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• Agile Development Requires Agile Support

  - by Matt Watson

  Agile developmentAgile development has become the standard methodology for application development. The days of long term planning with giant Gantt waterfall charts and detailed requirements is fading away. For years the product planning process frustrated product owners and businesses because no matter the plan, nothing ever went to plan. Agile development throws the detailed planning out the window and instead focuses on giving developers some basic requirements and pointing them in the right direction. Constant collaboration via quick iterations with the end users, product owners, and the development team helps ensure the project is done correctly.  The various agile development methodologies have helped greatly with creating products faster, but not without causing new problems. Complicated application deployments now occur weekly or monthly. Most of the products are web-based and deployed as a software service model. System performance and availability of these apps becomes mission critical. This is all much different from the old process of mailing new releases of client-server apps on CD once per quarter or year.The steady stream of new products and product enhancements puts a lot of pressure on IT operations to keep up with the software deployments and adding infrastructure capacity. The problem is most operations teams still move slowly thanks to change orders, documentation, procedures, testing and other processes. Operations can slow the process down and push back on the development team in some organizations. The DevOps movement is trying to solve some of these problems by integrating the development and operations teams more together. Rapid change introduces new problemsThe rapid product change ultimately creates some application problems along the way. Higher rates of change increase the likelihood of new application defects. Delivering applications as a software service also means that scalability of applications is critical. Development teams struggle to keep up with application defects and scalability concerns in their applications. Fixing application problems is a never ending job for agile development teams. Fixing problems before your customers do and fixing them quickly is critical. Most companies really struggle with this due to the divide between the development and operations groups. Fixing application problems typically requires querying databases, looking at log files, reviewing config files, reviewing error logs and other similar tasks. It becomes difficult to work on new features when your lead developers are working on defects from the last product version. Developers need more visibilityThe problem is most developers are not given access to see server and application information in the production environments. The operations team doesn’t trust giving all the developers the keys to the kingdom to log in to production and poke around the servers. The challenge is either give them no access, or potentially too much access. Those with access can still waste time figuring out the location of the application and how to connect to it over VPN. In addition, reproducing problems in test environments takes too much time and isn't always possible. System administrators spend a lot of time helping developers track down server information. Most companies give key developers access to all of the production resources so they can help resolve application defects. The problem is only those key people have access and they become a bottleneck. They end up spending 25-50% of their time on a daily basis trying to solve application issues because they are the only ones with access. These key employees’ time is best spent on strategic new projects, not addressing application defects. This job should fall to entry level developers, provided they have access to all the information they need to troubleshoot the problems.The solution to agile application support is giving all the developers limited access to the production environment and all the server information they need to see. Some companies create their own solutions internally to collect log files, centralize errors or other things to address the problem. Some developers even have access to server monitoring or other tools. But they key is giving them access to everything they need so they can see the full picture and giving access to the whole team. Giving access to everyone scales up the application support team and creates collaboration around providing improved application support.Stackify enables agile application supportStackify has created a solution that can give all developers a secure and read only view of the entire production server environment without console or remote desktop access.They provide a web application that provides real time visibility to the important information that developers need to see. An application centric view enables them to see all of their apps across multiple datacenters and environments. They don’t need to know where the application is deployed, just the name of the application to find it and dig in to see more. All your developers can see server health, application health, log files, config files, windows event viewer, deployment history, application notes, and much more. They can receive email and text alerts when problems arise and even safely query your production databases.Stackify enables companies that do agile development to scale up their application support team by getting more team members involved. The lead developers can spend more time on new projects. Application issues can be fixed quicker than ever. Operations can spend less time helping developers collect server information. Agile application support starts with Stackify. Visit Stackify.com to learn more.

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• Visual Studio 2012 and .NET 4.5 now Live!

  - by Tarun Arora

  Today was the formal launch event for Visual Studio 2012 and .NET 4.5, a state-of-the-art development solution for building modern applications that span connected devices and continuous services, from the client to the cloud. The event was streamed live from http://visualstudiolaunch.com, S.Somasegar corporate vice president of the Developer Division opened the key note, Jason Zander dived deeper into how to leverage Visual Studio 2012 and .NET 4.5 to build modern application. Brian Harry all the awesome features in Visual Studio 2012 to improve the application lifecycle management.   I. Summary of the announcements made today 1. Visual Studio Updates coming this fall –  VS Update will better support agile teams, enable continuous quality, elevate SharePoint development with application lifecycle management (ALM) tools, and expand Visual Studio 2012 Windows development capabilities. It will be available as a community technology preview (CTP) later this month and in final release later this calendar year. A comprehensive list of what will be on offer can be found here. 2. Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop – Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop brings the newest desktop development capabilities in Visual Studio 2012 to Express users, too. You would be excited to know that the express SKU will support Integration with TFS among some of the other cool features I would like to mention Unit Testing, Unit Testing, Code Analysis, dependency management with NuGet a full list and download links can be found here. 3. F# tools for Visual Studio Express 2012 for web –  This F# Tools release adds in F# 3.0 components, such as the F# 3.0 compiler, F# Interactive, IDE support, and new F# features such as type providers and query expressions to your Visual Studio 2012 express for web. More details and download links can be found here. 4. Visual Studio TFS 2012 Power Tools – The TFS 2012 Power tools brings the goodness of Best Practice Analyzer, Process Template Editor, Storyboard Shapes, Team Explorer enhancements, TFPT command line, TFS Server Backups, etc via to your TFS 2012 installation. It can be downloaded right away from here. II. Road shows There will be many more community road shows this month packaged with hours of demos and discussions. The Visual Studio UK Team has just announced that there will be four UK launch events, face to face session including a product group speaker and partner sessions: Edinburgh, 1st October Manchester, 3rd October London, 4th October Reading, 5th October III. Get Started Download Visual Studio 2012 and the additional supporting software's from here. The Visual Studio development team has put together over 60 videos to help you learn about the new Visual Studio 2012 capabilities in more detail, and all of these will be available for watching here. IV. What’s Next A lot more exciting stuff lined up… Windows 8 Anticipated release: Oct. 26 (UPDATED 9/12) Windows Server 2012 Released (UPDATED 9/4) System Center 2012 Released (UPDATED 9/11) SQL Server 2012 Released (UPDATED 4/2) Internet Explorer 10 Anticipated release: Between Q3 2012 and early 2013 (UPDATED 5/3   Office 2013 Anticipated release: Q4 2012 or Q1 2013(UPDATED 9/12) Exchange 2013 Anticipated release: Q4 2012 (UPDATED 7/26) Visual Studio 2012 Released (UPDATED 9/12) Kinect for Windows Released (UPDATED 9/4) Windows Phone "Tango" and 8 "Tango": Released; Anticipated "Windows Phone 8" release: Q4 2012 (UPDATED 9/5) Dynamics ERP Online Anticipated release: September or October 2012 (UPDATED 7/20) Office 365 Anticipated update schedule: "Almost weekly"(UPDATED 9/12) Windows Azure Rumored CTP release: Spring 2012 (UPDATED 9/7) SharePoint 2013 Anticipated release: Q4 2012 (UPDATED 8/21) Enjoy

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• Are Google Maps Open?

  - by EmbeddedInsider

  Right now they are ‘free’ but it is clear what the path forward is:   4.3 Advertising. The Service currently does not include advertising in the maps images. However, Google reserves the right to include advertising in the maps images provided to you through the Service, but will provide you with ninety (90) days notice prior to the commencement of advertising in the maps images. Such notice may be provided on relevant Google websites, including but not limited to the Google Geo Developers Blog and the Google Maps API Group (or such successor URLs that Google may designate from time to time). During that 90 day period, you may terminate your use of the Service, or provide notice of your refusal to accept advertising in the maps images in accordance with Google's policies and procedures for providing such notice (which Google may make available from time to time in its sole discretion). Lawrence Ricci www.EmbeddedInsider.com

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• Flow-Design Cheat Sheet &ndash; Part II, Translation

  - by Ralf Westphal

  In my previous post I summarized the notation for Flow-Design (FD) diagrams. Now is the time to show you how to translate those diagrams into code. Hopefully you feel how different this is from UML. UML leaves you alone with your sequence diagram or component diagram or activity diagram. They leave it to you how to translate your elaborate design into code. Or maybe UML thinks it´s so easy no further explanations are needed? I don´t know. I just know that, as soon as people stop designing with UML and start coding, things end up to be very different from the design. And that´s bad. That degrades graphical designs to just time waste on paper (or some designer). I even believe that´s the reason why most programmers view textual source code as the only and single source of truth. Design and code usually do not match. FD is trying to change that. It wants to make true design a first class method in every developers toolchest. For that the first prerequisite is to be able to easily translate any design into code. Mechanically, without thinking. Even a compiler could do it :-) (More of that in some other article.) Translating to Methods The first translation I want to show you is for small designs. When you start using FD you should translate your diagrams like this. Functional units become methods. That´s it. An input-pin becomes a method parameter, an output-pin becomes a return value: The above is a part. But a board can be translated likewise and calls the nested FUs in order: In any case be sure to keep the board method clear of any and all business logic. It should not contain any control structures like if, switch, or a loop. Boards do just one thing: calling nested functional units in proper sequence. What about multiple input-pins? Try to avoid them. Replace them with a join returning a tuple: What about multiple output-pins? Try to avoid them. Or return a tuple. Or use out-parameters: But as I said, this simple translation is for simple designs only. Splits and joins are easily done with method translation: All pretty straightforward, isn´t it. But what about wires, named pins, entry points, explicit dependencies? I suggest you don´t use this kind of translation when your designs need these features. Translating to methods is for small scale designs like you might do once you´re working on the implementation of a part of a larger design. Or maybe for a code kata you´re doing in your local coding dojo. Instead of doing TDD try doing FD and translate your design into methods. You´ll see that way it´s much easier to work collaboratively on designs, remember them more easily, keep them clean, and lessen the need for refactoring. Translating to Events [coming soon]

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• Uganda .NET Usergroup April meeting

  - by Malisa L. Ncube

  Our April meeting was presented by Wilson Kutegeka on the topic of Building the Data Access a layer. In his presentation he showed a tool which he has developed to generate the entities, stores procedures that would be used to reduce having to retype the same boilerplate code for each entity. He uses visual basic samples to demonstrate access to the data from the database and inherits his classes from an abstract class which contains common properties including connection strings, save and delete methods. A number of questions emerged from the group, mostly those that use a business model based approaches. Some of the questions are on unit testing and mocking the models without using the database, the use of IoCs and loose coupled patterns. Some of the questions were on caching, Linq support and data annotations based validation. The presentation details can be found here. Intellisense LTD agreed to sponsor our website and we are glad to have that as we really need to have a website running. We would like to thank the following companies for supporting our community activities: Apress, Telerik, Manning, DevExpress (CodeRush), Ncover, and Intellisense.   Technorati Tags: Uganda .NET Usergroup

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• Retrieving Custom Attributes Using Reflection

  - by Scott Dorman

  The .NET Framework allows you to easily add metadata to your classes by using attributes. These attributes can be ones that the .NET Framework already provides, of which there are over 300, or you can create your own. Using reflection, the ways to retrieve the custom attributes of a type are: System.Reflection.MemberInfo public abstract object[] GetCustomAttributes(bool inherit); public abstract object[] GetCustomAttributes(Type attributeType, bool inherit); public abstract bool IsDefined(Type attributeType, bool inherit); System.Attribute public static Attribute[] GetCustomAttributes(MemberInfo member, bool inherit); public static bool IsDefined(MemberInfo element, Type attributeType, bool inherit); If you take the following simple class hierarchy: public abstract class BaseClass { private bool result;   [DefaultValue(false)] public virtual bool SimpleProperty { get { return this.result; } set { this.result = value; } } }   public class DerivedClass : BaseClass { public override bool SimpleProperty { get { return true; } set { base.SimpleProperty = value; } } } Given a PropertyInfo object (which is derived from MemberInfo, and represents a propery in reflection), you might expect that these methods would return the same result. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. The MemberInfo methods strictly reflect the metadata definitions, ignoring the inherit parameter and not searching the inheritance chain when used with a PropertyInfo, EventInfo, or ParameterInfo object. It also returns all custom attribute instances, including those that don’t inherit from System.Attribute. The Attribute methods are closer to the implied behavior of the language (and probably closer to what you would naturally expect). They do respect the inherit parameter for PropertyInfo, EventInfo, and ParameterInfo objects and search the implied inheritance chain defined by the associated methods (in this case, the property accessors). These methods also only return custom attributes that inherit from System.Attribute. This is a fairly subtle difference that can produce very unexpected results if you aren’t careful. For example, to retrieve the custom  attributes defined on SimpleProperty, you could use code similar to this: PropertyInfo info = typeof(DerivedClass).GetProperty("SimpleProperty"); var attributeList1 = info.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(DefaultValueAttribute), true)); var attributeList2 = Attribute.GetCustomAttributes(info, typeof(DefaultValueAttribute), true));   The attributeList1 array will be empty while the attributeList2 array will contain the attribute instance, as expected. Technorati Tags: Reflection,Custom Attributes,PropertyInfo

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• Windows CE support forums

  - by Valter Minute

  As you may already know, microsoft is moving its communities to a new platform, based on web forums. The “old” USENET newsgroups are going to be replaced by web forums organized by categories. One for low-level platform development (for the guys working with Platform Builder), another one for native application development (for people writing their real-time applications in C/C++ or people using Silverlight for Windows Embedded) and, last but not least, a forum dedicated to managed application development (for people that are quickly developing their applications with the .NET Compact Framework). You can find the new forums here: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/windowsembeddedcompact Read the “welcome” message to choose the best forum for your question and never forget that to have a good answer you should ask your question in a good way. Here you can find some suggestions about how you can ask questions (in newsgroup or forums): http://guruce.com/blogpost/howtoaskquestionsonnewsgroups (Thanks to Michel Verhagen for the article)

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• Computer Networks UNISA - Chap 15 &ndash; Network Management

  - by MarkPearl

  After reading this section you should be able to Understand network management and the importance of documentation, baseline measurements, policies, and regulations to assess and maintain a network’s health. Manage a network’s performance using SNMP-based network management software, system and event logs, and traffic-shaping techniques Identify the reasons for and elements of an asset managements system Plan and follow regular hardware and software maintenance routines Fundamentals of Network Management Network management refers to the assessment, monitoring, and maintenance of all aspects of a network including checking for hardware faults, ensuring high QoS, maintaining records of network assets, etc. Scope of network management differs depending on the size and requirements of the network. All sub topics of network management share the goals of enhancing the efficiency and performance while preventing costly downtime or loss. Documentation The way documentation is stored may vary, but to adequately manage a network one should at least record the following… Physical topology (types of LAN and WAN topologies – ring, star, hybrid) Access method (does it use Ethernet 802.3, token ring, etc.) Protocols Devices (Switches, routers, etc) Operating Systems Applications Configurations (What version of operating system and config files for serve / client software) Baseline Measurements A baseline is a report of the network’s current state of operation. Baseline measurements might include the utilization rate for your network backbone, number of users logged on per day, etc. Baseline measurements allow you to compare future performance increases or decreases caused by network changes or events with past network performance. Obtaining baseline measurements is the only way to know for certain whether a pattern of usage has changed, or whether a network upgrade has made a difference. There are various tools available for measuring baseline performance on a network. Policies, Procedures, and Regulations Following rules helps limit chaos, confusion, and possibly downtime. The following policies and procedures and regulations make for sound network management. Media installations and management (includes designing physical layout of cable, etc.) Network addressing policies (includes choosing and applying a an addressing scheme) Resource sharing and naming conventions (includes rules for logon ID’s) Security related policies Troubleshooting procedures Backup and disaster recovery procedures In addition to internal policies, a network manager must consider external regulatory rules. Fault and Performance Management After documenting every aspect of your network and following policies and best practices, you are ready to asses you networks status on an on going basis. This process includes both performance management and fault management. Network Management Software To accomplish both fault and performance management, organizations often use enterprise-wide network management software. There various software packages that do this, each collect data from multiple networked devices at regular intervals, in a process called polling. Each managed device runs a network management agent. So as not to affect the performance of a device while collecting information, agents do not demand significant processing resources. The definition of a managed devices and their data are collected in a MIB (Management Information Base). Agents communicate information about managed devices via any of several application layer protocols. On modern networks most agents use SNMP which is part of the TCP/IP suite and typically runs over UDP on port 161. Because of the flexibility and sophisticated network management applications are a challenge to configure and fine-tune. One needs to be careful to only collect relevant information and not cause performance issues (i.e. pinging a device every 5 seconds can be a problem with thousands of devices). MRTG (Multi Router Traffic Grapher) is a simple command line utility that uses SNMP to poll devices and collects data in a log file. MRTG can be used with Windows, UNIX and Linux. System and Event Logs Virtually every condition recognized by an operating system can be recorded. This is typically done using event logs. In Windows there is a GUI event log viewer. Similar information is recorded in UNIX and Linux in a system log. Much of the information collected in event logs and syslog files does not point to a problem, even if it is marked with a warning so it is important to filter your logs appropriately to reduce the noise. Traffic Shaping When a network must handle high volumes of network traffic, users benefit from performance management technique called traffic shaping. Traffic shaping involves manipulating certain characteristics of packets, data streams, or connections to manage the type and amount of traffic traversing a network or interface at any moment. Its goals are to assure timely delivery of the most important traffic while offering the best possible performance for all users. Several types of traffic prioritization exist including prioritizing traffic according to any of the following characteristics… Protocol IP address User group DiffServr VLAN tag in a Data Link layer frame Service or application Caching In addition to traffic shaping, a network or host might use caching to improve performance. Caching is the local storage of frequently needed files that would otherwise be obtained from an external source. By keeping files close to the requester, caching allows the user to access those files quickly. The most common type of caching is Web caching, in which Web pages are stored locally. To an ISP, caching is much more than just convenience. It prevents a significant volume of WAN traffic, thus improving performance and saving money. Asset Management Another key component in managing networks is identifying and tracking its hardware. This is called asset management. The first step to asset management is to take an inventory of each node on the network. You will also want to keep records of every piece of software purchased by your organization. Asset management simplifies maintaining and upgrading the network chiefly because you know what the system includes. In addition, asset management provides network administrators with information about the costs and benefits of certain types of hardware or software. Change Management Networks are always in a stage of flux with various aspects including… Software changes and patches Client Upgrades Shared Application Upgrades NOS Upgrades Hardware and Physical Plant Changes Cabling Upgrades Backbone Upgrades For a detailed explanation on each of these read the textbook (Page 750 – 761)

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• Getting Started with Kinect for Windows.

  - by Vishal

  Hello folks,      Recently I got involved in a project for building a demo application for one of our customers with Kinect for Windows. Yes, something similar what Tom Cruise did in the movie Minority Report. Waving arms, moving stuff around, swipes, speech recognition, manipulating computer screens without even touching it. Pretty cool!!! The idea in the movie showed us how technology would be after 50 years from that day.   Minority Report Movie clip.           Well, that 50 years of time frame got squeezed and recently on Feb 1st 2012, Microsoft released the official Kinect for Windows SDK. That’s just 10 years from the movie release. Although, the product is in it early stages but with developer creativity and continuously improving hardware, those features shown in the movie are not very far away from becoming a reality. Soon after releasing the SDK, Microsoft again announced in March the release of its new Kinect for Windows SDK version 1.5 which is coming out in sometime May. More history about Kinect. Anyways, so for a newbie with Kinect, where would you start. Here is what I would suggest you can do. Watch the Kinect for Windows Quick start Series by Den Fernandez. Download the Kinect for Windows SDK and start playing around with the demos in it. It also comes with some basic Kinect documentation. Coding4Fun Kinect Projects | Lot many more videos and open sources projects information. Kinect for Windows Session at Techdays NL demo by Jesus Rodriguez. Book: Beginning Kinect Programming with the Microsoft Kinect SDK.  | I did go through few of the chapters in this book and based on that, it does talk deeply about core Kinect concepts but in very easy to understand way. I would definitely suggest this book for any Kinect developers. I liked the way it explained the Gestures recognition in Chapter 6. Buy your Kinect device from either Amazon or NewEgg. You will get it cheaper then buying it from Microsoft Store. Personally, I love Newegg.com as I never had any order related or shipping issues with them. I always hate developing UI application but well, you would need to get your hands dirty with WPF too in order to work with Kinect. So get started with WPF concepts too. I will keep adding stuff to the list once I come across them but so far the above list would definitely get you started building your first Kinect apps. Till then Happy Kinecting…!!!!! Thanks, Vishal Mody

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• BizTalk 2009 - The Community ODBC Adapter: Send Port

  - by Stuart Brierley

  I have previously talked about the installation of the Community ODBC adapter and also using the ODBC adapter to generate schemas and laterly the creation of a receive port using the ODBC Adapter.  But what about creating a send port? Select to add a new Send Port, select the ODBC Adapter and click configure. Clicking Connection string will open the DataSource window. Choose one of your system datasources and press OK. This will now update the Transport properties.  Select okay. All that remains is to set the standard send port properties and your ODBC send port is now ready.

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• Kansas City Developer's Conference

  - by Brian Schroer

  I just found about about / registered for Saturday’s Kansas City Developer’s Conference, and am going to make the drive over from the right side of the state (Hey, no offense, KC – I’m just looking at a map, and St. Louis is on the right side, Kansas City’s on the left). (I’m sure the event’s been mentioned on geekswithblogs several times, but I’m on a “staycation” this week, getting cabin fever, and noticed @leebrandt’s tweet today.) I’m looking forward to some of the presentations in the Agile and Patterns tracks. I’m going to have to get up pretty early Saturday morning to descend from St. Louis to Kansas City (Again, no offense – St. Louis is just at a higher elevation*, that’s all), so if you see a tired-looking guy wandering around wearing a St. Louis Day of .NET shirt, please be nice. I’m not sure how much longer registration will be open, but here’s the link: http://kcdc.eventbrite.com/ *Not true – St. Louis is closer to sea level than Kansas City, but I’ll start my drive from the top of the Arch, OK?

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• Day 3 - XNA: Hacking around with images

  - by dapostolov

  Yay! Today I'm going to get into some code! My mind has been on this all day! I find it amusing how I practice, daily, to be "in the moment" or "present" and the excitement and anticipation of this project seems to snatch it away from me frequently. WELL!!! (Shakes Excitedly) Let's do this =)! Let's code! For these next few days it is my intention to better understand image rendering using XNA; after said prototypes are complete I should (fingers crossed) be able to dive into my game code using the design document I hammered out the other night. On a personal note, I think the toughest thing right now is finding the time to do this project. Each night, after my little ones go to bed I can only really afford a couple hours of work on this project. However, I hope to utilise this time as best as I can because this is the first time in a while I've found a project that I've been passionate about. A friend recently asked me if I intend to go 3D or extend the game design. Yes. For now I'm keeping it simple. Lastly, just as a note, as I was doing some further research into image rendering this morning I came across some other XNA content and lessons learned. I believe this content could have probably been posted in the first couple of posts, however, I will share the new content as I learn it at the end of each day. Maybe I'll take some time later to fix the posts but for now Installation and Deployment - Lessons Learned I had installed the XNA studio  (Day 1) and the site instructions were pretty easy to follow. However, I had a small difficulty with my development environment. You see, I run a virtual desktop development environment. Even though I was able to code and compile all the tutorials the game failed to run...because I lacked a 3D capable card; it was not detected on the virtual box... First Lesson: The XNA runtime needs to "see" the 3D card! No sweat, Il copied the files over to my parent box and executed the program. ERROR. Hmm... Second Lesson (which I should have probably known but I let the excitement get the better of me): you need the XNA runtime on the client PC to run the game, oh, and don't forget the .Net Runtime! Sprite, it ain't just a Soft Drink... With these prototypes I intend to understand and perform the following tasks. learn game development terminology how to place and position (rotate) a static image on the screen how to layer static images on the screen understand image scaling can we reuse images? understand how framerate is handled in XNA how to display text , basic shapes, and colors on the screen how to interact with an image (collision of user input?) how to animate an image and understand basic animation techniques how to detect colliding images or screen edges how to manipulate the image, lets say colors, stretching how to focus on a segment of an image...like only displaying a frame on a film reel what's the best way to manage images (compression, storage, location, prevent artwork theft, etc.) Well, let's start with this "prototype" task list for now...Today, let's get an image on the screen and maybe I can mark a few of the tasks as completed... C# Prototype1 New Visual Studio Project Select the XNA Game Studio 3.1 Project Type Select the Windows Game 3.1 Template Type Prototype1 in the Name textbox provided Press OK. At this point code has auto-magically been created. Feel free to press the F5 key to run your first XNA program. You should have a blue screen infront of you. Without getting into the nitty gritty right, the code that was generated basically creates some basic code to clear the window content with the lovely CornFlowerBlue color. Something to notice, when you move your mouse into the window...nothing. ooooo spoooky. Let's put an image on that screen! Step A - Get an Image into the solution Under "Content" in your Solution Explorer, right click and add a new folder and name it "Sprites". Copy a small image in there; I copied a "Royalty Free" wizard hat from a quick google search and named it wizards_hat.jpg (rightfully so!) Step B - Add the sprite and position fields Now, open/edit  Game1.cs Locate the following line:  SpriteBatch spriteBatch; Under this line type the following:         SpriteBatch spriteBatch; // the line you are looking for...         Texture2D sprite;         Vector2 position; Step C - Load the image asset Locate the "Load Content" Method and duplicate the following:             protected override void LoadContent()         {             spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(GraphicsDevice);             // your image name goes here...             sprite = Content.Load<Texture2D>("Sprites\\wizards_hat");             position = new Vector2(200, 100);             base.LoadContent();         } Step D - Draw the image Locate the "Draw" Method and duplicate the following:        protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime)         {             GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.CornflowerBlue);             spriteBatch.Begin(SpriteBlendMode.AlphaBlend);             spriteBatch.Draw(sprite, position, Color.White);             spriteBatch.End();             base.Draw(gameTime);         }  Step E - Compile and Run Engage! (F5) - Debug! Your image should now display on a cornflowerblue window about 200 pixels from the left and 100 pixels from the top. Awesome! =) Pretty cool how we only coded a few lines to display an image, but believe me, there is plenty going on behind the scenes. However, for now, I'm going to call it a night here. Blogging all this progress certainly takes time... However, tomorrow night I'm going to detail what we just did, plus start checking off points on that list! I'm wondering right now if I should add pictures / code to this post...let me know if you want them =) Best Regards, D.

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• So, what&rsquo;s your blog URL?

  - by johndoucette

  Asked by many of my colleagues often enough, I decided to take the plunge and begin blogging. After many attempts to start and long discussions about what I should write about, I decided to give my “buddies” a series of lessons and tidbits to help them understand what it takes to manage a software development project in the real world. Stories of success and failure to keep hope alive. I am formally trained as a developer (BS/CS) and have scattered my code throughout the matrix since 1985 (officially working for the man). As I moved from job-to-job over my career, I have had good managers, bad ones, and ones who were – well, just sitting in the corner office. It wasn't until I began the transition and commitment to the role of project management that I began to take real software development management seriously. A boss once told me “put down the code. Start managing the people and process.” That was a scary time in my career. I loved solving really cool problems with a blank sheet of paper. It was an adrenaline rush to get an opportunity to start from scratch and write an application solution people would actually use and help them in their work/business. I felt that moving into “management” would remove me from the thrill and ownership I felt as a developer. It was a hard step to take, and one which I believe is hard for any developer. Well, I am here to help you through this transition. For those of you wanting to read my stories or learn about the tools and techniques I use on a daily basis, you too might just learn something you would have never thought of as an architect/developer. I am currently a Sr. Consultant at Magenic with the Boston branch office and primarily work with clients in the New England area. I am typically engaged as the lead project manager on our engagements, but also perform Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) assessments for development organizations as well as augment the Technical Evangelists for Microsoft and perform many Team Foundation Server (TFS) demos, installs and “get started” engagements. I have spoken at the New England Code Camp, our most recent CodeMastery event in Boston, and have written several whitepapers.   I am looking forward to helping you “Put down the code.” John Doucette

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• Building a personal website using Silverlight.

  - by mbcrump

  I’ve always believed that as a developer you should always have a hobby project going on. I think a hobby project needs to contain at least one of following things: Something that you have never done before. Something that you are interested in. Something that you can work on in your spare time without affecting your *paying* job. I decided my hobby project would be an entire web application written in Silverlight that could be used as a self-promotion/marketing tool. This goal of the site is to provide information on the work that I’ve done to conferences, future employers and anyone else that wanted to learn more about me. Before I go any further, if you just want to check out the site then it is located at http://michaelcrump.info. So, what did I use to create it? MVVM Light – I’m a big fan of this software. The item and project templates plus code snippets make this a huge win for any SL/WPF/WP7 application. Jetpack Theme by Microsoft – I suck at designing so I used this template to help speed up this project. ComponentOne 3rd Party Controls – I have a license and really like several of their products. A User Control that Jeremy Likness created called DynamicXaml (used with his permission). I had created my own version of this a while back, but Jeremy’s implementation was simply better. Main Page – Designed to create my “brand”. This was built for a quick glimpse of who I am and what do I do.  Blog – The best marketing tool for a developer is their blog. I decided to go with an HTML page displaying my site and the user could pop into full-screen if desired. I also included my feed and Silverlight-Zone. (Another site I work on) Online – This page links to sites that I have been featured on as well as community involvement and awards. I also have a web service that I can update this information without re-compiling the Silverlight App. Projects – I’ve been wanting to use a CoverFlow for a really long time now. =) This page list several hobby projects as well as a few professional projects.  Resume Page – This page only exist because I got tired of sending companies my resume in e-mail. I can now provide a deep link to this page and the recruiter can print, search or save my resume. The PDF of my resume exist in a folder that I can easily update without recompiling the app. Contact Page – Just a contact page with a web service that sends the email. The Send button becomes disabled after a successful send. I thought of adding captcha to this page but in the end didn’t think it was worth it. Looking back at this app, I’m happy with how it turned out. I love Silverlight and I am already thinking of my next hobby project. (Thinking another Windows Phone 7 app or MVC3).  Subscribe to my feed

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• Twitter Integration in Windows 8

  - by Joe Mayo

  Glenn Versweyveld, @Depechie, blogged about Twitter Integration in Windows 8. The post describes how to use WinRtAuthorizer to perform OAuth authentication with LINQ to Twitter. If you’re using LINQ to Twitter with Windows 8, the WinRtAuthorizer is definitely the way to go. It lets you perform the entire OAuth dance with a single method call, which is a huge time savings and simplification of your code. In addition to Glenn’s excellent post, I’ve posted a sample app named MetroWinRtAuthorizerDemo.zip on the LINQ to Twitter Samples Page. @JoeMayo

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• First Foray&ndash;About timeout

  - by SQLMonger

  It has been quite a while since I signed up for this blog site and high time that something was posted.  I have a list of topics that I will be working through and posting.  Some I am sure will have been posted by others, but I will be sticking to the technical problems and challenges that I’ve recently faced, and the solutions that worked for me.  My motto when learning something new has always been “My kingdom for an example!”, and I plan on delivering useful examples here so others can learn from my efforts, failures and successes.   A bit of background about me… My name is Clayton Groom. I am a founding partner of a consulting firm in St. Louis Missouri, Covenant Technology Partners, LLC and focus on SQL Server Data Warehouse design, Analysis Services and Enterprise Reporting solutions.  I have been working with SQL Server since the early nineties, when it still only ran on OS/2. I love solving puzzles and technical challenges.   Enough about me… On to a real problem… SSIS Connection Time outs versus Command Time outs Last week, I was working on automating the processing for a large Analysis Services cube.  I had reworked an SSIS package and script task originally posted by Vidas Matelis that automates the process of adding new and dropping old partitions to/from an Analysis Services cube.  I had the package working great, tested, and ready for deployment.  It basically performs a query against the source system to determine if there is new data in the warehouse that will require a new partition to be added to the cube, and it checks the cube to see if there are any partitions that are present that are no longer needed in a rolling 60 month window. My client uses Tivoli for running all their production jobs, and not SQL Agent, so I had to build a command line file for Tivoli to use to run the package. Everything was going great. I had tested the command file from my development workstation using an XML configuration file to pass in server-specific parameters into the package when executed using the DTExec utility. With all the pieces ready, I updated the dtsconfig file to point to the UAT environment and started working with the Tivoli developer to test the job.  On the first run, the job failed, and from what I could see in the SSIS log, it had failed because of a timeout. Other errors in the log made me think that perhaps the connection string had not been passed into the package correctly. We bumped the Connection Manager  timeout values from 20 seconds to 120 seconds and tried again. The job still failed. After changing the command line to use the /SET option instead of the /CONFIGFILE option, we tested again, and again failure. After a number more failed attempts, and getting the Teradata DBA involved to monitor and see if we were connecting and failing or just failing to connect, we determined that the job was indeed connecting to the server and then disconnecting itself after 30 seconds.  This seemed odd, as we had the timeout values for the connection manager set to 180 seconds by then.  At this point one of the DBA’s found a post on the Teradata forum that had the clues to the puzzle: There is a separate “CommandTimeout” custom property on the Data source object that may needed to be adjusted for longer running queries.  I opened up the SSIS package, opened the data flow task that generated the partition list table and right-clicked on the data source. from the context menu, I selected “Show Advanced Editor” and found the property. Sure enough, it was set to 30 seconds. The CommandTimeout property can also be edited in the SSIS Properties sheet. In order to determine how long the timeout needed to be, I ran the query from the task in the development environment and received a response in a matter of seconds.  I then tried the same query against the production database and waited several minutes for a response. This did not seem to be a reasonable response time for the query involved, and indeed it wasn’t. The Teradata DBA’s adjusted the query governor settings for the service account I was testing with, and we were able to get the response back down under a minute.  Still, I set the CommandTimeout property to a much higher value in case the job was ever started during a time of high-demand on the production server. With this change in place, the job finally completed successfully.  The lesson learned for me was two-fold: Always compare query execution times between development and production environments, and don’t assume that production will always be faster.  With higher user demands, query governors, and a whole lot more data, the execution time of even what might seem to be simple queries can vary greatly. SSIS Connection time out settings do not affect command time outs.  Connection timeouts control how long the package will wait for a response from the server before assuming the server is not available or is not responding. Command time outs control how long a task will wait for results to start being returned before deciding that the server is not responding. Both lessons seem pretty straight forward, and I felt pretty sheepish once I finally figured out what the issue was.  To be fair though, In the 5+ years that I have been working with SSIS, I could only recall one other time where I had to set the CommandTimeout property, and that memory only resurfaced while I was penning this post.

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• Welcome to new blog!! Agile.NAV

  - by ssmantha

  I am quite ecstatic to announce a new blog, to which I am also a co-author. http://agilenav.wordpress.com. Agile.NAV brings in a vast amount of information of the work I did together with my colleague on bringing Microsoft Dynamics NAV under the hood of Team Foundation Server. For the past couple of years we have been working on creating development tools (more on integration side) for Microsoft Dynamics NAV which includes, Version Control, Automated Build system and our new automation testing integration with Dynamics NAV 2013. To start of with we got very good initial responses from community’s distinguished members like Luc van Vugt (see here). The idea is to drive the shift in mind-set for the Microsoft Dynamics NAV developer community. We share the same passion as people like Luc, about creating software in a professional manner.

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• Christmas in the Clouds

  - by andrewbrust

  I have been spending the last 2 weeks immersing myself in a number of Windows Azure and SQL Azure technologies.  And in setting up a new business (I’ll speak more about that in the future), I have also become a customer of Microsoft’s BPOS (Business Productivity Online Services).  In short, it has been a fortnight of Microsoft cloud computing. On the Azure side, I’ve looked, of course, at Web Roles and Worker Roles.  But I’ve also looked at Azure Storage’s REST API (including coding to it directly), I’ve looked at Azure Drive and the new VM Role; I’ve looked quite a bit at SQL Azure (including the project “Houston” Silverlight UI) and I’ve looked at SQL Azure labs’ OData service too. I’ve also looked at DataMarket and its integration with both PowerPivot and native Excel.  Then there’s AppFabric Caching, SQL Azure Reporting (what I could learn of it) and the Visual Studio tooling for Azure, including the storage of certificate-based credentials.  And to round it out with some user stuff, on the BPOS side, I’ve been working with Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and LiveMeeting. I have to say I like a lot of what I’ve been seeing.  Azure’s not perfect, and BPOS certainly isn’t either.  But there’s good stuff in all these products, and there’s a lot of value. Azure Goes Deep Most people know that Web and Worker roles put the platform in charge of spinning virtual machines up and down, and keeping them up to date. But you can go way beyond that now.  The still-in-beta VM Role gives you the power to craft the machine (much as does Amazon’s EC2), though it takes away the platform’s self-managing attributes.  It still spins instances up and down, making drive storage non-durable, but Azure Drive gives you the ability to store VHD files as blobs and mount them as virtual hard drives that are readable and writeable.  Whether with Azure Storage or SQL Azure, Azure does data.  And OData is everywhere.  Azure Table Storage supports an OData Interface.  So does SQL Azure and so does DataMarket (the former project “Dallas”).  That means that Azure data repositories aren’t just straightforward to provision and configure…they’re also easy to program against, from just about any programming environment, in a RESTful manner.  And for more .NET-centric implementations, Azure AppFabric caching takes the technology formerly known as “Velocity” and throws it up into the cloud, speeding data access even more. Snapping in Place Once you get the hang of it, this stuff just starts to work in a way that becomes natural to understand.  I wasn’t expecting that, and I was really happy to discover it. In retrospect, I am not surprised, because I think the various Azure teams are the center of gravity for Redmond’s innovation right now.  The products belie this and so do my observations of the product teams’ motivation and high morale.  It is really good to see this; Microsoft needs to lead somewhere, and they need to be seen as the underdog while doing so.  With Azure, both requirements are in place.   BPOS: Bad Acronym, Easy Setup BPOS is about products you already know; Exchange, SharePoint, Live Meeting and Office Communications Server.  As such, it’s hard not to be underwhelmed by BPOS.  Until you realize how easy it makes it to get all that stuff set up.  I would say that from sign-up to productive use took me about 45 minutes…and that included the time necessary to wrestle with my DNS provider, set up Outlook and my SmartPhone up to talk to the Exchange account, create my SharePoint site collection, and configure the Outlook Conferencing add-in to talk to the provisioned Live Meeting account. Never before did I think setting up my own Exchange mail could come anywhere close to the simplicity of setting up an SMTP/POP account, and yet BPOS actually made it faster.   What I want from my Azure Christmas Next Year Not everything about Microsoft’s cloud is good.  I close this post with a list of things I’d like to see addressed: BPOS offerings are still based on the 2007 Wave of Microsoft server technologies.  We need to get to 2010, and fast.  Arguably, the 2010 products should have been released to the off-premises channel before the on-premise sone.  Office 365 can’t come fast enough. Azure’s Internet tooling and domain naming, is scattered and confusing.  Deployed ASP.NET applications go to cloudapp.net; SQL Azure and Azure storage work off windows.net.  The Azure portal and Project Houston are at azure.com.  Then there’s appfabriclabs.com and sqlazurelabs.com.  There is a new Silverlight portal that replaces most, but not all of the HTML ones.  And Project Houston is Silvelright-based too, though separate from the Silverlight portal tooling. Microsoft is the king off tooling.  They should not make me keep an entire OneNote notebook full of portal links, account names, access keys, assemblies and namespaces and do so much CTRL-C/CTRL-V work.  I’d like to see more project templates, have them automatically reference the appropriate assemblies, generate the right using/Imports statements and prime my config files with the right markup.  Then I want a UI that lets me log in with my Live ID and pick the appropriate project, database, namespace and key string to get set up fast. Beta programs, if they’re open, should onboard me quickly.  I know the process is difficult and everyone’s going as fast as they can.  But I don’t know why it’s so difficult or why it takes so long.  Getting developers up to speed on new features quickly helps popularize the platform.  Make this a priority. Make Azure accessible from the simplicity platforms, i.e. ASP.NET Web Pages (Razor) and LightSwitch.  Support .NET 4 now.  Make WebMatrix, IIS Express and SQL Compact work with the Azure development fabric. Have HTML helpers make Azure programming easier.  Have LightSwitch work with SQL Azure and not require SQL Express.  LightSwitch has some promising Azure integration now.  But we need more.  WebMatrix has none and that’s just silly, now that the Extra Small Instance is being introduced. The Windows Azure Platform Training Kit is great.  But I want Microsoft to make it even better and I want them to evangelize it much more aggressively.  There’s a lot of good material on Azure development out there, but it’s scattered in the same way that the platform is.   The Training Kit ties a lot of disparate stuff together nicely.  Make it known. Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot All in all, diving deep into Azure was a good way to end the year.  Diving deeper into Azure should a great way to spend next year, not just for me, but for Microsoft too.

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• Are IE 9 will have a place in heart of user ?

  - by anirudha

  in a advertisement of IE 9 MSFT compare two product first is their IE9 and second is chrome 6. I know 6 is not currently [9] but no objection because may be they make ads when 6 is currently version and have RC or beta in their hands. on IE 9 test-drive website they show many of people ads to show the user that IE9 is performance better or other chrome or Firefox not. well they not compare with Firefox because last days firefox not still in news and search trends like before RC release many of user googling for them. Well I myself found IE9 perform smoother then chrome. but what MSFT do after IE9 nothing they waiting for IE 10 not for give updates not as well as Google chrome and Firefox. Are IE9 have anything new for Developer even a small or big. well they tell you blah or useless things everytime when they make for next version no matter for you but a matter for them because they add a new thing even useless for developer. I am not have any feeling with IE bad but I like to make reviews as well as I can make. I show you something who I experience with IE and someother browser like Chrome and Firefox. IE 9 still have no plugin as well as other provided like Firefox have Firebug a great utilities who is best option for developer to debug their code. IE9 developer tool is good but still you never customize them or readymade customization available to work as in firefox many of person make customization for firebug like example :- firepicker for picking color in firebug , firebug autocomplete for intellisense like feature when you write JavaScript inside console panel , pixelperfect , firequery , sitepoint reference and many other great example we all love to use. as other things that Firefox give many things customizable like themes , ui and many thing customization means more thing user or developer want to make themselves and more contribution make them better software so Firefox is great because customization is a great thing inside firefox and chrome. if you read some post of developer on MSDN to what’s new in IE 9 developer tool that you feel they are joking whenever you see some other things of Firefox and chrome. in a Firefox a plugin perform many much things but in IE still use IE 9 developer tool no other option like in Firefox use Firebug and many other utilities to make development easier and time saving and best as we can do.if you see Firefox page on mozilla that sublines of firefox is high performance easy customization advanced security well you can say what’s performance but there is no comparison with IE because IE have only performance and nothing else. but Firefox have these three thing to make product love. and third thing I really love that security yeah security. from long time before whenever IE6 is no hackproff and many other easily hack IE6 whenever Firefox is secure. I found myself that many of website install a software on client’s computer and they still not know about them so they track everything. sometime they hijack the homepage and make their website as their homepage. sometime they do something and you trying  to go to  any website then they go to their site first. the problem I telling about not long before it’s time of late in 2008 whenever Firefox is much better then IE6. if someone have bad experience with anyone of these software share with us I like to hear your voice. whenever IE still not for use Firefox is a good option for us even user or developer. I not know why someone make next version of IE. IE still have time to go away from Web. Firefox not rude as IE they still believe in user feedback and chrome is also open the door for feedback on their product gooogle Chrome. but what thing they made in IE on user feedback nothing. they still thing to teach what they maked not thing about what user need. if you spent some hour on firefox and chrome then you found what’s matter. what thing you have whenever you use IE or other browser like google chrome and Firefox :- as a user IE give you nothing even tell you blah blah and more blah but still next version of IE means next IE6 for the web. as in Google chrome you find plugins addons or customization to make experience better but in IE9 you can’t customize anything even the themes they have by default. Firefox already have a great list of plugins or addons to make experience better with Web but IE9 have nothing. this means IE9 not for user and other like chrome and firefox give you much better experience then IE. next thing after user is developer. first thing is that all developer want smooth development who save their time not take too perhaps saving.posts on IE9 show that a list of thing improved in IE 9 developer tool but are one developer tool enough for web development so developer need more utilities to solve different different type of puzzle who IE 9 never give like in Firefox you have utilities to do a task even small or big one. in chrome same experience you have but IE9 never give any plugin or utilities to make our work faster even they are new headache for developer because IE not give update as soon as other because in Firefox and in chrome if a bug is reported then they solve them fast and distribute them in next version of software very soon but in IE wait for a long time like IE 9 and IE 8 have no official release between them as update. As my conclusion there is no reason to use IE and adopt 9 again. it’s really not for Developer or user even newbie or smart people. as a rule I want to beware you with IE because it’s my responsibilities to move the thing in good way as I can make. well are you sure that there is no reason or profit they thing to have with IE9  if not why they forget luna [windows xp] user. because they are old nothing they want to force user to give them some money by purchasing a new version of OS. so this a thing why they marketed their software. if you thing about what firefox and chrome want to make : Mozilla's mission is to promote openness, innovation and opportunity on the web. chrome mission we all see whenever we use them. but IE9 is a trick they promote because they want to add something to next version of windows. if somebody like IE9 [even surprised by ads they see or post they read] then they purchase windows soon as they possible. Well you feel that I am opposition of IE9 and favor of chrome and Firefox yeah you feel right I hate IE from a heart not from a pencil. well you get same thing when you have trying three product major I described here Chrome firefox and IE. well don’t believe on the blogs , posts or article who are provided by the merchant or vender’s website. open the eyes read and thing what they talk and feel are they really true. if you confused that compare with some other. now you know the true because no one telling so badly as a user can described who use them not only one who make their feature. always open the eyes don’t believe use your mind and find the truth. thanks for reading my post good bye and take care

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• Windows Phone 7 Series &ndash; First Developer Information

  - by Nikita Polyakov

  The official developer story for Windows Phone 7 Series was finally announced at MIX10. You can review the recording of the Keynote at http://live.visitmix.com, also all the sessions will be available within 24hours of their posting. There is extensive list of presentations for Windows Phone listed here. You can start playing with these tools today! Official Silverlight site for Mobile Development: http://silverlight.net/getstarted/devices/windows-phone/  Channel 9 has a training information here: http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Learn/Windows-Phone-7-Series-Training/ Ok, and for the ones in the hurry, direct link: Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP                      Here is the overview summary of the announcements: End-to-End Mobile Development Platform: By combining Silverlight for rich internet applications and the XNA Framework for game development, developers and designers will be able to build visually stunning and immersive applications and games on the Windows Phone 7 Series. Free Windows Phone Developer Tools: Microsoft has released a free comprehensive tool support package for Silverlight on Windows Phone 7 Series, available for download. Expression Blend for Windows Phone and a preview of Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone will be also included as part of the download. Windows Phone Marketplace: Microsoft made available a new merchandising tool that will enable developers and designers to bring applications and games to market and increase the discoverability of applications with customers while supporting one-time credit card purchases, mobile operator billing and advertising-funded applications.

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• The challenge of giving a positive No

  - by MarkPearl

  I find it ironic that the more I am involved in the software industry, the more apparent it becomes that soft skills are just as if not more important than the technical abilities of a developer. One of the biggest challenges I have faced in my career is in managing client expectations to what one can deliver and being able to work with multiple clients. If I look at where things commonly go pear shaped, one area features a lot is where I should have said "No" to a request, but because of the way the request was made I ended up saying yes. Time and time again this has caused immense pain. Thus, when I saw on Amazon that they had a book titled "The power of a positive no" by William Ury I had to buy it and read it. In William's book he explains an approach to saying No that while extremely simple does change the way a No is presented. In essence he talks of a pattern the Yes! > No > Yes? Pattern. 1. Yes! -> positively and concretely describing your core interests and values 2. No. -> explicitly link your no to this YES! 3. Yes? -> suggest another positive outcome or agreement to the other person Let me explain how I understood it. If you are working on a really important project and someone asks you to do add a quick feature to another project, your Yes! would be to the more important project, which would mean a No to the quick feature, and an option for your Yes? may be an alternative time when you can look at it.. An example of an appropriate response would be... It is really important that I keep to the commitment that I made to this customer to finish his project on time so I cannot work on your feature right now but I am available to help you in a weeks time. William then goes on to explain the type of behaviour a person may display when the no is received. He illustrates this with a diagram called the curve of acceptance. William points out that if you are aware of the type of behaviour you can expect it empowers you to stay true to your no. Personally I think reading and having an understanding of the “soft” side of things like saying no is invaluable to a developer.

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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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• The Joy Of Hex

  - by Jim Giercyk

  While working on a mainframe integration project, it occurred to me that some basic computer concepts are slipping into obscurity. For example, just about anyone can tell you that a 64-bit processor is faster than a 32-bit processer. A grade school child could tell you that a computer “speaks” in ‘1’s and ‘0’s. Some people can even tell you that there are 8 bits in a byte. However, I have found that even the most seasoned developers often can’t explain the theory behind those statements. That is not a knock on programmers; in the age of IntelliSense, what reason do we have to work with data at the bit level? Many computer theory classes treat bit-level programming as a thing of the past, no longer necessary now that storage space is plentiful. The trouble with that mindset is that the world is full of legacy systems that run programs written in the 1970’s.  Today our jobs require us to extract data from those systems, regardless of the format, and that often involves low-level programming. Because it seems knowledge of the low-level concepts is waning in recent times, I thought a review would be in order.       CHARACTER: See Spot Run HEX: 53 65 65 20 53 70 6F 74 20 52 75 6E DECIMAL: 83 101 101 32 83 112 111 116 32 82 117 110 BINARY: 01010011 01100101 01100101 00100000 01010011 01110000 01101111 01110100 00100000 01010010 01110101 01101110 In this example, I have broken down the words “See Spot Run” to a level computers can understand – machine language.     CHARACTER:  The character level is what is rendered by the computer.  A “Character Set” or “Code Page” contains 256 characters, both printable and unprintable.  Each character represents 1 BYTE of data.  For example, the character string “See Spot Run” is 12 Bytes long, exclusive of the quotation marks.  Remember, a SPACE is an unprintable character, but it still requires a byte.  In the example I have used the default Windows character set, ASCII, which you can see here:  http://www.asciitable.com/ HEX:  Hex is short for hexadecimal, or Base 16.  Humans are comfortable thinking in base ten, perhaps because they have 10 fingers and 10 toes; fingers and toes are called digits, so it’s not much of a stretch.  Computers think in Base 16, with numeric values ranging from zero to fifteen, or 0 – F.  Each decimal place has a possible 16 values as opposed to a possible 10 values in base 10.  Therefore, the number 10 in Hex is equal to the number 16 in Decimal.  DECIMAL:  The Decimal conversion is strictly for us humans to use for calculations and conversions.  It is much easier for us humans to calculate that [30 – 10 = 20] in decimal than it is for us to calculate [1E – A = 14] in Hex.  In the old days, an error in a program could be found by determining the displacement from the entry point of a module.  Since those values were dumped from the computers head, they were in hex. A programmer needed to convert them to decimal, do the equation and convert back to hex.  This gets into relative and absolute addressing, a topic for another day.  BINARY:  Binary, or machine code, is where any value can be expressed in 1s and 0s.  It is really Base 2, because each decimal place can have a possibility of only 2 characters, a 1 or a 0.  In Binary, the number 10 is equal to the number 2 in decimal. Why only 1s and 0s?  Very simply, computers are made up of lots and lots of transistors which at any given moment can be ON ( 1 ) or OFF ( 0 ).  Each transistor is a bit, and the order that the transistors fire (or not fire) is what distinguishes one value from  another in the computers head (or CPU).  Consider 32 bit vs 64 bit processing…..a 64 bit processor has the capability to read 64 transistors at a time.  A 32 bit processor can only read half as many at a time, so in theory the 64 bit processor should be much faster.  There are many more factors involved in CPU performance, but that is the fundamental difference.    DECIMAL HEX BINARY 0 0 0000 1 1 0001 2 2 0010 3 3 0011 4 4 0100 5 5 0101 6 6 0110 7 7 0111 8 8 1000 9 9 1001 10 A 1010 11 B 1011 12 C 1100 13 D 1101 14 E 1110 15 F 1111   Remember that each character is a BYTE, there are 2 HEX characters in a byte (called nibbles) and 8 BITS in a byte.  I hope you enjoyed reading about the theory of data processing.  This is just a high-level explanation, and there is much more to be learned.  It is safe to say that, no matter how advanced our programming languages and visual studios become, they are nothing more than a way to interpret bits and bytes.  There is nothing like the joy of hex to get the mind racing.

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• Dallas First Regionals 2012&ndash; For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology

  - by T

  Wow!  That is all I have to say after the last 3 days. Three full fun filled days in a world that fed the geek, sparked the competitor, inspired the humanitarian, encouraged the inventor, and continuously warmed my heart.  As part of the Dallas First Regionals, I was awed by incredible students who teach as much as they learn, inventive and truly caring mentors that make mentoring look easy, and completely passionate and dedicated volunteers that bring meaning to giving all that you have and making events fun and safe for all.  If you have any interest in innovation, robotics, or highly motivated students, I can’t recommend anything any higher than visiting a First Robotics event. This is my third year with First and I was honored enough to serve the Dallas First Regionals as both a Web Site evaluator and as the East Field Volunteer Coordinator.  This was also the first year my daughter volunteered with me.  My daughter and I both recognize how different the First program is from other team events.  The difference with First is that everyone is a first class citizen.   It is a difference we can feel through experiencing and observing interactions between executives, respected engineers, students, and event staff.  Even with a veracious competition, you still find a lot of cooperation and we never witnessed any belittling between teams or individuals. First Robotics coined the term “Gracious Professionalism”.   It's a way of doing things that encourages high-quality work, emphasizes the value of others, and respects individuals and the community.1 I was introduced to this term as the Volunteer Coordinator when I was preparing the volunteer instructional speech.  Through the next few days, I discovered it is truly core to everything that First does.  One of the ways First accomplishes Gracious Professionalism is by utilizing another term they came up with which is “CoopertitionTM”. At FIRST, CoopertitionTM is displaying unqualified kindness and respect in the face of fierce competition.1   One of the things I never liked about sports was the need to “destroy” the other team.  First has really found a way to integrate CoopertitionTM  into the rules so teams can be competitive and part of that competition rewards cooperation. Oh and did I mention it has ROBOTS!!!  This year it had basket ball playing Kinect connected, remote controlled, robots!  There are not words for how exciting these games are.  You HAVE to check out this years game, Rebound Rumble, on youtube or you can view live action on Dallas First Video (as of this posting, the recording haven’t posted yet but should be there soon).  There are also some images below. Whatever it is, these students get it and exemplify it and these mentors ooze with it.  I am glad that First supports these events so we can all learn and be inspired by these exceptional students and mentors.  I know that no matter how much I give, it will never compare to what I gain volunteering at First.  Even if you don’t have time to volunteer, you owe it to yourself to go check out one of these events.  See what the future holds, be inspired, be encouraged, take some knowledge, leave some knowledge and most of all, have FUN.  That is what First is all about and thanks to First, I get it.   First Dallas Regionals 2012 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL 1.  USFirst http://www.usfirst.org/aboutus/gracious-professionalism

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• Avoiding Hacker Trix

  - by Mike Benkovich

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/benko/archive/2014/08/20/avoiding-hacker-trix.aspxThis week we're doing a session called "Avoiding Hacker Trix" which goes thru some of the top web exploits that you should be aware of. In this webcast we will cover a variety of things including what we call the secure development process, cross site scripting attack, one click attack, SQL Injection and more. There are a bunch of links we cover, but rather than having you copy these down I'm providing them here... Links from the slide deck: Anti-XSS Library Download www.Fiddler2.com www.HelloSecureWorld.com Open Source Web Application Project - Top 10 Exploits Exploit: Cross Site Scripting - Paypal Exploit: SQL Injection - www.ri.gov Exploit: Cross Site Scripting - FTD Exploit: Insecure Direct Object Reference - Cahoots Exploit: Integer Overflow - Apple

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