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  • Am I missing something about these considerations about Leaderboard's database's schema?

    - by misiMe
    I just finished to develop a mobile game, now I want to implement an online leaerboard using mysql. I'm wondering about the database's schema, I thought about some possibilities: (I didn't got in detail with syntax because my question is just about the logic of it) Name: string; Score: integer I thought to ask the name just the first time. If, in the future, you will modify that, it will call just an update to the name associated with your id. Leaderboard(ID, Name, Score) ID: integer autoincrement, PrimaryKey With this kind of idea maybe the db will grow fast because if you choose everytime a different name for the score, it will add a new entry. Leaderboard(PhoneId, Name, Score) Here PhoneId will be the unique identifier of the phone, PrimaryKey. A con of this choice is that if you want to play with your friends' phone, you can't put a different name for the score. Leaderboard(Name, Score) Here Name is PrimaryKey. With that, if you enter a name that already exists, you will be prompted to choose another one. Do you agree with this considerations? What will you do? Am I missing something?

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  • Displaying Datamatrix in application error screen

    - by DaveNay
    Quite often we will get a report from a user in the field saying there was an error in our application. Frequently this leads to the typical round of "What was the error?" "I don't know, it was just an error." We of course log these faults to the log files, and we can even enable detailed debug logs, but this involves the end user changing a setting in the configuration file and then finding the correct files and then emailing them to us. As I'm sure you can all imagine, there are plenty of pitfalls and alligators in this methodology. Recently a couple of people have used their cell phone to email me a "screen capture" of the fault, and while this helps, we still have to scrutinize the image to find the exact fault, and if enabled, the stack trace. So this evening, I had the brilliant idea (IMHO) to encode the fault into a Datamatrix barcode image and then encourage users to send me a picture from their cell phone. I can then decode the datamatrix and get a parse-able error message! Our core technology is machine vision, so the decoding of the datamatrix image would be trivial, I just need to find a method of generating the actual image to display in the fault handler. Thoughts?

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  • Wifi won't connect to certain networks

    - by Dave M G
    As I write this, I'm in a coffee shop on my laptop, and I am trying to connect to the free wifi network they offer. Every time I select their network from the wifi applet drop down menu, it connects for a second and then disconnects. At the same time, I have my Android phone with me, and it connects to the coffee shop's network without problem. There are a couple of people around me also using the same network with no issues. I asked the staff to check and as far as they can tell there is no problem with their router or anything. I have tried rebooting, but it has not made a difference. I have double and triple checked that I am using the correct WEP password. As an added wrinkle, when I connect to another network, it seems to connect (although I can't use them because they are paid gateway services). So I'm able to ask this question now because I have tethered my laptop to my phone, but it's slow and a workaround, not a solution. All indications are that it's a problem with my computer against this one network. Why would that be and how can I fix it?

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  • Terrible App Review of the Week&ndash;October 2nd

    - by David Paquette
    As some people know, I have a few apps in the Windows Phone Store.  One of these apps was intended to be a gimmicky app that did NOT really do anything useful.  It was just a funny little app that you probably try it once, then almost immediately uninstall.  To my surprise, this app ended up in some of the Top App lists and actually got a large number of downloads (for the Windows Phone Store).  Along with these downloads came a large number of really terrible and offensive reviews.  People are insulting me and saying awful things that they would never say to someone in person (I hope).  I am ok with this.  I can take the bad reviews and it doesn’t really bother me, but I still think that people are incredibly dis-respectful with their app reviews.  So..I am going to start sharing the best of the worst reviews.  If by chance this is your review, please contact me.  I would love to have a quick chat… Literally THE crappiest app I could of downloaded. You might as well rub dog *** in your eyes..... You'd see more!!! Stan8976   P.S. I am not particularly proud of this app, so I am not going to reveal the name. However, as you see more of these amazing reviews, I think you might be able to guess which app it is.

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  • MS Marketing Strategy

    - by Aaron Kowall
    I found this week’s Windows Phone 8 event interesting.  Not just because it looks like some fantastic new features in the new OS but because of the wait for release.  If I were a Nokia shareholder (which I am not) I’d be very unhappy with MS announcing that Windows Phone 8 will NOT work with current hardware.  So, there are some very nice Lumia devices that are now end-of-life that have arrived relatively recently at carriers and retailers. I understand that MS needs to demonstrate progress against iOS and Android and that there is some Windows 8 tie-in that they are trying to capitalize (and MS IS still all about Windows).  However, it’s a bit of a kick to partners that have invested in the platform with pretty decent devices (Samsung, HTC and of course Nokia). Personally, I’m still using a Samsung Foucs.  I was seriously considering upgrading to a Lumia 900 (we just got Lync mobile available) but will now wait it out until new devices arrive with Windows 8.  If MS had waited to announce, I would happily have upgraded to the Lumia and when I found out it couldn’t be upgraded then that would be a gamble I took and lost and I’d live with it.  Now, however, I can see the future and know that waiting is the better option for me so that is 1 sale Nokia will miss out on.  Based on some chats I’ve seen on mobile forums I’m certainly far from the only one. I’m sure glad I’m not in charge of marketing at MS.  There are tough decisions to be made there and I’m pretty sure you piss somebody off regardless. Technorati Tags: WP8,Lumia,Nokia,Samsung

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  • Do you do custom tests/work for a potential employer before the interview?

    - by Chuck Stephanski
    Every shop I've worked at we have followed what I thought was a standard hiring sequence: 1. solicit resumes 2. phone screen applicants we are interested in 3. in person interview 4. in some shops 2nd in person interview (just w/ CEO for example) Most places I apply to follow something along these lines. But some shops want to give me a test or ask me to build something after I send in my resume. They usually say "congratulations, you've made it to stage 2 of our hiring process!" But for all I know they are asking every applicant they get a resume from to do the same thing. This annoys me because it doesn't scale. If I'm applying for a lot of positions I can't spend all my time doing work that potentially can only land me one job. Plus there's no shared dedication to the process. If we do a 45 minute phone screen, that's 45 minutes the company commits to me and 45 minutes I commit to the company in hopes of a potential match. Do you guys have a policy regarding these sorts of things?

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  • How To Sync Your Shared Google Calendars with Your iPhone

    - by Justin Garrison
      Smartphones are essential to our daily lives. They help us stay connected and keep us organized. But when it comes to calendar syncing and Gmail there are limitations. Here’s how you can sync your shared calendars and contacts from Gmail. If you use Gmail you probably know about the ability to create and share calendars with others. They help keep groups organized and even let you subscribe to public events. When it comes to getting that information on your smartphone there are some trade offs if you are on a non-Android phone. Android phones will sync your email, contacts, and all of your calendars by just singing into your Gmail account. If you have an iPhone however, you will miss out on contact syncing if you set up your account as a Gmail account. HTG Explains: Do You Really Need to Defrag Your PC? Use Amazon’s Barcode Scanner to Easily Buy Anything from Your Phone How To Migrate Windows 7 to a Solid State Drive

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  • iPhone UIWebView local resources using Javascript and handling onorientationChange

    - by Dougnukem
    I'm trying to server HTML Javascript and CSS content from an iPhone application's local resources, and I'm having trouble handling onOrientationChange events and including external Javascript. I seem to be able to link in CSS properly but not javascript. I'm trying to use the following example of handling onOrientationChange (How to build an iPhone website) but I'm serving the webpage from my app's NSBundle mainBundle. I tried attaching a javascript function to body.onorientationchange and to window.onorientationchange but neither work when served from UIWebView locally (or remotely), but it works if I'm using the iPhone Safari. <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /> <title>How to build an iPhone website</title> <meta name="author" content="will" /> <meta name="copyright" content="copyright 2008 www.engageinteractive.co.uk" /> <meta name="description" content="Welcome to engege interactive on the iPhone!" /> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width; initial-scale=1.0; maximum-scale=1.0;"> <link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="images/template/engage.png"/> <style type="text/css"> @import url("iphone.css"); </style> <!-- <script type="text/javascript" src="orientation.js"></script> --> <script type="text/javascript"> function updateOrientation(){ try { var contentType = "show_normal"; switch(window.orientation){ case 0: contentType = "show_normal"; break; case -90: contentType = "show_right"; break; case 90: contentType = "show_left"; break; case 180: contentType = "show_flipped"; break; } document.getElementById("page_wrapper").setAttribute("class", contentType); //alert('ORIENTATION: ' + contentType); } catch(e) { alert('ERROR:' + e.message); } } window.onload = function initialLoad(){ try { loaded(); updateOrientation(); } catch(e) { alert('ERROR:' + e.message); } } function loaded() { document.getElementById("page_wrapper").style.visibility = "visible"; } </script> </head> <body onorientationchange="updateOrientation();"> <div id="page_wrapper"> <h1>Engage Interactive</h1> <div id="content_left"> <p>You are now holding your phone to the left</p> </div> <div id="content_right"> <p>You are now holding your phone to the right</p> </div> <div id="content_normal"> <p>You are now holding your phone upright</p> </div> <div id="content_flipped"> <p>This doesn't work yet, but there is a chance apple will enable it at some point, so I've put it in anyway. You would be holding your phone upside down if it did work.</p> </div> </div> </body> </html>

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  • XML to CSV using XSLT help.

    - by Adam Kahtava
    I'd like to convert XML into CSV using an XSLT, but when applying the XSL from the SO thread titled XML To CSV XSLT against my input: <WhoisRecord> <DomainName>127.0.0.1</DomainName> <RegistryData> <AbuseContact> <Email>[email protected]</Email> <Name>Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Number</Name> <Phone>+1-310-301-5820</Phone> </AbuseContact> <AdministrativeContact i:nil="true"/> <BillingContact i:nil="true"/> <CreatedDate/> <RawText>...</RawText> <Registrant> <Address>4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 330</Address> <City>Marina del Rey</City> <Country>US</Country> <Name>Internet Assigned Numbers Authority</Name> <PostalCode>90292-6695</PostalCode> <StateProv>CA</StateProv> </Registrant> <TechnicalContact> <Email>[email protected]</Email> <Name>Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Number</Name> <Phone>+1-310-301-5820</Phone> </TechnicalContact> <UpdatedDate>2010-04-14</UpdatedDate> <ZoneContact i:nil="true"/> </RegistryData> </WhoisRecord> I end up with: [email protected] Corporation for Assigned Names and Number+1-310-301-5820, , , , ..., 4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 330Marina del ReyUSInternet Assigned Numbers Authority90292-6695CA, [email protected] Corporation for Assigned Names and Number+1-310-301-5820, 2010-04-14, My problem is that, the resulting transformation is missing nodes (like the DomainName element containing the IP address) and some child nodes are concatenated without commas (like the children of AbuseContact). I'd like to see all the XML output in CVS form, and strings like: "[email protected] Corporation for Assigned Names and Number+1-310-301-5820," delimited by commas. My XSL is pretty rusty. Your help is appreciated. :) Here's the XSL I'm using: <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"> <xsl:output method="text" encoding="iso-8859-1"/> <xsl:strip-space elements="*" /> <xsl:template match="/*/child::*"> <xsl:for-each select="child::*"> <xsl:if test="position() != last()"><xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(.)"/>, </xsl:if> <xsl:if test="position() = last()"><xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(.)"/><xsl:text> </xsl:text> </xsl:if> </xsl:for-each> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet>

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  • How do I use accepts_nested_attributes_for?

    - by Angela
    Editing my question for conciseness and to update what I've done: How do I model having multiple Addresses for a Company and assign a single Address to a Contact, and be able to assign them when creating or editing a Contact? I want to use nested attributes to be able to add an address at the time of creating a new contact. That address exists as its own model because I may want the option to drop-down from existing addresses rather than entering from scratch. I can't seem to get it to work. I get a undefined method `build' for nil:NilClass error Here is my model for Contacts: class Contact < ActiveRecord::Base attr_accessible :first_name, :last_name, :title, :phone, :fax, :email, :company, :date_entered, :campaign_id, :company_name, :address_id, :address_attributes belongs_to :company belongs_to :address accepts_nested_attributes_for :address end Here is my model for Address: class Address < ActiveRecord::Base attr_accessible :street1, :street2, :city, :state, :zip has_many :contacts end I would like, when creating an new contact, access all the Addresses that belong to the other Contacts that belong to the Company. So here is how I represent Company: class Company < ActiveRecord::Base attr_accessible :name, :phone, :addresses has_many :contacts has_many :addresses, :through => :contacts end Here is how I am trying to create a field in the View for _form for Contact so that, when someone creates a new Contact, they pass the address to the Address model and associate that address to the Contact: <% f.fields_for :address, @contact.address do |builder| %> <p> <%= builder.label :street1, "Street 1" %> </br> <%= builder.text_field :street1 %> <p> <% end %> When I try to Edit, the field for Street 1 is blank. And I don't know how to display the value from show.html.erb. At the bottom is my error console -- can't seem to create values in the address table: My Contacts controller is as follows: def new @contact = Contact.new @contact.address.build # Iundefined method `build' for nil:NilClass @contact.date_entered = Date.today @campaigns = Campaign.find(:all, :order => "name") if params[:campaign_id].blank? else @campaign = Campaign.find(params[:campaign_id]) @contact.campaign_id = @campaign.id end if params[:company_id].blank? else @company = Company.find(params[:company_id]) @contact.company_name = @company.name end end def create @contact = Contact.new(params[:contact]) if @contact.save flash[:notice] = "Successfully created contact." redirect_to @contact else render :action => 'new' end end def edit @contact = Contact.find(params[:id]) @campaigns = Campaign.find(:all, :order => "name") end Here is a snippet of my error console: I am POSTING the attribute, but it is not CREATING in the Address table.... Processing ContactsController#create (for 127.0.0.1 at 2010-05-12 21:16:17) [POST] Parameters: {"commit"="Submit", "authenticity_token"="d8/gx0zy0Vgg6ghfcbAYL0YtGjYIUC2b1aG+dDKjuSs=", "contact"={"company_name"="Allyforce", "title"="", "campaign_id"="2", "address_attributes"={"street1"="abc"}, "fax"="", "phone"="", "last_name"="", "date_entered"="2010-05-12", "email"="", "first_name"="abc"}} Company Load (0.0ms)[0m [0mSELECT * FROM "companies" WHERE ("companies"."name" = 'Allyforce') LIMIT 1[0m Address Create (16.0ms)[0m [0;1mINSERT INTO "addresses" ("city", "zip", "created_at", "street1", "updated_at", "street2", "state") VALUES(NULL, NULL, '2010-05-13 04:16:18', NULL, '2010-05-13 04:16:18', NULL, NULL)[0m Contact Create (0.0ms)[0m [0mINSERT INTO "contacts" ("company", "created_at", "title", "updated_at", "campaign_id", "address_id", "last_name", "phone", "fax", "company_id", "date_entered", "first_name", "email") VALUES(NULL, '2010-05-13 04:16:18', '', '2010-05-13 04:16:18', 2, 2, '', '', '', 5, '2010-05-12', 'abc', '')[0m

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  • change img src on select box selection

    - by user1871596
    i have a form that auto populates input fields using jquery and ajax i can not get the img url to change in the img src when i select the option from dropdown my dropdown is dynamicaly populated here is is my function <script type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready(function(){ $("#id").change(function(){ $.ajax({ url : 'get_driver_data2.php', type : 'POST', dataType: 'json', data : $('#ContactTrucks').serialize(), success: function( data ) { for(var id in data) { $(id).val( data[id] ); } } }); }); }); </script> here is get_driver_data2.php <?php include ('dbc.php'); $id_selected = $_POST['id']; // Selected Id $query = "SELECT * from admin_dispatch_records where id = '$id_selected' AND driver LIKE '%$username%'"; $result = mysqli_query($dbcon, $query); while ($row = mysqli_fetch_array($result, MYSQLI_ASSOC)) { $eta = $row['eta']; $time = $row['dispatch_time']; $date = $row['dispatch_date']; $name = $row['name']; $phone = $row['phone']; $vehicleyear = $row['vehicleyear']; $color = $row['color']; $make = $row['make']; $model = $row['model']; $vin = $row['vin']; $plate = $row['plate']; $mileage = $row['mileage']; $pickup = $row['pickup']; $dropoff = $row['dropoff']; $price = $row['price']; $invoice = $row['invoice']; $cash = $row['cash']; $credit = $row['credit']; $check = $row['check']; $po = $row['po']; $billed = $row['billed']; $need_to_bill = $row['need_to_bill']; $getphoto = $row['image_path']; } $arr = array( 'input#eta' => $eta, 'input#dispatch_time' => $time, 'input#dispatch_date' => $date, 'input#name' => $name, 'input#phone' => $phone, 'input#vehicleyear' => $vehicleyear, 'input#color' => $color, 'input#make' => $make, 'input#model' => $model, 'input#vin' => $vin, 'input#plate' => $plate, 'input#mileage' => $mileage, 'textarea#pickup' => $pickup, 'textarea#dropoff' => $dropoff, 'input#price' => $price, 'input#invoice' => $invoice, 'input#cash' => $cash, 'input#credit' => $credit, 'input#check' => $check, 'input#po' => $po, 'input#billed' => $billed, 'input#need_to_bill' => $need_to_bill, 'image#image_path' => $getphoto); echo json_encode( $arr ); ?> a bit of the html <td> <img id="image_path" src="????" /> </td> </tr> </table> <p><strong> <input type="submit" value="Complete Dispatch"> </strong></p> how do i if at all possible populate the src with the database vaule ajax recieved when i change the select box all other data is populated and the string is returned correctlly i have tested that by placing an input box and calling input#image_path = $getphoto. is there syntax for an img tag like the input....textarea....etc. I have tried including the get....php inline and assigning the src to $getphoto no luck there I was looking at trying to make a hidden input field with the ajax passed data and then taking that data and making it a var but can not figure that out either. thanks

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  • PHP Mail Not Sending Messages

    - by Kenton de Jong
    I realize this question title is pretty overused, but I couldn't find an answer to my problem. This could be because either I'm not too good with PHP and I don't understand the problem, or because I have a different issue, but I thought I would post it and see if somebody can help me. I developed a website for a local church in my city and I made the site on my computer, put it onto my website as a sub directory and tested it all. It worked great. One of the things the client wanted was there to be an email form that can send emails. I made it and all was good. I then uploaded it onto the church server and thought it went good too. But then we decided to try the email form out, and for some reason it didn't work. I made the email form by having the user select a recipient (pastor, office manager, etc.) with a radio button, and that would change the action of the email form. I just did something like this: if (recipent == "pastor") { document.forms[0].action = "../scripts/php/pastor_contact.php"; } else if (recipent == "pastoralAssist") { document.forms[0].action = "../scripts/php/pastoral_assist_contact.php"; } else if (recipent == "famMinistry") { document.forms[0].action = "../scripts/php/sacra_assist_contact.php"; } else if (recipent == "sacraAssist") { document.forms[0].action = "../scripts/php/fam_ministry_contact.php"; } I know this isn't the cleanest, but it works great. The php files then, all look very similar to this (just a different email)" <?php $name = $_POST['name']; $email = $_POST['email']; $phone = $_POST['phone']; $message = $_POST['message']; $formcontent="From: $name \n Email: $email \n Phone Number: $phone \n Message: $message"; $recipient = "[email protected]"; $subject = $_POST['subject']; $mailheader = "$subject \r\n"; mail($recipient, $subject, $formcontent, $mailheader) or die("There seems to be an error with this form. Sorry about the inconveince. We are working to get this fixed."); header('Location: ../../quickylinks/message_sent.html') ; ?> What this does, briefly, is collect the information from the email form, submit it as an email and then redirect the user to a "Message Sent" page. This works on my server, but not theirs so I believe it's something to do with their server. You can see their server information here and mine here. When the user sends the message, they get "There seems to be an error with this form. Sorry about the inconveince. We are working to get this fixed." and the email doesn't go through, although the code is the same on my server and it works fine there. My initial thought was that PHP wasn't installed on their server (rare, but it does happen). But it was. So then I thought maybe it was installed, but the "mail" function was disabled. So I tried the following php code: <?php if (function_exists('mail')) { echo 'mail() is available'; } else { echo 'mail() has been disabled'; } ?> And it came back with "mail() is available". So now I'm stuck and I don't know the problem could be. As I said, I'm not very good at PHP yet so if somebody could give a detailed answer, I would be really really thankful! Thank you so much!

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  • Table Name is null in the sqlite database in android device

    - by Mahe
    I am building a simple app which stores some contacts and retrieves contacts in android phone device. I have created my own database and a table and inserting the values to the table in phone. My phone is not rooted. So I cannot access the files, but I see that values are stored in the table. And tested on a emulator also. Till here it is fine. Display all the contacts in a list by fetching data from table. This is also fine. But the problem is When I am trying to delete the record, it shows the table name is null in the logcat(not an exception), and the data is not deleted. But in emulator the data is getting deleted from table. I am not able to achieve this through phone. This is my code for deleting, public boolean onContextItemSelected(MenuItem item) { super.onContextItemSelected(item); AdapterView.AdapterContextMenuInfo info = (AdapterView.AdapterContextMenuInfo) item .getMenuInfo(); int menuItemIndex = item.getItemId(); String[] menuItems = getResources().getStringArray(R.array.menu); String menuItemName = menuItems[menuItemIndex]; String listItemName = Customers[info.position]; if (item.getTitle().toString().equalsIgnoreCase("Delete")) { Toast.makeText( context, "Selected List item is: " + listItemName + "MenuItem is: " + menuItemName, Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show(); DB = context.openOrCreateDatabase("CustomerDetails.db", MODE_PRIVATE, null); try { int pos = info.position; pos = pos + 1; Log.d("", "customers[pos]: " + Customers[info.position]); Cursor c = DB .rawQuery( "Select customer_id,first_name,last_name from CustomerInfo", null); int rowCount = c.getCount(); DB.delete(Table_name, "customer_id" + "=" + String.valueOf(pos), null); DB.close(); Log.d("", "" + String.valueOf(pos)); Toast.makeText(context, "Deleted Customer", Toast.LENGTH_LONG) .show(); // Customers[info.position]=null; getCustomers(); } catch (Exception e) { Toast.makeText(context, "Delete unsuccessfull", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show(); } } this is my logcat, 07-02 10:12:42.976: D/Cursor(1560): Database path: CustomerDetails.db 07-02 10:12:42.976: D/Cursor(1560): Table name : null 07-02 10:12:42.984: D/Cursor(1560): Database path: CustomerDetails.db 07-02 10:12:42.984: D/Cursor(1560): Table name : null Don't know the reason why data is not being deleted. Data exists in the table. This is the specification I have given for creating the table public static String customer_id="customer_id"; public static String site_id="site_id"; public static String last_name="last_name"; public static String first_name="first_name"; public static String phone_number="phone_number"; public static String address="address"; public static String city="city"; public static String state="state"; public static String zip="zip"; public static String email_address="email_address"; public static String custlat="custlat"; public static String custlng="custlng"; public static String Table_name="CustomerInfo"; final SQLiteDatabase DB = context.openOrCreateDatabase( "CustomerDetails.db", MODE_PRIVATE, null); final String CREATE_TABLE = "create table if not exists " + Table_name + " (" + customer_id + " integer primary key autoincrement, " + first_name + " text not null, " + last_name + " text not null, " + phone_number+ " integer not null, " + address+ " text not null, " + city+ " text not null, " + state+ " text not null, " + zip+ " integer not null, " + email_address+ " text not null, " + custlat+ " double, " + custlng+ " double " +" );"; DB.execSQL(CREATE_TABLE); DB.close(); Please correct my code. I am struggling from two days. Any help is appreciated!!

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  • March 21st Links: ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, AJAX, Visual Studio, Silverlight

    - by ScottGu
    Here is the latest in my link-listing series. If you haven’t already, check out this month’s "Find a Hoster” page on the www.asp.net website to learn about great (and very inexpensive) ASP.NET hosting offers.  [In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu] ASP.NET URL Routing in ASP.NET 4: Scott Mitchell has a nice article that talks about the new URL routing features coming to Web Forms applications with ASP.NET 4.  Also check out my previous blog post on this topic. Control of Web Control ClientID Values in ASP.NET 4: Scott Mitchell has a nice article that describes how it is now easy to control the client “id” value emitted by server controls with ASP.NET 4. Web Deployment Made Awesome: Very nice MIX10 talk by Scott Hanselman on the new web deployment features coming with VS 2010, MSDeploy, and .NET 4.  Makes deploying web applications much, much easier. ASP.NET 4’s Browser Capabilities Support: Nice blog post by Stephen Walther that talks about the new browser definition capabilities support coming with ASP.NET 4. Integrating Twitter into an ASP.NET Website: Nice article by Scott Mitchell that demonstrates how to call and integrate Twitter from within your ASP.NET applications. Improving CSS with .LESS: Nice article by Scott Mitchell that describes how to optimize CSS using .LESS – a free, open source library. ASP.NET MVC Upgrading ASP.NET MVC 1 applications to ASP.NET MVC 2: Eilon Lipton from the ASP.NET team has a nice post that describes how to easily upgrade your ASP.NET MVC 1 applications to ASP.NET MVC 2.  He has an automated tool that makes this easy. Note that automated MVC upgrade support is also built-into VS 2010.  Use the tool in this blog post for updating existing MVC projects using VS 2008. Advanced ASP.NET MVC 2: Nice video talk by Brad Wilson of the ASP.NET MVC team.  In it he describes some of the more advanced features in ASP.NET MVC 2 and how to maximize your productivity with them. Dynamic Select Lists with ASP.NET MVC and jQuery: Michael Ceranski has a nice blog post that describes how to dynamically populate dropdownlists on the client using AJAX. AJAX Microsoft AJAX Minifier: We recently shipped an updated minifier utility that allows you to shrink/minify both JavaScript and CSS files – which can improve the performance of your web applications.  You can run this either manually as a command-line tool or now automatically integrate it using a Visual Studio build task.  You can download it for free here. Visual Studio VS 2010 Tip: Quickly Closing Documents: Nice blog post that describes some techniques for optimizing how windows are closed with the new VS 2010 IDE. Collpase to Definitions with Outlining: Nice tip from Zain on how to collapse your code editor to outline mode using Ctrl + M, Ctrl + O.  Also check out his post on copy/paste with outlining here. $299 VS 2010 Upgrade Offer for VS 2005/2008 Standard Users: Soma blogs about a nice VS 2010 upgrade offer you can take advantage of if you have VS 2005 or VS 2008 Standard editions.  For $299 you can upgrade to VS 2010 Professional edition. Dependency Graphics: Jason Zander (who runs the VS team) has a nice blog post that covers the new dependency graph support within VS 2010.  This makes it easier to visualize the dependencies within your application.  Also check out this video here. Layer Validation: Jason Zander has a nice blog post that talks about the new layer validation features in VS 2010.  This enables you to enforce cleaner layering within your projects and solutions.  VS 2010 Profiler Blog: The VS 2010 Profiler Team has their own blog and on it you can find a bunch of nice posts from the last few months that talk about a lot of the new features coming with VS 2010’s Profiler support.  Some really nice features coming. Silverlight Silverlight 4 Training Course: Nice free set of training courses from Microsoft that can help bring you up to speed on all of the new Silverlight 4 features and how to build applications with them.  Updated and current with the recently released Silverlight 4 RC build and tools. Getting Started with Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 Development: Nice blog post by Tim Heuer that summarizes how to get started building Windows Phone 7 applications using Silverlight.  Also check out my blog post from last week on how to build a Windows Phone 7 Twitter application using Silverlight. A Guide to What Has Changed with the Silverlight 4 RC: Nice summary post by Tim Heuer that describes all of the things that have changed between the Silverlight 4 Beta and the Silverlight 4 RC. Path Based Layout - Part 1 and Part 2: Christian Schormann has a nice blog post about a really cool new feature in Expression Blend 4 and Silverlight 4 called Path Layout. Also check out Andy Beaulieu’s blog post on this. Hope this helps, Scott

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  • Creating Descriptive Flex Field (DFF) Bean in OAF

    - by Manoj Madhusoodanan
    In this blog I will explain how to add a custom DFF in a custom OAF page.I am using XXCUST_DFF_DEMO table to store the DFF values.Also I am using custom DFF named XXCUST_PERSON_DFF.  Following steps needs to be performed to create this solution. 1) Register the custom table in Oracle Application2) Register the DFF3) Define the segments of DFF4) Create BC4J components for OAF and OA Page which holds the DFF I will explain the steps in detail below. Register the custom table in Oracle Application I am using custom DFF here so I have to register the custom table which I am going to capture the values.Please click here to see the table script. I am using the AD_DD package to register the custom table.Please click here to see the table registration script. Please verify the table has registered successfully. Navigation: Application Developer > Application > Database > Table Table has registered successfully. Register the DFF Next step is to register the DFF. Navigate to Application Developer > Flex Field > Descriptive > Register. Give details as below. Click on Reference Fields and set the Reference Field as ATTRIBUTE_CATEGORY. Click on the Columns button to verify that the columns ATTRIBUTE_CATEGORY,ATTRIBUTE1 .... ATTRIBUTE30 are enabled. DFF has registered successfully. Define the segments of DFF Here I am going to define the segments of the DFF.Navigate to Application Developer > Flex Field > Descriptive > Segments.Query for "XXCUST - Person DFF". Uncheck "Freeze Flexfield Definition". In my DFF the reference field I want to display a value set which has values "Permanent" and "Contractor". So define a value set  XXCUST_EMPLOYMENT_TYPE. Navigation: Application Developer > Flex Field > Descriptive > Validation > Sets After that assign the values to above created value sets. Navigation: Application Developer > Flex Field > Descriptive > Validation > Values Assign XXCUST_EMPLOYMENT_TYPE to Context Field Valueset. Setup the Context Field Values based on below table. Context Code Segments Global Data Elements Phone Number Email Fax Contractor Manager Extension Number CSP Name Permanent Extension Number Access Card Number Phone Number,Email and Fax displays always.When user choose Context Value as "Contractor" Manager Extension Number and CSP Name will show.In case of "Permanent" Extension Number and Access Card Number will show.  Assign value set also as follows. For Global Data Elements following are the segments. For "Contractor" following are the segments. For "Permanent" following are the segments. Check the "Freeze Flexfield Definition" check box and save.Standard concurrent program "Flexfield View Generator" will generate XXCUST_DFF_DEMO_DFV view which we mentioned in the DFF registration step.  Now the DFF has created successfully and ready to use. Create BC4J components for OAF and OA Page which holds the DFF Create the BC4J components ( EO,VO and AM) appropriately.Create the page based on the created VO.For DFF create an item of type "flex" with following property.  Note: You cannot create a flex item directly under a messageComponentLayout region, but you can create a messageLayout region under the messageComponentLayout region and add the flex item under the messageLayout region. In the Segment List property give the segment names which you want to display.The syntax of this is Global Data Elements|SEGMENT 1|...|SEGMENT N||[Context Code1]|SEGMENT 1|...|SEGMENT N||[Context Code2]|SEGMENT 1|...|SEGMENT N||... Eg: Global Data Elements|Phone Number|Email|Fax||Contractor|Manager Extension Number|CSP Name||Permanent|Extension Number|Access Card Number When you change the Context Value corresponding segments will display automatically by PPR in the page. You can attach partial action to the DFF bean programmatically so that you can identify the action related to DFF. pageContext.getParameter(EVENT_PARAM) will return "FLEX_CONTEXT_CHANGEDPersonDFF" when you change the DFF Context. Page is ready and you can test. When you choose "Contract" following output you can see. When you choose "Permanent" following output you can see.  Give proper values and press Apply.You can see values populated in the table.

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  • XNA Notes 007

    - by George Clingerman
    Every week I keep wondering if there’s going to be enough activity in the community to keep doing these notes on a weekly basis and every week I’m reminded of just how awesome and active the XNA community is. There’s engines being made, tutorials being created, games being crafted. There’s information being shared, questions being answered and then there’s another whole community around the Xbox LIVE Indie Games themselves. It’s really incredibly to just watch all that’s going on and I’m glad I’m playing a small part in all of this. So here’s what I noticed happening in the XNA community last week. If there’s things I’m missing, always feel free to let me know. I love learning about new corners of the XNA community that I wasn’t aware of or just have been missing! XNA Developers: Uditha Bandara held an XNA Game Development Workshops at Singapore Universities http://uditha.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/xna-game-development-workshops-at-singapore-universities-event-update/ Binary Tweed gives his talks about Indie City and gives his opinion on the false promise of digital distribution http://www.develop-online.net/news/37053/OPINION-The-false-promise-of-digital-distribution Kris Steele posts his Trivia or Die postmortem http://www.krissteele.net/blogdetails.aspx?id=246 @MadNinjaSkills (James Johnston) posts his feelings on testing for XBLIG http://www.ezmuze.co.uk/101 Simon (@DDReaper) posts hints and tips for XNA developers to help get the size of their projects down http://twitter.com/#!/DDReaper/status/38279440924545024 http://xna-uk.net/blogs/darkgenesis/archive/2011/02/17/look-at-the-size-of-that-thing.aspx Michael B. McLaughlin proving why he should be an XNA MVP posts the list of commonly used value types in XNA games http://geekswithblogs.net/mikebmcl/archive/2011/02/17/list-of-commonly-used-value-types-in-xna-games.aspx http://twitter.com/#!/mikebmcl/status/38166541354811392 Paul Powell (@ITSligoPaul) posts about a common sprite batch as a game service http://itspaulsblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/xna-common-sprite-batch-as-game-service.html @SigilXNA (John Defenbaugh) posts his new level editor video for the sequel to Opac’s Journey http://twitter.com/SigilXNA/statuses/36548174373982209 http://twitter.com/#!/SigilXNA/status/36548174373982209 http://youtu.be/QHbmxB_2AW8 @jwatte updates kW Animation for XNA 4.0 http://www.enchantedage.com/xna-animation @DSebJ posts Blender to SunBurn http://twitter.com/#!/DSebJ/status/36564920224976896 http://dsebj.evolvingsoftware.com/?p=187 Ads and WP7 Games - @mechaghost shares his revenue data for his ad based games http://www.occasionalgamer.com/2011/02/09/ads-and-wp7-games/ Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG): Steven Hurdle posts day 100 of his quest to find a fantastic XBLIG purchase every day http://writingsofmassdeduction.com/2011/02/17/day-100-radiangames-ballistic/ Xbox 360 Indie Game Buying Guide - 12 games for $60 including several Xbox LIVE Indie games! (although if the XNA community was asked we could have recommended 60 games for $60...) http://www.indiegamemag.com/xbox360-indie-games-buying-guide/ The best selling Xbox LIVE Indie games of 2010 http://www.1up.com/news/xbox-live-most-popular-games I’d buy that for a dollar! - the California Literary Review points out a few gems on the XBLIG marketplace (and other places) where you can game on the cheap. http://calitreview.com/14125 Armless Octopus Episode 39 - The Indie Gem Octocast http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/02/17/armless-octocast-episode-39-the-indie-gem-octocast/ Ska Studios posts a plethora of updates http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/02/11/good-morning-gato-49/ http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/02/14/vampire-smile-valentines/ http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/02/16/the-dishwasher-vs-finds-a-home/ Kotaku posts about the Xbox LIVE Indie Game that makes you go Pew Pew Pew Pew Pew Pew http://kotaku.com/#!5760632/the-game-that-makes-you-go-pew-pew-pew-pew-pew-pew-pew GameMarx continues to be active and doing a ton for the XBLIG community reviews and Top 5 indie games of the week 2/4-2/10 http://www.gamemarx.com/video/the-show/22/ep-9-february-11-2010.aspx a new podcast Xbox Indie New Releases http://twitter.com/#!/gamemarx/status/36888849107910656 http://www.gamemarx.com/news/2011/02/13/a-new-podcast-xbox-indie-new-releases.aspx @MasterBlud uploads Indocalypse XBLIG Collections #2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzCZSv075mc&feature=youtu.be&a http://twitter.com/#!/MasterBlud/status/37100029697064960 Just Press Start interviews Michael Hicks from MichaelArts, 18 year old creator of Honor in Vengeance http://justpressstart.net/?p=465 Achievement Locked interviews Kris Steele of FunInfused Games http://xboxindies.wordpress.com/2011/02/11/interview-fun-infused-games/ XNA Game Development: XNA -UK launches their XAP test service to help the XNA community http://xna-uk.net/blogs/news/archive/2011/02/18/xna-uk-xap-test-service-now-live.aspx Transmute shows off a video of the standard character editor http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqH6gErG948&feature=youtu.be Microsoft Tech Student introduces their first tech student of the month.  Meet Daniel Van Tassel from the University of Utah and learn how he created an Xbox LIVE Indie Game using XNA Studio http://blogs.msdn.com/b/techstudent/archive/2010/12/22/introducing-our-first-tech-student-of-the-month-daniel-van-tassel.aspx XNA for Silverlight Developers Part 3 - Animation (transforms) http://www.silverlightshow.net/items/XNA-for-Silverlight-developers-Part-3-Animation-transforms.aspx XNA for Silverlight Developers Part 4 - Animation (frame based) http://www.silverlightshow.net/items/XNA-for-Silverlight-developers-Part-4-Animation-frame-based.aspx @suhinini tweets about an XNA Sprite Font generation tool http://twitter.com/#!/suhinini/status/36841370131890176 http://www.nubik.com/SpriteFont/ XNATouch 1.5 is out and in it’s words is faster, simpler, more reliable and has the XNA 4.0 API http://monogame.codeplex.com/releases/view/60815 IndieCity is hosting marketing workshops for Indie Developers (UK and US) http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/75197/457654.aspx#457654 New York Students - Learn XNA and Silverlight for Xbox 360 and Windows Phone 7 http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/72753/456964.aspx#456964 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/andrewparsons/archive/2011/01/13/learn-to-build-your-own-games-for-xbox-360-and-windows-phone-7.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/andrewparsons/archive/2011/01/13/build-a-game-in-48-hours-win-a-kinect-or-windows-phone-7.aspx Extra Credits: Videogame Music http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2019-Videogame-Music Steve Pavlina posts an article with useful information for all XNA/XBLIG developers http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2011/02/completion-vs-perfection/

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  • Silverlight Cream for December 05, 2010 -- #1003

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this (Almost) All-Submittal Issue: John Papa(-2-), Jesse Liberty, Tim Heuer, Dan Wahlin, Markus Egger, Phil Middlemiss, Coding4Fun, Michael Washington, Gill Cleeren, MichaelD!, Colin Eberhardt, Kunal Chowdhury, and Rabeeh Abla. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Two-Way Binding on TreeView.SelectedItem" Phil Middlemiss WP7: "Taking Screen Shots of Windows Phone 7 Panorama Apps" Markus Egger Training: "Beginners Guide to Visual Studio LightSwitch (Part - 4)" Kunal Chowdhury Shoutouts: Don't let the fire go out... check out the Firestarter Labs Bart Czernicki discusses the need for 64-bit Silverlight: Why a 64-bit runtime for Silverlight 5 Matters Laurent Duveau is interviewed by the SilverlightShow folks to discuss his WP7 app: Laurent Duveau on Morse Code Flash Light WP7 Application From SilverlightCream.com: John Papa: Silverlight 5 Features John Papa has a post up highlighting his take on what's cool in the new featureset for Silverlight 5... including an external link to the keynote. Silverlight Firestarter Keynote and Sessions John Papa also has posted links to all the individual session videos... what a great resource! Yet Another Podcast #17 – Scott Guthrie Jesse Liberty went big with his latest Yet Another Podcast ... he is interviewing Scott Guthrie about the Firestarter, Silverlight, WP7. and more. Silverlight 5 Plans Revealed With this post from Tim Heuer, I find myself adding a Silverlight 5 tag... so bring on the fun! ... unless you've been overloaded like I have since last Thursday, you've probably seen this, but what the heck... Silverlight Firestarter Wrap Up and WCF RIA Services Talk Sample Code Phoenix's own Dan Wahlin had a great WCF RIA Services presentation at the Firestarter last week, and his material and lots of other good links are up on his blog, and I'd say that even if he didn't have a couple shoutouts to me in it :) Thanks Dan!! Taking Screen Shots of Windows Phone 7 Panorama Apps Markus Egger helps us all out with a post on how to get screenshots of your WP7 Panorama app... in case you haven't tried it ... it's not as easy as it sounds! Two-Way Binding on TreeView.SelectedItem Phil Middlemiss is back with a post taking some of the mystery out of the TreeView control bound to a data context and dealing with the SelectedItem property... oh yeah, and throw all that into MVVM! Great tutorial as usual, a cool behavior, and all the source. Native Extensions for Microsoft Silverlight Alan Cobb pointed me to a quick post up on the Coding4Fun site about the NESL (Native Extensions for SilverLight) from Microsoft that give access to some cool features of Windows 7 from Silverlight... I added an NESL tag in case other posts appear on this subject. Silverlight Simple Drag And Drop / Or Browse View Model / MVVM File Upload Control Michael Washington has another great tutorial up at CodeProject that expands on prior work he'd done with drag/drop file upload with this post on integrating an updated browse/upload into ViewModel/MVVM projects, all of which is Blendable. The validation story in Silverlight (Part 1) In good news for all of us, Gill Cleeren has started a tutorial series at SilverlightShow on Silverlight Validation. The first one is up discussing the basics... The Common Framework MichaelD! has a WPF/Silverlight framework up with Facebook Authentication, Xaml-driven IOC, T4 synchronous WCF proxies, and WP7 on the roadmap... source on CodePlex, check it out and give him some feedback. Exploring Reactive Extensions (Rx) through Twitter and Bing Maps Mashups If you've been waiting around to learn Rx, Colin Eberhardt has the post up for you (and me)... great tutorial up on Twitter and Bing Maps Mashups ... and all the code... for the twitter immediate app, and also the UKSnow one we showed last week... check out the demo page, and grab the source! Beginners Guide to Visual Studio LightSwitch (Part - 4) Kunal Chowdhury has the 4th part of his Lightswitch tutorial series up at SilverlightShow. In this one, he shows how to integrate multiple tables into a screen. It is here Take Your Silverlight Application Full Screen & intercept all windows keys !! Rabeeh Abla sent me this link to the blog describing a COM exposed library that intercepts all keys when Silverlight is full-screen. There are a few I hit when I'm going through blogs that Ctrl-W (FF) just won't take down and that annoys me... so this might be a solution if you have that problem... worth a look anyway! 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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  • Personal search – the future of search

    - by jamiet
    [Four months ago I wrote a meandering blog post on another blogging site entitled Personal search – the future of search. The points I made therein are becoming more relevant to what I'm reading about and hoping to get involved in in the future so I'm re-posting here to a wider audience to hopefully get some more feedback and guage reaction to it. This has been prompted by the book Pull by David Siegel that is forming my current holiday reading (recommended to me by a commenter on my previous post Interesting things – Twitter annotations and your phone as a web server) and in particular by Siegel's notion of us all in the future having a personal online data vault.] My one-time colleague Paul Dawson recently wrote an article called The Future of Search and in it he proposed some interesting ideas. Some choice quotes: The growth of Chinese search giant Baidu is an indicator that fully localised and tailored content and offerings have great traction with local audiences This trend is already driving an increase in the use of specialist searches … Look at how Farecast is now integrated into Bing for example, or how Flightstats is now integrated into Google. Search does not necessarily have to begin with a keyword, but could start instead with a click or a touch. Take a look at Retrievr. Start drawing a picture in the box and see what happens. This is certainly search without the need for typing in keywords search technology has advanced greatly in recent years. The recent launch of Microsoft Live Labs’ Pivot has given us a taste of what we can expect to see in the future This really got me thinking about where search might go in the future and as my mind wandered I realised that as the amount of data that we collect about ourselves increases so too will the need and the desire to search it. The amount of electronic data that exists about each and every person is increasing and in the near future I fully expect that we are going to be able to store personal data such as: A history of our location (in fact Google Latitude already offers this facility) Recordings of all our phone conversations Health information history (weight, blood pressure etc…) Energy usage Spending history What films we watch, what radio stations we listen to Voting history Of course, most of this stuff is already stored somewhere but crucially we don’t have easy access to it. My utilities supplier knows how much electricity I’m using but if I want to know for myself I have to go and dig through my statements (assuming I have kept them). Similarly my doctor probably has ready access to all of my health records, my bank knows exactly what I have spent my money on, my cable supplier knows what I watch on TV and my mobile phone supplier probably knows exactly where I am and where I’ve been for the past few years. Strange then that none of this electronic information is available to me in a way that I can really make use of it; after all, its MY information. Its MY data. I created it. That is set to change. As technologies mature and customers become more technically cognizant they will demand more access to the data that companies hold about them. The companies themselves will realise the benefit that they derive from giving users what they want and will embrace ways of providing it. As a result the amount of data that we store about ourselves is going to increase exponentially and the desire to search and derive value from that data is going to grow with it; we are about to enter the era of the “personal datastore” and we will want, and need, to search through it in order to make sense of it all. Its interesting then that today when we think of search we think of search engines and yet in these personal datastores we’re referring to data that search engines can’t touch because WE own it and we (hopefully) choose to keep it private. Someone, I know not who, is going to lead in this space by making it easy for us to search our data and retrieve information that we have either forgotten or maybe didn’t even know in the first place. We will learn new things about ourselves and about our habits; we will share these findings with whomever we choose; we will compare what we discover with others; we will collaborate for mutual benefit and, most of all, we will educate ourselves as to how to live our lives better. Search will be the means to that end, it will enable us to make sense of the wealth of information that we will collect day in day out. The future of search is personal, why would we be interested in anything else? @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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  • XNA Notes 005

    - by George Clingerman
    Another week and another crazy amount of activity going on in the XNA community. I’m fairly certain I missed over half of it. In fact, if I am missing things, make sure to email me and I’ll try and make sure I catch it next week! ([email protected]). Also, if you’ve got any advice, things you like/don’t like about the way these XNA Notes are going let me know. I always appreciate feedback (currently spammers are leaving me the nicest comments so you guys have work to do!) Without further ado, here’s this week’s notes! Time Critical XNA News The XNA Team Blob reminds us that February 7th is the last day to submit XNA 3.1 games to peer review! http://blogs.msdn.com/b/xna/archive/2011/01/31/7-days-left-to-submit-xna-gs-3-1-games-on-app-hub.aspx XNA MVPS Chris Williams kicks off the marketing campaign for our book http://geekswithblogs.net/cwilliams/archive/2011/01/28/143680.aspx Catalin Zima posts the comparison cheat sheet for why Angry Birds is different than Chickens Can’t Fly http://www.amusedsloth.com/2011/02/comparison-cheat-sheet-for-chickens-cant-fly-and-angry-birds/ Jim Perry congratulates the developers selected by Game Developer Magazine for Best Xbox LIVE Indie Games of 2010 http://machxgames.com/blog/?p=24 @NemoKrad posts his XNAKUUG talks for all to enjoy http://twitter.com/NemoKrad/statuses/33142362502864896 http://xna-uk.net/blogs/randomchaos/archive/2011/02/03/xblig-uk-2011-january-amp-february-talk.aspx George  (that’s me!) preps for his XNA talk coming up on the 8th http://twitter.com/clingermangw/statuses/32669550554124288 http://www.portlandsilverlight.net/Meetings/Details/15 XNA Developers FireFly posts the last tutorial in his XNA Tower Defense tutorial series http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/26442/451460.aspx#451460 http://xnatd.blogspot.com/2011/01/tutorial-14-polishing-game.html @fredericmy posts the main difference when porting a game from Windows Phone 7 to Xbox 360 http://fairyengine.blogspot.com/2011/01/main-differences-when-porting-game-from.html @ElementCy creates a pretty rad video of a MineCraft type terrain created using XNA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Waw1f7wnl9I Andrew Russel gets the first XNA badge on gamedev.stackexchange http://twitter.com/_AndrewRussell/statuses/32322877004972032 http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/badges?tab=tags And his funding for ExEn has passed $7000 only $3000 to go http://twitter.com/_AndrewRussell/statuses/33042412804771840 Subodh Pushpak blogs about his Windows Phone 7 XNA talk http://geekswithblogs.net/subodhnpushpak/archive/2011/02/01/windows-phone-7-silverlight--xna-development-talk.aspx Slyprid releases the latest version of Transmute and needs more people to test http://twitter.com/slyprid/statuses/32452488418299904 http://forgottenstarstudios.com/ SpynDoctorGames celebrates the 1 year anniversary of Your Doodles Are Bugged! Congrats! http://twitter.com/SpynDoctorGames/statuses/32511689068908544 Noogy (creator of Dust the Elysian Tail) prepares his conversion to XNA 4.0 http://twitter.com/NoogyTweet/statuses/32522008449253376 @philippedasilva posts about the Indiefreaks Game Framework v0.2.0.0 Input management system http://twitter.com/philippedasilva/statuses/32763393957957632 http://indiefreaks.com/2011/02/02/behind-smart-input-system-feature/ Mommy’s Best Games debates what to do about High Scores with their new update http://mommysbest.blogspot.com/2011/02/high-score-shake-up.html @BinaryTweedDeej want to know if there’s anything the community needs to make XNA games for the PC. Give him some feedback! http://twitter.com/BinaryTweedDeej/status/32895453863354368 @mikebmcl promises to write us all a book (I can’t wait to read it!) http://twitter.com/mikebmcl/statuses/33206499102687233 @werezompire is going to live, LIVE, thanks to all the generosity and support from the community! http://twitter.com/werezompire/statuses/32840147644977153 Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG) Making money in Xbox 360 indie game development. Is it possible? http://www.bitmob.com/articles/making-money-in-xbox-360-indie-game-development-is-it-possible @AlejandroDaJ posts some thoughts abut the bitmob article http://twitter.com/AlejandroDaJ/statuses/31068552165330944 http://www.apathyworks.com/blog/view.php?id=00215 Kobun gets my respect as an XBLIG champion. I’m not sure who Kobun is, but if you’ve every read through the comment sections any time Kotaku writes about XBLIGs you’ll see a lot of confusion, disinformation in there. Kobun has been waging a secret war battling that lack of knowledge and he does it well. Also he’s running a pretty kick ass site for Xbox LIVE Indie Game reviews http://xboxindies.teamkobun.com/ @radiangames releases his last Xbox LIVE Indie Game...for now http://bit.ly/gMK6lE Playing Avaglide with the Kinect controller http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqAYbHww53o http://www.joystiq.com/2011/01/30/kinect-hacks-take-to-the-skies-with-avaglide/ Luke Schneider of Radiangames interviewed in Edge magazine http://www.next-gen.biz/features/radiangames-venture Digital Quarters posts thoughts on why XBLIG’s online requirement kills certain genres http://digitalquarters.blogspot.com/2011/02/thoughts-why-xbligs-online-requirement.html Mommy’s Best Games shares the news that several XBLIGs were featured in the March 2011 issue of Famitsu 360 http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/33455/451487.aspx#451487 NaviFairy continues with his Indie-Game-A-Day http://gaygamer.net/2011/02/indie_game_a_day_epic_dungeon.html http://gaygamer.net/2011/02/indie_game_a_day_break_limit_r.html and more every day...that’s kind of the point! Keep your eye on this series! VVGTV continues with it’s awesome reviews/promotions for XBLIGs http://vvgtv.com/ http://vvgtv.com/2011/02/03/iredia-atrams-secret-xblig-review-2/ http://vvgtv.com/2011/02/02/poopocalypse-coming-soon-to-xblig/ ….and even more, you get the point. Magicka is an Indie Game doing really well on Steam AND it’s made using XNA http://www.magickagame.com/ http://twitter.com/Magickagame/statuses/32712762580799488 GameMarx reviews Antipole http://www.gamemarx.com/reviews/73/antipole-is-vvvvvvery-good.aspx Armless Octopus review Alpha Squad http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/01/28/xbox-indie-review-alpha-squad/ An interesting article about Kodu that Jim Perry found http://twitter.com/MachXGames/statuses/32848044105924608 http://www.develop-online.net/news/36915/10-year-old-Jordan-makes-games-The-UK-needs-more-like-her XNA Game Development Sgt. Conker posts about the Natur beta, a new book and whether you can make money with XBLIG http://www.sgtconker.com/ http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/01/a-new-book-on-the-block-and-a-new-natur-beta/ http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/01/making-money-in-xbox-360-indie-game-development-is-it-possible/ Tips for setting up SVN http://bit.ly/fKxgFh @bsimser found tons of royalty free music and soundfx for your XNA Games http://twitter.com/bsimser/statuses/31426632933711872 Post on the new features in the next Sunburn Editor http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/fivesidedbarrel/archive/2011/01/28/new-editor-features-prefabs-components-and-more.aspx @jasons_novaleaf posts source code for light pre-pass optimizations for #xna http://twitter.com/jasons_novaleaf/statuses/33348855403642880 http://jcoluna.wordpress.com/2011/02/01/xna-4-0-light-pre-pass-optimization-round-one/ I’ve been learning about doing an A.I. for turn based games and this article was a great resource. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1535/designing_ai_algorithms_for_.php?print=1

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  • Personal search – the future of search

    - by jamiet
    [Four months ago I wrote a meandering blog post on another blogging site entitled Personal search – the future of search. The points I made therein are becoming more relevant to what I'm reading about and hoping to get involved in in the future so I'm re-posting here to a wider audience to hopefully get some more feedback and guage reaction to it. This has been prompted by the book Pull by David Siegel that is forming my current holiday reading (recommended to me by a commenter on my previous post Interesting things – Twitter annotations and your phone as a web server) and in particular by Siegel's notion of us all in the future having a personal online data vault.] My one-time colleague Paul Dawson recently wrote an article called The Future of Search and in it he proposed some interesting ideas. Some choice quotes: The growth of Chinese search giant Baidu is an indicator that fully localised and tailored content and offerings have great traction with local audiences This trend is already driving an increase in the use of specialist searches … Look at how Farecast is now integrated into Bing for example, or how Flightstats is now integrated into Google. Search does not necessarily have to begin with a keyword, but could start instead with a click or a touch. Take a look at Retrievr. Start drawing a picture in the box and see what happens. This is certainly search without the need for typing in keywords search technology has advanced greatly in recent years. The recent launch of Microsoft Live Labs’ Pivot has given us a taste of what we can expect to see in the future This really got me thinking about where search might go in the future and as my mind wandered I realised that as the amount of data that we collect about ourselves increases so too will the need and the desire to search it. The amount of electronic data that exists about each and every person is increasing and in the near future I fully expect that we are going to be able to store personal data such as: A history of our location (in fact Google Latitude already offers this facility) Recordings of all our phone conversations Health information history (weight, blood pressure etc…) Energy usage Spending history What films we watch, what radio stations we listen to Voting history Of course, most of this stuff is already stored somewhere but crucially we don’t have easy access to it. My utilities supplier knows how much electricity I’m using but if I want to know for myself I have to go and dig through my statements (assuming I have kept them). Similarly my doctor probably has ready access to all of my health records, my bank knows exactly what I have spent my money on, my cable supplier knows what I watch on TV and my mobile phone supplier probably knows exactly where I am and where I’ve been for the past few years. Strange then that none of this electronic information is available to me in a way that I can really make use of it; after all, its MY information. Its MY data. I created it. That is set to change. As technologies mature and customers become more technically cognizant they will demand more access to the data that companies hold about them. The companies themselves will realise the benefit that they derive from giving users what they want and will embrace ways of providing it. As a result the amount of data that we store about ourselves is going to increase exponentially and the desire to search and derive value from that data is going to grow with it; we are about to enter the era of the “personal datastore” and we will want, and need, to search through it in order to make sense of it all. Its interesting then that today when we think of search we think of search engines and yet in these personal datastores we’re referring to data that search engines can’t touch because WE own it and we (hopefully) choose to keep it private. Someone, I know not who, is going to lead in this space by making it easy for us to search our data and retrieve information that we have either forgotten or maybe didn’t even know in the first place. We will learn new things about ourselves and about our habits; we will share these findings with whomever we choose; we will compare what we discover with others; we will collaborate for mutual benefit and, most of all, we will educate ourselves as to how to live our lives better. Search will be the means to that end, it will enable us to make sense of the wealth of information that we will collect day in day out. The future of search is personal, why would we be interested in anything else? @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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  • Build 2012, some thoughts..

    - by Dennis Vroegop
    I think you probably read my rant about the logistics at Build 2012, as posted here, so I am not going into that anymore. Instead, let’s look at the content. (BTW If you did read that post and want some more info then read Nia Angelina’s post about Build. I have nothing to add to that.) As usual, there were good speakers and some speakers who could benefit from some speaker training. I find it hard to understand why Microsoft allows certain people on stage, people who speak English with such strong accents it’s hard for people, especially from abroad, to understand. Some basic training might be useful for some of them. However, it is nice to see that most speakers are project managers, program managers or even devs on the teams that build the stuff they talk about: there was a lot of knowledge on stage! And that means when you ask questions you get very relevant information. I realize I am not the average audience member here, I am regular speaker myself so I tend to look for other things when I am in a room than most audience members so my opinion might differ from others. All in all the knowledge of the speakers was above average but the presentation skills were most of the times below what I would describe as adequate. But let us look at the contents. Since the official name of the conference is Build Windows 2012 it is not surprising most of the talks were focused on building Windows 8 apps. Next to that, there was a lot of focus on Azure and of course Windows Phone 8 that launched the day before Build started. Most sessions dealt with C# and JavaScript although I did see a tendency to use C++ more. Touch. Well, that was the focus on a lot of sessions, that goes without saying. Microsoft is really betting on Touch these days and being a Touch oriented developer I can only applaud this. The term NUI is getting a bit outdated but the principles behind it certainly aren’t. The sessions did cover quite a lot on how to make your applications easy to use and easy to understand. However, not all is touch nowadays; still the majority of people use keyboard and mouse to interact with their machines (or, as I do, use keyboard, mouse AND touch at the same time). Microsoft understands this and has spend some serious thoughts on this as well. It was all about making your apps run everywhere on all sorts of devices and in all sorts of scenarios. I have seen a couple of sessions focusing on the portable class library and on sharing code between Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. You get the feeling Microsoft is enabling us devs to write software that will be ubiquitous. They want your stuff to be all over the place and they do anything they can to help. To achieve that goal they provide us with brilliant SDK’s, great tooling, a very, very good backend in the form of Windows Azure (I was particularly impressed by the Mobility part of Azure) and some fantastic hardware. And speaking of hardware: the partners such as Acer, Lenovo and Dell are making hardware that puts Apple to a shame nowadays. To illustrate: in Bellevue (very close to Redmond where Microsoft HQ is) they have the Microsoft Store located very close to the Apple Store, so it’s easy to compare devices. And I have to say: the Microsoft offerings are much, much more appealing that what the Cupertino guys have to offer. That was very visible by the number of people visiting the stores: even on the day that Apple launched the iPad Mini there were more people in the Microsoft store than in the Apple store. So, the future looks like it’s going to be fun. Great hardware (did I mention the Nokia Lumia 920? No? It’s brilliant), great software (Windows 8 is in a league of its own), the best dev tools (Visual Studio 2012 is still the champion here) and a fantastic backend (Azure.. need I say more?). It’s up to us devs to fill up the stores with applications that matches this. To summarize: it is great to be a Windows developer. PS. Did I mention Surface RT? Man….. People were drooling all over it wherever I went. It is fantastic :-) Technorati Tags: Build,Windows 8,Windows Phone,Lumia,Surface,Microsoft

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  • Visual Tree Enumeration

    - by codingbloke
    I feel compelled to post this blog because I find I’m repeatedly posting this same code in silverlight and windows-phone-7 answers in Stackoverflow. One common task that we feel we need to do is burrow into the visual tree in a Silverlight or Windows Phone 7 application (actually more recently I found myself doing this in WPF as well).  This allows access to details that aren’t exposed directly by some controls.  A good example of this sort of requirement is found in the “Restoring exact scroll position of a listbox in Windows Phone 7”  question on stackoverflow.  This required that the scroll position of the scroll viewer internal to a listbox be accessed. A caveat One caveat here is that we should seriously challenge the need for this burrowing since it may indicate that there is a design problem.  Burrowing into the visual tree or indeed burrowing out to containing ancestors could represent significant coupling between module boundaries and that generally isn’t a good idea. Why isn’t this idea just not cast aside as a no-no?  Well the whole concept of a “Templated Control”, which are in extensive use in these applications, opens the coupling between the content of the visual tree and the internal code of a control.   For example, I can completely change the appearance and positioning of elements that make up a ComboBox.  The ComboBox control relies on specific template parts having set names of a specified type being present in my template.  Rightly or wrongly this does kind of give license to writing code that has similar coupling. Hasn’t this been done already? Yes it has.  There are number of blogs already out there with similar solutions.  In fact if you are using Silverlight toolkit the VisualTreeExtensions class already provides this feature.  However I prefer my specific code because of the simplicity principle I hold to.  Only write the minimum code necessary to give all the features needed.  In this case I add just two extension methods Ancestors and Descendents, note I don’t bother with “Get” or “Visual” prefixes.  Also I haven’t added Parent or Children methods nor additional “AndSelf” methods because all but Children is achievable with the addition of some other Linq methods.  I decided to give Descendents an additional overload for depth hence a depth of 1 is equivalent to Children but this overload is a little more flexible than simply Children. So here is the code:- VisualTreeEnumeration public static class VisualTreeEnumeration {     public static IEnumerable<DependencyObject> Descendents(this DependencyObject root, int depth)     {         int count = VisualTreeHelper.GetChildrenCount(root);         for (int i = 0; i < count; i++)         {             var child = VisualTreeHelper.GetChild(root, i);             yield return child;             if (depth > 0)             {                 foreach (var descendent in Descendents(child, --depth))                     yield return descendent;             }         }     }     public static IEnumerable<DependencyObject> Descendents(this DependencyObject root)     {         return Descendents(root, Int32.MaxValue);     }     public static IEnumerable<DependencyObject> Ancestors(this DependencyObject root)     {         DependencyObject current = VisualTreeHelper.GetParent(root);         while (current != null)         {             yield return current;             current = VisualTreeHelper.GetParent(current);         }     } }   Usage examples The following are some examples of how to combine the above extension methods with Linq to generate the other axis scenarios that tree traversal code might require. Missing Axis Scenarios var parent = control.Ancestors().Take(1).FirstOrDefault(); var children = control.Descendents(1); var previousSiblings = control.Ancestors().Take(1)     .SelectMany(p => p.Descendents(1).TakeWhile(c => c != control)); var followingSiblings = control.Ancestors().Take(1)     .SelectMany(p => p.Descendents(1).SkipWhile(c => c != control).Skip(1)); var ancestorsAndSelf = Enumerable.Repeat((DependencyObject)control, 1)     .Concat(control.Ancestors()); var descendentsAndSelf = Enumerable.Repeat((DependencyObject)control, 1)     .Concat(control.Descendents()); You might ask why I don’t just include these in the VisualTreeEnumerator.  I don’t on the principle of only including code that is actually needed.  If you find that one or more of the above  is needed in your code then go ahead and create additional methods.  One of the downsides to Extension methods is that they can make finding the method you actually want in intellisense harder. Here are some real world usage scenarios for these methods:- Real World Scenarios //Gets the internal scrollviewer of a ListBox ScrollViewer sv = someListBox.Descendents().OfType<ScrollViewer>().FirstOrDefault(); // Get all text boxes in current UserControl:- var textBoxes = this.Descendents().OfType<TextBox>(); // All UIElement direct children of the layout root grid:- var topLevelElements = LayoutRoot.Descendents(0).OfType<UIElement>(); // Find the containing `ListBoxItem` for a UIElement:- var container = elem.Ancestors().OfType<ListBoxItem>().FirstOrDefault(); // Seek a button with the name "PinkElephants" even if outside of the current Namescope:- var pinkElephantsButton = this.Descendents()     .OfType<Button>()     .FirstOrDefault(b => b.Name == "PinkElephants"); //Clear all checkboxes with the name "Selector" in a Treeview foreach (CheckBox checkBox in elem.Descendents()     .OfType<CheckBox>().Where(c => c.Name == "Selector")) {     checkBox.IsChecked = false; }   The last couple of examples above demonstrate a common requirement of finding controls that have a specific name.  FindName will often not find these controls because they exist in a different namescope. Hope you find this useful, if not I’m just glad to be able to link to this blog in future stackoverflow answers.

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  • Think before you animate

    - by David Paquette
    Animations are becoming more and more common in our applications.  With technologies like WPF, Silverlight and jQuery, animations are becoming easier for developers to use (and abuse).  When used properly, animation can augment the user experience.  When used improperly, animation can degrade the user experience.  Sometimes, the differences can be very subtle. I have recently made use of animations in a few projects and I very quickly realized how easy it is to abuse animation techniques.  Here are a few things I have learned along the way. 1) Don’t animate for the sake of animating We’ve all seen the PowerPoint slides with annoying slide transitions that animate 20 different ways.  It’s distracting and tacky.  The same holds true for your application.  While animations are fun and becoming easy to implement, resist the urge to use the technology just because you think the technology is amazing.   2) Animations should (and do) have meaning I recently built a simple Windows Phone 7 (WP7) application, Steeped (download it here).  The application has 2 pages.  The first page lists a number of tea types.  When the user taps on one of the tea types, the application navigates to the second page with information about that tea type and some options for the user to choose from.       One of the last things I did before submitting Steeped to the marketplace was add a page transition between the 2 pages.  I choose the Slide / Fade Out transition.  When the user selects a tea type, the main page slides to the left and fades out.  At the same time, the details page slides in from the right and fades in.  I tested it and thought it looked great so I submitted the app.  A few days later, I asked a friend to try the app.  He selected a tea type, and I was a little surprised by how he used the app.  When he wanted to navigate back to the main page, instead of pressing the back button on the phone, he tried to use a swiping gesture.  Of course, the swiping gesture did nothing because I had not implemented that feature.  After thinking about it for a while, I realized that the page transition I had chosen implied a particular behaviour.  As a user, if an action I perform causes an item (in this case the page) to move, then my expectation is that I should be able to move it back.  I have since added logic to handle the swipe gesture and I think the app flows much better now. When using animation, it pays to ask yourself:  What story does this animation tell my users?   3) Watch the replay Some animations might seem great initially but can get annoying over time.  When you use an animation in your application, make sure you try using it over and over again to make sure it doesn’t get annoying.  When I add an animation, I try watch it at least 25 times in a row.  After watching the animation repeatedly, I can make a more informed decision whether or not I should keep the animation.  Often, I end up shortening the length of the animations.   4) Don’t get in the users way An animation should never slow the user down.  When implemented properly, an animation can give a perceived bump in performance.  A good example of this is a the page transitions in most of the built in apps on WP7.  Obviously, these page animations don’t make the phone any faster, but they do provide a more responsive user experience.  Why?  Because most of the animations begin as soon as the user has performed some action.  The destination page might not be fully loaded yet, but the system responded immediately to user action, giving the impression that the system is more responsive.  If the user did not see anything happen until after the destination page was fully loaded, the application would feel clumsy and slow.  Also, it is important to make sure the animation does not degrade the performance (or perceived performance) of the application.   Jut a few things to consider when using animations.  As is the case with many technologies, we often learn how to misuse it before we learn how to use it effectively.

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  • Finding it Hard to Deliver Right Customer Experience: Think BPM!

    - by Ajay Khanna
    Our relationship with our customers is not a just a single interaction and we should not treat it like one. A customer’s relationship with a vendor is like a journey which starts way before customer makes a purchase and lasts long after that. The journey may start with customer researching a product that may lead to the eventual purchase and may continue with support or service needs for the product. A typical customer journey can be represented as shown below: As you may notice, customers tend to use multiple channels to interact with a company throughout their journey.  They also expect that they should get consistent experience, no matter what interaction channel they may choose. Customers do not like to repeat the information they have already provided and expect companies to remember their preferences, and offer them relevant products and services. If the company fails to meet this expectation, customers not only will abandon the purchase and go to the competitor but may also influence others’ purchase decision. Gone are the days when word of mouth was the only medium, and the customer could influence “Six” others. This is the age of social media and customer’s good or bad experience, especially bad get highly amplified and may influence hundreds of others. Challenges that face B2C companies today include: Delivering consistent experience: The reason that delivering consistent experience is challenging is due to fragmented data, disjointed systems and siloed multichannel interactions. Customers tend to get different service quality if they use web vs. phone vs. store. They get different responses from different service agents or get inconsistent answers if they call sales vs. service group in the company. Such inconsistent experiences result in lower customer satisfaction or NPS (net promoter score) numbers. Increasing Revenue: To stay competitive companies frequently introduce new products and services. Delay in launching such offerings has a significant impact on revenue realization. In addition to new product revenue, there are multiple opportunities to up-sell and cross-sell that impact bottom line. If companies are not able to identify such opportunities, bring a product to market quickly, or not offer the right product to the right customer at the right time, significant loss of revenue may occur. Ensuring Compliance: Companies must be compliant to ever changing regulations, these could be about Know Your Customer (KYC), Export/Import regulations, or taxation policies. In addition to government agencies, companies also need to comply with the SLA that they have committed to their customers. Lapse in meeting any of these requirements may lead to serious fines, penalties and loss in business. Companies have to make sure that they are in compliance will all such regulations and SLA commitments, at any given time. With the advent of social networks and mobile technology, companies not only need to focus on process efficiency but also on customer engagement. Improving engagement means delivering the customer experience as the customer is expecting and interacting with the customer at right time using right channel. Customers expect to be able to contact you via any channel of their choice (web, email, chat, mobile, social media), purchase via any viable channel (web, phone, store, mobile). Customers expect companies to understand their particular needs and remember their preferences on repeated visits. To deliver such an integrated, consistent, and contextual experience, power of BPM in must. Your company may be organized in departments like Marketing, Sales, Service. You may hold prospect data in SFA, order information in ERP, customer issues in CRM. However, the experience delivered to the customer must not be constrained by your system legacy. BPM helps in designing the right experience for the right customer and integrates all the underlining channels, systems, applications to make sure right information will be delivered to the right knowledge worker or to the customer every single time.     Orchestrating information across all systems (MDM, CRM, ERP), departments (commerce, merchandising, marketing service) and channels (Email, phone, web, social)  is the key, and that’s what BPM delivers. In addition to orchestrating systems and channels for consistency, BPM also provides an ability for analysis and decision management. By using data from historical transactions, social media and from other systems, users can determine the customer preferences, customer value, and churn propensity. This information, in the context, is then used while making a decision at a process step. Working with real-time decision management system can also suggest right up-sell or cross-sell offers, discounts or next-best-action steps for a particular customer. Timely action on customer issues or request is also a key tenet of a good customer experience. BPM’s complex event processing capabilities help companies to take proactive actions before issues get escalated. BPM system can be designed to listen to a certain event patters then deduce from those customer situations (credit card stolen, baggage lost, change of address) and do a triage before situation goes out of control. If such a situation arises you can send alerts to right people or immediately invoke corrective actions. Last but not least one of BPM’s key values is to drive continuous improvement. Learning about customers past experiences, interactions and social conversations, provide valuable insight. Such insight can be used to improve products, customer facing processes, and customer experience. You may take these insights as an input to design better more efficient and customer friendly sales, contact center or self-service processes. If customer experience is important for your business, make sure you have incorporated BPM as a part of your strategy to design, orchestrate and improve your customer facing processes.

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  • What is Happening vs. What is Interesting

    - by Geertjan
    Devoxx 2011 was yet another confirmation that all development everywhere is either on the web or on mobile phones. Whether you looked at the conference schedule or attended sessions or talked to speakers at any point at all, it was very clear that no development whatsoever is done anymore on the desktop. In fact, that's something Tim Bray himself told me to my face at the speakers dinner. No new developments of any kind are happening on the desktop. Everyone who is currently on the desktop is working overtime to move all of their applications to the web. They're probably also creating a small subset of their application on an Android tablet, with an even smaller subset on their Android phone. Then you scratch that monolithic surface and find some interesting results. Without naming any names, I asked one of these prominent "ah, forget about the desktop" people at the Devoxx speakers dinner (and I have a witness): "Yes, the desktop is dead, but what about air traffic control, stock trading, oil analysis, risk management applications? In fact, what about any back office application that needs to be usable across all operating systems? Here there is no concern whatsoever with 100% accessibility which is, after all, the only thing that the web has over the desktop, (except when there's a network failure, of course, or when you find yourself in the 3/4 of the world where there's bandwidth problems)? There are 1000's of hidden applications out there that have processing requirements, security requirements, and the requirement that they'll be available even when the network is down or even completely unavailable. Isn't that a valid use case and aren't there 1000's of applications that fall into this so-called niche category? Are you not, in fact, confusing consumer applications, which are increasingly web-based and mobile-based, with high-end corporate applications, which typically need to do massive processing, of one kind or another, for which the web and mobile worlds are completely unsuited?" And you will not believe what the reply to the above question was. (Again, I have a witness to this discussion.) But here it is: "Yes. But those applications are not interesting. I do not want to spend any of my time or work in any way on those applications. They are boring." I'm sad to say that the leaders of the software development community, including those in the Java world, either share the above opinion or are led by it. Because they find something that is not new to be boring, they move on to what is interesting and start talking like the supposedly-boring developments don't even exist. (Kind of like a rapper pretending classical music doesn't exist.) Time and time again I find myself giving Java desktop development courses (at companies, i.e., not hobbyists, or students, but companies, i.e., the places where dollars are earned), where developers say to me: "The course you're giving about creating cross-platform, loosely coupled, and highly cohesive applications is really useful to us. Why do we never find information about this topic at conferences? Why can we never attend a session at a conference where the story about pluggable cross-platform Java is told? Why do we get the impression that we are uncool because we're not on the web and because we're not on a mobile phone, while the reason for that is because we're creating $1000,000 simulation software which has nothing to gain from being on the web or on the mobile phone?" And then I say: "Because nobody knows you exist. Because you're not submitting abstracts to conferences about your very interesting use cases. And because conferences tend to focus on what is new, which tends to be web related (especially HTML 5) or mobile related (especially Android). Because you're not taking the responsibility on yourself to tell the real stories about the real applications being developed all the time and every day. Because you yourself think your work is boring, while in fact it is fascinating. Because desktop developers are working from 9 to 5 on the desktop, in secure environments, such as banks and defense, where you can't spend time, nor have the interest in, blogging your latest tip or trick, as opposed to web developers, who tend to spend a lot of time on the web anyway and are therefore much more inclined to create buzz about the kind of work they're doing." So, next time you look at a conference program and wonder why there's no stories about large desktop development projects in the program, here's the short answer: "No one is going to put those items on the program until you start submitting those kinds of sessions. And until you start blogging. Until you start creating the buzz that the web developers have been creating around their work for the past 10 years or so. And, yes, indeed, programmers get the conference they deserve." And what about Tim Bray? Ask yourself, as Google's lead web technology evangelist, how many desktop developers do you think he talks to and, more generally, what his frame of reference is and what, clearly, he considers to be most interesting.

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