October 14, 2012

30 big data project takeaways
Technology executives are hopping on the big data bandwagon at a rapid clip as they run Hadoop pilots, eye internal information streams and struggle to find talent. Here's a look at 30 big data takeaways over the last two weeks via a conference at Temple University as well as ZDNet's TechLines roundtable discussion last week.


Using the new .NET CLR without recompiling
One of the lesser known capabilities of the new CLR is in-process side-by-side execution. This allows applications that were built on an older version of .NET (before 4.0) to use the new features of the updated CLR without even having to recompile your code!


Cisco, Netapp Announce Pre-Configured Platform for SMBs
ExpressPod integrates Cisco UCS (Unified Computing System) C-Series servers, NetApp FAS2220 or FAS2240 (Fabric-Attached Storage) arrays, and Cisco Nexus 3048 switches with infrastructure management. ExpressPod supports an open ecosystem of management and hypervisors.


Enterprise IT Architecture: Goals, Trends and Perspectives
The Zachman framework is a particularly helpful framework to employ; it’s a formal and highly structured way of viewing and defining enterprise architecture. The Zachman framework is possibly the best such business architecture framework for analysis of an enterprise IT strategy as it identifies individual components in a strategy as they relate to processes, organizational structure and key stakeholders.


Employee Recognition: 5 Keys from Taj Hotels Resorts
Many best practices for recognition can be gleaned from a company that many in the west are unfamiliar with, Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces, which operates 93 luxury hotels across India and 16 other hotels in other parts of the world.


Apple Maps Accidentally Reveals Highly Sensitive Taiwanese Radar Installation
Taiwanese defense officials will ask Apple to blur satellite imagery of a previously unknown radar facility meant to provide early warning in case of a missile attack from mainland China, after the installation was accidentally outted on Apple's new Maps app.


Creative Direction - 8 Ideas for When Creativity Is Too Easy or Hard - Mike Brown
If the two creative extremes Salvador Dali offered aren’t very good answers, what can you do to move your creative reality somewhere in between? You want to have strategies to turn both creative extremes into challenging, workable creative successes. Here are four strategies for each creative extreme.


CIO Succession Plans Lacking, Study Finds
IT pros are accustomed to handling unexpected crises, such as when hardware fails or a cloud service has an outage. But it seems many IT leaders haven't considered what will happen if they're suddenly unable to work.


Scientists Build a Digital Camera That Can Be Absorbed by the Body
What if there were a disposable digital camera that you could eat after using? Sounds bizarre, but it already exists. Scientists in the US are working on uber-thin electronics that can be dissolved inside the human body once their job is done.


Google rolls out major Street View upgrade
Street View coverage has been broadened in 11 countries, including the U.S., Sweden, the U.K., Italy and Singapore, and special collections have been launched for South Africa, Japan, Spain, France, Brazil, Mexico and other countries.

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Quotes for the day:

"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones." -- John Cage

"Leadership has a harder job to do than just choose sides. It must bring sides together." -- Jesse Jackson

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October 13, 2012

Cisco Survey: Execs Reluctantly Embracing BYOD
Corporate executives continue to be uneasy about the mobile computing and bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trends, but understand that the momentum will only grow and that companies must ensure that the right policies are in place to protect sensitive data in a mobile world, according to Cisco Systems.


CIOs and CSOs Have a Costly Disconnect
"Much of this disconnect falls at the feet of the IT security profession," Street says. "It is IT security that, too often, is failing the business. We don't communicate risk well enough, and why the risk is worth mitigating."


Business architecture takes the fore in application portfolio analysis
For enterprise architects looking to transform complex legacy software, application portfolio analysis can be the key to aligning business investments with core capabilities. After all, companies need to know which applications they have before they can decide which ones to keep, add or abandon.


SOA governance standard goes global
The Open Group announced that its SOA Governance Framework is now an international standard, having passed its six-month ratification vote within the International Standards Organization (ISO) and the International Electrotechical Commission(IEC).


Writing Automated Acceptance Tests with Spec Flow
Gherkin is a domain specific language that lets us describe how our applications should behave without having to explain implementation details. Most of the above specification is free-text; there are only a few Gherkin specific keywords: Feature, Scenario, Given, When, And and Then. Everything else is free-text and is practically our documentation of how the feature is used.


Spider Silk Could Weave Biodegradable Computer Chips
Many people have heard that spider silk is a sort of supermaterial: stronger than steel, tougher than Kevlar, and yet incredibly malleable and flexible. But the silk has other properties that make it ideal for use in electronic devices. Light can travel through a silk strand as easily as it does through a fiber optic cable.


Why The Cloud Hasn't Solved The Office Paperwork Problem
Amazon now sells more eBooks than print, the DMV offers vehicle registration online and most airlines encourage online flight check-ins. Yet, these new sensations have not done away with paper alternatives.


SAS Extends Analytics Support for Unstructured Data
At its Premier Business Leadership Series here, SAS unveiled an upgraded version of its High Performance Analytic Server that adds support for Hadoop and the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS).


Force-sensing Touchpad to Reach Ultrabooks Next Year
Synaptics gave the forcepad to more than two dozen academic research groups, which were challenged to come up with novel uses for the device. It's like a touchpad, but in addition to the usual swiping gestures it can sense how much pressure is being applied, adding another dimension for control.

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Quote for the day:

"Whenever an individual or a business decides that success has been attained, progress stops." -- Thomas J. Watson

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October 12, 2012

Research: Developer perspectives on IT failure
The only solution lies in IT and the business collaborating and communicating more effectively. When both sides work together closely, many problems evaporate; the failures we so often see are a symptom of communications breakdowns between these groups.


CIOs more cautious on IT budgets, plan more outsourcing: survey
Chief information officers are not expecting any robust increases in IT spending over the coming year, and are starting to ramp up more outsourcing initiatives. More IT work will not be going to India, but to another Asian nation.


Sustaining a Winning Culture
Sustaining a winning culture involves engaging with your culture champions, and acknowledging their contributions. You will also notice that this has been widely recognised as a key performance motivator in younger workers, or Gen Y, as they are sometimes called.


Nokia looks to improve solar charging performance
The charging mat uses a thin-film photovoltaic panel, weighs 93 grams and has a 3 meter long cable to connect to the phone via Nokia's standard 2 millimeter plug.


Amazon Adds Number Of Services To GovCloud
The new AWS GovCloud services include Amazon EC2 Cluster Compute instances, Elastic Load Balancing, Auto Scaling, Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS), Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) and Amazon CloudWatch alarms.


New Wireless EEG System for Mobile Brain Wave Monitoring (video)
Because it can be applied by the user without assistance from a highly trained professional, coupled with the fact that it can be used outside the clinic, the device may open new doors for using EEG to study the brain in a variety of situations and environments.


Paradigm Shift in the CIO's Role
Contemporary CIOs stake a much broader and imperative role in the business, driving business transformation, innovating for competitive advantage and acting as key strategic partners to the CEO and formulating goals to the wider organization as a whole.


Top 10 Benefits Of Crowd funding
The amount of money raised by crowdfunding platforms during 2012 is expected to reach $2.8 billion, up 91% since 2011. Here are 10 great benefits that crowdfunding offers an entrepreneur.


The Product is the Byproduct
A great product is closer to an accident. It's the byproduct of the environment you build at your company. This environment may actually be harder to build than the product itself, but you'll be left with a better everything by the end of it.

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Quote for the day:

"Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success;leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall." --Covey

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October 11, 2012

Ballmer: Microsoft's a 'devices and services' company now
"It truly is a new era at Microsoft," he says in his annual letter to shareholders, and that means the company is focused on selling hardware augmented by cloud services. "This is a significant shift, both in what we do and how we see ourselves as a devices and services company," Ballmer says in his letter.


SIM: CIOs Feeling Cost Pressure
SIM’s just released survey, which annually reaches out to more than 3,500 CIOs and IT executives at member organizations, had historically placed business and IT alignment at the top of CIO concerns. This year finds that CIOs are facing the same cost-saving pressures as other parts of the organization, says Jerry Luftman, SIM VP, lead researcher for the report and executive director, Global Institute for IT Management.


VMware Tightens Management Infrastructures
VMware is on course to assemble an impervious management infrastructure that will complement its software-defined datacenter plans and solidify its leadership position as a purveyor of private and hybrid clouds. Building on its recently announced VMware vCloud Suite, the company is now focusing on customer service provisioning, cloud operation management and cloud business management.


Box Thinks Outside the Box on Cloud Security, Compliance
On the compliance side, it has released a new reporting API that will enable third-party business intelligence partners, such as GoodData, to create dashboards that will let administrators detect unusual activity such as an individual downloading an excessive number of files.


Effective Application Security Risk Management: From Policy to Standards
This webcast will focus on the individuals who are tasked with writing and/or managing security policies. The goal of this webcast is to explain the value and process of writing application security policies with a particular focus on how to create policies that are useful and actionable for your software development teams.


Microsoft Office coming to Android and Apple devices in early 2013
A Microsoft executive let slip in the Czech Republic that the long-rumored Microsoft Office for Android smartphones and tablets and Apple iPad and iPhones will be arriving in early 2013. Microsoft now denies that their executive was speaking accurately.


DBS, Microsoft partner to boost customer service
DBS Bank has deployed five Microsoft PixelSense table-top multitouch systems in one of its branches here, which it believes will bring better customer interaction and efficiency. ... DBS also chose the system for its object recognition capabilities, he said. The PixelSense technology allows the screen to detect up to 256 unique "symbols", which would then retrieve relevant information associated with each symbol.


Data Warehouse Construction: The Real Life
While the significant similarity can be exploited to increase the constructional productivity, the huge amount of programs converts the data warehouse construction to a real challenge. It is because in addition to the troublesome programming (scripting, coding, "modeling," etc.), all of these programs have to be designed, specified, tested, documented and maintained as well. Such a huge amount of work cannot be accomplished by a single person within a short period.


BMW’s cold call: It shifts computing to Iceland
German car and motorcycle stalwart BMW is transferring crash simulations and other high performance computing to Iceland, where the country’s 100 percent renewable electricity and year round “free” chilling will slash carbon emissions and costs.


Indian IT to create new industry around Big Data
Analytics is becoming important globally thanks to the explosion of data. Corporates have their internal data, but increasingly, they now have to deal with related external data, coming from social media, blogs, image and video sites, sensors and more.

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Quote for the day:

"There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work and learning from failure." -- Colin L. Powell

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October 10, 2012

Breaking Through Development Project Barriers
Barriers, real or imagined, are constructed and prevent progress toward solving problems. ... You can't always break down the barriers around you. But you can learn to recognize them and ask questions. The "5 Whys"technique can help get to the root cause, allowing you to solve the underlying problem(s) that created the barrier in the first place.


Analyst: Microsoft to price Surface RT tablet at $400 to $500
"With a launch set for later this month, speculation has intensified, with some sources stating a price less than $399 for the RT version. Let's get to a more educated estimate of the BOM cost and pricing for the Surface RT and Pro."


Google upgrades Search Appliance for enterprises
Google Search Appliance 7.0 was unveiled today and will be available Oct. 16 for sale or for customers to download. The new version would help employees in large enterprises find stored information whether they're using a desktop PC, a tablet or a smartphone.


Why Doesn’t Governance Lead to Data Freedom?
The business needs speed and agility and wants to get the job done. It does not want to be hampered by process, development timelines, and certainly does not want to hear “no.” Data governance needs to evolve to develop policies that are not just about what you can’t do, but what you can do.


Complex and non-transparent Oracle licensing costing firms millions
“We are seeing an increasing number of global customers failing to remain compliant with Oracle’s licensing schemes amid growing virtualisation and this is largely because of Oracle’s non-transparent and complicated licensing policy,” said Judica Krikke, solicitor at European law firm Stibbe, at the VMworld Europe 2012 event in Barcelona.


5 Leadership Approaches for Knowing, Being and Doing
Do my leadership practices include aligning people toward common goals, enlisting both their heads and their hearts, and then empowering them to act? If not, in what areas do I need to do better?


PC passwords exposed by flaw in Apple-owned fingerprint software
A security flaw in fingerprint reading software, now owned by Apple, which has the potential to leave millions of Windows PC users' passwords exposed, has been independently verified by security researchers.


Softbank to launch 110Mbps mobile router next week
The soap-bar size modem from Huawei provide download speeds of up to 110Mbps on its LTE network and can provide a Wi-Fi connection to up to 10 devices at the same time. It has a 3,000mAh battery and can also be used as a network drive via memory cards plugged into its microSD slot, which supports cards up to 64GB in size.


Procuring IT from startups offers benefits, but beware risks
Purchasing IT from startup vendors, instead of bigger and established companies, can allow access to benefits such as more innovative technologies and greater negotiating leverage. However, customers must note and prepare for risks such as the potential issues in scalability and support.


The Internet2 experiment goes global
 The takeaway from keynote speakers Sam Pitroda and John Sexton is that we need global resources to solve local problems. Advanced networking infrastructure spreads intellectual capital and offers opportunities to improve quality of life;

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Quote for the day:

"No man can think clearly when his fists are clenched." -- George Jean Nathan

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October 09, 2012

What exactly is a "post-PC device" anyway?
Technologists, and I include myself in this, sometimes struggle to think outside of what they themselves use and need in a separate way to what a "normal" human being needs. As a result, most technologists tend to think of tablets as a "PC Plus" - i.e. a tablet that because it runs Windows you can do more with.


Decision time: Automated data integration tools versus manual coding
Writing SQL integration scripts can be straightforward and seemingly inexpensive -- but data integration might be one case where handmade is no longer best, Sherman says in this interview with SearchDataManagement.com


Creative firms are variance- centric
Productivity orientation brings with it predictability, certainty and hence complacency, which may not be a good recipe when the change outside is rapid. On the other hand, variance- centric firms deliberately infuse outliers, experimentation and hence learning and innovation, quintessential elements to cope with rapid change.


Another Week Another In-Memory Big Data Analytics Platform
ScaleOut software is the new entrant to provide an in-memory powered data analytics platform that integrates map/reduce functionality enabling organizations to achieve near real-time data analytics.


World Can Be Your Oyster
For majority of us who are well into our 30’s and 40’s, this implies significant effort in re-training and re-skilling. It requires changing our mind-sets too, as many of us have resisted being hands-on with technology as we have moved up the ladder.


Clas Neumann: Customers Inspire Innovation
The Indian development centre of SAP located in Bangalore has contributed about 20-25 per cent to HANA development, says Clas Neumann, Senior Vice President, Global Head, SAP Labs. In a conversation with Manu Sharma, he discusses some of the innovations in the enterprise apps space and how IT managers are leveraging them


Can MySql Be Used For BigData With TokuDB?
TokuDB in its recent release scales MySql and MariaDB from Giga Bytes to Tera Bytes while improving overall performance for Flash drives. This helps many applications which run on MySql and MariaDB databases boost their performance.


Will the Future be Written Entirely in Javascript?
No popular language may be as maligned as JavaScript. But its migration to the server side opens the possibility it may become all-pervasive.


BYOD Is Not About Devices
It is about providing secure access to applications and data from any device, anywhere. That is, BYOD is about device agnostic access. The solutions to BYOD are solutions to providing mobility for a number of enterprise scenarios, BYOD included.


Cloud ROI: Of the people, by the people, for the people
The true cost of cloud is greater than many realize. While the cloud removes the burden of paying up to 10 times the amount for self-hosted applications, it is a mistake to think that there are no costs beyond the purchase of licenses and consulting services. Additional factors influence the true cost of cloud investment, including ongoing innovation, governance and adoption.

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Quote for the day:

"The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow." -- Rupert Murdoch

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October 08, 2012

Software testing could use non-IT grads' fresh perspective
Non-IT graduates may be put off from IT jobs due to a lack of technical qualifications, but the area of software testing is a plausible option, because they can offer a different yet complementary approach, particularly if the apps are meant for everyday, regular users.


Enterprise Data Architecture and Big Data
By treating big data as a “one-off” project, rather than an ongoing foundation that provides the context, environment, and capabilities to enable value creation and delivery to the organization…we might be sowing the destructive seeds for another crisis.


Big data matters – except when it doesn’t
If you’re ready to skip past the paradigm-shifting, game-changing clichés about big data and get to the stuff that matters – how it can help you improve what you’re doing today – we’ve developed a guide to help get you started. It’s really a guide for anyone contemplating big data investments.


Predictive analytics go to work
"Eighteen to 20 months ago, we knew virtually nothing about predictive analytics," says Anthony Perez, director of business strategy for the National Basketball Association franchise. While his team members were in fact working on predictive analytics well before that, Perez adds, their tools weren't powerful enough to give them the insights they needed, and the group had to scale up its efforts. So Perez brought in new, more powerful software from SAS and began climbing the learning curve.


Haswell Performance and Power: A Deep Dive
To provide useful insight for both hardware and software developers, Intel CPU Architects Robert Chappell and Bret Toll and Sr. Principal Engineer Ronak Singhal give a detailed tour of Haswell’s key features and improvements upon past architectures.


The No. 1 Enemy of Creativity: Fear of Failure
If you're an MBA-trained manager or executive, the odds are you were never, at any point in your educational or professional career given permission to fail, even on a "little bet." Your parents wanted you to achieve, achieve, achieve — in sports, the classroom, and scouting or work. Your teachers penalized you for having the "wrong" answers, or knocked your grades down if you were imperfect, according to however your adult figures defined perfection.


Politics, not security, behind Huawei, ZTE allegations, say analysts
The investigation's findings could tarnish the reputations of both Huawei and ZTE, which have faced repeated accusations that the companies' equipment could be used by the Chinese government to spy on U.S. telecommunication networks.


AMD posts parody teaser video: Another tablet in the works?
AMD posts a 'spooky' Paranormal Activity-like teaser video to YouTube suggesting that the processor and GPU giant is preparing to announce a tablet or hybrid system on October 9.


5 (more) key cloud security issues
In particular, I see five security-related issues with cloud computing that are critical to the success and security of a cloud-based project--and that are not always getting the full consideration they deserve.


Kiss up, kick down boss
Senior executives are the face of the organization. When selecting them, you need to be careful that they radiate the values of your organization. Your brand image is at stake. One bad hire in a senior position can be harmful to a corporate reputation.

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Quote for the day:

"Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes" -- Peter Drucker

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October 07, 2012

CIO Priorities for the Next 3 Years
We’ll see more CIOs who are entrepreneurial, adapting to and initiating major business shifts, and carrying equal responsibility with the CEO. These executives will no longer be measured primarily by the scope of their innovation; they will also be held responsible for the same financial metrics of the other C-level execs.


First Key to Agile IT Governance: Stakeholder Satisfaction
Future generations of sophisticated employees are growing up in an untethered work environment where they feel entitled to having all the tools they need to maximize productivity wherever they are, whenever they want. It can be frustrating for them to have tools that they feel constrained their productivity.


Big Data skills gap needs filling says tech industry
LinkedIn employs around 100 data scientists, he said, but the industry needs many more and there are job vacancies aplenty. His concerns were echoed on Wednesday with the release of a report on big data use in government from the non-profit TechAmerica Foundation's Big Data Commission.


IBM’s Big Data Analytics Empire
When you think of Big Data Analytics, you might think of startups. Think again. IBM has the space covered, perhaps better than any other company.


Big Data Vendors Need To Embrace Data Unification and Scaling Challenges
All of the industry’s largest enterprise-focused vendors have made numerous acquisitions over the last two years to fill out their Big Data solutions portfolio. However, when organizations are challenged with the task of unifying and analyzing massive amounts of data culled from a variety or structured, semi-structured and unstructured data sources, a big vendor solution is not necessarily better.


Cloud Will Never be Cheaper Than On-Premise: Claranet
Deploying applications in the cloud is never going to be cheaper than deploying on-premise infrastructure, but the service benefits of cloud computing make the cost of adopting it worthwhile.


Microsoft, Barnes & Noble Launch E-reading Joint Venture, Rename it Nook Media
Previously called NewCo, the joint venture was initially announced in April when Microsoft said it would invest US$300 million in the formation of the new company with Barnes & Noble. The company will deliver digital reading products to users of Microsoft products, including the Windows Phone and upcoming Windows 8 and RT operating systems.


Users Finding Relief From Wireless Data Sticker Shock
In an era when wireless data and phone service can cost a U.S. contract customer more than $1,200 annually, some lower-cost pre-paid options are emerging.


Why Apple Should Buy Nokia
Journalist and technologist Tristan Louis has a reasonable argument here for why Apple should buy Nokia, now that the former has driven the latter to the brink of dissolution. His case is built on several points:


Mobile workers increasingly dare IT to rein them in: survey
Third annual Unisys-Forrester study of consumerization of IT shows that a super-connected class of 'mobile elite' workers is injecting organizations with more innovation, but at the same time defying IT policies and creating risks.

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Quotes for the day:

"To be able to lead others, a man must be willing to go forward alone." — -- Harry Truman

"Two elements of successful leadership: a willingness to be wrong and an eagerness to admit it." --Seth Godin

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October 06, 2012

Cybercriminals plot massive banking Trojan attack
In an advisory Thursday, RSA said it has information suggesting the gang plans to unleash a little-known Trojan program to infiltrate computers belonging to U.S. banking customers and to use the hijacked machines to initiate fraudulent wire transfers from their accounts.


Swedish websites down after Anonymous threats
A handful of Swedish websites remained down Friday evening there after hacking group Anonymous threatened earlier this week to attack the nation for a police raid on a hosting service that was once home to The Pirate Bay.


NetSuite Announces Two-Tier ERP For Oracle
NetSuite Two-Tier ERP for Oracle is designed to enable multinational enterprises to drive global expansion by deploying the NetSuite to run subsidiaries and divisions while preserving headquarters' investments in Oracle.


A New Degree of Analytic Learning
In an interview with Information Management, Wixom discussed the evolving program for the Congress, the growing responsibility shown by vendors and where U.S. universities stand in closing the skills gap for business data analysts and more niche positions like data scientist.


Intel unveils personal cloud platform for SMBs, consumers
Intel is diving into the personal cloud storage space with a new Atom-based platform targeted towards both consumers and small businesses.


Education, Training Key to Federal Big Data Adoption
Education and training are key to bringing the benefits of big data to the federal government, according to a group of industry leaders who recently met in Washington, D.C.


Apple, Microsoft may be forced to reveal internal documents
The parliamentary committee investigating IT pricing disparity in Australia may look to force Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, and the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) to reveal documents used in creating their submissions to the inquiry, as the three tech giants have continued to resist appearing before the committee.


IT Leadership and Career Development
IT spent has to be treated as an Investment which should fuel the growth or contribute to the bottom-line in the form of savings. This can be possible only when IT leaders are also financially literate.


4 outcomes of character-based leadership
There is a difference between attempting a triathlon and becoming a triathlete. There is a difference between teaching a lesson and being a teacher. And there is a huge difference between leading some group or activity and being a leader.


Leadership Truths That Every Leader Needs To Know
Great leaders all share common characteristics which make them successful. They operate based on truths which underpin all of their behaviors and actions. Here are 5 truths that every great leader knows

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Quote for the day:

"Innovation has to be ingrained in an organization's DNA, not in a plaque on the wall that displays their corporate mission."--John Miziolek, CEO of Reset Branding

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October 05, 2012

Finally the World Wide Web Gets an Update
“It's official: We're working on HTTP 2.0," wrote IETF Hypertext Transfer Protocol working group chair Mark Nottingham. According to IETF, the update will be primarily based up on the SPDY Protocol (pronounced "SPeeDY"), which was developed by Google for a faster internet service.


Gamification
Gamification is the use of game design techniques, game thinking, and game mechanics to enhance non-game contexts. It has proved valuable in several contexts. However, most efforts in applying it in practical terms, whether led by academia or industry, have focused on solving the second of the two challenges ...


Getting Data In: Answering the Challenge of Growing Sources of BI Data
Attend this webcast to learn about the new architecture for a modern BI environment, the critical architectural pieces that ensure successful access to & deployment of BI data assets and about the best practices for providing easy access to data sources ...


Building and Maintaining a Lean and Effective IT Governance Board
Building a Lean and effective IT governance should not be transformational but transitional. It is a major shift for an organization whose only governance is the command and control of the organizational chart. Simply implementing a PPM tool is not the answer


LTE patent pool brings together technologies from AT&T, ZTE, HP and others
Via Licensing organized the patent pool as an independent administrator and announced it on Wednesday. Patent pools are designed to make it easier for companies to license the technology they need to implement a given standard, in this case LTE, and to prevent costly patent litigation in the future.


Load Testing with Custom Performance Counters
Tracking down performance problems in your application can be a frustrating experience. Reduce your stress levels with custom counters.


AMD & Oracle Team Up on OpenJDK 'Sumatra' for Heterogeneous Computing
A newly announced OpenJDK project aims to extend the recent trend of offloading compute cycles from CPUs to Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) with support for a native Java Virtual Machine (JVM), APIs and the Java language. Dubbed "Sumatra," the project is a joint effort of AMD and Oracle.


When IT Services are Free, Guess the Consequences
What do some diners do at an all-you-can-eat buffet? They gorge themselves. What might you do if there are free items at an exhibitor booth at a conference? You might take more than one. It is human nature that, when something is free, one is less attentive to how much one consumes (perhaps even to the point of not caring), no matter what the item or service may be.


Quantifying Cybersecurity Risk in $$$
Register for this free webinar to know more on The Open Group Risk Taxonomy Technical Standard, which is based on Factor Analysis of Information Risk (FAIR) and is a proven quantitative analytic model that has been used effectively to analyze cybersecurity risk and express annualized loss exposure in economic terms


Automagic site optimization with mod_pagespeed 1.0!
Catch up with Joshua Marantz, the tech lead of the project at Google and talk about the history of mod_pagespeed, its fast growing adoption (130K+ sites!), technical architecture and how it works under the hood.

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Quote for the day:

"The simple act of paying positive attention to people has a great deal to do with productivity" --Tom Peters

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