for missed service levels, it often fails to adequately protect the enterprise customer. Here are some questions the intelligent customer can ask to make sure they are sheltered from potential storms in the cloud.

4 tech trends in IT disaster recovery
Disaster recovery (DR) is a subset of business continuity (BC), and like BC, it's being influenced by some of the key trends in the IT industry. Foremost among these are cloud services, server and esktop virtualization, the proliferation of mobile devices in the workforce and the growing popularity of social networking as a business tool.

hi1.4xlarge: AWS SSD EC2 High I/O Quadruple Extra Large (and a Dr Pepper)
Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) is crowing about its super-fast, SSD-backed, hi1.4xlarge AWS EC2 instance type. Its full name is quite a mouthful: High I/O Quadruple Extra Large, but Amazon claims it can achieve 120,000 IOPS. In IT Blogwatch, bloggers scrape together $3.10 to try it for an hour.

Time To Build Your Big-Data Muscles
McKinsey Global Institute gauges that by 2018, the United States will create 290,000 to 340,000 new big data jobs and 140,000 to 190,000 (more than half) could go unfilled because skilled candidates are in short supply.

Obama: Cyber attack serious threat to economy, national security
U.S. President Barack Obama is urging the Senate to pass the Cybersecurity Act of 2012. He believes legislation will help the U.S. fight "the cyber threat to our nation," which he calls "one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face."

New Analyst Report Rips Agile: Says It's 'Designed To Sell Services ...
"In spite of the specialization of resources which limits the scope of the work of developers, the Agile movement might inspire and encourage developers to push back on processes, tools, documentation, and following plans,"

Mobile App Security Techniques and Traps
Graham Lee discusses designing, building and testing a secure mobile app, detailing several vulnerabilities that can be found in such apps and ways to deal with them.

Quote for the day:

To be effective for the long haul, you have to make room for the strategy work." --Jamillah Warner, marketing coordinator at Nobuko Solutions

July 20, 2012

Leading yourself into Humility
What you think about what you know matters more than what you know. With that in mind it may be risky to give you more knowledge about humility. Hopefully you’ll add doing to knowing.

AMD has scary things to say about the PC market
"For the first time since 2001, client PC shipments have declined sequentially for three consecutive quarters-and have been below historical averages for the last seven quarters,"

Who wants to be in the PC business? Not Dell
Now this week, Michael Dell, founder and CEO of Dell, said during a conference sponsored by Fortune that the "new Dell" really isn't in the PC business anymore.

Rulings hold banks responsible for cyber-attacks on SMBs
Two recent court rulings are giving those business owners new hope that banks which don't cater to their specific security needs may be held liable for funds stolen by hackers who increasingly have focused on attacking small businesses.

Why you shouldn't train employees for security awareness
If employees and/or executives at RSA, Google, eBay, Adobe, Facebook, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and other technologically sophisticated organizations can be phished, doesn't that suggest that even knowledgeable and trained people still fall victim to attacks?

Create a Validating Corporate Culture
Wouldn’t it be great to have an authentically “friendly” work place? Does your organizational culture provide a courteous, safe, inspiring environment where people thrive, where work gets done, customers are wow’ed daily, and stakeholders are equally thrilled?

Honda enters connected car race (with some help from smartphones)
Honda ... to unveil an in-car connected infotainment system. Called HondaLink, the platform uses Harman’s Aha technology to connect to reams of different content sources, ranging from Facebook newsfeeds to audiobook libraries and Internet radio, all of which drivers can activate through a touch of a button or voice command.

CIOs won't exist in five years: study
Let's face it: CFOs have been gunning for the CIO and IT for decades. Famous for their inability to demonstrate a positive impact on the bottom line, IT giving CFOs headaches

Adding Post-commit Hook to SVN Source Control
Tortoise SVN is a free source control tool that is used by many. One of the things I find missing is email notifications on check-in or commit (as it is called in SVN). Here, I try to share how we can send email notifications on commit. The code presented in this article sends an automated email to predefined list of people with details about files that were checked-in/committed.

Quote for the day:

"The best job goes to the person who can get it done without passing the buck or coming back with excuses." - Napoleon Hill

July 19, 2012

Speed as a Feature, Part 1
When describing your application to users, peers, VCs or potential new hires, which features do you list? ... How about the API you built? Or maybe you can’t stop glowing over your Cloud-based real time local big data feed? But when was the last time you talked to someone about how fast your application is?

For BYOD Best Practices, Secure Data, Not Devices
"It's appropriate to manage the device if you own that device," says Alan Murray, senior vice president of products at Apperian, a provider of a cloud-based mobile application management (MAM) solution

Do You Have the Digital Leaders You Need?
Only nine companies — less than two percent of the Fortune 500 — are what we would call "highly digital." To be highly digital, by our definition a company must pass four tests: it generates a high percentage of revenues digitally; its leadership (both the CEO and the Board) has deep digital experience; it does business significantly enabled by digital channels; and it's recognized as transformational in its industry.

Three Steps to Avoid Getting Hacked Like Yahoo
It may seem like a wake-up call for protecting servers better, and improving network security, but the reality is that it’s just a reminder that common sense and basic security practices could probably prevent this—and most other—attacks. Where did Yahoo go wrong? Well, according to Jason Rhykerd, an IT security expert with SystemExperts, Yahoo made three serious mistakes.

I Don’t Mean to Be Offensive, But Your Employee Engagement Stinks
... Many organizations talk a good game when it comes to employee engagement, but how many of you actually walk the walk? According to the latest Towers Watson survey, not many. The study found that 63 percent of workers are not engaged and are struggling to cope with work. That means that only 37 percent of employees are giving their all to your organization! ...

Enterprise Risk Management & Regulatory Capital Guidelines
... In spite of that progress, a large number of those institutions are still muddling through capital and earnings pressures derived from significant loan losses and sharp declining values of selected securities portfolios. ...

Create and Consume JSON-Formatted OData
OData is a specification for ensuring that data service consumers can rely on a consistent experience from the services they consume. One of the rules of the spec is that OData results are output by default in ATOM format (which is a specific way of formatting XML), and that it can also output results in JSON format.

Building a private cloud with System Center 2012: Part 2
The next stage in our investigation of Microsoft's Private Cloud Evaluation Software bundle involves deploying and configuring a series of Integration Packs that allow the various System Center tools to work together.

YouTube launches face-blurring tool to hide identities
YouTube has added a tool which automatically blurs out the faces of people appearing in uploaded videos.

Malaysia, India next big data center hotspots
As costs of building and operating data centers in Asia increase in traditional hotspots such as Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo, other countries such as Malaysia and India have emerged as alternative sites for their improving infrastructure and lower costs.

How artificial intelligence will shape our lives
...“The creation of avatars will change everything in our societies: politics, economics, medicine, health care, food industry, construction methods, transportation, trade, banking, etc. The whole architecture of society will be transformed, there will be an increase in its self-organization, people will unite to fight the biggest and most universal problem of humankind — that of death.”...

Quote for the day:

"Years of management have taught me that giving someone a job title or role before he is actually doing the job is a recipe for failure." --Eric V. Holtzclaw, CEO and founder of User Insight

July 18, 2012

The impact of software complexity on cost and quality across project type –An aggregation of empirical evidences
Although manystudies investigate the relationship between designcomplexity and cost and quality, it is unclear what wehave learned from these studies, because no systematicsynthesis exists to date. This paper presented asystematic review on the influence of softwarecomplexity metrics on quality attributes.

From Annoyance to Harmonizer: Cloud Computing's Maturity Curve
What happens in many cases is new silos are created, and IT managers have difficulties bringing these applications and data together. Data integration is a problem cited by 67%, and 39% have issues in locating where the data may reside.

Chip and PIN, contactless coming for EFTPOS
Chip and PIN and contactless payment options are on their way for EFTPOS, with the company in the process of revamping its technology

Customer discovery
The riskiest thing a company can do is make something no one wants. So “get outside the building.” It costs $0.

20 awesome office gadgets and must-haves
With these gadgets and must-haves, you'll have everyone in the office wondering how so much win could possibly come from one person! Be the awesome you want your office to be.

IRD goes it alone on enterprise architecture
A project is under way to develop a Government Enterprise Architecture for New Zealand (GEA-NZ), as part of the Directions and Priorities policy in government ICT

Mobile voice falls for the first time - but text is booming
The telecoms regulator has recorded the first-ever drop in mobile voice-call volumes, which it says is down to soaring use of SMS and social networking - especially among the younger crowd

zSpace: A Real Holographic Display Worthy Of Iron Man
... I spent about an hour playing with a system called zSpace, a new display by Infinite Z that makes these sorts of Iron Man interactions a reality. And while I walked into the meeting a skeptic, I walked out realizing that these holographic interfaces aren’t just the future; if you have $6,000 to purchase your own, they’re today...

Good Managers Lead Through a Team
"Manage your team" might seem clear and straightforward. Yet when we talk about it, we often find it's not an intuitive concept for many managers and for some it even cuts against the grain of what they think they should do as bosses.

How To Turn A Nasty Surprise Into The Next Disruptive Idea
... Most companies view surprises as things to be avoided. Even positive surprises like Canon’s are considered fortunate anomalies, far from being the cornerstone of any real strategy. ...

Quote for the day:

"Our greatest battles are that with our own minds." - Jameson Frank

July 17, 2012

BYOD for SMBs: Trends, Risks and Benefits [Infographic]
SMBs have certain advantages over the larger enterprises when adopting a BYOD strategy. This infographic provides an overview of some of the pros and cons of BYOD.

Data Is the New Diamond
Many of our clients have found that providing consistent, accurate and information-rich customer experiences across online and mobile channels have helped to retain customers, bring in new ones, and drive top-line growth.

Microsoft vs Google: Game on
Both global giants aspire to provide the complete underpinnings of your digital social and work life, and that lifestyle is changing very fast indeed

Marissa Mayer's 9 Principles of Innovation
Google's Ex VP (now hired to lead Yahoo) of search products and user experience shares the rules that gives the search company its innovative edge.

Oracle: Businesses falling short on turning data into revenue
Most executives are not prepared to handle the increasing amount of data they face, according to a new study sponsored by Oracle.

Salesforce intros Radian6 Insights for social big data
Salesforce Radian6 Insights tackles sentiments, intents, demographics and more key metrics found within the most commonly used social media channels.

Office 2013: a pleasant surprise
With the two new releases it's clear that Microsoft is making another of its big bets on the cloud, with Office 365 users getting far more from Office 2013 than users who buy the boxed product.

DoD Cloud Computing Strategy
... Adoption and implementation of commercially provided cloud services are being rapidly accelerated with the maturing of the Federal Cloud Computing initiative, the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), and release of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act ...

Quote for the day:

"One measure of leadership is the caliber of people who choose to follow you." ~Dennis A. Peer

July 16, 2012

Security professionals must become business people: Gartner
Business skills have been highly regarded throughout all levels of the enterprise, but for security professionals it may be crucial to a business' success.

Act Fast, but Not Necessarily First
Those of us who find time to step back and think about the big picture, even for a few minutes, have a major advantage. If every one else moves too quickly, we can win by going slow.

Facebook scans chats and posts for criminal activity
Facebook has added sleuthing to its array of data-mining capabilities, scanning your posts and chats for criminal activity. If the social-networking giant detects suspicious behavior, it flags the content and determines if further steps, such as informing the police, are required.

Nokia's flagship phone price cut in half
Nokia's Lumia 900 Windows phone, barely three months after its launch, is now available for $49.99 based on a two-year contract -- falling from its original price tag of $99.

Nine External Thunderbolt Storage Devices, Rounded Up
Here is a comparison of nine different Thunderbolt-based storage solutions, delivering scorching sequential throughput. Of the nine, three submissions rise to the top. Although it remains pricey, in the applications where it makes sense, Thunderbolt cannot be beat

How Integrated Performance Management Can Help Utilities Harness Big Data
Integrated performance management combines process improvement, unified data sources, business analytics, and other information management technologies and practices to help utilities unlock the value of big data.

VMware Positions Zimbra 8.0 as Path to Cloud Messaging
Zimbra is trying to entice end users by showcasing the personal cloud options that make it possible to manage contacts, e-mail and calendars from any device.

The New Enterprise Reference Architecture
Here is the impact of cloud, big data and related happenings on the Enterprise Reference Architecture.

Enterprise Architecture Benefits
Here is a free, un-formatted slide deck that describes some of the key benefits that can be gained from applying Enterprise Architecture. It can be freely distributed and used with or without attribution to Alex Matthews (@remembermytweet) the author.

Quote for the day:

“I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.” Michael Jordan

July 15, 2012

Scalability Best Practices: Lessons from eBay
There are many facets to scalability - transactional, operational, development effort. In this article, I will outline several of the key best practices we have learned over time to scale the transactional throughput of a web-based system.

Traction mistakes
Most startups don't fail at building a product. They fail at acquiring customers. The biggest mistakes I see over and over again when startups try to get traction are as follows (in order of importance).

The next big UI challenge is making big data human
IBM’s Jeopardy-playing supercomputer Watson is now getting a gig in the retail banking sector as part of an IBM partnership with Citi. This is in addition to its position as a diagnostic assistant for doctors

XenServer Performance and Scalabilitiy Tuning
When more than 65 machines were loaded on a single XenApp host, it has been noticed that the dom0 was at capacity and the PVS driver showed poor throughput of 4MB/s or less. Once 65 VMs were loaded, the user experience dropped dramatically. This scenario is explained in an article on the Citrix Blogs.

Punk Marketing – An interview with Richard Laermer
Punk to this day still makes people feel alive and “punk marketing” is the same way. When something that happens makes people say “holy crap” they know that it’s something different and new and they can’t get enough of it.

Create interactive PDF documents with Scribus
Learn how to use the Scribus open source page layout application to create PDF documents, and then how to add interactive elements to those PDFs.

Fourteen year old creates a way to generate electricity from raindrops
The device takes energy from rain or snow and turns it into electricity that is stored on a capacitor. Wang entered the project in the Google Science Fairand now he is one of the finalists in the competition.

All there is to know about NFC
The Commonwealth Bank introduced its NFC app Kaching six months ago; the NSW Government recently released an NFC tourism initiative down at The Rocks; and RIM is integrating it into its newer smartphones.

Here's how to better leverage TOGAF to deliver DoDAF capabilities and benefits
... In fact, we have seen some of our clients position EA as the Enterprise Decision Support capability – that is, providing an architecture-grounded, fact-based approach to making business and IT decisions...

Quote for the day:

"If you're interested, you'll do what's convenient. If you're committed, you'll do whatever it takes." -- John Assaraf

July 14, 2012

Java 8 vs Scala: a Feature Comparison
The reader will experience how the new concepts incorporated in Java 8 - that are already available in Scala - are not mere bells and whistles, but could introduce a true paradigm shift, which will offer great possibilities and may profoundly change the way we write software.

LMAX Disruptor: 100K TPS at Less than 1ms Latency
Dave Farley and Martin Thompson discuss solutions for doing low-latency high throughput transactions based on the Disruptor concurrency pattern.

Architecture Review - Scalability
Months after production usage, the application performance gradually slows down and there is a tendency to accept the performance slow down or to pump in more hardware to compensate the slowdown. This is again is an important sign that the application is not scaling to take on the ever growing user base and transaction volumes.

University of Michigan Health System offers skin cancer app
Unlike many other skin cancer detector and analysis apps, UMSkinCheck, mostly sends reminders to users and enables them to monitor changes in their skin lesions by instructing them to take photos of various regions of their body for storage in the app and comparison to future images the users take.

Why brainstorming doesn't always work
If you've ever been on a web meeting or conference call that was designed to brainstorm, only to have it be more like a mild shower, you know how frustrating it is. The problem may not be with the distance. It might be with the whole concept of brainstorming itself.

What's getting CIOs really nervous? Finding people for all the fancy new technology
The problem is, since everyone wants good IT, there doesn't seem to be enough talent to go around. And that's making CIOs very anxious. (Or just one more thing to be anxious about...)

Bing Fund: Microsoft Officially Launches Its New Angel Fund And Incubator Program
The idea here, says Microsoft, is to “partner with like-minded entrepreneurs—great talent that is innovating online to solve big problems and create amazing new experiences.”

Fault Contract - Handling Errors in WCF and A Very Simple WCF service Implementation
Most of people think that we can't throw FaultException in catch block. It should be only based on some conditon (if condition). But it is false assumption. The main objective is, any type of exceptions(Predicted or Unpredicted) from service to be passed to Client(WCF Service consumer).

Big Changes Are Ahead For The Health Care Industry, Courtesy Of Big Data
Just about every week, another startup announces plans to mine the world's mountains of information for meaningful insights

Yahoo fixes password-pilfering bug, explains who's at risk
Yahoo today said it has fixed the flaw that allowed hackers to steal more than 450,000 passwords from one of its many services.The company also provided more information about whose passwords had been pilfered.

How Microsoft Uses the Security, Trust & Assurance Registry (STAR) to Provide Greater Transparency
The Cloud Security Alliance’s (CSA) Security, Trust & Assurance Registry (STAR) framework helps to provide the transparency customers are looking for. Today we published a new whitepaper called The Microsoft approach to cloud transparency using the Cloud Security Alliance’s Security, Trust & Assurance Registry (STAR).

Quote for the day:

"Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas." - Marie Curie

July 13, 2012

Google+ gives users a tool to merge multiple accounts
The Web giant announced today the launch of the "Google+ circles transfer tool" via Google Takeout.The tool works by moving users' Google+ circles and connections from what it calls a "source" account to a "destination" account.

Mobile app testing imperative, but not foolproof
Developers need to avoid treating end-users as beta testers and conduct pre-launch app testing to avoid critical reviews due to poor usability once released to market, analysts urge.

10 Crucial Proofreading Tips
Proofreading is not just about understanding grammar rules; it’s about developing a focused routine. From blog entries to novels, these 10 crucial proofreading tips will help render each piece error-free ...

Review: Google's Nexus Q
Set to start shipping this month, the Nexus Q can stream music or videos purchased from the company's online store, Google Play, or that you've uploaded to Google's servers, as well as videos from YouTube.

Toshiba jacks up 2.5-inch hard-drive speed: Tops 10K rpm
Think 2.5-inch spinning hard disk drives are slow compared with the solid-state variety? Not always, Toshiba seems to be saying with today's announcement of drives that top 10,000rpm.

Moshtix shores up online payment security
The Australian Payment Clearing Association (APCA) recently released statistics showing that incidents of credit card fraud for non face-to-face payments increased in 2011, spurred by growth in online retail. APCA urged retailers to ramp up their online transaction security. And Moshtix decided to do just that.

Cloud Fundamentals Video Series: All Data Is Not Created Equal
Lori Woehler, senior director in the Microsoft World Wide Public Sector team explains her role in security programs as she focuses on information sharing, collaboration and security solutions that help public sector customers address security needs.

Intel slashing its SSD prices starting next month
With prices for solid state drives already in free fall, Intel appears ready to join the fray by lowering prices on its SSDs in August.

Spring Creator Rod Johnson Leaves VMware
Rod Johnson, who wrote the first version of the open-source, Java-based Spring framework, and later co-founded SpringSource, has left his position as SVP and GM of VMware's SpringSource product division.

Security researchers find multistage Android malware on Google Play
Security researchers from antivirus vendor Symantec identified two malware apps on Google Play that used a multistage payload delivery system in order to remain undetected.

Quote for the day:

"Whenever anyone says, 'theoretically,' they really mean, 'not really.'" - Dave Parnas

July 12, 2012

4 strategies to combat healthcare fraud
The GAO estimates that in 2010 more than $70 billion in improper payments were made by the federal government within the Medicare and Medicaid programs alone. According to the National Healthcare Antifraud and Abuse Association, between three and ten percent of all healthcare spending is lost to fraud.

Boost Productivity by 'Managing' Your Energy
Running a business is physically and mentally demanding. In many cases it comes with long hours accompanied by high levels of stress. And yet, there’s always more to get done than time and energy seems to permit.

When Smart People Get Stupid
When your "go-to" person becomes less reliable, the whole business starts to suffer ... smart people get stupid when they are either overwhelmed or underwhelmed.

How to Evolve from an Employee into a Consultant
If you’re passionate about your job — yet would prefer to be your own boss — shifting into a consulting role may be the ideal path to becoming a small-business owner.

Toshiba Developing New Data Center Products Based on its Flash Memory Chips
Toshiba said Tuesday it is developing a line of products for storing large amounts of data, based on its flash memory chips.

Twitter reveals the anatomy of its major mobile overhaul
Twitter did a complete work-over designing, prototyping, developing, testing, and calibrating its mobile system during the overhaul

VMware Zimbra Unifies Business Email, Voice, Texting in Cloud Beta Version
Zimbra Collaboration Server 8.0 unifies key business communication channels -- email, messaging, calendaring, voice, and collaboration workflow -- into a single cloud-based service.

Risk-storming
Like estimates, risks in the real world are rather more subjective than they ought to be and for this reason alone, it makes sense to get input from more than just a single person, especially if that person is the solitary software architect on the team.

Microsoft Surface will be a real iPad rival in the enterprise, say CIOs
... All three groups voted yes, albeit by different margins, reflecting the Surface tablet could be a genuine challenger to the iPad, Apple's hugely successful tablet that has not faced much serious competition until now ...

Thinking is dead
The value of 'thought' and thinking in IT has diminished, in a way that mirrors society at large, to the stage where design, planning, architecture and anything else other than just banging away at a keyboard appear to have been relegated behind opinions and statements as fact.

Scrum Extensions "Suspended"
Scrum extensions have been “suspended”. That’s the most recent communication from Scrum.org on the community proposed, but controversial, new adjuncts to the scrum methodology.

Quote for the day:

"Some defeats are only installments to victory" - Jacob

July 11, 2012

5 Pillars of BI Strategy and Innovation: A Closer Look at Mobile BI
Check out the latest information on the 5 pillars of BI strategy and innovation: mobile, social creative, extreme, and core BI. Let’s take a closer look at the mobile BI pillar.

Obama signs order outlining emergency Internet control
A new executive order addresses how the country deals with the Internet during natural disasters and security emergencies, but it also puts a lot of power in the government's hands.

15 Tech Visionaries Wouldn't Have Been Successful Without These Key People
Every great visionary has had a mentor, including Steve Jobs and Jack Dorsey. A mentor isn't just someone who gives advice occasionally, it's someone who is a trusted confidante for business and personal matters. Here's who top tech people have turned to throughout their careers

How to Salvage a Pointless Meeting
Politically, you have little choice but to attend. Meetings give you face time, and often help to establish the interpersonal relationships necessary to help you get you job done, but they’re still more often than not, a colossal waste of time. So what to do?

Rogue IT drives cloud decisions: survey
Recently, RackSpace released the results of a survey of 500 IT decision makers, which found that “shadow” or “rogue” IT is now prevalent across many enterprises, large and small. John Engates, Rackspace's chief technology officer, talks about what these findings mean ...

The five most connected cars
The advent of smartphones is playing a big part in getting automakers to integrate connected features. People used to looking up an address on a smartphone can now do it right in their car's dashboard, and save that address to the navigation system.

Microsoft equips Windows Server for cloud duty
Microsoft has released a preview set of technologies that can be installed on Windows Server that will allow organizations to set up virtual machines and Web hosting services that can then be offered as services, either internally or externally.

Glitch leaves Japan IDs without digital signature
System used to imprint justice minister's digital signature on new foreign residence card suffers glitch, but cards without signatures still valid and counterfeiting difficult, says government representative.

Get Comfortable with Team Conflict
Mark de Rond, professor at Cambridge's Judge Business School and author of There Is an I in Team, explains how conflict can drive team performance.

Missing Mozilla Thunderbird? Here are five email alternatives
Mozilla has put Thunderbird out to grass, halting development on the venerable desktop email client. Here are five multi-platform, open-source alternatives for fans looking for a replacement

Quote for the day
"Our greatest battles are that with our own minds." - Jameson Frank

Pages