City Year -- An Education Solution at Work in Detroit

Joel Gullickson, City Year Detroit corps member Team Leader, Ford Motor Company Team at Detroit Collegiate Prep High School

Best CCIE Training and CCIE Exams and more Cisco exams log in to examkingdom.com

Every 26 seconds, someone drops out of school in America. Detroit is being called the epicenter of the urban public education crisis -- Secretary of Education Arne Duncan called us "Ground Zero" for education reform. In Detroit, the dropout rates hover around 50%, and rates for African American and Hispanic males are even worse. According to recent data, almost 40% of Hispanic and African-American students fail to graduate with their class.

Based on leading research from Johns Hopkins University, we can now predict with alarming accuracy the likelihood of a student in a high-poverty school graduating from high school. By as early as the sixth grade, if a student falls off-track in either Attendance, Behavior or Course performance in math or English (the ABCs), without intervention, that child stands only a 20% chance of graduating high school. Students are failing and dropping out at alarming rates -- not because they want to, but because they are not getting the supports they need to keep them on track to graduation. Some supports are coming from the top. A state-wide school district, the Educational Achievement Authority, aims to radically restructure education in the state's lowest 5% performing schools. But the EAA is still months away from taking action. City Year Detroit has boots on the ground in classrooms right now.

At City Year Detroit, young adult leaders like Joel Gullickson are helping turn around the very real dropout crisis in Detroit. City Year's unique approach embeds a team of corps members (up to ten young adult leaders) at high-poverty K-12 schools full-time for the entire school year, where they provide targeted tutoring, mentoring, behavior coaching, attendance incentives, and other interventions to bring the achievement of struggling students back on track. From before the first morning bell until the end of afterschool programs, corps members serve as near-peer role models and provide the extra human capital so desperately needed in high-poverty schools. This year, City Year Detroit is partnering with nine public schools in Detroit, River Rouge, Harper Woods, and Taylor, and is bringing a laser-focused dedication to moving students who have fallen off track back onto the path towards high school graduation.
Like Joel, City Year recognizes that solving the education crisis will help solve many of the other issues impacting our society. City Year's efforts are keeping student in school and on track to graduate ready for success in college or career -- which is critical to building a local pipeline of a highly educated workforce. City Year leverages the talent, energy, idealism and service of young adults (ages 17-24) who choose to serve as AmeriCorps members for a year; our focus is to help solve the dropout crisis, and it is through service that City Year demonstrates the power of these young adults to tackle critical issues in our community and their commitment to developing the next generation of educated, successful young leaders of Detroit.

Germany's Merck wants Facebook page back

Germany's Merck KGaA has threatened legal action after it said it lost its Facebook page apparently to rival Merck & Co. in the U.S., though it has yet to identify defendants in the case.

Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft MCITP Training at certkingdom.com

In a filing before the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Merck said it intends to initiate an action based on the apparent takeover of its Facebook page at www.facebook.com/merck by its similarly-named but unrelated competitor, Merck & Co.

The filing reflects the growing importance of social networks as marketing tools, with companies willing to go to court to safeguard their perceived rights on these networks.

Because Facebook is an important marketing device, the page is of great value, and its misappropriation is causing harm to the company, said Merck KGaA in the filing. The company in Darmstadt claims to be the oldest and one of the largest producers of pharmaceuticals and chemicals worldwide.

The Facebook page contained on Friday information on Merck in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, which is described as "a global healthcare leader working to help the world be well". The site is said to be intended only for residents of the United States and its territories. On Sept. 16, it carried a post welcoming users to "Merck's official Facebook page!"

Merck in Germany said in the filing that it entered into an agreement with Facebook on or about March, 2010 for the exclusive use of the web page. Merck said it assigned administrative rights to the web page to a limited number of people, who are its employees, or its external service provider for registration of domain names and social media user names.

By about Oct. 11 this year, Merck Germany said it found that it no longer had administrative rights to the page which now had content that appeared to be "created by, and is related to" Merck & Co. in the U.S.

Merck & Co. was formed in 1891, but became an independent American company after World War I, according to the website of Merck in Germany. The two companies are no longer linked to one another, and they only have in common the name Merck, which the U.S. operation is only allowed to use in North America, according to Merck KGaA.

Merck in the U.S. was not immediately available for comment on the filing. "We're looking into this but have no comment at this time," said Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes in an email.

Merck KGaA said it requires "pre-action disclosure from Facebook to determine the nature of the misconduct, to frame the pleadings, and to identify the proper defendants." It decided to file in New York where California headquartered Facebook has an office, as it has been advised that pre-action disclosure to identify defendants is not available through courts in California, leaving Merck KGaA without remedy in California until after it identifies a proper defendant or defendants.

While it is clear that Merck KGaA's Facebook page has been misappropriated, it is not yet clear how that happened or who is at fault, nor is Facebook providing clear information about what happened, the company said.

Microsoft building Kinect device for Windows PCs

Microsoft will build a Kinect device specifically for use with PCs, as the company prepares to launch a program to support commercial products developed for Kinect and Windows.

Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft MCITP Training at examkingdom.com

Kinect is the motion and voice technology that Microsoft first introduced as an add-on to the Xbox. Gamers with Kinect play games by moving their bodies, rather than pushing buttons on a controller.

In a recent video, Microsoft showed some possible applications for Kinect with Windows, including people playing musical instruments by moving their hands in the air; a surgeon flipping through X-ray images without touching the screen; a teacher controlling a display of the night sky by moving his arms; and a technician remotely controlling a robot that defuses a bomb.

Earlier this year, Microsoft released a software development kit to let developers build applications on Windows that make use of the Kinect sensor. The Kinect device Microsoft will build for PCs has a few adjustments that should make it better suited for use with computers.

"Of particular interest to developers will be the new firmware which enables the depth camera to see objects as close as 50 centimeters in front of the device without losing accuracy or precision, with graceful degradation down to 40 centimeters," Craig Eisler, general manager of Kinect for Windows, wrote in a blog post.

This "near mode" will be more suitable for someone sitting at a computer, as opposed to standing in front of a TV. It's been one of the most requested features from developers already working on products, Eisler said. The new hardware will also have a shorter USB cable for connecting to computers.

When Microsoft first released the SDK for Kinect for Windows, it limited developers to non-commercial use only, saying it would release a commercial package in the future. It recently promised to launch that program early next year.

Some developers may be worried about how much to invest in their products without knowing more about the commercial program. Eisler wrote that users have said they want assurance of support and continued innovation from Microsoft. He hinted that the commercial program will give licensed customers access to ongoing updates in speech and human tracking technology as well as full support for Kinect hardware for Windows.

Microsoft recently announced an incubator program for getting startups with Kinect ideas off the ground. A Microsoft spokesperson said that Kinect for Windows will be commercially available prior to the incubation phase of Kinect Accelerator. Microsoft is accepting applications through Jan. 25 and the program will start in March.

Microsoft slashes upgrade times for Windows 8

Microsoft claimed yesterday that users will be able to complete a Windows 8 upgrade much faster, in some cases in one-tenth the time it took similar-configured PCs to upgrade to Windows 7.

Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft MCITP Training at examkingdom.com

The time savings quickly accumulate the more files are on the to-be-upgraded PC, said Christa St. Pierre, a member of Microsoft's Setup and Deployment team, in a long entry on the company's "Building Windows 8" blog.

According to St. Pierre, a clean install -- where all files and data are wiped from the drive prior to installing Windows 8 -- should wrap up in 21 minutes, 35% less time than the 32 minutes Microsoft said it takes Windows 7 to do the same.

For what Microsoft called a "medium upgrade," one on a PC with 213,000 files and 77 applications, Windows 8 is three times faster, finishing the upgrade in just 42 minutes, versus Windows 7's two hours and 11 minutes.

The real savings show when machines sporting between 430,000 and 1.4 million files with between 90 and 120 applications are upgraded: In those scenarios, Microsoft promised that Windows 8 was between four and ten times faster in the time trials.

St. Pierre acknowledged that Windows 7 was no greyhound.

"If you had a large number of files on your system, you may have seen that installation times in Windows 7 didn't scale very well," she said, citing a graph that showed a "super upgrade" on a PC harboring 1.4 million files and 120 applications taking eight and a half hours.

That kind of time was actually on shorter end of Windows 7's upgrade duration: Two years ago, a different member of Microsoft's deployment team warned that some upgrades from Vista to Windows 7 could take up to 20 hours.

St. Pierre also said that only Windows 7 to Windows 8 upgrades will transfer applications, meaning that anyone migrating from Windows XP or Vista will be offered a clean install that transfers only personal files, or in the case of Vista, personal files and the user's Windows settings.

She did not specify which versions of the decade-old Windows XP could be upgraded to Windows 8, but said that in some cases, depending on the PC's hardware, it would be possible.

"We expect that many systems running Windows Vista and even Windows XP will also be eligible [for Windows 8 upgrades]," St. Pierre said.

St. Pierre added that upgrade from XP to Windows 8 will let users of the former transfer "personal files" -- she did not define that term, however -- perhaps making the migration more generous than Windows 7's.

That 2009 operating system only provided a clean install that required users to move files off the PC to an external hard disk drive using Windows Easy Transfer.

For Windows 8, Microsoft has ditched the transfer utility and included the personal file-retention feature in the overall upgrade process. However, St. Pierre did not spell out whether the Windows 8 setup will copy those files to external media -- perhaps a USB thumb drive -- or whether they would somehow be stored on the PC's primary hard disk drive before being restored after the upgrade completed.

How Oracle made the Sun deal work: a lesson for CFOs

CFOs who gathered outside Boston on Thursday to discuss how they can be agents for change within their enterprises were treated to a close-up view of how Oracle not only transformed its own business but made its Sun Microsystems acquisition a success.

Microsoft Oracle Exam Training , Oracle Certification and over 2000+
Exams with Life Time Access Membership at http://www.actualkey.com

"The CFO role is more far-ranging than finance," Oracle Chairman Jeff Henley told the audience at the MIT Sloan CFO Summit. He spent 13 years as Oracle's CFO before taking his seat as head of the board of directors seven years ago, and he singled out IT as a key area for CFOs to partner with, whether it reports to them or not.

The IT budget should be spent in a more transformational way, and CIOs can't do this alone, he said. They need support from the rest of the business.

"Most companies are not using IT to its full potential," Henley said. "More complexity means less innovation. When you reduce complexity, you get better information and better controls."

During Henley's tenure as CFO, Oracle began a major, two-phase transformation that by its 2010 fiscal year had resulted in $2.5 billion in cost savings.

From 1998 to 2003, CEO Larry Ellison drove the company to simplify, standardize and centralize, with the result that it saved money, got better information, and gained more agility to execute globally, Henley said. Then from 2003 forward, it moved to a global single instance of its ERP system and processes, as well as more centralized decision-making, shared service centers, and a global information system.

This transformation set the stage for the work Oracle did to make its acquisition of Sun a success. Henley called the Sun deal, which closed in early 2010 and was one of more than 90 acquisitions Oracle has made since 2005 -- "Unequivocally the finest acquisition we've ever done."

Henley characterized the deal as a good one for Oracle: Sun was "cheap, but had tremendous IP and engineering assets." Still, "when we bought it, it was a very sick company" with low margins. The Sun deal, announced in 2009, closed in early 2010.

Oracle identified a range of challenges facing Sun, where changes could improve processes and cut costs. These included inventory: the company had short delivery lead times and large excess and obsolete inventories, according to Henley. Its manufacturing was spread out over 21 final assembly and test sites, and it had three distribution centers and four global logistics providers. Its distribution network had four tiers and was expensive. Finally, Oracle judged Sun's ERP systems to be fragmented, and it had multiple logistics systems.

Oracle took a hard line on inventory, throwing it out and simplifying the supply chain. It moved Sun to all configured systems, eliminated distribution centers and reduced the assembly and test sites to just five, while cutting logistics providers to a single one. Going forward, it would modify processes only when it made sense for all customers, according to Henley.

On the technology side, it integrated Sun with its Global Single Instance ERP system, and standardized on Oracle supply chain, demand management, and trade packages.

According to Henley, the results in twelve months were:

-- 16.7% reduction in product lead time

-- 9.8% reduction in headcount

-- 63.2% reduction in excess, obsolete inventory

-- 24% reduction in freight and warehousing

-- 9.7% reduction in inventory

But just as CIOs can't effect change alone, neither can CFOs, Henley said. He credited unwavering commitment from Ellison to driving the changes at Oracle.

"The CFO can't do it all -- you have to have your CEO behind you, " he said. "You're going to break a lot of glass."

Education, Analysis Help When Evaluating Lighting Technologies

Lighting efficiency options keep getting better, more complex, and tougher to sort out. There's a lot more to consider: new metrics, too-good-to-be-true claims, and sometimes questionable analyses, to name a few. A bit of reality checking, plus some help from a few independent data sources, may help facility managers navigate this ever-growing maze.

Best CCIE Training and CCIE Exams and more Cisco exams log in to Certkingdom.com

LightFair, the annual product show of the U.S. lighting industry, is always a feast of new lighting products and services. The 2011 event was no exception. As in recent years, solid-state lighting (SSL) based on LEDs (light emitting diodes) was all the rage. It seemed like a forgone conclusion that fixtures designed around LEDs would, in the next few years, supplant even high-efficiency fluorescents. Many vendors also exhibited sophisticated lighting controls for both LED and other lighting sources.

To describe the benefits of these new options, new lingo and new ways to compare light sources have been developed. Confronted by this avalanche of new information, lingo and products, some facility managers find themselves shutting down, unable to assess the possibilities and perhaps becoming too guarded as a result.

Because LED lighting involves a very small and essentially directional source (the LED lamp), retrofit devices and fixtures designed to use them may look and act differently from other sources. In the case of street or parking lot lighting, the directionality may be a plus: instead of lighting up the sky and creating glare and light pollution, nearly all light is focused down toward the ground. This difference may complicate comparisons with a large light source having a much wider distribution. Even if efficacy (lumens per watt) is lower for the LED source, its tighter distribution may still yield the same surface brightness using fewer watts. Differences in color content may also affect the level of wattage needed to assure acceptable illuminance.
Luminaire System Application Efficacy

To address such issues, lighting manufacturers have come up with new metrics, not all of which are as yet generally accepted. Luminaire System Application Efficacy, for example, is a sophisticated way to combine all of the above to allow useful comparisons among fixtures. Determining that final number involves inputting a variety of factors into software (find it at www.lrc.rpi.edu/parkinglot/#intro). Without knowing and understanding all the inputs, however, an end user may not know whether the answer has been "cooked" by a vendor supplying the comparison.

One area that remains controversial, for example, is the claimed scotopic/photopic (S/P) ratio for various light sources, or even such ratios within a type of light source. An S/P ratio describes the output of a given light source with regard to optical characteristics that may make an area appear brighter or darker, irrespective of a standard foot-candle measurement. If one claims a better S/P ratio for a source, the answer may favor that source. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lighting Facts Label does not include an S/P ratio, and does not require testing by an independent lab to verify the S/P number.

With regard specifically to LED lighting, another factor that may be both useful and a bit enigmatic is Duv. Loosely described as color consistency, this factor indicates how consistently the light from an LED source matches a known and precisely quantified color standard: the higher the number, the less consistent the match. In a row of many LED wall washers, for example, a high Duv could yield noticeable variations in wall color among fixtures, even if all contained lamps having the same coordinated color temperature (CCT).

John Halamka: The new metrics for CIO success

When I began my career as a CIO in 1997, success was defined by the basics: email delivery, network connectivity and application functionality. I personally wrote code, experimented with new operating systems and created novel analytics.

Best CCNA Training and CCNA Certification and more Cisco exams log in to examkingdom.com

In 2011, CIO success is much more complex.

Infrastructure success can be defined as 99.99% uptime of all systems and no loss, corruption or breach of data. This is very hard to achieve, and the cloud sets expectations that IT infrastructure should be like heat, power, and light -- available when needed, in the amount required.

Application success can be defined as the delivery, on time and on budget, of "go lives" according to project plans. Two important forces make this more complicated. One is the rise of consumer app stores, which set expectations that enterprise software should be easy to find, procure and install. The second is that, as the economy forces downsizing, there's more pressure on the IT department to quickly deliver applications that provide better workflow automation and thus the improvements in efficiency the organization needs when it's scraping by with fewer employees.
This all sounds impossible. Deliver massive infrastructure in an environment of constant change, but keep it entirely reliable and secure. Deliver applications that support business processes in increasingly short time frames with limited resources -- both within the IT department and among the business owners of those processes.

Modern CIOs are not technologists or evangelists for innovation, but customer relationship managers, strategic communicators and project managers, delicately balancing project portfolios, available resources and governance.

Modern CIOs have little time to get infrastructure and applications right. They must think more like CEOs about business needs and future strategies, and they must act more like Wayne Gretzky (who skated not where the puck was, but where it was going to be), to ensure that critical information technology is deployed by the time it is needed.

What am I doing in fiscal 2012 to become a more effective modern CIO? Three things:

1. I'm identifying key business customers and meeting with each one to make sure their priorities are reflected in the current IT operating plan and the five-year IT strategic plan. Working with the governance committees, I will trim the list of priorities to just those projects that have the greatest impact on business strategy, quality and efficiency.

2. I'm standardizing communications so key customers receive monthly updates about their priority projects.

3. I'm defining a process for managing IT projects across the enterprise. It includes standardizing the IT project intake process, the IT project life cycle and project management tools (project documentation, project plans and status reports).

I hope that by focusing on customer relationship management, communication and project management, I will create a positive working environment for the IT staff, with a manageable set of well-defined projects and engaged customers. Doing a few projects swiftly and in greater depth to meet the most critical needs of the business is much harder than agreeing to do many niche projects and moving slowly on all of them.

CIOs should be judged on their ability to manage demand and achieve reasonable levels of customer satisfaction while focusing on a narrower project portfolio and delivering it at a faster pace.

Better Windows support due on IBM mainframes

IBM mainframes will soon be able to manage Windows applications, bridging one of the last major divides in data centers.

Microsoft IBM Exam Training, IBM Certification and over 2000+
Exams with Life Time Access Membership at http://www.actualkey.com

IBM had already announced that it intended to deliver that capability with its zEnterprise 196 mainframe, but it recently said the Windows management function will be available on Dec. 16.

There are many Windows-based applications, including ones made by IBM, inside most data centers; they typically interact with mainframes to access data. Historically, all Windows software has had to be managed separately.

But now, IBM has promised, the security and speed of mainframe environments that include Windows systems will be improved. It will be possible to connect systems on a private network, thus avoiding some network hops and enabling the use of integrated management tools.

Joe Clabby, an analyst at Clabby Analytics, said the new features should reduce the labor required to run mainframe environments that have multiple operating systems. Moreover, he added, "if you can manage this as a single architecture, it saves money."

Greg Lotko, business line executive in IBM's System z division, said the addition of Windows support "is really recognizing that the world is heterogeneous."

Are You Safe from Hackers?

We don't use E-gold very often since most of our online business and customer sales are conducted through our online merchant account. However, we occasionally have someone who will request paying by E-gold so we keep an account there for this reason. Once a month or so we withdraw the funds and decided to do so yesterday. Imagine our dismay when we logged into our E-gold account yesterday and found our balance to be a big fat ZERO! We had checked the balance just a few days ago so we knew this was not correct. After investigating the history of the account, we found that a spend had been made to another e-gold account user WITHOUT our knowledge or authorization. We had been hacked!

Best CCNA Training and CCNA Certification and more Cisco exams log in to Certkingdom.com

Since we have up to date anti-virus and firewall software on our computer, we assumed we were safe. Not so! It seems this is not enough to keep away the hackers as the software does not prevent "Spyware" from being installed on your computer.

"Spyware" is software that gets onto your computer and literally "spies" on your activities. The spying can range from relatively harmless use of cookies tracking you across multiple websites... to extremely dangerous "keystroke loggers" which record passwords, credit cards, and other personal data. That data then gets relayed to the person who put the software on your computer.

Spyware gets on your computer in one of several different ways.

First, it rides along with software you download from the 'Net and install on your system.

Second, they come as email attachments (much like viruses) and automatically install themselves on your computer when you open the email message.

Third, hackers find an open port on your computer and use the "back door" to install basically anything they want.

And fourth, the more malicious types, like keystroke loggers, can even get installed by someone with direct physical access to your computer such as an employer, suspicious spouse, business competitor, or someone who wants to know exactly what you're doing.

So how do you protect yourself against these malicious hackers? You need a program that specifically scans your system for the tens-of-thousands of existing spyware programs along with the new ones appearing daily.

Below are two programs which specifically check for and remove spyware from your system:

"Spybot Search & Destroy" - www.safer-networking.org
"Ad Aware" - www.lavasoft.de/software/adaware/

You may have spyware lurking on your computer right now so protect yourself today by downloading one of the above programs!

As a point of reference, we contacted E-gold and informed them that we had been hacked. We provided them with the account number of the person who received the funds and asked for a contact e-mail address on the person. E-gold informed us that they could not provide that information without a "court order" and that basically there was no way of getting the money back!

Take action today to protect yourself from this growing threat! The bottom line is: - Keep your anti-virus program current

- Install a firewall
- Carefully screen software before installing it
- Scan specifically for spyware weekly
- Stay current on this growing threat.

HP Tablet PCs And The Machines Of Today

HP Tablet PCs are a great way of being able to save and work on your projects. They are able to do more than just one type of input. They have the ability to be two kinds of computers at the same time. This is good for someone who needs to do more than one type of work.

Best HP Certification Training and HP Exams Training and more Cisco exams log in to examkingdom.com

How one inputs their data into an instrument depends on what they are doing. They may be performing a specific job that requires the use of this type of computer because of its ability to take in data by touch or pen control. Another may need to use a laptop to finish what they are doing. The best option is to have both combined into one object.

The computer can also turn into a laptop. HP Tablet PCs are able to make their screens bend in a way that turns them back to become a platform that you can write on. When the job is done with using the tablet, the user can turn it back into a laptop. Some jobs need a laptop and others need a surface that you can draw or write on. It is nice to have options when using a computer.


The use of the flat drawing board is a function that suits well for art. The artist can use the pen to draw in detail. It also allows them to edit the image as well. This ensures that the project will be at its best when completed. The artwork is then saved on the machine digitally where it can be used for later.

HP Tablet PCs are also light weight. The advantage of having a device that can do more than one thing is having a device that doesn't weigh like more than one thing. The ability to have two computers in one instrument is a good thing for those who have to carry the item around. A good example of this is a doctor who must walk around the hospital with the computer.

The computer can turn into a laptop with a keyboard and the regular instruments that are used. HP Tablet PCs can also be tablets with the ability to use touch and pen input to manipulate information. The device can adapt to any type of project that it needs to perform. This is good for someone who needs this type of duality in their computer.


The real nice point to being able to have two types of computers is that they are in one device. This helps to reduce the weight and cumbersome problems of having more than one item to deal with. With a computer that can do two things in one also reduces the issue of having too much to carry. Weight can be a very serious issue when you have to carry the item around with you all day like a doctor.

When you look at the computers that you can buy, you have to look at the HP Tablet PCs. They are light weight and very useful with their multiple ways of input. They can be two machines in one. You are able to have two computers in one at the same time. The trick is to be able to have an instrument that can do more than one task.

How Should Brands Engage In Google+?

Brand pages have now launched on Google+ and the majority of businesses have jumped in with both feet already, beginning to amass followers and engage with them.

Microsoft MCTS Certification, MCITP Certification and over 2000+
Exams with Life Time Access Membership at http://www.actualkey.com

Whilst most brands are more than likely still in the process of creating or finalising their strategy for Google+, for many there will still be a question of engagement – how should a brand engage with users on Google+?

Some brands are starting by talking to G+ users in the same way as they speak to their audience on Facebook. Whilst Google+ and Facebook are of course similar in many ways, the conversations in most cases perhaps need to be framed differently in order to get the most out of the audience, with a focus on different content.

Having spent some time on the network, Google+ users seem to be far more technically orientated – they are (at the moment at least) thinkers and will want to engage around content that is perhaps more developed and refined than the content you’d traditionally find on brand Facebook pages. This could be detailed talk around the specifications and design of a tech product such as a tablet or laptop, versus a discussion on the colour of the product in Facebook. It is all engagement and of roughly equal value in increasing the consumers’ propensity to purchase or recommend, it will simply appear in a different form on Google+.

Different CTAs (calls to action) will also be important – it is likely that the average Google+ user will require more incentive to engage than the average Facebook user. By way of example, competitions to drive engagement and also acquisition will need to be much more thought out and worthwhile to the end user on Google+.

Of course, customer service in the form of one-to-one support will also be a good idea. Whilst the tools aren’t currently in place to allow coordinated discussions for brands to help them address consumer concerns, this is certainly something that should be addressed moving forward, given the savvy nature of the Google+ audience. Many brands currently use Facebook or Twitter for customer services purposes (Facebook’s discussions application was a great solution until it was closed down), so it makes sense that the same should be done in Google+. It’s probable that this will come to fruition should Google launch the capability for apps to be created for brand pages in Google+ - essentially a similar approach to that of Facebook.

Obviously, the approach to Google+ will be different from brand to brand – the above are simply a few points for brands or their commissioned digital PR or social media agencies to take into consideration. There are almost certainly opportunities about within Google+, not in the least because it’s likely to provide another social media outlet for brands to engage a totally different model of audience that - in most cases - they won’t have had access to previously. There is of course a lot of trial and error to be endured, but instinct suggests that the brands that treat G+ as an entity in its own right are the ones that will win out in the end.

Microsoft SideWinder X8 Mouse customers ratings

Irrespective of the cord-free advantage, wi-fi these rodents employ a very poor adopting pace involving considerable COMPUTER SYSTEM participants on account of lag plus indicate hiccups. Microsoft's feature-heavy SideWinder X8 solves of which dilemma that has a hybrid car pattern of which helps you replace pretty much faultlessly concerning feeling stimulated plus wi-fi network. Place with Microsoft's souped-up BlueTrack sensor technological know-how, some sort of well-sculpted pattern (intended for suitable distributed persons), plus several different attributes, along with the SideWinder X8 satisfies in a relaxed manner one of many game playing these rodents high level. Possibly for the encouraged selling price connected with $99, the SideWinder X8 is usually a valuable improvement to help almost any gamer's system, although in particular when you might realize its for just a very little seeing that $70.

Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft MCITP Training at certkingdom.com

The SideWinder X8 has a beautiful, futuristic pattern that may be smoothes available a lot of the abrasive tips by sooner incarnations connected with Microsoft's completely new creation connected with SideWinder these rodents. The X8 carries a tricky angled waistline exemplified by means of a tasteful combination of figure that supply realistic slumbering destinations for every single ring finger. That pattern facilitates ones give fit in an organic and natural golf grip. Positioning the SideWinder with your eventually left give senses at ease plenty of, even so the a couple area keys within the eventually left area on the computer mouse button were being definitely adapted with all your suitable thumbs as the primary goal.

Right-handers will probably get pleasure from the page layout plus pattern on the a couple side-buttons. Such as sooner SideWinders, the X8's thumbs keys employ a stacked, directory page layout. Although rather than the more aged models' round nubs, the X8's area keys mountain back to the inside, giving some sort of holds on your thumbs. That pattern helps you purely steel ones thumbs vertical to help mass media the keys, reducing your need for just a under the radar thumbs motions of which takes you outside of key management move. That will noise inconsequential to help nongamers, although most of us be expecting the first-person filming twitch herd will probably accept.

The X8's a couple key keys accomplish evidently, although most of us tend not to appreciate the precious metal scroll tire. Some sort of cross-hatch connected with precious metal ridges combined tire usually are purported to produce many more golf grip, they tend not to perform the job, which often ends up with some sort of fewer a number of, "soft" emotion towards scroll tire in comparison with with different these rodents.

Further than the press button page layout, Microsoft differentiates the SideWinder X8 almost all individually featuring a exclusive BlueTrack sensor. BlueTrack debuted within a several Microsoft these rodents not too long ago, and it also delivers superior tenderness plus effectiveness in comparison with regular optical or perhaps beam of light these rodents. Of which much better effectiveness helps you operate the X8 along with BlueTrack these rodents when using enhanced choice of types of surface, as well as marbled, new carpet, lumber, and almost all whatever except see-through and mirrored a glass. Many web-sites include claimed of which BlueTrack isn't going to get along with textile computer mouse button protections, although utilised the X8 a great extensive time with XTracPads' textile RipperXXL computer mouse button station without the need of issues. Some sort of wood made workspace, some sort of ebook, as well as a marbled bed sheet shown both equally trusted. Moreover, you may receive several packages connected with unique legs with the X8, which often helps you tailor the tactile think on the computer mouse button to help whatsoever exterior you decide.

B&N's Nook Tablet also ships early

Barnes & Noble began selling its new 7-in. Nook Tablet for $249 on Wednesday, earlier than executives said it would appear.

Best IBM Certification Training and IBM Exams Training and more Cisco exams log in to examkingdom.com

One store in Harrisonburg, Va., had three Nook Tablets on sale for the general public at the time of the store's opening at 9 a.m. ET Wednesday, a clerk said. Many other pre-ordered Nook Tablets were also available for sale Wednesday at the store, located near James Madison University in western Virginia.

Engadget reported a Nook Tablet sold at a Barnes & Noble store on Tuesday, but didn't indicate the location.

A Barnes & Noble spokeswoman told CNET that the Wednesday store arrivals of the Nook Tablet are two days before the "end of week" arrival that executives had announced on Nov. 7. But the Wednesday arrival conforms to a leaked presentation on the Nook Tablet that circulated days before the Nov. 7 announcement.

The early arrival of the Nooks shows that Barnes & Noble doesn't want to be outdone by Amazon, which shipped its $199 Kindle Fire 7-in. tablet a day early on Monday.

Analysts predict a fierce competition between the two tablet makers, and said that neither wants to slip-up with initial shipments.

Beware of dogma

Political debate in the United States today is highly polarized. Many in Congress are so beholden to the dogma of their political party that they are unable to make rational choices that might even give a hint that the "other side" has a point. The result is that Congress seems unable to act in the best interests of the citizens it is supposed to serve, resulting in historically low approval ratings.

Microsoft Oracle Exam Training , Oracle Certification and over 2000+
Exams with Life Time Access Membership at http://www.actualkey.com

IT is not immune from such polarization. There are, for example, many IT decision-makers who simply swear by open source. They believe so much in the open source model, and have had such positive initial experiences with open source tools, that they have taken the dogmatic position that all of their future software acquisitions will be made from within the open source portfolio.

On the other hand, there are decision-makers who have fully and with little reservation married themselves to proprietary platforms. The support and sense of security they get from platform buy-in has become entrenched in their go-to-market strategy, and the very mention of open source may elicit an actual, audible snort.

I find many Managed Service Providers (MSPs) that need an effective, inexpensive way to start building out their infrastructure fall in the open source camp. Unfortunately, many of them also discover that their open source toolkits have certain limitations that make it difficult for them to remain efficient and able to deliver competitively differentiated services once they build a reasonably sized customer base.

I find many proprietary platform supporters on the enterprise side, where business-as-usual often prevails. The problem for this group is that they often find themselves saddled with excessive licensing costs and overly complex products that are integrated in name only, and require extensive customization to meet even relatively simple operational needs.

So here is my suggestion to both parties: Don't be so dogmatic. Sure, open source solutions are attractive for a variety of reasons. But they are not the end-all and be-all of software. There are plenty of proprietary solutions that offer simplicity and reasonable cost -- and, most importantly, will actually do what's needed to support your growing and increasingly complex business requirements.

It may mitigate certain types of personal/career-related risks when one buys fully into a proprietary platform that no one ever got fired for buying. But, that does not tend to be the path to differentiated success and organizational excellence. Few of us have the luxury of being able to burn through more budget and staff hours than we absolutely have to.

Actually, when it comes down to it, both MSPs and enterprises have very similar needs nowadays. They need agile, cost-efficient solutions that scale, deliver rapid time-to-benefit, and play well with others. These characteristics are not the exclusive domain of either open source or proprietary software. Nor is it impossible for either class of solution to provide them.

CRM Watchlist 2012: The Preseason is Underway

Okay, maybe I miss baseball season too much. Maybe just using the word “preseason” gives me a comfort level that is just…well…comforting, but regardless of my real reasons for saying “preseason” (ahhhh, so nice…), this is the first round of the CRM Watchlist for 2012 - an assessment of the companies that I find important that will end in January 2012 with the announcement of the winners of a place in the CRM Watchlist for this year.

Best Oracle Certification Training and Oracle Exams Training and more Cisco exams log in to Certkingdom.com

The Idea

The CRM Watchlist plays a very specific role in the pantheon of technology companies and service providers. It’s comprised of those companies that I think that we all should be paying serious attention to, regardless of size or revenue, because one way or the other they are going to make a difference in a customer-centric world - at least from the standpoint of technology and innovation in that area. And most importantly, to the customers that actually use them to enable their customer strategies and programs. Small or big, they deserve notice and they deserve to be on a shortlist for appropriate practitioner engagements.
The Caveats

The caveats are somewhat different than last year though not entirely. The ones that remain the same are here again with some refreshed wordsmithing that makes them au courant.

Here goes:

The Preseason List - The list here is the list of all the companies et. al being considered for the list that I’ve been tracking during 2011. This is not a finalists list nor is it a winners list. These are the companies that have been noteworthy enough in 2011 to be considered for the Watchlist. But every company on this list has been tracked by me (more on that in a minute, companies-that-I-haven’t-tracked, I’m going to take care of you.).
This is a CRM Watchlist - meaning that worthiness is not just how well you analyze twitter traffic or how you suck up to digerati. Traditional CRM still has its place and a BIG place. Gartner estimates that SCRM is $1 billion of $13 billion in the total CRM market in 2012 so we’re still only talkin’ maybe 7.5% or so. Okay? What that means is that while Social CRM is an important part of some of the criteria, it’s not the sole criteria. Again this is Social CRM, not social media. Social per se isn’t the center of the universe here - it is being seen here as channels for input and outreach. However, unlike last year, I am going to give more credence to companies that are providing a component part of a CRM or Social CRM technology. So the chances of winning if you’re a vendor with promise that provides a small piece of the technological puzzle are increased to some extent. (Note the italics for emphasis)
I very well may have forgotten some companies that I think should be candidates but the odds of that are miniscule - but again, possible. So…. see below on what to do if I have forgotten you or your candidate for the list
You’ll note there are a few companies who are not CRM(ish). They are still noteworthy for reasons that shall be stated if they make the finals.

What’s Different for 2012

There are several things that are different this year that range from the way I’m applying criteria to the market changes that dictated the list choices to the failure of several of the candidates and even the winners to maintain any momentum or to live up to their promise. You’ll note that several of last year’s candidates and winners are not under consideration this year. They failed to do what they should have in the market and the result was….deterioration of their presence or stasis at best. Which is sad. KickApps, listen up here.

OR like Radian6 they got acquired and thus, are now part of salesforce.com and will be considered part of salesforce.com in the discussion, despite the fact that they are operating somewhat independently still. Because the acquired companies have the full resources of the acquiring company, they have to be considered part of it. The only exception to that will be RightNow (acquired by Oracle) because the acquisition is not complete at the time of the assessment.

Also different this year is that there are a number of candidates on the list who I learned about from CRM Idol. Now, the winners from CRM Idol 2011, Get Satisfaction for the Americas and BPMonline for EMEA are guaranteed a place on the list because de facto, de jure and any other de that goes with that, they have been vetted by the influencers and validated by the market just because of the contest itself. To win that, you had to be worth watching.

But there are more than the winners on this list because I felt that they are really interesting for one reason or the other. Some were semi-finalists, some weren’t. The criteria I use here are not the same criteria we used for CRM Idol
The Criteria

What I’m NOT going to do in this section is reveal how I weigh the criteria. There are weights assigned to the criteria. The weights have actually shifted somewhat from what the 2011 weights were.

But, there are a couple of general points to be made on this, earthlings. First, if I haven’t watched you closely for at least a year, the likelihood of you making this list is not that good. However, there is an app(lication) for that Open enrollment week. That’s where the arguments for those of you not on the list can be made. But you’re gonna have to work for it because if you want me to put in the time to do the work I have to do for all the candidates, finalists, and winners, then you have do the work that makes me want to do the work…. or something like that.

Without further ado and in no particular order these are the criteria. Don’t stress if you don’t see all that you need to know. If you decide to ask for the questionnaire all will be clear. If not, I’m around to ask questions on during open enrollment week.

Financial Performance -. How well has the company done in the last 12 months? Part of this is for understanding how the candidate companies think about their top and bottom lines. How well have you done year over year? Why? Because I need to be able to gauge the success you’re having as a business and the stability you have relative to your financial performance. How important is that relative to the other criteria? If you know me, you’ll have a good guess. If you don’t, try to find out. But not from me.
Management - This is a look at who the candidate companies’ top and CRM/SCRM management are. Remember this is a CRM Watchlist so there are two things that I’m looking at. First, the management that is directly involved in CRM or the component technologies that are relevant to this. So it might be a VP of Product Development or Product Marketing for example. Second the C-suite commitment to the CRM or, again, component technologies relative to the rest of the portfolio of products and services.
State of Technology Products/Services - Since I’m looking at both technology companies and the consulting services providers, the product portfolios that are appropriate to the Watchlist from the vendors and the services provided by the SI/Consulting firms in the CRM(ish) domains are obviously something that I have to look at thoroughly. The way I look at them - quality of the existing portfolios; the road maps; appropriateness to the market; customer perceptions of the value-in-use of the products. How well they support the jobs customers want them for - not the feature function list.
Partnerships/Alliances - who do these companies, hang out with- at least the tech vendors and the SI/consulting institutions? Is their partner mix a wise one? Are they getting results with their channel/ecosystem? Are they fair to their partners? How do they think of the partner channels?
Mission/Vision - What is the CRM related mission and vision for the company? Do they even have one? If they don’t, how is CRM thought of in the context of the universal corporate mission and vision?
Market Presence/Impact - What kind of impact and presence does the company have in the market? That means how they are perceived, how they participate, what their messaging is and how it coheres with their actions in the market. How does the company run their external operations - outreach to customers? What are customers’ perceptions of them?
Thought Leadership - This is different than market presence. For example, there is one major company who has a strong to dominant market presence and only a weak to modest hand in thought leadership. This means how you move the needle forward when it comes to thinking about ideas - which could be in your domain - say, analytics” - but it also looks at how you relate to analysts, bloggers etc. and how much you participate in the idea marketplace in the community - independent industry conferences etc. and what materials you are putting out there be it a white paper, an event, a video, a conference of your own. It also means how much you support your vision and mission or your messaging with a body of knowledge.
Corporate Culture - Finally, how does your mission/vision and belief structure affect your company and how it supports its employees and its customers? How well do you treat your employees? What do your customers think of working with you - not just of you? Are you flexible enough a culture to be able to change when need be. How imperious is management or how empowered are the staff etc.? Plus many other “touchpoints.” All part of this equation.

Now of course…The Preseason Candidates List: Software Vendors

Here’s the list so far, without comment, in no particular order and without links. In the next couple of days, you’ll see a second list with the consulting firms and systems integrators who aren’t on this one. (UPDATE - Coremetrics shouldn’t have been independent since its now part of IBM. Its now out of the list as an independent entity and incorporated into IBM (thanks to Tim for noticing this one))

Oracle
SAP
Microsoft
Salesforce.com (Radian6, Assistly)
NetSuite
RightNow
Sage
SugarCRM
Lithium
Jive
Attensity
Aplicor
Maximizer
Nimble
SAS
Moxie
Infusionsoft
Eloqua
Marketo
Clarabridge
Cisco
IBM (Unica, SPSS, Lotus, Coremetrics)
Zoho
Amdocs
Pegasystems
Sword-Ciboodle
Get Satisfaction
CDC Pivotal
Relayware
Infor
Pardot
Google
Nielsen
Telligent
Reuters (Open Calais)
InsideView
Crowd Factory
FuzeDigital
Parature
BatchBlue
Hootsuite
INgage Networks
ExactTarget (CoTweet)
Genesys
Coveo
BPMonline
Hubspot
Neolane
Zestia
workbooks.com
JaguarTPM
Vertical Solutions Inc
Qontext
Lattice Engine
Crimson HexagonXactly
UpdateCRM
Silverpop
Teradata (Aprimo)
Cosential
Salestrakr
RO|Innovation
Zestia (Capsule CRM)
Parature
Blackbaud
Meltwater Group
Reuters (Open Calais)
Dimelo
GreenRope CRM
RO|Innovation
SalesNexus
Soluciones SA
Stone Cobra
Thedatabank
ABCrm
IKO System
IntouchCRM
Atollon
The Selfservice Company
Workday
FinancialForce
SuccessFactors
Zuora

A Couple of Notes on the List

Just a few things:

I reserve the right to add to the list up to November 26 at 6pm at my discretion. I may have left a company or two off inadvertently and I don’t want to do that.
The consulting firms/systems integrators will be up as a separate list later this week.
There are multiple companies on this list who are marginal and will have to make a case, but they are good enough to make the candidates list, where many weren’t.

I’m Not on the List? What Do I Do?

Okay, I’m going to give you a window. I can’t be anywhere near perfect when it comes to tracking you. If you are on this list I might have tracked you and didn’t think you should be a candidate. However, I might not have tracked you and just don’t know you. I’m also happy to be convinced that I was wrong if you aren’t on the list and should have been according to you.

However, there are going to be rules and here they are:

From Monday November 14 at 8:00am ET to Friday November 19 at 6pm ET, there will be an open enrollment time. This is enrollment to be a candidate to be considered. No more, no less. If you have been in existence less than 12 months, don’t bother to apply. If you don’t meet the categories above, don’t bother to apply. But otherwise, if you’re interested, bother to apply.
If you are interested in being a candidate, let me know of your interest and I’ll send you a questionnaire that MUST be FULLY filled out or I’ll just ignore you. Last year, during the enrollment period, I asked people to just answer a few questions. I had a 10-day window last year and 88 companies asked to be part of the Watchlist consideration. Except that, 67 of them didn’t answer the questions that I explicitly asked them to and they were dumped immediately. Twenty-one of them did answer the questions, about half made the candidates list and 4 of them actually were Watchlist winners. So there is a value in this. You’ll have until November 26, 2011 at 6pm ET to fill out the questionnaire. These are essay questions, not multiple choices. Some of the questions are confidential, most are not. I need them to write the reviews if you are a winner

The process is simple:

When the enrollment period opens, send me an email at paul-greenberg3@the56group.com. Indicate your interest in being considered as a candidate for the CRM Watchlist 2012. Please tell me in a paragraph why you qualify for the CRM Watchlist 2012.
I will then send you the questionnaire and I’m asking you to answer all 9 questions fully. The 9 questions are based on the criteria set out above. Send it back to me before November 26 at 6pm. This really isn’t a lot of time since Thanksgiving is November 25 and that really means it needs to get in on November 24, most likely but you do have until Friday, November 26 at 6pm.

Of course, I reserve the right to not put you on the list even if you submit the document. This is an admissions form so to speak. Admission to candidacy. No more. No less.
I’m on the List. What Do I Do Next?

Well, the answer is…nothing and something optional that would be wise. If you’re on the list, I’ve been tracking you for some time during this year. That means I know enough about you to put you on the candidates list. There are a number of companies that aren’t on the list that I’ve been tracking too. However, here’s the deal. The questionnaire that I reference above? Its optional for you, but I’d like you to think about filling it (as many of you on the list did last year).

Here’s why.

I’m human and right now, my perception of you is shaped by my perception of you. Filling in the questionnaire shifts that a little toward the perception of you that you want me to have, which gives you a better chance of winning if it’s convincing.

Virtualization wars: VMware vs. Hyper-V vs. XenServer vs. KVM

Ten years ago the argument over virtualization would have been a short one because VMware was the only game in town, but that early dominance is now being significantly challenged by Microsoft, Citrix and Red Hat (KVM).

Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft MCITP Training at certkingdom.com

NETWORK WORLD'S HOTTEST TECH ARGUMENTS: Read them all

And Microsoft is on the offensive because of the forthcoming upgrade to Hyper-V coming with Windows Server 8. New features put it "on par and in some ways better than VMware," according to Aidan Finn, a Microsoft IT consultant in Dublin, Ireland. He says Hyper-V outstrips VMware in inexpensive server-attached storage, aspects of live migration and failover for site-to-site disaster recovery. Plus Hyper-V will have capacity access more virtual CPUs than ever before.

This flurry of improvements is in addition to progress Hyper-V has been making against ESX in licenses issued. Hyper-V grew 62% last year compared to ESX's 21% growth and Citrix's 25%, according to IDC. Separately, Gartner projects that by next year Hyper-V will account for 27% of the market, up from 11% two years ago. Within that projected 27%, Gartner says Microsoft will have captured 85% of all businesses with less than 1,000 employees that use virtual servers.

Get Daily News by Email
Year-to-year growth is significant because the number of X86 servers being converted to virtual servers is also growing dramatically. Gartner says x86 boxes will grow from 11 million virtual machines in 2009 to more than 55 million next year.

Meanwhile, Citrix, which Gartner projects to hold 6% of the market next year, is making strides working off its base of virtual desktop customers and recent assertions that it will drop prices next year to be less expensive than traditional physical desktops.

The company recently came out with a new version of its virtual server- XenServer 6.0 - that supports better sharing of CPUs among virtual machines and boosts its overall support for virtual CPUs to 16 and 128GB of virtual memory. That's still less than half what VMware and Red Hat support. And Citrix is continuing its collaboration with Microsoft to support management of each other's virtual environments. In the latest version, XenServer will be manageable from Microsoft's upcoming Systems Center Virtual Machine Manager. Citrix's XenCenter already supports managing Microsoft hypervisors and virtual machines.

Red Hat has perhaps the most work to do, with Gartner projections for its share of the market next year only 2%. But it has aggressively been working to make its virtual environment more manageable and robust. With the acquisition of Qumranet Red Hat gained kernel-based technology to run on its Linux platform. As such, Red Hat is a clear option for Linux shops.

Red Hat's KVM efforts will most probably get a boost from IBM, HP, Intel, all of which are members of the Open Virtualization Alliance, which is dedicated to encouraging use of open virtualization technology. The established customer bases of these other vendors can only help the spread of Red Hat's virtual environment.

Oracle Solaris goes to 11

Oracle has updated its Unix-based operating system Solaris, adding some features that would make the OS more suitable for running cloud deployments, as well as integrating it more tightly with other Oracle products, the company announced Wednesday.

Best Oracle Certification Training and Oracle Exams Training and more Cisco exams log in to Certkingdom.com

"We looked at some of the big challenges that people were having in deploying cloud infrastructure, either in a private cloud or public cloud," said Charlie Boyle, senior director of product marketing. "In the release, we engineered out some of the complexity in managing a cloud infrastructure, and made it possible to run any Solaris application in a cloud environment."

Cloud deployments require even greater levels of automation and streamlining than a standard IT infrastructure would, noted Markus Flierl, Oracle vice president of software development. While an organization may run hundreds of Solaris servers, as it moves its applications to a cloud infrastructure, it may run them across thousands of virtual Solaris instances.

Solaris, a Unix implementation, was originally developed by Sun Microsystems, which Oracle acquired last year. While not as widely known for its cloud software, Oracle has been marketing Solaris as a cloud-friendly OS. In Oracle's architecture, users can set up different partitions, called Zones, inside a Solaris implementation, which would allow different workloads to run simultaneously, each within their own environment, on a single machine.

Oracle Solaris Zones has 15 times less overhead than a VMware implementation, Oracle asserted in its marketing literature. The company also touted that Zones had no artificial limitations set on memory, network, CPU or storage resources.

Many of the new features were designed to ease the administrative overhead of running a cloud-like infrastructure, Flierl said. One new feature, called Fast Reboot, will allow the system to boot up without doing the routine set of hardware checks, a move that can make system boot times up to two-and-a-half times faster, Oracle claimed. This feature can be handy in that an administrator applying a patch or software update across thousands of Solaris deployments can reboot them all the more quickly. "It allows you safely to upgrade your entire environment," Flierl said.

The new Solaris also features a new software management system, called Image Packaging System, that will keep track of a program's dependencies, or the libraries and other software that the program needs to run. The Image Packaging System keeps all the software packages in a system up-to-date, including those in a virtual environment.

Also adding to Solaris' cloud capabilities are new administrator controls that lock down the settings in individual Zones. Users can be limited in what changes they can make to the file system, or to the network settings. It can also limit the amount of network bandwidth each Zone can use. This is also the first version of the OS that allows users to virtualize networking resources, meaning supporting network cards can route traffic to appropriate virtual machines without any additional processing on the part of the server CPU itself.

In addition to work Oracle has done to make Solaris cloud-ready, the company has also closely tailored other Oracle products so that they can be coupled more easily to Solaris, including the Oracle Database 11g, Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g and the Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center administrative software package. By controlling an entire stack of software, the company can make "holistic" decisions over which part of the stack would be best suited to tweak to gain performance improvements, Flierl said.



Solaris 11, which complies to the Open Group's specifications for Unix implementations, can support any programs that were written for earlier versions of Solaris, dating back to Solaris 6. The company also runs the Oracle Solaris Binary Application Guarantee Program, which certifies more than 11,000 applications that can run on Solaris 6.

Solaris 11, released Wednesday, will run on both x86 and Oracle's Sparc-based processors.

Windows Phone 7 jailbreak app shows that Microsoft, not Apple, is the friend of openness

Apple has managed through the years to portray itself as the friend of freedom and openness, while depicting Microsoft as the exact opposite. But the recent decision by Microsoft to approve the use of a jailbreak app for Windows Phone 7 shows that Microsoft embraces freedom far more than does Apple.

Best Comptia A+ Training | Comptia A+ Certification 2000+ Exams at Examkingdom.com

ChevronWP7 Labs has released a tool to allow people to jailbreak Windows Phone 7 devices, available for $9. It lets anyone install and run apps outside of the official Windows Phone Marketplace. It's good for a single device; to do the same on another device costs another $9.

Microsoft allows the tool in the marketplace. If someone uses the tool, the warranties on their phone will remain, and they'll still be able to get Microsoft support for their phone.

It wasn't always so. A year ago, the same company released a similar tool, and Microsoft had it removed from the marketplace.

This isn't the first time that Microsoft has embraced the hacking of its devices. After initially not allowing hacking the Kinect, Microsoft changed its mind, and encourages Kinect hackers.

Contrast that behavior with Apple, which fiercely controls what can be done with its hardware. In fact, the company has even argued before the U.S. Copyright Office in 2009 that jailbreaking the iPhone is illegal, claiming that:

"Current jailbreak techniques now in widespread use [utilizes] unauthorized modification to the copyrighted bootloader and OS, resulting in infringement of the copyright in those programs."

Apple is also notorious for banning apps from the App Store for unclear reasons. Even worse, it has done the bidding of Chinese censors and will not allow people in China to download apps from the App Store, or content from iTunes, about the Dalai Lama or certain activists.

Earlier this year, the New York Times reported:

Apple's iTunes service still forbids Chinese users from downloading certain applications that refer to the Dalai Lama and the Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer.

And Macworld found last December that in China Apple censors apps that mention the Dalai Lama.

So while Apple's marketing is clearly superior to Microsoft's in portraying itself as the friend of freedom and openness, the truth is, Microsoft is far more a friend of openness than Apple.

SAP Mobile: inching towards the rest of the world

SAP is getting its mobile act together. But it is taking time and it is proving a rocky journey.

Microsoft MCTS Certification, MCITP Certification and over 2000+
Exams with Life Time Access Membership at http://www.actualkey.com

I’m at SAPPHIRE/SAPTechEd Madrid and for the first time in a while, SAP has managed to get (half way) through a large customer event without causing serious alarms in the minds of customers and partners. Mostly. In our executive meetings, my team has been concentrating mostly upon mobile and the SAP Store since that is something that has exercised many of us as a story we have found difficult and often at odds with the rest of the industry. That is changing but as always, it’s changing the SAP way. Mostly.

Here’s how the story pans out:

At SAPPHIRE Orlando, SAP showed a slew of proof of concept apps. I liked what I saw at the time but immediately thought about the business model. SAP was pimping the idea of the Sybase Unwired Platform as the springboard for what they will offer. That hasn’t changed, and, true to form, SAP is expecting its large customers to pony up mega bucks to take the platform. A couple of months back, SAP told me the mobile pipeline was running at around $500 million, a fact confirmed by Bill McDermott at the last earnings call. At the time I wondered where that number comes from. Now it is clear - it’s SUP and not much else.

Today the story takes another step forward. Eric Lai succinctly sets out SAP’s position in an advertorial on Forbes. He makes great play of the fact that SAP is showcasing 50 SAP and SUP certified apps at this event and that:

For SAPPHIRE NOW, 20 partners submitted 200 apps to be shown on the show floor. 100 were chosen (check them out at the SAP Partner Mobile App Catalog).

SAP’s Usman Sheik, VP e-channels told me there are 200 apps in EMEA undergoing certification and 200 more on the US. All good so far. But it ain’t quite that simple.

Right now, SAP is saying that all mobile apps it certifies will have to be SUP compliant. That in turn means developers will need to license SUP and pass that cost on to their customers and/or customers themselves will need to license SUP.

I have said before and I repeat here: SAP should give the platform away in most cases. It doesn’t make sense to developers if they have to pay for a platform at high cost. Apple managed to build a highly successful business by making the barriers to developers trivial. SAP is still trying to wean itself on the idea that everything has to come with a Veuve Cliquot price tag.

In essence, SAP is deliberately restricting the market to the largest partners. Senior SAP executives have confirmed this saying they believe a top down approach is right for enterprise. My colleagues and I vehemently reject that argument. The big SIs/partners will not build the hundreds or thousands of apps needed to catapult the SAP Store to relevance. That has to come from a bottoms up approach. Apple and Saleforce.com have proven that model. It’s a done deal.

Owen Pettiford, a long time SAP developer and SAP solutions user gets this argument as do many of my colleagues. In a stinging post on the SAP Community Network, he asks: How many mobile downloads from an Apps Store does it take to make $5bn ? He observes:

I think the problem SAP face is that to make the above a success will require CIOs (or at least 2000 of them) to think strategically about Mobility because of the level of investment required when investing in an Enterprise Mobility Platform like SUP. This will slow their time to market which will annoy the business who are screaming for “Apps – Now !”

(Disclosure: Owen asked me to sense check his post. It’s in line with what I have been saying for some time.)

In comments, Jarret Pazahanick, another SAP house person says:

I know several large SAP customers who have reviewed the infrastructure and licensing costs and could not build a business case.

I also know that to be true having spoken to representatives of several very large SAP customers.

There’s a much simpler argument that SAP should understand and it comes in three parts:

The size of the average functional developer team inside SAP is 10 persons. That’s the equivalent of a small developer shop. Geddit?
Prior to SAPPHIRE, I was part of a judging panel reviewing applications built with SAP Gateway, a tool that allows developers to hook up SAP systems to many other services in a very easy way. The entries were first class, many showing how you can hide ‘good old SAP’ and make something that is not only functionally useful but good to look at and consume. All (except the Microsoft dudes) demonstrated the ability to deploy on multiple mobile platforms. These were built by tiny teams over three days. Yes, they’re little more than POC but provide a solid indication of invention and innovation that IS possible with SAP technology. As I said at the time, all we need now is for SAP to get real about licensing that technology. It drew a spontaneous round of applause.
There is no shortage of developers willing, able and enthusiastic about developing on SAP technology. They know there is a huge market out there that SAP can help them reach. All those I know are willing to share the spoils.

The good news is that SAP is making certification free through the end of this year and is talking ’sub-$1,000′ going forward. I don’t believe they’ll charge that fee for some time to come as they realize that take up is not g0ing to be at the speed they desire. Even so, I cannot imagine any SAP developer shop baulking at $1,000 or less.

Similarly, SAP has taken the eminently sensible decision of pitching what amounts to the marketing of these solutions via the SAP Store at a reasonable 15%. The comparisons are obvious. Not as cheap as Android Market but way better than Apple.

Going forward, the company has indicated an intent to open up the SAP Store so that developers of non-SUP solutions can come on board. Similarly, it is working on ways to make the SDK available at low or no cost and further into the distance, it talks about plans to make SUP licensing at the application level much lower than the current $900 mark. It has to because as currently iterated, that won’t fly very far.

To its credit, SAP has pushed through many policy refreshes that signal a welcome change in direction. Progress, just in the last few months has been astonishingly fast by SAP standards and again, for that they deserve credit. But, SAP will find they have to review their strategy around the platform in short order. Otherwise, I don’t see the mobile SAP Store turning into the runaway success they’d like us all to believe.

To use the famous word of Steve Jobs: there is one more thing.

Flash on mobile is dead. As the news was breaking, I saw an elegant and very well thought out solution that can be deployed on any mobile platform. It was built upon Flash. Not knowing the breaking story I asked: “What about HTML5?” It came from an Adobe team who I’m guessing are pretty annoyed right at this moment as they see their innovation effectively flushed down the toilet. There’s a lot of flash in the SAP landscape and that must now be addressed. It won’t be trivial. It will create developer challenges. It will be for the best, however painful in the short term.

Google starts rollout of Google+ for businesses

After months of waiting, Google+ invites enterprises, brands into the fold

Computerworld - Google is getting ready for businesses to start jumping onboard its Google+ social network.

Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft MCITP Training at certkingdom.com

The social network Monday began to roll out Google+ Pages to help businesses create a presence on the social network platform for connecting with their users locally or worldwide. Vic Gundotra, Google senior vice president of engineering, wrote in a blog post that users can add businesses to their circles, recommend them with a +1 and connect with business team members personally in Hang Outs.

"For you and me, this means we can now hang out live with the local bike shop, or discuss our wardrobe with a favorite clothing line, or follow a band on tour," Gundotra wrote. "Google+ Pages give life to everything we find in the real world. And by adding them to circles, we can create lasting bonds with the pages (and people) that matter most."

Google+ engineers appear to be gradually rolling out the new Pages. While some organizations, like the band ColdPlay, already have signed up, not everyone can. Some users clicking on the link to create a business page receive the prompt, "Google+ Pages isn't ready for everyone, and asks users to "check back soon." Gundotra said in his blog post that everyone "will soon be able to join."

Google released its social network last June and a month later was asking enterprises and organizations to back off from using the site for business purposes.

"Right now, we're very much focused on optimizing for the consumer experience," said Christian Oestlien, a developer on the Google+ project, in a video blog posted last summer. "But we have a great team of engineers building a similarly optimized business experience for Google+. We are very excited about it and hope to roll it out later this year."

At the time, Google also put out a call for business that would be interested in acting as a test group so Google engineers could see how users want to interact with companies.

A matter of days after that post, Google said it was accelerating its efforts to develop a business version of Google+. The company also noted that "tens of thousands" of businesses had signed up to be part of their test group.

In Monday's blog post, Gundotra did not say how the company had optimized Google+ Pages for business use. Google has not yet responded to a request for more information.

Despite the lack of details, Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group, said this is a good move for Google+. "It's high time that Google delivered on the promise of a more business-oriented social networking mechanism," Olds said. "This is one area where they can get a jump on Facebook and make a name for themselves."

Many businesses and organizations use Facebook for marketing purposes, but the social network isn't optimized for them, Old said. Monday's announcement could give Google+ an advantage in the lucrative enterprise market.

"With Facebook, companies are using mechanisms that are really designed and geared to individuals," he added. "While they're making it work, they'd probably be better served with tools that are designed with companies in mind. Google+ can get the jump on Facebook if they can put together a set of tools that make social networking easier and more effective for businesses."

A group of businesses, including Macy's, Pepsi, Toyota, Angry Birds and Zen Bikes, already have set up business pages on Google+.

Forbes places Mark Zuckerberg in top 10 most powerful people

Forbes has ranked Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg as the ninth most powerful person in the world this year. He was number 40 last year.

Best CCIE Training and CCIE Exams and more Cisco exams log in to Certkingdom.com

Forbes has released its list of “The World’s Most Powerful People.” The annual ranking, which compares politicians, religious leaders, self-made billionaires, major philanthropists, and celebrities, has listed Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg as number nine this year.

At age 27, Zuckerberg is not only the youngest person on the list, but he is also the biggest gainer this year, jumping 31 spots from number 40 in 2010. Forbes estimates his net worth at $17.5 billion.

Unsurprisingly, US president Barack Obama tops the list. The only technology-related figure above Zuckerberg is Microsoft founder Bill Gates, at fifth place (up from 10th last year).

The next technology figures don’t appear till number 30: Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are tied for the spot, having slipped from number 22 last year. Other tech gurus this year include Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in 40th place (up from 66th), Baidu CEO Robin Li in 42nd, and Apple CEO Tim Cook in 58th.

Forbes takes into account four factors for its ranking. It measures how many people a person has power over, the financial resources controlled by each candidate, whether his or her influence affects more than one arena, and considers how actively they wield their power. This cuts the list down to 70 people, or one for every 100 million people on the planet.

Europe Approves Microsoft Purchase of Skype

The European Commission on Friday approved Microsoft’s $8.5 billion purchase of Skype, saying it had no objections to a deal that would link the world’s largest software maker with the leading Internet communications service.

Cisco CCNA Training, Cisco CCNA Certification 2000+ Exams at Examkingdom.com

While the assent from the European competition commissioner, Joaquín Almunia, is not the final antitrust hurdle for the transaction — regulators in Russia, Ukraine, Serbia and Taiwan are still deliberating — the positive review from Brussels was considered the last significant threat to what would be Microsoft’s largest takeover to date.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission approved the transaction in June.

In voicing no objections to the deal, Mr. Almunia, a Spanish economist, chose not to act on a complaint from an Italian competitor to Skype, Messagenet of Milan, which had asked that the deal be blocked unless Microsoft opened Skype’s 124-million user network to competitors.

Mr. Almunia in February approved Microsoft’s purchase of the search advertising business of Yahoo. This time, the competition commissioner said he was approving the purchase of Skype “because the deal would not significantly impede effective competition,” according to a statement by his office.

In the consumer communications business, the commission said Microsoft and Skype overlapped only in video communications, which Microsoft offers separately through its Windows Live Messenger program.

“However, the commission considers that there are no competition concerns in this growing market where numerous players, including Google, are present,” the commission said in its statement.

In the sale of Internet communications to businesses, Skype had only “a limited presence,” the commission concluded, which did not overlap with Microsoft’s Lync Internet communications software, used by large companies.

Microsoft, in a statement, called the European approval “an important milestone. We look forward to completing the final steps needed to close the acquisition.”

The approval from Brussels will expedite the fusion of Microsoft, maker of the ubiquitous Windows computer operating system and Office business application suite, with Skype, an Internet seller of free and low-cost audio and video telephony founded in 2003 by Niklas Zennstrom, a Swede, and Janus Friis of Denmark.

During the past eight years, Skype has become the largest provider of Internet-based communications. But profitability has remained elusive.

A previous owner, eBay, which bought Skype for an estimated $2.6 billion in October 2005, was not able to integrate Skype profitably into its online auction business. In October 2007, eBay took a $1.4 billion impairment charge reflecting what it estimated that it had overpaid for Skype.

Last November, eBay sold a 70 percent stake in Skype to an investor group led by Silver Lake Partners for an estimated $2 billion.

Microsoft, which announced its agreement to buy Skype on May 10, is paying nearly three times Skype’s market value, as measured by the sale of eBay’s stake almost a year ago to private investors.

Leif-Olof Wallin, an analyst in Stockholm for Gartner, said Microsoft would use Skype to bolster its push into Internet-based telephony around its Lync software for businesses. With Skype’s huge user base, Microsoft will be able to greatly expand the availability of low-cost Internet telephony, Mr. Wallin said.

He added that Microsoft’s distribution of Skype through its Windows operating system would improve the image of Internet calling, especially among businesses, which are increasingly encouraging workers to use their own computers and software for company business.

That will make Microsoft more of a direct competitive threat to Cisco Systems and Avaya, the two biggest companies that sell Internet-based telephone service software for businesses.

But it will also accelerate downward pressure on long-distance and international calling prices, Mr. Wallin said.

“Once it is preloaded on a device, whether it is a computer or a phone, it becomes more convenient to use,” Mr. Wallin said. “That will make consumers more likely to discover and try it.”

Whether Microsoft can generate a profit from Skype, or create profitable synergies with its other software services and products remains unclear, said David W. Cearley, an analyst for Gartner in Stamford, Connecticut.

“I do not believe that direct revenue was the main reason for the purchase,” Mr. Cearley said. “The main thing that Microsoft is buying with Skype is brand presence on the Web and a customer base.”