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  • Hyper-V Live Migration across Sites!

    - by Ryan Roussel
    One of the great sessions I sat in on at Tech Ed this week was stretching a Windows 2008 R2 Hyper-V  Failover Cluster across sites.  With this ability, you could actually implement a Hyper-V cluster where you could migrate or even Live Migrate VMs across sites.   With this area’s propensity for Hurricanes, this will be a very popular topic for me over the next few months. While this technology is possible today, it’s also very complicated and can be very expensive to implement.    First your WAN connection has to support the ability to trunk your VLAN across both sites in order to Live Migrate.  This means you can’t use a Layer 3 routed connection like MPLS.  It has to be a Metro Ethernet connection or "Dark Fiber”.  Dark Fiber is unused Fiber already in the ground that can be leased from  various providers. Both of these connections would allow you to trunk layer 2 across your WAN.  Cisco does have the ability to trunk layer 2 across a routed connection by muxing the traffic but this is only available in their Nexus product line which has a very steep price tag.   If you are stuck with MPLS or the like and Nexus switching is not a realistic possibility, you will have to implement a multi-subnet cluster in which case Live Migration won’t be possible.  However you can still failover VMs to the remote site with some planning and manual intervention.  The consideration here is that the VMs will be on a different subnet once migrated, so you will have to change the IP addressing of your VMs.  This also has ramifications with DNS and Name resolution to control your down time.  DHCP with Reservations for your VMs is the preferred method to achieve the IP changes as this will automate that part of the process.   Secondly, you will have to have  a mechanism to replicate your storage across both sites.  Many SAN vendors natively support hardware based synchronous and asynchronous replication.  Some even support cluster shared volumes which were introduced in 2008 R2.   If your SANs do not support this natively, there are alternative file based replication products either software based like Double Take or hardware appliance like EMC.  Be sure to check with your vendor on the support of Disk majority if you’re replicating your quorum disk between SANs.   The last consideration is the ability to maintain quorum for your cluster.  If your replication provider does not support Disk Majority through replication, you will have to explore Node Majority with File Share Witness.  This will affect your design as a 3 node cluster with 1 node at the remote site and FSW at the production site would not have the ability to maintain quorum if the production site was lost. MS best practice for this would be to implement an even node cluster with 2 nodes at  each site and the FSW at a third site.   And there you have it.  While some considerations and research goes into implementing this solution, even a multi-subnet solution would be invaluable to organizations in the implementations of “warm” DR sites.

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  • iPad2 - Yet Another Fundamental Defect in an Apple product

    - by Kit Ong
    First it was antenna defect in iPhone4 now it has been reported that some iPad 2 have display issues, Apple really needs to look at their manufacturing process. It doesn't help that workers are working like robots in their main supplier's factory Foxconn. More info on reported display light bleeding http://www.cultofmac.com/if-your-ipad-2-has-display-problems-do-not-return-it-heres-why/87197   How to check your iPad for dead pixel / light leak / bleed http://www.theipadguide.com/content/ipad-dead-pixel-test-how/7171269

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  • Farmyard

    - by Richard Jones
    Moooooooo     For a while now we’ve been using Apple’s enterprise device app distribution mechanism.   This allows you to have a user, click on a URL on their iOS device and it pulls down a new version of an enterprise app. of of our servers. Its really nice,  have a look at - http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#featuredarticles/FA_Wireless_Enterprise_App_Distribution/Introduction/Introduction.html   I’ve embedded this, into a check on application launch, that a web-service is called to detect a newer version of the software is available.  It then calls the URL to the App and a new version is deployed. You can alert users that a new App update is available by sending them a push notification.  See screenshot at the top. We send our push notifications out to users,  using a simple C# service.    The fun part is this.   You can instruct the push notification to play a sound (embedded in the app already). So our push notification’s play a random farmyard noise, i.e from a selection of - cow.wav dogbrk.wav duck.wav goose.wav horse.wav lamb.wav monkey.wav – left field I know rooster.wav Imagine my amusement being able to periodically send out an update and watch our office (of about 60 people) turn into farm for a few seconds. I’ve messed up a few times, with people being interrupted on customer conference calls,  but people seem good humoured about it. (so far) Simple(ish) pleasures…

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  • APress Deal of the Day - 1/June/2012 - Introducing Visual C# 2010

    - by TATWORTH
    Today's $10 Deal of the Day from APress at http://www.apress.com/9781430231714 is Introducing Visual C# 2010."If you're new to C# programming, this book is the ideal way to get started. Respected author Adam Freeman guides you through the C# language by carefully building up your knowledge from fundamental concepts to advanced features." Adam Freeman is an excellent author. This is an excellent introduction to C# programming and a manual for those with experience. Having read through book, I am very impressed by its practical approach to C#. I cannot improve on the by-line "Get started on your C# journey with an expert by your side leading by example" Adam Freeman teaches C# by precept and example. I suspect he drives a Volvo C30 as it comes up in many of the code examples! Throughout the book there are numerous links back and forth so as to avoid over complicating the current topic. I have have no hesitation in recommending this book both to programmers starting out with C# and to the seasoned professional. It is a book that should be on every C# development team's book shelf.

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  • Working with Timelines with LINQ to Twitter

    - by Joe Mayo
    When first working with the Twitter API, I thought that using SinceID would be an effective way to page through timelines. In practice it doesn’t work well for various reasons. To explain why, Twitter published an excellent document that is a must-read for anyone working with timelines: Twitter Documentation: Working with Timelines This post shows how to implement the recommended strategies in that document by using LINQ to Twitter. You should read the document in it’s entirety before moving on because my explanation will start at the bottom and work back up to the top in relation to the Twitter document. What follows is an explanation of SinceID, MaxID, and how they come together to help you efficiently work with Twitter timelines. The Role of SinceID Specifying SinceID says to Twitter, “Don’t return tweets earlier than this”. What you want to do is store this value after every timeline query set so that it can be reused on the next set of queries.  The next section will explain what I mean by query set, but a quick explanation is that it’s a loop that gets all new tweets. The SinceID is a backstop to avoid retrieving tweets that you already have. Here’s some initialization code that includes a variable named sinceID that will be used to populate the SinceID property in subsequent queries: // last tweet processed on previous query set ulong sinceID = 210024053698867204; ulong maxID; const int Count = 10; var statusList = new List<status>(); Here, I’ve hard-coded the sinceID variable, but this is where you would initialize sinceID from whatever storage you choose (i.e. a database). The first time you ever run this code, you won’t have a value from a previous query set. Initially setting it to 0 might sound like a good idea, but what if you’re querying a timeline with lots of tweets? Because of the number of tweets and rate limits, your query set might take a very long time to run. A caveat might be that Twitter won’t return an entire timeline back to Tweet #0, but rather only go back a certain period of time, the limits of which are documented for individual Twitter timeline API resources. So, to initialize SinceID at too low of a number can result in a lot of initial tweets, yet there is a limit to how far you can go back. What you’re trying to accomplish in your application should guide you in how to initially set SinceID. I have more to say about SinceID later in this post. The other variables initialized above include the declaration for MaxID, Count, and statusList. The statusList variable is a holder for all the timeline tweets collected during this query set. You can set Count to any value you want as the largest number of tweets to retrieve, as defined by individual Twitter timeline API resources. To effectively page results, you’ll use the maxID variable to set the MaxID property in queries, which I’ll discuss next. Initializing MaxID On your first query of a query set, MaxID will be whatever the most recent tweet is that you get back. Further, you don’t know what MaxID is until after the initial query. The technique used in this post is to do an initial query and then use the results to figure out what the next MaxID will be.  Here’s the code for the initial query: var userStatusResponse = (from tweet in twitterCtx.Status where tweet.Type == StatusType.User && tweet.ScreenName == "JoeMayo" && tweet.SinceID == sinceID && tweet.Count == Count select tweet) .ToList(); statusList.AddRange(userStatusResponse); // first tweet processed on current query maxID = userStatusResponse.Min( status => ulong.Parse(status.StatusID)) - 1; The query above sets both SinceID and Count properties. As explained earlier, Count is the largest number of tweets to return, but the number can be less. A couple reasons why the number of tweets that are returned could be less than Count include the fact that the user, specified by ScreenName, might not have tweeted Count times yet or might not have tweeted at least Count times within the maximum number of tweets that can be returned by the Twitter timeline API resource. Another reason could be because there aren’t Count tweets between now and the tweet ID specified by sinceID. Setting SinceID constrains the results to only those tweets that occurred after the specified Tweet ID, assigned via the sinceID variable in the query above. The statusList is an accumulator of all tweets receive during this query set. To simplify the code, I left out some logic to check whether there were no tweets returned. If  the query above doesn’t return any tweets, you’ll receive an exception when trying to perform operations on an empty list. Yeah, I cheated again. Besides querying initial tweets, what’s important about this code is the final line that sets maxID. It retrieves the lowest numbered status ID in the results. Since the lowest numbered status ID is for a tweet we already have, the code decrements the result by one to keep from asking for that tweet again. Remember, SinceID is not inclusive, but MaxID is. The maxID variable is now set to the highest possible tweet ID that can be returned in the next query. The next section explains how to use MaxID to help get the remaining tweets in the query set. Retrieving Remaining Tweets Earlier in this post, I defined a term that I called a query set. Essentially, this is a group of requests to Twitter that you perform to get all new tweets. A single query might not be enough to get all new tweets, so you’ll have to start at the top of the list that Twitter returns and keep making requests until you have all new tweets. The previous section showed the first query of the query set. The code below is a loop that completes the query set: do { // now add sinceID and maxID userStatusResponse = (from tweet in twitterCtx.Status where tweet.Type == StatusType.User && tweet.ScreenName == "JoeMayo" && tweet.Count == Count && tweet.SinceID == sinceID && tweet.MaxID == maxID select tweet) .ToList(); if (userStatusResponse.Count > 0) { // first tweet processed on current query maxID = userStatusResponse.Min( status => ulong.Parse(status.StatusID)) - 1; statusList.AddRange(userStatusResponse); } } while (userStatusResponse.Count != 0 && statusList.Count < 30); Here we have another query, but this time it includes the MaxID property. The SinceID property prevents reading tweets that we’ve already read and Count specifies the largest number of tweets to return. Earlier, I mentioned how it was important to check how many tweets were returned because failing to do so will result in an exception when subsequent code runs on an empty list. The code above protects against this problem by only working with the results if Twitter actually returns tweets. Reasons why there wouldn’t be results include: if the first query got all the new tweets there wouldn’t be more to get and there might not have been any new tweets between the SinceID and MaxID settings of the most recent query. The code for loading the returned tweets into statusList and getting the maxID are the same as previously explained. The important point here is that MaxID is being reset, not SinceID. As explained in the Twitter documentation, paging occurs from the newest tweets to oldest, so setting MaxID lets us move from the most recent tweets down to the oldest as specified by SinceID. The two loop conditions cause the loop to continue as long as tweets are being read or a max number of tweets have been read.  Logically, you want to stop reading when you’ve read all the tweets and that’s indicated by the fact that the most recent query did not return results. I put the check to stop after 30 tweets are reached to keep the demo from running too long – in the console the response scrolls past available buffer and I wanted you to be able to see the complete output. Yet, there’s another point to be made about constraining the number of items you return at one time. The Twitter API has rate limits and making too many queries per minute will result in an error from twitter that LINQ to Twitter raises as an exception. To use the API properly, you’ll have to ensure you don’t exceed this threshold. Looking at the statusList.Count as done above is rather primitive, but you can implement your own logic to properly manage your rate limit. Yeah, I cheated again. Summary Now you know how to use LINQ to Twitter to work with Twitter timelines. After reading this post, you have a better idea of the role of SinceID - the oldest tweet already received. You also know that MaxID is the largest tweet ID to retrieve in a query. Together, these settings allow you to page through results via one or more queries. You also understand what factors affect the number of tweets returned and considerations for potential error handling logic. The full example of the code for this post is included in the downloadable source code for LINQ to Twitter.   @JoeMayo

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  • Development teams do not scale

    - by Matt Watson
    Recently I have been thinking about how development teams don't scale very well. The bigger a team and the product get, the more time the team spends fixing software bugs. This means they spend more time doing troubleshooting and debugging as the grow. The problem is that since developers don't typically have access to production servers, there is a bottleneck in the process when doing production troubleshooting.For a team that has 10 developers, I would guess than 0-2 of them have access to production servers. If that team grows to 20 people, it is probably the same 0-2 people that have production access still. This means that those 2 key people are a bottleneck and the team does not scale correctly as you add more resources. All those new developers want is to help track down and fix software bugs, but they don't have the visibility to do it. So they end up being less productive and frustrated because they really want to fix the problems. The people who do have production access end up spending too much of their time doing troubleshooting instead of working on new projects.The solution is to remove the bottlenecks and get those people working on more important tasks. Stackify can solve this problem by giving all the developers read only access to production servers. This allows them to access the information they need to do troubleshooting on their own.

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  • Beginners Guide to Client Application Services

    - by mbcrump
    What is it? Client application services make it easy for you to create Windows-based applications that use the ASP.NET AJAX login, roles, and profile application services included in the Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions. These services enable multiple Web and Windows-based applications to share user information and user-management functionality from a single server.   What can you do with it? Authenticate a user. You can use the authentication service to verify a user's identity. Determine the role or roles of an authenticated user. You can use the roles service to change the user interface of your application depending on the user's role. For example, you can provide additional features for users who are in an administrator role. Store and access per-user application settings located on the server. You can use the Web settings service (also known as the profile service) to share settings across multiple applications and locations. Client application services take advantage of the Web services extensibility model through client service providers that you can specify in your application configuration files. These service providers include offline functionality that uses a local cache for authentication, roles, and settings data when a network connection is unavailable. Give me an example of where I would use this! Sharing login and user role information between a Windows Form application and a ASP.NET application. How do I configure it? Click Here

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  • Team Foundation Server (TFS) Team Build Custom Activity C# Code for Assembly Stamping

    - by Bob Hardister
    For the full context and guidance on how to develop and implement a custom activity in Team Build see the Microsoft Visual Studio Rangers Team Foundation Build Customization Guide V.1 at http://vsarbuildguide.codeplex.com/ There are many ways to stamp or set the version number of your assemblies. This approach is based on the build number.   namespace CustomActivities { using System; using System.Activities; using System.IO; using System.Text.RegularExpressions; using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Build.Client; [BuildActivity(HostEnvironmentOption.Agent)] public sealed class VersionAssemblies : CodeActivity { /// <summary> /// AssemblyInfoFileMask /// </summary> [RequiredArgument] public InArgument<string> AssemblyInfoFileMask { get; set; } /// <summary> /// SourcesDirectory /// </summary> [RequiredArgument] public InArgument<string> SourcesDirectory { get; set; } /// <summary> /// BuildNumber /// </summary> [RequiredArgument] public InArgument<string> BuildNumber { get; set; } /// <summary> /// BuildDirectory /// </summary> [RequiredArgument] public InArgument<string> BuildDirectory { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Publishes field values to the build report /// </summary> public OutArgument<string> DiagnosticTextOut { get; set; } // If your activity returns a value, derive from CodeActivity<TResult> and return the value from the Execute method. protected override void Execute(CodeActivityContext context) { // Obtain the runtime value of the input arguments string sourcesDirectory = context.GetValue(this.SourcesDirectory); string assemblyInfoFileMask = context.GetValue(this.AssemblyInfoFileMask); string buildNumber = context.GetValue(this.BuildNumber); string buildDirectory = context.GetValue(this.BuildDirectory); // ** Determine the version number values ** // Note: the format used here is: major.secondary.maintenance.build // ----------------------------------------------------------------- // Obtain the build definition name int nameStart = buildDirectory.LastIndexOf(@"\") + 1; string buildDefinitionName = buildDirectory.Substring(nameStart); // Set the primary.secondary.maintenance values // NOTE: these are hard coded in this example, but could be sourced from a file or parsed from a build definition name that includes them string p = "1"; string s = "5"; string m = "2"; // Initialize the build number string b; string na = "0"; // used for Assembly and Product Version instead of build number (see versioning best practices: **TBD reference) // Set qualifying product version information string productInfo = "RC2"; // Obtain the build increment number from the build number // NOTE: this code assumes the default build definition name format int buildIncrementNumberDelimterIndex = buildNumber.LastIndexOf("."); b = buildNumber.Substring(buildIncrementNumberDelimterIndex + 1); // Convert version to integer values int pVer = Convert.ToInt16(p); int sVer = Convert.ToInt16(s); int mVer = Convert.ToInt16(m); int bNum = Convert.ToInt16(b); int naNum = Convert.ToInt16(na); // ** Get all AssemblyInfo files and stamp them ** // Note: the mapping of AssemblyInfo.cs attributes to assembly display properties are as follows: // - AssemblyVersion = Assembly Version - used for the assembly version (does not change unless p, s or m values are changed) // - AssemblyFileVersion = File Version - used for the file version (changes with every build) // - AssemblyInformationalVersion = Product Version - used for the product version (can include additional version information) // ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Version assemblyVersion = new Version(pVer, sVer, mVer, naNum); Version newAssemblyFileVersion = new Version(pVer, sVer, mVer, bNum); Version productVersion = new Version(pVer, sVer, mVer); // Setup diagnostic fields int numberOfReplacements = 0; string addedAssemblyInformationalAttribute = "No"; // Enumerate over the assemblyInfo version attributes foreach (string attribute in new[] { "AssemblyVersion", "AssemblyFileVersion", "AssemblyInformationalVersion" }) { // Define the regular expression to find in each and every Assemblyinfo.cs files (which is for example 'AssemblyVersion("1.0.0.0")' ) Regex regex = new Regex(attribute + @"\(""\d+\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+""\)"); foreach (string file in Directory.EnumerateFiles(sourcesDirectory, assemblyInfoFileMask, SearchOption.AllDirectories)) { string text = File.ReadAllText(file); // Read the text from the AssemblyInfo file // If the AsemblyInformationalVersion attribute is not in the file, add it as the last line of the file // Note: by default the AssemblyInfo.cs files will not contain the AssemblyInformationalVersion attribute if (!text.Contains("[assembly: AssemblyInformationalVersion(\"")) { string lastLine = Environment.NewLine + "[assembly: AssemblyInformationalVersion(\"1.0.0.0\")]"; text = text + lastLine; addedAssemblyInformationalAttribute = "Yes"; } // Search for the expression Match match = regex.Match(text); if (match.Success) { // Get file attributes FileAttributes fileAttributes = File.GetAttributes(file); // Set file to read only File.SetAttributes(file, fileAttributes & ~FileAttributes.ReadOnly); // Insert AssemblyInformationalVersion attribute into the file text if does not already exist string newText = string.Empty; if (attribute == "AssemblyVersion") { newText = regex.Replace(text, attribute + "(\"" + assemblyVersion + "\")"); numberOfReplacements++; } if (attribute == "AssemblyFileVersion") { newText = regex.Replace(text, attribute + "(\"" + newAssemblyFileVersion + "\")"); numberOfReplacements++; } if (attribute == "AssemblyInformationalVersion") { newText = regex.Replace(text, attribute + "(\"" + productVersion + " " + productInfo + "\")"); numberOfReplacements++; } // Publish diagnostics to build report (diagnostic verbosity only) context.SetValue(this.DiagnosticTextOut, " Added AssemblyInformational Attribute: " + addedAssemblyInformationalAttribute + " Number of replacements: " + numberOfReplacements + " Build number: " + buildNumber + " Build directory: " + buildDirectory + " Build definition name: " + buildDefinitionName + " Assembly version: " + assemblyVersion + " New file version: " + newAssemblyFileVersion + " Product version: " + productVersion + " AssemblyInfo.cs Text Last Stamped: " + newText); // Write the new text in the AssemblyInfo file File.WriteAllText(file, newText); // restore the file's original attributes File.SetAttributes(file, fileAttributes); } } } } } }

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  • Where&rsquo;s my start button?

    - by Dennis Vroegop
    I have to be honest here for a moment. The one thing people most complain about when they talk about Windows 8 is that they miss the Start Button. You know, that dreaded thing that everybody hated when it was introduced… I usually don’t go into these kinds of discussions unless I am personally involved but this one I cannot let go. Why are people doing this? Windows 8 is a great OS. They have changed, updated and perfected so many things so there is enough to talk or write about. Yet, all articles or discussions come down to “Where’s my start button?” In order to save myself from having to explain this every single time I wrote this post and from now on I will simply refer to this blog when I get asked that question. Here it is. Your start menu is there. It’s right in front of your nose. It’s two dimensional, it’s got huge buttons (although they are more than just buttons, they’re alive and therefore called Live Tiles). Just go through those tiles and click what ever you want to start up. Don’t want to look for an item? Just start typing. Really it is that simple. When you are on the start screen just start typing (part of) the name of the program you want and you’ll find it.  As you see in the attached example I started typing “word” and it found Word, Wordfeud, Wordament etc. If you want to find something else besides a program (say you want to change the region you’re in) just click on Settings (it will already show you how many hits there are in that section). People, my request is: dive into something before you complain about it. Look around. This feature is so much easier to use than the old stuff. But you have to know about it. So. I won’t get into this discussion anymore.

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  • How to Configure Microsoft Word 2013 to Connect to Geekswithblogs

    - by Enrique Lima
    The first step in this process is to open Word 2013. Once there, you will have the different templates available. You will select Blog Post.  Once the template for Blog Post opens, you will have a dialog popup with the option to Register a Blog Account. And click on Register Now.  The next part of the dialog will prompt you to provide the New Blog Account details, starting with the type of Blog you have (SharePoint, WordPress, TypePad and others are listed). In our case for GeeksWithBlogs, we will select Other.  Now come the juicy details! Under the New Account dialog, you will have the API set to MetaWebLog.Then provide the Blog Post URL, this needs to be http://geekswithblogs.net/<your-account>/services/metablogapi.aspx (remember to change the <your-account> part with your info).Then, enter your User Name and Password, click OK and you should be set (you will receive a dialog letting you know information will be transferred).  Hope it works for you!

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  • Microsoft Build 2012 Day 1 Keynote Summary

    - by Tim Murphy
    So I have finally dried the tears after watching the Keynote for Build 2012.  This wasn’t because it was an emotional presentation, but because for the second year I missed the goodies.  Each on site attendee got a Surface RT, a Lumia 920 and a voucher for 100GB of SkyDrive storage. The event was opened with the announcement that in the three days since the launch of Windows 8 over 4 million upgrades have been sold.  I don’t care who you are that is an impressive stat.  Ballmer then spent a fair amount of time remaking the case for the Windows and Windows Phone platforms similar to what we have heard over the last to launch events. There were some cool, but non-essential demos.  The one that was the most fun was the Perceptive Pixel 82” slate device.  At first glance I wondered why I would ever want such a device, but then Ballmer explained it’s possible use for schools and boardrooms.  The actually made sense. Then things got strange.  Steve started explaining features that developers could leverage.  Usually this type of information is left to the product leads.  He focused on the integration with the Charms features such as Search and Share. Steve “Guggs” Guggenheim showed off an app that would appeal to my kids from Disney called “Agent P” which is base on Phineas and Ferb.  Then he got to the meat of the presentation.  We found out that you could add a tile that can be used to sell ad space.  In the same vein we also found out that you could use Microsoft’s, Paypal’s or any commerce engine of your own creation or choosing. For those who are interested in sports and especially developing sports apps you would have found the small presentation from Michael Bayle of ESPN.  He introduced the ESPN app which has tons of features.  For the developers in the crowd he also mentioned that ESPN has an API available at developer.espn.com. During the launch events we were told apps were coming.  In this presentation we were actually shown a scrolling list of logos and told about a couple of them.  Ballmer mentioned specifically Twitter, SAP and DropBox.  These are impressive names that were just a couple of the list impressive names. Steve Ballmer addressed the question of why you should develop for the Windows 8 platform.  He feels that Microsoft has the best commercial terms for developers, a better way to build apps than other platforms and a variety of form factors.  His key point though was the available volume of customers given the current Windows install base and assuming even a flat growth of the platform.  This he backed with a promise that Microsoft is going to do better at marketing and you won’t be able to avoid the ads that they are bringing out. The last section of the key note was present by Kevin Gallo from the Windows Phone team.  This was the real reason I tuned into the webcast.  He impressed upon those watching that the strength of developing for the Microsoft platform is the common programming model that now exist.  While there are difference between form factor implementations you can leverage code across them. He claimed that 90% of developer requests for Windows Phone 8 had been implemented.  These include: More controls with better performance Better live tiles including lock screen integration Speech support in custom apps Easier submission to the market place App camera integration VOIP and chat support Bluetooth and NFC support Native C++ development Direct 3D development   The quote from Kevin that stood out for me was that “Take your Dramamine and buckle your seatbelt type of games are coming to Windows Phone 8”.  He back this up by displaying a list of game development frameworks and then having Unity come out and do a demo. Ok, almost done … The last two things of note for me were the announcement that the SDK is immediately available at dev.windowsphone.com and that they were reducing the cost of an individual developer account to $8 for the next 8 days. Let the development commence. del.icio.us Tags: Build 2012,Windows 8,Windows Phone 8,Windows Phone

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  • WebAPI and MVC4 and OData

    - by Aligned
    I was looking closer into WebAPI, specificially how to use OData to avoid writing GetCustomerByCustomerId(int id) methods all over the place. I had problems just returning IQueryable<T> as some sites suggested in the WebpAPI (Assembly System.Web.Http.dll, v4.0.0.0).  I think things changed in the release version and the blog posts are still out of date. There is no [Queraable] as the answer to this question suggests. Once I get WebAPI.Odata Nuget package, and added the [Queryable] to the method http://localhost:57146/api/values/?$filter=Id%20eq%201 worked (don’t forget the ‘$’). Now the main question is whether I should do this and how to stop logged in users from sniffing the url and getting data for other users. I John V. Peterson has a post on securing WebAPI with headers and intercepting the call at that point. He had an update to use HttpMessageHandlers instead. I think I’ll use this to force the call to contain some kind of unique code for the user, but I’m still thinking about this. I will not expose this to the public, just to my calls with-in my Forms Authentication areas. Other links: http://robbincremers.me/2012/02/16/building-and-consuming-rest-services-with-asp-net-web-api-and-odata-support/ ~lots of good information John V Peterson example: https://github.com/johnvpetersen/ASPWebAPIExample ~ all data access goes through the WebApi and the web client doesn’t have a connection string ~ There is code library for calling the WebApi from MVC using the HttpClient. It’s a great starting point http://blogs.msdn.com/b/alexj/archive/2012/08/15/odata-support-in-asp-net-web-api.aspx ~ Beta (9/18/2012) Nuget package to help with what I want to do? ~ has a sample code project with examples http://blogs.msdn.com/b/alexj/archive/2012/08/15/odata-support-in-asp-net-web-api.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/alexj/archive/2012/08/21/web-api-queryable-current-support-and-tentative-roadmap.aspx http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10885868/asp-net-mvc4-rc-web-api-odata-filter-not-working-with-iqueryable JSON, pass the correct format in the header (Accept: application/json). $format=JSON doesn’t appear to be working. Async methods built into WebApi! Look for the GetAsync methods.

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  • Get your TFS 2012 task board demo ready in under 1 minute

    - by Tarun Arora
    Release Notes – http://tfsdemosetup.codeplex.com/  | Download | Source Code | Report a Bug | Ideas In this blog post, I’ll show you how to use the ‘TfsDemoSetup’ application to configure and setup the TFS 2012 task board for a demo in well less than 1 minute Step 1 – Note what you get with a newly created Team Project Create a new Team Project on TFS Preview         2. Click Create Project         3. The project creation has completed        4. Open the team web access and have a look at the home page Note – Since I created the project I am the only Team Member       A default Team by the name AdventureWorks Team has been created       A few sprints have been assigned to the default team but no dates for sprint start and end have been specified        A default Area Path for the team is missing       Step 2. Download the TFS Demo Setup Console application from Codeplex 1. Navigate to the TFS Demo Setup project on codeplex https://tfsdemosetup.codeplex.com/       2. Download Instructions and TFSDemo_<version>      3. Follow the steps in the Instructions.txt file      4. Unzip TFSDemo_<version> and open the target folder. Two important files in this folder, DemoDictionary.xml – This file contains the settings using which the demo environment will be setup SetupTfsDemo.exe – This will run the TFS demo environment setup application       Step 3 – Configure the setup (i.e. team name, members, sprint dates, etc) 1. Open up DemoDictionary.xml      2. Walkthrough DemoDictionary.xml             a. Basic Team Details         <Name> – Specify the name of the team         <Description> – Specify a description to go with the team         <SetAsDefaultTeam> – This accepts a value “true/false” when set to true, the newly created team will be set as the default team in the project         <BacklogIterationPath> – Specify a backlog iteration path for the team     b. Iterations – The iterations you specify here will be set as the Teams iterations        <Iterations> – Accepts multiple <Iteration> nodes.        <Iteration> – This is the most granular level of an Iteration        <Path> – The path to the sprint, sample values, Release 1\Sprint 1 or Release 2\Sprint 2        <StartDate> – The sprint start date, this accepts the format yyyy-MM-dd        <FinishDate> – The sprint finish date, this accepts the format yyyy-MM-dd     c. Team Members – Team Members that need to be added to the newly created team will be added under this section         <TeamMembers> – Accepts multiple <TeamMember> nodes.         <TeamMember> – This is the most granular level of a Team Member         <User> – This accepts the username, if you are running this against TFSPreview then the live id of the user will need to be passed. If you are running this against TFS Server then the user id i.e. Domain\UserName will need to be passed          <Team> – Specify the name of the team that you want the user to be assigned to.     d. WorkItems – This section will allow you to add work items (product backlog Items and linked tasks) to the current sprint of the team         <WorkItems> – Accepts multiple <WorkItem> nodes.         <WorkItem> – Accepts one <ProductBacklogItem> and multiple <Task> nodes         <ProductBacklogItem> – Used to create a Product Backlog Item type work item               <Title> – The title of the Product Backlog Item               <Description> – The description of the Product Backlog Type Work Item               <AssignedTo> – Used to assign the work item to a team member. The team member name or email address can be passed.               <Effort> – The total effort required to complete the Product Backlog Item         <Task> – Used to create a linked task to the Product Backlog type work item               <Title> – The title of the task type work item               <Description> – The description of the Task Type Work Item               <AssignedTo> – Used to assign the work item to a team member. The team member name or email address can be passed.               <RemainingWork> – The remaining effort to complete the task type work item Step 4 – Setup the demo environment against the newly created Team Project 1. Run SetupTfsDemo.exe    2. Enter Y or y on the prompt to continue setting up TFS Demo setup.     3. Select the newly created Team project, for this blogpost I had created the Team Project – AdventureWorks, so that is what I’ll select in the Connect to TFS Server pop up    3. Click Connect and follow the messages that are written to the console application       Step 5 – Validate that the Demo environment is set up as per the configuration 1. The team web access is all lit up You have a Sprint, a burn down chart, team members…    2. The team Demo has been added and has been set up as the default team    3. The Sprint Backlog Iteration path, Sprints and Sprint start and finish dates have been set    4. The default area path has been setup    5. Taskboard – Backlog items view    6. Taskboard – Team members view      Step 6 – Exception Handling! 1. This solution has been tested against TFS 2012 Service/Server for the Scrum 2.1 process template. 2. You are likely to run into an exception if you mess up the config file 3. If the team already exists and you run the console app to set up the team (with the same name) you will run into exceptions. Please remember this is just an alpha release, if you have any feedback please leave a comment! Didn’t I say that it would just take 1 minute, Enjoy!

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  • Visual Studio 2010 Productivity Tips and Tricks&ndash;Part 1: Extensions

    - by ToStringTheory
    I don’t know about you, but when it comes to development, I prefer my environment to be as free of clutter as possible.  It may surprise you to know that I have tried ReSharper, and did not like it, for the reason that I stated above.  In my opinion, it had too much clutter.  Don’t get me wrong, there were a couple of features that I did like about it (inversion of if blocks, code feedback), but for the most part, I actually felt that it was slowing me down. Introduction Another large factor besides intrusiveness/speed in my choice to dislike ReSharper would probably be that I have become comfortable with my current setup and extensions.  I believe I have a good collection, and am quite happy with what I can accomplish in a short amount of time.  I figured that I would share some of my tips/findings regarding Visual Studio productivity here, and see what you had to say. The first section of things that I would like to cover, are Visual Studio Extensions.  In case you have been living under a rock for the past several years, Extensions are available under the Tools menu in Visual Studio: The extension manager enables integrated access to the Microsoft Visual Studio Gallery online with access to a few thousand different extensions.  I have tried many extensions, but for reasons of lack reliability, usability, or features, have uninstalled almost all of them.  However, I have come across several that I find I can not do without anymore: NuGet Package Manager (Microsoft) Perspectives (Adam Driscoll) Productivity Power Tools (Microsoft) Web Essentials (Mads Kristensen) Extensions NuGet Package Manager To be honest, I debated on whether or not to put this in here.  Most people seem to have it, however, there was a time when I didn’t, and was always confused when blogs/posts would say to right click and “Add Package Reference…” which with one of the latest updates is now “Manage NuGet Packages”.  So, if you haven’t downloaded the NuGet Package Manager yet, or don’t know what it is, I would highly suggest downloading it now! Features Simply put, the NuGet Package Manager gives you a GUI and command line to access different libraries that have been uploaded to NuGet. Some of its features include: Ability to search NuGet for packages via the GUI, with information in the detail bar on the right. Quick access to see what packages are in a solution, and what packages have updates available, with easy 1-click updating. If you download a package that requires references to work on other NuGet packages, they will be downloaded and referenced automatically. Productivity Tip If you use any type of source control in Visual Studio as well as using NuGet packages, be sure to right-click on the solution and click "Enable NuGet Package Restore". What this does is add a NuGet package to the solution so that it will be checked in along side your solution, as well as automatically grab packages from NuGet on build if needed. This is an extremely simple system to use to manage your package references, instead of having to manually go into TFS and add the Packages folder. Perspectives I can't stand developing with just one monitor. Especially if it comes to debugging. The great thing about Visual Studio 2010, is that all of the panels and windows are floatable, and can dock to other screens. The only bad thing is, I don't use the same toolset with everything that I am doing. By this, I mean that I don't use all of the same windows for debugging a web application, as I do for coding a WPF application. Only thing is, Visual Studio doesn't save the screen positions for all of the undocked windows. So, I got curious one day and decided to check and see if there was an extension to help out. This is where I found Perspectives. Features Perspectives gives you the ability to configure window positions across any or your monitors, and then to save the positions in a profile. Perspectives offers a Panel to manage different presets/favorites, and a toolbar to add to the toolbars at the top of Visual Studio. Ability to 'Favorite' a profile to add it to the perspectives toolbar. Productivity Tip Take the time to setup profiles for each of your scenarios - debugging web/winforms/xaml, coding, maintenance, etc. Try to remember to use the profiles for a few days, and at the end of a week, you may find that your productivity was never better. Productivity Power Tools Ah, the Productivity Power Tools... Quite possibly one of my most used extensions, if not my most used. The tool pack gives you a variety of enhancements ranging from key shortcuts, interface tweaks, and completely new features to Visual Studio 2010. Features I don't want to bore you with all of the features here, so here are my favorite: Quick Find - Unobtrusive search box in upper-right corner of the code window. Great for searching in general, especially in a file. Solution Navigator - The 'Solution Explorer' on steroids. Easy to search for files, see defined members/properties/methods in files, and my favorite feature is the 'set as root' option. Updated 'Add Reference...' Dialog - This is probably my favorite enhancement period... The 'Add Reference...' dialog redone in a manner that resembles the Extension/Package managers. I especially love the ability to search through all of the references. "Ctrl - Click" for Definition - I am still getting used to this as I usually try to use my keyboard for everything, but I love the ability to hold Ctrl and turn property/methods/variables into hyperlinks, that you click on to see their definitions. Great for travelling down a rabbit hole in an application to research problems. While there are other commands/utilities, I find these to be the ones that I lean on the most for the usefulness. Web Essentials If you have do any type of web development in ASP .Net, ASP .Net MVC, even HTML, I highly suggest grabbing the Web Essentials right NOW! This extension alone is great for productivity in web development, and greatly decreases my development time on new features. Features Some of its best features include: CSS Previews - I say 'previews' because of the multiple kinds of previews in CSS that you get font-family, color, background/background-image previews. This is great for just tweaking UI slightly in different ways and seeing how they look in the CSS window at a glance. Live Preview - One word - awesome! This goes well with my multi-monitor setup. I put the site on one monitor in a Live Preview panel, and then as I make changes to CSS/cshtml/aspx/html, the preview window will update with each save/build automatically. For CSS, you can even turn on live-update, so as you are tweaking CSS, the style changes in real time. Great for tweaking colors or font-sizes. Outlining - Small, but I like to be able to collapse regions/declarations that are in the way of new work, or are just distracting. Commenting Shortcuts - I don't know why it wasn't included by default, but it is nice to have the key shortcuts for commenting working in the CSS editor as well. Productivity Tip When working on a site, hit CTRL-ALT-ENTER to launch the Live Preview window. Dock it to another monitor. When you make changes to the document/css, just save and glance at the other monitor. No need to alt tab, then alt tab before continuing editing. Conclusion These extensions are only the most useful and least intrusive - ones that I use every day. The great thing about Visual Studio 2010 is the extensibility options that it gives developers to utilize. Have an extension that you use that isn't intrusive, but isn't listed here? Please, feel free to comment. I love trying new things, and am always looking for new additions to my toolset of the most useful. Finally, please keep an eye out for Part 2 on key shortcuts in Visual Studio. Also, if you are visiting my site (http://tostringtheory.com || http://geekswithblogs.net/tostringtheory) from an actual browser and not a feed, please let me know what you think of the new styling!

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  • New DataCenter Options for Windows Azure

    - by ScottKlein
    Effective immediately, new compute and storage resource options are now available when selecting data center options in the Windows Azure Portal. "West US" and "East US" options are now available, for Compute and Storage. SQL Azure options for these two data centers will be available in the next few months. The official announcement can be found here.In terms of geo-replication:US East and West are paired together for Windows Azure Storage geo-replicationUS North and South are paired together for Windows Azure Storage geo-replicationThese two new data centers are now visible in the Windows Azure Management Portal effective immediately. Compute and Storage pricing remains the same across all data centers. Get started with Windows Azure through the free 90 day trial.

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  • Content Based Routing with BRE and ESB

    - by Christopher House
    I've been working with BizTalk 2009 and the ESB toolkit for the past couple of days.  This is actually my first exposure to ESB and so far I'm pleased with how easy it is to work with. Initially we had planned to use UDDI for storing endpoint information.  However after discussing this with my client, we opted to look at BRE instead of UDDI since we're already storing transforms in BRE.  Fortunately making the change to BRE from UDDI was quite simple.  This solution of course has the added advantage of not needing to go through the convoluted process of registering our endpoints in UDDI. The first thing to remember if you want to do content based routing with BRE and ESB is that the pipleines included in the ESB toolkit don't include disassembler components.  This means that you'll need to first create a custom recieve pipeline with the necessary disassembler for your message type as well as the ESB components, itinerary selector and dispather. Next you need to create a BRE policy.  The ESB.ContextInfo vocabulary contains vocabulary links for the various items in the ESB context dictionary.  In this vocabulary, you'll find an item called Context Message Type, use this as the left hand side of your condition.  Set the right hand side to your message type, something like http://your.message.namespace/#yourrootelement.  Now find the ESB.EndPointInfo vocabulary.  This contains links to all the properties related to endpoint information.  Use the various set operators in your rule's action to configure your endpoint. In the example above, I'm using the WCF-SQL adapter. Now that the hard work is out of the way, you just need to configure the resolver in your itinerary. Nothing complicated here.  Just select BRE as your resolver implementation and select your policy from the drop-down list.  Note that when you select a policy, the Version field will be automatically filled in with the version of your policy.  If you leave this as-is, the resolver will always use that policy version.  Alternatively, you can clear the version number and the resolver will use the highest deployed version.

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  • May 2010 Chicago Architects Group Meeting

    - by Tim Murphy
    The Chicago Architects Group will be holding its next meeting on May 18th.  Please come and join us and get involved in our architect community. Register Presenter: Scott Seely  Topic: Azure For Architects       Location: TechNexus 200 S. Wacker Dr., Suite 1500 Room A/B Chicago, IL 60606 Time: 5:30 - Doors open at 5:00 del.icio.us Tags: Chicago Architects Group,Azure,Scott Seely

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  • Remove Trusted Site Popup

    - by Mike Koerner
    I keep getting this The current webpage is trying to open a site in your Trusted sites list.  Do you want to allow this? Solution is here http://forums.techarena.in/technology-internet/1218469.htm To turn it off, open your browser, go to Tools > Internet Options > Security > select Trusted Sites > click Custom Level to view the browser settings. "Websites in less privileged web content zone " could be set to prompt. You may want to change the setting to enable or disable instead.

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  • Google music search: a better way to listen.

    - by anirudha
    somebody who want to listen music  pay much more to some online music store for online listening. otherwise they experience bad or low quality on YouTube. who is illegal  because uploader not have a permission or right to upload the document and their is no guarantee that they not put their ads or quality as same. now forget YouTube and all other because Google music search is much better just go their search the song by movies name or song and just click and listen. the quality is much better then other but it is not Google. the result they put comes from other website. i feel a thing goes wrong in Google music  search  that if i search “sajda” they never show me result about “sadka” because the word in common life use as same both. but the song may be starting from  “sajda” or “sadka”. i thing that they put the link that Do you means “Sadka” when i search sajda that it is better thing just like many online book store show the different keyword related to your keyword when you search their. like you search for a book on online book store they show you some different keyword when they serve the result and show related product or books when you go to a product page. after thinking all it is a better option for user to feel a better quality music without search hassle.

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  • Windows Azure SDK 1.3 addresses early adopter feedback

    - by Eric Nelson
    At the end of November 2010 we released a new version of the Windows Azure SDK which contains many new features driven by the great feedback of early adopters plus a shiny new portal. New Portal implemented in Silverlight: The new portal is implemented using Silverlight and replaces the (IMHO rather clunky) original HTML + JavaScript portal. It is 100% better although does still have a few bugs. Enjoy! P.S. You can if you wish still use the old portal:   New runtime functionality: The following functionality is now generally available through the Windows Azure SDK and Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio and the new Windows Azure Management Portal: Elevated Privileges and Full IIS. You can now run a portion or all of your code in Web and Worker roles with elevated administrator privileges. The Web role now provides Full IIS functionality, which enables multiple IIS sites per Web role and the ability to install IIS modules. Remote Desktop functionality enables you to connect to a running instance of your application or service in order to monitor activity and troubleshoot common problems. Windows Server 2008 R2 Roles: Windows Azure now supports Windows Server 2008 R2 in its Web, worker and VM roles. This new support enables you to take advantage of the full range of Windows Server 2008 R2 features such as IIS 7.5, AppLocker, and enhanced command-line and automated management using PowerShell Version 2.0. New runtime functionality – in beta: Windows Azure Virtual Machine Role: Support for more types of new and existing Windows applications will soon be available with the introduction of the Virtual Machine (VM) role. You can move more existing applications to Windows Azure, reducing the need to make costly code or deployment changes. Extra Small Windows Azure Instance, which is priced at $0.05 per compute hour, provides developers with a cost-effective training and development environment. Developers can also use the Extra Small instance to prototype cloud solutions at a lower cost. Windows Azure Connect: (formerly Project Sydney), which enables a simple and easy-to-manage mechanism to set up IP-based network connectivity between on-premises and Windows Azure resources, is the first Windows Azure Virtual Network feature that we’re making available as a CTP. You can sign up for any of the betas via the Windows Azure Management Portal. Improved processes and simplified operations New portal! (see above) Access to new diagnostic information including the ability to click on a role to see role type, deployment time and last reboot time A new sign-up process that dramatically reduces the number of steps needed to sign up for Windows Azure. New scenario based Windows Azure Platform forums to help answer questions and share knowledge more efficiently. Multiple Service Administrators: Windows Azure now supports multiple Windows Live IDs to have administrator privileges on the same Windows Azure account. The objective is to make it easy for a team to work on the same Windows Azure account while using their individual Windows Live IDs.   Related Links Please also let us know through Microsoft Platform Ready if and when you intend to build an application using the Windows Azure Platform. Or indeed if you already have (Well done). You will get access to some great benefits if you do (more on that in a future post). It also really helps us better understand the demand out there which directly impacts how we will plan the next six months of activities around the Windows Azure Platform. Visit Microsoft Platform Ready to tell us about your plans for your applications UK based? Interested in the Windows Azure Platform? Join http://ukazure.ning.com Get started with the Windows Azure Platform http://bit.ly/startazure

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  • The Current week dates

    - by MoezMousavi
    The Current week dates Might be a bit vierd as we normaly not writing a multicultural web site. So not very frequently using CultureInfo however, it is  actully quite good to use it to get the week days.               CultureInfo info = Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture;             DayOfWeek firstday = info.DateTimeFormat.FirstDayOfWeek;             DayOfWeek today = info.Calendar.GetDayOfWeek(DateTime.Now);               int diff = today - firstday;               DateTime firstDate = DateTime.Now.AddDays(-diff);             DateTime lastDate = firstDate.AddDays(6);

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  • Learning Electronics & the Arduino Microcontroller

    - by Chris Williams
    Lately, I've had a growing interest in Electronics & Microcontrollers. I'm a loyal reader of Make Magazine and thoroughly enjoy seeing all the various projects in each issue, even though I rarely try to make any of them. I've been reading and watching videos about the Arduino, which is an open source Microcontroller and software project that the people at Make (and a lot of other folks) are pretty hot about. Even the prebuilt hardware is remarkably inexpensive , although there are kits available to build one from the base components. (Full disclosure: I bought my first soldering iron... EVER... just last week, so I fully acknowledge the likelihood of making some mistakes. That's why I'm not trying to do the "build it yourself" kit just yet. It's also another reason to be happy the hardware is so cheap.) There are a number of different Arduino boards available, but the two that have really piqued my interest are the Arduino UNO and the NETduino. The UNO is a very popular board, with a number of features and is under $35 which means I won't hurl myself off a bridge when I inevitably destroy it. The NETduino is very similar to the Arduino UNO and has the added advantage of being programmable with... you guessed it... C#. I'm actually ordering both boards and some miscellaneous other doodads to go with them.  There are a few good websites for this sort of thing, including www.makershed.com and www.adafruit.com. The price difference is negligible, so in my case, I'm ordering from Maker Shed (the Make Magazine people) because I want to support them. :) I've also picked up a few O'Reilly books on the subject which I am looking forward to reading & reviewing: Make: Electronics, Arduino: A Quick Start Guide and Getting Started With Arduino (all three of which arrived on my doorstep today.) This ties in with my "learn more about robotics" goals as well, since I'll need a good understanding of Electronics if I want to move past Lego Mindstorms eventually.

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