By LM Sixel

Lots of recruiters won’t be working out of a booth at OTC. So how do you find them if you’re looking to switch jobs and you want to keep your ears open about any potential openings?

One good way is to spend some time drinking coffee or having a snack in the refreshment area. And sit at a table with an extra chair or two.

Recruiters are trolling for job candidates, said Jamie Belinne, assistant dean for career services at the C.T. Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston.

They’re wandering around and looking at name tags, she said. And what better place to launch a conversation than over a soda at the convention concession stand?

It’s not as awkward as approaching someone who’s walking around, she said. Instead, the recruiter can ask if the seat is taken and sit down and chat.

Another giveaway — their names tags are often different from most conventioneers, she said. And they often wear their company shirts with logos.

They can also be spotted hovering at the periphery of the booths but aren’t standing in line to talk to the vendors or on-site recruiters.

Recruiters are discreet, she said. So keep a sharp eye for the stranger eyeing your name tag. And stop frequently for refreshments.

The popular photo and filter app is rolling out a spin-off app that lets users share their creations with a “community for creative people.”

by Dara Kerr

Even though Hipstamatic and Instagram are photo-sharing partners, it seems like Hipstamatic is looking to add a little more social networking to its world.

The company announced Wednesday that it’s launching a Hipstamatic spin-off app called Oggl for iOS. The idea is for people to take Hipstamatic-like photos and then share them with friends and family.

According to a Hipstamatic blog post by co-founders Lucas Buick and Ryan Dorshorst, Oggl is “a community for creative people to capture and curate their lives through photography.” The company is clear that it doesn’t want Oggl to be full of photos of people making kissy faces, bottles of beer they’re drinking, or blurry and boring images of friends.

“Oggl isn’t a fuzzy snap of cooking solo on Tuesday — it’s dinner at French Laundry,” Hipstamatic wrote. “Oggl isn’t screenshots of your favorite album cover — it’s when you hung backstage with the band. Oggl isn’t ducklips or bathroom selfies — it’s living like you mean it, your best creative work, and amazing life moments.”

As Instagram has grown in breadth and popularity — it now touts more than 100 million active monthly users — it has left other photo apps, like Hipstamatic and Camera+, in the dust. Currently, Hipstamatic has 4 million users, according to The Next Web.

While Oggl is Hipstamatic’s foray into social networking, it’s not dropping its partnership with Instagram. All photos on Oggl can easily be shared on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Tumblr, and Flickr.

Currently, Oggl is a free, invite-only app that comes pre-loaded with five situational shooting settings: nightlife, food, portraits, landscapes, and sunsets. For more lens and film options, Oggl offers two subscription plans, either monthly for $0.99 or yearly for $9.99.

TRADITIONALLY, business associates would get to know each other over a round of golf. But road cycling is fast catching up as the preferred way of networking for the modern professional. A growing number of corporate-sponsored charity bike rides and city cycle clubs are providing an ideal opportunity to talk shop with like-minded colleagues and clients while discussing different bike frames and tricky headwinds. Many believe cycling is better than golf for building lasting working relationships, or landing a new job, because it is less competitive.

“When you play golf with somebody you have to decide if you’re going to beat them, or let them beat you,” says Peter Murray, a former architect, journalist and chairman of the NLA centre dedicated to London’s built environment. “If they’re a client and you don’t want to beat them you have to sort of cheat in order to lose. That seems to me not a good way of doing things.”

In 2005 Mr Murray, who is a keen long-distance rider, founded the annual Cycle to Cannes bike ride. This six-day charity event brings together architects and developers who want to cycle 1,500km from London to the MIPIM property fair in southern France each March. It now attracts around 90 riders and has raised £1.5m for a range of charities in Britain and abroad. This year Mr Murray has also founded a more ambitious ride called Portland to Portland. A team will depart Portland Oregon on April 27th and they are due to arrive in Portland Place, London, 76 days and 6575km later. Along the way they will visit cities to discuss the benefits of urban cycling and raise money for several architectural charities.

Group cycling, and especially long-distance riding, is a shared experience, Mr Murray says. Riders often collaborate and help each other out, taking turns to be at the front so that the riders in their slipstream can save almost a third of the effort needed to travel at the same speed. Some riders selflessly volunteer to stay in the front earning them the awe and gratitude of the entire group.

How someone rides a bike can give you a real insight into what a person is like, says Jean-Jacques Lorraine, founding director of Morrow+Lorraine, a young architecture practice in London, and a regular participant of Cycle to Cannes. “Some riders are very single-minded, others more collaborative; some are tactical, others an open book. Some don’t mind being soloists whilst others prefer alliance and allegiance.” A day in the saddle, racing uphill and downhill, creates a bonding experience that endures. “If I walk into a meeting and somebody says ‘I’ve done Cycle to Cannes’ it’s a done deal really,” says Mr Murray.

Mr Lorraine estimates that as much as 75% of the practice’s workload (around 45 projects) has come directly or indirectly from contacts made on the road while cycling, in particular on the Cycle to Cannes ride. Why does he think cycle rides lend themselves so well to networking and making professional contacts? “Grabbing a quick lunch or drink after work, whilst great for different reasons doesn’t give you long enough to get to know someone,” he says. Mr Murray believes long rides break down conventional hierarchical barriers. “A younger rider can be cycling along with a chief executive and take their wind or help them in some way and you get a reversal of the relationship. This changes the relationship when they are off the ride too.”

Many long-distance bike riders say cycling, especially over long distances, simply makes them feel good; it lifts their mood and concentrates things down to the essentials. “The pattern of fuelling, riding, fuelling, arriving, celebrating, sleeping and fuelling again puts all the focus on riding and the company of your fellow riders,” says Simon Mottram, chief executive of Rapha, a premium cycling-clothes brand. The simple repetitiveness eases the stresses and pressures of normal life, making it a powerful counterpoint to our sedentary lives, he adds.

Mr Mottram believes it is easier to get to know people while cycling than in other situations. “There is an easy rhythm about conversations on a bike.” Mr Lorraine makes the point even more strongly: “The adrenaline rushes, the serotonin pulses and the surges of endorphin create a kind of high, a sense of euphoria. I feel open, honest and generous to others. I often find I’m saying things on a bike which I wouldn’t normally say, and equally I’ve been confided in when I wasn’t expecting it.”

Perhaps the most compelling reason why cycling is a good way to network is because, for many professionals, it’s a passion and a way of life. “Getting out on the bike is what we’re all dreaming of doing whilst we’re sitting at our computers,” says Mr Mottram. And a shared passion is a fantastic way to start any relationship.

• • John Rath
    

  Here’s some of today’s noteworthy links for the networking sector of the data center industry:

  Cyan Prices IPO.  Cyan (CYNI) a provider of software defined networking (SDN) and packet-optical platforms for network operators, announced the pricing of its initial public offering of 8,000,000 shares of common stock at $11.00 per share. Shares began trading May 9 on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol CYNI, and ended the day at $11.14. Petaluma, California-based Cyan was founded in 2006 and has raised over $30 million in funding. Late last year, Cyan launched its software defined networking Blue Planet software, aimed at enabling service providers of all types to virtualize their networks.

  Fujitsu Develops SDN-based Platform. Fujitsu announced the development of FUJITSU Intelligent Networking and Computing Architecture, a new architecture for network-wide ICT platform optimization based on the principles of software defined networking (SDN). The new architecture employs a software-based approach to intelligently and flexibly enable optimized control over three unique domains: data centers, wide area networks, and smart devices. In the initial phase, Fujitsu is offering the following products based on this architecture: an updated version of unified administration and control software for server, storage and network resources, a new switch that supports network virtualization, and a new virtual appliance platform.

  • Enhanced. Exinda announced significant enhancements to the its Network Optimization suite that uniquely combines WAN Optimization, Network Control and Application Monitoring into an integrated solution specifically designed to meet the growing requirements of mid-market enterprises and educational institutions. With the release of its 6.4 firmware, the Exinda suite integrates many of these tools into a single converged solution that allows network managers better control of their network and create a more predictable user experience for applications that rely on it. “With the growth of tools for network management and the lack of integration between these tools, the complexity of performance management has increased,” said Jim Rapoza, senior network analyst for Aberdeen Group. “However, there has been a push among companies to deploy products that offer a single integrated platform for network control, along with deep visibility into user experience and application performance. Aberdeen Group data shows that 88 percent of organizations have or plan to centralize network and application performance and user experience visibility. By deploying an all-in-one integrated platform, these organizations are working to meet user demand, manage cost, and maintain or improve the overall quality of their network and application experience.”

    Silver Peak joins NEC. Silver Peak Systems  announced it has joined NEC Corporation of America (NEC) to include its data acceleration software as part of NEC’s new Software-Defined Networking (SDN) Application Center.  The NEC SDN Application Center focuses on solutions that address customers’ top-of-mind network concerns. “Silver Peak’s leadership in delivering software-based WAN optimization is the perfect complement to NEC’s market-leading ProgrammableFlow Network Suite,” said Don Clark, director of business development, IT Platform Technologies, NEC Corporation of America. “Silver Peak virtual products plug into our new SDN Application Center to give customers maximum flexibility and performance for extending business-critical applications across any distance.”

By Sarah Perez

The latest to join the cadre of startups offering tools for more private sharing outside of Facebook’s massive footprint is not, in fact, another startup, but rather another media giant: Disney. Citing its “rich heritage in storytelling,” Disney’s Interactive division, best known for games, sites, and virtual worlds like “Where’s My Water?,” “Temple Run: Brave,” “Club Penguin,” Disney.com, and more, today launched a personal, mobile memory maker simply called “Story.”

Though our saved digital memories have long since included time, date and location information, only more recently have we begun to see a steady stream of newer mobile applications that use that data for grouping photos or creating shared albums with friends. Color was the big example standing out in everyone’s mind of how not to handle location-based photo albums, but others that followed, including Flock, Cluster, Tracks, Flayvr, Moment.me, Everpix, and many more, have been experimenting to varying degrees in this space.

But because of Story’s scrapbooking-esque annotation and customization features, it also shares a similarity to mobile photo-book makers like Mosaic, SimplePrints and KeepShot, for example. Unfortunately, Story stops short of actually allowing you to order a printed book at the finish of your creation. However, Scott Gerlach, Senior Director of Engineering at Disney Interactive, says that’s something that’s “definitely” being considered for the future.

“In our extensive usability testing of Story, we heard clearly from our users that they’d like to purchase high-quality printed materials for themselves and others,” he tells us, adding that the company is “absolutely looking at different options to help users share their stories.” Those options may even include other photo-based gifts, too.

These extra options would likely be added to Story as in-app purchases alongside other premium features the company has in the works, such as upgraded themes, for example. But for now, the app itself is entirely free, with no ads.

Story itself is simple to use. To further edit any of Story’s automatically created albums, you can tap a button to add more content, including photos, videos or text, or change the theme. You can also tap on any individual item to caption it, remove it, or change the size. You can also drag and drop items around to swap their positions in a way that’s reminiscent to what the Kleiner Perkins-backed startup Erly once offered years ago on the web, before it sold to Airtime in March 2012.

Once you’ve created your “story,” you can then email it to your family or friends, or choose to share it a bit more broadly by posting to Facebook. Stories can also be embedded on your own website, if you choose.

If there’s any complaint with the app, it’s that it has launched only half-done, despite having the resources of a larger corporation at its disposal. Story would make the most sense on iPad, but support for both that and Android isn’t yet available, nor is the option for printed books or other trendy features like photo filters or stickers.

That being said, from the sounds of it, Story will slowly morph into a micro social network for families and/or other close friends over time, as Gerlach hints at plans for “more social and collaborative” features in time. That speaks to things like commenting, liking or shared albums, perhaps, and could put Story up against other family-first mobile apps like Famil.io, Familiar, or Tweekaboo, for instance.

But for now, Story sits somewhere in middle of all these competitors, not quite finished on any front. If you’re leaning towards photo-book creation or private, family-focused social networking, there are other apps that still lead this space for now.

The new app, which debuts first on iPhone, takes the photos and videos saved on your device, then automatically organizes them into sharable, but by default, private albums that can also be personalized with captions, text and various themes and layouts. The albums’ content is also saved in iCloud, so it can be backed up and synced to other Apple devices.

Separating a collection of photos into albums isn’t exactly a new trick. Practically every photo-management application today, including Apple’s own Photos app, allows for some level of organization. What makes Disney’s app a bit more cutting edge is the way it automatically organizes the content for you based on the time and location of the photos and videos it finds.

by: MKenneth Feick

For anybody who is fed up with the inadequate overall performance of their shared web server but not yet in a position to step up to a costly dedicated server than the most suitable option available for you would be a Virtual Private Server (VPS).

The two main forms of VPS solutions are managed and unmanaged VPS services. Managed VPS hosting services are similar in a lot of ways to hosting that is shared. You’ll receive skilled pros who will take care of any issues with your hosting server which could develop.

Managed VPS hosting servers are the most useful way to go if you’re not very tech savvy or do not have the employees available to take care of any technical concerns that will arise with the hosting. You may also decide on Managed hosting if you’re a business owner who just desires to focus on operating their business rather than concern yourself with if your server is functioning so that your clients can reach and use it. You can sleep well at night knowing your website is in safe hands.

Most good Managed VPS hosting providers will ensure you get 24/7 support that should quickly try to deal with any complications with your hosting server or if you would like to add new email accounts or domains to the server. It is possible to usually put in a simple request and this will be taken good care of.

A great company is Tecsys who make available both virtual offices in India among their services.

Unmanaged VPS hosting services will mean that you happen to be accountable for caring for your Windows or Linux server. Unmanaged servers tend to be made use of by businesses that either have proprietors that are technically very knowledge and can fix any problems that may crop up or they hire staff who are able to handle the problems on behalf of the company.

Although unmanaged VPS hosting is frequently less than managed hosting simply because you are not paying for the technical support nevertheless, you have to make sure you’ll be able to take care of any technical issues that happen or you might find yourself with no functioning internet site for hours on end or even days which ultimately means that you end up paying much more in lost business than it would should you have had used a managed VPS hosting account.

If you’re willing to take your online business to a higher level then you certainly should consider upgrading from a shared server to a VPS hosting account that you either are comfortable taking care of yourself or opt to have a great hosting company manage it for you.