Daily Tech Digest by Kannan Subbiah

November 07, 2012

Developing an Information Strategy
An information strategy, whether broad or narrow in scope, requires a strategic context. We must avoid information requirements planning with no strategic purpose having been defined and no management framework in place. The converse—a strategy that does not consider information resources—is equally unhelpful. Information requires a strategy every bit as much as a strategy requires information.

Deficiency of innovation in Indian IT
We have bred inefficiencies in our workforce. If we step back a little, at a collegiate level too, our students have never been able to shake off primitive theories and largely irrelevant curriculums. Phaneesh Murthy, CEO, iGATE, Global Growth Company member of the World Economic Forum runs through both these areas.

HP simplifies automated software testing suite
"Applications used to be delivered every year, or every year and a half. Now they are delivered on an iterative basis, sometimes every month." UFT 11.5, due to be released early next month, has been updated to better accommodate this more rapid pace of development, Carmel said.

Free Tool: TDD for WCF Testing with wcfstorm-lite
Think of wcfstorm-lite as the Visual Studio WCF Test Client on steroids, plus the ability to save an executed request/response as a test case, plus some of the functionality that Fiddler gives you around watching the interaction between a client and a service (and viewing messages in a variety of ways).

Insider: A Debugging Story
Peter Vogel looks at debugging from a different specific: One incident whose resolution depended, in part, on understanding who'd already searched for the bug and the history of the bug itself.

How to Use the New Analytic Functions in SQL Server 2012
Learn how the new functions that perform calculations on ordered data sets in this excerpt from "Murach's SQL Server 2012 for Developers." by Bryan Syverson and Joel Murach; copyright 2012; published by Mike Murach & Associates

Blueprint for a Big Data Solution
One of the most challenging tasks when getting started with Hadoop and building a big data solution is figuring out how to take the tools you have and put them together. The Hadoop ecosystem encompasses about a dozen different open-source projects. How do we pick the right tools for the job?

iZettle launches Square-style mobile payments in the UK
Square's European rival iZettle is expanding to its second market in as many weeks. Swedish company iZettle allows SMEs, hobby businesses and sole traders to take payments from customers using just a phone and an iZettle reader, doing away with the need for a chip and PIN card reader and merchant account with a bank.

VirnetX wins Apple patent infringement case
Apple contended that the patents were invalid, and denied any infringement. However, the U.S. court found that VirnetX's case -- filed in 2010 -- was valid, and awarded $368.2 million in damages, rather than the original $708 million the patent-holding firm sought.

Researcher Finds Critical Vulnerabilities in Sophos Antivirus Product
Security researcher Tavis Ormandy discovered critical vulnerabilities in the antivirus product developed by U.K.-based security firm Sophos and advised organizations to avoid using the product on critical systems unless the vendor improves its product development, quality assurance and security response practices.

Singapore claims highest understanding of cloud in APAC
Companies in Singapore are the most confident of their knowledge about cloud computing across the Asia-Pacific region, thanks to the strong push and lead by the government for enterprise cloud adoption and national efforts to attract service providers to make datacenter investments in the country.

Quote for the day:

"There are so many men who can figure costs, and so few who can measure values." -- Unknown

November 06, 2012

How a NASA Open Source Startup Could Change the IT Universe
Chris Kemp, the first CTO of IT at NASA, helped to lead an effort at the U.S. space agency to create a cloud compute platform, known as Nova, which become the cornerstone of the OpenStack cloud project. ... In an exclusive interview with Internet News Kemp explained how the open source cloud effort came to be and how NASA is already reaping the rewards.

VMware Wields Many Cloud Weapons
VMware has plenty of weapons and ammo to take down both its competition and partners in the virtual and cloud worlds. But, would the company ever pull the trigger? Here's a look at its software arsenal

New ransomware attack hurts trustworthiness of Web
Last week, my company was paid a visit by some interesting malware. This time, it was ransomware: malicious software that disguises itself as "security software" but actually holds the system hostage to trick the user into paying money to the software's handlers.

The 5 R's For Building Lifelong Relationships With Employees
How can we, as employers, demonstrate that we are as dedicated to our employees as we hope they’ll be to us? Today I present to you a list of five “R’s” to cover the Requirements (sorry, I couldn’t resist) you can fulfill to give your employees a greater level of assurance about their commitment to stay. Here they are:

Hewlett-Packard’s Todd Bradley Talks Tablets in the Enterprise (Video)
HP’s play, Bradley tells Bartiromo, is to build tablets that appeal to the enterprise, with backward compatibility with all the applications they’re accustomed to running, and all the security and manageability features in Windows that tend to make CIOs comfortable. And he says that the company is prepping an ElitePad pilot program with 3,000 enterprise customers in the U.S.

Cloud Expert: 'There is no Cloud'
As for Power's assertion that there is no cloud, he explained that all the technologies that make up cloud -- virtualization, hosting, data center, storage, network, etc. -- have been around for years. "It's the same technology that's been taking care of them -- we're just providing it differently," he said.

Google unveils free Siri rival for iPhone, iPad
Hey, Siri, you better look behind you. Google on Tuesday upgraded its Google Search app for the iPhone and iPad, giving the feature a voice search functionality that poses a challenge to Apple's Siri.

DHS Official Suggests Sharing IT Resources to Survive Hacks
Groups of companies in the same industry could mitigate the effects of cyberattacks by pooling infrastructure resources and working together on security issues, a senior official in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has suggested.

Regulation, infrastructure hinder Myanmar's telecom ambitions
Myanmar may be one of the few relatively untapped telecommunications market left in the world and its once-reclusive government is now opening up the sector for foreign investments. However, telcos and service providers need to tread with care given the hazy regulatory framework and lack of infrastructure for foreign players to scale their operations.

On human ‘applications’ in EA models
Yet in this specific case – a ‘human application’ – most of our existing techniques and toolsetsactively get in the way of describing what actually happens in those applications. What I’m interested in here is how we can develop usable workarounds for this problem.

Quality-systems and enterprise-architecture
Most of what we do is about connecting-the-dots, wandering around, collecting and sharing ideas, talking with people, or getting other people to talk with each other – which is often a lot harder than that sounds… But when we stop and think about it, it’s actually much the same the research-lab: our real product is opinions. And if an opinion is a product, then all of the ISO-9000-type quality-system stuff should therefore apply. Yet how?

Quote for the day:

"I am more afraid of an army of one hundred sheep led by a lion than an army of one hundred lions led by a sheep." -- Charles

November 05, 2012

India, Germany to up IT cooperation
India and Germany are mulling plans to form a working group to increase bilateral cooperation in the IT sector, amid increasing trade between them. The group will look at areas such as e-learning and e-medicine among other things, said German vice chancellor Philip Rosler, who met Indian IT Minister Kapil Sibal, according to a report by Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) Sunday.

Introduction to MDX for PowerPivot Users, Part 4: Filtering
The combination of the filtering functionality built into PivotTables, and the ability to delete and reorder tuples in a set without needing to edit the set expression itself that the Excel named set functionality gives you, means that you can usually implement the filters you need in PowerPivot without needing to resort to MDX.

Facebook's Lessons in Leadership
In Facebook's early days, Mark Zuckerberg was a terrible CEO. He didn't communicate well, kept things to himself, and often riled his employees. He also had a bit of an attitude. One famous example was his business card, which stated at the top: "I'm the CEO, Bitch."

On starting a new EA group
But they seldom come that with an EA reference model which is in fact the prime task of an EA without which no one should call himself an EA architect. Without the EA any solution review is subjective and road-mapping and strategy are patchy. Without EA in fact, this work is performed as it was before the advent of EA.

Two consumer analytics platforms launch in Singapore
Rajesh Balan, director of LiveLabs Urban Lifestyle Innovation Platform at SMU, said the platform will enable organizations to utilize real-time insights, helping their campaigns go to market and assess the outcome faster. On the consumer end, it will turn what most users perceive as intrusive spam messages on their phones into something useful.

Understanding and Implementing State Pattern in C#
This article describes what is state pattern, when could we find state pattern useful and how to have a rudimentary implementation of state pattern in C#.

Predictive Analytics Model: A Spotlight Q&A with Simon Arkell of Predixion
s it relates to predictive analytics, we looked at the incumbent vendors – companies like SAS and SPSS, which is now a part of IBM. These are the technologies that have been around for quite a long time. What's broken about the model is that these are products that need highly trained experts, specifically in data science and, in many cases, people with PhDs.

Best practices for software license management

Organizations spend a fortune on licenses every year, and a lack of management around it can result in heavy fines. In some cases, CIOs of certain organizations have been taken into custody for violating norms.

RBS Group shells out further £50m over IT disaster
The banking group's 'technology incident' back in June has now cost a total of £175m, much of which has taken the form of compensation payments to affected customers of NatWest, RBS and Ulster Bank.

Quote for the day:

"Remember that it is far better to follow well than to lead indifferently." -- John G. Vance

November 04, 2012

Choosing Who NOT to Help
Leaders can’t help those going in the “wrong” direction. By wrong, I don’t mean morally wrong. I mean wrong for the organization. Get out of boats going in the “wrong” direction or you’ll dilute your leadership and the effectiveness of your organization.

Security Researcher Shares Blow-by-Blow Account of Advanced Persistent Threat
Hackers are brazenly infiltrating corporate networks to steal valuable data for purposes of sharing it with other companies or nation-states -- and they're getting away with it, say security researchers sharing war stories at the Hacker Halted conference in Miami this week.

How to make Windows 8 look like Windows 7
When Windows 8 first loads, you'll notice how it defaults to the new Start screen. If you'd rather go straight to the traditional desktop we all know and love, download a free tool called Skip Metro Suite. Once installed, launch the program and verify 'Skip Start Screen' is ticked.

Wyndham Exchange & Rentals has forecasting fever after profits roll in
on the business side they’re identifying risks, for example when revenue targets are exceeding demand forecasts, and sharing that information into the business units and finance teams. The technical forecasting team is a well-oiled machine, building revenue management forecasts to be more highly automated and run much more frequently.

ZeroMQ via C#: Introduction
The main part of ZeroMQ is the socket. It's not the traditional socket, but it's a socket that provides a layer of abstraction on top of the traditional socket API, which frees us from the complexity and the repeated tasks that we do in our applications.

5 trends that are changing how we do big data

In just a few years, big data has turned from a buzzword and concept best left for large web companies into a force that drives much of our digital lives. Here are five technological trends that will change how data is processed and consumed going forward.

Top 5 wireless routers: Home networking evolved
It was clear from CES that 2012 is going to be a year of major changes in home networking, considering the availability of the new 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard. While it's rather complicated to figure out all the differences between Wi-Fi standards, it's quite easy to equip yourself with the best as long as you follow this regularly updated list of the Top 5 networking products currently available.

Internet Governance Forum in Azerbaijan To Discuss Global Policy
Unlike many U.N. forums, IGF is attended not just by government officials but also by corporations, non-profit groups (aka “NGOs” or “non-governmental organizations) and scholars interested in how to handle, security, stability, growth and content management on the global Internet.

Nokia Lumia 920 camera vs. HTC Windows Phone 8X vs. iPhone 5
Pore through these photos to be your own judge. In most cases, you can click to enlarge them. Unless stated, all photos have been cropped or resized, but are otherwise untouched, and I took all photos using automatic settings and modes

Creating Success Through Serendipity
In short, serendipity involves an element of luck that is out of our control but you also have to have the wisdom to spot the opportunity and act. Without the latter, the opportunity would be lost.

Quotes for the day:

"There’s always an opportunity to make a difference." – Michael Dell
"Winning is important to me, but what brings me real joy is the experience of being fully engaged in whatever I'm doing" -- Phil Jackson

November 03, 2012

Hitting back at cyberattackers: Experts discuss pros and cons
The questions are being asked more often: When a cyberattack hits your network, is it right to launch a counter-attack of some type to try to at least identify the source if not stop it? Since the wheels of justice do indeed grind slowly, should frustrated IT professionals with security skills take matters into their own hands or hire others to do so?

Try the solid, configurable firewall distribution Sphirewall
Out of the box, you get advanced information for your network and traffic usage as well as the ability to glance at network traffic according to user, address, device, and much more. Unlike most Linux-based firewalls, Sphirewall doesn’t use iptables — it uses a kernel module that hooks into the packet stream and passes the packets to the Sphirewall core, which tracks and manages the packets based on user-configurable rules and events.

The Power of Persistence for Leaders
In the world of business leadership and entrepreneurship, persistence is often touted as one of the key success attributes. In a 2011 study conducted by professors at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, persistence was found to be one of the strict criteria for successful CEOs.

jQuery Modal Dialog with Dynamic Content
Here is a demonstration of how to implement a jQuery dialog window (modal or normal) that can contain truly dynamic content, in which the contents are loaded from a totally different aspx/html page.

Back to Basics: Ensuring Strong BI Software Selection
Key differentiators that used to exist between vendor capabilities are becoming harder and harder to decipher, with branding and market penetration becoming a key factor in many software evaluations. Now, in software selection, time to value and scalability are becoming more important success factors than simply providing common features and functions out of the box.

Firefox to force secure connections for selected domains
To force secure connections between the browser and a server, Mozilla uses HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security), a mechanism used by servers to indicate that the connecting browser must use a secure connection, wroteMozilla's David Keeler in a blog post.

The Most Urgent Security Risks in 2012
The state of IT security is constantly shifting. Keeping up-to-date with the latest trends and practices is vital to protecting your organization. Faronics unveils the latest results of the State of IT Security Study conducted by the Ponemon Institute – a leading research authority on data security.

The Amazon Outage in Perspective: Failure Is Inevitable, So Manage Risk
The most recent Amazon Web Services outage left customers (and rival cloud providers) blaming Amazon. Instead, CIO.com columnist Bernard Golden says, everyone needs to accept that cloud computing is not immune to failure.

Google Wallet Gets Real
The Google Wallet Card is intended for circumstances when customers cannot use their software-based, mobile phone-bound Google Wallet, due to a merchant's lack of support for NFC payments.

Now, it's BYOA (bring your own application)
That's the prediction of Edwin Schouten, who points out that along with doing a lot of their work on their own smartphones, tablets or laptops, employees also will soon be selecting the application they are most comfortable with. "This is the whole 'app' culture nowadays," he points out. "Although everyone has a preference, which app you use does not matter, as long as it gets the job done."

Quotes for the day:

"Vision is a picture of the future that produces passion." -- Bill Hybels

"When your values are clear to you, making decisions becomes easier." -- Roy E. Disney

November 02, 2012

Windows 8 uptake remains listless after public launch
The poor-thus-far showing of Windows 8 doesn't preclude it from eventually thriving, of course. Microsoft is reportedly ready to spend between $1 billion and $1.5 billion on advertising the new operating system, its Windows RT spin-off, and the also-new Windows Phone 8.

Intel researchers work on new way to display, share images
Vara demonstrated the project, dubbed Display without Borders, with a laptop, a Microsoft Connect sensor and a projector. Intel didn't give a timeframe for when the technology might go to market..

TDWI Checklist Report // Using Location Information for Geospatial Analytics
In this TDWI Checklist Report, we review the alignment of geospatial information with the business intelligence environment and provide suggestions for capturing location information and differentiating between deliverable addresses and geolocations.

arrayDB, a New and Easy PHP ORM
arrayDB ORM library has only 5 classes. You mostly use a singleton of one, while others are used internally, that's all. Caching and keeping cache synchronized with the database is all automated, you don't need to keep track of these.

The difference between a weakness and a fatal flaw
Having this significant weakness most often counters or negates the positive impact of profound strengths. In every case we have examined, fatal flaws appear to pull down the effectiveness of a leader. These cases are not rare or unusual. Statistically, we find that 28% of the population of leaders has one or more competencies at the 10th percentile or lower.

An enterprise-wide vision for social business: SAP's new take
Earlier today software giant SAP unveiled their latest vision for enterprise social software, along with an integrated set of functional offerings that focus on delivering targeted business value. Is it enough?

The Digital Capabilities Your Company Needs
In-depth interviews with 157 executives in 50 large companies found that the most fundamental technology requirement for digital transformation is not particular skills or particular technologies. It is a core set of four digital capabilities. These four capabilities revolve around technology but typically not all of them reside in the IT department.

Leadership Perspectives: What Is Your Intention?
There are so many avenues we could take in this conversation, and The Lead Change Group has done that in their new book, The Character Based Leader: Instigating a Leadership Revolution….One Person at a Time, written by 21 authors who believe deeply in this concept of character based leadership.

The software creation literacy crisis
Amid the great wall of noise the digital world is today stands a stark reality: fewer and fewer people have the ability to read and write the basic code building blocks of the internet and mobile world. Ismael Ghalimi of STOIC provocatively writes

Eventually, 90% of tech budgets will be outside IT departments
So CIOs will be relegated to the backoffice, back-room server stuff, while the CDO gets all the fun, get-the-attention-of-management stuff, such as cloud, social, mobile and Big Data? Gartner says there is a highly visible role for CIOs as well: "CEOs want their CIOs to make their impact felt where the enterprise meets the outside world.

Quote for the day:

"A competent leader can get efficient service from poor troops, while an incapable leader can demoralize the best of troops." -- John Pershing

November 01, 2012

Cloud adoption in India rising
The bigger growth is happening in private clouds - enterprises using the cloud concept internally - rather than in public clouds, where companies use third-party shared data centres to access computing resources. The Zinnov study estimated that 70-75% of the $4.5 billion cloud market in 2015 would come from private cloud deployments.

EMC to Buy Web Intelligence Provider Silver Tail Systems
EMC plans to use the purchase to beef up its RSA security division in the rapidly growing Web fraud detection market. The software will "complement" RSA's anti-fraud solutions that help leading banks and retailers thwart sophisticated cyberattacks.

The Battle of the Titans: What it all means for IT managers caught in the middle
The sands are rapidly shifting in enterprise IT but the quick witted IT professionals will understand that they are no longer a provider of technology for their company but a broker. It’s not for them to decide what mobile platforms to use but for their execs, line of business owners and end users to decide.

The Report of My Death Was an Exaggeration
That night, my more experienced director wrote up 100 lines of Perl script to replace the few thousand lines of Java code. The point isn’t that Java was bad, it was that just in this particular case, Perl was more efficient for the problem at hand. People still use Perl, they still use Cobol, but they also use C, C++, C# and of course Java.

Cross-platform development tools boost Windows Phone 8
This is the first time so many open-source and cross-platform frameworks are on board with Windows Phone on the first day of a new SDK version release, according to a blog posted by Olivier Bloch, technical evangelist at Microsoft.

2012 Top Scary Trends in Tech
In previous years, the monsters were such awful ghouls, ghosts and goblins as Unreliable Clouds, IT Consolidation, Virtual Workplaces, The Never-Ending Workday and Cyber Bullies from Hell. This year, I've got a bunch of new ones for you, so let's crack open a fresh bucket of chilled monkey brains and get our B-movie rolling.

Business Processes are Still a Manual Affair
Less than half of business processes are automated and manual tasks for BI and reporting are especially burdensome as IT leaders can’t carry through on their interests with a lack of enterprise capabilities, according to new survey findings.

A Vote for Constructive Office Politics
In the world of negotiation, there’s a profound difference between focusing on your own position … the “I want” versus your opponent’s “I want.” Negotiating around the “I wants” is not much different than engaging in a playground squabble. The playground approach offers no rational mechanism for going from disagreement to agreement, short of who’s bigger and tougher.

Lack of Abuse Detection Allows Cloud Computing Instances to Be Used Like Botnets
Some cloud providers fail to detect and block malicious traffic originating from their networks, which provides cybercriminals with an opportunity to launch attacks in a botnet-like fashion, according to a report from Australian security consultancy firm Stratsec.

How to Delegate – 7 steps
You’re snowed under; you have too many meetings to attend and not enough hours in the day to get the work done. Does that sound familiar? You also have a team of pretty capable people and know that you should delegate more; in fact, you keep saying to yourself “I must delegate more” but never quite get around to it.

Quotes for the day:

"It is impossible to win the race unless you venture to run, impossible to win the victory unless you dare to battle. " -- Richard M. DeVos

"Swallow your pride occasionally... it's non-fattening!" -- Unknown

October 31, 2012

A Detailed Look at The New File API in Java 7
This project provides a mechanism for managing file systems on remote computers. It supports operations such as navigation over the file system, and inspecting, renaming, copying or deleting files. Using the new I/O file allows us to extend the capabilities of the project to manipulate ZIP archives content and also watch for modifications.

3 health IT must-haves for natural disaster preparedness
As many healthcare centers employ a higher than average concentration of IT equipment, there are certain ways they can leverage them to cope with disasters- and things they must do to safeguard their technology as well. Mike Detjen of Arcadia Solutions speaks about some of the must-haves for HIT in disaster scenarios – ways it can be useful and things to be concerned about

ARM introduces 64-bit processors for phones, tablets and servers
The new ARM processors deliver 64-bit support, which enables a new range of hardware capabilities including more memory. The new processors also boast virtualization support, error correction, security capabilities and better floating point performance, Forsyth said.

Microsoft touts 4M Windows 8 upgrades
"In just the last three days, we have sold 4 million Windows 8 upgrades," Ballmer said during his early minutes on stage at Microsoft's BUILD Conference Tuesday. "The level of embrace from enthusiasts is very, very high.", Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said and later called the uptake "stunning."

Moving to the Cloud: Adoption, Impact, and What's Next
Clouds -- private, public, and hybrids -- have captured IT's attention. Saving data center costs is always attractive, but the technology isn't without risks. What do you need to know before you move to the cloud, and how with the technology impact your own data center? Where is the cloud headed?

MDM: It’s Not about One Version of the Truth
IT missed the point that the business wants data to support a system of engagement. The value of MDM is to be able to model and render a domain to fit a system of engagement. Until you understand and align to that, your MDM effort will not support the business and you won’t get the funding.

Google changes way emails are composed in Gmail
The new mechanism - currently available as a preview to some Gmail users - makes it easier to check previously sent or received messages while composing a new email. It also adds various other features, with more promised soon.

Indian IT companies shut offices temporarily due to Hurricane Sandy; Remain Unaffected
Several top companies such as Infosys, Cognizant, TCS, Mahindra Satyam, and HCL are closely monitoring the whole situation and working with local authorities to ensure the safety of their employees. Almost all the Indian IT companies, having operations in the Hurricane prone regions have a strong business contingency plan.

Good High-Level Enterprise Architecture Video
This animation shows the role of Enterprise Architecture starting from the perspective of a business user. That user has understandable wishes and requests, and the IT decisions made for him all make sense. But the result of all business users doing this independently is a 'hair ball architecture'. The role of Enterprise Architecture to prevent this from happening is illustrated.

DDoS Attacks Against Banks Raise Question: Is This Cyberwar?
Within the past month, crushing blasts of 65Gbps traffic, mainly from thousands of compromised Web servers, has targeted Bank of America, Wells Fargo, US Bank, JP Morgan Chase, Sun Trust, PNC Financial Services, Regions Financial and Capital One. The attacks have effectively cut bank customers off from online services for extended periods.

Quote for the day:

"If you decide to go for it, do it with spirit: Sometimes success is due less to ability than to zeal. " -- Charles Buxton

October 30, 2012

Learning How to Swim: Making the Case for a Big Data Strategy
Most people have heard a lot of big data buzz, and a great percentage of these people are persuaded that its potential will be realized eventually. However, enterprises that could actually reap benefits from big data right now may be thinking there’s no rush to take advantage of it.

Malware hijacks your email, sends death threats
Analysis of the malware has found that a sabotaged computer can be controlled through a remote location -- a common component of such infections. Through this control, the creator is able to make threats on behalf of the infected user's PC.

Windows Store has enough apps to prevent Windows RT flop, say analysts
"This gives them a shot at success," said Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy, in an interview. "It's a positive first showing, but they must have consistent singles, doubles, triples and home runs."

Enterprise Content Management: Become a Value Creator
Whether you’re talking about inducing better customer service or internal streamlining, Enterprise Content Management (ECM) has shot onto the radar in recent months as our virtual worlds continue to impact – and hopefully relieve – our previously cluttered (and retrospectively rudimentary) offline processes.

How to Hold Productive Meetings That People Don’t Actually Hate
Meetings are an essential aspect of getting things done, collaborating and delegating, but for many they are the bane of business life. People actually leave companies because of the life draining nature of their meeting culture.

Where is cloud computing heading in 2013?
There will be more innovation in application testing and development in 2013, with new cloud applications coming out to market. “We can expect to see new types of applications delivered out of the cloud, more options for where data is hosted (and the type of infrastructure it’s hosted on) and more services offering ‘enterprise-grade’ application hosting.”

A Character-Based Leader Leaves a Powerful Legacy
If you are a character-based leader, you are making a difference, even if the evidence is sparse on a daily basis. The seeds of your leadership legacy are being planted every day, through the small, seemingly inconsequential choices you make. Those seeds may take months, or even years, to bear fruit. But they are there, ever-growing, taking root and preparing to bloom.

IT Security Survey Shows Struggle to Control Cloud Computing, Social Media and Mobile Risks
Many CIOs and chief information security officers are struggling to adapt security practices to a changing environment that includes cloud computing, social media and tablets, according to a survey of 1,850 such IT pros.

Cut Features; Add Value
The key to systematically being able to cut product scope, while still delivering a great product, is to link the value the user needs to receive to the actual features in the product. To understand that value, consider what problems the product is solving and what objectives the user has for the product. This will help you derive the most valuable features.

8 Hacks to Make Google Calendar More Useful
If you use Google Calendar, you probably add events, reminders and vacation days to it, just like the calendar that used to hang on your wall (or the day planner you carried with you before the emergence of smartphones). But, what if it wasn't just a calendar, and "events" weren't just places you had to be or items on your schedule? It turns out, Google Calendar can be useful for just about any task that is relevant to either days or times.

Quotes for the day:

"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal." -- Henry Ford

"It's not what you are that holds you back, it's what you think you are not." -- Denis Waitley

October 29, 2012

Amazon suit shows Google as public cloud threat
At just a few months old, Google Compute Engine is seen as a threat to public cloud leader Amazon Web Services. At least that appears to be what Amazon thinks given its lawsuit against a former exec who is joining Google.

Top 5 Challenges for Hadoop MapReduce in the Enterprise
Extracting business value from the ‘big data’ contained in these unstructured, distributed file systems is becoming increasingly important. Distributed programming models such as MapReduce enable this type of capability, but the technology was not originally designed with enterprise requirements in mind.

Cryptography : A Basic Introduction of Hashing and HashAlgo class for beginners – Part 2
The SHA1 is one of the Commonly used hasing algorithm which provide Hashing functionality by using SHA1 classes and extending HashAlgorithm classes. The .Net Framework SHA1 hashing algorihm class uses a 160-bit hash key is extended by the SHA1CryptoServiceProvider(CSP) class and the SHA1Managed class.

Apple, Adobe called out in Australian parliament
The IT pricing inquiry is currently looking into the reasons why it is perceived that Australians pay more for technology. Research by consumer group Choice estimated that Australians pay, on average, 56 percent more for IT products than customers overseas. Apple, Adobe, and Microsoft were represented at a public hearing by the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA), but have subsequently refused to appear before the committee themselves.

C++ String Toolkit (StrTk) Tokenizer
This article will present the tokenizing and splitting functionality of a simple C++ library called the String Toolkit. Tokenization in the context of string processing, is the method by which a sequence of elements are broken up or fragmented in sub-sequences called tokens. The indices in the original sequence that determine such breaks in the sequence are known as delimiters.

Data Governance: Managing Data as an Asset
The world of data governance is rife with supporters and promoters that are thrilled to be involved, but a bit unprepared to participate and execute. It’s like loading a gun and pulling the trigger before aiming – you’ll make a lot of noise and likely miss the target.

IBM brings carbon nanotube-based computers a step closer
Carbon nanotubes are very small structures made of a lattice of carbon atoms rolled into a cylindrical shape, and a team of eight researchers have figured out a way to precisely place them on a computer chip, IBM announced today. That development allows them to arrange the nanotubes 100 times more densely than earlier methods, a key step in economical chipmaking, and IBM has built a chip with more than 10,000 carbon nanotube-based elements.

How Designers Plan To Create 'The Route 66 Of The Future'
"It's about safety, creating awareness but also making roads energy-neutral in terms of lighting," says Studio Roosegaarde founder Daan Roosegaarde, "and most of all: creating the experience of an icon, the Route 66 of the future."

South Carolina breach exposes 3.6M SSNs
In the biggest data compromise of the year, Social Security Numbers (SSN) belonging to about 3.6 million residents in South Carolina have been exposed in an intrusion into a computer at the state's Department of Revenue.

IT spending slowdown, emerging trends reshuffles megavendor deck
The IT leaders who have been connected to large vendors for years under the guise of one throat to choke and integrated stacks are moving on. These IT leaders have already moved some infrastructure to the cloud and are looking to innovate. The big guys aren't exactly screaming innovation these days. Often, the big vendors are selling you more stacks and upping maintenance fees.

Recent Developments in Cloud Computing
Cloud computing continues to hold a great deal of promise for a variety of business and personal implementations. A lot of buzz has been generated this year with regards to the potential of cloud-based applications and web services as well as a few recent developments that highlight the direction in which the cloud computing phenomenon is moving.

Quotes for the day:

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

"Effective leaders help others to understand the necessity of change and to accept a common vision of the desired outcome." -- John Kotter