AOL launched expanded AIM service for instant messenger which comes with Free and Paid version. The key features of the additional services are SMS notifications, location-aware services, and support of multiple accounts. The major difference for free and paid version is the inclusion of ads in the buddy list of the AIM Free app. AIM Free (2.0.1) is currently available for download (via iTunes)
Oracle is expected to release Enterprise Manager 10g Release 5 on Tuesday. This major upgrade will add features like Siebel CRM 8.1.1, as well as additional management tools for the Beehive collaboration platform and Oracle’s billing and revenue management software. Oracle also brought comprehensive management for Web Logic server and Oracle Service Bus.
Sybase Inc, provider of Enterprise software, recently rolled Sybase IQ 15, column based analytic Server. The software offers accurate analysis and reporting for critical business need. As per Ted Rooney, Senior Engineer of Secure Computing, the new features of Sybase IQ 15, including faster load times and multiple writer node improves the ability to make business decisions for big corporates. Sybase IQ 15 is supposed to be released on Mar 31.
Instant Messaging is one of the most popular way for communication over the web. Now, there are different protocols like ICQ, AIM, GTalk, Yahoo, and Facebook available on the web for instant messaging. IM Aggregators addresses the issue of having all of the programs open in one go.
FathomDB unveiled on Friday private beta version of its relational database as a service platform for the cloud computing. The service is currently available for mySQL database hosted on Amazon’s EC2 Web Service. But, it has a plan to expand for small cloud based web service in future. The beauty of the service is that it is a managed service that provides backups, monitoring, replication of databases.
Employers apply for H1b visa every year in April in order to get a slot out of 85000 visas that US Government approves every year. Companies starts hiring employees from Oct every year. Six Indian Outsourcing firms are among the top 10 companies who got approval of 11,617 H-1B visas in 2008. Also, Accenture, Microsoft, Cisco are among the top 10 US companies who received approval for 1,037, 731 and 422 number of Visas.
Google just launched Code Lab. This is a place where developers can find 60 APIs to access early-stage Google products and explore new ideas among developers. Third parties can build APIs at Google lab and it also says what projects Google has made a long term commitment and what they have not. Google also announced a list of several Google Code Lab “graduates,” featuring best-known APIs and tools. The list includes App Engine, Google Web Toolkit, AJAX Search API, Maps API, Earth API, Calendar Data API, and YouTube APIs. The complete list can be avaialable here.
Oracle RAC allows multiple computers to run the Oracle RDBMS software simultaneously while accessing a single database, thus providing a clustered database. In a non-RAC Oracle database, a single instance accesses a single database. Gartner analyzed the usage in early 2003 with Oracle Database 9i (9i) RAC. It was a very complex application at that time and required an skilled DBA to monitor it. But, in the last five years, Oracle made a significant improvement for RAC in terms of business value and lowered the skill level.
The future version of Windows server will support Microsoft Cloud based Service Platform, Azure. Azure runs on Windows Server 2008 inside Microsoft’s data centers. Azure, like other newer-generation cloud platforms, enables faster setup and easier scaling, and lets users pay for usage, thus avoiding upfront investment. Microsoft offers both Windows Server software and the Azure as software as a service strategy because of the fact that companies are unsure about the performance on cloud infrastructure. Azure is supposed to be released later this year.
Jive is going to release new social networking tool next week that will help Business collaboration and brainstorming session. Jive Social Business Software (SBS) 3.0 will mainly focus upon employee engagement, marketing and sales, customer support, and innovation. Jive features collaboration, community and social network on enterprise platform. The price of SBS 3.0 is $59 per user per year for four centers.
According to the recent projection of Wall Street, the economic crisis is far from over. One crisis gets over, another surprise pops up. Some of the small IT firms will be purchased by big corporates because big companies want to diversify their business for the banking trouble. Most of the start-up companies faced the worst hit due to weakening of cash flow. As per Forrester Research, the financial sector generates 20 -30% of the revenues for IT industry. Full article »
Oracle is the leading Enterprise Application software (EAS)vendor in Middle East and North Africa. The company posted strong year-to-year revenue growth in those countries and its year-on-year EAS revenue was up by 43.1% in 2007. Oracle is the largest EAS vendor in UAE market in 2007, according to IDC, with 44.1% market share and revenues of $49.96 million.
Software as a service (Saas) gained significant momentum in recent years due to lower cost, smaller storage requirement and the need for fewer personnel. The threshold of Saas lies Human Capital management and Customer Relationship Management applications. Gradually, it has spread in the areas like Web conferencing, collaboration, and IT service management. Forrester Research Inc, a Market Research Firm, made a study upon top 14 SaaS application technologies based on growth and future potential for success. They found that the following SaaS technologies are going to be hot in the coming days. Full article »
Zeppelin is a Cittio project that enhances cloud Computing capabilities. The software provides detailed asset, performance, auditing, benchmarking and usage metering information for cloud infrastructure. It will provide the reporting, analysis and operations support for both internal and remote cloud infrastructures.
As per Security firm F-Secure, already 9 million PCs have already been hit by the worm Conficker/Downadup. IT management firm CA further predicts that it may hit back on April Fool’s day in a big way. The new version of the worm will generate 50,000 URLs a day and report back to any one of 500 of them.
Microsoft just launched Internet Explorer 8. You can get it in 25 languages from the download site. The browser was in Beta release for the last one year. So, it is interesting to see how the final product works. You will be able to see some significant improvements in RSS, Cascade Style Sheet. Also, it includes Ajax support. As a developer , you can find tools with the browser for HTML, CSS and Javascript debugging directly from the browser. If the browser crashes, you can recover web pages when the browser is restarted. Microsoft also claims that the the browser improves rendering with the new version.
Secure Science researchers found vulnerability of Twitter Microblogging site. Hackers can attack user accounts as well as make your computer a compromising position with the help of the cross scripting code(XSS). 750 Twitter accounts were hacked last week to send Tweet spam.
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As the economy goes down, it’s harder to find job opportunities in both technical and traditional lines of work. Yes, finding a job requires patience and endurance. At the same time, you have to be a little smart to find the niche of recession proof job market. After interacting with HRD professional in different industries, I feel that you should focus on job market that is stable and experiences future growth. I would like to share my thoughts with you.
JTrac 2.1.0 is an open source issue tracking web application software, written in Java and it is bundled with Jetty Web Application Server. JTrac is distributed as a WAR file. You can easily install it by dropping the software at your servlet engine. The JTrac web-application checks the environment on startup and if a configured database is not detected, HSQLDB is used by default. If you have Java 5 installed you can run the application after downloading and extracting JTrac - by simply using start and stop scripts. The tool uses Acegi Security framework for Spring. You can get the software from here and there is a documentation at this place.
Freemium is a Business Model that offers basic services for free while charging premium for advanced features. Skype is a good example of Freemium Service. Any voice call within the network is free, but, there is a premium for call outside the network. The best part of this business model is that you, as a service provider, can make customer understand why they have to pay money for paid service. I think the business model that focuses on user value and monetize the value is very powerful compared to others.
The ultimate goal of corporate blogging is to reach the goal of the company. Your company can use internal blog instead of meetings and e-mail discussions, and it can be very useful when employees work at different locations, or have conflicting schedules. On the other hand, when your company employees, teams, share their views, external blog is preferred. Personally speaking, I have some experience about corporate blogging for a start up company. The top benefits for corporate blogging from my standpoint are as follows: Full article »
Oracle recently announced that it agreed to buy Relsys International Inc, a leading vendor for Drug Safety and Risk analysis solution for Health Care Industry. Despite the economic downturn, Oracle ventured out for the buyout of the pharmacology software firm. It gives Oracle to expand its domain knowledge in the vertical of Health care Industry.
Mule Enterprise 2.2 is an open source ESB that can be plugged into any vendor applications. It comes with support like HTTP, JMS, SOAP, SMTP. This a novel architecture that supports seamless integration of different business applications.You can get professional support for Mule from Mulesource.
Extreme Programming (xp) is a methodology for software development. The key concept is that it works by bringing the whole team of your company together. The core idea of XP is Agile programming that is fast and flexible and Iterative development. The team gets enough feedback to see where they are and to adapt the practices to their unique situation. XP is widely recommended for small teams. Here are the top benefits for using Extreme Programming. Full article »
Extreme Programming (XP) is such a methodology so that either you do all of XP or none at all. There is no in-between thing. But all of the utopian theory of XP may not be true in all cases. I interacted with many Project Managers due to the nature of my profession and I found some of the major difficulties for the implementation of XP project. Full article »
Are we heading further deep into recession? The Wall Street Journal says we’re in the “Worst Crisis Since ’30s, With No End Yet in Sight”. Finance market almost came to a halt worldwide. Banks and financial institutions are still reluctant to extend credit. The enterprise should consider ways to survive during this critical period of economic crisis.
Molybdenum is a visual test tool to test web application. The software version 0.7.1 is compatible with Firefox 3.1. It is based on Selenium and you can use it as add-on to your Firefox browser. The software is developed under license from Apache License 2.0. This tool simulates the user action to the Firefox browser. You can download the software from here.
As the statistics goes, recession time is ideal to start new business. Most of the well known and successful companies are born during the time of economic downturn. If you look into the business model of all of the companies, you will learn their tenacity, how they recognize the market need and identify the consumer plan. I gathered some informations from my company about how to launch business as well as from a few of my buddies who work as chief strategist of different companies. I would love to share the information with you. Full article »
ISO 9000 is the family of standard for Quality Management System. It is maintained by International Organization for Standardization and is administered by accreditation and certification bodies. My company has been able to improve the quality of the end products and services as well as business processes after having ISO certification.
Most of the enterprises are compelled to cut or freeze wages and further raise due to the recession. The future is not also good even though you have job. You have to come up with a way so that you can retain your job and at the same time get decent raise. After all, you have to be very mindful about these two things because you have to pay your bill in every month. I came with 10 best ways you can keep your job after my long discourse with HRD people and Corporate honchos’. I would like to share this with you. Full article »
A business plan is very important during recession time compared to the time during economic boom. This is your single most important document during economic downturn. As far as my experience with software industry is concerned, I believe that working and functional plan of actions are the key area of thrust during recession. Full article »
Bad economy did a havoc in corporate world during the last one year. In turn, it forced companies to go either out of business or lay off people very often. As a ripple effect, venture capital for start up and midsized companies are also drying up. But, still there are handful companies who have been able to manage venture capital during this crunch period. So, what are the tricks to draw funding during the recession period? My analysis highlights the following area of focus for venture capital. Full article »
Both XP and SCRUM are derived from Agile methodology but with a slight different principle and practices. When you work in a software development team, both of the above methodologies are so close that you may get confused which one you are in. Different people provide different opinion about the differences between the two methodologies. I worked with both of the XP and Scrum team. What I learned about the differences between both of the software development approaches, I would like to share with you. Full article »
Bad economy made a big impact on world economy. Countries like Germany, Japan are already in recession. Investment banking are the worst hit during this recession period, followed by banking and insurance sector. Many multinational companies and private sector firms posted lower profit or loss in the last one year. Not only has the Indian economy escaped the onslaught of Wall Street, but many Public sector Enterprises (PSE) in India fought well with the sagging economy compared to private sectors due to their conservative approach all along. They didn’t curtail staff strength like their counterpart. On the contrary, they posted significant profit. After going through the discussion with top company management, I found following reasons why India Inc fared well during recession. Full article »
Bill Gates has nurtured Microsoft from obscurity to a giant corporation. The last few years haven’t been especially good ones for Microsoft, despite the fact that it made billion dollar from consumers since it released its last successful operating system Windows XP.
Akamai Technology Ltd is the name of a Content Distribution Network (CDN) company that provides distributed computing platform for global Internet Content and Application Delivery. A content delivery network or content distribution network is a system of Internet that work together to deliver content to end users, in order to improve performance, scalability, and cost efficiency.
When the economy slows down, market swings into the negative direction. You should be smart enough to manage your business in this tough time. During this time, an entrepreneur should think of reduction of business expenses by means of proper resource allocation and consolidation of businesses. At the same time, you should not compromise with your product or service quality to stay competitive in the market. From my standpoint, I think if a company follow the following procedures, the business is going to be benefited in terms of expenditure. Full article »
Extreme Programming (XP) does not have a separate Quality Assurance (QA) team or role. Usually, the programmers perform unit testing, and either the programmers or the customer carries out acceptance testing. The QA team is associated with the project from the very beginning. They want to break the system at the early stage of the development so that customer does not get faulty product.
Every enterprise, whether they are manufacturing or service industry, should have a corporate strategy so that they can lower carbon emission, minimize their environmental impact, make the best use of natural resources, and become more energy efficient. The company should tailor their activities in such a way so that it can achieve both environmental and business success. I consider the following highlighted areas are the key for the success. Full article »
Ruba launched yesterday beta version of user generated travel guide. Ruba lets users discover their next trip by browsing highly visual guides written by other travelers about interesting themes.
The goal of a software product development company is to deliver good product on continuous basis in order to succeed in the competitive market.To achieve that you have to have a right process, tools and proper strategy. Software Quality Assurance is associated with entire software development process. QA also involves monitoring and improving the process, making sure any agreed-upon standards and procedures are followed. It also emphasizes handling of the problems that are found.
The supply Chain company i2 filed lawsuit against Oracle at US District court for violation of 11 of its patents related to supply chain management and other enterprise software applications. Oracle violated i2 patents in terms of process planning, managing factory planning systems, computer security, managing applications across multiple domains, intelligent order promising, managing multi-taxonomy environments, value chain management, and extreme capacity management. Full article »
Nokia is lagging behind Apple and RIM in terms of cellphone sale in USA. The company is expected to make big impact with the release of Nokia E71X through AT & T on Monday. Customer can buy the handset by paying $99 with two year contract with AT & T. The smartphone comes with Symbian S60 3.2 Operating system. The widely used operating system for smartphone can deal with multimedia, Web browsing, messaging, voice services, and text editing. Additionally, the phone has Navigation feature and AT & T branded software.
Oracle launched new BI software Oracle Business Intelligence (BI) Applications Release 7.9.6. couple of days back. The package includes further improvement of existing application, integration of other Oracle software and two new business management tools Project Analytics and Loyalty Analytics. As a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware, it helps reduce your deployment time and total cost of ownership.
Sun Shareholders are not very happy about the recent $7.4 billion proposed acquisition offer from Oracle. They placed three class action lawsuits to block the planned merger with Oracle. Sun made this disclosure with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Sun Micro did not respond to the complaint. As per an expert, if Oracle is really interested to acquire SUN, the lawsuit may not be a deterrent because Oracle can raise the offer to keep the deal alive.
IBM announced a couple of days ago that the software and services from IBM will work smarter with the new BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0. Blackberry users will be able to read documents without any laptop with the help of IBM Symphony word processing software, the new BlackBerry Client for Lotus Sametime instant messaging, and the new native BlackBerry Client for Lotus Connections. The blackberry client for Lotus Sametime collaborates in real time from the desktop computer to the BlackBerry smartphone,that includes instant messaging (IM), presence awareness, contacts, broadcasts, file transfer, click-to-call etc.
You can easily share and store file online by using Dropbox. It can also synchronize the files from your offline directories and online storage. You can download and install the software and it doesn’t have any user interface. You can get 2 GB of free storage for synchronization and sharing of files. They charge 9.99/mo beyond that.The key features of Dropbox are: Full article »
As your business grows, the dependency on the Internet for access to real-time business applications also increases. More importantly, your business requires always-on connectivity. But, gradually, Internet has become a potential security risk. The enterprises are looking ways about how to control web access.
Risk management is associated with assessing and quantifying business risks, then taking measures to control or reduce them. As software technologies continue to grow in terms of power and complexity we are witnessing the rapid expansion of software into virtually every walk of our business and personal life. Poor software project management can lead to missing deadline, overrun of cost and can also be major cause of ultimate cause of customer dissatisfaction. The following techniques may be considered to assess and address the complete risk management process at your company.
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You can create high quality audio recordings or “Tweetcasts” and publish them directly to Twitter with the help of new simple and intuitive addon app TweetMic. I would consider it a nice step to advance Social Networking one step ahead. You can make unlimited audio recording and review them before posting to twitter without going through any extra hassle of signup for anything. You just have to link TweetMic to your Twitter account for publication. Additionally, the price of the app is 99 cent. You can get TweetMic from apple store.
IBM today announced the availability of Smart Cube, an integrated hardware, software and services package that was targeted for small and medium businesses. The company claims that it is going to be easier to run and manage compared to traditional servers. Smart cube comes with Linux and IBM’s i operating system. The server starts at $8000 price tag. Smart Cube has the following components. Full article »
AA mail Server is a SQL database based Windows mail server program and Webmail software for enterprise. It is targeted mainly for small and medium businesses to build their mail server on internet. The software comes with two flavors. You can get a free trial of the software to download before you buy. The Standard Edition that supports 1 domain, 100 mailboxes, costs $119 and Business Edition with unlimited domain and mailboxes costs $299 with Lifetime license.
Recently, the debate regarding US Immigration policy in terms of reform for H1b and L1 workers visa resurfaced at US Congress. Those visas are mostly used by temporary foreign workers to work in USA. Senators Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) reintroduced a bill which was designed to prevent any fraud or misuse of H1b and L1 visas.
Although, weekly claims for unemployment insurance went down in USA, but, ongoing claims increases to 7 million. The Labor Dept reports that new claims for jobless benefit dropped to 631,000, down from 643,000 the previous week. The dept further reported that continuing claims increases from 6.6 million to 6.7 million. This is the highest total record since 1967. The projection is that labor market will remain weak in 2010 and beyond that.
RSS feed is an efficient way to read news and weblog. There are several RSS readers available in the market. You may have to do a lot of investigations to find a smart reader that suits your need to search or organize the news. I found that the following RSS Readers very interesting and I would like to share my view with you. Full article »
Platform virtualization is performed on a given hardware platform by host software (a control program), which creates a simulated computer environment, a virtual machine, for its guest software. Currently, virtualization technology is at every walk of our market. It is sometimes confusing to pick up right product and do the architecture for them. I reviewed a few virtualization software for installation at our workplace. Here, I cover up some of them as follows: Full article »
Microsoft just unveiled Zune High Definition Music Player that can play High Defintion Music and Video files. The portable media player brings new level of listening and viewing experience. As per Microsoft, the music player will be available in Fall. Although, the price was not announced.
As per the latest research by international research firm Parks Associates, when most of the industries are suffering from the impact of recession, gaming industry is considered recession-proof. The projection is that gaming industry will surpass $1 billion by the year 2013. As per the latest report by NPD group, the gaming software sale stands at $669 million until February which is a rise of 47% sales. The NPD’s Entertainment Trends In America reports that 65 five percent of the 10,000 consumers surveyed want to spend the same amount on video games - or more – in 2009 in comparison with 2008
Google Wave is a real time communication and collaboration tool which will be available by the later part of 2009. The announcement came couple of days back. It integrates email, instant messaging, wikis, web chat, social networking, and project management to build a browser based communication client. This model helps people communicate and work together in unique ways.
The current global recession hit most of the developing countried very badly, it may be a blessing for BPO industries in developing countries. Most of the global players cannot have high fixed costs when their revenues are going down,and that impacts their bottomline. So they will have to make their costs variable, which is keeping with the decrease in the revenue. Thus offshoring and outsourcing are the two top choices they have.For example, many BPO companies who handle mortgage business are doing well during this slowdown period. That’s because many homeowners are going for foreclosure.
The server market regardless of x86 or Unix is impacted badly due to recession. The data shows that overall sales for Servers went down by 24% worldwide. It also says that the top 5 vendors witnessed double digit drop of server market during the same period. Additionally, the shipment dropped to 1.7 million units.
As per Forrester Research report, the global recession made a negative impact not only to the IT budget, it also compelled software vendors to make their price more customer friendly. The survey was conducted on 12 Enterprise Software during final quarter of 2008 and first quarter of 2009.
LiquidTest is a browser based automated web application testing framework. It contains Eclipse rich client application for recording browser action produces output test script in Java, C#, Groovy, Ruby and other languages. The tools contains three separate editions; Developer Edition, Tester Edition and Server Edition. The company offers 30 days free trial period for you. You can buy LiquidTest bundle that includes Developer/Test edition and Server license and costs $1990.
Do you have a dynamic Web site or are thinking of building one? If the answer is Yes, one of the top priority is to make your web site search engine friendly. If you fail that part, the visibility of your web site will go down significantly. Dynamic sites are those in which pages are generated on the fly. Many webmasters are having questions about increasing the page hit for their websites. This article gives you some tips to achieve this. Full article »
As per the latest report of Financial Times, Apple has a plan to introduce cheaper version of iPhone on Monday. The company has a plan to show the models at their Developer’s Conference on Monday. This will improve the market share of iPhone significantly. The report further says that the product is going to be either $99 or $149.
H1b visa was introduced to help create American jobs. But, the critics say that under current law, an outsourcing company can use American workers to train H-1B guest-workers, fire the American workers and outsource the H-1B workers to a foreign country where they will do the same job for a much lower wage. But, U.S. Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) recently introduced “The H-1B and L-1 Visa Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act of 2007″ that can be applied if implemented to give priority to US workers and crack down on unscrupulous employers who deprive qualified Americans of high-skill jobs. The proposed legislation may impact bigger companies who have more than 50% guest workers.
IBM recently added Rational Insight, a Project Management Dashboard with its Rational Toolset. The objective of the new Dashboard is to let the business managers to pull key data on software development and modifications into progress charts. Insight is built upon the data mining software Cognos that IBM acquired.
Apple announced new features of iPhone 3.0 operating system like movie rentals and purchases at the worldwide Developer’s Conference. Additionally, the 3.0 operating system will add capabilities that lets MobileMe users to track down their iPhone and see its location on a map. The current software requires that users will get the content on iTunes before syncing the device. The update will enable user to purchase movie directly from the handset interface.
Wiki is a website that users can modify. The main benefit of wiki is as follows: Full article »
Google announced new tool Google Apps Sync to synchronize email, contacts, calendar directly with Microsoft outlook through web. With this, Google is trying to become more competitive with Microsoft Exchange. You need Outlook 2003 SP3 or 2007 SP2 (or SP1 with a hotfix), running on Windows XP SP2 (with selected hotfixes) or Vista SP1 (with a hotfix) to run the utility.
The year 2009 is going to witness some significant changes for IT vendors due to the economic downturn. Most analysts forecast that Business Intelligence will grow significantly during this year. The projected growth rate is between 2% to 10%. All industries running IT will adopt BI to increase Business strategy and business value. Most Global 2000 organizations are aware of the need to better manage information; many companies consider it a corporate asset. After my prolong discussion with the data management expert for different IT sector in BFSI sector, I compiled a list of top 10 BI trend as follows that I would like to share with you. Full article »
Oracle rolled out the latest release of Oracle Warehouse Management a few days back. Now, you can deploy Oracle Warehouse Management as a Distributed option. You can take the advantage of deploying this software without upgrading to latest version of Oracle E-Business Suite. The software also allows 24×7 warehouse operations during ERP upgrades or maintenance cycles.
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) is closely associated with the combination of people, process and technology and it focuses on preventing confidential information or other sensitive data from leaving an organization. Data Loss is not only the major security issue since the year 2007, it is also a big business issue.
You might be looking for a faster, jazzy PC. But, have you ever thought what good things you can do with the old PC rather than dismantling it totally. I have some ideas. May be that can help you out. I would like to share this with you, guys. Full article »
Rational Plan is a very powerful Project Management tool. It helps Project Managers to do plans, allocating resources, tracking progress, managing budgets and analysing workload. The software can be used for any kind of industries like construction, engineering, services & consulting, software development etc.
The parameters for the use of computer at workplace are sometimes confusing. Although, we use internet at work for many of our personal purposes like sending email, paying bills, checking stock ticker, but, we should exactly know where to draw the limit. Since, cases are rising drastically where employee gets fired for wrongful use of computer at work. I am highlighting a few important points for which employee may loose his job. Full article »
The social networking site, mySpace just announced to cut its workforce in USA by 30% of its 1500 approximate number of employees. The third quarter income of mySpace fell by 47%. The company didn’t disclose severance terms or how much MySpace is going to save by lowering its workforce and laying off nearly 500 U.S. employees.
The recent IT boom for the last few years has left many IT organizations with underutilized storage capacities. Now, under tight IT budget, many organizations are forced to do more with less. In order to economize the storage cost, the first step is to create dynamic and cost-efficient storage environment that optimizes your existing storage assets and investments. Here are the five ways of saving. Full article »
Identity and access management is the foundation of your company to manage risk, compliance and enterprise governance (GRC) on an integrated platform. Identity Management focuses on Digital identities and their access to your system information. It can be workforce, (online) customers, partners or suppliers. They are the core focus of identity and access management.
Apple and AT&T stores are going to sell 3G S iPhone from Friday at 7 a.m. The 16-GB model will cost $199, and the 32-GB version will be $299. Most analysts say that Apple is going to offer significant hardware improvement for 3G S. Although, the touch screen looks similar to the previous version, it has a powerful processor with 600-MHz processor and 256 RAM, a better camera, more space, a digital compass, and a coated screen to resist any scratch. The company is going to ship 500,000 3G S iPhone this weekend.
Devver takes the combination of all of the tools that developers use at their desktop and convert them into cloud service. Currently, they emphasize Ruby tools and testing. They have a plan to release an open API so that developers can use it for additional service like Python, PHP and Java languages. Currently, they are offering the service free in private beta release. The company claims to finish test as fast as 1/3 rd time that developer takes to test at their machines.
If you have your own blog and would like to add something cool to the sidebar, you can take a look Widgetbox. It is also a great place if you use a personalized start page or want to jazz up your profile at your favorite social networking website. People can find, make and distribute web widgets for blogging, social networking services, and personal websites with the help of Widgetbox. You will be provided with user friendly tools to build, distribute, and track your own Web widgets. You can see a gallery of widgets at the site.
Social Networking is the new and improved way to land your dream job. If you are new to social networking site, you should know that sites like Facebook or Twitter can help you find a job. As per the Market Research firm, Nielson Online, almost 70 % of the online users use social networking site. You will be wondering to know that there are quite a significant number of people who use those sites to get in touch with the employer or build up peer network to exchange job tips. The following section highlights a few interesting social networking sites in terms of finding a job. Full article »
IBM unveiled two new cloud computing offering for Enterprises last week. The new service is called IBM Smart Business that provides hosted tools and services for two tasks: virtual desktop management, and application development and testing. The new services are available on cloud infrastructures which was developed by IBM behind a customer’s firewall. Additionally, IBM has also released CloudBurst appliances to facilitate development and testing task.
I read somewhere that 42% American fear in public speaking. When we see the seasoned presenter in an interactive session, we wonder how did he acquire such a superb skill. I learned over the period of time that practice is one of the major skills that produces such a wonderful result. You should always try to groom your skills and improve them whenever possible. As you climb up in a corporate hierarchy, it is important that you develop the solid skills of presentation. This article gives you some tips in terms of developing business presentation skills. Full article »
The 2009 International Supercomputing Conference ranked IBM Roadrunner as the fastest supercomputer followed by Cray’s Jaguar. The IBM supercomputer accounts 1.105 petaflops. The Cray XT5 Jaguar One comes with 1.059 petaflops. A petaflop is quadrillion floating point operations per second. There are two other systems that feature in the top 10 list. They are the IBM BlueGene/P called Jugene and the Juropa, which is built from Novascale and Sun Microsystems Sun Blade x6048 server. The two German based systems that belong to non-American category featured in the top 10 list.
In today’s super competitive SEO environment it’s extremely tough to get to and stay on top of the search listing. I have gone through several SEO engines for my own blog. I am listing the following SEO tools that was designed to configure your website(s) for search engine optimization within the different search engines. Please, feel free to try one them for the optimization of your blog. Full article »
If your project can’t meet a deadline or you deliver project not within the budget and react to problems after they occur, continually add resources as the project goes ahead, then you need to reevaluate your project management methodology to maintain better control and make confident decisions. A good project manager has to have a general management skills with a strong hunch to solve the problem. You have to plan and manage the project, not to do it.
If you want to become a successful Quality Manager, the key is to develop a good QA procedure. You have to clearly define the goal, requirements, review, processes and metrics. It is necessary for you to set up a good QA procedure in order to survive in this competitive market. Most of the good companies who prosper have a solid QA procedure and the implementation starts since the beginning of the project. In this article, I mention a few crucial points in order to become a good QA manager. Full article »
Microsoft released the new Beta version of their free security antivirus which is available in a few countries for download including USA and China. The final product will be available before the end of 2009. Microsoft has promised to release a lightweight security tool that will take care of Viruses, spyware, rootkits and Trojans without compromising the speed of your system.You can download the software as follows:
Although, Apple allowed “hottest girl” software at its app store for a brief period of time on Thursday, but, the company removed it from the shelf later on. This way the company enforced the policy of prohibition of adult content in its application. The developer added the above software that shows nudity after the app is approved and distributed by the company.
The core idea of developing a good website is that the article of the site has to be interesting and easy to understand. You have to draw the attention of the viewers to the website and lead them further deep down the site without making any confusion. This article emphasizes on some nice tips about how to make good and user friendly web site. Full article »
You must be using your password to access information in your computer and in your on line transaction. The main purpose of a password is to guard something of yours. Password should be strong enough so that it can not be broken by wild guessing or by brute force method that hackers use from time to time. This article gives you the tips about how to check the password security. Full article »
The advent of wireless networking has made a big impact on the people about the way they use computers. Wireless networking is so inexpensive now a days that anyone can set up WLAN in an easy way. But, with the inception of this new technology, personal information has become vulnerable to hackers.
Penetration test is the process of evaluating the information security of your IT department. You test your information security system to find out any security issues. You should answer two questions to determine what kind of penetration test you will perform? 1> Who is going to be the potential hacker? For exmp, if you know any grumbling employee may do it, the test has to be conducted within the wall of the company. 2> What kind of notice you will give your IT people about the testing. I emphasize the following areas to perform penetration test. Full article »
Most of the big enterprises have IT department now a days. They have IT assets such as computers, networks, and data. You conduct security audit to find out potential security risks in your company. This article highlights the core areas to conduct security audit. Full article »
RIM, the maker of Blackberry SmartPhone, offered free server software for small business and it is called Professional Software Express. You can add upto 30 user license for free and you will pay $90 for additional license. If you are currently using Microsoft Exchange server, you can download the free software from Blackberyy site to synchronize your email, calendar, task list and contacts with one blackberry smartphone.
Adobe announced that Flash is going to be available in Smartphone from October. The company said that it will bring Flash technology in the mobile operating system like Google’s Android, Microsoft’s Windows mobile , Nokia’s Symbian and Pam’s WebOS. So, it will open a new avenue for Flash developers and content creators to develop rich applications for mobile platform. The company didn’t announce similar plan for Apple iPhone or RIM’s Blackberry as of yet.
Capability Maturity Model Integrated (CMMI) is the collection of best software engineering practices that was designed by Carnegie Melon University. You can use it as a guidance to improve the quality processes at your company. The guidelines also aims to help organizations focus on process improvement strategies.
People who use Google Maps already know how to figure out their location by using the maps. Google upgraded its maps by adding new location icon called My Location. The feature is available for smart phone users since 2007. But, now it is available also for desktop PC. The new feature enables you to pinpoint exact coordinate of your location. Google assures the privacy of your location. Although, Google is not going to disclose your location, but, any online interaction with Google or any other Web service will reveal the user’s IP address.
Very recently, you must have heard the important news from AP Radio that GM has been able to exit out of the bankruptcy successfully. But, AP didn’t want to disclose the fact how much Govt and US taxpayers have to compromise to help GM out of bankruptcy. AP clearly understated the amount of Govt money that was spent.
As per the latest report of AMR research, major Enterprise Vendors in the top category are building application with Java as the core programming language. It further said that SAP and Oracle ranked number one and number two Enterprise Vendor with $16 bill and $8.6 bill revenues respectively. The report also projects that the enterprise vendor market will decline between 2% to 6% during 2009 due to the recession. On the other hand, Oracle expects that Dept of Justice is going to close the deal of acquisition of SUN micro by this summer.
Microsoft senior VP Bill Veghte said that Enterprise customers who subscribed to any of a number of Microsoft’s Volume Licensing programs can access Windows 7 on Sept 1. The consumer version is going to be available on October 22nd. If you have applications built on Windows XP and the even older Windows 2000 platform, you will be able to run it on Windows 7. Additionally,as a Windows 7 Professional customers, you will be able to run virtual copy of Windows XP on virtual machine mode.
As opposed to the popular misconception that teens are the majority users for Twitter, lot of other people are also using Twitter. When the unique visitor hit is going down in US, Twitter’s hit improved significantly in the last few months. 20.1 million unique visitors in the U.S got into Twitter in June compared to 14 million of the previous month. The page views of Twitter hit 628 million, a 21 percent increase in comparison of the previous month. If you bring the global visitors into account then the number of unique visitors stands at 37 million. The above figure gives you the estimate for Twitter Website. Half of the visitor use desktop and mobile clients to access twitter.
Big Investment bankers like Bank of America, Chase and Goldman Sachs are due to announce their second quarterly result later this week after impressive performance in the first quarter. JPMorgan Chase, for example, is expected to report anywhere from a profit of 27 cents a share to a loss of 23 cents a share. Bank of America’s estimates, on the other hand, range from a loss of 11 cents to a profit of 70 cents a share. Goldman Sachs already announced their profit 3.44 bill dollar today which is much higher than expected. Comparatively, JP Morgan Chase is due to announce smaller profit of $280 million, or 4 cents a share.
As a Project Manager of an IT start up firm, I gather some experiences about do’s and dont’s of the complete process. I already mentioned tips to become a successful project manager. In this article, I would like to share my experience with you about the key mistakes that project manager should avoid. Full article »
As per San Hose news, CISCO downsized by laying off 700 employees at its San Jose headquarter. Due to the economic crisis , CISCO planned early this year to eliminate 1500 to 2000 people from its workforce as per Wall Street Journal. This downsizing is going to help the company to save between $1 bill to $1.5 bill of its expense. CISCO’s revenue fell by 17% during third quarter and it is expected to announce double digit decline in sales during fourth quarter. Full article »
Although, Google didn’t disclose much information about its upcoming operating system Chrome, I gathered some information from different blog post and news articles and I would like to share them with you.
PageR Enterprise Edition, developed by Avtech Software Inc. monitors any Windows NT/2000/XP server, system, event log, file, disk or device on the network, and includes Network-Wide IP Ping, Novell NetWare Server and SNMP Trap monitoring. It also includes Unlimited Contact Objects, Unlimited Alarm Objects, powerful Web Browser Interface, Unlimited Web and Manual Paging, Web Site and Web Server monitoring, multi-level Web Browser Access / Security, Sophisticated Alerting to Individuals /Groups /Hierarchies, Support in both pre-sale and post-sale, and Computer Room Environment & Security Monitoring add-on options. Enterprise edition is available for Win xp, Win 2x, Win 9x and Win NT system and the price of the tool is $495 .
Oracle again increased the software prices after one year at least by 20% to maximum 40 % for certain products. The administrative tools used for monitoring and compliance witnessed big jump in prices compared to databases and application server product. Full article »
When you network, you gain the trust of others as well as their “seal of approval.” That makes your business stronger and more competitive in the mainstream marketplace. But, networking is more than exchanging business cards. It means initiating relationship. A contact won’t remember your name for long time unless he notices and values you. In this article, I emphasized on the core benefits for business networking. Full article »
Microsoft released 20, 000 lines of code to the Linux community. The linux driver was developed by Microsoft’s open source technology center. This is the first time that Microsoft released Linux code to the Linux community. This is going to improve the performance of Linux OS which is virtualized on windows server 2008 Hyper-V or Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V. Without this driver code, Linux can run on top of Windows, but the performance level is not going to be that high. The code is released under GPLv2 license, which is the Linux community’s preferred license.
We are living in the era of Virus, Trojan, Malware and Phishing. You should take these security threats seriously for your company. Firewall is available both in hardware and software flavor. When you buy firewall software for your company, you have to pay attention for some basic features. Every product you examine should have an easy-to-use management console, provide basic perimeter defenses, accept TCP and UDP port blocking, support stateful inspection packet filtering, and be easily upgradable, both by swapping out existing hardware and replacing existing software. Before you install firewall on your PC, be sure that the Windows default Firewall is turned off. I have used a few firewall software for my company and I would like to mention the top 7 of them in this article. Full article »
As per the TPI index, outsourcing is struggling on continuous basis for the last one year due to financial crisis because less dollar amount was signed in the first half in comparison with the year of 2008. TPI this week released its second quarter and first half figures for the outsourcing market in 2009. TPI study witnessed that companies are going through a bad patch during the last one year, they are getting very tactful in order to take sourcing decision. However, they further noticed some activities for the last six month that indicates the worst may be finally over.
Entrepreneurs have gone through worst economic period during the last year. You already know the current condition of your business. But, you may be curious to know how your fellow entrepreneurs are doing and what they think about the future of the economy. Ray Silverstein president of PRO: President’s Resource Organization made a survey among different business owners about the future of the economy and the findings are as follows: Full article »
When it comes to new projects , you could say that I’m commitment phobic. For a long time I was more interested in the ideas before launching a new project than the execution. The rule of thumb is that you should never rush in the beginning of the project. I don’t think there is a best way to start a project however there always is a better way. I managed a few projects as a Project Manager for my previous company. I would like to share my experience with you about how did I start most of the mid sized projects and I am happy to get a feedback from you to improve any of my lapses. Full article »
The big blue acquired two IT firms. One of them is Business Analytics firm SPSS which is worth $1.2 billion and another is Risk software firm Ounce lab with undisclosed sum amount. The first deal needs shareholders’ approval. The SPSS deal IBM’s information on demand (IOD) software portfolio and business analytics capabilities and its information agenda initiative that turns information into a strategic asset. IBM is widening its area of expertise in Business Analytics with the acquisition of SPSS because clients are looking now a days to lower costs, reduce risk and increase profitability through predictive analytics capabilities, which include advanced data capture, data mining and statistical analysis. Full article »
When people launch product or services for their new company, they put advertisement to catch the attention of the audience. But, if the advertisement fails for some reason, that is going to be a huge loss for a starup firm. Once you lose money from your startup budget, it may turn out to be very difficult to manage finance for the second time. A good PR skill is an effective marketing tool, for this kind of company. I guess that a product that draws attraction in the context of printed news report gets more spotlight than third party advertisement. A good PR skill is the way to catch the media’s attention. In this article, I emphasized on 10 core aspects of your PR plans for your startup company. Full article »
A virtual directory server is a technology that offers a way to provide a consolidated view of user identity without creating an entire directory infrastructure. A virtual directory is a lightweight service that operates between applications and identity data. In other word, it is used as a middleware service. This ability to retrieve data frome disparate repositories makes virtual directory technology ideal for data consolidation in a distributed environment.
Successful websites are pleasant on the eye, easy to read, smart to navigate and give you all the information you need when you need it. Although, it sounds easy, but there are still thousands of terrible sites on the internet. Here are the top 9 mistakes that website owners make and how you can avoid them. Full article »
OpManager is a centralized network monitoring tool that runs on Windows, Linux or Solaris. You can use this tool for WAN/LAN monitoring, Server & Applications management, Windows Services and Event Log monitoring, URL, UPS, Firewall monitoring, database and infrastructure monitoring like printers, UPS etc. You can get a free trial for 30 days. You will also be able to monitor any performance degradation or complete performance of IT devices and network with the help of single monitoring console. The price starts at $445 for monitoring 25 devices. You need Pentinum 4.1.7 GHz or above and 1 GB RAM to run this software. Full article »
The growing economic burden is driving IT companies to go for infrastructure resourcing to address the issue of IT resources.Today’s economic climate demands that organizations invest time, talent, and financial resources on core competencies and activities because they are big business differentiators. In order to cut budgets and headcount, CIOs are going for infrastructure outsourcing to maintain service levels. key sectors such as the financial, telecommunications, and oil and gas industries have begun outsourcing elements of their IT functions to third parties for a long time. I would like to highlight the key benefits of Infrastructure Outsourcing. Full article »
As per the latest IDC survey, Open source Software market is expanding at the rate of 2.4% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) to reach $8.1 billion by 2013. The projection is higher than 2008 and there are three reason for that 1) The revenue increased significantly because more number of open source projects have been added in the latest forecast (2) open source software has had a much higher level of acceptance during the last 12 months than previously period, and; (3) the economy accelerated the acceptance of open source software in the closing months of 2008.
Dennis Hightower, the Deputy Secretary nominee under Obama administration said that countries like Brazil, India, Russia can throw a major challenge to US dominance in the world market. He also mentioned that those countries implemented major industrial policy that can be compared with the dominance of Japan in the 60’s. He further said that he was amazed by India’s commitment to reinvesting in technology and the implications for the United States after his recent visit to India. Full article »
LUCKNOW - The Uttar Pradesh government Friday hiked by Rs.25 a quintal the state advised price (SAP) of sugarcane in the state for the forthcoming crushing season, commencing early November.
WASHINGTON - Auburn University experts in Alabama say that security on government, commercial, and educational systems can be significantly improved by using a novel system to filter out denial of service attacks on computer networks, including cloud computing systems.
NEW DELHI - Hindustan Construction Co (HCC) has partnered with Britain-based engineering and project management firm AMEC Plc to offer technical services in the nuclear power sector, a top HCC official said Wednesday.
LONDON - Troops from Britain’s elite regiment, Special Air Services (SAS), have been training Libyan special forces for the last six months, despite Libya arming the Irish Republican Army, sources have said.
Global air travel may not recover until 2011
HONG KONG — International air travel, whacked by the economic downturn, is starting to stabilize but may not recover until 2011 as companies and passengers continue to scale back, executives at aviation giants Boeing Co. and Airbus SAS said Wednesday.
Man hangs self as horrified ex watches on Web cam
SANTIAGO, Chile — Chilean police say a young man distraught over a breakup with his girlfriend hanged himself while she watched over a Web camera.
Pernod Ricard net profit up 12.5 percent for year
PARIS — Pernod Ricard SA’s net profit rose 12.5 percent last year after the French wine and spirits group acquired the maker of Swedish vodka Absolut, the company said Thursday.
AMRITSAR - In a step to give shape to a proposed Baba Guru Nanak International University (BGNIU) the Government of Pakistan has announced the name of its members of the governing committee for project management unit on Friday.
RANCHI - A Special Armed Police (SAP) personnel was killed when Maoists ambushed a police jeep in Jharkhand’s Latehar district late on Wednesday.
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