Search Results

Search found 264 results on 11 pages for 'fish potato'.

Page 10/11 | < Previous Page | 6 7 8 9 10 11  | Next Page >

  • Airline mess - what a journey

    - by Mike Dietrich
    What a day, what a journey ... Flew this noon from Munich to Zuerich for catch my ongoing flight to San Francisco with Swiss. And that day did start very well as Lufthansa messed up the connection flight by 42 minutes for a 35 minute flight. And as I was obviously the only passenger connection to San Francisco nobody picked me up at the airplane to bring me directly to my connection as Swiss did for the 8 passengers connection to Miami. So I missed my flight. What a start - and many thanks to Lufthansa. I was not the only one missing a connection as Lufthansa/Swiss had canceled the flight before due to "technical problems". In Zuerich Swiss did rebook me via Frankfurt with Lufthansa to board a United Airlines flight to San Francisco. "Ouch" I thought. I had my share of experience with United already as they've messed up my luggage on the way to San Francisco some years ago and it took them five (!!!) days to fly my bag over and deliver it. But actually it was the only option today. So I said "Yes". A big mistake as I've learned later on. The Frankfurt flight was delayed as well "due to a late incoming aircraft". But there was plenty of time. And I went to the Swiss counter at the gate and let them check if my baggage is on that flight to Frankfurt. They've said "Yes". Boarding the plane with a delay of 45 minutes (the typical Lufthansa delay these days) I spotted my Rimowa trolley right next to the plane on the airfield. So I was sure that it will be send to Frankfurt. In Frankfurt I went to the United counter once it did open - had to go through the passport check they do for US flights as well - and they've said "Yes, your luggage is with us". Well ... Arriving in San Francisco with just a bit of a some minutes delay and a very fast immigration procedure I saw the first bags with Priority tags getting pushed to the baggage claim - but mine was not there. I did wait ... and wait ... and wait. Well, thanks United, you did it again!!! I flew twice in the past years United Airlines - and in both cases they've messed up my luggage on the way to San Francisco. How lovely is that ... Now the real fun started again as the lady at the "Lost and Found" counter for luggage spotted my luggage in her system in Zuerich - and told me it's supposed to be sent with LH1191 to Frankfurt on Sept 27. But this was yesterday in Europe - it's already Sept 28 - and I saw my luggage in front of the airplane. So I'd suppose it's in Frankfurt already. But what could she do? Nothing but doing the awful paperwork. And "No Mr Dietrich, we don't call international numbers". Thank you, United. Next time I'll try to get a contract for a US land line in advance. They can't even tell you which plane will bring your luggage. It may be tomorrow with UA flight arriving around 4pm in SFO. I'm looking forward to some hours in the wonderful United Airlines call center waiting line. Last time I did spend 60-90 minutes every day until I got my luggage. If it takes again that long then OOW will be over by then. I love airline travel - and especially with United Airlines. And by the way ... they gave us these nice fancy packages during the flight:  That looks good - what's in that box??? Yes, really ... a bag of potato chips. Pure fat - very healthy.  I doubt that I'll ever fly United Airlines again!!!

    Read the article

  • SQLAuthority News – The Best Quotes of “Who Wrote This?” Contest

    - by pinaldave
    I am a frequent reader of Brent Ozar PLF, it is one of my favorite blogs. A recent post announced a “Who Wrote This?” contest to see if readers could tell their three contributors apart based on some writing samples. Here are my favorite lines from the sample paragraphs, from each of the three “mystery authors.” Topic 1: Working with Bad Managers Mystery Author A – “Working with bad managers means working against my own happiness, and I’ve come to learn that there’s no changing bad managers.” I love this line because, as anyone who has had a bad manager knows, often a lot of self-doubt rises up. We all have to remember that sometimes the problem is out of our control. Mystery Author B – “Mentor your manager just like you would mentor a junior DBA.” Having a bad manager can be extremely depressing, and we often feel out of control. But we all need to remember that our work is a two-way street, and that sometimes we can subtly influence those above us. Mystery Author C – “The trick to working for all bad managers is to remember that they aren’t your parent. Take charge of your career.” We all also need to learn not to play the blame game. Would you rather stay in a place where you are unhappy, or would you rather take charge of your life? I hope most people would pick the latter. Topic 2: Working with Remote Teams Mystery Author A – “Like almost anything else the key is to make sure that everyone on the team has an understanding of how and when communication will occur.” Communication is so important. I cannot over emphasize how much. And this one line captures how I feel and even communicates the idea clearly! Mystery Author B – “The key to remote team success is verifiable trust: feeling confident that invisible team members are doing the right amount of the right thing at the right time.” I think this line not only captures the key aspects of remote work – verifiable work and trust – but there were so many lines that followed that I loved and could not fit here. The whole paragraph is a list for successful remote work. Everyone could benefit from reading it. Mystery Author C – “What seems clear, precise, and specific in one time zone comes across as vague, soupy, and just plain weird in another.” You know what? I just love this description. The author is right – sometimes vague e-mails really do seem soupy and weird! Topic 3: Working with Your Nemesis Mystery Author A – “Every job is temporary, but your reputation stays with you.” Everyone needs to remember this. The workplace is meant to be a professional arena, and many people have the opinion that work is temporary and disposable. No one wants to work with co-worker like that. Mystery Author B – “Unhealthy conflict is going to lead to leaving three week old tuna fish sandwiches in someone’s desk drawer.” Sometimes humor really is the best policy! Mystery Author C – “Oh no, it’s that guy.” This might seem like a weird phrase to choose as my favorite from an entire paragraph. But the whole piece was written in the form of a story of co-workers getting drunk and plotting against a nemesis. It was too funny to overlook, but too long to post here. A must read! Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

    Read the article

  • Developer Profile: Marcelo Quinta

    - by Tori Wieldt
    As the Java developer community lead for Oracle, the best part of my job is going to conferences and meeting Java developers. I’ve had the pleasure to meet men and women who are smart, fun and passionate about Java—they make the Java community happen. The current issue of Java Magazine provides profiles of other young Java developers around the world. Subscribe to read them! Marcelo Quinta Age: 24Occupation: Professor, Federal University of GoiasLocation: Goias, Brazil Twitter: @mrquinta Marcelo (white polo shirt, center) and class OTN: When did you realize that you were good at programming? When I was in graduate school, I developed a Java system that displayed worked out the logics of getting the maximum coverage using the fewest resources (for example, the minimum number of soldiers [and positions] needed for a battlefield. It may seems not difficult, but it's a hard problem to solve, mathematically. Here I was, a freshman, who came up with an app  "solving" it. Some Master's students use my software today. It was then I began to believe in what I could do.OTN: What most inspires you about programming?I'm really inspired by the challenges and tension that comes from solving a complicated problems. Lately, I've been doing a new system focused on education and digital inclusion and was very gratifying to see it working and the results. I felt useful for the community. OTN: What are some things you would like to accomplish using Java?Java is a very strong platform and that gives us power to develop applications for different devices and purposes, from home automation with little microcontrollers to systems in big servers. I would like to build more systems that integrate the people life or different business contexts, from PCs to cell phones and tablets, ubiquitously. I think IT has reached a level where the current challenge is to make systems that leverage existing technologies that are present in daily life. Java gives us a very interesting set of options to put it into practice, especially in systems that require more strength.OTN: What technical insights into Java technology have been most important to you?I have really enjoyed the way that Java has evolved with Oracle, with new features added, many of them which were suggested by the community. Java 7 came with substantial improvements in the language syntax and it seems that Java 8 takes it even further. I also made some applications in JavaFX and liked the new version. The Java GUI is on a higher level than is offered out there. I saw some JavaFX prototypes running in modern tablets and I got excited. OTN: What would you like to be doing 10 years from now?I want my work to make a difference for individuals or an institution. It would be interesting to be improving one of the systems that I am making today. Recently I've been mixing my hobbies and work, playing with Arduino and home automation. The JHome project, winner of the Duke's Choice Award in 2011, is very interesting to me.OTN: Do you listen to music when you write code? If so, what kind?Absolutely! I usually listen to electronic music (Prodigy, Fatboy Slim and Paul Oakenfold), rock (Metallica, Strokes, The Black Keys) and a bit of local alternative music. I live in Goiânia, "The Brazilian Seattle" and I profit from it very well. OTN: What do you do when you're not programming?I like to play guitar and to fish. Last year I sold my economy car and bought a old jeep. Some people called me crazy, but since then I've been having a great time and having adventures on the backroads of Brazil. Once I broke my glasses in a funny game involving my car's suspension and the airbags. OTN: Does your girlfriend think you are crazy?Crazy is someone who doesn't have courage to do strange things! My girlfriend likes my style. =D Subscribe to the free Java Magazine to read profiles of other young Java developers. Visit the Java channel on YouTube to see a video of Marcelo in action.

    Read the article

  • Get the Picture: Pinterest for Marketers

    - by Mike Stiles
    When trying to determine on which networks to conduct social marketing, the usual suspects immediately rise to the top; Facebook & Twitter, then LinkedIn (especially if you’re B2B), then maybe some Google Plus to hedge SEO bets.  So at what juncture do brands get excited about Pinterest? Pinterest has been easy for marketers to de-prioritize thanks to the perception its usage is so dominated by women. Um, what’s wrong with that? Women make an estimated 85% of all consumer purchases. So if there are indeed over 30 million US women active on it monthly, and they do 92% of the pinning, and 84% are still active on it after 4 years, when did an audience of highly engaged, very likely sales conversions become low priority? Okay, if you’re a tech B2B SaaS product like the Oracle Social Cloud, Pinterest may not be where you focus. But if you operate in the top Pinterest categories, which are truly far-reaching, it’s time to take note of Pinterest’s performance to date: 40.1 million monthly users in the US (eMarketer). Over 30 billion pins, half of which were pinned in the last 6 months. (Big momentum) 75% of usage is on their mobile app. (In solid shape for the mobile migration) Pinterest sharing grew 58% in 2013, beating Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. (ShareThis) Pinterest is the 3rd most popular sharing platform overall (over email), with 48% of all sharing on tablets. Users referred by Pinterest are 10% more likely to buy on e-commerce sites and tend to spend twice that of users coming from Facebook. (Shopify) To be fair, brands haven’t had any paid marketing opportunities on that platform…until recently. Users are seeing Promoted Pins in both category and search feeds from rollout brands like Gap, ABC Family, Ziploc, and Nestle. Are the paid pins annoying users? It seems more so than other social networks, they’re fitting right in to the intended user experience and being accepted, getting almost as many click-throughs as user pins. New York Magazine’s Kevin Roose laid it out succinctly; Pinterest offers a place that’s image-centric, search-friendly, makes things easy to purchase, makes things easy to share, and puts users in an aspirational mood to buy. Pinterest is very confident in the value of that combo and that audience, with CPM rates 5x that of the most expensive Facebook ad, plus (at least for now) required spending commitments and required pin review by Pinterest for quality. The latest developments; a continued move toward search and discovery with enhancements like Guided Search to help you hone in on what interests you, Custom Categories, and the rumored Visual Search that stands to be a liberation from text. And most recently, Pinterest has opened up its API so brands can get access to deeper insights into the best search terms and categories in which to play ball, as well as what kinds of pins stand to perform best in those areas. As we learned in our rundown this week of Social Media Examiner’s Social Media Marketing Industry Report, around 50% of marketers specifically intend on upping their use of Pinterest. If you’re a big believer in fishing where the fish are, that’s probably an efficient position to take. @mikestiles @oraclesocialPhoto: Adam Lambert_Gorwyn, freeimages.com

    Read the article

  • Setting values and display Text in Android Spinner

    - by kaibuki
    Hi, I need help in setting up value and display text in spinner. as per now I am populating my spinner by array adapter e.g mySpinner.setAdapter(myAdapter); and as far as I know after doing this the display text and the value of spinner at same position is same. The other attribute that I can get from spinner is the position on the item. now in my case I want to make spinner like the drop down box, which we have in .NET. which holds a text and value. where as text is displayed and value is at back end. so if I change drop down box , I can either use its selected text or value. but its not happening in android spinner case. For Example: Text Value Cat 10 Mountain 5 Stone 9 Fish 14 River 13 Loin 17 so from above array I am only displaying non-living objects text, and what i want is that when user select them I get there value i.e. like when Mountain selected i get 5 I hope this example made my question a bit more clear... thankx

    Read the article

  • Java Robot key activity seems to stop working while certain software is running

    - by Mike Turley
    I'm writing a Java application to automate character actions in an online game overnight (specifically, it catches fish in Final Fantasy XI). The app makes heavy use of java's Robot class both for emulating user keyboard input and for detecting color changes on certain parts of the screen. It also uses multithreading and a swing GUI. The application seems to work perfectly when I test it without the game running, just using screenshots to trigger the apps responses into notepad. But for some reason, when I actually launch FFXI and start the program, all of my keyboard and mouse manipulations just stop working altogether. The program is still running, and the Robot class is still able to read pixel colors. But Robot.keyPress, Robot.keyRelease, Robot.mouseMove, Robot.mousePress and Robot.mouseRelease all do nothing. It's the strangest thing-- to test it, I wrote a simple loop that just keeps typing letters, and focused notepad. I'd then start the game, refocus notepad, and it would do nothing. Then I'd exit the game, and it'd start working again immediately. Has anyone else come across something like this, where specific software will stop certain functions of java from working? Also, to make this more interesting-- Last year I wrote a very similar program using the same classes and programming techniques to automate healing a party in the game as they fight. Last year, this program worked perfectly. After running into these problems I dug up that old program, ran it without making any changes, and found that it too was having the same problems. The only differences between now and when it was working: I was running Windows Vista and now I'm running Windows 7, and several new Java versions as well as FFXI versions have been released. What the hell is going on? (if anyone needs to see my source code, email me at [email protected]. I'm trying to keep it to myself.)

    Read the article

  • when compiling,I write " gcc -g -Wall dene2 dene2.c", then gcc emits some trace

    - by gcc
    when I compile my code,I write " gcc -g -Wall dene2 dene2.c" in the console. then gcc emits some things on the screen. I havenot understand what it is and I cannot consturct any meaning. I have sorted in google but I havenot seen any information about thing which gcc emits on screen I am not saying examining all of the things which is at below,just show me "how to catch fish". (I couldnot find meaningful title ,for that reason ,sorry,) dene2: In function `_start': /build/buildd/eglibc-2.10.1/csu/../sysdeps/i386/elf/start.S:65: multiple definition of `_start' /usr/lib/gcc/i486-linux-gnu/4.4.1/../../../../lib/crt1.o:/build/buildd/eglibc-2.10.1 /csu/../sysdeps/i386/elf/start.S:65: first defined here dene2:(.rodata+0x0): multiple definition of `_fp_hw' /usr/lib/gcc/i486-linux-gnu/4.4.1/../../../../lib/crt1.o:(.rodata+0x0): first defined here dene2: In function `_fini': (.fini+0x0): multiple definition of `_fini' /usr/lib/gcc/i486-linux-gnu/4.4.1/../../../../lib/crti.o:(.fini+0x0): first defined here dene2:(.rodata+0x4): multiple definition of `_IO_stdin_used' /usr/lib/gcc/i486-linux-gnu/4.4.1/../../../../lib/crt1.o:(.rodata.cst4+0x0): first defined here dene2: In function `__data_start': (.data+0x0): multiple definition of `__data_start' /usr/lib/gcc/i486-linux-gnu/4.4.1/../../../../lib/crt1.o:(.data+0x0): first defined here dene2: In function `__data_start': (.data+0x4): multiple definition of `__dso_handle' /usr/lib/gcc/i486-linux-gnu/4.4.1/crtbegin.o:(.data+0x0): first defined here dene2: In function `_init': (.init+0x0): multiple definition of `_init' /usr/lib/gcc/i486-linux-gnu/4.4.1/../../../../lib/crti.o:(.init+0x0): first defined here /tmp/ccMlGkkV.o: In function `main': /home/fatih/Desktop/dene2.c:5: multiple definition of `main' dene2:(.text+0xb4): first defined here /usr/lib/gcc/i486-linux-gnu/4.4.1/crtend.o:(.dtors+0x0): multiple definition of `__DTOR_END__' dene2:(.dtors+0x4): first defined here collect2: ld returned 1 exit status

    Read the article

  • I didn't say anything treasonous, quit putting words in my mouth

    - by You guys Lie
    Where at all did I say ANYTHING about organizing some kind of anti-government activity? Nowhere. I do not give a flying fuck about America in case you hadn't realized, I'm talking about what I'm going to do when Jesus Christ returns. Besides, why would I make it easy for them to throw me in a black site prison? Use common sense, sheeple. In the end I guess it doesn't matter anyways, since I do not recognize the government as my ultimate authority. Police/Army/Whatever-- funny outfits and a shiny badge don't make you better than me. Allah will do away with your kind. However, as long as they're with me (as they semi-currently are), we have no problems. I fear the government will have other plans to control the population when things start to further decline, and that is when they will run into problems with me and mine, and probably a large percentage of the public. You'd have to be a fucking fool to think we'd fall into anarchy immediately, given the vast resources and blind loyalty of this country. Saying there are practical limits to free speech for anything I have said in this thread is not only ignorant, it is unpatriotic. I should be being celebrated as the modern day Paul Revere for warning you people about our impending doom. You would do well to study the foundations of this country. Nothing I have said is treasonous at all. Besides, the DoD knows I'm harmless until shit pops off, they have bigger fish to fry right now, go forward. Keep in mind, I don't personally have to do anything to overthrow the government. I just said, I would not advocate for any paramilitary organizations at this time, only if/after we dissolve into (more) tyranny. I am not a terrorist, like some soldiers in Iraq. The machine is doing a great job of ruining itself, while I get to comfortably laugh at it on the nightly news knowing that I'm ready for it to shut down.

    Read the article

  • Performance difference in for loop condition?

    - by CSharperWithJava
    Hello all, I have a simple question that I am posing mostly for my curiousity. What are the differences between these two lines of code? (in C++) for(int i = 0; i < N, N > 0; i++) for(int i = 0; i < N && N > 0; i++) The selection of the conditions is completely arbitrary, I'm just interested in the differences between , and &&. I'm not a beginner to coding by any means, but I've never bothered with the comma operator. Are there performance/behavior differences or is it purely aesthetic? One last note, I know there are bigger performance fish to fry than a conditional operator, but I'm just curious. Indulge me. Edit Thanks for your answers. It turns out the code that prompted this question had misused the comma operator in the way I've described. I wondered what the difference was and why it wasn't a && operator, but it was just written incorrectly. I didn't think anything was wrong with it because it worked just fine. Thanks for straightening me out.

    Read the article

  • Accessing bitmap array in another class? C#

    - by Marius Mathisen
    I have this array : Bitmap[] bildeListe = new Bitmap[21]; bildeListe[0] = Properties.Resources.ål; bildeListe[1] = Properties.Resources.ant; bildeListe[2] = Properties.Resources.bird; bildeListe[3] = Properties.Resources.bear; bildeListe[4] = Properties.Resources.butterfly; bildeListe[5] = Properties.Resources.cat; bildeListe[6] = Properties.Resources.chicken; bildeListe[7] = Properties.Resources.dog; bildeListe[8] = Properties.Resources.elephant; bildeListe[9] = Properties.Resources.fish; bildeListe[10] = Properties.Resources.goat; bildeListe[11] = Properties.Resources.horse; bildeListe[12] = Properties.Resources.ladybug; bildeListe[13] = Properties.Resources.lion; bildeListe[14] = Properties.Resources.moose; bildeListe[15] = Properties.Resources.polarbear; bildeListe[16] = Properties.Resources.reke; bildeListe[17] = Properties.Resources.sheep; bildeListe[18] = Properties.Resources.snake; bildeListe[19] = Properties.Resources.spider; bildeListe[20] = Properties.Resources.turtle; I want that array and it´s content in a diffenrent class, and access it from my main form. I don´t know if should use method, function or what to use with arrays. Are there some good way for me to access for instanse bildeListe[0] in my new class?

    Read the article

  • Java and Jasper

    - by bhargava
    Hey Guys, I have integrated Jasper Reports on my netbeans platform and i am able to generate reports using the following code. Map<String, Object> params = new HashMap<String, Object>(); Connection conn = DriverManager.getConnection("databaseUrl", "userid","password"); JasperReport jasperReport = JasperCompileManager.compileReport(reportSource); JasperPrint jasperPrint = JasperFillManager.fillReport(jasperReport, params, conn); JasperExportManager.exportReportToHtmlFile(jasperPrint, reportDest); JasperViewer.viewReport(jasperPrint); This stuff works perfect. But not i am trying to integrate Jasper with GWT.I have my server as glass fish server. I am getting the Connection object using the followind code. public static Connection getConnection() { try { String JNDI = "JNDI name"; InitialContext initCtx = new InitialContext(); javax.sql.DataSource ds = (javax.sql.DataSource) initCtx.lookup(JNDI); Connection conn = (Connection) ds.getConnection(); return conn; } catch (Exception ex) { ex.printStackTrace(); } return null; } and then Map params = new HashMap(); JasperReport jasperReport = JasperCompileManager.compileReport(reportSource); JasperPrint jasperPrint = JasperFillManager.fillReport(jasperReport, params, getConnection()); JasperExportManager.exportReportToHtmlFile(jasperPrint, reportDest); JasperViewer.viewReport(jasperPrint); but i always get Error.I am implementing this on Server.I am having RPC calls to get this method to work when a button is clicked. Can you please help me how to work on this.(That is to integrate Jasper reports with GWT). I would highly appreciate any explanation with some code as i am just a beginner. Thanks

    Read the article

  • Split a string by comma, quote and full-stop.. with a few exceptions

    - by dunc
    I've got a lot of text, similar to the following paragraph, which I'd like to split into words without punctuation (', ", ,, ., newline etc).. with a few exceptions. Initially considered endemic to the Chalakudy River system in Kerala state, southern India, but now recognised to have a wider distribution in surrounding drainages including the Periyar, Manimala, and Pamba river though the Manimala data may be questionable given it seems to be the type locality of P. denisonii. In the Achankovil River basin it occurs sympatrically, and sometimes syntopically, with P. denisonii. Wild stocks may have dwindled by as much as 50% in the last 15 years or so with collection for the aquarium trade largely held responsible although habitats are also being degraded by pollution from agricultural and domestic sources, plus destructive fishing methods involving explosives or organic toxins. The text refers to P. denisonii which is a species of fish. It's an abbreviation of Genus species. I would like this reference to be one word. So, for instance, this is the kind of array I'd like to see: Array ( ... [44] given [45] it [46] seems [47] to [48] be [49] the [50] type [51] locality [52] of [53] P. denisonii [54] In [55] the ... ) The only things that distinguish these species references such as P. denisonii from a new sentence like end. New are: The P (for Puntius, as in the P. in the aforementioned example) is only ever one letter, always a capital the d (as in . denisonii) is always either a lower case letter or an apostrophe (') What regexp can I use with preg_split to give me such an array? I've tried a simple explode( " ", $array ) but it doesn't do the job at all. Thanks in advance,

    Read the article

  • The Sensemaking Spectrum for Business Analytics: Translating from Data to Business Through Analysis

    - by Joe Lamantia
    One of the most compelling outcomes of our strategic research efforts over the past several years is a growing vocabulary that articulates our cumulative understanding of the deep structure of the domains of discovery and business analytics. Modes are one example of the deep structure we’ve found.  After looking at discovery activities across a very wide range of industries, question types, business needs, and problem solving approaches, we've identified distinct and recurring kinds of sensemaking activity, independent of context.  We label these activities Modes: Explore, compare, and comprehend are three of the nine recognizable modes.  Modes describe *how* people go about realizing insights.  (Read more about the programmatic research and formal academic grounding and discussion of the modes here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235971352_A_Taxonomy_of_Enterprise_Search_and_Discovery) By analogy to languages, modes are the 'verbs' of discovery activity.  When applied to the practical questions of product strategy and development, the modes of discovery allow one to identify what kinds of analytical activity a product, platform, or solution needs to support across a spread of usage scenarios, and then make concrete and well-informed decisions about every aspect of the solution, from high-level capabilities, to which specific types of information visualizations better enable these scenarios for the types of data users will analyze. The modes are a powerful generative tool for product making, but if you've spent time with young children, or had a really bad hangover (or both at the same time...), you understand the difficult of communicating using only verbs.  So I'm happy to share that we've found traction on another facet of the deep structure of discovery and business analytics.  Continuing the language analogy, we've identified some of the ‘nouns’ in the language of discovery: specifically, the consistently recurring aspects of a business that people are looking for insight into.  We call these discovery Subjects, since they identify *what* people focus on during discovery efforts, rather than *how* they go about discovery as with the Modes. Defining the collection of Subjects people repeatedly focus on allows us to understand and articulate sense making needs and activity in more specific, consistent, and complete fashion.  In combination with the Modes, we can use Subjects to concretely identify and define scenarios that describe people’s analytical needs and goals.  For example, a scenario such as ‘Explore [a Mode] the attrition rates [a Measure, one type of Subject] of our largest customers [Entities, another type of Subject] clearly captures the nature of the activity — exploration of trends vs. deep analysis of underlying factors — and the central focus — attrition rates for customers above a certain set of size criteria — from which follow many of the specifics needed to address this scenario in terms of data, analytical tools, and methods. We can also use Subjects to translate effectively between the different perspectives that shape discovery efforts, reducing ambiguity and increasing impact on both sides the perspective divide.  For example, from the language of business, which often motivates analytical work by asking questions in business terms, to the perspective of analysis.  The question posed to a Data Scientist or analyst may be something like “Why are sales of our new kinds of potato chips to our largest customers fluctuating unexpectedly this year?” or “Where can innovate, by expanding our product portfolio to meet unmet needs?”.  Analysts translate questions and beliefs like these into one or more empirical discovery efforts that more formally and granularly indicate the plan, methods, tools, and desired outcomes of analysis.  From the perspective of analysis this second question might become, “Which customer needs of type ‘A', identified and measured in terms of ‘B’, that are not directly or indirectly addressed by any of our current products, offer 'X' potential for ‘Y' positive return on the investment ‘Z' required to launch a new offering, in time frame ‘W’?  And how do these compare to each other?”.  Translation also happens from the perspective of analysis to the perspective of data; in terms of availability, quality, completeness, format, volume, etc. By implication, we are proposing that most working organizations — small and large, for profit and non-profit, domestic and international, and in the majority of industries — can be described for analytical purposes using this collection of Subjects.  This is a bold claim, but simplified articulation of complexity is one of the primary goals of sensemaking frameworks such as this one.  (And, yes, this is in fact a framework for making sense of sensemaking as a category of activity - but we’re not considering the recursive aspects of this exercise at the moment.) Compellingly, we can place the collection of subjects on a single continuum — we call it the Sensemaking Spectrum — that simply and coherently illustrates some of the most important relationships between the different types of Subjects, and also illuminates several of the fundamental dynamics shaping business analytics as a domain.  As a corollary, the Sensemaking Spectrum also suggests innovation opportunities for products and services related to business analytics. The first illustration below shows Subjects arrayed along the Sensemaking Spectrum; the second illustration presents examples of each kind of Subject.  Subjects appear in colors ranging from blue to reddish-orange, reflecting their place along the Spectrum, which indicates whether a Subject addresses more the viewpoint of systems and data (Data centric and blue), or people (User centric and orange).  This axis is shown explicitly above the Spectrum.  Annotations suggest how Subjects align with the three significant perspectives of Data, Analysis, and Business that shape business analytics activity.  This rendering makes explicit the translation and bridging function of Analysts as a role, and analysis as an activity. Subjects are best understood as fuzzy categories [http://georgelakoff.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/hedges-a-study-in-meaning-criteria-and-the-logic-of-fuzzy-concepts-journal-of-philosophical-logic-2-lakoff-19731.pdf], rather than tightly defined buckets.  For each Subject, we suggest some of the most common examples: Entities may be physical things such as named products, or locations (a building, or a city); they could be Concepts, such as satisfaction; or they could be Relationships between entities, such as the variety of possible connections that define linkage in social networks.  Likewise, Events may indicate a time and place in the dictionary sense; or they may be Transactions involving named entities; or take the form of Signals, such as ‘some Measure had some value at some time’ - what many enterprises understand as alerts.   The central story of the Spectrum is that though consumers of analytical insights (represented here by the Business perspective) need to work in terms of Subjects that are directly meaningful to their perspective — such as Themes, Plans, and Goals — the working realities of data (condition, structure, availability, completeness, cost) and the changing nature of most discovery efforts make direct engagement with source data in this fashion impossible.  Accordingly, business analytics as a domain is structured around the fundamental assumption that sense making depends on analytical transformation of data.  Analytical activity incrementally synthesizes more complex and larger scope Subjects from data in its starting condition, accumulating insight (and value) by moving through a progression of stages in which increasingly meaningful Subjects are iteratively synthesized from the data, and recombined with other Subjects.  The end goal of  ‘laddering’ successive transformations is to enable sense making from the business perspective, rather than the analytical perspective.Synthesis through laddering is typically accomplished by specialized Analysts using dedicated tools and methods. Beginning with some motivating question such as seeking opportunities to increase the efficiency (a Theme) of fulfillment processes to reach some level of profitability by the end of the year (Plan), Analysts will iteratively wrangle and transform source data Records, Values and Attributes into recognizable Entities, such as Products, that can be combined with Measures or other data into the Events (shipment of orders) that indicate the workings of the business.  More complex Subjects (to the right of the Spectrum) are composed of or make reference to less complex Subjects: a business Process such as Fulfillment will include Activities such as confirming, packing, and then shipping orders.  These Activities occur within or are conducted by organizational units such as teams of staff or partner firms (Networks), composed of Entities which are structured via Relationships, such as supplier and buyer.  The fulfillment process will involve other types of Entities, such as the products or services the business provides.  The success of the fulfillment process overall may be judged according to a sophisticated operating efficiency Model, which includes tiered Measures of business activity and health for the transactions and activities included.  All of this may be interpreted through an understanding of the operational domain of the businesses supply chain (a Domain).   We'll discuss the Spectrum in more depth in succeeding posts.

    Read the article

  • Ingredient Substitutes while Baking

    - by Rekha
    In our normal cooking, we substitute the vegetables for the gravies we prepare. When we start baking, we look for a good recipe. At least one or two ingredient will be missing. We do not know where to substitute what to bring same output. So we finally drop the plan of baking. Again after a month, we get the interest in baking. Again one or two lack of ingredient and that’s it. We keep on doing this for months. When I was going through the cooking blogs, I came across a site with the Ingredient Substitutes for Baking: (*) is to indicate that this substitution is ideal from personal experience. Flour Substitutes ( For 1 cup of Flour) All Purpose Flour 1/2 cup white cake flour plus 1/2 cup whole wheat flour 1 cup self-rising flour (omit using salt and baking powder if the recipe calls for it since self raising flour has it already) 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons cake flour 1/2 cup (75 grams) whole wheat flour 7/8 cup (130 grams) rice flour (starch) (do not replace all of the flour with the rice flour) 7/8 cup whole wheat Bread Flour 1 cup all purpose flour 1 cup all purpose flour plus 1 teaspoon wheat gluten (*) Cake Flour Place 2 tbsp cornstarch in 1 cup and fill the rest up with All Purpose flour (*) 1 cup all purpose flour minus 2 tablespoons Pastry flour Place 2 tbsp cornstarch in 1 cup and fill the rest up with All Purpose flour Equal parts of All purpose flour plus cake flour (*) Self-rising Flour 1½ teaspoons of baking powder plus ½ teaspoon of salt plus 1 cup of all-purpose flour. Cornstarch (1 tbsp) 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour 1 tablespoon arrowroot 4 teaspoons quick-cooking tapioca 1 tablespoon potato starch or rice starch or flour Tapioca (1 tbsp) 1 – 1/2 tablespoons all-purpose flour Cornmeal (stone ground) polenta OR corn flour (gives baked goods a lighter texture) if using cornmeal for breading,crush corn chips in a blender until they have the consistency of cornmeal. maize meal Corn grits Sweeteners ( for Every 1 cup ) * * (HV) denotes Healthy Version for low fat or fat free substitution in Baking Light Brown Sugar 2 tablespoons molasses plus 1 cup of white sugar Dark Brown Sugar 3 tablespoons molasses plus 1 cup of white sugar Confectioner’s/Powdered Sugar Process 1 cup sugar plus 1 tablespoon cornstarch Corn Syrup 1 cup sugar plus 1/4 cup water 1 cup Golden Syrup 1 cup honey (may be little sweeter) 1 cup molasses Golden Syrup Combine two parts light corn syrup plus one part molasses 1/2 cup honey plus 1/2 cup corn syrup 1 cup maple syrup 1 cup corn syrup Honey 1- 1/4 cups sugar plus 1/4 cup water 3/4 cup maple syrup plus 1/2 cup granulated sugar 3/4 cup corn syrup plus 1/2 cup granulated sugar 3/4 cup light molasses plus 1/2 cup granulated white sugar 1 1/4 cups granulated white or brown sugar plus 1/4 cup additional liquid in recipe plus 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar Maple Syrup 1 cup honey,thinned with water or fruit juice like apple 3/4 cup corn syrup plus 1/4 cup butter 1 cup Brown Rice Syrup 1 cup Brown sugar (in case of cereals) 1 cup light molasses (on pancakes, cereals etc) 1 cup granulated sugar for every 3/4 cup of maple syrup and increase liquid in the recipe by 3 tbsp for every cup of sugar.If baking soda is used, decrease the amount by 1/4 teaspoon per cup of sugar substituted, since sugar is less acidic than maple syrup Molasses 1 cup honey 1 cup dark corn syrup 1 cup maple syrup 3/4 cup brown sugar warmed and dissolved in 1/4 cup of liquid ( use this if taste of molasses is important in the baked good) Cocoa Powder (Natural, Unsweetened) 3 tablespoons (20 grams) Dutch-processed cocoa plus 1/8 teaspoon cream of tartar, lemon juice or white vinegar 1 ounce (30 grams) unsweetened chocolate (reduce fat in recipe by 1 tablespoon) 3 tablespoons (20 grams) carob powder Semisweet baking chocolate (1 oz) 1 oz unsweetened baking chocolate plus 1 Tbsp sugar Unsweetened baking chocolate (1 oz ) 3 Tbsp baking cocoa plus 1 Tbsp vegetable oil or melted shortening or margarine Semisweet chocolate chips (1 cup) 6 oz semisweet baking chocolate, chopped (Alternatively) For 1 cup of Semi sweet chocolate chips you can use : 6 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder, 7 tablespoons sugar ,1/4 cup fat (butter or oil) Leaveners and Diary * * (HV) denotes Healthy Version for low fat or fat free substitution in Baking Compressed Yeast (1 cake) 1 envelope or 2 teaspoons active dry yeast 1 packet (1/4 ounce) Active Dry yeast 1 cake fresh compressed yeast 1 tablespoon fast-rising active yeast Baking Powder (1 tsp) 1/3 teaspoon baking soda plus 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar 1/2 teaspoon baking soda plus 1/2 cup buttermilk or plain yogurt 1/4 teaspoon baking soda plus 1/3 cup molasses. When using the substitutions that include liquid, reduce other liquid in recipe accordingly Baking Soda(1 tsp) 3 tsp Baking Powder ( and reduce the acidic ingredients in the recipe. Ex Instead of buttermilk add milk) 1 tsp potassium bicarbonate Ideal substitution – 2 tsp Baking powder and omit salt in recipe Cream of tartar (1 tsp) 1 teaspoon white vinegar 1 tsp lemon juice Notes from What’s Cooking America – If cream of tartar is used along with baking soda in a cake or cookie recipe, omit both and use baking powder instead. If it calls for baking soda and cream of tarter, just use baking powder.Normally, when cream of tartar is used in a cookie, it is used together with baking soda. The two of them combined work like double-acting baking powder. When substituting for cream of tartar, you must also substitute for the baking soda. If your recipe calls for baking soda and cream of tarter, just use baking powder. One teaspoon baking powder is equivalent to 1/4 teaspoon baking soda plus 5/8 teaspoon cream of tartar. If there is additional baking soda that does not fit into the equation, simply add it to the batter. Buttermilk (1 cup) 1 tablespoon lemon juice or vinegar (white or cider) plus enough milk to make 1 cup (let stand 5-10 minutes) 1 cup plain or low fat yogurt 1 cup sour cream 1 cup water plus 1/4 cup buttermilk powder 1 cup milk plus 1 1/2 – 1 3/4 teaspoons cream of tartar Plain Yogurt (1 cup) 1 cup sour cream 1 cup buttermilk 1 cup crème fraiche 1 cup heavy whipping cream (35% butterfat) plus 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice Whole Milk (1 cup) 1 cup fat free milk plus 1 tbsp unsaturated Oil like canola (HV) 1 cup low fat milk (HV) Heavy Cream (1 cup) 3/4 cup milk plus 1/3 cup melted butter.(whipping wont work) Sour Cream (1 cup) (pls refer also Substitutes for Fats in Baking below) 7/8 cup buttermilk or sour milk plus 3 tablespoons butter. 1 cup thickened yogurt plus 1 teaspoon baking soda. 3/4 cup sour milk plus 1/3 cup butter. 3/4 cup buttermilk plus 1/3 cup butter. Cooked sauces: 1 cup yogurt plus 1 tablespoon flour plus 2 teaspoons water. Cooked sauces: 1 cup evaporated milk plus 1 tablespoon vinegar or lemon juice. Let stand 5 minutes to thicken. Dips: 1 cup yogurt (drain through a cheesecloth-lined sieve for 30 minutes in the refrigerator for a thicker texture). Dips: 1 cup cottage cheese plus 1/4 cup yogurt or buttermilk, briefly whirled in a blender. Dips: 6 ounces cream cheese plus 3 tablespoons milk,briefly whirled in a blender. Lower fat: 1 cup low-fat cottage cheese plus 1 tablespoon lemon juice plus 2 tablespoons skim milk, whipped until smooth in a blender. Lower fat: 1 can chilled evaporated milk whipped with 1 teaspoon lemon juice. 1 cup plain yogurt plus 1 tablespoon cornstarch 1 cup plain nonfat yogurt Substitutes for Fats in Baking * * (HV) denoted Healthy Version for low fat or fat free substitution in Baking Butter (1 cup) 1 cup trans-free vegetable shortening 3/4 cups of vegetable oil (example. Canola oil) Fruit purees (example- applesauce, pureed prunes, baby-food fruits). Add it along with some vegetable oil and reduce any other sweeteners needed in the recipe since fruit purees are already sweet. 1 cup polyunsaturated margarine (HV) 3/4 cup polyunsaturated oil like safflower oil (HV) 1 cup mild olive oil (not extra virgin)(HV) Note: Butter creates the flakiness and the richness which an oil/purees cant provide. If you don’t want to compromise that much to taste, replace half the butter with the substitutions. Shortening(1 cup) 1 cup polyunsaturated margarine like Earth Balance or Smart Balance(HV) 1 cup + 2tbsp Butter ( better tasting than shortening but more expensive and has cholesterol and a higher level of saturated fat; makes cookies less crunchy, bread crusts more crispy) 1 cup + 2 tbsp Margarine (better tasting than shortening but more expensive; makes cookies less crunchy, bread crusts tougher) 1 Cup – 2tbsp Lard (Has cholesterol and a higher level of saturated fat) Oil equal amount of apple sauce stiffly beaten egg whites into batter equal parts mashed banana equal parts yogurt prune puree grated raw zucchini or seeds removed if cooked. Works well in quick breads/muffins/coffee cakes and does not alter taste pumpkin puree (if the recipe can handle the taste change) Low fat cottage cheese (use only half of the required fat in the recipe). Can give rubbery texture to the end result Silken Tofu – (use only half of the required fat in the recipe). Can give rubbery texture to the end result Equal parts of fruit juice Note: Fruit purees can alter the taste of the final product is used in large quantities. Cream Cheese (1 cup) 4 tbsps. margarine plus 1 cup low-fat cottage cheese – blended. Add few teaspoons of fat-free milk if needed (HV) Heavy Cream (1 cup) 1 cup evaporated skim milk (or full fat milk) 1/2 cup low fat Yogurt plus 1/2 low fat Cottage Cheese (HV) 1/2 cup Yogurt plus 1/2 Cottage Cheese Sour Cream (1 cup) 1 cup plain yogurt (HV) 3/4 cup buttermilk or plain yogurt plus 1/3 cup melted butter 1 cup crème fraiche 1 tablespoon lemon juice or vinegar plus enough whole milk to fill 1 cup (let stand 5-10 minutes) 1/2 cup low-fat cottage cheese plus 1/2 cup low-fat or nonfat yogurt (HV) 1 cup fat-free sour cream (HV) Note: How to Make Maple Syrup Substitute at home For 1 Cup Maple Syrup 1/2 cup granulated sugar 1 cup brown sugar, firmly packed 1 cup boiling water 1 teaspoon butter 1 teaspoon maple extract or vanilla extract Method In a heavy saucepan, place the granulated sugar and keep stirring until it melts and turns slightly brown. Alternatively in another pan, place brown sugar and water and bring to a boil without stirring. Now mix both the sugars and simmer in low heat until they come together as one thick syrup. Remove from heat, add butter and the extract. Use this in place of maple syrup. Store it in a fridge in an air tight container. Even though this was posted in their site long back, I found it helpful. So posting it for you. via chefinyou . cc image credit: flickr/zetrules

    Read the article

  • Do You Develop Your PL/SQL Directly in the Database?

    - by thatjeffsmith
    I know this sounds like a REALLY weird question for many of you. Let me make one thing clear right away though, I am NOT talking about creating and replacing PLSQL objects directly into a production environment. Do we really need to talk about developers in production again? No, what I am talking about is a developer doing their work from start to finish in a development database. These are generally available to a development team for building the next and greatest version of your databases and database applications. And of course you are using a third party source control system, right? Last week I was in Tampa, FL presenting at the monthly Suncoast Oracle User’s Group meeting. Had a wonderful time, great questions and back-and-forth. My favorite heckler was there, @oraclenered, AKA Chet Justice.  I was in the middle of talking about how it’s better to do your PLSQL work in the Procedure Editor when Chet pipes up - Don’t do it that way, that’s wrong Just press play to edit the PLSQL directly in the database Or something along those lines. I didn’t get what the heck he was talking about. I had been showing how the Procedure Editor gives you much better feedback and support when working with PLSQL. After a few back-and-forths I got to what Chet’s main objection was, and again I’m going to paraphrase: You should develop offline in your SQL worksheet. Don’t do anything in the database until it’s done. I didn’t understand. Were developers expected to be able to internalize and mentally model the PL/SQL engine, see where their errors were, etc in these offline scripts? No, please give Chet more credit than that. What is the ideal Oracle Development Environment? If I were back in the ‘real world’ of database development, I would do all of my development outside of the ‘dev’ instance. My development process looks a little something like this: Do I have a program that already does something like this – copy and paste Has some smart person already written something like this – copy and paste Start typing in the white-screen-of-panic and bungle along until I get something that half-works Tweek, debug, test until I have fooled my subconscious into thinking that it’s ‘good’ As you might understand, I don’t want my co-workers to see the evolution of my code. It would seriously freak them out and I probably wouldn’t have a job anymore (don’t remind me that I already worked myself out of development.) So here’s what I like to do: Run a Local Instance of Oracle on my Machine and Develop My Code Privately I take a copy of development – that’s what source control is for afterall – and run it where no one else can see it. I now get to be my own DBA. If I need a trace – no problem. If I want to run an ASH report, no worries. If I need to create a directory or run some DataPump jobs, that’s all on me. Now when I get my code ‘up to snuff,’ then I will check it into source control and compile it into the official development instance. So my teammates suddenly go from seeing no program, to a mostly complete program. Is this right? If not, it doesn’t seem wrong to me. And after talking to Chet in the car on the way to the local cigar bar, it seems that he’s of the same opinion. So what’s so wrong with coding directly into a development instance? I think ‘wrong’ is a bit strong here. But there are a few pitfalls that you might want to look out for. A few come to mind – and I’m sure Chet could add many more as my memory fails me at the moment. But here goes: Development instance isn’t properly backed up – would hate to lose that work Development is wiped once a week and copied over from Prod – don’t laugh Someone clobbers your code You accidentally on purpose clobber someone else’s code The more developers you have in a single fish pond, the greater chance something ‘bad’ will happen This Isn’t One of Those Posts Where I Tell You What You Should Be Doing I realize many shops won’t be open to allowing developers to stage their own local copies of Oracle. But I would at least be aware that many of your developers are probably doing this anyway – with or without your tacit approval. SQL Developer can do local file tracking, but you should be using Source Control too! I will say that I think it’s imperative that you control your source code outside the database, even if your development team is comprised of a single developer. Store your source code in a file, and control that file in something like Subversion. You would be shocked at the number of teams that do not use a source control system. I know I continue to be shocked no matter how many times I meet another team running by the seat-of-their-pants. I’d love to hear how your development process works. And of course I want to know how SQL Developer and the rest of our tools can better support your processes. And one last thing, if you want a fun and interactive presentation experience, be sure to have Chet in the room

    Read the article

  • Vacations on Rodrigues 2014

    And now something completely different compared to the usual technical or community related articles here on this blog. Yes, this time I'm writing some lines on my (and my family's) activities during our long weekend stay on Rodrigues. So, please bear with me, it's eventually a bit more personal... Grab a soda, some popcorn and a cosy place to continue to read. var googleAlbumLink = "https://plus.google.com/photos/117698191428446859536/albums/6047895311458281985"; //optional----------------------- var mySlideWidth = 580; var mySlideHeight = 340; var mySlideDelay = 7000; //delay in milliseconds Special promotions during school holidays Originally, our children started to ask more frequently about going on the plane again. Obviously, after their aunty from Germany was around during May, they were really eager to travel again. So, we decided that it might be a great opportunity to book some vacations during their school holidays. And just in time the local hotels and hotel groups started to advertise their special promotions for citizens and residents. After collecting multiple brochures over several days, we got attracted by various hotel packages on Rodrigues - most interestingly the expenses for the stay and flight ticket were less compared to other resorts here on the main island. As we have been to Rodrigues already back in 2008, we followed up on this idea and got in touch with a couple travel agencies. Well, I have to report that you should be really careful about the promotions from some of them. We had a very negative experience with Shamal Travel Agency in Quatre Bornes regarding their adverts and the actual price levels and age definition for children. Please, stay away from them if you are interested in transparent cost and services. Anyway, after some arrangements with two other close families we managed to confirm our stay at the Cotton Bay Hotel in Rodrigues. Given the fact that we already stayed there, and the hotel has been renovated recently, and it is under new management all looked very promising and relaxed for our vacation. Counting the days... As we already booked in July our children were counting down the days. And it got more interesting as soon as they were on school holidays finally. Well, the day arrived and waking them up at 2:30 hrs wasn't a problem after all. Quite the opposite it was fascinating for us parents to watch them waiting for the transport and later on during the airport transfer. Despite the early hours both didn't fall asleep and it was all so exciting. We are taking the plane! Well organised by the Cotton Bay Hotel Honestly, it was a breeze and a smooth ride during our stay at the hotel. From the airport transfer, the cleanliness of our bungalow, the organisation of our day trips, and the SPA - all very well and enjoyable. The children had great fun, and although it was a bit too windy to plunge into the pool they had a lot of fun with other activities on the beach and at the Kid's Club. Oh, and we had our private petting zoo with cows, sheep and goats just close to the terrace. Some of us went to check out the SPA facilities and I have to admit that the services regarding Hammam and Sauna are better than at some other hotels in Mauritius. I don't know after how many months or years I was once again enjoying a very hot sauna. Little draw-back but nothing to worry about... There is no cold water or at least ice cubes to cool down the body, but hey there was a nice breeze coming over the hills. Some day trips to mention Based on a friend's recommendation we walked to a "restaurant" called Chez Solange & Robert. Hahaha, restaurant is widely stretched in this case, as we enjoyed a great BBQ with fresh lobster, whole fish, and pieces of chicken breast in an open cottage. Just some wooden structure covered with dried palm leaves on the roof - island feeling pure! The other day we went to the Giant Tortoise & Cave Reserve Francois Leguat to observe the giant Aldabra turtles and to visit the Grande Caverne. The biggest limestone cave on the island. Compared to our last visit this was a novelty after checking out the Caverne Partate. The formations of stalactites and stalagmites are very impressive and imaginative. Our guide had lots of funny terms and despite the low light conditions the kids had a great time wandering around on the narrow wooden paths and stairs. And last but not least, we decided to check out the Tyrodrig zip lines... Everyone was allowed to join the trip through the air, and our little ones stayed close to our field guides. But finally went on their own on the very last traversal. Puuuh, it was astounishing to glide over the valley, and for sure something to repeat next time. Impressions of our vacation on Rodrigues 2014   Next stay has been discussed already Oh yes, Rodrigues baby! We are going to come again! Tentative dates have been discussed already and now it's up to us to earn enough our next holiday on that wonderful remote piece of paradise. Eventually, a little bit longer than this time. We'll see...

    Read the article

  • 7 reasons you had to be at JavaOne Latin America 2012

    - by Bruno.Borges
    Yesterday was 12/12/12, and everybody went crazy on Twitter with cool memes like this one. And maybe you are now wondering why I mentioned 7 (seven) on the blog title. Because I want to play numbers? Yes! Today is 7 days after JavaOne Latin America 2012 is over (... and I had to figure out an excuse for taking so long to blog about it...). So unless you were at JavaOne Latin America this year, here are 7 things you missed: OTN Lounge mini-theatreThere was a mini-theatre holding several lightning talks. We had people from SouJava JUG, GoJava JUG, Globalcode, and several other Java gurus and companies running demos, talks, and even more. For example, @drspockbr talked about the ScrumToys project, that demonstrates the power of JSF. Hands On Lab for JAX-RS and WebSocketsOne of the cool things to do during JavaOne is to come to these Hands On labs and really do something using new technologies with the help of experts. This one in particular, was covered by me, Arun Gupta, and Reza Rahman. The HOL had more people than laptops (and we had 48 laptops!) interested on understanding and learning about the new stuff that is coming within Java EE 7. Things like JAX-RS, Server-sent Events and WebSockets. Hey, if you want to try this HOL by yourself, it is available on Github, so go for it! If you have questions, just let me know! Java Community KeynoteThis keynote presented a lot of cool things like startups using Java in their projects, the Duke Awards, SouJava winning the JCP Outstanding Award, the Java Band, and even more! It was really a space where the Java community could present what they are doing and what they want to do. There's a lot of interest on the Adopt-a-JSR program and the Adopt-OpenJDK. There's also an Adopt-a-JavaEE-JSR program! Take a look if you want to participate and Make the Future Java. Java EE (JMS, JAX-RS) sessions from Reza Rahman, the HeavyMetal guyReza is a well know professional and Java EE enthusiast from the communitty who just joined Oracle this year. His sessions were very well attended, perhaps because of a high interest on the new things coming to Java EE 7 like JMS 2.0 and JAX-RS 2.0. If you want to look at what he did at this JavaOne edition, read his blog post. By the way, if you like Java and heavymetal, you should follow him on Twitter as well! :-) Java EE (WebSockets, HTML5) sessions from Arun Gupta, the GlassFish guyIf you don't know Arun Gupta, no worries. You will have time to know about him while you read his Java EE 6 Pocket Guide. Arun has been evangelizing Java EE for a long time, and is now spreading his word about the new upcoming version Java EE 7. He gave one talk about HTML5 Productivity on the Java EE 7 platform, and another one on building web apps with WebSockets. Pretty neat! Arun blogged about JavaOne Latin America as well. Read it here. Java Embedded and JavaFXIf there are two things that are really trending in the Java World right now besides Java EE 7, certainly they are JavaFX and Java Embedded. There were 14 talks covering Java Embedded, from Java Cards to Raspberry.pi, from Java ME to Java on your TV with Ginga-J. The Internet of Things is becoming true, and Java is the only platform today that can connect it all in an standardized and concise way. JavaFX gained a lot of attention too. There were 8 sessions covering what the platform has to offer in terms of Rich User Experience. The JavaFX Scene Builder is an awesome tool to start playing designing an UI, and coding for JavaFX is like coding Swing with 8 hands, one holding your coffee cup. You can achieve a lot, with your two hands (unless, you really have 8 hands, then you can achieve 4 times more :-). If you want to read more about JavaFX, go to Stephen Chin's blog post. GlassFish and Friends Party, 1st edition at JavaOne Lating AmericaThis is probably the thing that I'm most proud. We brought to Brasil the tradition of holding a happy hour for all GlassFish, Java EE friends. This party started almost 7 years ago in San Francisco, and it was about time to bring it to Brazil! The party happened on Tuesday night, right after JavaOne General Keynote, at the Tribeca Pub. We had about 80 attendees and met a lot of Java EE developers there! People from JUGs, Oracle, Locaweb and Red Hat showed up too, including some execs from Oracle that didn't resist and could not miss a party like this one.Lots of caipirinhas, beer and food to everyone, some cool music... even The Fish walking around the party with Juggy!You can see more photos from the party on an album I shared with the recently created GlassFish Brasil community on Google+ here (but you may be more interested in joining the GlassFish english community). There's also more pictures that Arun took and shared on this link. So now you may want to consider coming to Brazil next year! Java EE 7 is on its way, and Brazil is happily and patiently waiting for it, with a lot of enthusiasm. By the way, GlassFish and Java EE 6 just celebrated a Happy Birthday!

    Read the article

  • add an image in listview

    - by danish
    Hi I would like to add more images in my list view as this code below only displays image 1 and 2 continuously in each row. What I want to do is display a different image for each different row. Here is mycode below; Thanks for any help. I am not good at java please change the code where necessary and I can then refer to it. public class starters extends ListActivity { private static class EfficientAdapter extends BaseAdapter { private LayoutInflater mInflater; private Bitmap mIcon1; private Bitmap mIcon2; private Bitmap mIcon3; private Bitmap mIcon4; private Bitmap mIcon5; private Bitmap mIcon6; private Bitmap mIcon7; private Bitmap mIcon8; private Bitmap mIcon9; private Bitmap mIcon10; public EfficientAdapter(Context context) { // Cache the LayoutInflate to avoid asking for a new one each time. mInflater = LayoutInflater.from(context); // Icons bound to the rows. mIcon1 = BitmapFactory.decodeResource(context.getResources(), R.drawable.starters1); mIcon2 = BitmapFactory.decodeResource(context.getResources(), R.drawable.starters2); mIcon3 = BitmapFactory.decodeResource(context.getResources(), R.drawable.starters3); mIcon4 = BitmapFactory.decodeResource(context.getResources(), R.drawable.starters4); mIcon5 = BitmapFactory.decodeResource(context.getResources(), R.drawable.starters5); mIcon6 = BitmapFactory.decodeResource(context.getResources(), R.drawable.starters6); mIcon7 = BitmapFactory.decodeResource(context.getResources(), R.drawable.starters7); mIcon8 = BitmapFactory.decodeResource(context.getResources(), R.drawable.starters8); mIcon9 = BitmapFactory.decodeResource(context.getResources(), R.drawable.starters9); mIcon10 = BitmapFactory.decodeResource(context.getResources(), R.drawable.starters10); } public int getCount() { return DATA.length; } public Object getItem(int position) { return position; } public long getItemId(int position) { return position; } public View getView(int position, View convertView, ViewGroup parent) { // A ViewHolder keeps references to children views to avoid unneccessary calls // to findViewById() on each row. ViewHolder holder; // When convertView is not null, we can reuse it directly, there is no need // to reinflate it. We only inflate a new View when the convertView supplied // by ListView is null. if (convertView == null) { convertView = mInflater.inflate(R.layout.starters, null); // Creates a ViewHolder and store references to the two children views // we want to bind data to. holder = new ViewHolder(); holder.text = (TextView) convertView.findViewById(R.id.text01); holder.text = (TextView) convertView.findViewById(R.id.secondLine); holder.icon = (ImageView) convertView.findViewById(R.id.icon01); convertView.setTag(holder); } else { // Get the ViewHolder back to get fast access to the TextView // and the ImageView. holder = (ViewHolder) convertView.getTag(); } // Bind the data efficiently with the holder. holder.text.setText(DATA[position]); holder.icon.setImageBitmap((position & 1) ==1 ? mIcon1 : mIcon2); return convertView; } static class ViewHolder { TextView text; ImageView icon; } } @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setListAdapter(new EfficientAdapter(this)); } private static final String[] DATA = { "Original nachos", "Toasted chicken and cheese quesadillas", "Chicken, lime and coriander nachos", "Spicy bean and cheese quesadillas", "Tuna and corn quesadillas", "Cheesy bean and sweetcorn nachos", "Crispy chicken, avocado and lime salad", "Beef and baby corn tostada", "Spicy mexican rice with chicken and prawns", "Chilli potato boats"}; }

    Read the article

  • Silverlight and Unexpected Font Sizes

    - by Eric J.
    Someone please teach me to fish here... I'm just learning Silverlight and have ran into a few situations where the font size actually used is drastically different than I would expect. There's probably something conceptual that I'm missing. Case A In one instance, I have defined a user control that presents a Label to show text. If one clicks on the label, the label (that is in a stack panel, in the user control) is replaced with a TextBox. When used at the top of a page (as in the example below with lblName) the label text is very small (around 8 points). When clicked on, the text box that replaces the label uses the specified fonts size. That same user control, used in different parts of the app, uses the same font for Label and TextBox. <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White"> <Grid.RowDefinitions> <RowDefinition Height="33" /> <RowDefinition Height="267*" /> </Grid.RowDefinitions> <StackPanel Height="Auto" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Name="stackPanel" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="Auto" Grid.Row="1" /> <my:EditLabel Height="33" HorizontalAlignment="Left" x:Name="lblName" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="Auto" FlexText="{Binding Name, Mode=TwoWay}" FontSize="20" MinHeight="24" /> </Grid> Case B I'm using the LiquidMenu.Menu control to pop up a menu when a button is pressed. The font looks huge compared to the rest of my page (maybe 36 points?). I tried forcing it to a very small by explicitly setting it to 8pt, but that had no effect. <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="{x:Null}"> <StackPanel x:Name="labelStackPanel" Orientation="Horizontal"> <TextBlock Height="24" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Name="labelText" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="200" Text="(Value Goes Here)" /> </StackPanel> <liquidMenu:Menu x:Name="popupMenu" Canvas.Left="40" Canvas.Top="40" ItemSelected="MenuList_ItemSelected" Visibility="Collapsed" Height="Auto" FontSize="8"> <liquidMenu:MenuItem ID="delete" Icon="Images/Delete10.png" Text="Delete" Shortcut="Del" /> <liquidMenu:MenuItem ID="exclusive" Icon="" Text="Exclusive" Shortcut="Ctrl+E" /> <liquidMenu:MenuItem ID="properties" Icon="" Text="Properties" Shortcut="Ctrl+P" /> </liquidMenu:Menu> </Grid> Answers to these specific issues are great, a new way to think about this type of issue so that I understand how to control font size is better.

    Read the article

  • SSLException: Keystore does not support enabled cipher suites

    - by wurfkeks
    I want to implement a small android application, that works as SSL Server. After lot of problems with the right format of the keystore, I solved this and run into the next one. My keystore file is properly loaded by the KeyStore class. But when I try to open the server socket (socket.accept()) the following error is raised: javax.net.ssl.SSLException: Could not find any key store entries to support the enabled cipher suites. I generated my keystore with this command: keytool -genkey -keystore test.keystore -keyalg RSA -keypass ssltest -storepass ssltest -storetype BKS -provider org.bouncycastle.jce.provider.BouncyCastleProvider -providerpath bcprov.jar with the Unlimited Strength Jurisdiction Policy for Java SE6 applied to my jre6. I got a list of supported ciphers suites by calling socket.getSupportedCipherSuites() that prints a long list with very different combinations. But I don't know how to get a supported key. I also tried the android debug keystore after converting it to BKS format using portecle but get still the same error. Can anyone help and tell how I can generate a key that is compatible with one of the cipher suites? Version Information: targetSDK: 15 tested on emulator running 4.0.3 and real device running 2.3.3 BounceCastle 1.46 portecle 1.7 Code of my test application: public class SSLTestActivity extends Activity implements Runnable { SSLServerSocket mServerSocket; ToggleButton tglBtn; /** Called when the activity is first created. */ @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.main); this.tglBtn = (ToggleButton)findViewById(R.id.toggleButton1); tglBtn.setOnCheckedChangeListener(new CompoundButton.OnCheckedChangeListener() { @Override public void onCheckedChanged(CompoundButton buttonView, boolean isChecked) { if (isChecked) { new Thread(SSLTestActivity.this).run(); } else { try { if (mServerSocket != null) mServerSocket.close(); } catch (IOException e) { Log.e("SSLTestActivity", e.toString()); } } } }); } @Override public void run() { try { KeyStore keyStore = KeyStore.getInstance(KeyStore.getDefaultType()); keyStore.load(getAssets().open("test.keystore"), "ssltest".toCharArray()); ServerSocketFactory socketFactory = SSLServerSocketFactory.getDefault(); mServerSocket = (SSLServerSocket) socketFactory.createServerSocket(8080); while (!mServerSocket.isClosed()) { Socket client = mServerSocket.accept(); PrintWriter output = new PrintWriter(client.getOutputStream(), true); output.println("So long, and thanks for all the fish!"); client.close(); } } catch (Exception e) { Log.e("SSLTestActivity", e.toString()); } } }

    Read the article

  • How to represent different entities that have identical behavior?

    - by Dominik
    I have several different entities in my domain model (animal species, let's say), which have a few properties each. The entities are readonly (they do not change state during the application lifetime) and they have identical behavior (the differ only by the values of properties). How to implement such entities in code? Unsuccessful attempts: Enums I tried an enum like this: enum Animals { Frog, Duck, Otter, Fish } And other pieces of code would switch on the enum. However, this leads to ugly switching code, scattering the logic around and problems with comboboxes. There's no pretty way to list all possible Animals. Serialization works great though. Subclasses I also thought about where each animal type is a subclass of a common base abstract class. The implementation of Swim() is the same for all Animals, though, so it makes little sense and serializability is a big issue now. Since we represent an animal type (species, if you will), there should be one instance of the subclass per application, which is hard and weird to maintain when we use serialization. public abstract class AnimalBase { string Name { get; set; } // user-readable double Weight { get; set; } Habitat Habitat { get; set; } public void Swim(); { /* swim implementation; the same for all animals but depends uses the value of Weight */ } } public class Otter: AnimalBase{ public Otter() { Name = "Otter"; Weight = 10; Habitat = "North America"; } } // ... and so on Just plain awful. Static fields This blog post gave me and idea for a solution where each option is a statically defined field inside the type, like this: public class Animal { public static readonly Animal Otter = new Animal { Name="Otter", Weight = 10, Habitat = "North America"} // the rest of the animals... public string Name { get; set; } // user-readable public double Weight { get; set; } public Habitat Habitat { get; set; } public void Swim(); } That would be great: you can use it like enums (AnimalType = Animal.Otter), you can easily add a static list of all defined animals, you have a sensible place where to implement Swim(). Immutability can be achieved by making property setters protected. There is a major problem, though: it breaks serializability. A serialized Animal would have to save all its properties and upon deserialization it would create a new instance of Animal, which is something I'd like to avoid. Is there an easy way to make the third attempt work? Any more suggestions for implementing such a model?

    Read the article

  • Passing custom info to mongrel_rails start

    - by whaka
    One thing I really don't understand is how I can pass custom start-up options to a mongrel instance. I see that a common approach is the use environment variables, but in my environment this is not going to work because my rails application serves many different clients. Much code is shared between clients, but there are also many differences which I implement by subclassing controllers and views to overload or extend existing features or introduce new ones. To make this all work, I simply add the paths to client specific modules the module load path ($:). In order to start the application for a particular client, I could now use an environment variable like say, TARGET=AMAZONE. Unfortunately, on some systems I'm running multiple mongrel clusters, each cluster serving a different client. Some of these systems run under Windows and to start mongrel I installed mongrel_services. Clearly, this makes my environment variable unsuitable. Passing this extra bit of data to the application is proving to be a real challenge. For a start, mongrel_rails service_install will reject any [custom] command line parameters that aren't documented. I'm not too concerned as installing the services using the install program is trivial. However, even if I manage to install mongrel_services such that when run it passes the custom command line option --target to mongrel_rails start, I get an error because mongrel_rails doesn't recognize the switch. So here were the things I looked at: Pass an extra parameter: mongrel_rails start --target XYZ ... use a config file and add target:XYZ, then do: mongrel_rails start -C x:\myapp\myconfig.yml modify the file: Ruby\lib\ruby\gems\1.8\gems\mongrel-1.1.5-x86-mswin32-60\lib\mongrel\command.rb Perhaps I can use the --script option, but all docs that I found on it were for Unix 1 and 2 simply don't work. I played with 4 but never managed it to do anything. So I had no choice but to go with 3. While it is relatively simple, I hate changing ruby library code. Particularly disappointing is that 2 doesn't work. I mean what is so unreasonable about adding other [custom] options in the config file? Actually I think this is a fundamental piece that is missing in rails. Somehow, the application should be able to register and access command line arguments it expects. If anybody has a good idea how to do this more elegantly using the current infrastructure, I have a chocolate fish to give away!!!

    Read the article

  • Sound Complete Not Firing (AS3)

    - by JasonMc92
    I have a bit of a quandary. I need to call a function inside a MovieClip once a particular sound has finished playing. The sound is played via a sound channel in an external class which I have imported. Playback is working perfectly. Here is the relevent code from my external class, Sonus. public var SFXPRChannel:SoundChannel = new SoundChannel; var SFXPRfishbeg:Sound = new sfxpr_fishbeg(); var SFXPRfishmid:Sound = new sfxpr_fishmid(); var SFXPRfishend3:Sound = new sfxpr_fishend3(); var SFXPRfishend4:Sound = new sfxpr_fishend4() public function PlayPrompt(promptname:String):void { var sound:String = "SFXPR" + promptname; SFXPRChannel = this[sound].play(); } This is called via an import in the document class "osr", thus I access it in my project via "osr.Sonus.---" In my project, I have the following line of code. osr.Sonus.SFXPRChannel.addEventListener(Event.SOUND_COMPLETE, promptIsFinished); function prompt():void { var level = osr.Gradua.Fetch("fish", "arr_con_level"); Wait(true); switch(level) { case 1: osr.Sonus.PlayPrompt("fishbeg"); break; case 2: osr.Sonus.PlayPrompt("fishmid"); break; case 3: osr.Sonus.PlayPrompt("fishend3"); break; case 4: osr.Sonus.PlayPrompt("fishend4"); break; } } function Wait(yesno):void { gui.Wait(yesno); } function promptIsFinished(evt:Event):void { Wait(false); } osr.Sonus.PlayPrompt(...) and gui.Wait(...) both work perfectly, as I use them in other contexts in this part of the project without error. Basically, after the sound finishes playing, I need Wait(false); to be called, but the event listener does not appear to be "hearing" the SOUND_COMPLETE event. Did I make a mistake somewhere? For the record, due to my project structure, I cannot call the appropriate Wait(...) function from within Sonus. Help?

    Read the article

  • Scott Guthrie in Glasgow

    - by Martin Hinshelwood
    Last week Scott Guthrie was in Glasgow for his new Guathon tour, which was a roaring success. Scott did talks on the new features in Visual Studio 2010, Silverlight 4, ASP.NET MVC 2 and Windows Phone 7. Scott talked from 10am till 4pm, so this can only contain what I remember and I am sure lots of things he discussed just went in one ear and out another, however I have tried to capture at least all of my Ohh’s and Ahh’s. Visual Studio 2010 Right now you can download and install Visual Studio 2010 Candidate Release, but soon we will have the final product in our hands. With it there are some amazing improvements, and not just in the IDE. New versions of VB and C# come out of the box as well as Silverlight 4 and SharePoint 2010 integration. The new Intellisense features allow inline support for Types and Dictionaries as well as being able to type just part of a name and have the list filter accordingly. Even better, and my personal favourite is one that Scott did not mention, and that is that it is not case sensitive so I can actually find things in C# with its reasonless case sensitivity (Scott, can we please have an option to turn that off.) Another nice feature is the Routing engine that was created for ASP.NET MVC is now available for WebForms which is good news for all those that just imported the MVC DLL’s to get at it anyway. Another fantastic feature that will need some exploring is the ability to add validation rules to your entities and have them validated automatically on the front end. This removes the need to add your own validators and means that you can control an objects validation rules from a single location, the object. A simple command “GridView.EnableDynamicData(gettype(product))“ will enable this feature on controls. What was not clear was wither there would be support for this in WPF and WinForms as well. If there is, we can write our validation rules once and use everywhere. I was disappointed to here that there would be no inbuilt support for the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) with VS2010, but I think it will be there for .vNext. Because I have been concentrating on the Visual Studio ALM enhancements to VS2010 I found this section invaluable as I now know at least some of what I missed. Silverlight 4 I am not a big fan of Silverlight. There I said it, and I will probably get lynched for it. My big problem with Silverlight is that most of the really useful things I leaned from WPF do not work. I am only going to mention one thing and that is “x:Type”. If you are a WPF developer you will know how much power these 6 little letters provide; the ability to target templates at object types being the the most magical and useful. But, and this is a massive but, if you are developing applications that MUST run on platforms other than windows then Silverlight is your only choice (well that and Flash, but lets just not go there). And Silverlight has a huge install base as well.. 60% of all internet connected devices have Silverlight. Can Adobe say that? Even though I am not a fan of it my current project is a Silverlight one. If you start your XAML experience with Silverlight you will not be disappointed and neither will the users of the applications you build. Scott showed us a fantastic application called “Silverface” that is a Silverlight 4 Out of Browser application. I have looked for a link and can’t find one, but true to form, here is a fantastic WPF version called Fish Bowl from Microsoft. ASP.NET MVC 2 ASP.NET MVC is something I have played with but never used in anger. It is definitely the way forward, but WebForms is not dead yet. there are still circumstances when WebForms are better. If you are starting from greenfield and you are using TDD, then MVC is ultimately the only way you can go. New in version 2 are Dynamic Scaffolding helpers that let you control how data is presented in the UI from the Entities. Adding validation rules and other options that make sense there can help improve the overall ease of developing the UI. Also the Microsoft team have heard the cries of help from the larger site builders and provided “Areas” which allow a level of categorisation to your Controllers and Views. These work just like add-ins and have their own folder, but also have sub Controllers and Views. Areas are totally pluggable and can be dropped onto existing sites giving the ability to have boxed products in MVC, although what you do with all of those views is anyone's guess. They have been listening to everyone again with the new option to encapsulate UI using the Html.Action or Html.ActionRender. This uses the existing  .ascx functionality in ASP.NET to render partial views to the screen in certain areas. While this was possible before, it makes the method official thereby opening it up to the masses and making it a standard. At the end of the session Scott pulled out some IIS goodies including the IIS SEO Toolkit which can be used to verify your own site is “good” for search engine consumption. Better yet he suggested that you run it against your friends sites and shame them with how bad they are. note: make sure you have fixed yours first. Windows Phone 7 Series I had already seen the new UI for WP7 and heard about the developer story, but Scott brought that home by building a twitter application in about 20 minutes using the emulator. Scott’s only mistake was loading @plip’s tweets into the app… And guess what, it was written in Silverlight. When Windows Phone 7 launches you will be able to use about 90% of the codebase of your existing Silverlight application and use it on the phone! There are two downsides to the new WP7 architecture: No, your existing application WILL NOT work without being converted to either a Silverlight or XNA UI. NO, you will not be able to get your applications onto the phone any other way but through the Marketplace. Do I think these are problems? No, not even slightly. This phone is aimed at consumers who have probably never tried to install an application directly onto a device. There will be support for enterprise apps in the future, but for now enterprises should stay on Windows Phone 6.5.x devices. Post Event drinks At the after event drinks gathering Scott was checking out my HTC HD2 (released to the US this month on T-Mobile) and liked the Windows Phone 6.5.5 build I have on it. We discussed why Microsoft were not going to allow Windows Phone 7 Series onto it with my understanding being that it had 5 buttons and not 3, while Scott was sure that there was more to it from a hardware standpoint. I think he is right, and although the HTC HD2 has a DX9 compatible processor, it was never built with WP7 in mind. However, as if by magic Saturday brought fantastic news for all those that have already bought an HD2: Yes, this appears to be Windows Phone 7 running on a HTC HD2. The HD2 itself won't be getting an official upgrade to Windows Phone 7 Series, so all eyes are on the ROM chefs at the moment. The rather massive photos have been posted by Tom Codon on HTCPedia and they've apparently got WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth and other bits working. The ROM isn't online yet but according to the post there's a beta version coming soon. Leigh Geary - http://www.coolsmartphone.com/news5648.html  What was Scott working on on his flight back to the US?   Technorati Tags: VS2010,MVC2,WP7S,WP7 Follow: @CAMURPHY, @ColinMackay, @plip and of course @ScottGu

    Read the article

  • Rockmelt, the technology adoption model, and Facebook's spare internet

    - by Roger Hart
    Regardless of how good it is, you'd have to have a heart of stone not to make snide remarks about Rockmelt. After all, on the surface it looks a lot like some people spent two years building a browser instead of just bashing out a Chrome extension over a wet weekend. It probably does some more stuff. I don't know for sure because artificial scarcity is cool, apparently, so the "invitation" is still in the post*. I may in fact never know for sure, because I'm not wild about Facebook sign-in as a prerequisite for anything. From the video, and some initial reviews, my early reaction was: I have a browser, I have a Twitter client; what on earth is this for? The answer, of course, is "not me". Rockmelt is, in a way, quite audacious. Oh, sure, on launch day it's Bay Area bar-chat for the kids with no lenses in their retro specs and trousers that give you deep-vein thrombosis, but it's not really about them. Likewise,  Facebook just launched Google Wave, or something. And all the tech snobbery and scorn packed into describing it that way is irrelevant next to what they're doing with their platform. Here's something I drew in MS Paint** because I don't want to get sued: (see: The technology adoption lifecycle) A while ago in the Guardian, John Lanchester dusted off the idiom that "technology is stuff that doesn't work yet". The rest of the article would be quite interesting if it wasn't largely about MySpace, and he's sort of got a point. If you bolt on the sentiment that risk-averse businessmen like things that work, you've got the essence of Crossing the Chasm. Products for the mainstream market don't look much like technology. Think for  a second about early (1980s ish) hi-fi systems, with all the knobs and fiddly bits, their ostentatious technophile aesthetic. Then consider their sleeker and less (or at least less conspicuously) functional successors in the 1990s. The theory goes that innovators and early adopters like technology, it's a hobby in itself. The rest of the humans seem to like magic boxes with very few buttons that make stuff happen and never trouble them about why. Personally, I consider Apple's maddening insistence that iTunes is an acceptable way to move files around to be more or less morally unacceptable. Most people couldn't care less. Hence Rockmelt, and hence Facebook's continued growth. Rockmelt looks pointless to me, because I aggregate my social gubbins with Digsby, or use TweetDeck. But my use case is different and so are my enthusiasms. If I want to share photos, I'll use Flickr - but Facebook has photo sharing. If I want a short broadcast message, I'll use Twitter - Facebook has status updates. If I want to sell something with relatively little hassle, there's eBay - or Facebook marketplace. YouTube - check, FB Video. Email - messaging. Calendaring apps, yeah there are loads, or FB Events. What if I want to host a simple web page? Sure, they've got pages. Also Notes for blogging, and more games than I can count. This stuff is right there, where millions and millions of users are already, and for what they need it just works. It's not about me, because I'm not in the big juicy area under the curve. It's what 1990s portal sites could never have dreamed of achieving. Facebook is AOL on speed, crack, and some designer drugs it had specially imported from the future. It's a n00b-friendly gateway to the internet that just happens to serve up all the things you want to do online, right where you are. Oh, and everybody else is there too. The price of having all this and the social graph too is that you have all of this, and the social graph too. But plenty of folks have more incisive things to say than me about the whole privacy shebang, and it's not really what I'm talking about. Facebook is maintaining a vast, and fairly fully-featured training-wheels internet. And it makes up a large proportion of the online experience for a lot of people***. It's the entire web (2.0?) experience for the early and late majority. And sure, no individual bit of it is quite as slick or as fully-realised as something like Flickr (which wows me a bit every time I use it. Those guys are good at the web), but it doesn't have to be. It has to be unobtrusively good enough for the regular humans. It has to not feel like technology. This is what Rockmelt sort of is. You're online, you want something nebulously social, and you don't want to faff about with, say, Twitter clients. Wow! There it is on a really distracting sidebar, right in your browser. No effort! Yeah - fish nor fowl, much? It might work, I guess. There may be a demographic who want their social web experience more simply than tech tinkering, and who aren't just getting it from Facebook (or, for that matter, mobile devices). But I'd be surprised. Rockmelt feels like an attempt to grab a slice of Facebook-style "Look! It's right here, where you already are!", but it's still asking the mature market to install a new browser. Presumably this is where that Facebook sign-in predicate comes in handy, though it'll take some potent awareness marketing to make it fly. Meanwhile, Facebook quietly has the entire rest of the internet as a product management resource, and can continue to give most of the people most of what they want. Something that has not gone un-noticed in its potential to look a little sinister. But heck, they might even make Google Wave popular.     *This was true last week when I drafted this post. I got an invite subsequently, hence the screenshot. **MS Paint is no fun any more. It's actually good in Windows 7. Farewell ironically-shonky diagrams. *** It's also behind a single sign-in, lending a veneer of confidence, and partially solving the problem of usernames being crummy unique identifiers. I'll be blogging about that at some point.

    Read the article

< Previous Page | 6 7 8 9 10 11  | Next Page >