Linkology: The Best of the Internet for 5/13/11

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Linkology: The Best of the Internet for 5/13/11

Every now and again I get to thinking that it really is a minor miracle I’m alive today. I’m 42.  Back when I was young and stupid, we didn’t wear helmets when we were riding bikes.  We didn’t pad ourselves up like a linebacker every time there was a remote chance that our bodies might

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Oracle 11g and Spatial Business Intelligence

With Oracle 11g, you can take your business intelligence to the next level with spatial business intelligence. What does that mean?  It’s simply a name for a set of features that allow you to view key data based upon that data being graphically represented on maps which depict state level, regional level, country level, etc.

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Getting Into MIT Without a High School Degree

Chris Dixon tells the story of his friend and business partner Tom Pinckney, who got into MIT without ever having received a high school diploma. Tom grew up in rural South Carolina and mostly stayed at home writing video games on his Apple II.  There was no place nearby to go to high school. He

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Microsoft To Acquire Skype

Quick update today on the news everyone’s (already) talking about, which is that Skype has agreed to be acquired by Microsoft for $8.5B.  From Skype’s corporate blog: I’m excited to announce that Skype and Microsoft have entered into a definitive agreement whereby Microsoft will acquire Skype for $8.5 billion US. Once the acquisition closes, Skype

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A Smart IT Investment Could Help Ease Budgetary Challenges for K-12 Education

It might not be the first thing on your mental checklist, but enterprise software consulting firms play a key role in the overall return on investment for K-12 education by implementing applications –  in our case Oracle and PeopleSoft, which enable significant organizational efficiencies. In today’s economic climate, K-12 education administrators must be especially mindful

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Ric Elias: 3 Things I Learned While My Plane Crashed

Ric Elias was a passenger aboard Flight 1549, which crash-landed in the frigid Hudson River in New York in January 2009.  As his plane went down, he learned a few things about himself and his life.  Here’s his story. [5 minutes, 3 seconds] ### More links: MIPRO Consulting main website. MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

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Linkology: The Best of the Internet for 5/6/11

So it’s been a scant two-and-a-half months since I announced an experimental format change for these Friday Linkology posts, and today I have another announcement: we’re going back to the way things were.  Meaning, I will begin every Friday post with a preamble, which likely will make little sense, that will murkily tie together some

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‘Old’ vs. ‘New’ Revenue for Enterprise Vendors

Without getting academic about it, Vinnie Mirchandani breaks up technology markets into old and new, which mean, nutshelled, traditional and innovation-driven revenue, respectively.  I’ve often looked at it the same way; in fact, one of the reasons I’m linking to Vinnie’s post is because he articulated my thoughts better than I could.  Here it is

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Questions To Ask Jim Balsillie Over Coffee

Eric Jackson, writing for Forbes.com, on what questions he would ask RIM co-CEO Jim Balsille over a cup of coffee: Last month, when you reiterated your guidance that you cut yesterday, had you done any “confirmation” of the numbers beforehand?  Your excuse for cutting the guidance was because you had recently completed some “confirmation” process

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Enterprise Software Usage Hits Record High

Joe McKendrick, writing for ZDNet’s Service Oriented: Although its been a challenge to wring benefits out of bottomless pit investments in enterprise software, the study says things are drifting slowly in the right direction. 2010 marked the first year that organizations collectively achieved an average effective usage rate greater than 50%, the survey finds —

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