[Link] Learn: Business Process Modeling Fundamentals

LinkedIn Learning recently released a course on Business Process Modeling Fundamentals.

It covers:
- Defining Process Modeling
- Overview of modeling tools, and
- Modeling consistency and standards

It's a short introductory course, and you may be able to avail a limited free starter month. (See the site terms & conditions for details).


And, don't forget to browse more interesting topics in the LinkedIn Learning catalog.

[Link] 8 Things You Didn't Know You Could do on your Android Phone

Android Phones are no doubt popular, and there's a plethora of ways to enhance the capabilities of the Android operating system using apps from the popular Google Play Store.

Since there's millions of apps, we still think, there might be a few things you weren't aware that your Android phone could do.

Curious? Find out here.

[Link] Definitive Guide to Predictive Analytics Models for Marketing

Predictive analytics is a hot topic and we are often asked how specifically marketers can use predictions to develop more profitable relations with their customers.

In this post, we’ll give you an overview of 13 predictive models you could use to increase revenues and delight your customers.

There are three types of predictive models marketers should know about:

• Clustering models (segments)
• Propensity models (predictions)
• Collaborative filtering (recommendations)

Read the post at:
http://www.agilone.com/academy/the-definitive-guide-to-predictive-analytics-models-for-marketing/

[Webinar] Deep Dive Into Telerik Platform Support for Angular 2

The latest Telerik Platform by Progess release highlights deep integration with Angular 2, making cross-platform native development even more productive.

In this webinar scheduled for November 15, 2016 at 11 am EST, the speakers as they demonstrate how to:

• Take advantage of Angular 2 support in Telerik AppBuilder
• Leverage the latest version of NativeScript to boost your native app development
• Bootstrap your Angular 2 app with the Telerik Platform Views service, without writing a line of code
• …and many more updates that will also improve the productivity of existing Apache Cordova developers

 Get to know how to build mobile apps using Angular 2, with the Telerik Platform.

Cryptocurrency: NXT & the Nxt Platform

Nxt is an advanced open source application platform which builds on and improves the basic functionality of the first wave of pioneering crypto-currencies. The Nxt platform includes many advanced features, including the NXT digital currency. Nxt gives its users complete freedom in many ways: for example to use the NXT currency as a payment system, or to create advanced blockchain applications using the Nxt API and toolkit. Nxt is a powerful, open and completely decentralized application platform, leading the evolution of crypto-currency into blockchain technology.

For more information, please visit: https://nxt.org/what-is-nxt/

[Link] Microsoft Azure Launches 'Easy Nxt' Blockchain Nodes for Developers

Microsoft Azure, the cloud computing platform and infrastructure for building, deploying and managing applications through Microsoft’s global network of managed data centers, has officially brought the Nxt Blockchain to their platform. Now for the first time on Azure, developers worldwide will be able to start their own Nxt nodes easily.

Read the article here.

[Update] If you want to know, what NXT, check out the post 'Cryptocurrency: NXT and the Nxt Platform'

[Link] The case for Twitter's independence

Twitter is apparently on the block, with Alphabet/Google and Salesforce.com being reported as potential bidders. TechCrunch analyzes the company, and what it might mean in different scenarios.

Read the story here.

[Link] MongoDB Cheat Sheet

MongoDB is a popular choice for NoSQL databases in web-scale applications today. Besides GUI tools to work with MongoDB, sometimes, command line is still an essential.

This helpful cheatsheet by Red Hat's Cian Clarke is a handy resource to have.

[Link] 2016 State of Mobile Performance

The H1 2016 State of Mobile Performance (SoMP) report is a detailed 33-page analysis of the current state of mobile performance in the US, Europe and India.

Whether you’re an app developer, an industry journalist or just someone interested in learning about how the worldwide mobile landscape is progressing, we hope you’ll download the full H1 2016 State of Mobile report to learn more.

Get it from: http://go.twinprime.com/p/resources/state-of-mobile-performance-2016h1

[Link] IBM Marketplace

Find solutions for Cloud, Data & Analytics, Mobile, IT and much more at the IBM Marketplace

[Link] Difference between AI, Machine Learning, NLP & Deep Learning

With the world advancing rapidly in intelligent, automated and cognitive technologies, the world of the future may well be ruled by robots and smart devices. While it can be a good topic to debate what humans will do in future then, it's probably of interest to you to know, what will power these possibilities.

Artificial Intelligence (AI for short), Machine Learning (ML), Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Deep Learning (DL) are the building blocks behind these trends. But what exactly is the difference between these? Find out here.

[Event] Expert Talks - Conference (Pune, India)

An annual conference dedicated to everything software, Expert Talks brings together some of the brightest minds in our industry for a day of cutting edge conversations... and coffee...

Seminars, demonstrations, and brainstorming will be the order of the day as experts delve deep into the evolving world of software and its myriad facets.

The event is scheduled to be held in Pune on 5th November, 2016. Visit the site to view details.

[Link] APIs for Dummies - Get the book

APIs are like the neural system that powers the digital world of today. Without APIs, there would no mobile apps that seamlessly enable you to search, browse, discover or transact on the go.

While the technology for this has been around for a while, it is only recently, that APIs have gained more prominence. Fret not - if you are somewhat a newbie here, here's just the resource for you:

Get the free book: APIs for Dummies, by IBM.

[Event] HP & Economic Times - Enterprise Digital Transformation

Digital Transformation is on the minds of all enterprises, and is slated to enable the foundation for staying competitive in a world disrupted by technology advances.

Visit the Enterprise Digital Transformation Conference, organized by HP and Economic Times on 29th Sept 2016 in Mumbai.

[Event] IoT Summit, Pune - Sept 2016

"Internet of Things: Link your World" - Exploring the latest happening in IoT Industry and how the Internet of Things will offer businesses and consumers.

The conference explores how the Internet of Things will re-shape our interactions with the real and virtual worlds in the coming years. Bringing together leading IoT companies, Start-Ups and the developer/ Professional community to exchange their ideas with the practical application and utilization of Internet of Things.
Experience a complete technical immersion.
Theme : Discovering the future - Let devices do the talking

Read more at: IoT Summit, Pune 2016

[Link] Wonder, a bot that'll remember anything for you

Bots (also called as virtual agents), like drones, are gradually becoming common place, to help take care of routine tasks. Will that make humans smarter in that they can now do more intelligent things? (That's a separate debate).

Wonder is a new bot that wants to help by remembering anything you want. To know more, visit this link.

[Event] NASSCOM MarTech - Marketing Tech Conference

MarTech is NASSCOM's annual conference aimed to bring together marketers who are also technologists! So this conference is for you if you are a marketing technologist, creative technologist, data scientist, digital strategist or digital marketer.


Visit http://www.nasscom.in/martech/ for more information.

[Link] How AWS Came To Be

Amazon Web Services, AWS for short, is the leader by far in the disruptive world of technology, and more specifically, cloud computing. Who would've thought that a e-commerce company would get into something like this?

Well, here's the interesting inside story for how AWS came to be!

[Event] Agile's Next Frontier: Continuous Visibility

As you strive to deploy smaller releases faster, do you have the real-time visibility you need to make sure you’re delivering the best quality products to your customers? Frameworks and tooling around agile and DevOps have evolved to help, but value streams still go dark during the last mile of software delivery as ideas get converted into digital bytes. As we continue to scale agile across our enterprises, the ability to manage value streams from idea to end-user is becoming a critical requirement


View/register for this webinar

IoT Opportunities: Partners should prep IoT roadmap

Channel partners should start planning their IoT roadmaps, paying particular attention to vertical market skills and integration capabilities.




Read the article here to understand how to tap into the potential of IoT, a disruptive and emerging trend of the not-so-distant future.

[Link] Essential Checklist for Scaling Kanban

This handy checklist can help you scale your Kanban sustainably - and each point in the list also provides some helpful resources too.


http://leankit.com/learn/kanban/scaling-kanban-across-teams/

[Webinar] Data Modeling in Hadoop

Excerpt:
The USP of Hadoop over traditional RDBMS is "Schema on Read".

While the flexibility of choices in data organization, storage, compression and formats in Hadoop makes it easy to process data, understanding the impact of these choices on search, performance and usability allows better design patterns.

Learning when and how to use schemas and data model evolution due to required changes is key to building data-driven applications.

This webinar will explore the various options available and their impact to allow better design choices for data processing and metadata management in Hadoop.


View/register for this on-demand webinar.

[Link] What to Expect From JavaScript In 2016 - Frameworks (Part I)

Javascript - and associated frameworks - have been on a rising trend over the past few years. The "digital economy" pivoted by the anytime, anywhere paradigm, powered by mobile device(s) and cloud computing has skyrocketed the use and popularity of Javascript, no doubt a powerful programming language.

So, what's the future for it looking like?

Find out in this post: What to Expect From JavaScript in 2016 - Frameworks

[Webinar] Best Practices for Microservices

Excerpt:
Microservices is one of the hottest technology trends for 2016. Join us to learn what microservices mean for your business, as our technical experts take you on a journey through microservices best practices and implementation using Anypoint Platform.

• What is the microservices approach and how to achieve business agility with it
• How continuous delivery/continuous integration principles tie in with microservices
• How to implement microservices using Anypoint Platform.

Watch this on-demand webinar from Mulesoft.

[Link] Beyond jQuery: An expert guide to JavaScript frameworks

Javascript frameworks are available aplenty since the past few years. While each is interesting, and offers powerful capabilities, the choice, no doubt leaves one wondering how to pick the right/best one for the task at hand.

This guide provides some good information:
How to choose from 22 essential Javascript frameworks for web and mobile development.

[Link] Overview of the Javascript Ecosystem

Take a look at front-end frameworks, mobile development frameworks, and the Node.js ecosystem in this comprehensive look at all things Javascript.

Read this article at:
https://dzone.com/articles/overview-of-the-javascript-ecosystem

[Link] Alternatives to Jive

Jive is a popular enterprise Collaboration software solution. But, maybe you want to know what, if any, are alternatives.


Here's a good starting point:
https://alternatives.financesonline.com/p/jive/

[Link] Top 7 Open Source JSON Binding Frameworks

Though this link is a bit dated, the frameworks are probably still around.


http://www.developer.com/lang/jscript/top-7-open-source-json-binding-providers-available-today.html

[White Paper] Supply Chain Execution With Real-time Contextual Data

Excerpt:
"Real-time supply chain execution weighs heavily on a very important metric: ETA...
 For the first time in history, technology exists that can take the pulse of your specific supply chain, and give you a competitive advantage in making smarter business decisions. The worlds of  big/fast/smart data and supply chain transactions are converging, and the automated, analytic-driven future of tomorrow is beginning today."


Read this white paper to understand the "Live Supply Chain", that's important for today's global businesses.


http://docs.media.bitpipe.com/io_12x/io_129871/item_1294093/GTNexus-LIVE-WP.pdf
(May need user registration for access)

[Webinar] DevOps - More Than Automation

Excerpt:
Organizations globally have realized the proven benefits DevOps brings – reduced organizational friction, frequent deployments and tighter feedback loops. Benefits that originate with automating the deployment pipeline. But the reality is that DevOps is more than automation.

In this webinar, we will cover:

• “Why DevOps?” through the lens of Incident Response
• The importance of shared operational responsibility on organizational culture
• Why reliable alerting means both tools and people
• How aggregating alerts helps to maintain situational awareness

(Source: http://devops.com/2016/02/10/webinar-devops-more-than-just-automation/)

[Link] How to Build an Enterprise Data Lake

Enterprise Data Lake:

http://resources.idgenterprise.com/original/AST-0163853_how-to-build-an-enterprise-data-lake.pdf

[Link] What is Design Thinking?

Design Thinking is a new, creative approach to help people to think differently, to derive new possibilities, where few (or none) seemed likely. It's a popular approach, that's quickly gaining ground in the industry today.

To know more, read 'Design Thinking as a Strategy for Innovation' and 'Design Thinking - Why Does it Matter?'

See also: Design Thinking on PoweredByThought

[Link] 21 hot programming trends -- and 21 going cold

The tech world is always evolving, and well, it's not easy to keep pace. But, on the other hand, you've got to know what's "in" and what's "out". Hot, or cold, if you may.

Javascript? CSS? Containers? Hypervisors? ...

Read some interesting views on 21 such trends.

[Link] Learning from the PaaS

Container services are redefining PaaS by giving enterprises the freedom to choose best-of-breed tools and services to compose their own.
Learn more about the "container-ization".

[Link] Microsoft integrates Visual Studio with open source Eclipse IDE

After decades, the most popular integrated development environments, Eclipse and Visual Studio, are coming together!!

http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-integrates-visual-studio-with-open-source-eclipse-ide/

[Event] How IoT Analytics Can Drive Competitive Advantage

Excerpt:
"Digital intelligence is the convergence of analytics with real-time data and business processes to drive competitive advantage. Today, sensors are monitoring machines on the factory floor, assets in the oilfield, data center systems, tracking ships and inventory, helping businesses gain productivity and become even more efficient. The Internet of Things (IoT) is fundamentally shifting industry dynamics. Connected things and digital networks are enabling big data analytics to push data-driven decision-making to new frontiers. Real-time and in-context analytics is how these new digital organizations can deliver game changing advantage, along with a new approach to business process management that can seize and act on digital moments to improve the customer experience, grow revenues and improve operational efficiency.

Join this panel discussion featuring guest speaker, Mike Gualtieri of Forrester Research to learn how digital businesses are capturing greater value from big data and real-time data streams for sharper insights, real-time decision-making and competitive advantage."

View the event at:
http://www.tibco.com/destination-digital/roundtable/digital-intelligence?med=masherydd&mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRovs63KZKXonjHpfsX66e0qUaGxlMI%2F0ER3fOvrPUfGjI4ATMVkPa%2BTFAwTG5toziV8R7PNLc1my8YQUxbl

[Link] Beyond jQuery: Guide to choosing the right Javascript framework

Javascript is a critical element of the modern, responsive web and mobile today. The language has grown in popularity, and while that's cool, there are a lot of options out there, and it can be tough even for the experienced to navigate the mish-mash of options.

Thanks to Martin Heller for posting an expert guide:
How to choose from 22 essential Javascript frameworks for web and mobile development.

[Link] 7 signs you're doing DevOps wrong

www.devops.com

If someone asks you "Can I buy DevOps?", how would you respond?

DevOps is a transformative and rapidly embraced approach for enabling agility for today's fast-paced business, striving to embrace the digital economy.

But, before you embark on the journey (or, umm, even if you have, in some way), it's important to look out for some signs that may be a red flag! Know more.

[Link] Twelve Factor App - Building SaaS Right

This one is for architects, looking to design (develop) modern, web/SaaS applications based on proven experience and practices.

Know more at:
http://12factor.net/

[Link] Richardson Maturity Model for REST

REST has taken off in popularity as the preferred choice for enabling the mobile and responsive web of today.

Roy Fielding's Dissertation in 2000 of the topic is a must read for anyone working or looking to work on REST.

In addition, Leonard Richardson has developed a "Maturity Model" for REST, and helps to understand the RESTful paradigm quite easily.

[Link] Artificial Intelligence in the Enterprise

"After a long winter frozen in the technological permafrost, it's springtime again in the field of artificial intelligence"

Read more:
http://www.computerworld.com/article/3030655/emerging-technology/artificial-intelligence-in-the-enterprise-it-s-on.html

[Link] Gravitational Wave Discovery in 2016: A landmark event

The discovery of Gravitational Waves made history this year, on Feb 11 - cementing the genius of Einstein, who predicted these more than a 100 years ago.

It was something the entire scientific community was elated to discover (and, well, let's admit, we're not sure of what it all means in simple terms!).



To understand more about this landmark discovery by the LIGO, read this:
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2016/0215/Why-that-gravitational-wave-discovery-is-such-a-big-deal

[Link] Facebook's Streaming Video Engine

Facebook users upload so many videos, it had to invent a whole new system to deal with them.

http://www.businessinsider.in/Facebook-users-upload-so-many-videos-it-had-to-invent-a-whole-new-system-to-deal-with-them/articleshow/50676232.cms

[Learning] Google just published a free course in deep learning

Deep learning is a hot topic because of its use in solving problems ranging from image recognition to text analysis.

Google just announced a free, 3-month course on Udacity for those interested:
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/google-just-published-free-three-134212389.html
http://googleresearch.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/teach-yourself-deep-learning-with.html

Don't know what deep learning is? Read more here.

[Link] Ever seen a roundabout bridge?

Most of you have probably seen some stunning bridges across the world - across rivers, waterways, valleys, oceans... While each typically is a feat of extraordinary engineering, how come there was never a circular bridge?

Well, engineers/architects in Uruguay, are planing to do just that!
Read at: http://www.businessinsider.com/this-roundabout-bridge-in-uruguay-has-2-specific-purposes-2016-1?IR=T

[Link] Amazon planning to open hundreds of bookstores. Why?

Alright, so after everything was just getting digital, this one takes you by surprise. Bookstores seemed to have been dwindling - not just in the US, but all over the world. Amazon.com began the disruption many years ago.

And, now, there seems to be a new direction. Well, if it's out there, it's probably going to be happening. Which may actually be a good thing, in many ways!

Read this article to understand why:
http://www.vox.com/2016/2/2/10900082/amazon-books-explained

[Link] Facebook's newest data center using Open Compute Project (OCP)

For tech giants, it's a never-ending race to do things that will enable their agility & scalability, all while finding newer avenues to optimize costs.

Facebook, like other new-age companies, needs sizeable infrastructure, within it's data centers. And, while it has been building its own data centers for a while, the newest one will be more efficient (read: greener) and will be powered by the Open Compute Project.

Find out more at: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/facebooks-newest-data-center-going-000000195.html

And, some more interesting related links:
Inside Facebook's data centers: (Slideshow/pictures) 
How Facebook is eating the $140billion hardware market

[Link] How Strong is Gravity on Other Planets?

Ever wanted to understand gravity? Or wondered what is the gravitational force on other planets in our solar system?

Well, this informative article explains this well:


http://www.universetoday.com/35565/gravity-on-other-planets/

[Link] How Uber's devastating New York's taxi business

Uber has been at the forefront in city-based passenger transit and has disrupted the local modes of transport viz. taxis, in many places around the world.

Here are some interesting facts about the impact to NYC;s taxi business.


http://www.vox.com/2015/12/26/10647418/uber-new-york-taxi-medallions

[Link] Bitcoin and Blockchain technology can help counterfeiting

Bitcoin, the virtual, cyber/digital-currency is touted as one of the most secure currencies, and it's use has been steadily growing. Though in it's initial years, acceptance by business and financial institutions had been low, there seems to be a gradual mainstreaming of this with Amazon, Walmart and Nike have begun accepting it.

Blockchain, a technology to provide a "ledger" of bitcoin transactions, is also something that's catching on.

It's a trend that needs to be closely followed.
Read more in this TOI article from the Dec 26, 2015 edition: 'Tech behind bitcoin can help check counterfeiting: RBI"

[Webcast] Automated Mobile App Testing & AWS Device Farm

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has recently launched another useful service: the AWS Device Farm.
This cool offering allows you to provision mobile devices - Android & iOS - to run your mobile application workloads. So, say goodbye to having to setup a device lab for testing your smart apps!

Watch the webcast: Automated Mobile App Testing & AWS Device Farm

[Link] WebSocket Microservice vs REST Microservice

Article about performance of WebSocket Microservice versus REST Microservice.

Also contains more reference links for microservices.

Visit for the article:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/websocket-microservice-vs-rest-qbit-rick-hightower

[Image] Intelligent Automation Continuum

A long-term goal of automation is to make it more intelligent. Along with improving the maturity of processes (BPM Maturity), there's also a dimension to cater to the increasing maturity of digital processes.

(Source: Google | http://image.slidesharecdn.com/fershtnasscombpmphilfershtsessionparti-150924073906-lva1-app6892/95/the-emerging-digital-bpm-economy-strengthening-the-foundations-to-get-ahead-of-the-disruption-curve-13-638.jpg?cb=1443080618)

[Image] Process Management Maturity

Graphic depicting the maturity levels for process management:

(Source: Google / http://joeshepley.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/document-capture-continuum-roadmap.jpg)