Does Social Media Promote Narcissism?

Based on a survey by Jean Twenge, an SDSU Psychology Professor and co-author of The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement, 57% of young people believe their generation uses social networking sites for self-promotion, narcissism and attention seeking.

While it’s no surprise that social media would cater to a more self-promotional audience, it’s certainly interesting to note that not only does Gen Y think of their social behaviors as narcissistic, but almost 40% (39.27%) agree that “being self-promoting, narcissistic, overconfident, and attention-seeking is helpful for succeeding in a competitive world.”

Catch a movie at YouTube

Nobody see’s YouTube as pay-and-view content provider, rather as see- for-free user generated content facilitator. In a move, which is seen as a direct challenge to Apple as related to distribution of film and television content, Google is in talks with leading Hollywood movie studios to launch a global pay-per-view video service in YouTube by the end of 2010.

The plan is to launch the service first in USA and then take it to other countries. The Hollywood studios are also supposedly excited with the idea as this will be an additional arena for them to make money and might prove to be the most profitable in the long run.



Google will reportedly use its search technology as well as YouTube to direct users to the new services. And with Google and YouTube’s loyal users already on-board, it will likely be an easy venture to become a great success.

Google has not been able to make much money from $1.65bn buy—YouTube. But this initiative might turn out to be the money-churning tool for them. But there will be lots of competition from companies like Apple, Amazon and others who are already online and ready, and those who are also planning to offer such services. We can only wait and see who rules the roost and who calls it a day!!!

Indian midsize organisations give precedence to ‘on time project deployment’ rather than ‘fast return on investment’

About the Survey

•  As business applications gain importance among midsize and enterprise companies alike, Oracle today shared the findings of a survey conducted by Frost & Sullivan, titled ‘Business Applications Optimisation in India 2010’ between end 2009 and early 2010.
• The survey was conducted with more than 1500 respondents across Asia Pacific (APAC) to understand the needs of midsize organisations using business applications; help them prioritise their business issues; and assess their ability to execute them.
• Twenty-three percent or 354 APAC respondents were from India, comprising CIOs, IT decision makers, IT managers and business decision makers from midsize companies. The majority of these companies represented the industrial manufacturing, high technology and professional services sectors. Other prominent sectors included engineering/construction, communications, financial services, education and research, automotive, retail, travel and transportation and healthcare.
• All survey respondents were instrumental in owning and deploying business applications in their organisations.

Survey Results

 

The top 10 issues related to business requirements included:

 

1. Project deployment on time

 

2. Project deployment on budget

 

3. Comprehensive security considerations

 

4. Ability to integrate multiple departments and business partners

 

5. Speed of problem resolution

 

6. Low total cost of ownership

 

7. Fast time to business benefit

 

8. Delivery of high uptime

 

9. Software vendor after sales support

 

10. Fast return on investment

 

Eight of the top 10 Indian business requirements matched the APAC survey ranking (although in a slightly different order). However, the ability to integrate multiple departments ranked much higher for India as compared to Asia/Pacific as a whole.

The ability to achieve a fast time to business benefit and fast return on investment were also of much greater concern to Indian respondents as compared to APAC where these attributes did not appear in the top 10 concerns for APAC respondents.

In addition to tracking business requirements, the survey also studied the top 10 performance criteria in the operation of business applications. These included:

 

 1. IT department understanding of the needs of the business

 

2. Project deployment on time

 

3. Delivery of high uptime

 

4. Application security management

 

5. Project deployment on budget

 

6. Speed of problem resolution

 

7. Software vendor after sales support

 

8. Fast project business benefit

 

9. Fast project deployment

 

10. Fast return of investment

 

 

 

 

 

On Facebook, Avoid Dislike Buttons

Despite the desire of a lot of users, there is no ‘dislike’ button on Facebook. And beware of the dislike buttons that are going viral on Facebook. Some scamsters are working on the need of the users to have a dislike button to work out a scam.

Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant at the British security firm Sophos, has written in a blog post, “you still haven't at this point been given a "Dislike" Facebook button, and the rogue application requires you to complete an online survey (which makes money for the scammers) before ultimately pointing you to a Firefox browser add-on for a Facebook dislike button developed by FaceMod”.

What it can do
On Facebook, avoid posts like: "I just got the Dislike button, so now I can dislike all of your dumb posts lol!!"

These posts are typically followed with a link that takes people to a fake Facebook application.
Instead of installing a dislike button, the application uses a person's social network to continue spreading the fake program. Typically, such schemes are designed to steal information from Internet users. That information then can be sold to other parties. The scams also can be used to co-opt an Internet user's social network contacts.

Cluley wrote, "If you do give the app permission to run, it silently updates your Facebook status to promote the link that tricked you in the first place, thus spreading the message virally to your Facebook friends and online contacts," he writes.

After the other viral scams like including 'Justin Bieber trying to flirt,' 'Student attacked his teacher and nearly killed him,' 'the biggest and scariest snake' and the 'world's worst McDonald's customer, the fake dislike button is the latest one to hit the Facebook users.

What you can do to uninstall

If you accidentally installed the fake application, click on the "account" button at the top right of the Facebook home screen. Navigate to the option that says "application settings," and disable the fake "dislike" application.

If the app has posted to your Facebook wall, go to your profile page and delete those posts to stop the scam from spreading further. Some experts also recommend checking your "interests" and "likes" settings from the "edit my profile" menu, to be sure that the app hasn't lodged itself there as well.

You can also ask Facebook to uninstall/remove it.

Facebook’s Response

As per Facebook, there is no official dislike button and have requested users to not click on strange links, even if they are from friends, and notify the person and report the link if one sees something suspicious. The company further added that it is trying to block the "dislike" app

India to be fastest growing economy by 2013-15

A recent Morgan Stanley report by Chetan Ahya  and Tanvee Gupta says that India is poised to accelerate its growth rate to 9-9.5% over 2013-15, and will become the fastest growing economy.

The report further forecasted India will significantly jack up its expenditure on infrastructure and in plant and machinery. Infrastructure expenditure has gone up from 5.4% of GDP in 2005 to 7.5% in 2009 and is poised to go up to 8% of GDP in 2010. Over 2012-17, the forecast is that India’s infrastructure spend would be $1 trillion as compared with $530 million over the previous five-year period.

Another assumption is on the quantity and quality of the young people coming into the workforce. While India will be the largest contributor to the world’s workforce — all of 136 million people — over the next 10 years, China will add just 23 million.

As per Gartner-- Security Software Market poised for 11 percent growth in 2010

Worldwide security software revenue is forecast to surpass $16.5 billion in 2010, an 11.3 percent increase from 2009 revenue of $14.8 billion, according to Gartner, Inc. Although the economic downturn slowed security revenue to 7 percent growth in 2009, organizations have indicated an intention to give priority to security budgets.


"Most segments of the security software market will continue to grow over the next few years, although a significant degree of variation is expected between the more-established and less-mature technologies," said Ruggero Contu, principal research analyst at Gartner. "Overall, security will remain one of the fastest-growing areas within the enterprise software market."



Gartner analysts said security software markets will weather the current economic downturn better than in 2001 and 2002, because the market conditions are dramatically different in terms of maturity, penetration, confidence in IT, and geographic and vertical mix.

"Security software vendors that have a balanced mix of channel, new license and maintenance revenue streams and flexibility in contractual terms, such as software as a service (SaaS), open source and outsourcing, have the strongest options for continued growth and to even out the risk," Mr. Contu said. "Shrinking discretionary spending budgets have heightened competition for new maintenance and license revenue streams and placed a renewed emphasis on vendor performance and viability."



The consumer security software market remains the largest security software segment, with 2010 revenue projected to reach $4.2 billion in 2010, up from $3.9 billion in 2009. The endpoint protection platform (enterprise) market is the No. 2 security software segment, with revenue on pace to reach $3 billion in 2010, up from $2.9 billion in 2009.



The security software market continues to benefit from prioritization and demands related to compliance requirements, as well as the need to keep up with ever-increasing sophistication and volume in the threat landscape.



“During the next six to 12 months, products delivered as SaaS and appliances will continue overtaking traditional software licensing as the preferred purchasing methods,” said Matthew Cheung, senior research analyst at Gartner. “Delivery as a suite in subsegments such as enterprise endpoint security, identity and access management (IAM), and Web security will be the most prevalent product delivery types. Despite major vendors seeking to consolidate, opportunities exist for smaller niche players and product specialization, and local expertise is expected to remain a valued factor.”



Compliance remains an important driver across many segments, particularly user provisioning, security information and event management (SIEM) and mobile data protection.



"The growing sophistication of the threat landscape — with malware composed of multiple components that can be installed after the initial infection and the exploits of socially engineered trojans, which trick end users into downloading and executing malicious files — will push organizations and consumers to invest in endpoint security products in coming years," Mr. Cheung said.



IAM is a critical component of enterprises' security strategies. Gartner clients indicate that about 8 percent of their security budgets are currently dedicated to IAM. This area is composed of technologies with varying levels of maturity and adoption; overall, the IAM market is estimated to grow to more than $12 billion by 2014.

Change your Operator but keep your Number

One of my friends has changed his number 9 times in the last 3 years, and many of the people I know have at least changed it 5 times. But you cannot blame them; once you change the network – you have to change your number. Number portability was a distant dream. It was working fine for the telecom service provider but it was a nightmare for the consumers who have to keep on informing everyone about the number change.


But it would change pretty soon, as mobile number portability (MNP) will be implemented nationwide from October 31.

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has informed that there would be no further delay in the implementation. In fact, the Department of Telecom (DoT) said the operators must ensure that all inter-operator tests for porting the numbers from one service provider to another are completed before September 1, 2010. DoT further pointed out the telecom operators will be barred from launching any new commercial services from September 1 in case they fail to implement MNP as per the scheduled deadline


As per a DoT note, "It has been decided that permission to launch commercial service in any area with effect from September 1, 2010 shall be given to only those licensee(s) who are MNP compliant,"

One-fit-on-charger for all Cell Phones

Your cell phone is dead and you don’t have a charger. But everybody else you know has a charger, but you are not able to use it as your cell phone is of different make and model. Ain’t that annoying?


Currently, every company ships its own charger. In fact, many companies have different chargers for its models. So whenever you buy a new model, you get a new charger.

But those days will likely be over in the near future. And the Europeans are leading that trend. Thanks to the European Commission, starting 2011 the cell phones sold in Europe will have a one-size-fit-all charger. In fact major cell phone makers including Apple, Motorola, Samsung and Research In Motion, have signed on to the agreement.

A standardized and common charger will be beneficial for the consumers as well as for the companies which can drastically cut down on cost of making new chargers with new models. And it is also a green move as having one charger for all would mean less e-waste and usage of fewer resources.

In India too, we should urge our telecom authorities to ask the cell phone makers to provide a standardized one-fit-in-charger for all.

All India Oracle Users Group presents its annual conference ‘Sangam 2010’ in Hyderabad

• After the success of Sangam 2009, the All India Oracle Users Group (AIOUG) presents Sangam 2010– a two-day Oracle user conference in Hyderabad, 3rd to 4th September 2010.
• As part of its charter to encourage Oracle technologists in India to exchange, experience and discuss advancements and innovations on various Oracle technologies, Sangam 2010 will host multiple sessions by international and Indian experts. Key speaker highlights include:

o Roland Slee, Vice President, Database Product Management, Oracle Asia Pacific & Japan will describe how Oracle is leveraging its expanded product portfolio, including the acquired Sun assets, to progress its long-standing vision of enhanced information management and a simplified, standardised IT infrastructure

o Jonathan Lewis, renowned expert on Oracle Database and an independent consultant from the UK, who has worked on the technology for more than 23 years, will discuss various aspects of Oracle Database Engine.

o Murali Vallath, President, AIOUG and an Oracle ACE Director specialises in areas of capacity planning, high availability solutions and performance tuning of Oracle. He has successfully completed over 100 (Oracle 9iR2, 10gR2 and 11gR2) successful small, medium and terabyte sized RAC implementations for reputed corporate firms across the globe.

• The event is expected to host IT professionals and Oracle enthusiasts from India’s leading SI companies (Infosys, Wipro, Patni, GE, TCS etc.), independent software solutions companies as well as Oracle certified professionals (those directly involved in developing business applications based on the world’s and India’s #1 database provider, Oracle Database) from other industries. In India alone, there are more than 500,000 developers working on various Oracle technologies.

• AIOUG provides Oracle technology and database professionals the opportunity to enhance their productivity and influence the quality, usability, and support of Oracle technology. The group is composed of Oracle professionals across business users, IT professionals (several from leading SI and ISV companies) and developers committed to helping fellow IT professionals develop Oracle-based solutions to address their business challenges.

• “AIOUG has been in existence for more than three years and in this period, we have seen tremendous activity among this community with all the new developments and new technologies that Oracle offers,” said Murali Vallath, President, AIOUG. “This year we initiated a new webcasts programme that aims to enhance skill sets and also provide members and non-members with access to sessions by world-class speakers on various technology platforms and developments.”

• SANGAM 2010 is being actively promoted through various social media channels like twitter, linkedin, facebook as well as through blogs.

• “Through our SANGAM conferences, we would also like to create an opportunity for our Indian Oracle user community to listen to world-class speakers such as Tom Kyte, Jonathan Lewis among others,” said Satyendra Kumar, Co Founder and Vice President, AIOUG.

• To get more information visit: www.aioug.org/sangam10.php or Oracle Events or Oracle User Groups Center

Oracle leader in PPM--as per Gartner 2010 report

Gartner, Inc. has named Oracle a leader in its report “Magic Quadrant for IT Project and Portfolio Management, 2010.”


Gartner defines IT Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) applications as those that “primarily automate and centralize the collection of data about demand, costs, schedules and resources for investment prioritization, as well as the execution of the programs and projects delivering new technologies and other IT assets to the business. They can also be used to assess, justify, rationalize and otherwise control the investment in ongoing IT operations or specific applications.”

Oracle's PPM solutions support the full lifecycle of project and portfolio management with an integrated, accurate view of all project-related activities, helping companies and organizations achieve and maintain strategic advantage over their competitors.