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Service Orient Architecture - SOA - Hot Issue In a Recession
Unless you've been incommunicado for the last few years, you've doubtless noticed the extensive press that SOA has recently received. Though the term can be intimidating, the fundamental concept is really quite simple - and very powerful. It's that to meet your present and projected business needs, you can turn your software applications into building blocks that you can infinitely rearrange, and usually at great speed. It gives you a new way not only to reconfigure your business, but to connect to suppliers, partners and customers.

Much like the Internet before it, SOA is sweeping through companies and industries, upending the competitive order. Thanks to SOA, companies are fast commissioning new products and services, at lower cost and with less labor, often with the technology assets they have right in hand. It's like discovering that with your existing condiments, you can make an entirely new and unexpected recipe, to the delight of your diners and of course yourself. Most important, SOA is helping to put IT squarely where it belongs: in the hands of the business executive, under whose direction it can create the most value.

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 11:31:05 -0700
Firefox 3.0 Features Out Shine IE
User experience
- Easier password management. An information bar at the top of the browser window now appears to allow you to save passwords after a successful login.
- Simplified add-on installation. You can now install extensions from third-party download sites in fewer clicks, thanks to the removal of the add-on download site whitelist.
- New Download Manager. The download manager makes it easier to locate your downloaded files.
- Resumable downloads. You can now resume downloads after restarting the browser or resetting your network connection.
- Full page zoom. From the View menu and using keyboard shortcuts, you can now zoom in and out on the content of entire pages -- this scales not just the text but the layout and images as well.
- Tab scrolling and quickmenu. Tabs are easier to locate with the new tab scrolling and tab quickmenu features.
- Save what you were doing. Firefox 3 prompts you to see if you'd like to save your current tabs when you exit Firefox.
- Optimized Open in Tabs behavior. Opening a folder of bookmarks in tabs now appends the new tabs instead of replacing the existing ones.
- Easier to resize location and search bars. You can now easily resize the location and search bars using a simple resize handle between them.
- Text selection improvements. You can now select multiple ranges of text using the Control (Command on Macintosh) key. Double-clicking and dragging now selects in "word-by-word" mode. Triple-clicking selects an entire paragraph.
- Find toolbar. The Find toolbar now opens with the current selection.
- Plugin management. Users can now disable individual plugins in the Add-on Manager.
- Integration with Windows Vista. Firefox's menus now display using Vista's native theme.
- Integration with Mac OS X. Firefox now uses the Mac OS X spell checker and supports Growl for notifications of completed downloads and available updates.
- Star button. The new star button in the location bar lets you quickly add a new bookmark with a single click. A second click lets you file and tag your new bookmark.
- Tags. You can now associate keywords with your bookmarks to easily sort them by topic.
- Location bar and auto-complete. Type the title or tag of a page in the location bar to quickly find the site you were looking for in your history and bookmarks. Favicons, bookmark, and tag indicators help you see where the results are coming from.
- Smart Bookmarks folder. Firefox's new Smart Bookmarks folder offers quick access to your recently bookmarked and tagged places, as well as pages you visit frequently.
- Bookmarks and History Organizer. The new unified bookmarks and history organizer lets you easily search your history and bookmarks with multiple views and smart folders for saving your frequent searches.
- Web-based protocol handlers. Web applications, such as your favorite web mail provider, can now be used instead of desktop applications for handling mailto: links from other sites. Similar support is provided for other protocols as well. (Note that web applications do have to register themselves with Firefox before this will work.)
- Easy to use Download Actions. A new Applications preferences pane provides an improved user interface for configuring handlers for various file types and protocol schemes.
- Improved look and feel. Graphics and font handling have been improved to make web sites look better on your screen, including sharper text rendering and better support for fonts with ligatures and complex scripts. In addition, Mac and Linux (Gnome) users will find that Firefox feels more like a native application for their platform than ever, with a new, native, look and feel.
- Color management support. By setting the gfx.color_management.enabled preference in [about:config], you can ask Firefox to use the color profiles embedded in images to adjust the colors to match your computer's display.
- Offline support. Web applications can take advantage of new features to support being used even when you don't have an Internet connection.
IE Market Share

Security and privacy
- One-click site information. Want to know more about the site you're visiting? Click the site's icon in the location bar to see who owns it. Identify information is prominently displayed and easier than ever to understand.
- Malware protection. Firefox 3 warns you if you arrive at a web site that is known to install viruses, spyware, trojans, or other dangerous software (known as malware). You can see what the warning looks like by clicking here.
- Web forgery protection enhanced. Now when you visit a page that's suspected of being a forgery, you're shown a special page instead of the contents of the page with a warning. Click here to see what it looks like.
- Easier to understand SSL errors. The errors presented when an invalid SSL certificate is encountered have been clarified to make it easier to understand what the problem is.
- Out-of-date add-on protection. Firefox 3 now automatically checks add-on and plugin versions and disables older, insecure versions.
- Secure add-on updates. Add-on update security has been improved by disallowing add-ons that use an insecure update mechanism.
- Anti-virus integration. Firefox 3 now informs anti-virus software when executable files are downloaded.
- Windows Vista parental controls support. Firefox 3 supports the Vista system-wide parental control setting for disabling file downloads.
Performance
- Reliability. Firefox 3 now stores bookmarks, history, cookies, and preferences in a transactionally secure database format. This means your data is protected against loss even if your system crashes.
- Speed. Firefox 3 has gotten a performance boost by completely replacing the part of the software that handles drawing to your screen, as well as to how page layout work is handled.
- Memory use reduced. Firefox 3 is more memory efficient than ever, with over 300 memory "leak" bugs fixed and new features to help automatically locate and dispose of leaked memory blocks.
Fri, 15 Feb 2008 13:05:07 -0700
IT Spending Cut
(Forrester) The worsening U.S. economic situation has moved analyst firm Forrester Research Inc. to lower its expectations for U.S. and global IT spending for the second time in less than two months.
The 28-page Global IT 2008 Market Outlook report released today by the Cambridge, Mass.-based company, predicts that U.S. business purchases of IT goods and services will grow by 2.8%, down from an expected 4.6% growth rate that Forrester predicted in December. The December number was a reduction from Forrester's original 2008 IT goods and services spending estimate made last October, when the company predicted 8% spending growth for the nation's businesses.

2008 Global IT Spending By Sector
- Software investment will do better than average. Forrester projects that global purchases of software products will grow by eight percent in 2008, down slightly from 11 percent last year, but still strong.
- Communications equipment investment will grow below the average. This sector will see 3 percent growth in 2008, down from much stronger growth of 12 percent in 2007.
- Computer equipment investment will see a similar slowdown in growth. Forrester foresees the growth in purchases of personal computers, servers, storage devices, and peripheral markets shifting down from 12 percent growth in 2007 to 4 percent this year.
- IT consulting and outsourcing services will expand. While demand for IT consulting and integration services will weaken, demand for IT outsourcing will increase by 9 percent this year.
2008 Global IT Spending By Region
- Europe grows slowly but steadily. In Western and Central Europe, growth will be 5 percent in 2008, following 15 percent growth the previous year, which was due largely to the dollar's drop against the Euro. Measured in Euros, 2008 growth will be 3 percent.
- Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa will see much stronger growth. The total market in this region is about one-sixth the size of the Western and Central European market with just $74 billion in IT purchases of goods and services in 2008. However, in oil and gas producing countries where the economy is stronger such as Russia, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, and Nigeria IT purchases will grow at 12 percent in 2008, slightly lower than in 2007.
- Asia Pacific grows strongly in 2008, but not as well as 2007. Overall IT purchases in the Asia Pacific market will grow at 9 percent in 2008 (measured in dollars). That impressive growth rate is actually a slowdown from the 15 percent growth rate in 2007.
Mon, 11 Feb 2008 07:58:43 -0700
How to Implement Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)
Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is top of mind with many businesses as they eagerly anticipate the increased development flexibility it bring, as well as its promise to speed business innovation.

However, much less discussed is the importance of IT operations for SOA success. In order to fully capitalize on the promise of SOA, IT operations must take a leadership role and team with enterprise architects before they design an SOA environment. Together, they can dramatically improve the IT environments effectiveness, security and manageability. When SOA-based applications are modeled, designed, assembled and tested with the SOA service management best practices throughout the lifecycle, companies can avoid operational service surprises that bring costs up and drive quality down.

The crucial issues that IT operations should address before making the leap to a more dynamic, SOA-based environment:
- Designing SOA-based services to improve service quality and reduce costs
- Incorporating security, compliance and audit controls
- Addressing monitoring of the end-to-end SOA deployment, including this new set of composite applications with service-to-service dependencies
- Addressing reporting on services in a business context or in terms of SLAs
- Ensuring that the right virtualization infrastructure is in place to support SOA
- Ensuring that the environment has the flexibility to adapt and track changes in case trending shows its in trouble
Wed, 06 Feb 2008 06:37:59 -0700
17,000 Jobs Lost in the US
(Reuters) - U.S. employers cut payrolls for the first time in 4-1/2 years in January, the Labor Department said on Friday in a report that showed the slowing economy was at growing risk of sliding into recession.

A separate report showing a modest revival in manufacturing at the beginning of 2008 took some sting out of the jobs loss but financial market participants were betting the Federal Reserve will have to keep cutting interest rates.

A series of contrasting reports whipsawed financial markets, leaving stock prices basically unchanged in early afternoon trading and bond prices mixed. The dollar recovered earlier losses to show modest gains against the euro.

Uncertainty about U.S. economic prospects was widespread.

The economy is very weak. It's on the edge of recession but the data are mixed enough so that you can't say a recession has begun, said the chief economist for PNC Financial Services in Pittsburgh. It is hanging by a thread but it has not been cut yet.

President George W. Bush acknowledged to a Kansas City, Missouri, audience there were troubling signs, serious signs that the economy is weakening and said Congress should speed up work on fiscal measures to get tax rebates to consumers.

Some 17,000 jobs were cut last month, sharply contrary to Wall Street analysts forecasts that 80,000 would be created. Decembers new-job total was revised up to 82,000 from 18,000 but October and November gains were revised lower.

At midmorning, the Institute for Supply Management said its index of national factory activity rose to 50.7 in January from 48.4 in December, a sign of expansion. Consumer sentiment also rose, according to a Reuters/University of Michigan Survey, though not as much as had been forecast.

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 14:39:57 -0700
Risk Management is an issue that many need to face

Risk. Its something we all struggle with, four little letters that keep us up at night. Many of us have made a career out of understanding the potential impacts, and creating mitigation strategies and response plans for every possible event. The reality is, there are so many events, so many possibilities that it is utterly unimaginable to prepare your organization for every risk.

Many of us turn to classic probability statistics to help determine what the most likely events that may happen to our facilities, assets and the human beings that work for our organization. Unfortunately, the world of Risk Management is a different place today than it was just 20 years ago, and the bad news is that it will be a far different place in just 5 years than it is today. This alarming truth equates to the unequivocal fact that global risks and threats are evolving and multiplying faster than the speed at which Risk Management policies and implementation can keep pace.

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 12:55:14 -0700
Ask fights back
Search engine vendor Ask.com has come out swinging against several privacy advocacy groups over a complaint they filed last week with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission alleging that a new service called AskEraser isn't living up to its promise of deleting the search histories of Web users.
Helping Ask.com cause was the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), a Washington-based think tank that in a highly unusual move sent a letter Wednesday to the FTC urging it to quickly review and dismiss the complaint as unfounded (download PDF). In its letter, the CDT said that Ask.com had proactively addressed or is in the process of addressing the concerns previously raised by the petitioners that are within [its] control.

Sun, 27 Jan 2008 11:14:20 -0700
700-MHz wireless bids apporach $3 Billion
(Computerworld) At the close of the first full day of bidding for 700-MHz wireless spectrum today, the Federal Communications Commission reported nearly $2.8 billion in provisional winning bids.
There were 1,122 new bids filed in the second of two rounds that was held in the afternoon. The total value of all provisional bid winners jumped 15% from the morning bidding round, when $2.4 billion was offered.

A total of 1,099 licenses can be bid upon, although only 902 had received bids by the end of the day.

All the bids are filed anonymously and bidders are prohibited from publicly discussing their bids in an effort to reduce anticompetitive behavior, the FCC said.

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 07:28:16 -0700
Broadband Refom has Failed
(Computerworld) -- A progressive Washington think tank today blasted the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Bush administration for failing to invest in and develop a robust broadband network in the U.S. that can support consumers as well as first responders and anti-terrorist teams.
The policy of relying on market forces that the Bush administration claimed for seven years would propel broad access is irresponsible and insufficient, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress (CAP), said in a statement on the CAP's Web site.
The result of administration neglect, industry intransigence and the incompetence of the Federal Communications Commission ... has left the American people and most policymakers with no clear idea where broad services are deployed in the U.S.
Although it is a nonpartisan organization, the CAP is headed by John Podesta, who served as chief of staff to Bill Clinton when he was president. P.J. Crowley, CAP's director of homeland security, served as Clinton's special assistant for national security and joined Lloyd in a call with reporters today.
Lloyd and Crowley urged policymakers, including the presidential candidates, to find government funds to support the building of a 10Gbit/sec., redundant and ubiquitous broadband network. They also urged current leaders to create a commission to implement that goal.

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 11:27:27 -0700
Yahoo Supports OpenID
OpenID eliminates the need for multiple usernames across different websites, simplifying your online experience.

You get to choose the OpenID Provider that best meets your needs and most importantly that you trust. At the same time, your OpenID can stay with you, no matter which Provider you move to. And best of all, the OpenID technology is not proprietary and is completely free.

For businesses, this means a lower cost of password and account management, while drawing new web traffic. OpenID lowers user frustration by letting users have control of their login.

For geeks, OpenID is an open, decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity. OpenID takes advantage of already existing internet technology (URI, HTTP, SSL, Diffie-Hellman) and realizes that people are already creating identities for themselves whether it be at their blog, photostream, profile page, etc. With OpenID you can easily transform one of these existing URIs into an account which can be used at sites which support OpenID logins.

OpenID is still in the adoption phase and is becoming more and more popular, as large organizations like AOL, Microsoft, Sun, Novell, etc. begin to accept and provide OpenIDs. Today it is estimated that there are over 160-million OpenID enabled URIs with nearly ten-thousand sites supporting OpenID logins.

Who Owns or Controls OpenID?

OpenID has arisen from the open source community to solve the problems that could not be easily solved by other existing technologies. OpenID is a lightweight method of identifying individuals that uses the same technology framework that is used to identify websites. As such, OpenID is not owned by anyone, nor should it be. Today, anyone can choose to be an OpenID user or an OpenID Provider for free without having to register or be approved by any organization.

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 08:07:57 -0700
Change Control is Mandatory for World Class Enterprises - ITIL is the Best Way to go
While planned, authorized changes have obvious benefits to systems and users; it is the unknown, poorly executed, or even imperceptible changes that can result in serious negative impact to IT systems and processes. For example, an unauthorized change to firewall settings can result in serious vulnerabilities that not only threaten data and disrupt revenue-generating services, but that can also imperil compliance with regulatory requirements. The only way to truly prevent these kinds of changes is to create a culture of change management that has zero tolerance for unauthorized change. Companies that successfully embrace such a culture of change management spend less than five percent of IT time on unplanned work (also known as firefighting), experience a low number of emergency changes, and successfully implement desired changes more than 99 percent of the time.
Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:46:20 -0700
Most H-1B Visas go to Indian Nationals
(Computerworld) -- More than half of H-1B visas issued are issued to Indian nationals, who received 54% of the total number of temporary visas approved in 2006, according to a government study released Tuesday. And an increasing number of foreign workers who hold these visas -- more than half -- are in computer-related occupations.
China ranked a distant second, at 9%, among H-1B recipients. The next largest group of countries, all with 3% each, were from Canada, South Korea, and the Philippines, the report said.
Authored by the National Science Board, which oversees the National Science Foundation, the 588-page "Science and Engineering Indicators 2008" report examines the state of science and engineering training as well as the ability of the U.S. to compete globally, and includes an analysis of H-1B visa trends.
Some of its key takeaways concern education and research. The U.S. spent about $340 billion in research and development in 2006, a record high. But federal support for basic and applied research has been on a multi-year decline, and the report also warned that U.S. grade school students continue to lag behind other developed countries in science and math.

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 08:02:42 -0700
Laptop Theft Security Breach Could Cost $1,000,000
(IDG News Service) -- The theft of a laptop containing Social Security numbers of Nashville, Tennessee, area voters is expected to cost local officials about $1 million as they roll out identity-theft protection to those affected.
County officials say that thieves broke into Davidson County Election Commission offices on the weekend before Christmas, smashing a window with a rock and then making off with a $3,000 router, a digital camera and a pair of Dell Latitude laptops containing names and Social Security numbers of all 337,000 registered voters in the county.
County election officials began notifying residents of the breach on Jan. 2, and the local government is offering victims one year of free identity theft protection from Debix Identity Protection Network.
Debix says that 25 percent to 35 percent of victims of this type of breach typically request this service. With the city paying Debix just under $10 per account, the price tag for the laptop theft is expected to be in the $1 million range.
Since state data breach disclosure laws went into effect a few years ago, the theft of an unencrypted laptop computer can become a major problem for any organization that stores sensitive data.
"It is a very bad information-handling practice to keep sensitive information about individuals, including their Social Security numbers, on an unencrypted laptop or any other device that is removable," said the director of policy and advocacy with Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a privacy advocacy group that has tracked the exposure of 217 million records in the U.S. over the past three years.
Laptop thefts have been the source of privacy breaches at AT&T, The Gap, and the Chicago Public School system recently.
The Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County's IT services department is now working with the Commission to make changes to protect residents from this type of incident and has already come up with 19 recommendations, said Janel Lacy, a spokeswoman for Nashville Mayor Karl Dean.

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 07:48:05 -0700
How do you get VoIP to work?
VoIP technology is a one way of sending a voice signal also known as an analog signal in a medium which is digital, i.e, the internet. In practice, the process works like this when you have a standard analog telephone attached to your high speed internet connection with VoIP service. There will be an analog telephone adapter or ATA between the phone and the computer.

In order to place what would normally be a long distance call to a person who doesn't have VoIP service you key in the number you want. The analog telephone adapter converts the touch tones into a digital format. The digital phone number is sent by the analog telephone adapter to the VoIP routing system at the service provider's location. The VoIP service provider is located on the internet as well.

The VoIP service provider's routing system identifies the recipient's location and sends the call to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PTSN) at that location. The phone rings at the other end and the conversation can begin. Each time you speak, the analog to digital converter in the analog telephone adapter changes the voice tones into packets of digital information that can be transmitted across the internet. When the VoIP service meshes with the Public Switched Telephone Network at the recipient's end, the digital packets which are the voice tones from you get turned back into an analog signal so that you recipient of your call can understand what you are saying.

The reverse process, i.e. the transmission of what the other person says to you is a mirror image of the first process. Their voice is transformed from analog to digital when it gets to the PSTN/internet connection. The digital packets are sent to the analog telephone adapter at your location where they are converted back into an audible or analog signal to be able to perceive the voice as that of your caller.

The technology to do the conversion from analog to digital and back again has been around as long as digital electronics. For example, your PC sound card converts digital CD information to analog signal needed by the speakers on your computer. The difficult part of the VoIP technology is the necessity to smoothly transmit the digital data over the internet and reassemble it in a continuous stream. This is know as the protocol.

When listening to voice transmission, there can be no gaps in the stream of digital packets or the voices will not be understandable. This part of the technology has only recently been available, but is actually equal or better in quality than you get with standard telephone networks.

The equipment available today that uses VoIP technology can be an analog telephone adapter for your head set through the computer. There are a few VoIP phones that act like a regular analog telephone but have the ATA incorporated into the phone. It's actually a small dedicated personal computer in your telephone. These VoIP phones can be plugged into the computer with high speed internet connection or into the router.

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 12:11:10 -0700
CIO Median Salary is over $181,000 in large enterprises in Janco Survey
The mean compensation for CIOs in large enterprises now is $181,240 and $171,200 for CIOs in mid-sized enterprises.
- The new target top compensation CIOs now is over $2,000,000 a year (data source SEC filings of public corporations) continues to increase.
Mon, 14 Jan 2008 10:46:49 -0700

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