Blogging: Free or Moderated Comments?

I've just changed the settings of this blog, moving from free to moderated comments. It's impressive how many comments are coming from spammers and from people interested in optimizing their ranking in search engines (SEO). While this will imply a few more clicks from my side, I'll do all my best to approve each and every relevant comment as soon as possible.

To briefly extend the topic, I'd like to point to a few sites containing notable statistics on both legal an illicit use of communication channels:

• MessageLabs Intelligence - This website hosts the MessageLabs Intelligence report, which provides the latest threat trends to keep you informed regarding the ongoing fight against viruses, spam and other unwelcome content.
  
• Email Marketing Consumer Report - ContactLab presents the results of the latest research on the use of e-mail among Internet users. The study, in its European edition, describes and compares e-mail and newsletters habits and behaviour in Italy, Spain, France, Germany and the United Kingdom, highlighting similarities and differences between the different markets.

Email, Blogs, Wikis, Twitter, etc.. are all good ways to improve brand awareness, generate leads and deliver marketing campaigns, but unfortunately sometimes they are used in a wrong manner. I hope that in the future there will be a way to counteract this phenomenon, but for now comments are moderated and spam filters on email accounts are in place! ;)

Luca

MySQL and Java - The World's Most Popular Development Platforms

On Feb 10, 2010 we've held an event in Milan, explaining why MySQL and Java are the most popular development platforms.

Our annual MySQL User Survey conducted in early 2009 showed that 57%  of those surveyed use Java to develop their MySQL applications.

My speech was all about MySQL and its usage from Java applications with various connectors. I explained the capabilities of Connector/J and Connector/MXJ, you can see relevant on demand webinars here.

After that, I moved to the usage of MySQL Cluster from Java applications, elucidating the three types of connectivity available. If you want to see for yourself then take a look at the blog post by my colleague Bernhard or hurry up and register for the upcoming webinars.

If you are a Java developer, don't forget to look at the Java page on our website alongside the developer portal.

Thanks for your participation and see you soon,

Luca

14/Jan/2010 - Web Based Collaborative Content Management with Alfresco and MySQL

Join us for this informative Italian technical webinar with Gabriele Columbro at Alfresco Software and me at MySQL.
We will explore the benefits of an open source Collaborative Content Management stack based on Alfresco and MySQL.

This webinar describes how Alfresco Share offers a great experience for team collaboration and will detail use case examples of organisation who have adopted Alfresco Share as a collaboration platform for coordinating with distributed teams, clients and business partners.

Alfresco delivers the collaborative features of SharePoint but runs on an open source stack and comes embedded MySQL as the default database. MySQL is the world's most popular open source database at the heart of many Enterprise Content Management solutions.

The presentation will be approximately 45 minutes long followed by Q&A. Register here.

A New App Store for Business Applications

One of the best things that I've enjoyed when I've bought an iPhone is the colossal amount of applications available on the App Store. From there I can download as many apps as I like: dictionaries, yellow pages, navigation software, games or anything else.

I was surprised to know that a former colleague decided to apply the same successful approach to business applications. I can clearly see the need for a similar portal, since anytime I look for a potential solution to suite my customers needs I have to search in many places.

Part of Sun Startup Essentials and fully running on MySQL, GetApp.Com is the site that you should take a look at if you are starting a project or searching for a specific solution.
Featuring over 2270 applications listed in more that 300 categories I doubt that you won't be able to find what you are looking for.

Congratulations for the idea!

18/Nov/2009 - The Open Source Data Warehouse Revolution

On the 18th of November we've hold in Milan an event focused on Open Source Data Warehousing.

For many organizations, data warehouses are simply too costly to buy, too costly to implement and too costly to maintain. Data warehousing is still a luxury of deep-pocketed organizations, although the resulting benefits can be virtually reaped by companies of all sizes.
Open Source Software is changing the rules again, lowering the economic barriers to undertake Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing projects.

During the event we proved that MySQL can help organizations to achieve higher ROI on their projects. With the support of our partners, Infobright and Talend, we showed how to design, deploy and manage a multi-terabyte Data Warehouse with Open Source Software.

Participants have shown a lot of interest in MySQL, Infobright and Talend. More informations can be found here: http://www.mysql.com/why-mysql/application-scenarios/data-warehouse.html

We hope to host similar events in the future. Thanks to all participants!
Luca