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  • .NET Rocks is on the Road Again!

    - by Scott Spradlin
    Carl and Richard are loading up the DotNetMobile (a 30 foot RV) and driving to our town again to show off their favorite bits of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0! Richard talks about Web load testing and Carl talks about Silverlight 4.0 and multimedia. And to make the night even more fun, they are going to bring a mystery rock star from the Visual Studio world to the event and interview them for a special .NET Rocks Road Trip show series. Along the way we’ll be giving away some great prizes, showing off some awesome technology and having a ton of laughs. So come out to the most fun you can have in a geeky evening - and learn a few things along the way about web load testing and Silverlight 4! And one lucky person at the event will win "Ride Along with Carl and Richard" and get to board the RV and ride with the boys to the next town on the tour -- Chicago. (don’t worry, they will get you home again!) So come out to the most fun you can have in a geeky evening – and find out what’s new and cool in Visual Studio 2010! To get insure we have sufficient food for everyone, please register for this event at http://stlnet.eventbrite.com This registration information will only be used to obtain accurate counts for food preparation. All other answers are optional and will be used for purely statistical analysis. No information will be shared outside the St. Louis .NET User Group. Here is a list of prizes to be given away at the event: Telerik Premium Collection Pre-Emptive One Year Commercial Runtime Intelligence license Red Gate ANTS Memory Profiler Quest Toad Extension for Visual Studio DevExpress Code Rush and Refactor Pro Grape City Active Report/BI Suite Grape City Spread 5.0 JetBrains Resharper Component One Studio for ASP.NET Component One Studio for Silverlight Please check out the event sponsors: Visit http://www.dotnetrocks.com/roadtrip for more information! Thursday, April 29, 2010 6:00 pm - Food and social 6:30 pm - .NET Rocks Interview 7:15 pm - Richard Campbell 8:00 pm - Carl Franklin 8:45 pm - prizes!

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  • Silverlight Cream for March 27, 2010 -- #822

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: MSDN, Bill Reiss, Charlie Kindel(-2-), SilverLaw, Scott Marlowe, Kenny Young, Andrea Boschin, Mike Taulty, Damon Payne, and Jeff Handley(-2-). Shoutouts: Scott Morrison has his material up for his talk at MIX 10: Silverlight 4 Business Applications Matthias Shapiro posted his MIX10 “Information Visualization in Silverlight” Slides and Code for MIX10 Information Visualization Talk Demos Dan Wahlin has his MIX10 material all posted as well: Syncing Audio, Video and Animations in Silverlight Timmy Kokke has an interesting MEF post up: Building extensions for Expression Blend 4 using MEF From SilverlightCream.com: How to: Add an Application Bar to Your Application In case you missed this MSDN post on adding an Application Bar to your WP7 app Simulating accelerometer data in the Windows Phone 7 emulator Got a Wii? How about a Wii remote? Bill Reiss shows how to use the Wii remote to simulate accelerometer data on the WP7 emulator ... really! Windows Phone 7 Series Icon Pack Charlie Kindel announced the release of a WP7 Icon pack ... great external MSDN link on using them as well. Windows Phone Developer Documentation Charlie Kindel also posted WP7 Documentation, and a quick overview of what you'll find ... samples, references, all good stuff to check out and download. GlossyTextblock Custom Control - Silverlight 3 SilverLaw has his GlossyTextblock rebuilt as a Custom Control and in the Expresseion Gallery. Check the blog for a screenshot. A Windows Phone 7 Silverlight TagList Scott Marlowe has a great post up for WP7 accessing his blog tag list via WCF and displaying the data on the emulator... wow! Dynamic Layout and Transitions in Expression Blend 4 Kenny Young has a great companion blog post to a demo app on Expression Gallery. There's also a link on the page to Kenny's MIX10 session Using XmlDefinition and XmlPrefix to better organize namespaces Andrea Boschin comes to our rescue about the maze of namespaces in XAML by using a solution from the RC: XmlDefinition and XmlPrefix Silverlight 4 RC – Socket Security Changes Mike Taulty is discussing changes in the RC with regard to sockets that have come about since he did his series of posts. Lots of good code. Cascading ItemsSource Bindings in Silverlight Damon Payne addresses an issue he came acros with multiple DataGrids on the same screen. He demonstrates the problem, and then demonstrates his solution. ContosoSales Application for RIA Services RC Jeff Handley posted about the refresh to the ContosoSales application shown in the PDC keynote, and details the changes. Lots of good code and links. DomainDataSource Filters and Parameters Jeff Handley has another post up about RIA Services and the fact that ControlParameter is gone... and he shows how to use ElementName binding instead. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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  • Need some advice regarding collision detection with the sprite changing its width and height

    - by Frank Scott
    So I'm messing around with collision detection in my tile-based game and everything works fine and dandy using this method. However, now I am trying to implement sprite sheets so my character can have a walking and jumping animation. For one, I'd like to to be able to have each frame of variable size, I think. I want collision detection to be accurate and during a jumping animation the sprite's height will be shorter (because of the calves meeting the hamstrings). Again, this also works fine at the moment. I can get the character to animate properly each frame and cycle through animations. The problems arise when the width and height of the character change. Often times its position will be corrected by the collision detection system and the character will be rubber-banded to random parts of the map or even go outside the map bounds. For some reason with the linked collision detection algorithm, when the width or height of the sprite is changed on the fly, the entire algorithm breaks down. The solution I found so far is to have a single width and height of the sprite that remains constant, and only adjust the source rectangle for drawing. However, I'm not sure exactly what to set as the sprite's constant bounding box because it varies so much with the different animations. So now I'm not sure what to do. I'm toying with the idea of pixel-perfect collision detection but I'm not sure if it would really be worth it. Does anyone know how Braid does their collision detection? My game is also a 2D sidescroller and I was quite impressed with how it was handled in that game. Thanks for reading.

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  • Silverlight Firestarter Wrap Up and WCF RIA Services Talk Sample Code

    - by dwahlin
    I had a great time attending and speaking at the Silverlight Firestarter event up in Redmond on December 2, 2010. In addition to getting a chance to hang out with a lot of cool people from Microsoft such as Scott Guthrie, John Papa, Tim Heuer, Brian Goldfarb, John Allwright, David Pugmire, Jesse Liberty, Jeff Handley, Yavor Georgiev, Jossef Goldberg, Mike Cook and many others, I also had a chance to chat with a lot of people attending the event and hear about what projects they’re working on which was awesome. If you didn’t get a chance to look through all of the new features coming in Silverlight 5 check out John Papa’s post on the subject. While at the Silverlight Firestarter event I gave a presentation on WCF RIA Services and wanted to get the code posted since several people have asked when it’d be available. The talk can be viewed by clicking the image below. Code from the talk follows as well as additional links. I had a few people ask about the green bracelet on my left hand since it looks like something you’d get from a waterpark. It was used to get us access down a little hall that led backstage and allowed us to go backstage during the event. I thought it looked kind of dorky but it was required to get through security. Sample Code from My WCF RIA Services Talk (To login to the 2 apps use “user” and “P@ssw0rd”. Make sure to do a rebuild of the projects in Visual Studio before running them.) View All Silverlight Firestarter Talks and Scott Guthrie’s Keynote WCF RIA Services SP1 Beta for Silverlight 4 WCF RIA Services Code Samples (including some SP1 samples) Improved binding support in EntitySet and EntityCollection with SP1 (Kyle McClellan’s Blog) Introducing an MVVM-Friendly DomainDataSource: The DomainCollectionView (Kyle McClellan’s Blog) I’ve had the chance to speak at a lot of conferences but never with as many cameras, streaming capabilities, people watching live and overall hype involved. Over 1000 people registered to attend the conference in person at the Microsoft campus and well over 15,000 to watch it through the live stream.  The event started for me on Tuesday afternoon with a flight up to Seattle from Phoenix. My flight was delayed 1 1/2 hours (I seem to be good at booking delayed flights) so I didn’t get up there until almost 8 PM. John Papa did a tech check at 9 PM that night and I was scheduled for 9:30 PM. We basically plugged in my laptop backstage (amazing number of servers, racks and audio devices back there) and made sure everything showed up properly on the projector and the machines recording the presentation. In addition to a dedicated show director, there were at least 5 tech people back stage and at least that many up in the booth running lights, audio, cameras, and other aspects of the show. I wish I would’ve taken a picture of the backstage setup since it was pretty massive – servers all over the place. I definitely gained a new appreciation for how much work goes into these types of events. Here’s what the room looked like right before my tech check– not real exciting at this point. That’s Yavor Georgiev (who spoke on WCF Services at the Firestarter) in the background. We had plenty of monitors to reference during the presentation. Two monitors for slides (right and left side) and a notes monitor. The 4th monitor showed the time and they’d type in notes to us as we talked (such as “You’re over time!” in my case since I went around 4 minutes over :-)). Wednesday morning I went back on campus at Microsoft and watched John Papa film a few Silverlight TV episodes with Dave Campbell and Ryan Plemons.   Next I had the chance to watch the dry run of the keynote with Scott Guthrie and John Papa. We were all blown away by the demos shown since they were even better than expected. Starting at 1 PM on Wednesday I went over to Building 35 and listened to Yavor Georgiev (WCF Services), Jaime Rodriguez (Windows Phone 7), Jesse Liberty (Data Binding) and Jossef Goldberg and Mike Cook (Silverlight Performance) give their different talks and we all shared feedback with each other which was a lot of fun. Jeff Handley from the RIA Services team came afterwards and listened to me give a dry run of my WCF RIA Services talk. He had some great feedback that I really appreciated getting. That night I hung out with John Papa and Ward Bell and listened to John walk through his keynote demos. I also got a sneak peak of the gift given to Dave Campbell for all his work with Silverlight Cream over the years. It’s a poster signed by all of the key people involved with Silverlight: Thursday morning I got up fairly early to get to the event center by 8 AM for speaker pictures. It was nice and quiet at that point although outside the room there was a huge line of people waiting to get in.     At around 8:30 AM everyone was let in and the main room was filled quickly. Two other overflow rooms in the Microsoft conference center (Building 33) were also filled to capacity. At around 9 AM Scott Guthrie kicked off the event and all the excitement started! From there it was all a blur but it was definitely a lot of fun. All of the sessions for the Silverlight Firestarter were recorded and can be watched here (including the keynote). Corey Schuman, John Papa and I also released 11 lab exercises and associated videos to help people get started with Silverlight. Definitely check them out if you’re interested in learning more! Level 100: Getting Started Lab 01 - WinForms and Silverlight Lab 02 - ASP.NET and Silverlight Lab 03 - XAML and Controls Lab 04 - Data Binding Level 200: Ready for More Lab 05 - Migrating Apps to Out-of-Browser Lab 06 - Great UX with Blend Lab 07 - Web Services and Silverlight Lab 08 - Using WCF RIA Services Level 300: Take me Further Lab 09 - Deep Dive into Out-of-Browser Lab 10 - Silverlight Patterns: Using MVVM Lab 11 - Silverlight and Windows Phone 7

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  • Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Integration With Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 11g

    - by Scott Elvington
    In a blog entry earlier this year, we announced the availability of the Ops Center 11g plug-in for Enterprise Manager 12c. In this article I will walk you through the process of deploying the plug-in on your existing Enterprise Manager agents and show you some of the capabilities the plug-in provides. We'll also look at the integration from the Ops Center perspective. I will show you how to set up the connection to Enterprise Manager and give an overview of the information that is available. Installing and Configuring the Ops Center Plug-in The plug-in is available for download from the Self Update page (Setup ? Extensibility ? Self Update). The plug-in name is “Ops Center Infrastructure stack”. Once you have downloaded the plug-in you can navigate to the Plug-In management page (Setup ? Extensibility ? Plug-ins) to begin deployment. The plug-in must first be deployed on the Management Server. You will need to provide the repository password of the SYS user in order to deploy the plug-in to the Management Server. There are a few pre-requisites that need to be completed on the Ops Center side before the plug-in can be deployed and configured on the desired Enterprise Manager agents. Any servers, whether physical or virtual, for which you wish to see metrics and alerts need to be managed by Ops Center. This means that the Operating System needs to have an Ops Center management agent installed as a minimum. The plug-in can provide even more value when Ops Center is also managing the other “layers of the stack”, for example the service processor, the blade chassis or the XSCF of an M-Series server. The more information that Ops Center has about the stack, the more information that will be visible within Enterprise Manager via the plug-in. In order to access the information within Ops Center, the plug-in requires a user to connect as. This user does not require any particular Ops Center permissions or roles, it simply needs to exist. You can create a specific “EMPlugin” user within Ops Center or use an existing user. Oracle recommends creating a specific, non-privileged user account within Ops Center for this purpose. From the Ops Center Administration section, select Enterprise Controller, click the Users tab and finally click the Add User icon to create the desired user account. For the purpose of this article I have discovered and managed the OS and service processor of the server where my Enterprise Manager 12c installation is hosted. With the plug-in deployed to the Management Server and the setup done within Ops Center, we're now ready to deploy the plug-in to the agents and configure the targets to communicate with the Ops Center Enterprise Controller. From the Setup menu select Add Targets then Add Targets Manually. Select the bottom radio button “Add Targets Manually by Specifying Target Monitoring Properties”, select Infrastructure Stack from the Target Type dropdown and finally, select the Monitoring Agent where you wish to deploy the plug-in. Click the Add Manually.... button and fill in the details for the new target using the appropriate hostname for your Enterprise Controller and the user and password details for the plug-in access user. After the target has been added to the agent you will need to allow a few minutes for the initial data collection to complete. Once completed you can see the new target in the All Targets list. All metric collections are enabled by default except one. To enable Infrastructure Stack Alarms collection, navigate to the newly added target and then to Target ? Monitoring ? Metric and Collection Settings. There you can click the “Disabled” link under Collection Schedule to enable collection and set your desired collection frequency. By default, a Warning level alert in Ops Center will equate to a Warning level event in Enterprise Manager and a Critical alert will equate to a Critical event. This mapping can be altered in the Metric and Collection Settings also. The default incident rules in Enterprise Manager only create incidents from Critical events so keep this in mind in case you want to see incidents generated for Warning or Info level alerts from Ops Center. Also, because Enterprise Manager already monitors the OS through it's Host target type, the plug-in does not pull OS alerts from Ops Center so as to prevent duplication. In addition to alert propagation, the plug-in also provides data for several reports detailing the topology and configuration of the stack as well as any hardware sensor data that is available. These are available from the Information Publisher Reports. Navigate there from the Enterprise ? Reports menu or directly from the Infrastructure Stack target of interest. As an example, here is a sample of the Hardware Sensors report showing some of the available sensor data. The report can also be exported to a CSV file format if desired. Connecting Ops Center to Enterprise Manager Repository For an Enterprise Manager user, the plug-in provides a deeper visibility to the state of the infrastructure underlying the databases and middleware. On the Ops Center side, there is also a greater visibility to the targets running on the infrastructure. To set up the Ops Center data collection, just navigate to the Administration section and select the Grid Control link. Select the Configure/Connect action from the right-hand menu and complete the wizard forms to enable the connection to the Enterprise Manager repository and UI. Be sure to use the sysman account when configuring the database connection. Once the job completes and the initial data synchronization is done you will see new Target tabs on your OS assets. The new tab lists all the Enterprise Manager targets and any alerts, availability and performance data specific to the selected target. It is also possible to use the GoTo icon to launch the Enterprise Manager BUI in context of the specific target or alert to drill into more detail. Hopefully this brief overview of the integration between Enterprise Manager and Ops Center has provided a jumpstart to getting a more complete view of the full stack of your enterprise systems.

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  • Is there a expected set of button mappings games commonly use?

    - by Scott Chamberlain
    I am making a game that will support a XBox 360 controller but I would like to try and keep the default button mappings to be what is expected from a user's past history from playing other games. Is there a set of guidelines from Microsoft on what should map to what (Do you use A for fire or left trigger?), or has the gaming community picked up a common set of controls that is just not written anywhere, everyone just "knows" it (like WASD for movement). The hardest thing for me is I have walking movement, vehicle movement, and airplane movement. I plan on allowing custom configuration of each, but I don't know what to set as the defaults.

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  • First impressions of Scala

    - by Scott Weinstein
    I have an idea that it may be possible to predict build success/failure based on commit data. Why Scala? It’s a JVM language, has lots of powerful type features, and it has a linear algebra library which I’ll need later. Project definition and build Neither maven or the scala build tool (sbt) are completely satisfactory. This maven **archetype** (what .Net folks would call a VS project template) mvn archetype:generate `-DarchetypeGroupId=org.scala-tools.archetypes `-DarchetypeArtifactId=scala-archetype-simple `-DremoteRepositories=http://scala-tools.org/repo-releases `-DgroupId=org.SW -DartifactId=BuildBreakPredictor gets you started right away with “hello world” code, unit tests demonstrating a number of different testing approaches, and even a ready made `.gitignore` file - nice! But the Scala version is behind at v2.8, and more seriously, compiling and testing was painfully slow. So much that a rapid edit – test – edit cycle was not practical. So Lab49 colleague Steve Levine tells me that I can either adjust my pom to use fsc – the fast scala compiler, or use sbt. Sbt has some nice features It’s fast – it uses fsc by default It has a continuous mode, so  `> ~test` will compile and run your unit test each time you save a file It’s can consume (and produce) Maven 2 dependencies the build definition file can be much shorter than the equivalent pom (about 1/5 the size, as repos and dependencies can be declared on a single line) And some real limitations Limited support for 3rd party integration – for instance out of the box, TeamCity doesn’t speak sbt, nor does IntelliJ IDEA Steeper learning curve for build steps outside the default Side note: If a language has a fast compiler, why keep the slow compiler around? Even worse, why make it the default? I choose sbt, for the faster development speed it offers. Syntax Scala APIs really like to use punctuation – sometimes this works well, as in the following map1 |+| map2 The `|+|` defines a merge operator which does addition on the `values` of the maps. It’s less useful here: http(baseUrl / url >- parseJson[BuildStatus] sure you can probably guess what `>-` does from the context, but how about `>~` or `>+`? Language features I’m still learning, so not much to say just yet. However case classes are quite usefull, implicits scare me, and type constructors have lots of power. Community A number of projects, such as https://github.com/scalala and https://github.com/scalaz/scalaz are split between github and google code – github for the src, and google code for the docs. Not sure I understand the motivation here.

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  • Using an Apt Repository for Paid Software Updates

    - by Scott Warren
    I'm trying to determine a way to distribute software updates for a hosted/on-site web application that may have weekly and/or monthly updates. I don't want the customers who use the on-site product to have to worry about updating it manually I just want it to download and install automatically ala Google Chrome. I'm planning on providing an OVF file with Ubuntu and the software installed and configured. My first thought on how to distributed software is to create six Apt repositories/channels (not sure which would be better at this point) that will be accessed through SSH using keys so if a customer doesn't renew their subscription we can disable their account: Beta - Used internally on test data to check the package for major defects. Internal - Used internally on live data to check the package for defects (dog fooding stage). External 1 - Deployed to 1% of our user base (randomly selected) to check for defects. External 9 - Deployed to 9% of our user base (ramdonly selected) to check for defects. External 90 - Deployed to the remaining 90% of users. Hosted - Deployed to the hosted environment. It will take a sign off at each stage to move into the next repository in case problems are reported. My questions to the community are: Has anyone tried something like this before? Can anyone see a downside to this type of a procedure? Is there a better way?

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  • INETA Community Leadership Summit

    - by Scott Spradlin
    INETA Community Leadership Summit will be taking place on Sunday June 6th at 1PM at Tech·Ed North America in New Orleans. INETA is hosting a free Community Leadership Summit in New Orleans at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center on Sunday June 6th at 1:00 PM prior to the start of Tech·Ed 2010. The summit is open to Community Leaders from the area, as well as those attending Tech·Ed from across the country and around the world. It is an excellent opportunity for exchanging information and ideas. If you are a user group leader, or are involved in the leadership, planning, promotion, or day-to-day operations of a user group community, this event is for YOU! The summit is an open forum to share ideas, discuss common challenges, and gain from the experience of other leaders. INETA Community Leadership summits are part of an ongoing effort by INETA to create, improve and share resources designed to strengthen individual user groups and the community. This meeting will be the perfect opportunity to meet leaders from other groups, benefit from their success stories, and expand your network of contacts.   Quick FAQs Who can attend? Any leader or volunteer of any INETA User Group. Do I need to be attending Tech·Ed? No, you do NOT need to purchase a pass for Tech·Ed to attend the Leadership Summit. What does it cost to attend? There is NO cost to attend summit, but the knowledge that will be available about User Groups will be priceless. I want to help out, who do I contact? Send an email to [email protected] if you are interested. I want to attend, where do I register? We are putting together a registration link now, it will be published in a future newsletter and on the website. What will the format of the summit be? The summit will be like our Birds of a Feather Sessions but focused on User Group topics. Moderators will be armed with some broad topics to kick off the conversation, however the real value of these sessions is getting the chance to learn from each other. What topics will be covered? We are thinking of focusing on 4 areas: Running a User Group, Effective Content and Presenters, User Group Promotion and Developing Partnerships. However the agenda is yours! If there is a topic you want to see covered, or a topic that you would like to lead then email  [email protected]. Technorati Tags: conference

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  • Discount for Staying in Town During St. Louis Day of .NET 2011

    - by Scott Spradlin
    Traveling in from out of town? (Or just interested in a night away from home with your spouse in a beautiful suite?) You can call the Ameristar at 636-940-4301 and ask for the St. Louis Day of .NET 2011 group rate. You can also make reservations online using the conference code GDNET11. We encourage you take the opportunity to hang around, spend the night, and enjoy the social events and networking opportunities that we have planned. Friday and Saturday sessions start promptly in the mornings. There are great social events planned for both Thursday and Friday nights that you’ll enjoy if you stay on-site!

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  • The future for Microsoft

    - by Scott Dorman
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/sdorman/archive/2013/10/16/the-future-for-microsoft.aspxMicrosoft is in the process of reinventing itself. While some may argue that it’s “too little, too late” or that their growing consumer-focused strategy is wrong, the truth of the situation is that Microsoft is reinventing itself into a new company. While Microsoft is now calling themselves a “devices and services” company, that’s not entirely accurate. Let’s look at some facts: Microsoft will always (for the long-term foreseeable future) be financially split into the following divisions: Windows/Operating Systems, which for FY13 made up approximately 24% of overall revenue. Server and Tools, which for FY13 made up approximately 26% of overall revenue. Enterprise/Business Products, which for FY13 made up approximately 32% of overall revenue. Entertainment and Devices, which for FY13 made up approximately 13% of overall revenue. Online Services, which for FY13 made up approximately 4% of overall revenue. It is important to realize that hardware products like the Surface fall under the Windows/Operating Systems division while products like the Xbox 360 fall under the Entertainment and Devices division. (Presumably other hardware, such as mice, keyboards, and cameras, also fall under the Entertainment and Devices division.) It’s also unclear where Microsoft’s recent acquisition of Nokia’s handset division will fall, but let’s assume that it will be under Entertainment and Devices as well. Now, for the sake of argument, let’s assume a slightly different structure that I think is more in line with how Microsoft presents itself and how the general public sees it: Consumer Products and Devices, which would probably make up approximately 9% of overall revenue. Developer Tools, which would probably make up approximately 13% of overall revenue. Enterprise Products and Devices, which would probably make up approximately 47% of overall revenue. Entertainment, which would probably make up approximately 13% of overall revenue. Online Services, which would probably make up approximately 17% of overall revenue. (Just so we’re clear, in this structure hardware products like the Surface, a portion of Windows sales, and other hardware fall under the Consumer Products and Devices division. I’m assuming that more of the income for the Windows division is coming from enterprise/volume licenses so 15% of that income went to the Enterprise Products and Devices division. Most of the enterprise services, like Azure, fall under the Online Services division so half of the Server and Tools income went there as well.) No matter how you look at it, the bulk of Microsoft’s income still comes from not just the enterprise but also software sales, and this really shouldn’t surprise anyone. So, now that the stage is set…what’s the future for Microsoft? The future I see for Microsoft (again, this is just my prediction based on my own instinct, gut-feel and publicly available information) is this: Microsoft is becoming a consumer-focused enterprise company. Let’s look at it a different way. Microsoft is an enterprise-focused company trying to create a larger consumer presence.  To a large extent, this is the exact opposite of Apple, who is really a consumer-focused company trying to create a larger enterprise presence. The major reason consumer-focused companies (like Apple) have started making in-roads into the enterprise is the “bring your own device” phenomenon. Yes, Apple has created some “game-changing” products but their enterprise influence is still relatively small. Unfortunately (for this blog post at least), Apple provides revenue in terms of hardware products rather than business divisions, so it’s not possible to do a direct comparison. However, in the interest of transparency, from Apple’s Quarterly Report (filed 24 July 2013), their revenue breakdown is: iPhone, which for the 3 months ending 29 June 2013 made up approximately 51% of revenue. iPad, which for the 3 months ending 29 June 2013 made up approximately 18% of revenue. Mac, which for the 3 months ending 29 June 2013 made up approximately 14% of revenue. iPod, which for the 3 months ending 29 June 2013 made up approximately 2% of revenue. iTunes, Software, and Services, which for the 3 months ending 29 June 2013 made up approximately 11% of revenue. Accessories, which for the 3 months ending 29 July 2013 made up approximately 3% of revenue. From this, it’s pretty clear that Apple is a consumer-and-hardware-focused company. At this point, you may be asking yourself “Where is all of this going?” The answer to that lies in Microsoft’s shift in company focus. They are becoming more consumer focused, but what exactly does that mean? The biggest change (at least that’s been in the news lately) is the pending purchase of Nokia’s handset division. This, in combination with their Surface line of tablets and the Xbox, will put Microsoft squarely in the realm of a hardware-focused company in addition to being a software-focused company. That can (and most likely will) shift the revenue split to looking at revenue based on software sales (both consumer and enterprise) and also hardware sales (mostly on the consumer side). If we look at things strictly from a Windows perspective, Microsoft clearly has a lot of irons in the fire at the moment. Discounting the various product SKUs available and painting the picture with broader strokes, there are currently 5 different Windows-based operating systems: Windows Phone Windows Phone 7.x, which runs on top of the Windows CE kernel Windows Phone 8.x+, which runs on top of the Windows 8 kernel Windows RT The ARM-based version of Windows 8, which runs on top of the Windows 8 kernel Windows (Pro) The Intel-based version of Windows 8, which runs on top of the Windows 8 kernel Xbox The Xbox 360, which runs it’s own proprietary OS. The Xbox One, which runs it’s own proprietary OS, a version of Windows running on top of the Windows 8 kernel and a proprietary “manager” OS which manages the other two. Over time, Windows Phone 7.x devices will fade so that really leaves 4 different versions. Looking at Windows RT and Windows Phone 8.x paints an interesting story. Right now, all mobile phone devices run on some sort of ARM chip and that doesn’t look like it will change any time soon. That means Microsoft has two different Windows based operating systems for the ARM platform. Long term, it doesn’t make sense for Microsoft to continue supporting that arrangement. I have long suspected (since the Surface was first announced) that Microsoft will unify these two variants of Windows and recent speculation from some of the leading Microsoft watchers lends credence to this suspicion. It is rumored that upcoming Windows Phone releases will include support for larger screen sizes, relax the requirement to have a hardware-based back button and will continue to improve API parity between Windows Phone and Windows RT. At the same time, Windows RT will include support for smaller screen sizes. Since both of these operating systems are based on the same core Windows kernel, it makes sense (both from a financial and development resource perspective) for Microsoft to unify them. The user interfaces are already very similar. So similar in fact, that visually it’s difficult to tell them apart. To illustrate this, here are two screen captures: Other than a few variations (the Bing News app, the picture shown in the Pictures tile and the spacing between the tiles) these are identical. The one on the left is from my Windows 8.1 laptop (which looks the same as on my Surface RT) and the one on the right is from my Windows Phone 8 Lumia 925. This pretty clearly shows that from a consumer perspective, there really is no practical difference between how these two operating systems look and how you interact with them. For the consumer, your entertainment device (Xbox One), phone (Windows Phone) and mobile computing device (Surface [or some other vendors tablet], laptop, netbook or ultrabook) and your desktop computing device (desktop) will all look and feel the same. While many people will denounce this consistency of user experience, I think this will be a good thing in the long term, especially for the upcoming generations. For example, my 5-year old son knows how to use my tablet, phone and Xbox because they all feature nearly identical user experiences. When Windows 8 was released, Microsoft allowed a Windows Store app to be purchased once and installed on as many as 5 devices. With Windows 8.1, this limit has been increased to over 50. Why is that important? If you consider that your phone, computing devices, and entertainment device will be running the same operating system (with minor differences related to physical hardware chipset), that means that I could potentially purchase my sons favorite Angry Birds game once and be able to install it on all of the devices I own. (And for those of you wondering, it’s only 7 [at the moment].) From an app developer perspective, the story becomes even more compelling. Right now there are differences between the different operating systems, but those differences are shrinking. The user interface technology for both is XAML but there are different controls available and different user experience concepts. Some of the APIs available are the same while some are not. You can’t develop a Windows Phone app that can also run on Windows (either Windows Pro or RT). With each release of Windows Phone and Windows RT, those difference become smaller and smaller. Add to this mix the Xbox One, which will also feature a Windows-based operating system and the same “modern” (tile-based) user interface and the visible distinctions between the operating systems will become even smaller. Unifying the operating systems means one set of APIs and one code base to maintain for an app that can run on multiple devices. One code base means it’s easier to add features and fix bugs and that those changes become available on all devices at the same time. It also means a single app store, which will increase the discoverability and reach of your app and consolidate revenue and app profile management. Now, the choice of what devices an app is available on becomes a simple checkbox decision rather than a technical limitation. Ultimately, this means more apps available to consumers, which is always good for the app ecosystem. Is all of this just rumor, speculation and conjecture? Of course, but it’s not unfounded. As I mentioned earlier, some of the prominent Microsoft watchers are also reporting similar rumors. However, Microsoft itself has even hinted at this future with their recent organizational changes and by telling developers “if you want to develop for Xbox One, start developing for Windows 8 now.” I think this pretty clearly paints the following picture: Microsoft is committed to the “modern” user interface paradigm. Microsoft is changing their release cadence (for all products, not just operating systems) to be faster and more modular. Microsoft is going to continue to unify their OS platforms both from a consumer perspective and a developer perspective. While this direction will certainly concern some people it will excite many others. Microsoft’s biggest failing has always been following through with a strong and sustained marketing strategy that presents a consistent view point and highlights what this unified and connected experience looks like and how it benefits consumers and enterprises. We’ve started to see some of this over the last few years, but it needs to continue and become more aggressive and consistent. In the long run, I think Microsoft will be able to pull all of these technologies and devices together into one seamless ecosystem. It isn’t going to happen overnight, but my prediction is that we will be there by the end of 2016. As both a consumer and a developer, I, for one, am excited about the future of Microsoft.

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  • Favorite Visual Studio 2010 Extensions, Update

    - by Scott Dorman
    With the release of the Visual Studio Pro Power Tools (and many other new extensions having been released), my list of favorite Visual Studio extensions has changed. All of these extensions are available in the Visual Studio Gallery. Here is the list of extensions that I currently have installed and find useful: Bing Start Page CodeCompare Collapse Selection In Solution Explorer Collapse Solution Color Picker Completion Extension Analyzer Find Results Highlighter Find Results Tweak (Available from CodePlex) Format Document HelpViewerKeywordIndex HighlightMultiWord Image Insertion Indentation Matcher Extension ItalicComments MoveToRegionVSX Numbered Bookmarks PowerCommands for Visual Studio 2010 Regular Expressions Margin Search Work Items for TFS 2010 Source Outliner Spell Checker Structure Adornment This also installs the following extensions: BlockTagger BlockTaggerImpl SettingsStore SettingsStoreImpl StyleCop Team Founder Server Power Tools TFS Auto Shelve Visual Studio Color Theme Editor Visual Studio Pro Power Tools VS10x Code Map VS10x Code Marker VS10x Collapse All Projects VS10x Editor View Enhancer VS10x Insert Debug Names VS10x Selection Popup VS10x Super Copy Paste VSCommands 2010 Word Wrap with Auto-Indent   Technorati Tags: Visual Studio,Extensions

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  • St. Louis Day of .NET 2011

    - by Scott Spradlin
    The St. Louis .NET User Group is proud to announce that the St. Louis Day of .NET 2011 developers conference is officially open for registration. The fee for the two-day event remains the same as last year at $200.00 per attendee. However, if you register now through July 1, you will qualify for an “early bird” discount of $75.00, making the total cost only $125.00 per attendee. Act quickly to take advantage of this discount! (Invoicing is available for groups of 5 or more.) There are already 33 confirmed speakers and 51 confirmed sessions, with more being added each week. You can find biographies of the speakers, as well as abstracts of the scheduled sessions, on our conference web site. A full agenda will be provided soon and a mobile session builder is being constructed. The event will once again be held in the Ameristar Casino & Resort this year. Hotel rooms are available on-site, as they have been the prior two years. Friday night will we will host our annual attendee social networking night, where you can grab a bite to eat and talk with speakers and sponsors in a relaxed atmosphere. This will be held in the nightclub area of the Ameristar and is exclusively available to the attendees at no additional charge. A large part of the success of this event is due to the ongoing support of our great sponsors. If your organization would be interested in a sponsorship opportunity, details are available on the web site, or you can email [email protected]. Thanks to the current sponsors who have already stepped forward for this year’s event! Register today! You are encouraged to tweet, blog, or otherwise help spread the word! http://www.StLouisDayOfDotNet.com

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  • Trying to use HUAWEI E173 on Ubuntu 12.04

    - by Scott Warren
    I have a HUAWEI E173 usb stick to access the internet. It works normally on windows but I need to use it on my Ubuntu system. I plug it in, and after 25-20 seconds the status light turns green and blinks twice every 3 seconds. I see no changes in my system whatsoever, nothing gets installed, I don't get prompted for my PIN. I tried to create a connection using edit connections. I entered the following parameters: Turkey, Turkcell, My Plan is not listed, Internet. Nothing happens. I tried the lsusb command and got the following: tosh2000@tosh:~$ lsusb Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 002 Device 002: ID 058f:a001 Alcor Micro Corp. Bus 001 Device 004: ID 12d1:14ba Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. I tried the usb-devices command and can see the device: T: Bus=01 Lev=01 Prnt=01 Port=01 Cnt=01 Dev#= 4 Spd=480 MxCh= 0 D: Ver= 2.00 Cls=00(ifc ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS=64 #Cfgs= 1 P: Vendor=12d1 ProdID=14ba Rev=00.00 S: Manufacturer=HUAWEI Technology S: Product=HUAWEI Mobile C: #Ifs= 2 Cfg#= 1 Atr=e0 MxPwr=500mA I: If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 2 Cls=08(stor.) Sub=06 Prot=50 Driver=usb-storage I: If#= 1 Alt= 0 #EPs= 2 Cls=08(stor.) Sub=06 Prot=50 Driver=usb-storage Based on other advice I found, I tried the following command: sudo modprobe usbserial vendor=0x12d1 product=0x14ba Again, nothing happened. My question is why does the "enable mobile broadband" not populate automatically in the dropdown networking menu and how can I can I start using the device? Thank you.

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  • Sun2Oracle: Hub City Media Webcast Reminder - Thursday, September 13, 2012

    - by Darin Pendergraft
    Our Sun2Oracle webcast featuring Steve Giovanetti from Hub City Media is this Thursday, September 13th at 10:00 am PST.  If you haven't registered yet, there is still time: Register Here. Scott Bonell, Sr. Director of Product Management will be talking to Steve about their recent project to upgrade a large University from Sun DSEE Directory to Oracle Unified Directory.  Scott and Steve will talk through details of the project, from planning through implementation. In addition to this webcast, Steve Giovanetti will also be participating in two sessions at Oracle OpenWorld 2012: CON9465 - Next-Generation Directory: Oracle Unified Directory  Etienne Remillon, Principal Product Manager, Oracle  Steve Giovanetti, CTO Hub City Media  Warren Leung, Sr. Architect, UCLA  Tuesday, Oct 2, 5:00 PM – 6:00 PM  Moscone West – 3008 CON5749 - Solutions for Migration of Oracle Waveset to Oracle Identity Manager Steve Giovanetti, CTO Hub City Media Kevin Moulton, Senior Sales Consulting  Manager, Oracle Thursday, Oct 4, 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM Moscone West - 3008

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  • String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace

    - by Scott Dorman
    An empty string is different than an unassigned string variable (which is null), and is a string containing no characters between the quotes (""). The .NET Framework provides String.Empty to represent an empty string, and there is no practical difference between ("") and String.Empty. One of the most common string comparisons to perform is to determine if a string variable is equal to an empty string. The fastest and simplest way to determine if a string is empty is to test if the Length property is equal to 0. However, since strings are reference types it is possible for a string variable to be null, which would result in a runtime error when you tried to access the Length property. Since testing to determine if a string is empty is such a common occurrence, the .NET Framework provides the static method String.IsNullOrEmpty method: public static bool IsNullOrEmpty(string value) { if (value != null) { return (value.Length == 0); }   return true; } It is also very common to determine if a string is empty and contains more than just whitespace characters. For example, String.IsNullOrEmpty("   ") would return false, since this string is actually made up of three whitespace characters. In some cases, this may be acceptable, but in many others it is not. TO help simplify testing this scenario, the .NET Framework 4 introduces the String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace method: public static bool IsNullOrWhiteSpace(string value) { if (value != null) { for (int i = 0; i < value.Length; i++) { if (!char.IsWhiteSpace(value[i])) { return false; } } } return true; }   Using either String.IsNullOrEmpty or String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace helps ensure correctness, readability, and consistency, so they should be used in all situations where you need to determine if a string is null, empty, or contains only whitespace characters. Technorati Tags: .NET,C# 4

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  • Do keyword-based filenames and URLs really matter?

    - by Justin Scott
    We've developed a dynamic web application which uses URLs such as product.cfm?id=42 but our marketing team says we should use search friendly URLs and put our keywords into the URLs (so it would be product-name.cfm instead). Our developers tell us this will cost more money and take additional time. Is it worth the effort? How important is this to the search engines and will it impact our rankings?

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  • Today at Oracle OpenWorld 2012

    - by Scott McNeil
    We have another full day of great Oracle OpenWorld keynotes, sessions, demos and customer presentations in the Seen and Be Heard threater. Here's a quick run down of what's happening today with Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c: Download the Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c OpenWorld schedule (PDF) Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c (and Private Cloud) General Session Tues 2 Oct, 2012 Time Title Location 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM General Session: Using Oracle Enterprise Manager to Manage Your Own Private Cloud Moscone South - 103* 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM General Session: Breakthrough Efficiency in Private Cloud Infrastructure Moscone West - 3014 Conference Session Tues 2 Oct, 2012 Time Title Location 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM Oracle Exadata/Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c: Journey into Oracle Database Cloud Moscone West - 3018 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM Bulletproof Your Application Upgrades with Secure Data Masking and Subsetting Moscone West - 3020 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c: Architecture Deep Dive, Tips, and Techniques Moscone South - 303 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM RDBMS Forensics: Troubleshooting with Active Session History Moscone West - 3018 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM Building and Operationalizing Your Data Center Environment with Oracle Exalogic Moscone South - 309 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM Securely Building a National Electronic Health Record: Singapore Case Study Westin San Francisco - Concordia 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM Managing Heterogeneous Environments with Oracle Enterprise Manager Moscone West - 3018 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM Complete Oracle WebLogic Server Management with Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Moscone South - 309 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM Database Lifecycle Management with Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Moscone West - 3020 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM Best Practices, Key Features, Tips, Techniques for Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Upgrade Moscone South - 307 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM Enterprise Cloud with CSC’s Foundation Services for Oracle and Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Moscone South - 236 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM Deep Dive 3-D on Oracle Exadata Management: From Discovery to Deployment to Diagnostics Moscone West - 3018 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM Everything You Need to Know About Monitoring and Troubleshooting Oracle GoldenGate Moscone West - 3005 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c: The Nerve Center of Oracle Cloud Moscone West - 3020 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM Advanced Management of Oracle E-Business Suite with Oracle Enterprise Manager Moscone West - 2016 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud Control Performance Pages: Falling in Love Again Moscone West - 3014 Hands-on Labs Tues 2 Oct, 2012 Time Title Location 10:15 AM - 12:45 PM Managing the Cloud with Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Marriott Marquis - Salon 5/6 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM Database Performance Tuning Hands-on Lab Marriott Marquis - Salon 5/6 Scene and Be Heard Theater Session Tues 2 Oct, 2012 Time Title Location 10:30 AM - 10:50 AM Start Small, Grow Big: Hands-On Oracle Private Cloud—A Step-by-Step Guide Moscone South Exhibition Hall - Booth 2407 12:30 PM - 12:50 PM Blue Medora’s Oracle Enterprise Manager Plug-in for VMware vSphere Monitoring Moscone South Exhibition Hall - Booth 2407 Demos Demo Location Application and Infrastructure Testing Moscone West - W-092 Automatic Application and SQL Tuning Moscone South, Left - S-042 Automatic Fault Diagnostics Moscone South, Left - S-036 Automatic Performance Diagnostics Moscone South, Left - S-033 Complete Care for Oracle Using My Oracle Support Moscone South, Left - S-031 Complete Cloud Lifecycle Management Moscone North, Upper Lobby - N-019 Complete Database Lifecycle Management Moscone South, Left - S-030 Comprehensive Infrastructure as a Service via Oracle Enterprise Manager Moscone South, Left - S-045 Data Masking and Data Subsetting Moscone South, Left - S-034 Database Testing with Oracle Real Application Testing Moscone South, Left - S-041 Identity Management Monitoring with Oracle Enterprise Manager Moscone South, Right - S-212 Mission-Critical, SPARC-Powered Infrastructure as a Service Moscone South, Center - S-157 Oracle E-Business Suite, Siebel, JD Edwards, and PeopleSoft Management Moscone West - W-084 Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Overview Moscone South, Left - S-039 Oracle Enterprise Manager: Complete Data Center Management Moscone South, Left - S-040 Oracle Exadata Management Moscone South, Center - Oracle Exalogic Management Moscone South, Center - Oracle Fusion Applications Management Moscone West - W-018 Oracle Real User Experience Insight Moscone South, Right - S-226 Oracle WebLogic Server Management and Java Diagnostics Moscone South, Right - S-206 Platform as a Service Using Oracle Enterprise Manager Moscone North, Upper Lobby - N-020 SOA Management Moscone South, Right - S-225 Self-Service Application Testing on Private and Public Clouds Moscone West - W-110 Oracle OpenWorld Music Festival New this year is Oracle’s first annual Oracle OpenWorld Musical Festival, featuring some of today's breakthrough musicians from around the country and the world. It's five nights of back-to-back performances in the heart of San Francisco—free to registered attendees. See the lineup Not Heading to OpenWorld—Watch it Live! Stay Connected: Twitter | Facebook | YouTube | Linkedin | Newsletter Download the Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control12c Mobile app

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  • How do I copy packages within a PPA from one release to another? (nonsensical "same version already has published binaries" error)

    - by Scott Ritchie
    I keep getting weird errors from launchpad when I try and copy the Maverick packages to Natty for the PPA. I select the wine1.3 package (not in Ubuntu), select "copy to this PPA", and then select "rebuild the resulting binaries". This error emerges: The following source cannot be copied: wine1.3 1.3.11-0ubuntu1 in maverick (same version already has published binaries in the destination archive) I have no idea what this error means but apparently it doesn't mean there are binaries in the destination archive.

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  • Enum.HasFlag

    - by Scott Dorman
    An enumerated type, also called an enumeration (or just an enum for short), is simply a way to create a numeric type restricted to a predetermined set of valid values with meaningful names for those values. While most enumerations represent discrete values, or well-known combinations of those values, sometimes you want to combine values in an arbitrary fashion. These enumerations are known as flags enumerations because the values represent flags which can be set or unset. To combine multiple enumeration values, you use the logical OR operator. For example, consider the following: public enum FileAccess { None = 0, Read = 1, Write = 2, }   class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { FileAccess access = FileAccess.Read | FileAccess.Write; Console.WriteLine(access); } } The output of this simple console application is: The value 3 is the numeric value associated with the combination of FileAccess.Read and FileAccess.Write. Clearly, this isn’t the best representation. What you really want is for the output to look like: To achieve this result, you simply add the Flags attribute to the enumeration. The Flags attribute changes how the string representation of the enumeration value is displayed when using the ToString() method. Although the .NET Framework does not require it, enumerations that will be used to represent flags should be decorated with the Flags attribute since it provides a clear indication of intent. One “problem” with Flags enumerations is determining when a particular flag is set. The code to do this isn’t particularly difficult, but unless you use it regularly it can be easy to forget. To test if the access variable has the FileAccess.Read flag set, you would use the following code: (access & FileAccess.Read) == FileAccess.Read Starting with .NET 4, a HasFlag static method has been added to the Enum class which allows you to easily perform these tests: access.HasFlag(FileAccess.Read) This method follows one of the “themes” for the .NET Framework 4, which is to simplify and reduce the amount of boilerplate code like this you must write. Technorati Tags: .NET,C# 4

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  • What I&rsquo;m Up To: November 2012

    - by Brian T. Jackett
    This is a short personal post to let any regular readers know what I’m up to (and why I’ll be in reduced blogging mode for a bit). Writing 2 chapters for a SharePoint 2013 book (more to announce closer to publish date) Doing research, proof of concepts, and testing for above said writing Developing a SharePoint PowerShell diagnostic script to clean up issues found by the Health Analyzer Prepping for teaching SharePoint 2013 content to customers    There are some other community and personal commitments taking up my time (in addition to normal work responsibilities).  Since the number of hours in a day is limited to 24 hours I’m making a late addition to my goals for 2012 for the year of learning and adopting more personal productivity practices.  Before the end of this year I’ll be posting a couple that I’ve already adopted that are working well for me.  Scott Hanselman posted a great video recently that sparked me down this path.  I highly recommend you watch.   “It’s not what you read it’s what you ignore” video – Scott Hanselman http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ItsNotWhatYouReadItsWhatYouIgnoreVideoOfScottHanselmansPersonalProductivityTips.aspx         -Frog Out

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