Daily Tech Digest by Kannan Subbiah

December 03, 2012

Innovative CIOs Show How to Make Money With IT
A select few CIOs are generating cold hard cash through innovation and collaboration. We rounded up examples of CIOs who generate revenue with IT, either by boosting sales or developing a product or service sold externally.

iiNet: copyright law hampering ISPs
Australia's copyright law and the alleged draft text from the Intellectual Property chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement limit the ability of internet service providers (ISPs) to cache content locally, according to iiNet. iiNet estimated that caching can reduce transmission overheads to 1 percent of what they would otherwise be.

Self-healing flash for infinite life
NAND flash is a wearing resource - like tires on a car - which creates many problems for high duty cycle storage. But a Taiwanese manufacturer demonstrates how to overcome that limit. Will it fly in the marketplace?

Enterprise Software is Not Gangnam Style
The entire face of enterprise software now has to look, feel and act differently; the user interface must become more “consumerish.” And that’s where the sex and sizzle will come in. Enterprise software will be forced to look like a game or other smartphone apps. It must be intuitive; there can’t be a boatload of documentation behind it. It must be built so that employees intuitively know how to use it.

Service Locator Pattern
Amy has some pretty strong feelings about the use of the Service Locator pattern in the software we build. They go along the lines of ‘why would you ever use it?’ and possibly (and somewhat mellow dramatically) rocking slowly backwards and forth in the corner of the shower after being exposed to it. So to ease her pain, and perhaps yours, She has compiled an explanation of why she feel so intolerant toward this pattern.

EU countries should adopt UK's business-friendly approach to 'big data' and anonymisation
The UK's privacy watchdog has taken a major step towards enabling businesses to reap greater rewards from 'big data' processing, but conflicting views within the EU threaten that pragmatic approach.

The Best and the Worst of MDM Practices
It’s called “best version of the truth” to reflect the fact you are often picking the best values from individual cells across duplicate records, explained fellow presenter and Informatica representative Ravi Shankar. Shankar is responsible for product and technical marketing activities for master data management (MDM) as part of the data quality business unit at Informatica.

Big Data: A Blessing and A Curse
Big data can also be a curse if the cleaning (deleting) technologies are not considered as part of the Super Software operation. In my previous post, “information pollution”, I have emphasized the danger of uncontrollable growth of information which is the invisible devil in information age.

Mysterious google two step authentication - in debug
I hope you have enabled your google account for two step authentication? If not -I strongly recommend to do so. Do you know the nature of the code generated by Google Authenticator? There are no myth here - this is just implementation of RFC6238. And even more - you can add new level of security to your application very easy without need to use some monstrous security library.

HTTP 2.0 First Draft Published
The editors of the HTTP specification have published an initial draft of v2 which is a straight copy of SPDY and will be used as a base for diffs going forward. Many changes are expected to be done like adding new features, removing existing ones, changing the bytes on the wire, etc. A draft ready for test implementations is expected to be published early next year.

Quotes for the day:

"Your future is created by what you do today, not tomorrow" -- Robert Kiyosaki

"I rate enthusiasm even above professional skill." -- Edward Appleton

December 02, 2012

Resources for Android App Development
If you develop Android based application design and development you should refer the Android design guidelines authored by the official Android user experience (UX) team. It provides the basic principles to be followed by developers and specific guidelines related to devices and displays, themes, touch interface, metrics and grids, typography, color, iconography including the rules for writing user interface prompts.

BPM vs. BPMS: How To Think Big and Act Small
Even with the best-of-breed BPMS, most large businesses struggle to identify current processes and model them towards some desired end-state. Users perceive BPMS to be restrictive and the offered participation in the governance as a smoke screen to hide that the ROI is mostly achieved through manpower reductions.

Amazon-Google cloud price war heats up
The cloud pricing wars are heating up, and today it's Google -- again -- putting on the pressure. The search giant, which has been growing its rentable cloud offerings, today said in a blog post that it's lowering cloud pricing by an additional 10 percent on top of the over 20 percent cut it unveiled earlier this week. In case math is a little tough for any of you, that brings the total price reduction to over 30 percent. Not too shabby.

Play YouTube videos in VLC
As the Digital Inspiration blog points out, there are lots of benefits to watching YouTube videos in VLC. For starters, you can skip any ads that might play before videos without needing to use a browser extension. Second, you can change the playback speed of videos, which can help if you're trying to learn something new, like a dance.

NHook - A .NET debugger API for x86

The problem is that I love my comfortable .NET world, so I thought “Hey, what if all of these great tool were available within a nice and friendly .NET API ?” so the this API is my response to this question. Not everything is implemented yet, but that’s the first bits. For now it only support x86 programs.

No matter which way you slice it, RIM is still toast
It looks as if some savvy investors are betting that RIM is going to fight back next year and improve sales from their painful lows in 2011. It wouldn't be that hard, especially with a new product launching. But if anybody is betting on RIM's long-term prospects, they're clearly not looking at the big picture.

Make a Data Confidence Index Part of your BI Architecture
No large, global, heterogeneous, multi-business- and product-line enterprise can ever hope to clean up all of its data - it's always a continuous journey. The key is knowing what data sources feed your BI applications and how confident you are about the accuracy of data coming from each source.

Big Data Is Not the New Oil
One of the places where we'll have to tread most carefully — another place where our data/oil model can be useful — is in the realm of personal data. A great deal of the profit that is being made right now in the data world is being made through the use of human-generated information.

Lawsuit Possible in NASA Laptop Theft
Some members of the group were part of a lawsuit filed against NASA five years ago over what they claimed were overly intrusive background checks the agency was conducting in connection with a mandatory federal smart card credentialing program.

Instacompute – CentOS – MySQL
Check out Sridhar's blog detailing the installation and setting up MySQL on CentOS, which according to him is already installed and is very easy to install again, if you want to do so.

Quotes for the day:

"Every failure brings with it the seed of an equivalent success." -- Napoleon Hill

"The toughest thing about success is that you've got to keep on being a success." -- Irving Berlin

December 01, 2012

On Technology, Boards Need to Get More Sophisticated
One way we've found to improve this dialog is to ensure CIOs engage with directors outside the boardroom. One CIO, for example, has monthly conversations with a tech-savvy board member. Their meetings, to which the CIO often brings members of his own team, also benefit IT. The CIO can showcase his or her bench strength, while expanding the IT team's awareness of the business impact and top-management issues.

Get Ready For Gigabit Wi-Fi
To meet our ever-growing need for speed, the IEEE is working on Enhancements for Very High Throughput for operation in bands below 6 GHz, commonly known as the 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard. Wi-Fi certified products based on a draft of this standard will likely emerge by mid-2013, boosting maximum data rates above 1 Gbps. By late 2014 or early 2015, products aligned with the final 11ac standard will nudge the Wi-Fi speed limit closer to 7 Gbps.

4 top trends that will shape digital health
This was a big year for digital health transformation, especially for advances in personalized and connected care. Looking back at 2012, these are the four trends that I think will ultimately have the greatest impact on the future.

Mobile browser vulnerability lets hackers steal cloud computing time
A novel technique based on MapReduce could let hackers hijack computing resources used by cloud-based mobile browsers and use them anonymously, according to security researchers from North Carolina State University and the University of Oregon.

I.B.M. and Ohio State University to Open Center for Big Data
In an interview, Michael Rhodin, an I.B.M. senior vice president, said the impetus for the new center began with the concerns of local clients, including Nationwide Insurance, Cardinal Health, Huntington Bank and The Limited. “They told us they were increasingly spending around business analytics and mathematics, and that those skills were hard to find,” Mr. Rhodin said.

5 Habits of Highly Effective Communicators
It’s no secret that good leaders are also good communicators. And the best leaders have learned that effective communication is as much about authenticity as the words they speak and write. Indeed, communication and leadership are inextricably tied. How can you galvanize, inspire or guide others if you don’t communicate in a clear, credible, authentic way?

Microsoft's 'Cloud OS' Era Means a Return to License Land
Microsoft threw another wrench in the effort to define cloud computing when it ushered in its Cloud OS era with Windows Server 2012. But for partners, the new definition means that for once, they won't have to change as much as they thought.

The mystery of the disappearing Android developer
After 17 months of virtual silence, Ander Webbs emerged from the shadows this fall and released a new version of ADWLauncher. He's hoping the newly updated 4.x-level version of his program can reclaim its glory and compete with current-day frontrunners like Nova and Apex Launcher.

Is your datacenter disposable?
Both IT and facilities have to learn a valuable lesson in when to let go. IT groups threatened by the cloud are learning to integrate cloud-based development and services into their planning. Facilities related to IT can no longer be focused strictly on building and infrastructure maintenance and development, and will need to look outside the box (literally) for things that will improve their response time to business changes.

New strategies now needed to simplify data backup and protection
Backup of enterprise information and associated data protection are fragmented, complex, and inefficient. But new approaches are helping to simplify the data-protection process, keep costs in check, and improve recovery speed and confidence.

Quote for the day:

"If you don't drive your business, you will be driven out of business." -- B. C. Forbes

November 30, 2012

The CIO and CMO: An Integrated Approach
Technology now underpins and shapes the entire customer experience, from the delivery of marketing campaigns to the aggregation of analytics and insights. The amount of raw consumer data now available is a major challenge for today’s CMOs; making sense of it, while trying to justify their marketing spend to guarantee ROI, is even harder – especially without a strong bond to the CIO.

3 steps to HIPAA security in the cloud
The default response for those charged with HIPAA security is to say ‘no’ to cloud computing. There is a clear need, however, to rethink the role of cloud computing by those charged with HIPAA security. The efficiencies that can be gained by leveraging public, private, and hybrid clouds are just too compelling.

Citrix Foresees the Future
After establishing that virtualization has had a big impact on datacenter infrastructures, ... the company gets down with some virtual networking comments i.e. dynamic networks are the way to go as we constantly redefine traffic flow for individual users and VMs. As Citrix puts it, "The stage will be set in 2013 for SDN to become the dominant form of networking."

New Kendo UI Framework for Java Developers
Developer tools and solutions provider Telerik has released a new version of its framework for building applications and Web sites with HTML5 and JavaScript that supports Java. This version, the third release of the framework, introduces Java server-side wrappers, which make it possible for devs to use their existing JavaServer Pages (JSP) coding skills.

10 Hot IT Jobs for 2013
... beyond big data, the demand for IT employees keeps growing as well.According to Robert Half Technology, the pool of available talent continues to shrink, driving average salaries up as much as 9 percent from 2012. Here are 10 hot IT jobs predicted for 2013 and beyond

How Agile solves traditional pitfalls of IT Outsourcing
It is a misconception that agile IT cannot be outsourced. In fact, agile practices solve all the listed arguments against outsourcing. It is important to note that agile is not just about incremental deliveries, agile teams engineer software in a different way as compared to traditional software engineering practices.

Adidas Heads to the Cloud to Control IT Spending
Seeking to improve internal audit compliance and streamline spending, Bader evaluated several spending-management solutions and decided on Coupa for its multinational support, total cost of ownership, integration with the ERP system, and capacity for customization.

Three Mistakes to Avoid in your Business Intelligence Project
A Gartner study in 2005 reported that more than half of BI projects fail. Unfortunately, the situation hasn't improved since that survey was taken. A more recent Kognitio survey shows that two-thirds of businesses still fail to receive value out of the BI system they install.

Directory: Big data vendors in Asia
Data analytics isn't new, but the number of companies offering big data solutions has certainly risen in recent years. To help IT professionals and technology decision-makers navigate the big data landscape, ZDNet editors have compiled a shortlist of vendors in the Asia region. This is not a paid listing, nor is it an exhaustive list.

Big data projects make it to the drawing board, but no further
In a poll of TechRepublic’s exclusive CIO Jury, when asked “Does your organisation have big data as part of your budget and plans for 2013?” the response was no by a margin of eight to four, suggesting that big data still has a way to go to win over CIOs. In particular, CIOs seem reluctant to use the term ‘big data’ even if they have projects planned to look at unstructured data.

Quote for the day:

"Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out." -- Robert Collier

November 29, 2012

Keynote: The New Application Architectures
Adrian Colyer, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for SpringSource and the vFabric Cloud Application Platform at VMware discusses the application architecture emerging these days defined by a departure from server-side apps to a model characterized by smart clients and services.

Top 3 Trends in Developer Testing
Most developers still do not unit test. Unit testing and test-driven development (TDD) are difficult to begin. The practice is still not taught in most computer science and engineering departments. (Though not yet mainstream, in 2012 the popularity and awareness of unit testing increased.)

The State of NoSQL
After at least four years of tough criticism, it's time to come to an intermediate conclusion about the state of NoSQL. So many things have happened around NoSQL that it is hard to get an overview and value what goals have been achieved and where NoSQL failed to deliver.

How Finding “Exceptions” Can Jump Start Your Social Initiative
Many senior executives still think of social media as something you do after hours for fun, says John Hagel, co-chairman of the Deloitte Center for the Edge — they haven't bought into the idea that social can drive the core performance of the business. He's committed to showing them why they're wrong.

After That What?
There are some opportunities for some nifty tools to help the ‘after that, what’ problem. As we switch more and more to mobile devices to help us cope with our life, more such tools will be useful. “After that what?’ is a good question to ask yourself, if you are looking for mobile product ideas.

Smartphones with unusual features (roundup)
These days, almost every smartphone contains the same bag of tricks, with little to differentiate handsets, apart from the hardware and maybe some software extras. There are some smartphones that stand out from the crowd for a certain physical or software feature. In no particular order, here's the current crop of unique handsets that have me looking twice

What on earth is OpenStack?
Together, NASA and Rackspace went on to create a kind of online fantasy world, where storage, resources and performance would be no object, and small startups could build their ivory towers in the clouds, knowing that when their day came, they'd be able to scale everything up, quickly and efficiently, before quickly selling their stock to Facebook.

Live and Learn
While money gets depleted over time, your experience remains with you for life. You’ll be able to leverage that know-how into a better position within your existing organization or offer it to your next employer. That being said, investing in yourself may be the best investment you’ll ever make. Period. And that begins with learning.

Hadley's guide to high-performance R with Rcpp
This guide comes from a book on writing reproducible code that Hadley's working on. You can browse the other sections of the book on GitHub — even though the book isn't yet complete there's a wealth of useful information there for any serious R programmer.

Microsoft's Free Security Tools - Summary
A good tool can save a lot of work and time for those people responsible for developing and managing software. In the series we discuss many of the benefits each tool can provide and include step by step guidance on how to use each. Given is a summary of the tools covered in the series and a brief overview of each.

A top ten for business leaders
There are growing levels of social unrest over rising inequality, austerity, unemployment, political ineptitude, institutional failure and more. And companies will continue to fail because they misread the future - like Kodak, which invented the digital camera but filed for bankruptcy after focusing on its core film business instead.

Quote for the day:

"Your job gives you authority. Your behavior gives you respect." -- Irwin Federman

November 28, 2012

Analytical Programming
The analytical engine is famously the first programmable computing machine, and there was much programming involved both in designing and operating it. In this post Christian Plesner Hansen takes a look at the various ways you could program the engine and the way programs were used to control the engine internally.

The Real Reason Teams Don’t Work
Overworked leaders don’t have time to help. They are too busy helping themselves. A corporate leader recently said, “My boss is buried. She doesn’t have time or energy to give me.” “Overworked staff results in turf wars and office politics,” Andy Stanley at Catalyst.

What CIOs Want In Their Successors
Rob Preston had a chance to participate in a panel discussion at Interop, Mumbai in which four leading Indian CIOs discussed the attributes they're looking for in a successor. In preparation for that session, I talked with four CIOs in the U.S. about the same subject. Here's what they say they're looking for in their top people.

EU's cybersecurity budget up 14%
Rik Ferguson, director of security research and communication at TrendMicro, who called the 14 percent increase "paltry," said that "the commercial security industry is already pooling resources with not-for-profit organizations, and government has made much of the risk from cybercrime. It's time to make the commensurate investment.

12 Ways To Fail In Goal Setting
I think we all have at least one thing we badly want to get. It could be popularity, power, friends, love, money, lasting marriage, children, or health. But unfortunately, not all of us successfully obtain even just that one thing though we may live up to 85 years. Why? Well, it is simply because most people do not set goals.

5 IT vs. Business Battlegrounds
It is common for the relationship between IT and the other departments to become strained over time. Many factors can contribute to the friction between company unit leaders and the IT group. Regardless of the causes for the interdepartmental tension, we have found that this stress plays out in common ways among the companies we have audited.

Micro Focus Introduces Free IDE for IBM Mainframe Application Modernization
A powerful integrated development environment (IDE) for IBM mainframe applications, Enterprise Developer Personal Edition is a simple-to use, entry-level version of the full Micro Focus Enterprise Developer product for IT development professionals and students. It offers a choice of Eclipse or Visual Studio IDE to develop enterprise-class mainframe and distributed applications.

Making Architecture Matter
As Architects, we want our architecture to matter. We want projects to implement our grand designs, one little step at a time, with each piece fitting perfectly into the big puzzle that is software architecture. We want to reach out to developers across the company and tell them to use a particular database software or Web server because we want their code to be easily maintainable and follow our sound architecture design principles.

Get Greater Performance Tuning Gains Using SQL Server Waits and Queues
Join SQL Server Sr DBA and performance expert, Neil Hambly, for a detailed examination of SQL Server waits types and how they impact performance. Neil will take you through real-world examples to help illustrate how to quickly identify the waits that are causing the greatest degradation of performance levels and how to use this information to drastically improve SQL Server performance.

How Much Poor Performers Cost You
There's an effective strategy for dealing with a poor performer without letting that employee take over your life or your mental well-being. And it's important to tackle the problem ASAP. "Don't put it off till the performance review in three months," McDonald advises. "Take care of it right now so it doesn't get worse."

Quotes for the day:

"Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success." -- Dale Carnegie

"Whether you think you can or whether you think you can’t, you’re right!" -- Henry Ford

November 27, 2012

Microsoft's client-access licensing and pricing changes to hit December 1
Business customers who purchase CALs from Microsoft for use with Exchange, Lync, SharePoint, Windows Server, System Center and other products should be aware of licensing/pricing changes coming soon.

Why You Don’t Need a New Smartphone
How do you control your wants? Your guess is as good as mine, but think about this the next time you see a commercial for a new phone and decide right there and then that you have to have one. Do you really, or are you being played by science?

Will the future for Apple v. Google be decided in the iCloud?
Patrick B. Gibson thinks Apple has a blind spot when it comes to the Internet, and he believes the company's lack of innate understanding of how to deliver effective online services is giving Google an advantage in the technology arms race. You have to take the criticisms of any ex-company employee with a huge pinch of salt, but Apple's history does show provision of Internet-based services as one of its weakest points:

Analytics Must Be a Cultural Priority To Achieve Data Goals
Hiring (or designating) the right people is only the first step. Even at companies that already have significant analytical activities underway, doing the analysis is only about a third of the battle. The other two-thirds involve driving it into all current business workflows in a way that prompts your organization to use and act on your valuable conclusions.

HP may offer free analytics service with Autonomy technology
HP mentioned the idea of a free service during a webcast it held for customers on Wednesday to assure them it plans to keep investing in the Autonomy product line. A day earlier, HP said it would take a massive accounting charge due to alleged fraud that inflated Autonomy's value before it bought the company.

How to Respond to Negative Online Reviews
Everyone knows word-of-mouth advertising is still the best, but today’s word of mouth has many mouths talking on sites like Yelp, Trip Advisor, Google, etc. It is in this arena where small businesses battle their competition. So, having assessed that reviews are a significant part of the way your company does business; lets look at some proper techniques for addressing that 1-star review you just got.

Intel Hybrid Cloud: Go Big or Go Home
Intel Hybrid Cloud essentially is an on-premises small business server that can link to a range of managed and cloud services. Special offers include a BDR (backup and disaster recovery) appliance running StorageCraft, and Level Platforms software that allows MSPs (managed services providers) to remotely manage and troubleshoot customer systems.

Microsoft’s Free Security Tools - Attack Surface Analyzer
Attack Surface Analyzer can help software developers and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) understand the changes in Windows systems’ attack surface resulting from the installation of the applications they develop. It can also help IT Professionals, who are responsible for managing the deployment of applications or the security of desktops and servers,

Guidance Regarding Methods for De-identification of Protected Health Information
The guidance explains and answers questions regarding the two methods that can be used to satisfy the Privacy Rule’s de-identification standard: Expert Determination and Safe Harbor1. This guidance is intended to assist covered entities to understand what is de-identification, the general process by which de-identified information is created, and the options available for performing de-identification.

Are You Letting Pink Elephants Hold Back Your Team’s Creativity?
Tanveer Nasser shares three strategies leaders can use to ensure that their words and actions don’t inadvertently activate these neurological responses that can limit your team’s creativity and willingness to collaborate with others in order to achieve your organization’s shared goals.

Quote for the day:

"If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life." -- Marcus Garvey

November 26, 2012

Changing times for web developers – 6 Tips You Should Read to survive
If you haven't yet started mastering your art and adapting to the changing trends, you should start today. Think about crafting your web applications properly. Use commonsense to mix and match based on scenarios. Here we go with 6 Tips to be a responsible web developer, and to stay on top of what you do.

Panasas Gets Real About Hadoop
According to the Panasas CTO, the real reason the Hadoop community doesn’t like NAS is that they’ve had bad experiences. “They run big Hadoop workloads against an NFS filer and the filer just gets creamed so, of course, the job doesn’t go well.”

Google Adds Indoor Maps for Iphone, Ipad and Other Web Users

Google has added indoor floor plans to the Web version of its Maps service, allowing any device with a browser to show the way in airports, rail stations, shopping malls and museums in nine countries.

The Six Enemies of Greatness (and Happiness)
These six factors can erode the grandest of plans and the noblest of intentions. They can turn visionaries into paper-pushers and wide-eyed dreamers into shivering, weeping balls of regret. Beware!

Competition keeps SaaS profits artificially low
Sabharinath Bala, research manager of enterprise applications at IDC Asia-Pacific, pointed to the increasingly big traction for SaaS-based products in the market which has resulted in significant top-line growth for the vendors. This is especially so in the small and midsize business (SMB) segment which has enticed major players to plunge into this space, he said.

Managing Cloud for the Enterprise
Senior IT executives from enterprises adopting cloud technologies shared their experience and advice last week at a summit forum held by research and management consulting firm Saugatuck Technology.

Mouse Control via Webcam
This application uses emguCV, a .NET wrapper for openCV, to perform image processing, through which we try to recognize hand gestures and control mouse using these gestures. In this app, cursor movement is controlled by the movement of hand and click events are triggered using hand gestures.

Mozilla suspends work on 64-bit Firefox for Windows
The x64 edition of Firefox for Windows had been stalled in the build channel Mozilla calls "Nightlies," a label for the unpolished daily versions, for months. Mozilla maintains three general-public build channels -- Aurora, analogous to an alpha; Beta; and Release -- but the x64 browser never made it to Aurora, much less the more stable Beta or final code.

The Three Axioms of Application Delivery
Of late the term “application delivery” has been creeping up into the vernacular. That could be because cloud has pushed it to the fore, necessarily. Cloud purports to eliminate the “concern” of infrastructure and allows IT to focus on … you guessed it, the application.

Can SOA liberate the cloud?
Tom Nolle, president of CIMI Corporation, says it's high time for a new vision in the evolution of cloud computing. That is, to bring in the experience and sensibilities of service oriented architecture, essentially building a cloud architecture on what he calls "Distributed SOA."

Quotes for the day:

"Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be." -- Jack Welch

"Always acknowledge a fault. It throws those in authority off their guard and gives you an opportunity to commit more" -- M. Twain

November 25, 2012

Big Data Conundrum: Show Me the Money!
Companies have not yet grasped the business potential of all the data pouring in from hundreds of sources—think apps in the cloud, on-premise partner software and from their own enterprise. In effect, businesses haven’t figured out how to make money from this fire hose of disparate data sources.

NEC is Working on a Suitcase-sized DNA Analyzer
The company said it aims to launch the device globally in 2014, and sell it for around 10 million yen, or US$120,000. It will output samples that can be quickly matched via the growing number of DNA databases worldwide.

5 Areas for CIOs to Instill Innovation
A new-age CIO shoulders the responsibility of not only identifying the most viable trends for an enterprise but also to increase revenue for the business. Here is a list of 5 innovative ideas that can boost a CIO in keeping pace with the changing trends.

Indian firms urged to buy struggling global tech vendors
In a report by The Hindu Business Line Thursday, an unidentified senior official from the Department of Electronics and IT (DietY) said at least three presentations last week were made to the Ministry of Communication and IT and its minister, Kapil Sibal, proposing initiatives meant to "excite Indian companies for such opportunities as the market cap of many global companies [including] Nokia, Research In Motion (RIM) and Ericsson are at a very low level".

Multi-Channel Attribution: Definitions, Models and a Reality Check
Multi-Channel Attribution is a red hot topic in our industry, and yet it is so poorly understood. I'm convinced that the resulting problems (confusion, FUD, angst, daily prayers, and wasted budget) are due to the lack of a clear framework that can help clearly define the problem.

Brightcove, Application Craft, launch cloud-based development tools
Brightcove's native plug-in architecture for its App Cloud and Application Craft's launch of Mobile Build are the latest examples of how cross-platform development tools for mobile apps are becoming increasingly cloud-centric.

Sony Vaio Tap 20 review:
The appeal of this desktop-tablet hybrid is that it addresses a problem that has nagged all-in-one makers for years. Often pitched as a kitchen PC, a secondary home entertainment center, or some kind of family organizational kiosk, the all-in-one has always fallen short of its ambition to elevate the humble desktop PC.

TDD the Anagrams Kata
A Kata is a form of deliberate practice. Katas are small coding exercise that a programmer completes on a daily basis. Rather than attempt a new Kata each day the programmer should work on the same Kata repeatedly until completing the Kata is almost automatic. The benefits include greater efficiency in the way you use your development tools, Better understanding of features of your programming language, and a better grasp of TDD.

PCI DSS Risk Assessment Guidelines
The information supplement outlines the relationship between PCI DSS and risk assessments; the various industry-recognized risk methodologies and key components of a risk assessment, including developing a risk assessment team and building a risk assessment methodology; risks introduced by third parties; as well as the risk reporting process and critical success factors.

Dream or Die, That’s Just How the World Turns
Many people have fears about the next 4 years. I have fears about the next 4 years. If we spend too much time worrying about those fears, and worrying about what we cannot control, we will be spending less time in making our dreams a reality.

Quotes for the day:

"Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust." -- ZigZiglar

"You aren't learning anything when you're talking." -- Lyndon B. Johnson

November 24, 2012

Southampton uses GCHQ funding for biometrics research
"The new thing we're looking at is soft biometrics," said Professor Mark Nixon, an academic at the university, working in the new cyber security centre. "You can describe someone as tall, thin, or fat and then use that information to retrieve people from a video."

IT sector likely to grow at 11 pc this fiscal
"Global economy is going through challenging times, it will have some impact (on IT industry growth). The projection for IT industry growth is 11 per cent for current fiscal," Gopalakrishnan told reporters on the sidelines of an IT event held here. Slow growth in IT sector will also also cause slowdown in employment generation in the industry, though the industry will add jobs, he said.

Amazon's dead serious about the Enterprise Cloud
All the talk about big companies not wanting to put workloads on Amazon Web Services is hot air. The biggest companies already deploy workloads beyond test-and-dev on AWS. The question is: can AWS sustain that momentum as new options come online?

US school tag tracker project prompts court row
Religious reasons led Andrea Hernandez to stop wearing the tag that revealed where she was on her school campus. The tags were introduced to track students and help tighten control of school funding. A Texan court has granted a restraining order filed by a civil rights group pending a hearing on use of the tags.

Let's get together

"In the wider market economy people, customers and suppliers collaborate all the time. It's kind of the norm. Inside organisations, however, the way people are managed and led tends to discourage collaboration. When the team can't agree on something, power is delegated to the leader to make a decision."

CIOs to Look Towards Cloud for Future Business Operations
Companies across the world are incorporating cloud based solutions in their work dynamics. Given the benefits that cloud strengthens security, reliability, transparency of cost and integration, CIOs are increasingly relying on it for delivery of IT services.

Security Guru Pledges to Strengthen Critical Computers
The prospect that malware like Stuxnet could infect and disrupt critical pieces of infrastructure worries government officials and computer scientists like Eugene Kaspersky, CEO of the Moscow-based antivirus company Kaspersky Lab. He has been talking about building secure operating systems for industrial systems, a subject he discussed with MIT Technology Review.

How To Apply Emotional Intelligence At Your Workplace?
When it comes to the workplace, emotions can fly. More often than not, bosses judge the staffs while customers always have to the right to complaint. You can’t underestimate the power of emotion. They will simply overwhelm you when you’re not in-charge of yourself.

Microsoft’s Free Security Tools – Portqry
This tool is a TCP/IP connectivity test tool, port scanner, and local port monitor. Portqry is useful for troubleshooting networking issues as well as verifying network security related configurations. Because of this broad functionality, I have heard some Information Technology (IT) Professionals refer to this tool as a “Swiss army knife” of tools.

There Is No Such Thing as Work-Life Balance
Employees should stop trying so hard to balance their work and life because it’s simply impossible. In this social economy, everyone is connected all of the time and there is no 9 to 5 workday anymore. When you get home from work, you still have work on your mind and are answering work-related emails. Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, is famous for saying “There’s no such thing as work-life balance.

Quote for the day:

"Close scrutiny will show that most "crisis situations" are opportunities to either advance, or stay where you are." -- Maxwell Maltz