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Posts Tagged ‘Business’

After hours of speculations and intense discussions, the owner of Sun Microsystems, Oracle Corporation, as per numerous reports has now finally announced that, the company has hired the ex-CEO of Hewlett Packard (HP), Mark Hurd in the capacity of one of the two co-Presidents for Oracle. Along with his responsibility of being the company’s co-President, Mr. Hurd will also be serving on Oracle’s board of directors. However, as of now this information is not available on the company website, where the previous two Presidents are still being shown till now.

Mark Hurd was forced to give up the reigns of HP, after he was hit by sexual harassment case by an ex-HP contractor last month and the subsequent internal investigation found financial discrepancies as well. However, the inception of Mr. Hurd as Oracle’s President isn’t a shocking development as Oracle CEO, Larry Ellison had been a staunch supporter of Mark at the time of the controversy and even went to the lengths of lashing out at HP management for making a rash decision of letting Mark Hurd go. Furthermore, considering the fact that, under the able leadership of Mark Hurd, HP managed to acquire a huge position in the computer hardware industry, Oracle could definitely get a lot of advantage with Mr. Hurd’s appointment, as the company is known to be struggling in the hardware division.

According to Larry Ellison (CEO, Oracle Corp.),

“Mark did a brilliant job at H-P and I expect he’ll do even better at Oracle.”

Via Computer World

One of the biggest names when it come to online polls, quizzes, surveys and public feedback, BooRoo.com has now announced the launch of an all new vertical of its services, that has been designed to enhance the experience of BooRoo users who have been accustomed to the company’s decade old platform. This all new initiative will now enable BooRoo to expand its reach beyond the United Kingdom and across the globe, with the help of numerous new features and functionality.

BooRoo has completely revamped the survey and quiz section with the introduction of an entirely new user interface. Furthermore, the toolbar for the section has now been embedded with drag and drop feature as well as a visual toolset, that would enable its clients to create and edit surveys, polls and surveys. This all new section will also feature new and updates themes and skins, that would make the customization of polls and quizzes that much more interesting and fun as well as more personalized, catering to the profile of the clients’ company or organization. With the help of these new features and toolkits, BooRoo has opened new and exciting venues for researchers, marketers, educators, HR professionals etc. to create more interesting, complex and interactive polls, quizzes and surveys.

According to BooRoo,

“Not only is this tool very easy to use, but it has served many purposes including surveys, polls, online registration, online forms, and online exams. It has definitely been a great communication and tracking too.”

Via PR Web

Since the launch of the immensely famous Apple iPhone series, the Apple Apps Store has been flooded with a plethora of applications ranging from business, entertainment, sports and covering a vast spectrum of other topics as well. Now, one of the foremost names in canine caretaking awareness, DogParkUSA.com has now launched an all new application for the Apple iPhone, that has been designed and developed to assist the canine owners in gathering all the required information, whether it be a dog park or a trip across the country with their pet dog.

This all new application called, Dog Park Finder Plus, provides the users with information about local dog parks in both maps and list pages and these crucial details include ratings, fenced and un-fenced markers, on-leash rules, hours and days of operation etc. DogParkUSA.com has also announced that, the 15% of all sales will be donated to Adopt-a-Pet.com, a non profit organization, that is known to be the largest in North America and focuses on adoption of homeless pets. This noble and enormous agency so far displays 155,000 pets for adoption at over 9,200 animal shelter throughout the North American continent and is actively supported as well as sponsored by Purina and Bayer Animal Health.

According to Greg Holsclaw (Creative Team, Dog Park Finder Plus),

“Through the use of innovative new tools, we hope to broadcast new dog parks and news about current parks to loving pet owners through our improved Dog Park Finder Plus, and we’re very excited to benefit homeless pets while we do so that every dog can be lucky enough to enjoy a day at the park.”

Via PR Web

One of the most biggest and perhaps the most privacy conscious social networking service on the Internet, Facebook, as per reports, developed a snag that enabled a spammer to post thousands of spam wall posts all across the Facebook walls. This anomaly occurred in the service’s photo upload system, that was later confirmed by Facebook and the company duly notified the users as well.

One of the Facebook users, Andrew Jones spotted the spam attack, when he was alerted to spam post on his wall, which he misinterpreted as a hacking attempt on his account. The victim immediately changed his password for Facebook. He later attributed the snag as a malware concern, as the user had logged on to Facebook via a public computer and was later informed of the glitch in Facebook’s own systems. The spam message tried to entice thousands of Facebook users with a free iPhone link, that would have taken the users to a third party website. There, the users were tricked into filling out survey forms as well sign up for product subscriptions, leading to a flood of unwanted calls on their cell phones. As per Facebook, the snag led to numerous spam postings on wall, against which the company too measures and removed the spam photos as well as informed the affected users.

According to Facebook,

“Earlier this week, we discovered a bug in the code that processes photos as they’re uploaded. This bug caused us not to make the correct checks when determining whether a photo should be posted to a person’s profile. We quickly worked to resolve the issue and fixed it shortly after discovering it. For a short period of time before it was fixed, a single spammer was able to post photos to people’s profiles that they hadn’t approved.”

Via Computer World

Well, it seems that the social networking attempt from Google in the form of Google Buzz, not only ended in botched service being closed down for good, but has also made the Internet search giant lose $8.5 million in a settlement in regards to a class action lawsuit filed against Google Buzz. The settlement took place in a federal court in San Jose, California and covers attorney fees as well as funding privacy advocacy groups.

The lawsuit was brought upon Google by a group of privacy right groups, who had been more than concerned in regards to the fact that, Google Buzz made the name of the users’ Gmail contacts a public knowledge, without the consent of the users. Even though Google took appropriate steps to address the issue, yet it turned out that, the search behemoth was a little late and was hit with class action lawsuits. This latest development is expected to finally close the Google Buzz saga, a service that Google Inc. had introduced, being envisioned as an alternative to the social networking giant, Facebook.

According to Google Inc.,

“We have always been committed to offering users transparency and choice in Buzz and all our products, and will continue to work together with users to provide the best user experience possible.”

Via Computer World

A major factor that brought the social networking phenomenon bursting on the Internet with lightning speed was the concept of keeping in touch with your family and friends on a singular platform and also get a chance to explore and find new people to connect with. With advent of social networking big hitters such as the likes of Facebook and Twitter, millions of users found what the Internet was lacking for all these years. However, this vast level of online communication has is slowly bringing actual social life to a redundancy level.

This could very be the factor because of which nowadays, more and more application developers are adopting the “mobile first, web second” policy, wherein these developers are giving more priority to the contacts in your mobile phones, rather than your Facebook contacts as far as their applications are concerned. Two of the most successful mobile operating systems, Google Android and Apple iOS have already given the developers the leverage to let their applications gain access to the users’ phone books, after explicit approval, of course! One such application is, addappt. Designed and developed specifically for the Apple iPhone , the application makes use of the users’ contact book from the device and then cross references these names and find out which of your contacts have currently signed up for various types of conferences. So far, most of the companies including Google Inc. and Apple Inc. have taken the wrong approach in creating a social graph of their users, as these companies have always looked upon computers as their target, when clearly mobile devices are the solution to building a sustainable and reliable social graph.

Via TechCrunch & AVC

For all those of our readers, who at some point in time spent two fascinating hours watching Minority Report and wondering when they would be able to see such technology in function, here is some great news. Apparently, Japan is the country that, without a doubt is making that technology dream into a reality as, Tokyo is now witness to one of the biggest technological marvels in the form of highly interactive billboards. At the Shinagawa train station in Tokyo, researchers have been successful in introducing and installing one of world’s smartest billboard.

This all new billboard carries a 47 inch touch screen and works with the help of a front mounted camera and sensors, with which this incredible innovation is then able to profile the person looking at the billboard and can judge his or her gender as well as age and then provide suggestion as to which drink would be best suited for the individual. With the help of this state of the art advertising billboard, the East Japan Railway, will be able to better understand the shopping habits of the commuters, rather than making predictions and useless guesses.

Via Wall Street Journal

The world of social networking has come a long way from being just a venue for friends and family to connect and has now evolved into a business networking platform, that provides the users with the ability to reach to others in their respective niche of work. Now, another such service has surfaced on the Internet, that has been designed and developed specifically to help aspiring and struggling Indie music artists, gain a firm foothold.

We are talking about, Music Lunge, a social networking platform, that has the primary objective of helping out Indie and Major artists in the music industry in promoting themselves. Music Lunge provides some of the most astounding growth potential, as the service will enable musicians to get in touch with business consulting, development, music publishing, radio distribution and song mastering professionals and will be able to take benefit from live consultations as well. Furthermore, Music Lunge has collaborated with music industry big hitters, George “Pretty Boy Beats” Seals and super lawyer, Howard Hertz, to provide the users with the most updated and accurate information they require to jump start their career.

According to Sergio Giles (Founder, Music Lunge),

“We offer music live business consulting services to indie artists, independent record labels and musicians at affordable prices. Who better to get consulting from than the industry professionals themselves.”

Via Market Wire

As the end of the year draws near, Microsoft Corporation has now set in motion a chain of events, that would lead to what many believe to be a spectacular launch of the all new and much anticipated Windows Phone 7 series. As of now, Microsoft has official releases the code for the Windows Phone 7 operating system and marked it as, “released to manufacturing”, that essentially means that, the OS will now be delivered to the handset manufacturers and would facilitate a timely launch of the all new series in Fall this year.

The all new Windows Phone 7 OS that has been made open to manufacturers has been given some major tweaks and changes, that were brought to the attention of the engineers by outside developers, as well as from a torrent of internal feedback. Microsoft is all geared up for the release of the Windows Phone 7 development tools, on September 16th, 2010, along with the launch of a brand new applications store in the month of October this year, especially for the Windows Phone 7 series. Microsoft had put a great deal of stress on the feedback from both internal and external sources and thus has managed to come up with an OS code that, has been praised widely by developers for its quality and stability. Some of the major names in the world of mobile handsets, such as Asus, LG, HTC and Samsung are expected to come out with their Windows Phone 7 powered handsets, just around the 2010 shopping season.

According to Terry Myerson, (Corporate V.P, Windows Phone Engineering),

“We had nearly 10,000 devices running automated tests daily, over a half million hours of active self-hosting use, over three and a half million hours of stress test passes, and eight and a half million hours of fully automated test passes.”

Via PC World

After spending more than a week in the spotlight and relinquishing himself of the top job at Hewlett Packard, one of the biggest companies in the corporate world, Mark Hurd, the former CEO of HP has reportedly been in talks with Oracle Corporation for an employment opportunity. Larry Ellison, the CEO of Oracle was seen as a staunch supporter of Mr. Hurd during the times of hardship and controversies, that had surrounded HP’s ex-CEO last month.

Mark Hurd is said to have applied for a top level executive position and as per the reports, the hiring of Mr. Hurd could still very well go sour, as the final decision will be taken by the Oracle board. Oracle has been increasingly successful in the field of software development for enterprises and also acquired the creators of the famous Java platform, Sun Microsystems. On the other hand the acquisition of Mr. Hurd by Oracle could in fact prove to be an added bonus for the company, as Mark is known to have vast experience in the technology business, so much so, that under his leadership, Hewlett Packard reached the pinnacle of its success and became the world’s biggest maker of personal computers and server systems and the largest technology company

Via PC World