How to Stop Your Social Networks From Distracting You

Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and other social networks help you stay connected with friends and family, but it's easy to overdo the connecting and end up distracted and unproductive. Worse, many social networks notify you every time someone tries to interact with you, making it even harder to concentrate on productive tasks. Turning these helpful reminders off can be tricky in some instances, but setting up a way to tune out mobile and e-mail notifications is well worthwhile. Here's how to stop your social networks from distracting you, so you can get your working life back on track. And don't worry--you can still peek at your Twitter page once in a while.

Silence Your Smartphone

The most disruptive and intrusive notifications in my life are the push notifications that my smartphone reports from various apps and social networks. Though I was initially excited to have access to push notifications, I quickly turned them off for almost all of my apps so that I could avoid being pestered by updates that tended to be pretty trivial. The process for turning off mobile notifications varies slightly from OS to OS, but it's usually not too complicated.

Your best bet with an Android phone is to open the offending app, press the Menu key, locate the messaging settings under that menu, and select the apps that you'd like to turn off notifications for. Unfortunately, if you want to kill all of your push notifications, you'll have to do it manually in each app.

Silencing your notifications on an iOS 5 device is both easier and more obtuse, as you'll need to navigate to Settings, Notifications to make the modifications. From there, select an app and set the 'Alert Style' to None. Once again, you'll need to go app by app to turn off all alerts; but they're all in one menu, so it shouldn't take much time--and blocking incessant alerts will help you avoid hours of lost productivity.

Mute Your Inbox

Once you've muffled your mobile devices' alerts, you can turn your attention to removing annoying auto-updates from your email account. Turning off email notifications from Facebook and Twitter is a simple (albeit somewhat time-consuming) matter of finding and editing your notification settings in each service.

To eliminate Facebook email notifications, select Account Settings in the drop-down menu on the upper right side of your Facebook page, and then select Notifications from the menu on the left side of the page, to bring up your notification preferences. Manually select each part of your Facebook account, and unclick each checked box to turn off the corresponding notification e-mail. Facebook's incredibly granular approach to settings means you'll have to uncheck a lot of boxes on this screen, but the arrangement does let you control the email notifications you receive (so you can find out when someone posts pictures of you, but skip all the game invites), and it should reduce the amount of time you spend checking your email.

To turn off Twitter's email notifications about new followers, retweets, and so on, first log in to your Twitter account and select Settings from the upper right drop-down menu; then selectNotifications from the new menu on the left. Twitter has far fewer settings here than Facebook has in its modification options area. Simply turn off the six notification options, and you'll be ready to go on your way.

Is the bright red Google+ notification icon in the top-right corner of your GMail account distracting you? Regrettably, the notification toolbar in Google+ is impossible to kill from your Google settings, and if you're a GMail user you'll often find your eyes drawn to that bright red reminder. If you want to continue to use Google services without having to endure the Google+ notification bar, download Google Chrome and install the Hide Google+ Notification extension.

The Nuclear Option

If you've turned off all of your notifications but find that you still waste most of your day on Facebook and Twitter, it's time to accept that the problem might rest with you as much as with the sites themselves. If you can't help yourself, install a browser extension that blocks distracting sites automatically. As a Chrome user I prefer StayFocusd--a useful extension that completely blocks unwanted sites except during a limited time (the default duration is 10 minutes) each day. That way you can ensure that you don't miss out on important updates, without wasting your whole day on the Web.

Firefox users should check out the similar Leechblock. Internet Explorer users are out of luck, and Safari doesn't have a real alternative either. But Mac users can try SelfControl, an OS X application that lets you create a blacklist of sites you don't want to visit and then blocks access to those sites across all browsers. Congratulations! By adopting these simple measures, you've taken a big step toward shutting out distraction and becoming more productive.

The Best Email Tool You’re Not Using

The best-kept secret of the business world? Email reminder services, which can help turn overloaded inboxes into productivity powerhouses.

Email reminder services such as Followupthen make you more productive.No, really. I’ve been using these services for the past couple years, and I’m constantly amazed at how helpful they are--and how few people know they exist.

See, I use my inbox as a kind of to-do list, marking as unread any messages I don’t have time to answer now or need to act on later.

The problem is, as my inbox fills up with other mail, these messages get pushed lower and lower, until eventually they're forced out of sight--and out of mind.

A reminder service gives you a kind of email snooze button. All you do is forward a selected message to a particular e-mail address; at the designated time, it’ll return to your inbox.

For example, suppose a PR person emails me about a new product launch that’s happening next Monday. I decide to write about it, but not until the actual launch day. Instead of spending a bunch of time setting up a reminder in my calendar or to-do list, I simply forward that email to monday@reminderservice.com.

When Monday rolls around, presto: There’s the email again.

Different services have different syntax for the kinds of delays you can set, but for the most part it’s pretty straightforward: 2pm@reminderservice.com, tomorrow@reminderservice.com,june1@reminderservice.com, and so on.

What’s especially nice is that if an email arrives (make that re-arrives) and you’re still not ready to deal with it, you can click a snooze-delay link right inside the message.

So, what reminder services are available, and which ones are best? PC World’s Liane Cassavoy recently reviewed three free email reminder services: Boomerang for Gmail, Followup.cc, and Followupthen.com. (Keep in mind that “free” gets you just the basics; for more advanced features, you’ll want to look at pro-level accounts. Worth every penny, in my humble opinion.)

I’ve tried all three of these services myself, and while they’re all great, I have to give the nod to Followupthen. That said, I also recommend checking out Nudgemail, which has been in beta forever but continues to be fully free while it is.

Secure Your BIOS

You probably don’t interact with your PC’s BIOS (Basic Input/Output Operating System) much, but it occupies a unique and highly privileged position in your computer’s architecture.

Since the BIOS loads before the operating system--and before you enter your user credentials--malware surreptitiously introduced into the BIOS could activate itself long before any anti-malware software has an opportunity to detect it. A sophisticated and malicious program operating at such a low level could take control of your PC without providing a clue that it was there.

And fortunately, there have been very few confirmed cases of malware infections at the BIOS level. The most famous is 1998’s Chernobyl virus, and the vulnerabilities that enabled that exploit are not present in new PCs. UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) and the secure boot mechanism in Windows 8 will make this less of an issue, but that’s a topic for another article.

But it’s always better to be safe than sorry. The first step in your safety plan is to protect your BIOS with an administrator password that must be entered before a BIOS update can occur. We’ll show you how.

Step 1:Boot or reboot your PC. While it’s starting up, repeatedly tap the ‘DEL,’ ‘F1,’ or whatever other special key is required to launch the BIOS. This information is typically displayed onscreen during the boot process, although it might not be immediately obvious.This text, for instance, appears verbatim at the bottom of the screen for just a few moments after we start our computer:

Step 2: Once your BIOS setup menu is loaded, look for the menu item that enables you to set up a password. There might be more than one.

Our BIOS, for example, has provisions for setting up both a “supervisor” password and a “user” password. In our case, you must log in with the supervisor password to make changes to the BIOS. The user password only allows you to see the current BIOS values.

Step 3: Select the menu item for creating the password and enter a password (usually twice, to verify what you typed the first time). If you think you might have trouble remembering the password later, as you’ll access your BIOS infrequently, store it in a password locker utility such as LastPass.

Save your BIOS changes and your computer will reboot. From here on out you’ll need to enter this password before any changes can be made to your BIOS, ensuring malware will have a harder time harming your PC.

Windows 8 Multi-screen

When Microsoft launches Windows 8 Release Preview next month the operating system will have improved navigation features for users who like more than one monitor to display all their applications

The upgrade - the last major tune-up expected before the final version launches sometime this fall - addresses task bars, desktop backgrounds and that no man's land, the common edge shared by adjacent screens, according to the Building Windows 8 blog.

The current problem with that common edge is that when users mouse over to them - for example to hit the minimize button - they sometimes overshoot and wind up on the next screen instead of the screen they started off on. They either have to slow down or adjust the window size so there's a buffer between the edge of the window and the edge of the screen.

With Windows 8 Release Preview, Microsoft has created interface corners that are larger than 6 pixels tall so users can pull up a little short of the edge but still hit the active interface. The active area extends a little beyond the corner itself to present a larger target.

These corners have new uses with Windows 8 that they didn't have with Windows 7. Corners contain access to applications, charm bars and the Start screen.

The active corners have also been revised so they only work for the monitor the cursor is active on. So when the cursor moves from one screen to another, the corners won't initially work on the second screen until the user establishes that that is the screen being worked on. So if users do overshoot the active screen, they won't accidentally click on an active corner on the other screen.

To improve the ability to organize the location of active applications, the Release Preview will add a new keyboard shortcut just for moving Metro applications from screen to screen - Windows key+page up/page down. The shortcut for moving traditional desktop apps remains Windows key+shift+arrow. All apps can be moved from screen to screen via drag and drop as well.

In the upcoming version Microsoft gives more options for the functionality of taskbars on each screen, giving users new options.

The default setting is to make the taskbar fully functional on all screens. Rather than having to manipulate the cursor back to the primary screen and perhaps turn their heads, users can access all taskbar icons from every screen.

Alternatively, they can have the taskbar show icons only for those windows that appear on each screen. The downside is that users have to remember which windows are open on which screens in order to find their icons.

Or users can set up a main monitor with a taskbar that always displays all icons, and other monitors' taskbars show only icons for the windows open on them. So when users are looking for a particular window but aren't sure on which screen it is open, they know they can find it on the master monitor.

The Start button, charms bar and calling up recently used application will be accessible from all monitors. In the Consumer Preview they were available only on one screen.

Microsoft has spent a lot of effort on desktop backgrounds in the release preview, making it possible to put a different one on each screen or to spread a single image so it is displayed just once over all the screens. When different pictures are used, they can be displayed on horizontally oriented monitors in landscape mode or rotated 90 degrees with in portrait mode.

Fifth-Generation Wi-Fi

If your business has kept pace with changes in wireless networking, you've deployed dual-band routers and client adapters that can stream encrypted data over the airwaves at speeds greater than 100 megabits per second at relatively close range.

But no good deed goes unpunished. New hardware based on the nearly finished 802.11ac standard is about to debut, and it will make your existing wireless infrastructure feel as though it's mired in molasses.

Though the standards body responsible for defining 802.11ac hasn't finished dotting all the i's and crossing all the t's yet, semiconductor manufacturers Broadcom and Qualcomm Atheros are already sampling 802.11ac chipsets (Broadcom has labeled its effort "5G Wi-Fi"). Both companies are closely involved in defining the standard, and they promise to deliver firmware updates to correct for any minor changes that may creep into the standard between now and the moment it is ratified (probably later this year or early in 2013).

Wondering how the IEEE moved from 802.11n to 802.11ac? The standards body uses a new letter suffix to identify each new technical paper related to the 802.11 project, so the logical follow-ons to 802.11z were 802.11aa, 802.11ab, and now 802.11ac. The standard is dubbed "fifth-generation Wi-Fi" because it's the fifth generation of the technology that will be certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance marketing consortium. At the risk of muddying the waters, there is an 802.11ad standard in the works, but it's not the next step in mainstream wireless networking. WiGig, as that standard is known, is a short-range, line-of-site technology that uses the 60GHz frequency band to stream media.

Unlike 802.11n networking hardware, which can use either the 2.4GHz or the 5GHz frequency bands, 802.11ac devices will operate exclusively on the 5GHz band. The 2.4GHz band delivers better range, but Wi-Fi data streams that use it must compete with a multitude of other devices that operate at the same frequency--everything from microwave ovens to Bluetooth headsets). The 5GHz band contains many more available channels; and in the 802.11ac standard, each of those channels is 80MHz wide, versus the 40MHz width specified for channels under the 802.11n standard.

Trendnet’s TEW-811DR router will support 802.11ac.

What's more, 802.11ac will use a modulation scheme that quadruples the amount of data that will fit on an encoded carrier signal. The maximum bandwidth per spatial stream in 802.11n is 150 mbps, which means that an 802.11n router outfitted with three transmit and three receive antennas can deliver maximum theoretical throughput of 450 mbps. In contrast, the maximum bandwidth in 802.11ac jumps to 433 mbps per spatial stream, and the maximum number of spatial streams increases from three to eight. So the theoretical maximum throughput on an 802.11ac network will eventually be several times that of gigabit ethernet. First-generation devices, however, will be limited to using either two or three transmit and receive antennas to deliver a theoretical throughput maximum of 866 mbps or 1.3 gbps).

As we've seen with 802.11n networks, real-world throughput will likely be one-third to one-half as fast as the theoretical maximums. Still, even mobile devices outfitted with 802.11ac chipsets and just one transmit and one receive antenna--think smartphones and tablets--should be able to handle more than twice the bandwidth that today's devices with 802.11n chipsets can manage. With bandwidth-intensive applications such as videoconferencing and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) moving from the desktop to smartphones and tablets, 802.11ac networks will become essential infrastructure elements for businesses large and small.

One means of overcoming the 5GHz band's shorter range with 802.11ac chipsets will be to utilize transmit and receive beam-forming technology. Beam forming was an optional and non-standardized element of the 802.11n spec. In the 802.11ac standard, beam-forming will remain an optional feature, but its implementation will be standardized. Most of today's 802.11n devices use omnidirectional signal transmission and reception. Signals propagate in a series of concentric rings, like the ripples you create by dropping a stone in a pond.

With beam forming, the router and its clients develop an awareness of each other's relative location, so they can coherently focus their transmission streams at each other. Without beam forming, reflected signals may arrive out-of-phase and cancel each other out, reducing total bandwidth. A beam-forming chipset can adjust the signals' phase to overcome that problem, thereby substantially increasing usable bandwidth.

The first generation of 802.11ac routers, such as the Trendnet TEW-811DR, will be concurrent dual-band models that support 802.11n clients on the 2.4GHz frequency band and 802.11ac clients on the 5GHz band. These devices are likely to reach the market in the third quarter of this year. Laptops with 802.11ac chipsets should arrive in time for the winter holiday season, with mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets following in early 2013. The Wi-Fi Alliance, which has assumed responsibility for ensuring that wireless networking products interoperate properly, plans to begin its 802.11ac certification program in early 2013.

Storing Pictures in Oracle Tables

Storing Pictures in Oracle Tables

Photographs and pictures and Oracle BLOB data are easy to add to a Oracle table. There are two ways to load BLOBs and CLOBs into the database. The first method uses PL/SQL and the DBMS_LOB package and the BFILE datatype to transfer external LOB files into the database internal LOB structures. The second uses the Oracle Call Interface (OCI) to perform the same function. Let's look at the first method.

To load external LOB data into internal LOB storage using PL/SQL alone you must first use a table containing BFILE locators for the files to allow Oracle to access them.

create table graphics_table (

  bfile_id number,

  bfile_desc varchar2(30),

  bfile_loc bfile,

  bfile_type varchar2(4))

  TABLESPACE appl_data

  storage (initial 1m next 1m pctincrease 0)

 /

Listing 3: Example Use of BFILE datatype in a Table

Notice in the above code that no LOB storage clause is specified. This is because all that is stored in the database is a locator value for the BFILE consisting of an internal DIRECTORY specification and a file name. The BFILE locators are loaded into the table using the BFILENAME function and a standard insert statement.

An example of this process is shown here in Listing 4.

SQL> INSERT INTO graphics_table

  2  VALUES(4,'April Book of Days Woodcut',bfilename('GIF_FILES','APRIL.JPG'),'JPEG');

1 row created.

SQL> INSERT INTO graphics_table

  2  VALUES(8,'August Book of Days Woodcut',bfilename('GIF_FILES','AUGUST.JPG'),'JPEG');

1 row created.

SQL> INSERT INTO graphics_table

  2  VALUES(13,'Benzene Molecule',bfilename('GIF_FILES','BENZNE.GIF'),'GIF');

1 row created.

.

.

.

SQL> INSERT INTO graphics_table

  2  VALUES(30,'',bfilename('GIF_FILES','SHAPIROS.GIF'),'GIF');

1 row created.

SQL> INSERT INTO graphics_table

  2  VALUES(31,'',bfilename('GIF_FILES','SODF5.GIF'),'GIF');

1 row created.

SQL> INSERT INTO graphics_table

  2  VALUES(32,'',bfilename('GIF_FILES','WAVRA-CL.GIF'),'GIF');

1 row created.

SQL> commit;

Commit complete.

Listing 4: Example Set of INSERT Commands to Load BFILE Locators Manually

TIP:

Using a host command to perform a single column directory listing into a file (for example on NT: dir /B >file.lis), then using the UTL_FILE package to read the contents of the created file into the DBMS_SQL package to build the INSERT commands on the fly, an entire directory of LOB datafiles can be loaded at one time into a BFILE table and then on into the internal LOB storage table. For an example see Listing 5.

CREATE  OR REPLACE PROCEDURE get_bfiles

(

                                        

bfile_dir in  VARCHAR2,

                                        

bfile_lis in  VARCHAR2,

                                       

 bfile_int_dir VARCHAR2)

AS

 cur           INTEGER;

 bfile_int    VARCHAR2(100);

 sql_com   VARCHAR2(2000);

 file_proc   INTEGER;

 file_hand  utl_file.file_type;

 file_buff    VARCHAR2(1022);

 file_type   VARCHAR2(4);

BEGIN

 bfile_int:=UPPER(bfile_int_dir);

 file_hand:=utl_file.fopen(bfile_dir,bfile_lis,'R');

 LOOP

   BEGIN

   utl_file.get_line(file_hand,file_buff);

   cur:=dbms_sql.open_cursor;

   file_type:=SUBSTR(file_buff,INSTR(file_buff,'.')+1,3);

   file_type:=UPPER(file_type);

   IF file_type='GIF'

    THEN

        file_type:='GIF';

    ELSIF file_type='JPG'

    THEN file_type:='JPEG';

   END IF; 

   sql_com:= 'INSERT INTO graphics_table '||CHR(10)||

             'VALUES (graphics_table_seq.NEXTVAL,'||CHR(39)||CHR(39)||

             ', bfilename('||

             CHR(39)||bfile_int||CHR(39)||','

             ||CHR(39)||file_buff||CHR(39)||

             ') ,'||CHR(39)||file_type||CHR(39)||')';

   dbms_output.put_line(sql_com);

   dbms_sql.parse(cur,sql_com,dbms_sql.v7);

   file_proc:=dbms_sql.execute(cur);

   dbms_sql.close_cursor(cur);

   EXCEPTION

    WHEN no_data_found THEN

   EXIT;

   END;

 END LOOP;

 utl_file.fclose(file_hand);

END;

/

Listing 5: Example Procedure for Loading BFILE Locators based on an External File List

Once the BFILE locators are set in the BFILE table we can use the DBMS_LOB package to read the external LOB (BFILE) into an internal LOB (BLOB, CLOB or NCLOB). This is shown in Listing 6. The SELECT from the TEMP_BLOB table initializes the internal LOB values so they can be used, otherwise an error will be returned.

CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE load_lob AS

  id         NUMBER;

  image1     BLOB;

  locator    BFILE;

  bfile_len  NUMBER;

  bf_desc    VARCHAR2(30);

  bf_name    VARCHAR2(30);

  bf_dir     VARCHAR2(30);

  bf_typ     VARCHAR2(4);

  ctr integer;

  CURSOR get_id IS

    SELECT bfile_id,bfile_desc,bfile_type FROM graphics_table;

BEGIN

  OPEN get_id;

LOOP

  FETCH get_id INTO id, bf_desc, bf_typ;

  EXIT WHEN get_id%notfound;

  dbms_output.put_line('ID: '||to_char(id));

  SELECT bfile_loc INTO locator FROM graphics_table WHERE bfile_id=id;

  dbms_lob.filegetname(

locator,bf_dir,bf_name);

  dbms_output.put_line('Dir: '||bf_dir);

  dbms_lob.fileopen(locator,dbms_lob.file_readonly);

  bfile_len:=dbms_lob.getlength(locator);

  dbms_output.put_line('ID: '||to_char(id)||' length: '||to_char(bfile_len));

  SELECT temp_blob INTO image1 FROM temp_blob;

  bfile_len:=dbms_lob.getlength(locator);

  dbms_lob.loadfromfile(image1,locator,bfile_len,1,1);

  INSERT INTO internal_graphics VALUES (id,bf_desc,image1,bf_typ);

  dbms_output.put_line(bf_desc||' Length: '||TO_CHAR(bfile_len)||

  ' Name: '||bf_name||' Dir: '||bf_dir||' '||bf_typ);

  dbms_lob.fileclose(locator);

END LOOP;

END;

/

Listing 6: Example Procedure to Load BFILE values into Internal LOBs

By enforcing a naming standard on the external LOB files the loading procedure in Listing 6.6 could be modified to place BLOB types into BLOBs, CLOB types into CLOBs and NCLOB types into NCLOBs based on the file type values that are parsed from the file extensions in Listing 5. Between the procedure in Listing 5 and the one shown in Listing 6 the example tables in Listings 1 and 3 are populated with LOB values located in a specific directory.

Data Mining Techniques

There are several major data mining techniques have been developed and used in data mining projects recently including association, classification, clustering, prediction and sequential patterns. We will briefly examine those data mining techniques with example to have a good overview of them.

Association

Association is one of the best known data mining technique. In association, a pattern is discovered based on a relationship of a particular item on other items in the same transaction. For example, the association technique is used in market basket analysis to identify what products that customers frequently purchase together. Based on this data businesses can have corresponding marketing campaign to sell more products to make more profit.

Classification

Classification is a classic data mining technique based on machine learning. Basically classification is used to classify each item in a set of data into one of predefined set of classes or groups. Classification method makes use of mathematical techniques such as decision trees, linear programming, neural network and statistics. In classification, we make the software that can learn how to classify the data items into groups. For example, we can apply classification in application that “given all past records of employees who left the company, predict which current employees are probably to leave in the future.” In this case, we divide the employee’s records into two groups that are “leave” and “stay”. And then we can ask our data mining software to classify the employees into each group.

Clustering

Clustering is a data mining technique that makes meaningful or useful cluster of objects that have similar characteristic using automatic technique. Different from classification, clustering technique also defines the classes and put objects in them, while in classification objects are assigned into predefined classes. To make the concept clearer, we can take library as an example. In a library, books have a wide range of topics available. The challenge is how to keep those books in a way that readers can take several books in a specific topic without hassle. By using clustering technique, we can keep books that have some kind of similarities in one cluster or one shelf and label it with a meaningful name. If readers want to grab books in a topic, he or she would only go to that shelf instead of looking the whole in the whole library.

Prediction

The prediction as it name implied is one of a data mining techniques that discovers relationship between independent variables and relationship between dependent and independent variables. For instance,prediction analysis technique can be used in sale to predict profit for the future if we consider sale is an independent variable, profit could be a dependent variable. Then based on the historical sale and profit data, we can draw a fitted regression curve that is used for profit prediction.

Sequential Patterns

Sequential patterns analysis in one of data mining technique that seeks to discover similar patterns in data transaction over a business period. The uncover patterns are used for further business