Latest News from XML Journal

Pay-as-You-Grow Pricing for Citrix NetScaler

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:15:00 EST

Citrix Systems today announced the groundbreaking new “Pay-as-You-Grow” pricing for its Citrix NetScaler line of application acceleration, load balancing and web security appliances. Most networking systems require expensive hardware replacements to expand capacity and functionality, which often forces customers to over provision and pay for more than they need at any given time. The new Pay-as-You-Grow pricing from Citrix breaks this dependency, enabling customers to buy only what they need today, knowing they can easily scale up their network as demand grows with a simple software license upgrade.

Maureen O'Gara at Cloud Computing Journal on the Vordel Cloud Service Broker

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 08:39:00 EST

Maureen O'Gara presents a sneak peak of the Vordel Cloud Service Broker private beta over at Cloud Computing Journal

Contact Vordel at info@vordel

Main Power UPS Types, Specs and Buying Source

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 15:05:00 EST

UPSonNet, a consulting and Power Protection information source launched recently an Uninterruptible Power Supply Products Directory, which enables buyers to see at a glance main manufacturer's systems, explore specifications, compare and contact relevant professional suppliers.

Which Cloud Is Right for You?

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 07:45:00 EST

When enterprises and data centers evaluate cloud technologies and various solutions move their applications to the cloud computing paradigm, there are many important decisions to consider, such as Will the applications be portable? Are there significant code changes and workflow changes related to moving to the cloud?

Cloud Computing Expo 2010 East to Attract More Than 5,000 Delegates in New York City

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:00:00 EST

SYS-CON Events announced today that the 5th International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo will take place April 19-21, 2010, at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City. The three-day event will offer a rich array of sessions led by exceptional speakers about the business and technical value of cloud computing with more than 80 sponsors and exhibitors on the 70,000 sq. ft. show floor and over 5,000 estimated delegates from well over 48 different countries.

Wiring Los Angeles Part 4 – WilCon’s Path to the Future

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:15:00 EST

This is the fourth article in a series of interviews with Eric Bender, President of Wilshire Connection (WilCon), the largest independent telecom carrier in Los Angeles. In this segment Eric discusses the future of WilCon, including expansion outside of Los Angeles, wireless topics, relations with local utilities, and some great examples of WilCon’s flexibility in delivering telecom solutions to the LA community.

Comodo Backup, Free Utility, Safeguards Computer Information in Two Ways

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:07:00 EST

Comodo Backup 2.1 offers software wizards suitable for novice users, and advanced features like command line scripting, encryption and resource management options. Comodo Backup is available for free download.

CIA Falls for Cloud Computing in a Big Way

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:45:00 EST

The most anticipated talk of the day, at the Cloud Computing Conference and Expo yesterday, was by the deputy CIO of the CIA, Jill Singer. Her talk was entitled, Enterprise Cloud Computing, the Infrastructure’s Final Revenge. She acknowledged the problem with defining Cloud Computing, and then went on to give her paragraph-length definition of “the cloud”. Her talk focused on the part of the Cloud behind the firewall.

RightScale User Meetup To Take Place at Cloud Expo

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 22:30:00 EDT

Below are essential details for our meetup, the Cloud Computing Conference & Expo, and lodging. Should you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact the RightScale User Meetup Team at meetup@rightscale.com. Monday Evening Cocktail Party The details of our Monday evening invitation-only cocktail party are still being finalized. Check in here for the most up-to-date information, and if you've already registered, we'll keep you updated via email. Cloud Computing Conference & Expo We're hosting the RightScale User Meetup alongside the Cloud Computing Conference & Expo so you can maximize the opportunity to share and learn about the cloud. We are excited to offer complimentary VIP registration to the conference.

Licensing of Linked Data

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:00:00 EDT

As part of a workshop at this year’s International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC), former colleague Leigh Dodds prepared an interesting diagram on the ways in which resources comprising the Linked Data Cloud are currently licensed. For various reasons, I was unable to make it to Virginia for the event, but a scan through the presentations from [...]

Everyone Should Be Skeptical About Cloud Service Providers

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 10:00:00 EDT

As we plummet down into Gartner's "trough of disillusionment", the cloud skeptics are making their voices heard. Although my professional focus is at the forefront of the cloud storage wave, I can not disagree with the content of articles with sensational headlines like "Cloud Storage: It's Strictly For Airheads" and "Why Cloud Storage Use Could Be Limited in Enterprises". The authors are doing exactly what everyone should be doing: Questioning the viability and suitability of cloud storage in the enterprise. The truth is, although I'm not the "cloud police", not all managed storage services are created equal. In fact, lots of them are, to put it bluntly, not worth much. Many cloud backup and archiving services use bare un-protected disk drives to store data, have no redundancy built into the system, and try to scrape up every cent by using home-brewed hardware. This is especially true in the consumer space, where bargain-basement (or even free) pricing has driven a race to the bottom in terms of quality. No business should use junky consumer solutions.

Google's Data Liberation Front

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:45:00 EDT

In what can be seen as a major win for users of Google's various cloud services, the company has announced a new website called "The Data Liberation Front" dedicated to be the central location for information on how to move your data in and out of Google products.

According to the site, The Data Liberation Front is an engineering team at Google whose singular goal is to make it easier for users to move their data in and out of Google products. We do this because we believe that you should be able to export any data that you create in (or import into) a product. We help and consult other engineering teams within Google on how to "liberate" their products.

Their mission statement: Users should be able to control the data they store in any of Google's products. Our team's goal is to make it easier for them to move data in and out.

The site's creators point out that project was started as an internal engineering team back in 2007. When the team couldn't agree on the name, they came up with "Data Liberation Front" as a homage to The Judean People's Front, the splinter group in Monty Python's Life of Brian that spends most of its time bickering. In addition, the team indicated that they see themselves as being somewhat subversive, not so much within Google, but insofar as it's unusual for a big company to work to make it easier for their customers to leave them.

The site also points out that there shouldn't be an additional charge to export your data. Beyond that, if it takes you many hours to get your data out, it's almost as bad as not being able to get your data out at all. I would also add if your data isn't usable. For example a 1tb text file is (almost) just as bad as not getting your data at all.

The FAQ answers some interesting questions including that of Data Standards saying "We're working to use existing open standards formats wherever possible, and to document how we use those formats in a clear simple manner."

Personally, I applaud this move by Google, lets hope others in the cloud space follow Google's lead.

You Want to Chart XML Data?

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 03:30:00 EDT

You can use Microsoft's Chart Control in ASP.NET 3.5 and craft your chart with ease. The following article brought to you from Packt Publishing shows you how. You can chart both attribute-centric as well as element-centric data with this chart control. The article also shows the code you need to write to add title and configure the axes.

Microsoft Chart with XML Data

Enabling Content Approval on a List Using CAML

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 11:30:00 EDT

I’ve always liked the power of CAML because it allows me to create so much in SharePoint without ever having to write a line of code. However, there really isn’t enough examples out there, so I like writing posts like these that focus on doing something very specific with a list. @SPKyle would say just write some code to do that, but that’s not my style, so I did some digging through the SDK and some experimentation and I figured out how to do it. Of course there isn’t an attribute called EnableContentApproval. So, the first thing we have to figure out is what CAML calls content approval. It turns out CAML refers to this as moderation. We’ll add this to the SharePoint UI to API translation guide. Looking at the List element, I find two attributes ModeratedList and ModeratedType. The description of the both is quite similar, so I decide to try them out one at a time. I find that setting ModeratedList works but setting ModeratedType does nothing. No idea why there is two attributes. Maybe one is deprecated. Here is what a List element line would like in your schema.xml.

<List xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/" BaseType="0" DisableAttachments="True" EnableContentTypes="True" Name="MyList" OrderedList="False" QuickLaunchUrl="True" Title="My List" Type="10001" VersioningEnabled="False" Url="Lists/MyList" Id="ed65344b-0399-4c34-8265-de0c2d193165" ModeratedList="TRUE">

I then go take a look at the list versioning settings of my newly created list, and everything looks good. Note, if you want to turn on versioning, you can use the VersioningEnabled attribute that you see above.

Again, I set the ModeratedList attribute in the List element of the Schema.xml. Before I set it on the schema.xml file, I noticed that the ListTemplate element that you use in your elements.xml file had an attribute EnableModeration. The SDK states this can be used to turn on moderation as well. However, when using it I find that it does not work. If I set it to true or false it does not work and does not seem to override I set in the schema.xml file. Anyhow, if you ever need to turn on content approval and don’t feel like writing code, I hope this helps.

Confessions of a Ulitzer Addict

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 23:00:00 EDT

I was quite brazen at first, I just logged straight in not fully understand the ramifications. No thought of what could happen if.......? Within Days I was affiliated in magazines, aggregated on global sites, people were creating RSS feeds of my content, the whirlwind grew as my page gained traction amongst the community.

Specifying a List by Name in a .UDCX File

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:30:00 EDT

I’ve been working with InfoPath again lately since I’ve been working with Document Information Panels and I thought I would share another quick tip today. Observe the following .UDCX file.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<?MicrosoftWindowsSharePointServices ContentTypeID="0x010100B4CBD48E029A4ad8B62CB0E41868F2BF"?>

<udc:DataSource MajorVersion="2" MinorVersion="0" xmlns:udc="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/infopath/2006/udc">

<udc:Name>list_2F9fb67e-ab7d-44b7-accc-d9f6c9ca37f9</udc:Name>

<udc:Description>Format: UDC V2; Connection Type: SharePointList; Purpose: ReadOnly; Generated by Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 on 2009-10-05 at 15:02:14 by MOSS-SERVER\moss_setup.</udc:Description>

<udc:Type MajorVersion="2" MinorVersion="0" Type="SharePointList">

<udc:SubType MajorVersion="0" MinorVersion="0" Type=""/>

</udc:Type>

<udc:ConnectionInfo Purpose="ReadOnly" AltDataSource="">

<udc:WsdlUrl/>

<udc:SelectCommand>

<udc:ListId>2F9fb67e-ab7d-44b7-accc-d9f6c9ca37f9</udc:ListId>

<udc:WebUrl>http://moss-server/MySiteCollection/</udc:WebUrl>

<udc:ConnectionString/>

<udc:ServiceUrl UseFormsServiceProxy="false"/>

<udc:SoapAction/>

<udc:Query/>

</udc:SelectCommand>

<udc:UpdateCommand>

<udc:ServiceUrl UseFormsServiceProxy="false"/>

<udc:SoapAction/>

<udc:Submit/>

<udc:FileName>Specify a filename or formula</udc:FileName>

<udc:FolderName AllowOverwrite=""/>

</udc:UpdateCommand>

</udc:ConnectionInfo>

</udc:DataSource>

I generated this .UDCX file with InfoPath using the Convert button on the Data Sources form. As you can see from the ListId element is conveniently hard coded with the GUID of a list. That makes this .UDCX file absolutely worthless when deployed to a new server. I looked for some documentation .UDCX to see if I could put a path in for the ListId, but I couldn’t find anything that stated I could. I tried the path (i.e.: Lists/MyCustomList) and I got a list not found error when I tried to open the form. So I then decided to just specify the list by its name and sure enough it works. Here is what it looks like.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<?MicrosoftWindowsSharePointServices ContentTypeID="0x010100B4CBD48E029A4ad8B62CB0E41868F2BF"?>

<udc:DataSource MajorVersion="2" MinorVersion="0" xmlns:udc="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/infopath/2006/udc">

<udc:Name>list_2f9fb67e-ab7d-44b7-accc-d9f6c9ca37f9</udc:Name>

<udc:Type MajorVersion="2" MinorVersion="0" Type="SharePointList">

<udc:SubType MajorVersion="0" MinorVersion="0" Type=""/>

</udc:Type>

<udc:ConnectionInfo Purpose="ReadOnly" AltDataSource="">

<udc:WsdlUrl/>

<udc:SelectCommand>

<udc:ListId>MyCustomList</udc:ListId>

<udc:WebUrl>http://moss-server/MySiteCollection/</udc:WebUrl>

<udc:ConnectionString/>

<udc:ServiceUrl UseFormsServiceProxy="false"/>

<udc:SoapAction/>

<udc:Query/>

</udc:SelectCommand>

<udc:UpdateCommand>

<udc:ServiceUrl UseFormsServiceProxy="false"/>

<udc:SoapAction/>

<udc:Submit/>

<udc:FileName>Specify a filename or formula</udc:FileName>

<udc:FolderName AllowOverwrite=""/>

</udc:UpdateCommand>

</udc:ConnectionInfo>

</udc:DataSource>

As you can see I just specified the name of my custom list and it works great. I still have to update the WebUrl when I put this on a new server, but this eliminates the hassle of having to look up and deal with list Ids.

Will PR Firms Survive The New Media Avalanche?

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 23:00:00 EDT

Blogs are relatively new, if you consider the mass of the population. At a cocktail party less than a year ago someone I was talking to from the financial industry (a stockbroker) told me, "You know there is something called a ‘blog' and people who write blogs are called bloggers?" I said yes I know. Today, the mass of the population knows "blogging" as their Facebook pages, and 99.999% of the blogs being written are never read by anyone except the blogger's family and friends. This means two things. Not everyone has to write a book, sing, or blog. The ones who have something to say in their blogs will evolve into more professional platforms. The social media platforms that do not exist today will be created to serve the professional community of writers and bloggers.

Typhoon Ondoy (Ketsana) Hits the Philippines (Part 2)

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 03:15:00 EDT

We have many typhoons in the Philippines, and they always cause trouble. Thank-you for your help with this one. I want to let everyone know again that this is not the only time that we have trouble in the Philippines. We have so many typhoons every year. Many people die each time we have a bad typhoon. Houses fall into the rivers. Children and old people drown. Little boats sink in the ocean. This happens so many times each year in the Philippines talaga. You can see in my blog here that I wrote a story about Typhoon Feria back in June. There are some pictures too.

My Thoughts on Ulitzer

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 14:45:00 EDT

Ok, so, here are my thoughts on Ulitzer... As a blogger, I focus on traffic and I spend quite a lot of time optimizing my SEO. Since the target audience of my articles is much greater than the reach of my blog, Ulitzer is actually helping me increase my content reach. Moreover, Ulitzer does it in a very fair way since links back to my posts or other locations are without the evil "nofollow" providing a nice SEO boost. It also gives me some good metrics that are very useful data point on the effectiveness of my blog article. And last but not least, it allows my article to appears in news.google.com, which is a very nice channel extension. So, all of these to say that while Utilizer might be seen as a competing channel to bloggers, I think that bloggers should realize the tremendous value it could bring to their blog. I think to materialize this value to bloggers, some sort of WordPress plugin would be very useful. I think that allowing bloggers to show and combined Ulitzer/SYS-CON stats, comments, Tweets/ReTweets with their blog posts would be a killer feature. Another approach would be to expose a simple REST API (just HTTP JSON gets) and do a sample Wordpress plugin showing developers how to integrate Wordpress with Ulitzer. Anyway, just some random thoughts.

Managing Cloud Applications

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 08:00:00 EDT

As enterprises evaluate if and how cloud computing fits into their core IT services, they must consider how they will manage cloud services as part of their day-to-day operations. This article examines how operational management of cloud computing differs from traditional methods, and examine techniques for addressing these needs.

Combining the Cloud with the Computing: Application Delivery Networks

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 19:45:00 EDT

IT executives are being asked to increasingly evaluate new cloud-based services to improve business agility while lowering operating and capital costs within the enterprise. Yet often very little is known about the “cloud” itself. How does it work? What new challenges does it present for the enterprise? While cloud vendors continue to roll-out new technology to capture the imagination of application development and IT organizations – one area continues to remain noticeably cloudy and overlooked – the cloud itself.

Linq to XML and Deleting Lists on Feature Deactivation

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 05:00:00 EDT

A few months ago, I discussed how to use LINQ to XML to parse your elements.xml file to delete any files that you may have deployed on feature activation. Today I have decided to reuse this concept to delete any lists that I have created when I deactivate a feature? Now you may ask, “why would I want to delete a list when a feature is deactivated? I’ll lose all of my data in that list!” My answer is: Yes, of course you will, but sometimes when building a feature to deploy a list(s), you want to delete the list each time before you deploy a new version of it. During development this is a huge time saver. Right now, I am working on a feature that deploys four document libraries. This means I have to manually delete each one. That is a huge waste of time, but what is nice is that we can reuse the concept above with LINQ to XML and delete lists instead.

The code is quite similar. Have a look. We first, write some code to get the path to the elements.xml file. This code snippet assumes, it is always named Elements.xml. Maybe in the future, I will have it look in the feature.xml file, get all of the ElementManifest definitions and then delete whatever it finds in each file. For now though, we assume, you can change the path as needed.

public override void FeatureDeactivating(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties)
{
    using (SPWeb currentSite = (SPWeb)properties.Feature.Parent)
    {
        string elementsPath = string.Format(@"{0}\FEATURES\{1}\Elements.xml", SPUtility.GetGenericSetupPath("Template"), properties.Definition.DisplayName);
        DeleteLists(currentSite, elementsPath);
    }
}

From here, it passes a reference to the current SPWeb and the path to the XML document. The path to the elements.xml file is used to populate an XDocument which we can then query with LINQ to XML.

private void DeleteLists(SPWeb currentSite, string elementsPath)
{
    try
    {
        XDocument elementsXml = XDocument.Load(elementsPath);
        XNamespace sharePointNamespace = "http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/";
 
        // get each URL to each list
        var listInstances = from module in elementsXml.Root.Elements(sharePointNamespace + "ListInstance")
                        select new
                        {
                            ListUrl = (module.Attributes("Url").Any()) ? module.Attribute("Url").Value : null,
                        };
 
        // iterate through each list and delete it
        foreach (var listInstance in listInstances)
        {
            try
            {
                SPList currentList = currentSite.GetList(string.Format("{0}/{1}", currentSite.Url, listInstance.ListUrl));
                currentList.Delete();
            }
            catch (System.IO.FileNotFoundException e)
            {
                // this exception is thrown if the list does not exist
            }
        }
 
        // update the site
        currentSite.Update();
    }
    catch
    {
    }
}

This code is quite similar to that used in my other post, however instead of looking for Module elements we are looking for ListInstance elements. It creates a list of those Urls to each list and iterates through them. For each list it finds, it deletes the list. I’ve written code in the past to manually delete lists, I create by name. That works fine, but the name of each list has to be maintained. Now, I just attach this to any feature I am working on and it deletes any list (or lists) that I throw at it. More than likely this isn’t something you want once you go to production, but it will save you a ton of time during development.

Agiliance Unified Privacy Management Solution

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 21:25:00 EDT

"Web as Platform" Has Been Replaced By “Cloud Computing“

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 03:00:00 EDT

First Web 2.0 conference was held October 5-7, 2004 at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco. Lot has happened in the last five years like the theme “Web as Platform” as a terminology is dead and has been replaced by “Cloud Computing“. In this year’s hype cycle for emerging technologies, Gartner has positioned Web 2.0 under [...]

EMC Named “Gold Sponsor” of Cloud Computing Expo

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 13:15:00 EDT

SYS-CON Events announced today that EMC, the world leader in information infrastructure solutions, was named "Gold Sponsor" of SYS-CON's 4th International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo (www.CloudComputingExpo.com), which will take place on November 2 - 4, 2009, Santa Clara Convention Center, in Santa Clara, California.

NewRelic Founder & CEO to Speak at 4th Cloud Computing Expo

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 06:45:00 EDT

When application performance is not what the cloud customer expected, who’s at fault? The cloud provider’s infrastructure? The application owner’s code? The platform vendor’s deployment tools? The external services the application uses? The database tier? The answers to these questions will be provided at SYS-CON's 4th International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo by NewRelic Founder & CEO Lewis Stirne, who will be giving a breakout session at the popular event, which is being held November 2-4 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.

Injecting Intelligence into PDFs with XMP (Part 1)

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 12:00:00 EDT

Unlike the workflows that previously surrounded printed content, today’s workflows contain more changing variables, especially when it comes to documentation. Documents are created, repurposed, archived, retrieved, and even merged into others. In short – they encompass change. As a result, keeping an eye on change is an essential part of document management.

Corporate Management: Complexity Is Risk

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 08:00:00 EDT

Have you noticed how people that are neck deep in complexity almost always ask for a standardized solution? And they supposedly do this to regain oversight.

And in reverse; have you noticed how people that have everything neatly packed in small modular boxes almost always ask for some highly customized guerilla tactic – which inherently adds complexity?

Well, no matter how you answer both of these questions, you might know that they are really part of another phenomenon, namely they are about risk.

Cloud Interoperability Magazine on Ulitzer

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 23:00:00 EDT

Cloud Computing Interoperability Magazine on Ulitzer presents the most distinguished thought leaders on Cloud Computing. Founded and edited by Reuven Cohen, the Cloud Computing Interoperability Magazine focuses on APIs, standards and related Interoperability efforts. The magazine is brought you to by the Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum, a group of industry stakeholders that are active in cloud computing. The groups goal is to define an organization that would enable interoperable enterprise-class cloud computing platforms through application integration and stakeholder cooperation. Please learn more about us at www.cloudforum.org

Cloud Computing Implementation Frameworks and SOA

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 12:30:00 EDT

Today's enterprise environment is rapidly changing. The disparate mix of operating systems, applications and databases for business and organizations is part of a rapidly evolving technological dynamic - made even more complicated by the emergence of cloud computing. As Enterprise Software applications grow in complexity, the need for organizations to leverage cloud computing as part of their SOA platform is growing exponentially.

Nehalem Goes Mainstream

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 06:30:00 EDT

Intel's Lynnfield chips, the widgets meant to drive its newfangled Nehalem architecture into the mainstream, arrived on Tuesday. The new dumbed-down 45nm arrivals include three quad-core desktop devices officially designated the Core i5 750, i7 860 and i7 870 clocking 2.66GHz, 2.8GHz and 2.93GHz respectively and priced, respectively, at $196, $284 and $562 in quantity, the 800-series i7 being cheaper than the existing carriage trade i7 900-series, which starts at ~$280.

Ulitzer vs. Ning

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 16:30:00 EDT

In the case of Ulitzer, as a writer I am focused on getting readers from within an existing audience. There are already thousands of readers coming to the Ulitzer site, so if they are interested in my topics such as marketing, they will find my articles as well as others. Ulitzer allows the writer the ability to set up a feed coming from another site, so it can be a write once, publish twice strategy. You just have to give Ulitzer a few hours to upload a new article you wrote on a different site. You still have to go back into that article even after it has been posted and assign it to topics and tags. This is part of the administration of your stories which is under the manage stories menu.

Nehalem Goes Mainstream

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 06:45:00 EDT

Intel’s Lynnfield chips, the widgets meant to drive its newfangled Nehalem architecture into the mainstream, arrived on Tuesday. The new dumbed-down 45nm arrivals include three quad-core desktop devices officially designated the Core i5 750, i7 860 and i7 870 clocking 2.66GHz, 2.8GHz and 2.93GHz respectively and priced, respectively, at $196, $284 and $562 in quantity, the 800-series i7 being cheaper than the existing carriage trade i7 900-series, which starts at ~$280. The difference between the 800-series and the 900-series rests with the width of the built-in memory interface and the amount of RAM throughput and the number of processing threads supported. Mercury Research thinks the chips could entice people to upgrade.

Dead or Alive? There's an API For That

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 14:00:00 EDT

Deathswitch, which is based in Houston, has a different system for releasing the funeral instructions, love notes and "unspeakable secrets" it suggests you store with your passwords and account info. The company will regularly send you e‑mail prompts to verify that you're still alive, at a frequency of your choosing. (Once a day? Once a year?) After a series of unanswered prompts, it will assume you're dead and release your messages to intended recipients. One message is free; for more, the company charges members $19.95 a year.

Are Users to Blame For Cloud Insecurity?

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 10:30:00 EDT

Twelve years ago, I was working for an ISP and one of my jobs was to vet Perl and ASP scripts for security holes. If the ISP let a customer host an insecure script, who was to blame? Or does it even matter who to blame, after the damage is done? If the script could tie up resources on the system and degrade the performance of other customers' applications, then the ISP could not turn around and say "don't blame us, blame that other customer over there with their insecure script". In reality, we would block insecure applications before they were hosted.

Vordel Connects SOA to the Cloud

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 10:15:00 EDT

Vordel, the XML networking management company, today announced at the Burton Catalyst Conference the general availability of Vordel 5.2, its suite of application networking products. Vordel 5.2 enables enterprises to connect their applications to Cloud services such as Amazon Web Services, SalesForce.com, and Microsoft Azure. Vordel benefits enterprises by resolving the complexity of connecting SOA and Cloud-based services and providing a secure and transparent environment for this process.

An Old XML Attack Resurfaces, and Is Blocked

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 10:15:00 EDT

One of the paradoxes of information security is that despite all of the publicity about known vulnerabilities, organizations often do not patch their systems to block the most well-publicized attacks. Years after the hoopla about SQL Slammer, Nimda and Code Red, systems continued to be vulnerable to these attacks, even to this day. If you study how botnets propagate, they mostly use older well-known vulnerabilities which most people would assume were patched on everybody's computers years ago. The failure to patch can be down to laziness, disorganization, ignorance, or complacency.

How To Generate An X.509 Certificate

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 10:15:00 EDT

Did you know that the free SOAPbox Web Services testing tool includes the ability to generate X.509 Certificates and keys? Just select "View Certificates" from the "Security" menu and press "Create".

Personal Branding Journal Launched on Ulitzer

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 11:00:00 EDT

Personal Branding Journal launched today on Ulitzer. The latest Ulitzer topic is created by Wiliam Arruda and edited by Dr. Hubert Rampersad. The latest Ulitzer topic also offers news, articles and blog entries by: Susan Guarneri, Chris Perry, John Ryan, Ambal Balakrishnan, Newt Barrett, John Gannon, and Jesse Randall Warden.

Publishing Synergy: Blog, Twitter and Ulitzer

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 20:45:00 EDT

In the six months we've been using Ulitzer, the platform has definitely demonstrated its value in the delivery of true publishing synergy with new media. Through it, we have built an effective, responsive and fiscally conservative customer outreach program. Industry thought leadership, as measured by article readership, has exceeded all expectations. We look forward to future enhancements and will certainly leverage the many other related offerings.

Cloud Computing Journal "Readers' Choice Awards" Nominations Close Sept 4

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 19:00:00 EDT

SYS-CON's Cloud Computing Journal announced today that nominations will close on September 4 for its first annual Cloud Computing Readers' Choice Awards. Voting will begin on September 7 and end October 23, 2009. Winners will be announced the week of November 2-4, 2009. To nominate your favorite products and services today, visit this site.

Richard Egan, The "E" in EMC, Commits Suicide

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 01:30:00 EDT

Richard Egan, 73, the retired billionaire co-founder of EMC, a former US ambassador to Ireland and an ex-Marine Corps helicopter pilot, committed suicide last Friday after being diagnosed with fatal lung cancer in May. He was also struggling with emphysema, diabetes and high blood pressure. The Boston Globe says he shot himself. Egan and his partner Roger Marino started EMC 30 years ago this week. The “E” in EMC, Egan was CEO of the company until 1992 and chairman until 2001.

Orchestration in the Cloud to Manage Lower Operational Costs

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 19:00:00 EDT

SYS-CON Events announced today that Brian Boruff, CSC's Vice President of Cloud Computing and Software Services, will be presenting at SYS-CON’s 4th International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo in Santa Clara, CA, this coming November 2 – 4, 2009. His session is entitled “Orchestration in the Cloud.” Managing various providers and ensuring data and processing are safe, compliant, and trustworthy is a growing concern.

Comodo, SafeMashups Partner on MashSSL Technology

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 09:54:00 EDT

"Be it an eCommerce site interacting with a payments processor, or with a new mashup technology, Internet applications continue their relentless march. Consumers get their functionality from multiple interacting web services now," said James Langman, VP of Business Development at Comodo Group Inc. "In this new environment it is critical for web applications interacting through a user's browser to be able to establish a secure, mutually-authenticated channel, even in the presence of a potentially malicious user. SafeMashups' innovative MashSSL repurposes the tried and tested SSL infrastructure to solve this issue."

DHS EAGLE & First Source Digital Guide Launched

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 08:00:00 EDT

The Enterprise Acquisition Gateway for Leading Edge Solutions (EAGLE) is a multiple-award indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract vehicle, specifically designed as the preferred source of information technology (IT) services for the majority of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) enterprise infrastructure and initiatives. According to Soraya Correa, Director of the DHS Office of Procurement Operations (OPO), the success of EAGLE has led to plans for EAGLE II.

Designed as a companion contract to EAGLE, FirstSource provides DHS with access to contractor's commercial catalogs which offer a full array of IT commodity products available in the commercial marketplace from multiple original equipment manufacturers, producers, and suppliers. It is built on the same strategy as EAGLE and lets DHS components place their own orders through a centralized ordering vehicle, accessible to senior leadership, where they can find data or information related to their IT needs.

Soraya Correa, Director of the DHS Office of Procurement Operations (OPO)

This newly released digital guide provides information on:

Progress & Success of EAGLE/First Source
The Enterprise Solutions Office (ESO) & Outreach Program
Interview with Charlie Armstrong, CIO, CBP
EAGLE Contractor Roundtable
First Source for Small Business
EAGLE Large & Small Business Listing
EAGLE/First Source Vision for the Future
EAGLE Perspective by Jim Flyzik

Read and download your copy of this unique guide right now.

Produced by Trezza Media Group, Public Sector Communications and The Flyzik Group, the DHS EAGLE/FirstChoice Digital Guide was sponsored by:

Abacus Technology
Accenture
Booz Allen Hamilton
CSC
ECS
IBM
Perot Systems
Raytheon; and
SAIC

( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS - KLJ )

Advantage Futures Doubles Its Colocation Space with Telx in Chicago

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 12:08:13 EDT

Telx, one of the largest domestic interconnection and colocation data center operators, announced today that Advantage Futures, a leading futures brokerage firm, has expanded its network footprint by 100 percent in Telx’s facility in 350 East Cermak Street in downtown Chicago. The company now uses approximately 520 square feet of space for application servers, data storage and network-based equipment.

Why Current Network Protocol-Based Firewalls and Routers Can't Handle XML

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 13:15:00 EDT

Look in the network closet in any good-sized company today and you’ll find a wide assortment of network gear: firewalls, switches, gateways, routers, hubs, bridges, the list goes on and on. Each of these devices essentially either directs or secures the packets that form the automobiles on the streets and freeways of today’s networks. All data networks -- including the mother of all data networks, the Internet -- are built from these packet-directing and packet-securing devices. All this equipment works pretty well, as long as they don’t care what is actually inside the packets. And there’s the rub. The amount of traffic going over the network that is XML formatted -- in particular, Web Services messages -- is set to explode, and all that equipment in the closet is completely unprepared to direct or secure that XML traffic.

Breaking XML to Optimize Performance

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 06:30:00 EDT

As XML becomes ubiquitous throughout the enterprise, it increasingly taxes the systems that must deal with it. Even though there are a wide range of hardware and software solutions coming to market that aim to alleviate XML's performance bottlenecks (See ZapThink's XML Proxies Report), many developers are nevertheless resorting to a variety of tactics to improve the performance of XML processing and transmission that are… well… creative. Many of these creative approaches simplify certain aspects of XML in order to squeeze document size, improve parser performance, and speed the mapping of XML document components to application objects.

Rapid7 Announces Participation at DEFCON and Black Hat 2009

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 06:35:00 EDT

Rapid7, the leading provider of unified vulnerability management solutions, today announced its participation in two leading security industry events in July 2009. Rapid7 will attend and showcase its expertise at Black Hat USA 2009 from July 25-30, 2009 and DEFCON 17 from July 30-August 2, 2009, both held in Las Vegas, NV. At Black Hat, Marc Bevand, director of security research at Rapid7, will demonstrate a new implementation of the MD5 chosen-prefix collision attack, as well as software techniques to achieve breakthrough performance gain in a session entitled, “MD5 Chosen-Prefix Collisions on GPUs,” on July 30, 2009 at 1:45 p.m.

Comodo 2048-bit Certificates Most Trusted in Industry

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 12:00:00 EDT

Digital certificates provide two factors to build trust online: the strength of the encryption and the visual assurance of authentication. Stronger encryption enhances protection because it's harder to break. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a federal agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce, recommends that site owners upgrade to 2048-bit digital certificates. (2007 NIST standards)