Search Results

Search found 2713 results on 109 pages for 'xamarin ios'.

Page 100/109 | < Previous Page | 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107  | Next Page >

  • Game Review: God of Light

    Luckily I came across this title at a very early stage. If I remember correctly, I took notice of God of Light on Twitter right on the weekend it has been published on the Play Store. "Sit back and become immersed into the world of God of Light, the game that rethinks the physics puzzle genre with its unique environment exploration gameplay, amazing graphics and exclusive soundtrack created by electronic music icon UNKLE. Join cute game mascot, Shiny, on his way to saving the universe from the impending darkness. Play through a variety of exciting game worlds and dozens of levels with mind-blowing puzzles. Your goal is to explore game levels, seek for game objects that reflect, split, combine, paint, bend and teleport rays of light energy to activate the Sources of Life and bring light back to the universe." Mastering the various reflection items in God of Light is very easy to learn and new elements are introduced during the game. Amazing puzzle game Here's the initial review I posted on the Play Store: "Great change in puzzles Fantastic and refreshing concept of puzzle solving. The effects and the music match very well, putting the player in the right mood to game. Get enlightened and grow your skills until you are a true God of Light." And it remains true, even after completing the first realm completely. Similar to Quell it took me only a couple of hours during the evening to complete all levels in the available three realms, unfortunately. God of Light currently consists of 75 levels, well it's 25 in each realm to be precise, and the challenges are increasing. Compared to the iOS version from the AppStore, God of Light is available for free on Android - at least the first realm (25 levels). Unlocking the other two remaining realms is done through an in-app purchase. The visual appearance, the sound effects and the background music provided by UNKLE makes God of Light a superb package for any puzzle gamer. Whether it is simply reflecting light over multiple mirrors, or later on bending the rays of light with black holes, or using prisms to either split, enforce, or colourise your beam, God of Light is great fun and offers a good amount of joy. Check out the following screenshots for some impressions. God of Light: Astonishing graphics and visual appeal throughout the game God of Light - Introduction to the game during the first levels. New light items are introduced at each stage during the game play God of Light: Increasing complexity and puzzle fun Hopefully, Playmous is going to provide more astonishing looking realms and interesting gimmicks in future versions. Play Store: God of Light Also, check out the latest game updates on the official web site of Playmous

    Read the article

  • Engine Rendering pipeline : Making shaders generic

    - by fakhir
    I am trying to make a 2D game engine using OpenGL ES 2.0 (iOS for now). I've written Application layer in Objective C and a separate self contained RendererGLES20 in C++. No GL specific call is made outside the renderer. It is working perfectly. But I have some design issues when using shaders. Each shader has its own unique attributes and uniforms that need to be set just before the main draw call (glDrawArrays in this case). For instance, in order to draw some geometry I would do: void RendererGLES20::render(Model * model) { // Set a bunch of uniforms glUniformMatrix4fv(.......); // Enable specific attributes, can be many glEnableVertexAttribArray(......); // Set a bunch of vertex attribute pointers: glVertexAttribPointer(positionSlot, 2, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, stride, m->pCoords); // Now actually Draw the geometry glDrawArrays(GL_TRIANGLES, 0, m->vertexCount); // After drawing, disable any vertex attributes: glDisableVertexAttribArray(.......); } As you can see this code is extremely rigid. If I were to use another shader, say ripple effect, i would be needing to pass extra uniforms, vertex attribs etc. In other words I would have to change the RendererGLES20 render source code just to incorporate the new shader. Is there any way to make the shader object totally generic? Like What if I just want to change the shader object and not worry about game source re-compiling? Any way to make the renderer agnostic of uniforms and attributes etc?. Even though we need to pass data to uniforms, what is the best place to do that? Model class? Is the model class aware of shader specific uniforms and attributes? Following shows Actor class: class Actor : public ISceneNode { ModelController * model; AIController * AI; }; Model controller class: class ModelController { class IShader * shader; int textureId; vec4 tint; float alpha; struct Vertex * vertexArray; }; Shader class just contains the shader object, compiling and linking sub-routines etc. In Game Logic class I am actually rendering the object: void GameLogic::update(float dt) { IRenderer * renderer = g_application->GetRenderer(); Actor * a = GetActor(id); renderer->render(a->model); } Please note that even though Actor extends ISceneNode, I haven't started implementing SceneGraph yet. I will do that as soon as I resolve this issue. Any ideas how to improve this? Related design patterns etc? Thank you for reading the question.

    Read the article

  • Additional new material WebLogic Community

    - by JuergenKress
    Oracle Cloud Application Foundation 12c Helps Customers Deliver Next-Generation Applications on a Mission-Critical Cloud Platform In a recent online event, Oracle and industry speakers introduced Oracle Cloud Application Foundation 12c, including Oracle WebLogic 12.1.2 and Oracle Coherence 12.1.2.  Read More Team Spotlight: Mike Lehmann, Vice President of Product Management Meet the team behind Oracle Fusion Middleware. In this edition, we speak to Mike Lehmann, Oracle’s vice president of product management for Oracle Cloud Application Foundation, Oracle WebLogic Server, Oracle Coherence, Java Cloud Services, and Java Platform, Enterprise Edition. Read More New and Free: Learn Oracle Application Development Framework Mobile Online at Your Convenience Are you ready to go mobile? Check out this new tutorial from Oracle’s ADF Academy - Developing Applications with Oracle Application Development Framework Mobile. New: Oracle JDeveloper 12c and Oracle Application Development Framework 12c Announcing Oracle JDeveloper 12c and Oracle Application Development Framework 12c. New capabilities include HTML5, better Maven support, Git support, new Oracle ADF Faces components, improved REST support, Enterprise JavaBeans/Java Persistence API, and the latest support for Oracle WebLogic Server 12.1.2. Get more details and download. New: Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse 12c The best Eclipse-based tools for Oracle WebLogic and Oracle Coherence continue to get better. Check out the latest Oracle WebLogic and Oracle Coherence support, improved Oracle Application Development Framework support, Maven, and more. Register: Oracle WebLogic Devcast Series Join us for the upcoming Oracle WebLogic Devcast webcast. Oracle GlassFish Server 3.1.2 and 2.1.1 updates  & An Overview of JSON-P & Comprehensive Free Java EE 6 Video Tutorial! Java ME Embedded 3.3 and Java ME Software Development Kit (SDK) 3.3 Now Available - Optimized for microcontrollers and other resource-constrained devices, this release reduces "core plumbing" for an app, and includes more information about memory and network usage critical for low-power apps. JDK 8 Early Access Releases now available JDK 8 Early Access Developer Documentation - Get the latest documentation changes to the Java Developer Guides and the Java Tutorials - Blog NetBeans IDE 7.4 Beta - This release extends HTML5 features to Java EE and PHP application development, introduces new support for Hybrid HTML5 development on Android and iOS platforms, and preview support for JDK 8. WebLogic Partner Community For regular information become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea ( OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Wiki Technorati Tags: WebLogic,WebLogic Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

    Read the article

  • ADF Mobile @ Oracle Open World 2012 - A Look Back...

    - by Joe Huang
    Hi, everyone: It's been a little over two weeks since the end of Oracle Open World 2012, and hope everyone has recovered sufficiently.  We have seen a tremendous amount of coverage on Oracle ADF Mobile during this Oracle Open World.  For starters, ADF Mobile demo booth was positioned in the Oracle Red Lounge in Moscone North, where all new and innovative technologies are being demonstrated.  The booth is liternally out front and the first booth in the area, and we had a lot of interested attendees talking to us.  It feels like ADF Mobile has finally arrived on the big stage. There are numerous sessions and hands on labs that covers ADF Mobile.  Details can be found in Oracle Open World page.   The Oracle Cloud: Oracle's Cloud Platofrm and Application Strategy by Thomas Kurian (Keynote) Near the beginning of the keynote, showing a great analytics application built using ADF Mobile  Oracle Fusion Middleware Strategies Driving Business Innovation by Hasan Rizvi (Keynote) The Future of Development for Oracle Fusion—From Desktop to Mobile to Cloud by Chris Tonas (General Session) Co-presented with Accenture, an ADF Mobile Beta Partner Extend Oracle Fusion Apps to Tablets/Smartphones with Oracle Mobile Technology (General Session) Extend Oracle Applications to Mobile Devices with Oracle’s Mobile Technologies (General Session) Building Mobile Applications with Oracle Cloud (General Session) Mobile-Enable Oracle Fusion Middleware and Enterprise Applications with Oracle ADF (Conference Session) Co-presented with Infosys, an ADF Mobile Beta Partner Develop On-Device iPhone and iPad Apps Without Writing Any Objective-C Code (Oracle Develop Session) Mobile Apps for Oracle E-Business Suite with Oracle ADF Mobile and Oracle SOA Suite (Conference Session) Developing Applications for Mobile iOS and Android Devices with Oracle ADF Mobile (Hands on Lab) This lab was repeated 8 (!) times Build Mobile Applications for Oracle E-business Suite (Hands on Lab) It was an extremely busy Open World for the team, and we were in the middle of trying to release ADF Mobile!   By far, the most memorable event during Open World was the ADF Meett Up at the OTN Lounge, where beers were flowing (for a little while) and familiar names are finally matched with faces.  We also appreciate the opportunity to interview the attendees from New Caledonia - sorry we probably surprised you with the video record, and many thanks for coming through for us. I also want to thank my fellow ADF Mobile and Fusion Middleware team members - from product managers, engineers, and product marketing, everyone worked extremely hard to make this Open World a great success for ADF Mobile. I really enjoyed meeting everyone at Oracle Open World, at the booth, sessions, etc.   Now it's on to release ADF Mobile - for real! Thanks, Joe Huang PS: If this thread shows up on your RSS feed, please keep watching...

    Read the article

  • Career Development: What should I learn next after Python? and Why? [closed]

    - by Josh
    Hi all I'm currently learning Python. I want to know what should I learn next out of these programming langauages: PHP Actionscript 3 Objective-C (iPhone applications) I work in the Multimedia industry and have decided to learn Python as a first programming language seriously because I would like to learn the basics of programming, to mainly write scripts at work that Automate task (eg. Edit multiple XML files quickly) At work we have a senior developer who knows Actionscript and PHP very well (although knows PHP better). We also have been developing iPhone applications for 2 weeks, Our senior developer could learn it although we have lots of work currently with PHP and Actionscript 3 type work and haven't had time or reason to pick up iOS development. Here are the reasons I want to learn each language, But I cannot decide what I'll learn next: PHP: I want to learn PHP because it will help with Web Development. PHP is very wanted by employers. Senior developer at work writes everything in it web sites, CMS etc. (including XML checks and scripts), I will learn a lot from him (once I learn the basics). However, I don't want to learn Web because you have to deal with lots of cross-browser problems. Actionscript 3: At work we are looking to put on another developer to help with online activities and very small games (using Actionscript 3.0 and Flash CS5) for (eg. First Aid Activities etc) I would like to do things that have a element of design as I'm better at Photoshop then developing. I want to be creative, I like to interact with users in a fun way. Objective-C (iPhone applications): We are a all mac office, we may get more iPhone, iPad application work(jobs) that need to be created. Work has found it nearly impossible to find good iPhone developers. I like apple products (Macs and iPhones), I would like to make my own games, applications in my spare time(if I knew how). Should I learn Actionscript first because it would be easier to learn then Objective-C? Should I learn PHP because it is very widely used? Should I learn Objective-C because it is really wanted by employers now?

    Read the article

  • MSCC: Global Windows Azure Bootcamp - 29th March 2014

    The Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community proudly presents you the Global Windows Azure Bootcamp 2014 in Mauritius. Global Windows Azure Bootcamp 2014 in Mauritius - MSCC together with Microsoft, Ceridian and Emtel We are very happy and excited about our participation in this global event and would like to draw your attention to the official invitation letter below. Please sign up and RSVP on the official website of the MSCC. Participation is for free! Call for action Please create more awareness of this event in Mauritius and use the hash tag #gwabmru as well as the shortened link: http://aka.ms/gwabmru And remember: Sharing is Caring! Official invitation letter to the GWAB 2014 in Mauritius With over 130 confirmed locations around the globe, the Global Windows Azure Bootcamp is going to be a truly memorable event - and now here's your chance to take part! In April of 2013 we held the first Global Windows Azure Bootcamp at more than 90 locations around the globe! This year we want to again offer up a one day deep dive class to help thousands of people get up to speed on discovering Cloud Computing Applications for Windows Azure. In addition to this great learning opportunity the hands on labs will feature pooling a huge global compute farm to perform diabetes research! In Mauritius, the event will be organised by Microsoft Indian Ocean Islands & French Pacific in partnership with The Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community (MSCC) and sponsored by Microsoft, Ceridian and Emtel. What do I need to bring?  You will need to bring your own computer which can run Visual Studio 2012 or 2013 (i.e. Windows, OSX, Ubuntu with virtualization, etc.) and have it preloaded with the following: Visual Studio 2012 or 2013 The Windows Azure SDK - http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/net/ Optionally (or if you will not be doing just .NET labs), the following can also be installed: Node.js SDK - http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/nodejs/ JAVA SDK - http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/java/ Doing mobile? Android? iOS? Windows Phone or Windows 8? - http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/mobile/ PHP - http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/php/ More info here: http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/documentation Important: Please do the installation upfront as there will be very little time to troubleshoot installations during the day.  

    Read the article

  • Introducing Windows Azure Mobile Services

    - by Clint Edmonson
    Today I’m excited to share that the Windows Azure Mobile Services public preview is now available. This preview provides a turnkey backend cloud solution designed to accelerate connected client app development. These services streamline the development process by enabling you to leverage the cloud for common mobile application scenarios such as structured storage, user authentication and push notifications. If you’re building a Windows 8 app and want a fast and easy path to creating backend cloud services, this preview provides the capabilities you need. You to take advantage of the cloud to build and deploy modern apps for Windows 8 devices in anticipation of general availability on October 26th. Subsequent preview releases will extend support to iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. Features The preview makes it fast and easy to create cloud services for Windows 8 applications within minutes. Here are the key benefits:  Rapid development: configure a straightforward and secure backend in less than five minutes. Create modern mobile apps: common Windows Azure plus Windows 8 scenarios that Windows Azure Mobile Services preview will support include:  Automated Service API generation providing CRUD functionality and dynamic schematization on top of Structured Storage Structured Storage with powerful query support so a Windows 8 app can seamlessly connect to a Windows Azure SQL database Integrated Authentication so developers can configure user authentication via Windows Live Push Notifications to bring your Windows 8 apps to life with up to date and relevant information Access structured data: connect to a Windows Azure SQL database for simple data management and dynamically created tables. Easy to set and manage permissions. Pricing One of the key things that we’ve consistently heard from developers about using Windows Azure with mobile applications is the need for a low cost and simple offer. The simplest way to describe the pricing for Windows Azure Mobile Services at preview is that it is the same as Windows Azure Websites during preview. What’s FREE? Run up to 10 Mobile Services for free in a multitenant environment Free with valid Windows Azure Free Trial 1GB SQL Database Unlimited ingress 165MB/day egress  What do I pay for? Scaling up to dedicated VMs Once Windows Azure Free Trial expires - SQL Database and egress     Getting Started To start using Mobile Services, you will need to sign up for a Windows Azure free trial, if you have not done so already.  If you already have a Windows Azure account, you will need to request to enroll in this preview feature. Once you’ve enrolled, this getting started tutorial will walk you through building your first Windows 8 application using the preview’s services. The developer center contains more resources to teach you how to: Validate and authorize access to data using easy scripts that execute securely, on the server Easily authenticate your users via Windows Live Send toast notifications and update live tiles in just a few lines of code Our pricing calculator has also been updated for calculate costs for these new mobile services. Questions? Ask in the Windows Azure Forums. Feedback? Send it to [email protected].

    Read the article

  • Do I need to create my own or use a commercial server for the features and matchmaking options I want my game to support?

    - by baptzmoffire
    So I'm developing an indie turn-based game for iOS and, in coding up a Game Center matchmaking class, I'm starting to question whether Game Center is even the best choice for what I want this game to do. I need to figure out whether I need to create my own server, invest in a preexisting client or server service, or if I even need to use a server at all. If I do need to use a ready-made service other than Game Center, which server would accomodate my game's needs best? I have limited resources and funds. Here is the list of features I want my game to support, ideally: Turn-based gameplay (a la "with Friends" and "with Buddies" games) Smart matchmaking (matching users up with other players of comparable skill/achievements) Random matchmaking Facebook matchmaking Specific username matchmaking Contact list matchmaking A way to select what "type" of match you want to challenge an opponent to. (In random, smart, and Facebook matchmaking, there will be different "wagers" the player can make. [e.g. "I wanna play a random opponent for 1000 points. Now, I wanna play my Facebook buddy for 1,000,000 points."] There will be a predetermined range of amounts you can play for. It won't be customizable.) Buddies list capability (Game-buddies, as opposed to contacts and Facebook) A higher concurrent game cap than Game Center offers (which I still can't really find a straight answer on) Scalability (it should support 2 or 20,000,000 players) Objective-C compatibility Flexibility (for all the stuff I haven't thought of yet) Am I dreaming, here? Is there even a service that can handle all of these features? Do I need to invest months in learning a networking language to build my own? If so, how much would I need to spend on hardware? I've been looking around all morning and, so far, the only seemingly viable option is SmartFox. Under "Everything and the kitchen sink" section here, it says they support "virtual world with Zones, Rooms and RoomGroups, create complex game challenges, send invitations, manage buddy lists, create custom permission profiles, oversee the security aspects and tons more." http://www.smartfoxserver.com/overview/platform Is there an option that Im just overlooking? Thanks for any help anyone can provide. Sorry for the long poast. One last question: Does anyone know which server Dice with Buddies uses? I was experimenting with how many concurrent games I could get going and my ADHD kicked in at about 80 games. 80 concurrent games would be great for my game, but again, I need the other features I mentioned too. Thanks again.

    Read the article

  • Wrapping REST based Web Service

    - by PaulPerry
    I am designing a system that will be running online under Microsoft Windows Azure. One component is a REST based web service which will really be a wrapper (using proxy pattern) which calls the REST web services of a business partner, which has to do with BLOB storage (note: we are not using azure storage). The majority of the functionality will be taking a request, calling our partner web service, receiving the request and then passing that back to the client. There are a number of reasons for doing this, but one of the big ones is that we are going to support three clients: our desktop application (win and mac), mobile apps (iOS), and a web front end. Having a single API which we then send to our partner protects us if that partner ever changes. I want our service to support both JSON and XML for the data transfer format, JSON for web and probably XML for the desktop and mobile (we already have an XML parser in those products). Our partner also supports both of these formats. I was planning on using ASP.NET MVC 4 with the Web API. As I design this, the thing that concerns me is the static type checking of C#. What if the partner adds or removes elements from the data? We can probably defensively code for that, but I still feel some concern. Also, we have to do a fair amount of tedious coding, to setup our API and then to turn around and call our partner’s API. There probably is not much choice on it though. But, in the back of my mind I wonder if maybe a more dynamic language would be a better choice. I want to reach out and see if anybody has had to do this before, what technology solutions they have used to (I am not attached to this one, these days Azure can host other technologies), and if anybody who has done something like this can point out any issues that came up. Thanks! Researching the issue seems to only find solutions which focus on connecting a SOAP web service over a proxy server, and not what I am referring to here. Note: Cross posted (by suggestion) from http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11906802/wrapping-rest-based-web-service Thank you!

    Read the article

  • Windows 8 and the future of Silverlight

    - by Laila
    After Steve Ballmer's indiscrete 'MisSpeak' about Windows 8, there has been a lot of speculation about the new operating system. We've now had a few glimpses, such as the demonstration of 'Mosh' at the D9 2011 conference, and the Youtube video, which showed a touch-centric new interface for apps built using HTML5 and JavaScript. This has caused acute anxiety to the programmers who have followed the recommended route of WPF, Silverlight and .NET, but it need not have caused quite so much panic since it was, in fact, just a thin layer to make Windows into an apparently mobile-friendly OS. More worryingly, the press-release from Microsoft was at pains to say that 'Windows 8 apps use the power of HTML5, tapping into the native capabilities of Windows using standard JavaScript and HTML', as if all thought of Silverlight, dominant in WP7, had been jettisoned. Ironically, this brave new 'happening' platform can all be done now in Windows 7 and an iPad, using Adobe Air, so it is hardly cutting-edge; in fact the tile interface had a sort of Retro-Zune Metro UI feel first seen in Media Centre, followed by Windows Phone 7, with any originality leached out of it by the corporate decision-making process. It was kinda weird seeing old Excel running alongside stodgily away amongst all the extreme paragliding videos. The ability to snap and resize concurrent apps might be a novelty on a tablet, but it is hardly so on a PC. It was at that moment that it struck me that here was a spreadsheet application that hadn't even made the leap to the .NET platform. Windows was once again trying to be all things to all men, whereas Apple had carefully separated Mac OS X development from iOS. The acrobatic feat of straddling all mobile and desktop devices with one OS is looking increasingly implausible. There is a world of difference between an operating system that facilitates business procedures and a one that drives a device for playing pop videos and your holiday photos. So where does this leave Silverlight? Pretty much where it was. Windows 8 will support it, and it will continue to be developed, but if these press-releases reflect the thinking within Microsoft, it is no longer seen as the strategic direction. However, Silverlight is still there and there will be a whole new set of developer APIs for building touch-centric apps. Jupiter, for example, is rumoured to involve an App store that provides new, Silverlight based "immersive" applications that are deployed as AppX packages. When the smoke clears, one suspects that the Javascript/HTML5 is merely an alternative development environment for Windows 8 to attract the legions of independent developers outside the .NET culture who are unlikely to ever take a shine to a more serious development environment such as WPF or Silverlight. Cheers, Laila

    Read the article

  • Making A Photo-Sharing App For Android In Eclipse [on hold]

    - by user3694394
    I've only just started developing mobile apps, which is something that I've been wanting to learn for a while now. I'm from an indie games studio, making PC games for around the last 3 years, and I finally decided to move into android app development. The only problem I'm having is that I don't know where to start. The project which I'm aiming to create will be something similar to Instagram, basically a photo-sharing app which allows users to take new photos, or pull them from their device, and add filters to them, before posting them. I have a rough idea of how I could go about doing this, but I need pointing towards any tutorials available for each specific step. So, here's my idea: Create a UI in eclipse (this wont be a problem for me, I should be able to do this fine through xml files) Setup a server-side database to store all user info and uploaded images (the images will need to be converted into byte arrays, and I have no idea how to do this through a database). My best idea would be to use a MySQL database to do this. Add user interactions (likes, favourites, reposts, etc.). This would, again, have to be stored in the database (or, at least, i think it would). Add the ability to take new photos using the phone's camera (I can probably do this anyway, using the Camera API). Add the ability to pull existing photos from the device (again, pretty simple to do). Add the ability to add filters to any photos (I had a look around, and there are some repos and resources which allow you to do this, but they're mainly for iOS development). Add facebook/twitter integration (possibly) to allow phots to be shared to other social networks. Create a news feed which shows users all of the latest photos from their friends, and allows them to post their own images to it. Give all registered users their own wall/page which has their latest posts/images displayed on it. Add the ability to allow users to follow other users, and display their followed users posts on their news feed. Yep. It's not going to be easy, and I don't even know if it's possible for me to do alone in Eclipse. However, this is the plan, and I'm going to do my best to learn everything I need to know to do this successfully. My actual question would be how should I start doing this- where do I begin learning how to do all of this? I've had a look at snapify, which can be edited via Parse, but I won't be spending hundreds of dollars (since I'm 15 and just don't have the available funds) on software. I have extensive knowledge of Java (again, I've been making games for around 3 years, mainly in Java), and various scripting languages. So, hopefully, this will be of some use here. Thanks in advance, Josh.

    Read the article

  • The State of the Internet -- Retail Edition

    - by David Dorf
    Over at Business Insider, there's a great presentation on the State of the Internet done in the Mary Meeker style.  Its 138 slides so I took the liberty of condensing it down to the 15 slides that directly apply to the retail industry.  However, I strongly recommend looking at the entire deck when you have time.  And while you're at it, Business Insider just launched a retail portal that's dedicated to retail industry content.  Please check it out as well.  My take-aways are below after the slide show. &amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;span id=&amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;XinhaEditingPostion&amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/span&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; [Source: Business Insider] Here are a few things I took away from the statistics: Facebook and Twitter are in their infancy.  While all retailers should have social programs, search is still the driver and therefore should receive the lions share of investment.  Facebook referrals are up 92% year-over-year, but Google still does 80% of the referrals. E-commerce continues to grow at breakneck speed, but in-store commerce is still king. Stores are not showrooms yet.  And social commerce pure-plays like Gilt and Groupon are tiny but worthy of some attention. There are more smartphones than PCs on the internet, and the disparity will continue to grow. PC growth will be flat and Tablet use will continue to grow. Mobile accounts for 12% of all internet traffic. A quarter of smartphone sales come from China, so anyone with a presence there better have a strong mobile strategy. 38% of people have used their smartphone to make a purchase, and many use their smartphones inside stores.  Smartphones are a critical consumer tool for shopping. Mobile is starting to drive significant traffic to e-commerce sites, especially tablets.  Tablet strategies are crucial for retailers. Mobile payments from the likes of Paypal and Square are growing quickly.  It will be interesting to see how NFC plays in this area. Mobile operating systems are losing market share to iOS and Android.  I wonder in Microsoft can finally make a dent? The internet is being dominated by mobile devices, and retailers had better have a strong mobile strategy to meet consumer demand.

    Read the article

  • Are they asking too much of me?

    - by Tesserex
    Or am I just whining? Background: I work for a "startup," which I put in air quotes because the company has been around for 4 years. We have about 40 employees in three offices, 9 here plus some part time. We have a good amount of investment and bring in about 75% of what we spend (so not profitable just yet.) Standard work week is supposed to be about 60 hours, but they justify that as we have to be online when our international (Taiwan and Vietnam) offices are awake. When I started the job 6 months ago, I spent about a month prototyping an iphone app and did really well on my own. They also found out about my facebook applications and how many users they got. Putting 2 and 2 together (and winding up at -7) they realized 1. I'm independent and innovative (because I was able to use stackoverflow to answer my iOS questions instead of bugging my superiors) and 2. I must have an eye for marketing (since my fb apps grew totally organically without me doing any advertising), and assigned me to a project optimizing adwords campaigns. Today I got reviewed, and then chewed out, by our CEO for not totally rocking this project. Now I thought I was doing ok, but the CEO said the project is stagnant and they're expecting more from me. But since it's a startup, they play loose with job roles and I've had plenty of other things to do in the past three months. Every time I ask what's most important, I get conflicting responses depending who I ask, and the end result is that almost everything has equal priority - high. I could go on about how I don't think adwords is worthwhile for us since our profit margin is so slim, and how we should be trying to improve our website first, but that's not the point. I also have explained to the office director (who originally assigned me the project, not the CEO) that I don't actually know anything about marketing, I'm just a decent programmer, but they think my general smarts will prove capable of tackling this challenge. The CEO also clarified that he wants a more technical and algorithmic approach to the problem. So is there something I can do to address this? Combined with my existing and confusing workload, should I be raising an issue? Or should I do the grown up thing and give it my all, asking for help when I need it and hoping for the best? Sorry if this is very rant-ish.

    Read the article

  • Best way to determine surface normal for a group of pixels?

    - by Paul Renton
    One of my current endeavors is creating a 2D destructible terrain engine for iOS Cocos2D (See https://github.com/crebstar/PWNDestructibleTerrain ). It is in an infant stages no doubt, but I have made significant progress since starting a couple weeks ago. However, I have run into a bit of a performance road block with calculating surface normals. Note: For my destructible terrain engine, an alpha of 0 is considered to not be solid ground. The method posted below works just great given small rectangles, such as n < 30. Anything above 30 causes a dip in the frame rate. If you approach 100x100 then you might as well read a book while the sprite attempts to traverse the terrain. At the moment this is the best I can come up with for altering the angle on a sprite as it roams across terrain (to get the angle for a sprite's orientation just take dot product of 100 * normal * (1,0) vector). -(CGPoint)getAverageSurfaceNormalAt:(CGPoint)pt withRect:(CGRect)area { float avgX = 0; float avgY = 0; ccColor4B color = ccc4(0, 0, 0, 0); CGPoint normal; float len; for (int w = area.size.width; w >= -area.size.width; w--) { for (int h = area.size.height; h >= -area.size.height; h--) { CGPoint pixPt = ccp(w + pt.x, h + pt.y); if ([self pixelAt:pixPt colorCache:&color]) { if (color.a != 0) { avgX -= w; avgY -= h; } // end inner if } // end outer if } // end inner for } // end outer for len = sqrtf(avgX * avgX + avgY * avgY); if (len == 0) { normal = ccp(avgX, avgY); } else { normal = ccp(avgX/len, avgY/len); } // end if return normal; } // end get My problem is I have sprites that require larger rectangles in order for their movement to look realistic. I considered doing a cache of all surface normals, but this lead to issues of knowing when to recalculate the surface normals and these calculations also being quite expensive (also how large should the blocks be?). Another smaller issue is I don't know how to properly treat the case when length is = 0. So I am stuck... Any advice from the community would be greatly appreciated! Is my method the best possible one? Or should I rethink the algorithm? I am new to game development and always looking to learn new tips and tricks.

    Read the article

  • What is the most appropriate testing method in this scenario?

    - by Daniel Bruce
    I'm writing some Objective-C apps (for OS X/iOS) and I'm currently implementing a service to be shared across them. The service is intended to be fairly self-contained. For the current functionality I'm envisioning there will be only one method that clients will call to do a fairly complicated series of steps both using private methods on the class, and passing data through a bunch of "data mangling classes" to arrive at an end result. The gist of the code is to fetch a log of changes, stored in a service-internal data store, that has occurred since a particular time, simplify the log to only include the last applicable change for each object, attach the serialized values for the affected objects and return this all to the client. My question then is, how do I unit-test this entry point method? Obviously, each class would have thorough unit tests to ensure that their functionality works as expected, but the entry point seems harder to "disconnect" from the rest of the world. I would rather not send in each of these internal classes IoC-style, because they're small and are only made classes to satisfy the single-responsibility principle. I see a couple possibilities: Create a "private" interface header for the tests with methods that call the internal classes and test each of these methods separately. Then, to test the entry point, make a partial mock of the service class with these private methods mocked out and just test that the methods are called with the right arguments. Write a series of fatter tests for the entry point without mocking out anything, testing the entire functionality in one go. This looks, to me, more like "integration testing" and seems brittle, but it does satisfy the "only test via the public interface" principle. Write a factory that returns these internal services and take that in the initializer, then write a factory that returns mocked versions of them to use in tests. This has the downside of making the construction of the service annoying, and leaks internal details to the client. Write a "private" initializer that take these services as extra parameters, use that to provide mocked services, and have the public initializer back-end to this one. This would ensure that the client code still sees the easy/pretty initializer and no internals are leaked. I'm sure there's more ways to solve this problem that I haven't thought of yet, but my question is: what's the most appropriate approach according to unit testing best practices? Especially considering I would prefer to write this test-first, meaning I should preferably only create these services as the code indicates a need for them.

    Read the article

  • Curating projects of deceased friends

    - by Ant
    A very good friend of mine, and an avid programmer, recently passed away. He left nearly 40 projects on BitBucket. Most of them are public, but a few of them are marked as private. I've decided to take on curation duties for the projects rather than leave his work to disappear. If you have been in the same situation, what did you do? Did you open-source everything? Continue development? Delete it all? I'm very interested to hear other people's experiences. There are a few reasons why some of the projects are marked as private (private projects on BitBucket are visible only to invited users and the original creator): One of them is an iOS web app that was free in the app store. I've had to remove the app from the store as I'm shutting down his web sites as a favour to his widow. However, I've already made the app public under the GPL v3 (he was a big GPL supporter). One of them contains proprietary code. It can't be open-sourced. Others are very much work-in-progress. I don't know if he intended to make them into hosted, paid services or if he wanted to give the code away under an open-source licence when they were finished. Here's a list of the private projects: Some kind of living cell simulator that uses SBML along with Runge-Kutta and Euler algorithms to do... something. There's a fair amount of code here but I don't know what it does or how far along it is. No docs. An accountacy application; it seems to have a solid DB design behind it but there's little code on top of that. A website whose purpose is to suggest good restaurants. Built on yii. Seems to have a lot of code but I'd need to set up a WAMP stack to see how far along it is. A website intended to host memorials to people who suffered from the same problem he was. Built on Joomla. I'm not sure how much of the code is just Joomla and how much is custom; again, I'd need to get Joomla running to find out. I'd just introduced him to Mercurial and BitBucket. All of the private projects are single commits of codebases he wasn't using version control with/was previously using SVN. I don't have the SVN repositories so I can't see the commit logs.

    Read the article

  • ActiveSync devices causing accounts to lockout

    - by Abdullah
    When a user changes his account password for whatever reason (read: expired), and the old password is stored in his mobile device connected through EAS. This will cause his account almost immediately - as it should according to the lockout policy defined in the AD. It was easy to figure out that part. The hard part is keeping it from happening. I looked everywhere. Nothing. Basically there are four parts to the puzzle: the EAS device, the TMG (ISA) server, the EAS protocol and finally the AD. None of them have a way to stop the EAS device from failing to authenticate. So I figured I'll have to come up with a clever workaround. And the only thing I could come up with is to create a group for all EAS users and exclude them from the lockout policy, which obviously defeats the whole purpose of the policy, or to educate the users to update their devices with the new passwords, which is impossible. The question: Can you think of any other way to prevent EAS from locking out the accounts? Environment: Mostly iOS devices all through EAS. TMG 2010. Exchange 2007. AD 2008 R2.

    Read the article

  • Microsoft Remote Desktop Services - Android

    - by Matt Rogers
    We have recently started testing Remote Desktop Services. We have deployed the environment using the latest server, Windows Server 2012 R2. We have deployed the Web Access Roles, RD Gateway, Connection Broker Virtualization Host and Session Host. We are running both, Virtual machine-based and Session-based deployments. All of these are working as expected internally and externally when using a Windows workstation as the RDS client, however, the Android client is unable to launch applications. Once you install the app from Google Play you are given a screen to add Remote Resources. After entering the appropriate URL, username and password we see the applications that have been published. Unfortunately, when we attempt to launch an app we get the following error: Connection Error Host not found. Please provide the fully-qualified name or the IP address of the host. We have already entered this information otherwise I don't believe we would be able to see the published applications. I think the error is related to the certificate and how it is being used to connect to the applications. Since this is in our lab environment we have not configured a valid external certificate on the servers and the trusted certificate that is installed on the android tablet points to our internal server / domain name. What I would like to know: Has anyone configured RDS Web Access on Server 2012 R2 and attempted to externally connect an Android or iOS device using the Microsoft supported Remote Desktop client. Are others experiencing the same problem we are? Were you able to resolve the issue? Was it related to the external cert / host name?

    Read the article

  • Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Drivers Missing Would Not Install?

    - by bleepzter
    I am building my dev machine with WS2008R2SP1. I consider Windows Server as the best development environment for C# since I tend to focus on server-centric (integration) applications. The desktop flavor of Windows (7) doesn't play nicely with things like Commerce Server or BizTalk... so I to like stick to the environment I develop for. Previously I used to develop inside of VM's but I've found that it is super inefficient and tends to take a toll on the laptops. (I've gone through two of them in 6 months). Problem is that I multiple devices that do not want to be recognized by Windows: My machine is Dell Precision M4500: Intel Core i7-Q740, 1TB HDD, 8GB RAM, Dell re-branded Broadcom DW1501 802x11n Half-Mini Card, Dell re-branded Broadcom DW375 Bluetooh Module, Intel 82577LM Gigabit Network connection NVidia Quadro FX1800 Graphics The devices in question are the Dell rebranded broadcom network and bluetooth adapters: Broadcom USH: USB\VID_0A5C&PID_5800&REV_0101&MI_00 USB\VID_0A5C&PID_5800&MI_00 DW375 Bluetooth Module USB\VID_413C&PID_8187&REV_0517 USB\VID_413C&PID_8187 When I ran the broadcom installers I get "Operating System not supported" which I think is a big oversight on Broadcom's part. Why check for system version string? UGHGHGH Moreover if I try to manually force the driver in windows... I get an error: Driver Management concluded the process to install driver FileRepository\btwampsecfl.inf_amd64_neutral_d8fc2b85d035ed47\btwampsecfl.inf for Device Instance ID USB\VID_0A5C&PID_5800&MI_00\7&66DE6C9&0&0000 with the following status: 0xe0000217. '- or - Driver Management concluded the process to install driver FileRepository\btwampfl.inf_amd64_neutral_d4c4acf036c61299\btwampfl.inf for Device Instance ID USB\VID_413C&PID_8187\90004EEEF5A6 with the following status: 0xe0000217. I googled the 0xe0000217 error code and it says Bad service install section in the driver inf file... Any ideas on how to fix this? I also tried the post by BetaIQ on MSDN Forum, unfortunately the links to the driver package included in the post were dead :( PS. On a side note I also do mobile development for Android, iOS, and Windows Phone, and BB. Having the bluetooth is quite useful with mobile devices.

    Read the article

  • PXE booting LACP hosts on Force10 S50N with FTOS

    - by lolwutreddit
    Hardware: S50N Firmware: FTOS 8.4.2.6 Problem: We're trying to PXE boot some servers that are connected via port-channel interfaces with LACP. Current Work-around: we PXE boot a server with a single interface (eth0), and then use a Perl script to turn up the port-channel interfaces after the server is built. Details: Is anyone doing anything similar on Force10 S50 switches with FTOS? If not, is anyone doing this on another S series, or larger chassis-based Force10? I'm wondering if Native VLAN will solve this, since ports in a port-channel cannot explicitly have a VLAN set, and they don't seem to use the tagged or untagged VLAN that the port channel is in. I will confirm this next (I think it's the only thing I haven't tried) Juniper Example: http://broken.net/openindiana/how-to-pxe-boot-systems-on-lacp-using-juniper-switches/ Cisco: there are plenty of documented ways to solve this issue on IOS and Nexus Update/Edit: since there seems to be no way to use interface or port-channel mode commands to get the individual interfaces to show up in spanning-tree (rtsp in this case), the ports should never go into a forwarding state. I'm not going to mess with it anymore unless a) someone that has experience passes it on, or b) Force10 comes up with a solution for this (I'm guessing it will only be introduced on other S platforms (S55, S60), since the S50 seems to be near EOL). I'm basing that on the fact that the Open Automation type features are only being supported on the newer switches.

    Read the article

  • Unable to install PEM/pkcs12 created by gnutls to Cisco ASA

    - by ACiD GRiM
    I've been pulling some hair out trying to figure out why cisco devices don't like my certificates. My primary need is to get a trustpoint set up with CA,cert,key on the ASA for VPN systems, however I'm having the same issues on my IOS devices. I created a pkcs12 with openssl a few months ago that imported with no issues, but now that I'm getting ready to move this lab to production I'm using gnutls certtool as I found it adds alt_dns and ip_address fields properly to the certificate, (which cost me a few more hairs trying to get to work with openssl's ca tool) I'm including the current test certs below, don't worry I'm not using these in production ;) The maddening thing is that after I thought gnutls was generating certs incorrectly, I tried making a pkcs12 for a printserver and it imported with no issues. Here's my command flow for creating these certs: certtool --generate-privkey --disable-quick-random --outfile nn-ca.key certtool --generate-self-signed --load-privkey nn-ca.key --outfile nn-ca.crt certtool --generate-privkey --disable-quick-random --outfile nn-g0.key certtool --generate-certificate --load-privkey nn-g0.key --outfile nn-g0.crt --load-ca-privkey nn-ca.key --load-ca-certificate nn-ca.crt openssl pkcs12 -export -certfile nn-ca.crt -in nn-g0.crt -inkey nn-g0.key -out nn-g0.p12 openssl enc -base64 -in nn-g0.p12 -out nn-g0.base64.p12 The password for the attatched pkcs12 is "ciscohelp" without quotes. Thanks for any help TestCerts

    Read the article

  • How can I stream audio signals from various devices/computers to my home server?

    - by Breakthrough
    I currently have a headless home server set up (running Ubuntu 12.04 server edition) running a simple Apache HTTP server. The server is near an audio receiver, which controls a set of indoor and outdoor speakers in my home. Recently, my father purchased a Bluetooth adapter, which our various laptops and cellphones can connect to, outputting the music to the speakers. I was hoping to find a solution that worked over Wi-Fi, namely because it won't cost anything (I already have a server with an audio card), and it doesn't depend on Bluetooth. Is there any cross-platform (preferably free and open-source) solution that I can use which will allow me to stream audio to my home server, over my home network, from a wide variety of devices (laptops running Windows/Linux or cellphones running Android/BB/iOS)? I need something that works at least with Windows and Android. Also, just to clairfy, I want something that simply allows devices to connect to my server and output an audio signal without any action on the server end (since it's a server hidden away near my receiver). Any subsequent connection attempt should be dropped, so only one device can be in control of the stereo at once.

    Read the article

  • MSCC: Global Windows Azure Bootcamp

    Mauritius participated and contributed to the Global Windows Azure Bootcamp 2014 (GWAB). Again! And this time stronger than ever, and together with 137 other locations in 56 countries world-wide. We had 62 named registrations, 7 guest additions and approximately 10 offline participants prior to the event day. Most interestingly the organisation of the GWAB through the MSCC helped to increased the number of craftsmen. The Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community has currently 138 registered members - in less than one year! Only with those numbers we can proudly say that all the preparations and hard work towards this event already paid off. Personally, I'm really grateful that we had this kind of response and the feedback from some attendees confirmed that the MSCC is on the right track here on Cyber Island Mauritius. Inspired and motivated by the success of this event, rest assured that there will be more public events like the GWAB. This time it took some time to reflect on our meetup, following my first impression right on spot: "Wow, what an experience to organise and participate in this global event. Overall, I've been very pleased with the preparations and the event itself. Surely, there have been some nicks that we have to address and to improve for future activities like this. Quite frankly, we are not professional event organisers (not yet) but we learned a lot over the past couple of days. A big Thank You to our event sponsors, namely Microsoft Indian Ocean Islands & French Pacific, Ceridian Mauritius and Emtel. Without them this event wouldn't have happened - Thank You! And to the cool team members of Microsoft Student Partners (MSPs). You geeks did a great job! Thanks!" So, how many attendees did we actually have? 61! - Awesome - 61 cloud computing instances to help on the research of diabetes. During Saturday afternoon there was even an online publication on L'Express: Les développeurs mauriciens se joignent au combat contre le diabète Reactions of other attendees Don't take my word for granted... Here are some impressions and feedback from our participants: "Awesome event, really appreciated the presentations :-)" -- Kevin on event comments "very interesting and enriching." -- Diana on event comments "#gwab #gwabmru 2014 great success. Looking forward for gwab 2015" -- Wasiim on Twitter "Was there till the end. Awesome Event. I'll surely join upcoming meetup sessions :)" -- Luchmun on event comments "#gwabmru was not that cool. left early" -- Mohammad on Twitter The overall feedback is positive but we are absolutely aware that there quite a number of problems we had to face. We are already looking into that and ideas / action plans on how we will be able to improve it for future events. The sessions We started the day with welcoming speeches by Thierry Coret, Sr. Marketing Manager of Microsoft Indian Ocean Islands & French Pacific and Vidia Mooneegan, Managing Director and Sr. Vice President of Ceridian Mauritius. The clear emphasis was on the endless possibilities of cloud computing and how it can enable any kind of sectors here in the country. Then it was about time to set up the cloud computing services in order to contribute each attendees cloud computing resources to the global research of diabetes, a step by step guide presented by Arnaud Meslier, Technical Evangelist at Microsoft. Given a rendering package and a configuration file it was very interesting to follow the single steps in Windows Azure. Also, during the day we were not sure whether the set up had been correctly, as Mauritius didn't show up on the results board - which should have been the case after approximately 20 to 30 minutes. Anyways, let the minions work... Next, Arnaud gave a brief overview of the variety of services Windows Azure has to offer. Whether you need a development environment for your websites or mobiles app, running a virtual machine with your existing applications or simply putting a SQL database online. No worries, Windows Azure has the right packages available and the online management portal is really easy t handle. After this, we got a little bit more business oriented while Wasiim Hosenbocus, employee at Ceridian, took the attendees through the inerts of a real-life application, and demoed a couple of the existing features. He did a great job by showing how the different services of Windows Azure can be created and pulled together. After the lunch break it is always tough to keep the audience awake... And it was my turn. I gave a brief overview on operating and managing a SQL database on Windows Azure. Well, there are actually two options available and depending on your individual requirements you should be aware of both. The simpler version is called SQL Database and while provisioning only takes a couple of seconds, you should take into consideration that SQL Database has a number of constraints, like limitations on the actual database size - up to 5 GB as web edition and up to 150 GB maximum as business edition -, among others. Next, it was Chervine Bhiwoo's session on Windows Azure Mobile Services. It was absolutely amazing to see that the mobiles services directly offers you various project templates, like Windows 8 Store App, Android app, iOS app, and even Xamarin cross-platform app development. So, within a couple of minutes you can have your first mobile app active and running on Windows Azure. Furthermore, Chervine showed the attendees that adding another user interface, like Web Sites running on ASP.NET MVC 4 only takes a couple of minutes, too. And last but not least, we rounded up the day with Windows Azure Websites and hosting of Virtual Machines presented by some members of the local Microsoft Students Partners programme. Surely, one of the big advantages using Windows Azure is the availability of pre-defined installation packages of known web applications, like WordPress, Joomla!, or Ghost. Compared to running your own web site with a traditional web hoster it is surely en par, and depending on your personal level of expertise, Windows Azure provides you more liberty in terms of configuration than maybe a shared hosting environment. Running a pre-defined web application is one thing but in case that you would like to have more control over your hosting environment it is highly advised to opt for a virtual machine. Provisioning of an Ubuntu 12.04 LTS system was very simple to do but it takes some more minutes than you might expect. So, please be patient and take your time while Windows Azure gets everything in place for you. Afterwards, you can use a SecureShell (ssh) client like Putty in case of a Linux-based machine, or Remote Desktop Services when operating a Windows Server system to log in into your virtual machine. At the end of the day we had a great Q&A session and we finalised the event with our raffle of goodies. Participation in the raffle was bound to submission of the session survey and most gratefully we had a give-away for everyone. What a nice coincidence to finish of the day. Note: All session slides (and demo codes) will be made available on the MSCC event page. Please, check the Files section over there. (Some) Visual impressions from the event Just to give you an idea about what has happened during the GWAB 2014 at Ebene... Speakers and Microsoft Student Partners are getting ready for the Global Windows Azure Bootcamp 2014 GWAB 2014 attendees are fully integrated into the hands-on-labs and setting up their individuals cloud computing services 60 attendees at the GWAB 2014. Despite some technical difficulties we had a great time running the event GWAB 2014: Using the lunch break for networking and exchange of ideas - Great conversations and topics amongst attendees There are more pictures on the original event page: Questions & Answers Following are a couple of questions which have been asked and didn't get an answer during the event: Q: Is it possible to upload static pages via FTP? A: Yes, you can. Have a look at the right side column on the dashboard of your website. There you'll find information about the FTP and SFTP host names. You can use any FTP client, like ie. FileZilla to log in. FTP also gives you access to your log files. Q: What are the size limitations on SQL Database? A: 5 GB on the Web Edition, and 150 GB on the business edition. A maximum 150 databases (inclusing 'master') per SQL Database server. More details here: General Guidelines and Limitations (Azure SQL Database) Q: What's the maximum size of a SQL Server running in a Virtual Machine? A: The maximum Windows Azure VM has currently 8 CPU cores, 14 or 56 GB of RAM and 16x 1 TB hard drives. More details here: Virtual Machine and Cloud Service Sizes for Azure Q: How can we register for Windows Azure? A: Mauritius is currently not listed for phone verification. Please get in touch with Arnaud Meslier at Microsoft IOI & FP Q: Can I use my own domain name for Windows Azure websites? A: Yes, you can. But this might require to upscale your account to Standard. In case that I missed a question and answer, please use the comment section at the end of the article. Thanks! Final results Every participant was instructed during the hands-on-lab session on how to set up a cloud computing service in their account. Of course, I won't keep the results from you... Global Azure Lab GWAB 2014: Our cloud computing contribution to the research of diabetes And I would say Mauritius did a good job! Upcoming Events What are the upcoming events here in Mauritius? So far, we have the following ones (incomplete list as usual) in chronological order: Launch of Microsoft SQL Server 2014 (15.4.2014) Corsair Hackers Reboot (19.4.2014) WebCup (TBA ~ June 2014) Developers Conference (TBA ~ July 2014) Linuxfest 2014 (TBA ~ November 2014) Hopefully, there will be more announcements during the next couple of weeks and months. If you know about any other event, like a bootcamp, a code challenge or hackathon here in Mauritius, please drop me a note in the comment section below this article. Thanks! Networking and job/project opportunities Despite having technical presentations on Windows Azure an event like this always offers a great bunch of possibilities and opportunities to get in touch with new people in IT, have an exchange of experience with other like-minded people. As I already wrote about Communities - The importance of exchange and discussion - I had a great conversation with representatives of the University des Mascareignes which are currently embracing cloud infrastructure and cloud computing for their various campuses in the Indian Ocean. As for the MSCC it would be a great experience to stay in touch with them, and to work on upcoming, common activities. Furthermore, I had a very good conversation with Thierry and Ludovic of Microsoft IOI & FP on the necessity of user groups and IT communities here on the island. It's great to see that the MSCC is currently on a run and that local companies are sharing our thoughts on promoting IT careers and exchange of IT knowledge in such an open way. I'm also looking forward to be able to participate and to contribute on more events in the near future. My resume of the day We learned a lot today and there is always room for improvement! It was an awesome event and quite frankly it was a pleasure to spend the day with so many enthuastic IT people in the same room. It was a great experience to organise such event locally and participate on a global scale to support the GlyQ-IQ Technology in their research on diabetes. I was so pleased to see the involvement of new MSCC members in taking the opportunity to share and learn about the power of cloud computing. The Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community is on the right way and this year's bootcamp on Windows Azure only marked the beginning of our journey. Thank you to our sponsors and my kudos to the MSPs! Update: Media coverage The event has been reported in local media, too. Following are some resources: Orange - Local - Business: Le cloud, pour des recherches approfondies sur le diabète Maurice Info.mu: Le cloud, pour des recherches approfondies sur le diabète Le Quotidien Pg 2: Global Windows Azure Bootcamp 2014 - Le cloud pour des recherches approfondies sur le diabète The Observer Pg 12: Le cloud, pour des recherches approfondies sur le diabète

    Read the article

  • Inbound SIP calls through Cisco 881 NAT hang up after a few seconds

    - by MasterRoot24
    I've recently moved to a Cisco 881 router for my WAN link. I was previously using a Cisco Linksys WAG320N as my modem/router/WiFi AP/NAT firewall. The WAG320N is now running in bridged mode, so it's simply acting as a modem with one of it's LAN ports connected to FE4 WAN on my Cisco 881. The Cisco 881 get's a DHCP provided IP from my ISP. My LAN is part of default Vlan 1 (192.168.1.0/24). General internet connectivity is working great, I've managed to setup static NAT rules for my HTTP/HTTPS/SMTP/etc. services which are running on my LAN. I don't know whether it's worth mentioning that I've opted to use NVI NAT (ip nat enable as opposed to the traditional ip nat outside/ip nat inside) setup. My reason for this is that NVI allows NAT loopback from my LAN to the WAN IP and back in to the necessary server on the LAN. I run an Asterisk 1.8 PBX on my LAN, which connects to a SIP provider on the internet. Both inbound and outbound calls through the old setup (WAG320N providing routing/NAT) worked fine. However, since moving to the Cisco 881, inbound calls drop after around 10 seconds, whereas outbound calls work fine. The following message is logged on my Asterisk PBX: [Dec 9 15:27:45] WARNING[27734]: chan_sip.c:3641 retrans_pkt: Retransmission timeout reached on transmission [email protected] for seqno 1 (Critical Response) -- See https://wiki.asterisk.org/wiki/display/AST/SIP+Retransmissions Packet timed out after 6528ms with no response [Dec 9 15:27:45] WARNING[27734]: chan_sip.c:3670 retrans_pkt: Hanging up call [email protected] - no reply to our critical packet (see https://wiki.asterisk.org/wiki/display/AST/SIP+Retransmissions). (I know that this is quite a common issue - I've spend the best part of 2 days solid on this, trawling Google.) I've done as I am told and checked https://wiki.asterisk.org/wiki/display/AST/SIP+Retransmissions. Referring to the section "Other SIP requests" in the page linked above, I believe that the hangup to be caused by the ACK from my SIP provider not being passed back through NAT to Asterisk on my PBX. I tried to ascertain this by dumping the packets on my WAN interface on the 881. I managed to obtain a PCAP dump of packets in/out of my WAN interface. Here's an example of an ACK being reveived by the router from my provider: 689 21.219999 193.x.x.x 188.x.x.x SIP 502 Request: ACK sip:[email protected] | However a SIP trace on the Asterisk server show's that there are no ACK's received in response to the 200 OK from my PBX: http://pastebin.com/wwHpLPPz In the past, I have been strongly advised to disable any sort of SIP ALGs on routers and/or firewalls and the many posts regarding this issue on the internet seem to support this. However, I believe on Cisco IOS, the config command to disable SIP ALG is no ip nat service sip udp port 5060 however, this doesn't appear to help the situation. To confirm that config setting is set: Router1#show running-config | include sip no ip nat service sip udp port 5060 Another interesting twist: for a short period of time, I tried another provider. Luckily, my trial account with them is still available, so I reverted my Asterisk config back to the revision before I integrated with my current provider. I then dialled in to the DDI associated with the trial trunk and the call didn't get hung up and I didn't get the error above! To me, this points at the provider, however I know, like all providers do, will say "There's no issues with our SIP proxies - it's your firewall." I'm tempted to agree with this, as this issue was not apparent with the old WAG320N router when it was doing the NAT'ing. I'm sure you'll want to see my running-config too: ! ! Last configuration change at 15:55:07 UTC Sun Dec 9 2012 by xxx version 15.2 no service pad service tcp-keepalives-in service tcp-keepalives-out service timestamps debug datetime msec localtime show-timezone service timestamps log datetime msec localtime show-timezone no service password-encryption service sequence-numbers ! hostname Router1 ! boot-start-marker boot-end-marker ! ! security authentication failure rate 10 log security passwords min-length 6 logging buffered 4096 logging console critical enable secret 4 xxx ! aaa new-model ! ! aaa authentication login local_auth local ! ! ! ! ! aaa session-id common ! memory-size iomem 10 ! crypto pki trustpoint TP-self-signed-xxx enrollment selfsigned subject-name cn=IOS-Self-Signed-Certificate-xxx revocation-check none rsakeypair TP-self-signed-xxx ! ! crypto pki certificate chain TP-self-signed-xxx certificate self-signed 01 quit no ip source-route no ip gratuitous-arps ip auth-proxy max-login-attempts 5 ip admission max-login-attempts 5 ! ! ! ! ! no ip bootp server ip domain name dmz.merlin.local ip domain list dmz.merlin.local ip domain list merlin.local ip name-server x.x.x.x ip inspect audit-trail ip inspect udp idle-time 1800 ip inspect dns-timeout 7 ip inspect tcp idle-time 14400 ip inspect name autosec_inspect ftp timeout 3600 ip inspect name autosec_inspect http timeout 3600 ip inspect name autosec_inspect rcmd timeout 3600 ip inspect name autosec_inspect realaudio timeout 3600 ip inspect name autosec_inspect smtp timeout 3600 ip inspect name autosec_inspect tftp timeout 30 ip inspect name autosec_inspect udp timeout 15 ip inspect name autosec_inspect tcp timeout 3600 ip cef login block-for 3 attempts 3 within 3 no ipv6 cef ! ! multilink bundle-name authenticated license udi pid CISCO881-SEC-K9 sn ! ! username xxx privilege 15 secret 4 xxx username xxx secret 4 xxx ! ! ! ! ! ip ssh time-out 60 ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! interface FastEthernet0 no ip address ! interface FastEthernet1 no ip address ! interface FastEthernet2 no ip address ! interface FastEthernet3 switchport access vlan 2 no ip address ! interface FastEthernet4 ip address dhcp no ip redirects no ip unreachables no ip proxy-arp ip nat enable duplex auto speed auto ! interface Vlan1 ip address 192.168.1.1 255.255.255.0 no ip redirects no ip unreachables no ip proxy-arp ip nat enable ! interface Vlan2 ip address 192.168.0.2 255.255.255.0 ! ip forward-protocol nd ip http server ip http access-class 1 ip http authentication local ip http secure-server ip http timeout-policy idle 60 life 86400 requests 10000 ! ! no ip nat service sip udp port 5060 ip nat source list 1 interface FastEthernet4 overload ip nat source static tcp x.x.x.x 80 interface FastEthernet4 80 ip nat source static tcp x.x.x.x 443 interface FastEthernet4 443 ip nat source static tcp x.x.x.x 25 interface FastEthernet4 25 ip nat source static tcp x.x.x.x 587 interface FastEthernet4 587 ip nat source static tcp x.x.x.x 143 interface FastEthernet4 143 ip nat source static tcp x.x.x.x 993 interface FastEthernet4 993 ip nat source static tcp x.x.x.x 1723 interface FastEthernet4 1723 ! ! logging trap debugging logging facility local2 access-list 1 permit 192.168.1.0 0.0.0.255 access-list 1 permit 192.168.0.0 0.0.0.255 no cdp run ! ! ! ! control-plane ! ! banner motd Authorized Access only ! line con 0 login authentication local_auth length 0 transport output all line aux 0 exec-timeout 15 0 login authentication local_auth transport output all line vty 0 1 access-class 1 in logging synchronous login authentication local_auth length 0 transport preferred none transport input telnet transport output all line vty 2 4 access-class 1 in login authentication local_auth length 0 transport input ssh transport output all ! ! end ...and, if it's of any use, here's my Asterisk SIP config: [general] context=default ; Default context for calls allowoverlap=no ; Disable overlap dialing support. (Default is yes) udpbindaddr=0.0.0.0 ; IP address to bind UDP listen socket to (0.0.0.0 binds to all) ; Optionally add a port number, 192.168.1.1:5062 (default is port 5060) tcpenable=no ; Enable server for incoming TCP connections (default is no) tcpbindaddr=0.0.0.0 ; IP address for TCP server to bind to (0.0.0.0 binds to all interfaces) ; Optionally add a port number, 192.168.1.1:5062 (default is port 5060) srvlookup=yes ; Enable DNS SRV lookups on outbound calls ; Note: Asterisk only uses the first host ; in SRV records ; Disabling DNS SRV lookups disables the ; ability to place SIP calls based on domain ; names to some other SIP users on the Internet ; Specifying a port in a SIP peer definition or ; when dialing outbound calls will supress SRV ; lookups for that peer or call. directmedia=no ; Don't allow direct RTP media between extensions (doesn't work through NAT) externhost=<MY DYNDNS HOSTNAME> ; Our external hostname to resolve to IP and be used in NAT'ed packets localnet=192.168.1.0/24 ; Define our local network so we know which packets need NAT'ing qualify=yes ; Qualify peers by default dtmfmode=rfc2833 ; Set the default DTMF mode disallow=all ; Disallow all codecs by default allow=ulaw ; Allow G.711 u-law allow=alaw ; Allow G.711 a-law ; ---------------------- ; SIP Trunk Registration ; ---------------------- ; Orbtalk register => <MY SIP PROVIDER USER NAME>:[email protected]/<MY DDI> ; Main Orbtalk number ; ---------- ; Trunks ; ---------- [orbtalk] ; Main Orbtalk trunk type=peer insecure=invite host=sipgw3.orbtalk.co.uk nat=yes username=<MY SIP PROVIDER USER NAME> defaultuser=<MY SIP PROVIDER USER NAME> fromuser=<MY SIP PROVIDER USER NAME> secret=xxx context=inbound I really don't know where to go with this. If anyone can help me find out why these calls are being dropped off, I'd be grateful if you could chime in! Please let me know if any further info is required.

    Read the article

  • Looking for software to create a personal hotspot on Mac OS X (not using the built-in ability)

    - by Fred
    I got my nifty little MacBook Air today. Since I will be going on travel I was hoping to use my iPad 3G as screen extension with Air Display. It works being in a shared WiFi network. Sadly Apple is a bit restrictive on the tethering with their mobile devices such as the iPad. Now I read iOS 4.3 will enable the iPad to use tethered networks. But the feature will not be working for iPad 3G. I assume their big partner telecom companies fear everyone will quit their internet contract with them. So I want to create a personal hotspot on my MacBook and use it on my iPad. But the iPad is not able to use this network. The network is visible but not usable. On Windows there is this connectify program which lets the PC act as wireless router. Does anybody know a similar program for Mac which would turn it into a wireless router? Or is there something I don't see with Mac OS X's builtin features?

    Read the article

< Previous Page | 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107  | Next Page >