The other month I presented Caching Up and Down the Stack at the Boston Web Performance meetup. It was great to get the chance to present to the 60+ people who came out for the talk. Unsurprisingly, many of the people there knew a lot about caching in all of the different levels I touched on, and some great conversation developed. I covered six of the major areas of caching available to web devs today. On the HTML / JS / CSS side, you can use client asset caches, full-page HTTP caches (like Varnish) and partial template caches. On the back end, you can use generated code caches, manually cache objects in memory or nearby services or even enable your database’s query cache (though, as the audience reminded me, if you’re using MySQL, just don’t. See below for why). Caching at each layer has advantages and disadvantages, and throughout, you’ll only be effective if you... (more)

Payments Industry CEO’s Speak Out on "What’s Next"

CEO’s from the leading players across the payments spectrum describe “what’s next” in payments to David Evans, Founder, Market Platform Dynamics and author of Paying with Plastic (2nd Edition, MIT Press) in an exclusive PYMNTS.com feature. These interviews have already captured the views of CEO’s from a diverse group of innovators, including Visa, The Clearing House and Billeo. CEOs will address the role of mobile, security, prepaid, eCommerce and payments infrastructure in transforming the industry over the next 3 to 5 years, in both the developed and developing worlds. In one interview, Bill Sheedy, President of The Americas from Visa comments that innovations in the US will “primarily … come in the form of smarter devices that initially are just going to add value to the existing card-based magnetic stripe infrastructure” and suggests that “the ability for the ... (more)

Mu Sigma Key Sponsor and Featured Speaker at 12th Annual Shopper Insights in Action Retail Conference 2012

CHICAGO, IL -- (Marketwire) -- 07/09/12 -- Mu Sigma (http://www.mu-sigma.com), the largest pure-play provider of decision sciences and analytics solutions for global enterprise customers, announced today that it is a key sponsor and speaker at the 12th Annual Shopper Insights in Action Conference, July 18-20, 2012, in Chicago, IL. The theme of this year's conference will focus on championing the action of research at retail and Mu Sigma will address how retail analytics can shed new light on online shopping behaviors. In the session, Mu Sigma will describe how it helped a luxury online retailer improve its customer conversions by understanding the brand preference of its members. Mu Sigma's analytical tools and techniques provide online retailers with a better understanding of their customers, allowing a maximum return on investment from website activation "sign up... (more)

The Top 250 Players in the Cloud Computing Ecosystem

In the run-up to the next Cloud Expo, 7th Cloud Expo (November 1–4, 2010) being held at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Silicon Valley, it's time to give my earlier list a complete overhaul. Here, accordingly, is an expanded list of the most active players in the Cloud Ecosystem. I have increased it from the 'mere' 150 I identified back in January of this year, to 250, testimony – as if any were needed! – to the fierce and continuing growth of the "Elastic IT" paradigm throughout the world of enterprise computing. Editorial note: The words in quotation marks used to describe the various services and solutions in this round-up are in every case taken from the Web sites of the companies themselves. Omissions to this Top 250 list should be sent to me via Twitter (twitter.com/jg21) and I will endeavor to include them in any future revision of this newly expanded rou... (more)

Where Are RIA Technologies Headed in 2008?

I am always being told off by i-technologists for quoting Picasso as having said that computers are useless. But I still love his reasoning? "Because they can only give you answers." Picasso, like AJAXWorld Magazine, liked questions. So we thought we would share with you what some of the world's leading rich Internet application pioneers are thinking may be the next questions that we need to see answered. From that readers can themselves infer where AJAX is headed. What are the top questions to ask next about AJAX? Eric Miraglia of Yahoo! 1.  (From March'08) How do I calculate the ROI of building my RIA on the iPhone SDK vs using AJAX? 2.  How do I assess the performance of my app and decide what to do next to make it faster?  3.  When it comes to accessibility, how do I know what's required of me for my rich web apps?  Beyond what's required, what makes good business se... (more)

Cloud Expo New York Call for Papers Now Open

Early Bird Savings Cloud Expo Cloud computing is a game changer. The cloud is disrupting traditional software and hardware business models by disrupting how IT service gets delivered. Entrepreneurial opportunities abound as this classic disruptive technology begins to proliferate, so it is no surprise that SYS-CON's industry-leading International Cloud Expo is going from strength to strength. The 5th International Cloud Expo, to be held April 19-21, 2010, at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York, NY, announces that its Call for Papers is fast approaching. Topics on which submission are welcome include all aspects of providing or using massively scalable IT-related capabilities as a service using Internet technologies (see suggested examples below). Help plant your flag in the fast-expanding business opportunity that is The Cloud: submit your speaking propos... (more)

Cloud Expo 2011 East To Attract 10,000 Delegates and 200 Exhibitors

SYS-CON Events announced today that the 8th International Cloud Expo will take place June 6-9, 2011, in New York City. The International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo series is the world's leading Cloud-focused event and is held three times a year, in New York, Silicon Valley and in Europe. Over 600 corporate sponsors and 10,000 industry professionals have participated in Cloud Computing Expo since its inception, more than all other Cloud-related events put together. Cloud Computing Expo 2011 East Call for Papers Deadline November 30, 2010 - SUBMIT YOUR SPEAKING PROPOSAL TODAY! The four-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 150 sponsors and exhibitors and over 5,000 estimated delegates from well over 48 different countries. Explore Cloud Expo Sponsorship &... (more)

AJAX World RIA Conference & Expo Kicks Off in New York City

In the tight economy, front-end engineers and front-end engineering can play a conspicuous role: good user experience, as the iPhone spectacularly demonstrates, means good business. At the 7th International AJAXWorld RIA Conference & Expo which opened Monday in New York City, the speaker lineup is as usual dripping with real-world expertise. The distinguished Speaker Faculty is headlined by Oracle's Ashish Mohindroo, whose Opening Keynote on "Breaking the Collaboration Barrier with Rich Enterprise Applications" set the tone for two intense days of breakout sessions across three parallel tracks. According to Mohindroo and Oracle, Rich Enterprise Applications (REAs) promise breakthrough capabilities and services for achieving higher levels of personal and team productivity throughout your enterprise. "Consumer web and mobile technologies are setting high standards for wha... (more)

Processing XML with C# and .NET

Microsoft's counterpiece to Java, the new C# programming language with its rich .NET library, uses XML as a core technology. This article presents some basic ideas, for example creating and manipulating a DOM tree, and reading and writing XML streams. I also compare .NET's solution with the SAX model, and finally I show how a complex XSLT algorithm can be more simply implemented in C#. The source code can be downloaded from and www.sys-con.com/xml/sourcec.cfm. XML Processors To process an XML document means to extract information from it. Often the extracted information should be output to a new XML (or perhaps HTML) document that's similar to the original one - then we address the transformation. Which processor to use for a given task is not a trivial question. There are a number of ready-to-use XML processors on the market - like Cocoon and Axkit - and any XML-e... (more)

Cloud Expo, Inc. Announces Cloud Expo 2011 New York Venue

Click Here to Save $800 at Cloud Expo New York ! Cloud Expo, Inc. announced on Thursday that Cloud Expo 2011 New York, the 8th International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo, will take place June 6-9, 2011, at the Javits Center in New York City. Cloud Expo - International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo series is the world’s leading Cloud-focused event and is held in New York, Silicon Valley, Prague, Tokyo, and Hong-Kong. Over 900 corporate sponsors and more than 65,000 industry professionals have participated in Cloud Expo since its inception, tenfold more than all other Cloud-related events put together. Click Here to Save $800 at Cloud Expo New York ! "Cloud Expo was announced on February 24, 2007, the day the term ‘cloud computing' was coined," said Fuat Kircaali, Chairman and Founder of Cloud Expo, Inc. "Cloud has become synonymous with ‘computing' and ‘soft... (more)

The Next Chapter in the Virtualization Story Begins

Cloud Expo Europe €550 Savings here! Cloud Expo West $800 Savings here! Cloud Computing Journal recently caught up with Pete Malcolm, CEO of cloud management innovators Abiquo - a major new player in the fast-emerging Cloud ecosystem and Platinum Plus Sponsor of 6th Cloud Expo being held in Prague, the Czech Republic, 21-22 June 2010. Malcolm is keynoting at the event. His theme will be "An Open Cloud Ecosystem - the Gathering Storm." Explore Cloud Expo Sponsorship & Exhibit Opportunities ! Abiquo was also Platinum Plus Sponsor of the 5th International Cloud Expo held April 19-21, 2010 at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City Cloud Computing Journal: How would you define the difference between Private clouds and Public Clouds, and why is the distinction so important in the context of Cloud Computing? Pete Malcolm: Actually, I think people get rather too hun... (more)