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Halloween Costume Shopping

Shopping for Halloween costumes can be scary, especially when looking for costumes for ages 11, 8, 4 and a newborn. There are a couple of easy options.

First, get some paper shopping bags, markers, glue and construction paper. Let everyone go to town. Anything they come up with is bound to be a reasonable disguise.

Another option is the site, halloweencostumes4u. The site is easy to navigate, with a great search facility. Just enter a keyword or character name, and you get a nice selection right off the bat. I’m usually into flashier sites, with all kinds of drag-and-drop doodads, but the straightforward navigation and costume selection is somewhat refreshing. The pictures make it easy for the kids to point and make suggestions (sometimes leading to discussions about why certain costumes are only for adults that live someplace else).

I might still favor more technically-fun-to-implement site designs, but I appreciate the very practical experience on halloweencostmes4u. The bottom-line is that we turned what’s normally a frightful annual ritual into a treat of a shopping experience for the whole family. Thanks, Grandma, for pointing out the site!

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By Joe – September 6, 2011

A Tale of Two Estimates

Here’s a quick one, based largely on a true story.
Imagine two software development teams, each given the same set of requirements by the same customer. They’re not competing with each other…they are in parallel universes, placed solely for the purposes of this story.
The first team looks at the requirements and comes up with an estimate that they are all comfortable with. They don’t spend much time on the estimate because they know the “magic number” the customer is looking for and they convince themselves that they can deliver in just under that number. Let’s say it’s six months.
The second team has an estimating process that they have honed over years of experience. They ask some clarifying questions and they document some assumptions. They plug in the variables to account for the project’s technical complexity, its volume, and the culture of the customer. They come up with an estimate of ten months.
They both deliver the exact same product–same quality, same functionality, same everything–in ten months.
The first team’s effort is considered a failure, and most of the team is demoralized and ready to quit IT altogether.
The second team is hailed as heroes and the phone is ringing off the hook from the customer’s referrals to friends.

The moral of the story: never underestimate the importance of estimating.

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By Joe – September 1, 2011

HyperProductive named IBM Software ValueNet Partner for IBM Cognos Solutions

IBM has named HyperProductive, LLC, one of only a few Cleveland based partners certified and authorized to resell and deliver IBM Cognos and TM1 solutions via its Software ValueNet Certified Partner Program. With decades of experience delivering such solutions, HyperProductive is a key partner with IBM as we work to create business value for our clients in Northeast Ohio.

Why IBM Cognos – IBM Cognos business analytics and performance management solutions help companies to better plan, understand, and manage financial and operational performance.

About HyperProductive:

HyperProductive is a Cleveland based Custom Software Development Company and Advanced IBM® Business Partner. We hold multiple Certifications with respect to Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Business Intelligence (BI).

Contact Us

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By Mark Sanders – October 27, 2010

IBM Unveils New Information Management And Analytics Software – IBM Cognos 10

IBM Unveils New Information Management And Analytics Software To Help Organizations Gain Faster Insight For Smarter Business Outcomes

LAS VEGAS, – 25 Oct 2010: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today introduced new software that combines the most sophisticated business analytics and optimization capabilities for today’s evolving workforce. For the first time, the new offerings combine social networking and collaboration capabilities for the burgeoning mobile workforce, expected to reach more than 1.19 billion by 2013.

With today’s news, IBM is bringing business analytics capabilities to the masses with a new look and feel that more closely mirrors people’s every day use of technology including support for new mobile devices and integrated social networking capabilities for faster, more collaborative decision-making.

The new software takes analytics out of the traditional format of reports and charts to a more interactive design and broader analysis and insight making it easier by providing built-in images and videos to guide business users. They can now gain instant insight with analytics in an easy to use format anytime, anywhere on their mobile devices. These new capabilities will have a profound impact on the way all business users interact with their teams, partners, managers and customers around the globe.

Spurred by the growth of mobile transactions, expected to grow by 40 times by 2015, the increase in the rate and pace of data is accelerating the IT opportunity around business analytics and optimization. When combined with the unprecedented growth of the mobile workforce, this presents an opportunity for businesses to embrace the borderless office and extract intelligence to better interact with customers. A recent IBM study with 1,900 CFOs globally revealed analytics-driven organizations had 33% more revenue growth with 32% more return on capital invested.

To address these changing market dynamics, IBM is announcing a set of new business analytics and information management offerings:

Cognos 10: New software that brings together the power of social collaboration and analytics for business users to gain real-time intelligence in a single, user-friendly interface — online or through mobile devices such as ipad, iphones and blackberries.

New Analytics Software Brings Speed to Insight with Social Collaboration and Mobile

Today, with the launch of Cognos 10, IBM is delivering the most significant analytics offering since the acquisition of Cognos, one of the largest acquisitions in IBM history. For the first time, this new software brings together the power of social collaboration with Lotus Connections software and business analytics with Cognos in one unified experience with intuitive navigation capabilities and simplified user experience. This removes the frustration of having to interrupt user train of thought resulting from the need to switch between views to get the right information. The software supports the natural path of seamless views from browsing to investigation to decision making.

This new software provides business users with an integrated view of historical information with real-time updates to give users a complete picture of their business. Now, business users can benefit from accessing information with a range of views from simple real-time information to advanced predictive “what if” analysis. The integrated social networking capabilities with analytics allow the employees to interact with each other in real time in communities, wikis and blogs. This combination fuels the exchange of ideas and knowledge that naturally occurs in the decision-making process, but is typically lost in meeting notes, manual processes and emails. Users can now initiate activities, engage others with their expertise, post messages, files, links, and discuss or review opinions – all in real time for faster, more accurate decision making.

For example, a regional sales manager can spot a spike in sales in a popular pair of shoes with the store manager and marketing team in real time to identify the cause and brainstorm to resolve the issues around managing supply and demand. Doctors can spot trends for patient treatment of certain diseases, share insight with other doctors, and agree on a preventative course of action and treatment with a team of doctors, all without having to change a single view with this in-depth information. A brand manager sees product sales declining and needs to discuss the issue with the store manager, production department, and marketing team – all at the same time. The manager can instantly set up a decision network to connect the right people and information to share insights and capture annotations.

to read the entire press release:  http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/32858.wss


About HyperProductive:

HyperProductive is a Cleveland based Custom Software Development Company and Advanced IBM® Business Partner. We hold multiple Certifications with respect to Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Business Intelligence (BI).

Contact Us

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By Mark Sanders – October 27, 2010

The Admin Console Is Dead! Long Live the Admin Console!

This post is mainly for people that had the pleasurable experience of using the WebSphere v3-v4 Admin Console. The nice thick client that required a surprisingly large and painful installation on any workstation from which you wanted to administer WebSphere. This post is for people that saw it, used it, and ran away never to look at WebSphere again.
It is a common critique of WebSphere that it is slow and unwieldy. Digging in a little bit, people are really talking about the admin console. And they’re talking about the beast that was the Admin Client installation.
When I was managing a WAS 4.0 installation not too long ago, firing up the admin console was a dreaded nightmarish experience. People scheduled change migrations so they wouldn’t be the one on duty. I personally chose to memorize the “wscp” command-line administration API rather than go through the pain of administering the servers through the admin console GUI. (As it turns out, this turned into a great way to increase quality through scripted common tasks. Talk about lemons into lemonade.)
Fast forward to today. The administration console is completely web-based. Everything you used to do, and a whole lot more, is now accessible from any browser. I was able to troubleshoot a web service configuration problem from my iphone while sitting in an airplane waiting for the rest of the passengers to board.
If you want to deploy an application, you have the choice of referencing a local EAR/WAR to upload, or an archive that’s already sitting on the server. Depending on your selection, the “browse…” button will open the correct navigation dialog. Developing and deploying from the Mac (with the help of IntelliJ) is no longer “crazy talk”.
Managing a server from the old console was just downright angering at times. There were times when I would click a button and wait twenty minutes for a response, only to find out that one of the parameters or permissions was incorrect. The new admin console now spits out clear messages at each step of every task. Additionally, most input parameters are either drop-downs–no chance of a typo–or the value is validated as part of the “pre-process” step, prior to attempting to commit the change to the server(s).
The commit of changes is also improved. Rather than slogging through a number of database commits, the submitted change is stored as XML. The XML file is verified for consistency and then the changes are applied in bulk to the destination servers.
Server adminstration is never going to be (for me) a “joyful” experience, but it is now as expected. The experience is quick and intuitive. The interface exposes pretty much all of the Application Server nooks and crannies.
Command-line black magic is no longer required, although you could easily get hooked on the overhauled scripting interface. I’ll go over that in another post. Then you can decide for yourself.
In the meantime, if you haven’t Seen WebSphere Lately, then you owe it to yourself and your employer’s shareholders to take another look.


About HyperProductive:

HyperProductive is a Cleveland based Custom Software Development Company and Advanced IBM® Business Partner. We hold multiple Certifications with respect to Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Business Intelligence (BI).

Contact Us

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By Joe – September 13, 2010