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• Is there a way to undo deletion of registry keys while the machine is still running?

  - by Oliver Giesen

  [ also posted from a programmer's POV at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3299230 ] I messed up big time and deleted a large portion of my registry during a programming experiment: As a result most of the contents of HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ are gone. I haven't logged off or shutdown since this happened. The applications that were already running seem to be coping fine so far but I suspect that after the next reboot there won't be much happiness left... Also, System Restore tells me there are no restore points even though I'm pretty sure there should have been. Could this be another symptom of the purged registry? I wouldn't have expected this information to be stored under HKCU, though... Does anybody know of a technique or utility that can possibly restore some or all of the deleted entries? I'm on Windows 7 Enterprise 32bit. I'm not really holding my breath but you can always hope, can't you?

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• Security considerations when giving access to SQL Server db for a web application

  - by rem

  I need to expose our SQL Server 2008 database for an access from a asp.net web application. This is a new task for me, so I would like to know what basic security requirements are there for configuring software and hardware components of web server and DB Server. Is it OK to have both Web Server (Windows Server 2008) with IIS holding ASP.NET application and SQL Server 2008 on the same machine? Should I have to install additional firewall, like Forefront TMG? Should it be on separate computer? In case a web application is hosted on an external web hosting privider server and SQL Server DB on a our internal server what are "pro's" and "con's" of such configuration?

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• Why can't I open programs after watching youtube videos for a while?

  - by manjivsanotsu

  I have recently built a new PC, and it worked fine for a while (1-2 months of no problems whatsoever). However in the recent weeks I noticed that after I watched some youtube videos and closed everything, I can no longer do anything except move the mouse and expand the Startup Menu. If I click on any of the programs on the Start Menu or type a program on the Run text box, it won't open anything. I can't open taskmgr, or windows explorer, or even shut down the PC. I don't have anything else running when I'm watching videos except ZoneAlarm and Avast. The only workaround I can do when this happens is a forced shutdown (holding the power button of my PC), and restart if I wanted to do anything more. But this happens a lot - about 4-5 times a week so I'm worried it would fry up my hardware if I keep on doing this. OS: Windows 7 Other Installed Software: Open Office, Tropico 4 game, Adobe Photoshop Browser used: Google Chrome Hardware: CPU: i7 2600K RAM: 16 GB Motherboard: Asus P8Z68-V GEN3 Hard Drive: 120GB Corsair Force GT SSD Graphics: 2047MB GeForce GTX 560 Ti

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• Empty MacBook Pro, no SuperDrive. How do I install Windows?

  - by MCcz

  My situation is this: HDD1: Empty 180 GB SSD HDD2: Empty 500 GB HDD (instead of SuperDrive) Accessories: Windows 8 ISO 64 Gig USB stick Second computer SuperDrive in USB enclosure What I need: Install Windows 8 on the SSD in the laptop What I tried: Create bootable USB – Doesn't work. Macbook doesnt show me USB as an option after holding OPTION key. Install Windows through SuperDrive connected via USB – Doesn't work. On the internet, there are thousands of articles telling me all kinds of solutions, expecting me to have Mac OS on my laptop. Is there any solution to this?

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• Does Google Chrome officially work on Windows 7 64-Bit Yet?

  - by Nick Josevski

  As soon as I jumped onto one of the beta releases for Windows 7, I tried to install Google Chrome. Being on a 64-bit installation it came up with a 'non-supported OS' or some error (can't remember). Having a look around at the time I saw lots of posts/tips about just appending --in-process-plugins to the shortcut for chrome, after trying this and still not having luck, I found more posts including what seemed ones from the Chrome developers saying this was not wise and exposed a security risk. So does anyone have a well sourced answer, as to what's holding up Win 7 64-bit support in Chrome, or better yet an "official" answer to say that it is supported in Win7 x64 RTM and works well now...

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• Removing DVI connectors stuck in video card ports

  - by thecyclegeek

  I need some help removing a couple of DVI connectors which are stuck in my video card ports. I don't know why they were screwed in so tightly in the first place but they won't move. I need to replace hardware in the machine, but doing so with the cables connected and the box in its current position is nearly impossible. I've tried pliers with grips to loosen the screws holding the cable, and I've tried a screwdriver, the latter ended up breaking off the plastic. Neither worked. I'm at a loss as to what to do and I'm very frustrated. Can I get some suggestions?

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• ALT+TAB doesn't work properly in Windows 8.1

  - by Marco1

  Holding ALT+TAB will activate the flip 2D to switch from a window to another. The problem is that this function remains active for a very short time and I'm not able to select the window I want in the foreground. I also noticed that when I put the cursor on an icon on the taskbar, the live preview thumbnail disappears quickly. With a safe mode restart the problem is no longer there, all is fine! With a clean install of Windows 8.1(no driver and applications installed) the problem is here again; obviously disappears with a safe mode restart also in this situation. What's the problem? A Windows process or service?

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• Mac OS X: What is using my 'active' memory?

  - by badkitteh

  Hello fellas, I'm using a recent MacBook Pro with 8 GB of RAM and after a few hours of using it at work I notice the amount of 'active' memory growing and growing. Whenever I reboot my Mac, everything looks fine and it is hardly using any RAM. But after a few hours it looks like this: As you can see, in this case it's about 4.3 GB. Being a developer, I know that 'active memory' is the amount of memory that is currently used by running processes. So the first thing I did was quitting all applications and killing all processes that don't seem to belong to Mac OS X. After I did that, my active memory came down about 400 MB, but got stuck at what you see in the screenshot. There are no more processes or applications to quit. Now I'm wondering what is actually holding on to the memory? top and Activity Monitor don't report any processes with a high memory usage. Any ideas? Thanks!

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• UNMOUNTABLE BOOT VOLUME win7

  - by user1809318

  i'm having a serious problem with my laptop (Toshiba satellite l40). Two days ago i just turned it off by holding the power button and the next day it didn't start at all. There is a blue screen with an error : UNMOUNTABLE BOOT VOLUME, i searched all over the net for a solution, did almost everything like using the windows 7 install disk and trying to repair with the command prompt (check c: /r, bootfix etc.) it runs the check saying there are no errors and when i restart the blue screen again. Can someone please give me some new solution?

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• Asus Eee-PC 1015PEM

  - by Bianka

  My Asus worked perfectly until yesterday. I assume that the battery drained and AC was not plugged. I turned it on and doesn't chargeat all. It seems that something wrong with my battery. It works from AC but when it is plugged it shows only 4% available charging. When I unplug AC it shuts down right away. I already tried the 45 seconds holding power button method, and I uninstalled in device manager Microsoft ACPI-compliant Method Battery. Nothing helped. Does anybody has any idea?

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• Best way to get back to using the power of lxml after having to use a regex to find something in an

  - by PyNEwbie

  I am trying to rip some text out of a large number of html documents (numbers in the hundreds of thousands). The documents are really forms but they are prepared by a very large group of different organizations so there is significant variation in how they create the document. For example, the documents are divided into chapters. I might want to extract the contents of Chapter 5 from every document so I can analyze the content of the chapter. Initially I thought this would be easy but it turns out that the authors might use a set of non-nested tables throughout the document to hold the content so that Chapter n could be displayed using td tags inside a table. Or they might use other elements such as p tags H tags, div tags or any other block level element. After trying repeatedly to use lxml to help me identify the beginning and end of each chapter I have determined that it is a lot cleaner to use a regular expression because in every case, no matter what the enclosing html element is the chapter label is always in the form of >Chapter # It is a little more complicated in that there might be some white space or non-breaking space represented in different ways (  or   or just spaces). Nonetheless it was trivial to write a regular expression to identify the beginning of each section. (The beginning of one section is the end of the previous section.) But now I want to use lxml to get the text out. My thought is that I have really no choice but to walk along my string to find the close tag for the element that encloses the text I am using to find the relevant section. That is here is one example where the element holding the Chapter name is a div <div style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN-LEFT: 0pt; TEXT-INDENT: 0pt; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0pt" align="left"><font style="DISPLAY: inline; FONT-WEIGHT: bold; FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Times New Roman">Chapter 1.&#160;&#160;&#160;Our Beginnings.</font></div> So I am imagining that I would begin at the location where I found the match for chapter 1 and set up a regular expressions to find the next </div|</td|</p|</h1 . . . So at this point I have identified the type of element holding my chapter heading I can use the same logic to find all of the text that is within that element that is set up a regular expression to help me mark from >Chapter 1.&#160;&#160;&#160;Our Beginnings.< So I have identified where my Chapter 1 begins I can do the same for chapter 2 (which is where Chapter 1 ends) Now I am imagining that I am going to snip the document beginning at the opening of the element that I identified as the element the indicates where chapter 1 begins and ending just before the opening of the element that I identified as the element that indicates where Chapter 2 begins. The string that I have identified will then be fed to lxml to use its power to get the content. I am going to all of this trouble because I have read over and over - never use a regular expression to extract content from html documents and I have not hit on a way to be as accurate with lxml to identify the starting and ending locations for the text I want to extract. For example, I can never be certain that the subtitle of Chapter 1 is Our Beginnings it could be Our Red Canary. Let me say that I spent two solid days trying with lxml to be confident that I had the beginning and ending elements and I could only be accurate <60% of the time but a very short regular expression has given me better than 95% success. I have a tendency to make things more complicated than necessary so I am wondering if anyone has seen or solved a similar problems and if they had an approach (not the details mind you) that they would like to offer.

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• Parallelism in .NET – Introduction

  - by Reed

  Parallel programming is something that every professional developer should understand, but is rarely discussed or taught in detail in a formal manner.  Software users are no longer content with applications that lock up the user interface regularly, or take large amounts of time to process data unnecessarily.  Modern development requires the use of parallelism.  There is no longer any excuses for us as developers. Learning to write parallel software is challenging.  It requires more than reading that one chapter on parallelism in our programming language book of choice… Today’s systems are no longer getting faster with each generation; in many cases, newer computers are actually slower than previous generation systems.  Modern hardware is shifting towards conservation of power, with processing scalability coming from having multiple computer cores, not faster and faster CPUs.  Our CPU frequencies no longer double on a regular basis, but Moore’s Law is still holding strong.  Now, however, instead of scaling transistors in order to make processors faster, hardware manufacturers are scaling the transistors in order to add more discrete hardware processing threads to the system. This changes how we should think about software.  In order to take advantage of modern systems, we need to redesign and rewrite our algorithms to work in parallel.  As with any design domain, it helps tremendously to have a common language, as well as a common set of patterns and tools. For .NET developers, this is an exciting time for parallel programming.  Version 4 of the .NET Framework is adding the Task Parallel Library.  This has been back-ported to .NET 3.5sp1 as part of the Reactive Extensions for .NET, and is available for use today in both .NET 3.5 and .NET 4.0 beta. In order to fully utilize the Task Parallel Library and parallelism, both in .NET 4 and previous versions, we need to understand the proper terminology.  For this series, I will provide an introduction to some of the basic concepts in parallelism, and relate them to the tools available in .NET.

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• Globe Trotters: Asian Healthcare CIOs need ‘Security Inside Out’ Approach

  - by Tanu Sood

  In our second edition of Globe trotters, wanted to share a feature article that was recently published in Enterprise Innovation. EnterpriseInnovation.net, part of Questex Media Group, is Asia's premier business and technology publication. The article featured MOH Holdings (a holding company of Singapore’s Public Healthcare Institutions) and highlighted the project around National Electronic Health Record (NEHR) system currently being deployed within Singapore.  According to the feature, the NEHR system was built to facilitate seamless exchanges of medical information as patients move across different healthcare settings and to give healthcare providers more timely access to patient’s healthcare records in Singapore. The NEHR consolidates all clinically relevant information from patients’ visits across the healthcare system throughout their lives and pulls them in as a single record. It allows for data sharing, making it accessible to authorized healthcare providers, across the continuum of care throughout the country. In healthcare, patient data privacy is critical as is the need to avoid unauthorized access to the electronic medical records. As Alan Dawson, director for infrastructure and operations at MOH Holdings is quoted in the feature, “Protecting the perimeter is no longer enough. Healthcare CIOs today need to adopt a ‘security inside out’ approach that protects information assets all the way from databases to end points.” Oracle has long advocated the ‘Security Inside Out’ approach. From operating systems, infrastructure to databases, middleware all the way to applications, organizations need to build in security at every layer and between these layers. This comprehensive approach to security has never been as important as it is today in the social, mobile, cloud (SoMoClo) world. To learn more about Oracle’s Security Inside Out approach, visit our Security page. And for more information on how to prevent unauthorized access, streamline user administration, bolster security and enforce compliance in healthcare, learn more about Oracle Identity Management.

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• Box Selection and Multi-Line Editing with VS 2010

  - by ScottGu

  This is the twenty-second in a series of blog posts I’m doing on the VS 2010 and .NET 4 release. I’ve already covered some of the code editor improvements in the VS 2010 release.  In particular, I’ve blogged about the Code Intellisense Improvements, new Code Searching and Navigating Features, HTML, ASP.NET and JavaScript Snippet Support, and improved JavaScript Intellisense.  Today’s blog post covers a small, but nice, editor improvement with VS 2010 – the ability to use “Box Selection” when performing multi-line editing.  This can eliminate keystrokes and enables some slick editing scenarios. [In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu] Box Selection Box selection is a feature that has been in Visual Studio for awhile (although not many people knew about it).  It allows you to select a rectangular region of text within the code editor by holding down the Alt key while selecting the text region with the mouse.  With VS 2008 you could then copy or delete the selected text. VS 2010 now enables several more capabilities with box selection including: Text Insertion: Typing with box selection now allows you to insert new text into every selected line Paste/Replace: You can now paste the contents of one box selection into another and have the content flow correctly Zero-Length Boxes: You can now make a vertical selection zero characters wide to create a multi-line insert point for new or copied text These capabilities can be very useful in a variety of scenarios.  Some example scenarios: change access modifiers (private->public), adding comments to multiple lines, setting fields, or grouping multiple statements together. Great 3 Minute Box-Selection Video Demo Brittany Behrens from the Visual Studio Editor Team has an excellent 3 minute video that shows off a few cool VS 2010 multi-line code editing scenarios with box selection:   Watch it to learn a few ways you can use this new box selection capability to optimize your typing in VS 2010 even further: Hope this helps, Scott P.S. You can learn more about the VS Editor by following the Visual Studio Team Blog or by following @VSEditor on Twitter.

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• No-Weld Multi-Monitor Stand Crafted From Sturdy Metal Framing

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  As far as DIY stands for multiple monitors go, this design has to be the sturdiest and least difficult to construct model we’ve seen in some time. Read on to see how one DIYer cleverly crafted a solid metal triple monitor stand with no welding involved. Tinker and gamer Opteced wanted a new stand for his Eyefinity setup but wasn’t in a hurry to spend a pile of cash on a custom stand. His DIY solution is just as sturdy as a commercial metal stand but is made out of inexpensive hardware store parts–the main supports and base are made from Unistrut, a simple metal framing material. Unlike many DIY stands made from metal rods and piping, this build doesn’t require any sort of welding or custom pipe threading. In fact, the metal struts are so over engineered for the task of holding up flat-panel monitors he was able to simply partially saw through them and bend them to the shape he wanted. Hit up the link below for additional pictures of the build. Unistrut Monitor Stand [via Hack A Day] 8 Deadly Commands You Should Never Run on Linux 14 Special Google Searches That Show Instant Answers How To Create a Customized Windows 7 Installation Disc With Integrated Updates

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• ASPxGridView Pager disappears

  - by Jo Asakura

  Hello all, I use the ASPxGridView with paging, pager settings is next: <SettingsPager Mode="ShowPager" Position="Bottom" Visible="true"> Also I have a CustomButtonInitialize event: protected void gridViewInvoices_CustomButtonInitialize(object sender, ASPxGridViewCustomButtonEventArgs e) { if (!e.IsEditingRow) { Invoice invoice = (Invoice)gridViewInvoices.GetRow(e.VisibleIndex); if (invoice != null) { if (e.ButtonID == "btnConfirmPayment") { e.Visible = invoice.PaymentConfirmedDate.HasValue ? DefaultBoolean.False : DefaultBoolean.Default; } } } } When I open the page with this grid the pager disappears but if I comment my CustomButtonInitialize event: protected void gridViewInvoices_CustomButtonInitialize(object sender, ASPxGridViewCustomButtonEventArgs e) { /*if (!e.IsEditingRow) { Invoice invoice = (Invoice)gridViewInvoices.GetRow(e.VisibleIndex); if (invoice != null) { if (e.ButtonID == "btnConfirmPayment") { e.Visible = invoice.PaymentConfirmedDate.HasValue ? DefaultBoolean.False : DefaultBoolean.Default; } } }*/ } Pager appears again, how can I fix it and how is pager depend on this event (CustomButtonInitialize)? Best regards, Alex.

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• Wpf vs WinForms for a vb programmer? [closed]

  - by Jeroen

  I am asked by a client to develop an application that is basically a screen on which the user can choose several items to pass the time (used in holding cells in mental hospitals for example). The baisc idea is as follows: TV (choosing this will provide the user with a number of TV streams from the interweb) Radio (...) Games (serveral flash games, also from the interweb) Music (play local music or streams) Draw something (not the game) Create an email Choose lighting settings for the room etc. etc. I am torn between WinForms and WPF for this project. It seems that WPF is the way to go since there is quite a bit of rich media involved but I have a 15 year VB background. The project obviously has a dead line and certain budget that I cannot cross and if I can avoid starting from scratch with some thing that will be nice. Is WPF worth it in this particular case or can I use WinForms with the incorperation of WPF controls? I would very much like to hear your thoughts/comments/suggestions!

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• Oracle Outsourced Repair Solution: The “Control Tower” for the Reverse Supply Chain

  - by John Murphy

  By Hannes Sandmeier, Vice President of cMRO and Depot Repair Development Smart businesses are increasing their focus on core competencies and aggressively cutting costs in their supply chains. Outsourcing repairs can enable a business to focus on what they do best and most profitably while delivering top-notch customer service through partners that specialize in reverse logistics and repair. A well managed “virtual service organization” can deliver fast turn times, lower costs and high customer satisfaction. A poorly managed partner network can deliver disaster for your business. Managing a virtual service organization requires accurate, real-time information and collaboration tools that enable smart, informed and immediate corrective action. To meet this need, Oracle has released the Oracle Outsourced Repair Solution to provide the “control tower” for managing outsourced reverse supply chain operations from customer complaint through remediation to partner claim settlement. The new solution provides real-time visibility to return status, location, turn time, discrepancies and partner performance. Additionally, its web portals allow partners and carriers to view assigned work, request parts, enter data, capture time and submit claims. Leveraging the combined power of Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle E-Business Suite Extensions for Oracle Endeca, the Oracle Outsourced Repair Solution provides a comprehensive set of tools that range from quick online partner registration to partner claim reconciliation, from capturing parts and labor to Oracle Cost Management and Financials integration, and from part requisition to waste and hazmat controls. These tools empower service operations managers to: · Increase customer satisfaction Ensure customers are satisfied by holding partners accountable for the speed and quality of repairs, and taking immediate corrective action when things go wrong · Reduce costs: Remove waste from the repair process using accurate job cost and cost breakdown data · Increase return velocity: Users have the tools to view all orders in flight and immediately know the current location, status, owner and contact point for repairs so as to be able to remove bottlenecks, resolve discrepancies and manage escalations The Oracle Outsourced Repair Solution further demonstrates Oracle’s commitment to helping supply chain professionals and service managers deliver high customer satisfaction at the lowest cost. For more information on the Oracle Outsourced Repair Solution, visit here. 

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• Detect backspace in UITextField

  - by marcc

  Is there any way to detect when the backspace/delete key is pressed in the iPhone keyboard on a UITextField that is empty? I want to know when backspace is pressed only if the UITextField is empty. Based on the suggestion from @Alex Reynolds in a comment, I've added the following code while creating my text field: [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self selector:@selector(handleTextFieldChanged:) name:UITextFieldTextDidChangeNotification object:searchTextField]; This notification is received (handleTextFieldChanged function is called), but still not when I press the backspace key in an empty field. Any ideas? There seems to be some confusion around this question. I want to receive a notification when the backspace key is pressed. That's it. But the solution must also work when the UITextField is already empty.

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• [GoogleMaps] Get GLatLng from GPoint

  - by Jo Asakura

  Hello everybody, I have a google map with my own map type: var currentProjection = new GMercatorProjection(maxLevels + 1); var mapBounds = new GLatLngBounds(new GLatLng(-9, -15), new GLatLng(9, 15)); var custommap = new GMapType(tilelayers, currentProjection, "Some project"); map.addMapType(custommap); map.setCenter(mapBounds.getCenter(), minLevels, custommap); When user clicks on map then context menu appears (singlerightclick event), from context menu user can add markers and I need a GLatLng value to add marker to the map but singlerightclick event contains only GPoint value. I try to use next statement: map.getCurrentMapType().getProjection().fromPixelToLatLng(pointValueFromEvent, map.getZoom()); but it wasn't helpfull (GLatLng value is outside of my map). I think it's because I use my own map type, how can I get GLatLng value to add the marker? Best regards, Alex.

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• Visual Studio Shortcut: Surround With

  - by Jeff Widmer

  I learned a new Visual Studio keyboard shortcut today that is really awesome; the “Surround With” shortcut.  You can trigger the Surround With context menu by pressing the Ctrl-K, Ctrl-S key combination when on a line of code. Ctrl-K, Ctrl-S means to hold down the Control key and then press K and then while still holding down the Control key press S. Here is where this comes in handy: You type a line of code and then realize you need to put it within an if statement block. So you type “if” and hit tab twice to insert the if statement code snippet.  Then you highlight the previous line of code that you typed, and then either drag and drop it into the if-then block or cut and paste it.  That is not too bad but it is a lot of extra key clicks and mouse moves. Now try the same with the Surround With keyboard shortcut.  Just highlight that line of code that you just typed and press Ctrl-K, Ctrl-S and choose the if statement code snippet, hit tab, and POW!... you are done!  No more code moving/indenting required. Here is what the Surround With context menu looks like: Just up or down arrow inside the drop down list to the code snippet that you want to surround your currently selected text with.  Did I mention this is AWESOME! Now it is so simple to surround lines of code with an if-then block or a try-catch-finally block... things that usually took several key clicks and maybe one or two mouse moves. And this works in both Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Studio 2010 which means it has been around for a long time and I never knew about it.   Technorati Tags: Visual Studio Keyboard Shortcut

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• Animating a CALayer's mask size change

  - by Alexander Repty

  I have a UIView subclass which uses a CAShapeLayer mask on its CALayer. The mask uses a distinct shape, with three rounded corners and a cut out rectangle in the remaining corner. When I resize my UIView using a standard animation block, the UIView itself and its CALayer resize just fine. The mask, however, is applied instantly, which leads to some drawing issues. I've tried animating the mask's resizing using a CABasicAnimation but didn't have any luck getting the resizing animated. Can I somehow achieve an animated resizing effect on the mask? Do I need to get rid of the mask, or will I have to change something about the way I currently draw the mask (using - (void)drawInContext:(CGContextRef)ctx). Cheers, Alex

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• That Escalated Quickly

  - by Jesse Taber

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/GruffCode/archive/2014/05/17/that-escalated-quickly.aspxI have been working remotely out of my home for over 4 years now. All of my coworkers during that time have also worked remotely. Lots of folks have written about the challenges inherent in facilitating communication on remote teams and strategies for overcoming them. A popular theme around this topic is the notion of “escalating communication”. In this context “escalating” means taking a conversation from one mode of communication to a different, higher fidelity mode of communication. Here are the five modes of communication I use at work in order of increasing fidelity: Email – This is the “lowest fidelity” mode of communication that I use. I usually only check it a few times a day (and I’m trying to check it even less frequently than that) and I only keep items in my inbox if they represent an item I need to take action on that I haven’t tracked anywhere else. Forums / Message boards – Being a developer, I’ve gotten into the habit of having other people look over my code before it becomes part of the product I’m working on. These code reviews often happen in “real time” via screen sharing, but I also always have someone else give all of the changes another look using pull requests. A pull request takes my code and lets someone else see the changes I’ve made side-by-side with the existing code so they can see if I did anything dumb. Pull requests can facilitate a conversation about the code changes in an online-forum like style. Some teams I’ve worked on also liked using tools like Trello or Google Groups to have on-going conversations about a topic or task that was being worked on. Chat & Instant Messaging  - Chat and instant messaging are the real workhorses for communication on the remote teams I’ve been a part of. I know some teams that are co-located that also use it pretty extensively for quick messages that don’t warrant walking across the office to talk with someone but reqire more immediacy than an e-mail. For the purposes of this post I think it’s important to note that the terms “chat” and “instant messaging” might insinuate that the conversation is happening in real time, but that’s not always true. Modern chat and IM applications maintain a searchable history so people can easily see what might have been discussed while they were away from their computers. Voice, Video and Screen sharing – Everyone’s got a camera and microphone on their computers now, and there are an abundance of services that will let you use them to talk to other people who have cameras and microphones on their computers. I’m including screen sharing here as well because, in my experience, these discussions typically involve one or more people showing the other participants something that’s happening on their screen. Obviously, this mode of communication is much higher-fidelity than any of the ones listed above. Scheduled meetings are typically conducted using this mode of communication. In Person – No matter how great communication tools become, there’s no substitute for meeting with someone face-to-face. However, opportunities for this kind of communcation are few and far between when you work on a remote team. When a conversation gets escalated that usually means it moves up one or more positions on this list. A lot of people advocate jumping to #4 sooner than later. Like them, I used to believe that, if it was possible, organizing a call with voice and video was automatically better than any kind of text-based communication could be. Lately, however, I’m becoming less convinced that escalating is always the right move. Working Asynchronously Last year I attended a talk at our local code camp given by Drew Miller. Drew works at GitHub and was talking about how they use GitHub internally. Many of the folks at GitHub work remotely, so communication was one of the main themes in Drew’s talk. During the talk Drew used the phrase, “asynchronous communication” to describe their use of chat and pull request comments. That phrase stuck in my head because I hadn’t heard it before but I think it perfectly describes the way in which remote teams often need to communicate. You don’t always know when your co-workers are at their computers or what hours (if any) they are working that day. In order to work this way you need to assume that the person you’re talking to might not respond right away. You can’t always afford to wait until everyone required is online and available to join a voice call, so you need to use text-based, persistent forms of communication so that people can receive and respond to messages when they are available. Going back to my list from the beginning of this post for a second, I characterize items #1-3 as being “asynchronous” modes of communication while we could call items #4 and #5 “synchronous”. When communication gets escalated it’s almost always moving from an asynchronous mode of communication to a synchronous one. Now, to the point of this post: I’ve become increasingly reluctant to escalate from asynchronous to synchronous communication for two primary reasons: 1 – You can often find a higher fidelity way to convey your message without holding a synchronous conversation 2 - Asynchronous modes of communication are (usually) persistent and searchable. You Don’t Have to Broadcast Live Let’s start with the first reason I’ve listed. A lot of times you feel like you need to escalate to synchronous communication because you’re having difficulty describing something that you’re seeing in words. You want to provide the people you’re conversing with some audio-visual aids to help them understand the point that you’re trying to make and you think that getting on Skype and sharing your screen with them is the best way to do that. Firing up a screen sharing session does work well, but you can usually accomplish the same thing in an asynchronous manner. For example, you could take a screenshot and annotate it with some text and drawings to illustrate what it is you’re seeing. If a screenshot won’t work, taking a short screen recording while your narrate over it and posting the video to your forum or chat system along with a text-based description of what’s in the recording that can be searched for later can be a great way to effectively communicate with your team asynchronously. I Said What?!? Now for the second reason I listed: most asynchronous modes of communication provide a transcript of what was said and what decisions might have been made during the conversation. There have been many occasions where I’ve used the search feature of my team’s chat application to find a conversation that happened several weeks or months ago to remember what was decided. Unfortunately, I think the benefits associated with the persistence of communicating asynchronously often get overlooked when people decide to escalate to a in-person meeting or voice/video call. I’m becoming much more reluctant to suggest a voice or video call if I suspect that it might lead to codifying some kind of design decision because everyone involved is going to hang up the call and immediately forget what was decided. I recognize that you can record and archive these types of interactions, but without being able to search them the recordings aren’t terribly useful. When and How To Escalate I don’t mean to imply that communicating via voice/video or in person is never a good idea. I probably jump on a Skype call with a co-worker at least once a day to quickly hash something out or show them a bit of code that I’m working on. Also, meeting in person periodically is really important for remote teams. There’s no way around the fact that sometimes it’s easier to jump on a call and show someone my screen so they can see what I’m seeing. So when is it right to escalate? I think the simplest way to answer that is when the communication starts to feel painful. Everyone’s tolerance for that pain is different, but I think you need to let it hurt a little bit before jumping to synchronous communication. When you do escalate from asynchronous to synchronous communication, there are a couple of things you can do to maximize the effectiveness of the communication: Takes notes – This is huge and yet I’ve found that a lot of teams don’t do this. If you’re holding a meeting with  > 2 people you should have someone taking notes. Taking notes while participating in a meeting can be difficult but there are a few strategies to deal with this challenge that probably deserve a short post of their own. After the meeting, make sure the notes are posted to a place where all concerned parties (including those that might not have attended the meeting) can review and search them. Persist decisions made ASAP – If any decisions were made during the meeting, persist those decisions to a searchable medium as soon as possible following the conversation. All the teams I’ve worked on used a web-based system for tracking the on-going work and a backlog of work to be done in the future. I always try to make sure that all of the cards/stories/tasks/whatever in these systems always reflect the latest decisions that were made as the work was being planned and executed. If held a quick call with your team lead and decided that it wasn’t worth the effort to build real-time validation into that new UI you were working on, go and codify that decision in the story associated with that work immediately after you hang up. Even better, write it up in the story while you are both still on the phone. That way when the folks from your QA team pick up the story to test a few days later they’ll know why the real-time validation isn’t there without having to invoke yet another conversation about the work. Communicating Well is Hard At this point you might be thinking that communicating asynchronously is more difficult than having a live conversation. You’re right: it is more difficult. In order to communicate effectively this way you need to very carefully think about the message that you’re trying to convey and craft it in a way that’s easy for your audience to understand. This is almost always harder than just talking through a problem in real time with someone; this is why escalating communication is such a popular idea. Why wouldn’t we want to do the thing that’s easier? Easier isn’t always better. If you and your team can get in the habit of communicating effectively in an asynchronous manner you’ll find that, over time, all of your communications get less painful because you don’t need to re-iterate previously made points over and over again. If you communicate right the first time, you often don’t need to rehash old conversations because you can go back and find the decisions that were made laid out in plain language. You’ll also find that you get better at doing things like writing useful comments in your code, creating written documentation about how the feature that you just built works, or persuading your team to do things in a certain way.

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• Don’t miss the Oracle Webcast: Enabling Effective Decision Making with “One Source of the Truth” at BB&T

  - by Rob Reynolds

  Webcast Date:  September 17th, 2012  -  9 a.m. PT / 12 p.m. ET  BB&T Corporation (NYSE: BBT) is one of the largest financial services holding companies in the United States. One of their IT goals is to provide “one source of truth” to enable more effective decision making at the corporate and local level. By using Oracle’s Hyperion Enterprise Planning Suite and Oracle Essbase, BB&T streamlined their planning and financial reporting processes. Large volumes of data were consolidated into a single reporting solution giving stakeholders more timely and accurate information. By providing a central and automated collaboration tool, BB&T is able to prepare more accurate financial forecasts, rapidly consolidate large amounts of data, and make more informed decisions. Join us on September 17th for a live webcast to hear BB&T’s journey to achieve “One Source of Truth” and learn how Oracle’s Hyperion Planning Suite and Oracle’s Essbase allows you to: Adopt best practices like rolling forecasts and driver-based planning Reduce the time and effort dedicated to the annual budget process Reduce the time and effort dedicated to the annual budget process Remove forecasting uncertainty with predictive modeling capabilities Rapidly analyze shifting market conditions with a powerful calculation engine Prioritize resources effectively with complete visibility into all potential risks Link strategy and execution with integrated strategic, financial and operational planning Register here.

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• ANTS Memory Profiler 8 released!

  - by Ben Emmett

  I’m excited to say that we’ve just released ANTS Memory Profiler 8! The big news is support for profiling .NET’s usage of unmanaged memory. There are two main parts to this. Firstly you can see a breakdown of unmanaged memory usage by module. This lets you see at a high level where unmanaged memory is being used – for example in the image below, it’s being used by a PDF generation library. Separately, when looking at a list of .NET classes, you can see how much unmanaged memory those classes are responsible for holding on to. You can also see that information for individual instances of those classes. Some clues you might need this: You’re using system objects or 3rd party components which deal with unmanaged memory under the hood (this includes things like the GDI+ functions used for working with bitmaps) Your application still relies on some legacy Delphi / C++ / etc code from left over from the days before your company moved over to using .NET You’ve used a previous version of ANTS Memory Profiler, and have ever seen a pie chart that looks something like this: You’ll also notice that the startup process has been entirely redesigned, bringing it in line with ANTS Performance Profiler 8, which was released earlier in the year. This makes it faster to start profiling and to run repeat profiling sessions, lets you profile using any browser instead of Internet Explorer, and also provides a host of stability improvements, particularly when launching websites in IIS. Download the new version (there’s a free trial), and as always I’d love to know what you think – just email [email protected]. Cheers! Ben

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