PGConf NYC 2014, the New York City-based nonprofit PostgreSQL conference focused on user-oriented talks hosted by the NYC PostgreSQL User Group (NYCPUG) is taking place on April 3-4 at the New York Marriott Downtown. We are pleased to announce our talks and schedule:

http://nyc.pgconf.us/2014/schedule/

While we would love to highlight all the talks in our announcements, here is a brief glimpse of what to expect at PGConf NYC 2014:

• Keynote: Bryan Doyle, Vice President, Technical Division, Goldman Sachs
• Keynote: Michael Bryzek, CTO & Co-founder, Gilt Groupe
• Presentations from 5 out of 6 of the PostgreSQL Core Team members
• Case studies from many organizations, including ARIN, Amazon, DataDog, MeetMe, PlaceIQ
• A full-day "Security Track" on April 3, sponsored by Crunchy Data Solutions

Our early-bird registration is open and early-bird tickets are available through February 22, 2014, after which tickets will go up to their regular price. Tickets can be purchased directly here: http://pgconfnyc2014.eventbrite.com/?aff=pgnews

Because NYCPUG is a nonprofit organization, PGConf NYC 2014 would not be possible without the generous support of our sponsors. We would like to highlight our Platinum and Gold Sponsors:

• Platinum: EnterpriseDB
• Gold: OmniTI, 2ndQuadrant, Heroku

For more information, please visit http://nyc.pgconf.us

We look forward to hosting you in April!

In response to an announcement by the US Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence about increased transparency on national security orders, the companies who dismissed their motions with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court released the following joint statement.

"We filed our lawsuits because we believe that the public has a right to know about the volume and types of national security requests we receive. We're pleased the Department of Justice has agreed that we and other providers can disclose this information. While this is a very positive step, we'll continue to encourage Congress to take additional steps to address all of the reforms we believe are needed.”

WHAT:

REDMOND , Wash. — Jan . 2 7 , 2014 — Bing.com and FOX News Channel (FNC) are teaming up again on the Bing Pulse online voting tool for the State of the Union address and Republican response on Tuesday, Jan. 28, at 9 p.m. EST. The first-of-its-kind technology, which was introduced during the 2013 State of the Union, enables viewers to track and share their opinions and reactions in real time via their smartphone, PC or tablet. For the 2013 State of the Union, the Bing Pulse received 12.9 million votes during the address. Live results were also shown on FNC.

During the address and the response, people will be able to not only provide their feedback, but also look at the Bing Pulse online or on FNC to see what other viewers think of both the speech and the Republican response in real time as the remarks are being delivered. The Bing Pulse also provides an intensity score, which highlights the key moments of the address or when the greatest numbers of viewers vote at the same time. New this year is an online annotated graphing feature that enables people with one click to understand exactly what was said during those polling spikes. Also new this year are poll questions about some of the key topics in the speeches.

“We deployed the Bing Pulse for the 2013 State of the Union because we thought it was the perfect tool to give people an opportunity to react in real time to the address,” said Mark Penn, executive vice president of Advertising and Strategy at Microsoft. “Over the course of 59 minutes, we conducted the largest live online poll in history with 12.9 million votes registered. That response showed how much people want to make their voices heard during significant political moments. This year, we’re adding more features and are covering the Republican response as well.”

In addition to teaming up with FNC for its State of the Union coverage, the Bing Pulse runs three nights a week on “Special Report with Bret Baier” (6 p.m. EST). According to Nielsen, “Special Report” delivers on average 2.2 million viewers a night with Bing Pulse drawing over half a million votes per week.

How i t w orks

The Bing Pulse allows people to share their opinion of the State of the Union by “voting” every five seconds on their reactions to the content of the speech. Viewers simply go to Bing.com/politics from a computer, tablet or mobile device to connect with the poll while watching the president’s address or Republican response on television or through a live feed on the Bing.com/politics hub.

Unlike typical polls, Bing Pulse allows people to self-identify by gender and political party affiliation to provide additional aggregate data analysis to the results shown online and on FNC.

As the speeches progress, viewers have five choices to characterize how they are feeling about what they are hearing: strongly agree, somewhat agree, neutral, somewhat disagree and strongly disagree. The live count of the number of “pulses,” or votes, becomes a line graph of how users react to the State of the Union, as well as the Republican response throughout both speeches, and will be visible on the television screen on FNC. Viewers watching the speech on other networks can have a robust State of the Union companion experience by participating in the Bing Pulse and seeing the live poll results online. During the course of the speeches, the Bing Pulse online poll results will be updated every few seconds on FNC with data also available at Bing.com/politics. More in-depth news and analysis will be available at http://www.foxnews.com/sotu.

Comprehensive, n onpartisan State of the Union e xperience

The Bing Pulse is part of a comprehensive, nonpartisan State of the Union experience on Bing.com/politics and on FNC. In addition to the Bing Pulse, the site provides a single destination for up-to-the-minute political news, expert information and real-time conversations on major policy issues. Bing.com/politics features include these:

• A live feed of President Obama’s State of the Union address and the Republican response

• An annotated graph allowing users to see what parts of the State of the Union are soaring and what parts are tanking

• Real-time news results using the Bing news filter that helps people navigate the news by filtering coverage from left-leaning and right-leaning sources

• A live feed of social conversations on Twitter so people can stay informed on what leading political pundits are saying about the speech

About Bing

Bing is the search engine from Microsoft. It was introduced in 2009 with a mission to empower people with knowledge — to answer any question and provide useful tools to help you best accomplish your goals, from the everyday to the extraordinary. Bing continues on that mission today by moving beyond the search box to power intelligent experiences across a range of devices and services from Microsoft and third parties.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/news/contactpr.mspx.

Note to reporters covering the State of the Union: Bing will provide insights from the Bing Pulse during and following the State of the Union. To receive this information, follow us on Twitter at #BingSOTU.

DAVOS, Switzerland — Jan. 24, 2014 — A new global survey of Internet users conducted by Microsoft Corp. reveals distinct regional findings and differing viewpoints between the developed and developing world. However, overwhelmingly the more than 10,000 people surveyed from 10 nations said they embrace personal technology, particularly in emerging markets, and see it as the foundation of innovation and economic empowerment.

Microsoft unveiled the results of its new survey today at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in the report titled, “Views from Around the Globe: How Personal Technology is Changing Our Lives.”

Mark Penn, Microsoft Executive Vice President of Advertising and Strategy, presented the poll’s findings followed by a panel discussion moderated by award-winning journalist and author Maria Bartiromo. The panel included Marc R. Benioff, chairman and CEO, Salesforce.com; Maurice Lévy, chairman and CEO, Publicis Group; Bill McDermott, co-CEO, SAP; Alan Murray, president, Pew Research Center; and former U.S. Treasury Secretary and current Charles W. Elliot university professor, Harvard University, Lawrence H. Summers.

“Whether you live in a world capital or a remote village, personal technology is seen as empowering and as a vehicle to individual economic growth,” Penn said. “Despite varying rates of personal technology adoption and cultural differences, there is an overwhelming sense globally that improvements are being experienced across the board.”

Among the key findings of the study are these:

• A majority of the people surveyed around the world believe that personal technology has the most positive impact on innovation in business and empowering people to start a new business.

• People surveyed in developing countries — especially Brazil, Russia, India and China — believe that personal technology is creating job opportunities and helping bridge economic gaps.

• People in China say that personal technology has positively impacted personal freedom more than people in any other country surveyed.

• Those in developing countries — especially India — say that personal technology is improving education, health and healthcare.

• In Brazil, people say that personal technology had a strong impact on arts and culture.

• In China and India, they say their quality of life has improved due to personal technology.

Although personal technology was seen overwhelmingly as a positive force in both developed and developing countries, there were concerns that focused on personal safety and security, family bonds, and, most significantly, privacy. Interestingly, the survey found that the developing countries are more willing to trade privacy for security. Despite privacy concerns, however, nearly three-quarters of parents around the world want their children to have more, not less, access to personal technology. This is particularly true in developing countries, where parents are especially supportive of increased access to technology. Opinions are mixed in developed countries, where more parents feel there should be limits to technology access.

About the poll

The Microsoft poll was conducted between Dec. 26, 2013, and Jan. 3, 2014, and surveyed 10,009 Internet users in the United States, France, Brazil, Russia, China, India, Japan, Germany, Mexico and Turkey. The results were then weighted based on the size of the Internet populations in each of the 10 countries. The full survey findings and comprehensive analysis of the poll can be found at http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2014/01/23/personal-technology-is-changing-lives-around-the-world-what-we-learned-from-talking-to-10-000-people-in-10-countries.aspx.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/news/contactpr.mspx.