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emystifying the Economics of Virtualization and Cloud Computing Posted by Michael Vizard Mar 15, 2011 11:51:15 AM Make the Financial Case for Virtualization and Cloud Computing With the advent of virtualization and cloud computing, figuring out the actual cost of enterprise computing has never been more important or complicated. Now that every application to one degree or another is eventually going to wind up sharing IT infrastructure with some other set of applications, ascribing costs to each application gets significantly more difficult. In the past, when every application pretty much had its own servers, the costs were clear, except for mainframe and minicomputer environments that were designed from the ground up to run a symmetric multiprocessing environment that supported multiple applications. But now that virtualization and cloud computing are pushing the concept of shared IT infrastructure across the entire spectrum of IT, application owners want to know what their true costs for running these environments actually will be. In addition, the chief financial officer - along with the rest of the board of directors - is demanding a more line-by-line accounting of the allocation of IT resources. Conceptually, most IT leaders should welcome this increased level of scrutiny. It gives them a chance to show how efficient they can be, which represents a significant change of pace after decades of meetings with senior managers that only really wanted to know what the availability of IT services was without much regard to the actual budget. The challenge facing many IT organizations today, says Chris Pick, chief marketing officer for Apptio, a provider of IT financial management tools that are available as a service, is they just don't have the tools needed to delve into all the financial elements of the overall IT equation. For example, a new survey of 100 CIOs in the U.S. that was conducted by the market research firm Worldwide Executive Council on behal

Nairobi 2010 Conference Reoprt  Climate Change and Natural Resource Use in Eastern Africa: Impacts, Adaptation and Mitigation Report of the 3rd Scientific Conference of the Ecological Society for Eastern Africa (ESEA) and co-hosted with the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) at Multimedia University College, Nairobi, 19 - 21 May 2010 By Nicholas Oguge, Caroline Lumosi, Teddy Odindo, Joseph Ngondi and Philista Malaki October 4, 2010 Summary While the Earth's climate has changed throughout history, the current warming trend has been of particular concern because most of it is human-induced and proceeding at a rate that is unprecedented.  One of the greatest concerns of this global warming is climate variability and change.  The risks associated with climate change add to development challenges such as food and water insecurity. Although climate change is only one of the many drivers negatively affecting biodiversity and ecosystem services, it certainly exacerbates the other factors such as land degradation and unsustainable natural resource use. There is general concern on the accelerating deterioration of the human environment and natural resources. This would widen poverty levels confronting eastern African countries and threaten gains made towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Thus, the Ecological Society for Eastern African organised its 3rd annual scientific conference with a theme addressing this global challenge.  The idea was to bring together researchers, policy makers and the general public together to discuss the climate change phenomena, its impacts, mitigation strategies and adaptation measures with regard to natural resource use in Eastern Africa. In order to address above issues and to reach out to a wider audience, we designed the conference strategically on three tiers:   1. Plenary talks: to provide policy information and direction, science on climate change, ecological and socio-economic effects, how to commun

over 500 social networking sites that can bookmarks Social Services that can "Manage Bookmarks" Social bookmarking is a way for Internet users to store, organize, share and search bookmarks of web pages. In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share. These bookmarks are usually public, but depending on the service's features, may be saved privately, shared only with specific people or groups, shared only inside certain networks, or another combination of publicness and privateness. The allowed people can usually view these bookmarks chronologically, by category or tags, via a search engine, or even randomly. Most social bookmark services encourage users to organize their bookmarks with informal tags instead of the traditional browser-based system of folders, although some services feature categories/folders or a combination of folders and tags. They also enable viewing bookmarks associated with a chosen tag, and include information about the number of users who have bookmarked them. Some social bookmarking services also draw inferences from the relationship of tags to create clusters of tags or bookmarks. Many social bookmarking services provide web feeds for their lists of bookmarks, including lists organized by tags. This allows subscribers to become aware of new bookmarks as they are saved, shared, and tagged by other users. As these services have matured and grown more popular, they have added extra features such as ratings and comments on bookmarks, the ability to import and export bookmarks from browsers, emailing of bookmarks, web annotation, and groups or other social network features.[1]

Quickclass, virtual learning environment for film schools to teach filmmaking. Purpose-built platform for private, flipped, goal-orientated learning.

Quickclass, virtual learning environment for film schools to teach filmmaking. Purpose-built platform for private, flipped, goal-orientated learning.

In most of the countries, no strict rule has been created for this personal tutoring sector. Thus, to say legally, almost anyone may plan to become a trainer with minimum credentials. The good fact for you is that you do not need any formal documentation to accomplish this private tuition.

Contains I can… talk about how I use the internet, that internet takes me to far away paces and people, that staying safe on internet is like staying safe in real life, I understand what info is private and how to keep it that way.

A great site for making public or private online scrapbooks of images and text. It's a lovely way to present a summary of a topic. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools

This is a fun, cute, social 3D island world designed especially with children in mind. Children make an avatar and follow a quick tutorial and explanation of safety rules. The children can take their characters on quests, play educational games and interact with other users of the site. A fabulous feature of the site is that users are encouraged to 'make and do' offline as well. These activities can be uploaded to a scrapbook and multimedia blog. Offline activities also generate points in the game. The scrapbook is defaulted to private and no photos of children will be approved by moderators if the scrapbook is public. All the usual safety features are in place, including a 'report' and 'block' other users button. The basic account with most features is free, but there are optional 'paid for' extras. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools

A good site for creating private Twitter-like networks where colleagues can send messages and attach files. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools

This is a useful QR code creator that allows you to add a password to your codes. You can use this to protect private information or make the passwords the answer to a question to access a new question to create a chain of questions for a QR code quiz. Encode for a web link, message, contact details or maps. All without needing to sign up! Sign in to get analysis of your codes. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools

A beautifully made Twitter-like social network for schools that supports photos, videos, files and embed html. The site also has a blog feature, calendar and many other fab features. You can set your class to private or public. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools

Recently , while eating with his wife and a friend , Jesse Itzler , founder of Marquis Jet , a business that rents private planes that celebs and executives , not really a loss when his people asked him concerning La Jolla , California , the latest home he laid on the market . " Oh , I forgot to tell you , so I decided to sell the house , " his wife , Sara Blakely , founder of Spanx body shaper ultrasuccessful empire , said nonchalantly. Itzler not affected . It was hardly the first time she has been creating executive decisions regarding their finances without him green - light it . Only a year earlier he had stopped at the entrance of their Connecticut homes that find new Lexus he bought. " I believe him to do whatever he wants , " said Itzler .

OnlineIndiaEducation.com provides students with online study material for various competitive exams and job interviews, and updates about all the latest private and government recruitment.

How An LMS and BYOD Changed A School This article describes a three-year implementation of a Learning Management System into a traditional private school on the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. It shows the capacity of the LMS to promote classroom change and the power of the blended learning approach when a BYOD program is introduced to increase access to learning resources. http://elearningindustry.com/how-an-lms-and-byod-changed-a-school

What is StartAid StartAid is a Social Bookmarking site. Startaid give you the ability to make a custom homepage where you can have all your Bookmarks at your finger tips. With Startaid you can you Category and/or Tag filing systems. Startaid has a powerful Ajax interface to help make the managing of your bookmarks fast and easy. Here are some of the Features of Startaid: - Online Bookmark Manager - Discover New Bookmarks - Design your own Personal Homepage - Access your bookmarks from anywhere Online - You can use Tags and/or Categories - Set Tags, Categories or Bookmarks as private - Comment and discuss Bookmarks with members - Share Groups for controled bookmark sharing - Send boomkarks to friends and members - Bookmark a link with a single click - Bookmarklets for easy bookmarking - Thumbnail images of all your bookmarks - Dynamic Search box for most search platforms - Import all your existing bookmarks Enjoy!

TweetDeck is an Adobe Air desktop application that is currently in private beta. It aims to evolve the existing functionality of Twitter by taking an abundance of information i.e twitter feeds, and breaking it down into more manageable bite sized pieces.

A Wall that allows virtual sticky notes to be stored on the web - Walls can be private or public an can be edited by names groups or the public

Web-based Comics. BitStrips for Schools places it on a private virtual network where teachers can moderate content and review all characters and comics. Students can flag inappropriate comments or bullying, which is then instantly removed pending teacher review. There is a nominal fee of $9.95 per month for up to 40 students.