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• F# for the C# Programmer

  - by mbcrump

  Are you a C# Programmer and can’t make it past a day without seeing or hearing someone mention F#?  Today, I’m going to walk you through your first F# application and give you a brief introduction to the language. Sit back this will only take about 20 minutes. Introduction Microsoft's F# programming language is a functional language for the .NET framework that was originally developed at Microsoft Research Cambridge by Don Syme. In October 2007, the senior vice president of the developer division at Microsoft announced that F# was being officially productized to become a fully supported .NET language and professional developers were hired to create a team of around ten people to build the product version. In September 2008, Microsoft released the first Community Technology Preview (CTP), an official beta release, of the F# distribution . In December 2008, Microsoft announced that the success of this CTP had encouraged them to escalate F# and it is now will now be shipped as one of the core languages in Visual Studio 2010 , alongside C++, C# 4.0 and VB. The F# programming language incorporates many state-of-the-art features from programming language research and ossifies them in an industrial strength implementation that promises to revolutionize interactive, parallel and concurrent programming. Advantages of F# F# is the world's first language to combine all of the following features: Type inference: types are inferred by the compiler and generic definitions are created automatically. Algebraic data types: a succinct way to represent trees. Pattern matching: a comprehensible and efficient way to dissect data structures. Active patterns: pattern matching over foreign data structures. Interactive sessions: as easy to use as Python and Mathematica. High performance JIT compilation to native code: as fast as C#. Rich data structures: lists and arrays built into the language with syntactic support. Functional programming: first-class functions and tail calls. Expressive static type system: finds bugs during compilation and provides machine-verified documentation. Sequence expressions: interrogate huge data sets efficiently. Asynchronous workflows: syntactic support for monadic style concurrent programming with cancellations. Industrial-strength IDE support: multithreaded debugging, and graphical throwback of inferred types and documentation. Commerce friendly design and a viable commercial market. Lets try a short program in C# then F# to understand the differences. Using C#: Create a variable and output the value to the console window: Sample Program. using System;   namespace ConsoleApplication9 {     class Program     {         static void Main(string[] args)         {             var a = 2;             Console.WriteLine(a);             Console.ReadLine();         }     } } A breeze right? 14 Lines of code. We could have condensed it a bit by removing the “using” statment and tossing the namespace. But this is the typical C# program. Using F#: Create a variable and output the value to the console window: To start, open Visual Studio 2010 or Visual Studio 2008. Note: If using VS2008, then please download the SDK first before getting started. If you are using VS2010 then you are already setup and ready to go. So, click File-> New Project –> Other Languages –> Visual F# –> Windows –> F# Application. You will get the screen below. Go ahead and enter a name and click OK. Now, you will notice that the Solution Explorer contains the following: Double click the Program.fs and enter the following information. Hit F5 and it should run successfully. Sample Program. open System let a = 2        Console.WriteLine a As Shown below: Hmm, what? F# did the same thing in 3 lines of code. Show me the interactive evaluation that I keep hearing about. The F# development environment for Visual Studio 2010 provides two different modes of execution for F# code: Batch compilation to a .NET executable or DLL. (This was accomplished above). Interactive evaluation. (Demo is below) The interactive session provides a > prompt, requires a double semicolon ;; identifier at the end of a code snippet to force evaluation, and returns the names (if any) and types of resulting definitions and values. To access the F# prompt, in VS2010 Goto View –> Other Window then F# Interactive. Once you have the interactive window type in the following expression: 2+3;; as shown in the screenshot below: I hope this guide helps you get started with the language, please check out the following books for further information. F# Books for further reading   Foundations of F# Author: Robert Pickering An introduction to functional programming with F#. Including many samples, this book walks through the features of the F# language and libraries, and covers many of the .NET Framework features which can be leveraged with F#.       Functional Programming for the Real World: With Examples in F# and C# Authors: Tomas Petricek and Jon Skeet An introduction to functional programming for existing C# developers written by Tomas Petricek and Jon Skeet. This book explains the core principles using both C# and F#, shows how to use functional ideas when designing .NET applications and presents practical examples such as design of domain specific language, development of multi-core applications and programming of reactive applications.

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• SQL Saturday 43 in Redmond

  - by AjarnMark

  I attended my first SQLSaturday a couple of days ago, SQLSaturday #43 in Redmond (at Microsoft).  I got there really early, primarily because I forgot how fast I can get there from my home when nobody else is on the road.  On a weekday in rush hour traffic, that would have taken two hours to get there.  I gave myself 90 minutes, and actually got there in about 45.  Crazy! I made the mistake of going to the main Microsoft campus, but that’s not where the event was being held.  Instead it was in a big Microsoft conference center on the other side of the highway.  Fortunately, I had the address with me and quickly realized my mistake.  When I got back on track, I noticed that there were bright yellow signs out on the street corner that looked like they said they were for SOL Saturday, which actually was appropriate since it was the sunniest day around here in a long time. Since I was there so early, the registration was just getting setup, so I found Greg Larsen who was coordinating things and offered to help.  He put me to work with a group of people organizing the pre-printed raffle tickets and stuffing swag bags. I had never been to a SQLSaturday before this one, so I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect even though I have read about a few on some blogs.  It makes sense that each one will be a little bit different since they are almost completely volunteer driven, and the whole concept is still in its early stages.  I have been to the PASS Summit for the last several years, and was hoping for a smaller version of that.  Now, it’s not really fair to compare one free day of training run entirely by volunteers with a multi-day, $1,000+ event put on under the direction of a professional event management company.  But there are some parallels. At this SQLSaturday, there was no opening general session, just coffee and pastries in the common area / expo hallway and straight into the first group of sessions.  I don’t know if that was because there was no single room large enough to hold everyone, or for other reasons.  This worked out okay, but the organization guy in me would have preferred to have even a 15 minute welcome message from the organizers with a little overview of the day.  Even something as simple as, “Thanks to persons X, Y, and Z for helping put this together…Sessions will start in 20 minutes and are all in rooms down this hallway…the bathrooms are on the other side of the conference center…lunch today is pizza and we would like to thank sponsor Q for providing it.”  It doesn’t need to be much, certainly not a full-blown Keynote like at the PASS Summit, but something to use as a rallying point to pull everyone together and get the day off to an official start would be nice.  Again, there may have been logistical reasons why that was not feasible here.  I’m just putting out my thoughts for other SQLSaturday coordinators to consider. The event overall was great.  I believe that there were over 300 in attendance, and everything seemed to run smoothly.  At least from an attendee’s point of view where there was plenty of muffins in the morning and pizza in the afternoon, with plenty of pop to drink.  And hey, if you’ve got the food and drink covered, a lot of other stuff could go wrong and people will be very forgiving.  But as I said, everything appeared to run pretty smoothly, at least until Buck Woody showed up in his Oracle shirt.  Other than that, the volunteers did a great job! I was a little surprised by how few people in my own backyard that I know.  It makes sense if you really think about it, given how many companies must be using SQL Server around here.  I guess I just got spoiled coming into the PASS Summit with a few contacts that I already knew would be there.  Perhaps I have been spending too much time with too few people at the Summits and I need to step out and meet more folks.  Of course, it also is different since the Summit is the big national event and a number of the folks I know are spread out across the country, so the Summit is the only time we’re all in the same place at the same time.  I did make a few new contacts at SQLSaturday, and bumped into a couple of people that I knew (and a couple others that I only knew from Twitter, and didn’t even realize that they were here in the area). Other than the sheer entertainment value of Buck Woody’s session, the one that was probably the greatest value for me was a quick introduction to PowerShell.  I have not done anything with it yet, but I think it will be a good tool to use to implement my plans for automated database recovery testing.  I saw just enough at the session to take away some of the intimidation factor, and I am getting ready to jump in and see what I can put together in the next few weeks.  And that right there made the investment worthwhile.  So I encourage you, if you have the opportunity to go to a SQLSaturday event near you, go for it!

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• Use Drive Mirroring for Instant Backup in Windows 7

  - by Trevor Bekolay

  Even with the best backup solution, a hard drive crash means you’ll lose a few hours of work. By enabling drive mirroring in Windows 7, you’ll always have an up-to-date copy of your data. Windows 7’s mirroring – which is only available in Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions – is a software implementation of RAID 1, which means that two or more disks are holding the exact same data. The files are constantly kept in sync, so that if one of the disks fails, you won’t lose any data. Note that mirroring is not technically a backup solution, because if you accidentally delete a file, it’s gone from both hard disks (though you may be able to recover the file). As an additional caveat, having mirrored disks requires changing them to “dynamic disks,” which can only be read within modern versions of Windows (you may have problems working with a dynamic disk in other operating systems or in older versions of Windows). See this Wikipedia page for more information. You will need at least one empty disk to set up disk mirroring. We’ll show you how to mirror an existing disk (of equal or lesser size) without losing any data on the mirrored drive, and how to set up two empty disks as mirrored copies from the get-go. Mirroring an Existing Drive Click on the start button and type partitions in the search box. Click on the Create and format hard disk partitions entry that shows up. Alternatively, if you’ve disabled the search box, press Win+R to open the Run window and type in: diskmgmt.msc The Disk Management window will appear. We’ve got a small disk, labeled OldData, that we want to mirror in a second disk of the same size. Note: The disk that you will use to mirror the existing disk must be unallocated. If it is not, then right-click on it and select Delete Volume… to mark it as unallocated. This will destroy any data on that drive. Right-click on the existing disk that you want to mirror. Select Add Mirror…. Select the disk that you want to use to mirror the existing disk’s data and press Add Mirror. You will be warned that this process will change the existing disk from basic to dynamic. Note that this process will not delete any data on the disk! The new disk will be marked as a mirror, and it will starting copying data from the existing drive to the new one. Eventually the drives will be synced up (it can take a while), and any data added to the E: drive will exist on both physical hard drives. Setting Up Two New Drives as Mirrored If you have two new equal-sized drives, you can format them to be mirrored copies of each other from the get-go. Open the Disk Management window as described above. Make sure that the drives are unallocated. If they’re not, and you don’t need the data on either of them, right-click and select Delete volume…. Right-click on one of the unallocated drives and select New Mirrored Volume…. A wizard will pop up. Click Next. Click on the drives you want to hold the mirrored data and click Add. Note that you can add any number of drives. Click Next. Assign it a drive letter that makes sense, and then click Next. You’re limited to using the NTFS file system for mirrored drives, so enter a volume label, enable compression if you want, and then click Next. Click Finish to start formatting the drives. You will be warned that the new drives will be converted to dynamic disks. And that’s it! You now have two mirrored drives. Any files added to E: will reside on both physical disks, in case something happens to one of them. Conclusion While the switch from basic to dynamic disks can be a problem for people who dual-boot into another operating system, setting up drive mirroring is an easy way to make sure that your data can be recovered in case of a hard drive crash. Of course, even with drive mirroring, we advocate regular backups to external drives or online backup services. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Rebit Backup Software [Review]Disabling Instant Search in Outlook 2007Restore Files from Backups on Windows Home ServerSecond Copy 7 [Review]Backup Windows Home Server Folders to an External Hard Drive TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup Windows Firewall with Advanced Security – How To Guides Sculptris 1.0, 3D Drawing app AceStock, a Tiny Desktop Quote Monitor Gmail Button Addon (Firefox) Hyperwords addon (Firefox) Backup Outlook 2010

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• Profit's COLLABORATE 10 Session Selections

  - by Aaron Lazenby

  COLLABORATE 2010 is a mere 11 days away (thanks for the reminder @ocp_advisor). Every year I publish my a list of the sessions I think reflect some of the more interesting people/trends in enterprise IT. I should be at all of these sessions, so drop by for a chat--I'll be the guy tapping out emails on my iPad... Monday, April 19 9:15 a.m. - Keynote: Transforming Customer Value, Delivering Highest Customer Service Location: Keynote Hall I never miss Charles Phillips when he speaks--it's one of the best opportunities to get an update on Oracle product developments and strategy. And there's certainly occasion for an update: this will be Phillips' first big presentation since the Oracle + Sun Strategy Update in late January. Phillips is appearing with Oracle Executive Vice President of Development Thomas Kurian which means there should be some excellent information about how customers are using Oracle's complete software and hardware stack to address enterprise IT challenges. The session should provide some excellent context for the rest of the week's session...don't miss it. 10:45 a.m. - Oracle Fusion Applications: Functional Overview Location: South Seas FI met Basheer Khan at COLLABORATE 08 in Denver and have followed his work ever since. He's a former member of the OAUG Board of Directors, an Oracle ACE, and a charismatic enterprise IT expert. Having worked with the Oracle Usability Advisory Board, Basheer should have some fascinating insights to share about the features and interface of Oracle's Fusine Applications. This session, along with Nadia Bendjedou's "10 Things You Can Do Today to Prepare for the Next Generation Applications" (on Tuesday, April 20 8:00 a.m. in room 3662) should give attendees the update they need about Oracle's next-generation applications.   1:15p.m. - E-Business Suite in the Amazon Cloud Location: South Seas HI did my first full-fledged cloud computing coverage at last year's COLLABORATE show (check out my interview with Oracle's Bill Hodak), where I first learned about Amazon's EC2 offering. I've since talked with several people who have provisioned server space on Amazon's cloud with great results. So I'm looking forward to watching the audience configure an instance of the Oracle E-Business Suite release 12 on the cloud while Chuck Edwards from Blue Gecko drives. This session should take some of the mist and vapor out of the cloud conversation.2:30 p.m. - "Zero Sign-on" to EBS - Enabling 96000 Users to Login to EBS Without User Maintenance Location: South Seas HI'll be sitting tight in South Seas H for the next session on Monday where Doug Pepka, a ten-year veteran of communications giant Comcast, will be walking attendees through a massive single sign-on (SSO) project across the enterprise. I'm working on a story about SSO for the August issue of Profit, so this session has real practical value to me. Plus the proliferation of user account logins--both personal and professional--makes this a critical usability/change management issue for IT leaders planning for successful long-term IT implementations.   Tuesday 8:00 am  - Information Architecture for Men in Kilts Location: SURF AGetting to a 8:00 a.m. presentation is a tall order in Las Vegas, but presenter Billy Cripe will make it worth your effort. Not only is the title of this session great, but the content should appeal to any IT strategist looking to push the limits of Web 2.0 technologies in the enterprise. Cripe is a product management director of Enterprise 2.0 and Enterprise Content Management at Oracle, author of Reshaping Your Business with Web 2.0, and a prolific blogger--he knows how information architecture is critical to and enterprise 2.0 implementation.    10:30a.m. - Oracle Virtualization: From Desktop to Data Center Location: REEF FData center virtualization is still one of the best ways to reduce the cost of running enterprise IT. With the addition of Sun products, Oracle has the industry's most comprehensive virtualization portfolio. I must admit, I'm no expert in this subject. So I'm looking forward to Monica Kumar's presentation so I can get up to speed.   Wednesday 8:00 a.m. - The Art of the Steal Location: Mandalay Bay Ballroom JMany will know Frank Abagnale from Steven Spielberg's 2002 film "Catch Me if You Can." The one-time con man and international fugitive who swindled $2.5 million in forged checks went on to help U.S. federal officials investigate fraud cases. Now the CEO of Abagnale and Associates, he has become an invaluable source to the business world on the subject of fraud and fraud protection. With identity theft and digital fraud still on the rise, this session should be an entertaining, and sobering, education on the threats facing businesses and customers around the world. A great way to start Wednesday.1:00 p.m. - Google Wave: Will it replace e-mail as we know it today? Location: SURF EBy many assessments (my own included), Google Wave is a bit of an open collaboration failure. It may seem like an odd reason for me to be excited about this session, but I'm looking forward to the chance to revisit the technology. Also, this is a great case study in connecting free, available Internet tools to existing enterprise computing environments--an issue that IT strategists must contend with as workers spreads out and choose their own productivity tools.  

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• Center Pictures and Other Objects in Office 2007 & 2010

  - by Matthew Guay

  Sometimes it can be difficult to center a picture in a document just by dragging it dragging it around. Today we show you how to center pictures, images, and other objects perfectly in Word and PowerPoint. Note: For this tutorial we’re using Office 2010, but the steps are nearly identical in 2007. Centering a Picture in Word First let’s insert a picture into our document.  Click the Insert tab, and then click Picture. Once you select the picture you want, it will be added to your document.  Usually, pictures are added wherever your curser was in the document, so in a blank document it will be added at the top left. Also notice Picture Tools show up in the Ribbon after inserting an image. Note: The following menu items are available in Picture Tools Format tab which is displayed when you select the object or image you’re working with. How do we align the picture just like we want?  Click Position to get some quick placement options, including centered in the middle of the document or on the top.    However, for more advanced placement, we can use the Align tool.  If Word isn’t maximized, you may only see the icon without the “Align” label. Notice the tools were grayed out in the menu by default.  To be able to change the Alignment, we need to first change the text wrap settings. Click the Wrap Text button, and any option other than “In Line with Text”.  Your choice will depend on the document you’re writing, just choose the option that works best in the document.   Now, select the Align tools again.  You can now position your image precisely with these options. Align Center will position your picture in the center of the page widthwise. Align Middle will put the picture in the middle of the page height-wise. This works the same with textboxes.  Simply click the Align button in the Format tab, and you can center it in the page. And if you’d like to align several objects together, simply select them all, click Group, and then select Group from the menu.   Now, in the align tools, you can center the whole group on your page for a heading, or whatever you want to use the pictures for. These steps also work the same with Office 2007. Center objects in PowerPoint This works similar in PowerPoint, except that pictures are automatically set for square wrapping automatically, so you don’t have to change anything.  Simply insert the picture or other object of your choice, click Align, and choose the option you want. Additionally, if one object is already aligned like you want, drag another object near it and you will see a Smart Guide to help you align or center the second object with the first.  This only works with shapes in PowerPoint 2010 beta, but will work with pictures, textboxes, and media in the final release this summer. Conclusion These are good methods for centering images and objects in Word and PowerPoint.  From designing perfect headers to emphasizing your message in a PowerPoint presentation, this is something we’ve found useful and hope you will too. Since we’re talking about Office here, it’s worth mentioning that Microsoft has announced the Technology Guarantee Program for Office 2010. Essentially what this means is, if you purchase a version of Office 2007 between March 5th and September 30th of this year, when Office 2010 is released you’ll be able to upgrade to it for free! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Add or Remove Apps from the Microsoft Office 2007 or 2010 SuiteAdd More Functions To Office 2007 By Installing Add-InsCustomize Your Welcome Picture Choices in Windows VistaEasily Rotate Pictures In Word 2007Add Effects To Your Pictures in Word 2007 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Discover New Bundled Feeds in Google Reader Play Music in Chrome by Simply Dragging a File 15 Great Illustrations by Chow Hon Lam Easily Sync Files & Folders with Friends & Family Amazon Free Kindle for PC Download Stretch popurls.com with a Stylish Script (Firefox)

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, November 02, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, November 02, 2011Popular ReleasesWYGIWYS Driver: 1.1.2.0 release: Win32, x86, kernel mode driver.Reset IPv6: 1.0.0.0: First release. Only works for Spanish and English operating system editions.BExplorer (Better Explorer): Better Explorer 2.0.0.631 Alpha: Changelog: Added: Some new functions in ribbon Added: Possibility to choose displayed columns Added: Basic Search Fixed: Some bugs after navigation Fixed: Attempt to fix slow navigation and slow start Known issues: - BreadcrumbBar fails on some situations - Basic search not work quite well in some situations Please if anyone find bugs be kind and report them at the Issue Tracker! Thanks!DotNetNuke® Community Edition: 05.06.04: Major Highlights Fixed issue with upgrades on systems that had upgraded the Telerik library to 6.0.0 Fixed issue with Razor Host upgrade to 5.6.3 The logic for module administration checks contains incorrect logic in 1 place, opening the possibility of a user with edit permissions gaining access to functionality they should not have through a particularly crafted url Security FixesBrowsers support the ability to remember common strings such as usernames/addresses etc. Code was adde...Terminals: Version 2.0 - Beta 2 Release: The team has finally put the nail into the official release date for version 2.0. As bugs are winding down on the 2.0 Roadmap we decided to push out another build - the first 2.0 Beta build. Please take time to use and abuse this release. We left logging in place, and this is a debug build so be sure to submit your logs on each bug reported, and please do report all bugs! Check the source code page on the site, this beta includes all commits since (and including) the 90428 check-in back i...iTuner - The iTunes Companion: iTuner 1.4.4322: Added German (unverified, apologies if incorrect) Properly source invariant resources with correct resIDs Replaced obsolete lyric providers with working providers Fix Pseudolater to correctly morph every third char Fix null reference in CatalogBaseTrack Folder Changes: Track Folder Changes 1.0: Track Folder Changes 1.0 (binary)Windows Workflow Foundation on Codeplex: Microsoft.Activities v1.8.8: Microsoft.Activities Overview How do I install Microsoft.Activities? Updates in this release9318Technical Analysis Engine for .NET: Technical Analysis Engine 1.25: What's new in the 1.25 release (2011-11-01): - Added Williams %R indicator - Added Moving Average Envelopes indicatorBF3Rcon.NET: BF3Rcon 3.0: This release is targeted for RCON documentation based on R3. Everything should be beta stable, but it's alpha because I haven't been able to fully test it. When a stable release is ready, a proper changelog will be kept. Important Edit: There's one method that will keep this from working in Mono. GeneratePasswordHash uses void HashAlgorithm.Dispose(), which isn't in Mono. This will have to be changed to Clear() in the next release. If anyone needs a Mono version of this immediately, you can...BoxWorld: BoxWorld_2011.10.30: BoxWorld - 8.0.1110.30 This is the initial release of BoxWorld. I'd recommend downloading the installer as it contains the compiled code and everything all nicely contained. By default, you end up with this directory structure: C:\Program Files\ViperWorks\BoxWorld C:\Program Files\ViperWorks\BoxWorld\Data C:\Program Files\ViperWorks\BoxWorld\Interface C:\Program Files\ViperWorks\BoxWorld\Source In the root you have the compiled EXE files, one for the main release, one for the LITE release ...VidCoder: 1.2.1: Fixed a couple regressions: video encoder was blank in queue and crashes with the High Profile preset when opening the Settings window. Fixed problem with auto-update introduced in 1.2.0. If you have 1.2.0 you will need to update manually to get this.Koober: Koober - The Ebook Creator 0.2: The official release of Koober as Open source. Koober is a ebook creator for Windows, and Koob Reader is the reader.patterns & practices: Enterprise Library Contrib: Enterprise Library Contrib - 5.0 (Oct 2011): This release of Enterprise Library Contrib is based on the Microsoft patterns & practices Enterprise Library 5.0 core and contains the following: Common extensionsTypeConfigurationElement<T> - A Polymorphic Configuration Element without having to be part of a PolymorphicConfigurationElementCollection. AnonymousConfigurationElement - A Configuration element that can be uniquely identified without having to define its name explicitly. Data Access Application Block extensionsMySql Provider - ...Network Monitor Open Source Parsers: Network Monitor Parsers 3.4.2748: The Network Monitor Parsers packages contain parsers for more than 400 network protocols, including RFC based public protocols and protocols for Microsoft products defined in the Microsoft Open Specifications for Windows and SQL Server. NetworkMonitor_Parsers.msi is the base parser package which defines parsers for commonly used public protocols and protocols for Microsoft Windows. In this release, NetowrkMonitor_Parsers.msi continues to improve quality and fix bugs. It has included the fo...Media Companion: MC 3.420b Weekly: Ensure .NET 4.0 Full Framework is installed. (Available from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=17718) Ensure the NFO ID fix is applied when transitioning from versions prior to 3.416b. (Details here) Movies Fixed: Fanart and poster scraping issues TV Shows (Re)Added: Rebuild single show Fixed: Issue when shows are moved from original location Ability to handle " for actor nicknames Crash when episode name contains "<" (does not scrape yet) Clears fanart when switch...patterns & practices - Unity: Unity 3.0 for .NET4.5 Preview: The Unity 3.0.1026.0 Preview enables Unity to work on .NET 4.5 with both the WinRT and desktop profiles. The major changes include: Unity projects updated to target .NET 4.5. Dynamic build plans modified to use compiled lambda expressions instead of Reflection.Emit Converting reflection to use the new TypeInfo for reflection. Projects updated to work with the Microsoft Visual Studio 2011 Preview Notes/Known Issues: The Microsoft.Practices.Unity.UnityServiceLocator class cannot be use...Managed Extensibility Framework: MEF 2 Preview 4: Detailed information on this release is available on the BCL team blog.AcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.6: ?? ● AcDown??????????、??????，??????????????????????，???????Acfun、Bilibili、???、???、???、Tucao.cc、SF???、?????80????，???????????、?????????。 ● AcDown???????????????????????????，???，???????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7 ????????????? ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)?.NET Framework 2.0???(x64)，?????"?????????"??? ??????????????，??????????： ??"AcDown?????"????????? ?? v3.6?? ??“????”...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.33: Add JSParser.ParseExpression method to parse JavaScript expressions rather than source-elements. Add -strict switch (CodeSettings.StrictMode) to force input code to ECMA5 Strict-mode (extra error-checking, "use strict" at top). Fixed bug when MinifyCode setting was set to false but RemoveUnneededCode was left it's default value of true.New ProjectsAlgorithms: algorithms, ACM C++ programs, Electronic design automation algorithmsAll-In-One: Ein Programm - Alle Funktionen Einfach Komponente erstellen - und schon gibt es eine Funktion mehr!Bar Code File Copy: Bar Code File Copy is a mobile app that allows user to initiate file transfer from a PC to another with the help of barcodes and Windows Phone 7.BlekBoox: Google Books API CF-Soft: this is my workspace to study C# programming.CodePaste.NET Tray Application: A simple tray application to create snippets on CodePaste.NET. Right click the app and select New Snippet. A snippet will be created, the contents of your clipboard will be pasted and your clipboard will be replaced with the URL after the code snippet is successfully posted.Common libs of fanthos: Fanthos.Libs.Controls provides panel and button with special draw and special events. Fanthos.Libs.Network provides class that you can use the method likes Async WCF in dotNet 2.0.Database Filesystem: The DBFS project implements a filesystem paradigm to the storage of objects in a database. The primary development language is Visual Basic .NET.Destructible Texture2D: The project shows how to create a destructible texture2D in XNA. This project is developed using the XNA framework and C# programming languageEject and Close CD Tray: For some reason i cannot seem to find any command line program to eject or close the cd tray. So i've created my own version and sharing it for everyone to use. It is an extremely simplistic program with the sole aim of ejecting or closing the cd tray and nothing else.Excel add-in for pricing options: Price options using various distributions.FDFToolkit .NET: FDFToolkit .NET makes it easier to read, write, create, populate, merge FDF, XDP, XFDF, and XML data with Acrobat and LiveCycle PDF forms. FDFToolkit.net utilizes iTextSharp 4.x technologies, under MPL license.Fiction Catalog: A catalog project designed to store information about fictional literature.Gangbee Software: This is customized version of Nopcommerce 1.9Guess Number: This simple program is letting you to guess number from 1 to 20. H? th?ng Khách s?n: H? th?ng qu?n lí khách s?nHelloTipi Photo Downloader: Permet de télécharger les photos en qualité original de votre site de famille [url:HelloTipi|http://www.hellotipi.com].Image Tagger & Resizer: Resize, and text in the lower right of picture with i.e. copyright information.Kinect Sensor Controller: A project using kinect sensor to control objectsKJFramework.Dynamic ??????: KJFramework.Dynamic ???????? KJFramework????????????????????，?????????: KJFramework.Dynamic(??????). ???????????????????????，???????????????，?????????， ????????????????????，????，???????????????，??????????(??，???????)。 ????，?????????????????????(Component), ??????DynamicDomainComponent??。 ??，????????????，???????????DynamicDomainService??。 ??????，???????????? ???????DynamicDomainService。 ??DynamicDomainService??，????????????????。 ?????, ????????????(Tunnel)???，??????(Tunnel)...Lan ETS Player Registration Software: This is the custom software that the Lan ETS staff uses to register people when they arrive at the LAN party.LINQ to Calil: LINQ to Calil ????? (http://calil.jp/) ???????? API ? LINQ ????????。???????????? LINQ ???????????????。.NET Framework 4 ???????、Silverlight ??????????。 LINQ to Calil ??????????????????????????????????????。Login Form in VB: <project name> makes it easier for <target user group> to <activity>. You'll no longer have to <activity>. It's developed in <programming language>.MbpGpsTester: MbpGpsTester is a gps test tool.Mi proyecto: Mi proyectoMy NuGET Packages: This project contains a custom program that allows you to quickly update NuGET packages from multiple sources and package feeds. It also contains set-up of some packages that are used by HydroDesktop.MyyoutubeforWp7: MyyoutubeforWp7 is a youtube application where users can search and view the videoNERO'S TOOLS: NEROS TOOLS will be an area of programming tools and resources for the automation control industry and the everyday usage of major control systems software.NetWebScript: NetWebScript is a IL to JavaScript compiler. It allow to write complex web application in C# or any other .Net language. It provide Visual Studio integration to debug into orginial sources. It allow to share code with server.Northern Lights WP7 Toolkit: Northern Lights WP7 Toolkit contains some common tools for WP7 Developers.SccmBoundaryHealthTool: .NET application that will search the AD forest for SCCM boundary configurations and report the following: * Overlapping boundaries, including those inter-boundary type, e.g. IP subnet overlaps with AD site. * Unassigned AD sites * Orphaned AD sites in SCCMSeven: Seven is a set of tools for programs development using the Oberon 07 language. SOAP Test Application (with EWS Tools): Application that allows testing of SOAP implementations, in particular Exchange Web Services.SocialCastDotNet: C# library for accessing the SocialCast APISosyal: Sosyal as.sqlce_perfDemo: just a bit of code to demonstrate sqlce insert performance on the desktop. I'm using sqlce on the desktop to persist data as its the fastest thing I can find. Insert perfromance seems to top out at around 65,000records/sec on my laptop but it also seems to limited at this point by my hard drive speeds. The sample code should be able to accept a dataTable, dataReader or dataset and persit to a sqlce database. Also in the code is a small wrapper on the sqlce connectionstring (localconne...SqlMon for OracleClient: This is a project to doing a tool just like Quest SQL Monitor that capture sql sentence in client side.So it's so cool that juect join in and user it. It's developed in C# and Visual Studio 2010 and bases on the EasyHook that is a powerfull .NET hook library.It injects in oci.dll and hook the "OCIStmtPrepare" function which excute before sql excuting,through the parameter "stms" we can get the sqltext and display itStackOverflow Offline Reader using a pdf reader: Using one or more keywords and number of questions to download, the app creates and displays a single pdf file of the questions and answers pertaining to the keyword(s). This enables the user to read questions in an offline manner or to read in a top/down fashion. std::streambuf wrapper for COM IStream: This provides a subclass of std::streambuf that wraps a COM IStream, so you can use an IStream with any C++ code that uses iostreams or the STL algorithms with a streambuf_iterator. It does no internal buffering whatsoever (I'd be happy to change this if someone needs it).step out ring signatures .net: Simple program to demonstrate how srs works in real world of .net.System Center Service Manager 2010 SP1 WCF and Web Service: Simple WCF Service and Web Service for SCSM 2010 SP1.System32 - SDK de componentes y acceso a datos para .NET: System32 - SDK de componentes y acceso a datos para .NET Taha Mail: A Java Web Based MailTest TDS: Test TFS - 1Track Folder Changes: Displays in real time a tree with the list of created/deleted/changed files in a specific directory and its subdirectoriesumbTrafficCentral: A plugin for Umbraco that adds robust and scalable handling of redirects, storing the data in the media library. WebDAV Test Application: Application to test WebDAV functionality.XnaXaml: XnaXaml allows you to add a XAML file to your Content Pipeline in XNA and edit straight from Visual Studio. It then takes the XAML file and parses through it to create mock objects that can be used to render controls to the screen in XNA. These mock objects can also be used to pass data to any GUI system you choose.???-?????????? ?? ????????????? ????????? ??????????? ??????? ???: Under construction

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• ACORD LOMA Session Highlights Policy Administration Trends

  - by [email protected]

  Helen Pitts, senior product marketing manager for Oracle Insurance, attended and is blogging from the ACORD LOMA Insurance Forum this week. Above: Paul Vancheri, Chief Information Officer, Fidelity Investments Life Insurance Company. Vancheri gave a presentation during the ACORD LOMA Insurance Systems Forum about the key elements of modern policy administration systems and how insurers can mitigate risk during legacy system migrations to safely introduce new technologies. When I had a few particularly challenging honors courses in college my father, a long-time technology industry veteran, used to say, "If you don't know how to do something go ask the experts. Find someone who has been there and done that, don't be afraid to ask the tough questions, and apply and build upon what you learn." (Actually he still offers this same advice today.) That's probably why my favorite sessions at industry events, like the ACORD LOMA Insurance Forum this week, are those that include insight on industry trends and case studies from carriers who share their experiences and offer best practices based upon their own lessons learned. I had the opportunity to attend a particularly insightful session Wednesday as Craig Weber, senior vice president of Celent's Insurance practice, and Paul Vancheri, CIO of Fidelity Life Investments, presented, "Managing the Dynamic Insurance Landscape: Enabling Growth and Profitability with a Modern Policy Administration System." Policy Administration Trends Growing the business is the top issue when it comes to IT among both life and annuity and property and casualty carriers according to Weber. To drive growth and capture market share from competitors, carriers are looking to modernize their core insurance systems, with 65 percent of those CIOs participating in recent Celent research citing plans to replace their policy administration systems. Weber noted that there has been continued focus and investment, particularly in the last three years, by software and technology vendors to offer modern, rules-based, configurable policy administration solutions. He added that these solutions are continuing to evolve with the ongoing aim of helping carriers rapidly meet shifting business needs--whether it is to launch new products to market faster than the competition, adapt existing products to meet shifting consumer and /or regulatory demands, or to exit unprofitable markets. He closed by noting the top four trends for policy administration either in the process of being adopted today or on the not-so-distant horizon for the future: Underwriting and service desktops New business automation Convergence of ultra-configurable and domain content-rich systems Better usability and screen design Mitigating the Risk When Making the Decision to Modernize Third-party analyst research from advisory firms like Celent was a key part of the due diligence process for Fidelity as it sought a replacement for its legacy policy administration system back in 2005, according to Vancheri. The company's business opportunities were outrunning system capability. Its legacy system had not been upgraded in several years and was deficient from a functionality and currency standpoint. This was constraining the carrier's ability to rapidly configure and bring new and complex products to market. The company sought a new, modern policy administration system, one that would enable it to keep pace with rapid and often unexpected industry changes and ahead of the competition. A cross-functional team that included representatives from finance, actuarial, operations, client services and IT conducted an extensive selection process. This process included deep documentation review, pilot evaluations, demonstrations of required functionality and complex problem-solving, infrastructure integration capability, and the ability to meet the company's desired cost model. The company ultimately selected an adaptive policy administration system that met its requirements to: Deliver ease of use - eliminating paper and rework, while easing the burden on representatives to sell and service annuities Provide customer parity - offering Web-based capabilities in alignment with the company's focus on delivering a consistent customer experience across its business Deliver scalability, efficiency - enabling automation, while simplifying and standardizing systems across its technology stack Offer desired functionality - supporting Fidelity's product configuration / rules management philosophy, focus on customer service and technology upgrade requirements Meet cost requirements - including implementation, professional services and licenses fees and ongoing maintenance Deliver upon business requirements - enabling the ability to drive time to market for new products and flexibility to make changes Best Practices for Addressing Implementation Challenges Based upon lessons learned during the company's implementation, Vancheri advised carriers to evaluate staffing capabilities and cultural impacts, review business requirements to avoid rebuilding legacy processes, factor in dependent systems, and review policies and practices to secure customer data. His formula for success: upfront planning + clear requirements = precision execution. Achieving a Return on Investment Vancheri said the decision to replace their legacy policy administration system and deploy a modern, rules-based system--before the economic downturn occurred--has been integral in helping the company adapt to shifting market conditions, while enabling growth in its direct channel sales of variable annuities. Since deploying its new policy admin system, the company has reduced its average time to market for new products from 12-15 months to 4.5 months. The company has since migrated its other products to the new system and retired its legacy system, significantly decreasing its overall product development cycle. From a processing standpoint Vancheri noted the company has achieved gains in automation, information, and ease of use, resulting in improved real-time data edits, controls for better quality, and tax handling capability. Plus, with by having only one platform to manage, the company has simplified its IT environment and is well positioned to deliver system enhancements for greater efficiencies. Commitment to Continuing the Investment In the short and longer term future Vancheri said the company plans to enhance business functionality to support money movement, wire automation, divorce processing on payout contracts and cost-based tracking improvements. It also plans to continue system upgrades to remain current as well as focus on further reducing cycle time, driving down maintenance costs, and integrating with other products. Helen Pitts is senior product marketing manager for Oracle Insurance focused on life/annuities and enterprise document automation.

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• SQLAuthority News – #SQLPASS 2012 Seattle Update – Memorylane 2009, 2010, 2011

  - by pinaldave

  Today is the first day of the SQLPASS 2012 and I will be soon posting SQL Server 2012 experience over here. Today when I landed in Seattle, I got the nostalgia feeling. I used to stay in the USA. I stayed here for more than 7 years – I studied here and I worked in USA. I had lots of friends in Seattle when I used to stay in the USA. I always wanted to visit Seattle because it is THE place. I remember once I purchased a ticket to travel to Seattle through Priceline (well it was the cheapest option and I was a student) but could not fly because of an interesting issue. I used to be Teaching Assistant of an advanced course and the professor asked me to build a pop-quiz for the course. I unfortunately had to cancel the trip. Before I returned to India – I pretty much covered every city existed in my list to must visit, except one – Seattle. It was so interesting that I never made it to Seattle even though I wanted to visit, when I was in USA. After that one time I never got a chance to travel to Seattle. After a few years I also returned to India for good. Once on Television I saw “Sleepless in Seattle” movie playing and I immediately changed the channel as it reminded me that I never made it to Seattle before. However, destiny has its own way to handle decisions. After I returned to India – I visited Seattle total of 5 times and this is my 6th visit to Seattle in less than 3 years. I was here for 3 previous SQLPASS events – 2009, 2010, and 2011 as well two Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Summit in 2009 and 2010. During these five trips I tried to catch up with all of my all friends but I realize that time has its own way of doing things. Many moved out of Seattle and many were too busy revive the old friendship but there were few who always make a point to meet me when I travel to the city. During the course of my visits I have made few fantastic new friends – Rick Morelan (Joes 2 Pros) and Greg Lynch. Every time I meet them I feel that I know them for years. I think city of Seattle has played very important part in our relationship that I got these fantastic friends. SQLPASS is the event where I find all of my SQL Friends and I look for this event for an entire year. This year’s my goal is to meet as many as new friends I can meet. If you are going to be at SQLPASS – FIND ME. I want to have a photo with you. I want to remember each name as I believe this is very important part of our life – making new friends and sustaining new friendship. Here are few of the pointers where you can find me. All Keynotes – Blogger’s Table Exhibition Booth Joes 2 Pros Booth #117 – Do not forget to stop by at the booth – I might have goodies for you – limited editions. Book Signing Events – Check details in tomorrow’s blog or stop by Booth #117 Evening Parties 6th Nov – Welcome Reception Evening Parties 7th Nov - Exhibitor Reception – Do not miss Booth #117 Evening Parties 8th Nov - Community Appreciation Party Additionally at few other locations – Embarcadero Booth In Coffee shops in Convention Center If you are SQLPASS – make sure that I find an opportunity to meet you at the event. Reserve a little time and lets have a coffee together. I will be continuously tweeting about my where about on twitter so let us stay connected on twitter. Here is my experience of my earlier experience of attending SQLPASS. SQLAuthority News – Book Signing Event – SQLPASS 2011 Event Log SQLAuthority News – Meeting SQL Friends – SQLPASS 2011 Event Log SQLAuthority News – Story of Seattle – SQLPASS 2011 Event Log SQLAuthority News – SQLPASS Nov 8-11, 2010-Seattle – An Alternative Look at Experience SQLAuthority News – Notes of Excellent Experience at SQL PASS 2009 Summit, Seattle Let us meet! Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)   Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL PASS, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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• Searching for the Perfect Developer&rsquo;s Laptop.

  - by mbcrump

  I have been in the market for a new computer for several months. I set out with a budget of around $1200. I knew up front that the machine would be used for developing applications and maybe some light gaming. I kept switching between buying a laptop or a desktop but the laptop won because: With a Laptop, I can carry it everywhere and with a desktop I can’t. I searched for about 2 weeks and narrowed it down to a list of must-have’s : i7 Processor (I wasn’t going to settle for an i5 or AMD. I wanted a true Quad-core machine, not 2 dual-core fused together). 15.6” monitor SSD 128GB or Larger. – It’s almost 2011 and I don’t want an old standard HDD in this machine. 8GB of DDR3 Ram. – The more the better, right? 1GB Video Card (Prefer NVidia) – I might want to play games with this. HDMI Port – Almost a standard on new Machines. This would be used when I am on the road and want to stream Netflix to the HDTV in the Hotel room. Webcam Built-in – This would be to video chat with the wife and kids if I am on the road. 6-Cell Battery. – I’ve read that an i7 in a laptop really kills the battery. A 6-cell or 9-cell is even better. That is a pretty long list for a budget of around $1200. I searched around the internet and could not buy this machine prebuilt for under $1200. That was even with coupons and my company’s 10% Dell discount. The only way that I would get a machine like this was to buy a prebuilt and replace parts. I chose the  Lenovo Y560 on Newegg to start as my base. Below is a top-down picture of it.   Part 1: The Hardware The Specs for this machine: Color :  GrayOperating System : Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bitCPU Type : Intel Core i7-740QM(1.73GHz)Screen : 15.6" WXGAMemory Size : 4GB DDR3Hard Disk : 500GBOptical Drive : DVD±R/RWGraphics Card : ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5730Video Memory : 1GBCommunication : Gigabit LAN and WLANCard slot : 1 x Express Card/34Battery Life : Up to 3.5 hoursDimensions : 15.20" x 10.00" x 0.80" - 1.30"Weight : 5.95 lbs. This computer met most of the requirements above except that it didn’t come with an SSD or have 8GB of DDR3 Memory. So, I needed to start shopping except this time for an SSD. I asked around on twitter and other hardware forums and everyone pointed me to the Crucial C300 SSD. After checking prices of the drive, it was going to cost an extra $275 bucks and I was going from a spacious 500GB drive to 128GB. After watching some of the SSD videos on YouTube I started feeling better. Below is a pic of the Crucial C300 SSD. The second thing that I needed to upgrade was the RAM. It came with 4GB of DDR3 RAM, but it was slow. I decided to buy the Crucial 8GB (4GB x 2) Kit from Newegg. This RAM cost an extra $120 and had a CAS Latency of 7. In the end this machine delivered everything that I wanted and it cost around $1300. You are probably saying, well your budget was $1200. I have spare parts that I’m planning on selling on eBay or Anandtech.  =) If you are interested then shoot me an email and I will give you a great deal mbcrump[at]gmail[dot]com. 500GB Laptop 7200RPM HDD 4GB of DDR3 RAM (2GB x 2) faceVision HD 720p Camera – Unopened In the end my Windows Experience Rating of the SSD was 7.7 and the CPU 7.1. The max that you can get is a 7.9. Part 2: The Software I’m very lucky that I get a lot of software for free. When choosing a laptop, the OS really doesn’t matter because I would never keep the bloatware pre-installed or Windows 7 Home Premium on my main development machine. Matter of fact, as soon as I got the laptop, I immediately took out the old HDD without booting into it. After I got the SSD into the machine, I installed Windows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit. The BIOS was out of date, so I updated that to the latest version and started downloading drivers off of Lenovo’s site. I had to download the Wireless Networking Drivers to a USB-Key before I could get my machine on my wireless network. I also discovered that if the date on your computer is off then you cannot join the Windows 7 Homegroup until you fix it. I’m aware that most people like peeking into what programs other software developers use and I went ahead and listed my “essentials” of a fresh build. I am a big Silverlight guy, so naturally some of the software listed below is specific to Silverlight. You should also check out my master list of Tools and Utilities for the .NET Developer. See a killer app that I’m missing? Feel free to leave it in the comments below. My Software Essential List. CPU-Z Dropbox Everything Search Tool Expression Encoder Update Expression Studio 4 Ultimate Foxit Reader Google Chrome Infragistics NetAdvantage Ultimate Edition Keepass Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 Microsoft Security Essentials 2  Mindscape Silverlight Elements Notepad 2 (with shell extension) Precode Code Snippet Manager RealVNC Reflector ReSharper v5.1.1753.4 Silverlight 4 Toolkit Silverlight Spy Snagit 10 SyncFusion Reporting Controls for Silverlight Telerik Silverlight RadControls TweetDeck Virtual Clone Drive Visual Studio 2010 Feature Pack 2 Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate VS KB2403277 Update to get Feature Pack 2 to work. Windows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit Windows Live Essentials 2011 Windows Live Writer Backup. Windows Phone Development Tools That is pretty much it, I have a new laptop and am happy with the purchase. If you have any questions then feel free to leave a comment below.  Subscribe to my feed

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• 7 reasons you had to be at JavaOne Latin America 2012

  - by Bruno.Borges

  Yesterday was 12/12/12, and everybody went crazy on Twitter with cool memes like this one. And maybe you are now wondering why I mentioned 7 (seven) on the blog title. Because I want to play numbers? Yes! Today is 7 days after JavaOne Latin America 2012 is over (... and I had to figure out an excuse for taking so long to blog about it...). So unless you were at JavaOne Latin America this year, here are 7 things you missed: OTN Lounge mini-theatreThere was a mini-theatre holding several lightning talks. We had people from SouJava JUG, GoJava JUG, Globalcode, and several other Java gurus and companies running demos, talks, and even more. For example, @drspockbr talked about the ScrumToys project, that demonstrates the power of JSF. Hands On Lab for JAX-RS and WebSocketsOne of the cool things to do during JavaOne is to come to these Hands On labs and really do something using new technologies with the help of experts. This one in particular, was covered by me, Arun Gupta, and Reza Rahman. The HOL had more people than laptops (and we had 48 laptops!) interested on understanding and learning about the new stuff that is coming within Java EE 7. Things like JAX-RS, Server-sent Events and WebSockets. Hey, if you want to try this HOL by yourself, it is available on Github, so go for it! If you have questions, just let me know! Java Community KeynoteThis keynote presented a lot of cool things like startups using Java in their projects, the Duke Awards, SouJava winning the JCP Outstanding Award, the Java Band, and even more! It was really a space where the Java community could present what they are doing and what they want to do. There's a lot of interest on the Adopt-a-JSR program and the Adopt-OpenJDK. There's also an Adopt-a-JavaEE-JSR program! Take a look if you want to participate and Make the Future Java. Java EE (JMS, JAX-RS) sessions from Reza Rahman, the HeavyMetal guyReza is a well know professional and Java EE enthusiast from the communitty who just joined Oracle this year. His sessions were very well attended, perhaps because of a high interest on the new things coming to Java EE 7 like JMS 2.0 and JAX-RS 2.0. If you want to look at what he did at this JavaOne edition, read his blog post. By the way, if you like Java and heavymetal, you should follow him on Twitter as well! :-) Java EE (WebSockets, HTML5) sessions from Arun Gupta, the GlassFish guyIf you don't know Arun Gupta, no worries. You will have time to know about him while you read his Java EE 6 Pocket Guide. Arun has been evangelizing Java EE for a long time, and is now spreading his word about the new upcoming version Java EE 7. He gave one talk about HTML5 Productivity on the Java EE 7 platform, and another one on building web apps with WebSockets. Pretty neat! Arun blogged about JavaOne Latin America as well. Read it here. Java Embedded and JavaFXIf there are two things that are really trending in the Java World right now besides Java EE 7, certainly they are JavaFX and Java Embedded. There were 14 talks covering Java Embedded, from Java Cards to Raspberry.pi, from Java ME to Java on your TV with Ginga-J. The Internet of Things is becoming true, and Java is the only platform today that can connect it all in an standardized and concise way. JavaFX gained a lot of attention too. There were 8 sessions covering what the platform has to offer in terms of Rich User Experience. The JavaFX Scene Builder is an awesome tool to start playing designing an UI, and coding for JavaFX is like coding Swing with 8 hands, one holding your coffee cup. You can achieve a lot, with your two hands (unless, you really have 8 hands, then you can achieve 4 times more :-). If you want to read more about JavaFX, go to Stephen Chin's blog post. GlassFish and Friends Party, 1st edition at JavaOne Lating AmericaThis is probably the thing that I'm most proud. We brought to Brasil the tradition of holding a happy hour for all GlassFish, Java EE friends. This party started almost 7 years ago in San Francisco, and it was about time to bring it to Brazil! The party happened on Tuesday night, right after JavaOne General Keynote, at the Tribeca Pub. We had about 80 attendees and met a lot of Java EE developers there! People from JUGs, Oracle, Locaweb and Red Hat showed up too, including some execs from Oracle that didn't resist and could not miss a party like this one.Lots of caipirinhas, beer and food to everyone, some cool music... even The Fish walking around the party with Juggy!You can see more photos from the party on an album I shared with the recently created GlassFish Brasil community on Google+ here (but you may be more interested in joining the GlassFish english community). There's also more pictures that Arun took and shared on this link. So now you may want to consider coming to Brazil next year! Java EE 7 is on its way, and Brazil is happily and patiently waiting for it, with a lot of enthusiasm. By the way, GlassFish and Java EE 6 just celebrated a Happy Birthday!

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• Online Password Security Tactics

  - by BuckWoody

  Recently two more large databases were attacked and compromised, one at the popular Gawker Media sites and the other at McDonald’s. Every time this kind of thing happens (which is FAR too often) it should remind the technical professional to ensure that they secure their systems correctly. If you write software that stores passwords, it should be heavily encrypted, and not human-readable in any storage. I advocate a different store for the login and password, so that if one is compromised, the other is not. I also advocate that you set a bit flag when a user changes their password, and send out a reminder to change passwords if that bit isn’t changed every three or six months.    But this post is about the *other* side – what to do to secure your own passwords, especially those you use online, either in a cloud service or at a provider. While you’re not in control of these breaches, there are some things you can do to help protect yourself. Most of these are obvious, but they contain a few little twists that make the process easier.   Use Complex Passwords This is easily stated, and probably one of the most un-heeded piece of advice. There are three main concepts here: ·         Don’t use a dictionary-based word ·         Use mixed case ·         Use punctuation, special characters and so on   So this: password Isn’t nearly as safe as this: P@ssw03d   Of course, this only helps if the site that stores your password encrypts it. Gawker does, so theoretically if you had the second password you’re in better shape, at least, than the first. Dictionary words are quickly broken, regardless of the encryption, so the more unusual characters you use, and the farther away from the dictionary words you get, the better.   Of course, this doesn’t help, not even a little, if the site stores the passwords in clear text, or the key to their encryption is broken. In that case…   Use a Different Password at Every Site What? I have hundreds of sites! Are you kidding me? Nope – I’m not. If you use the same password at every site, when a site gets attacked, the attacker will store your name and password value for attacks at other sites. So the only safe thing to do is to use different names or passwords (or both) at each site. Of course, most sites use your e-mail as a username, so you’re kind of hosed there. So even though you have hundreds of sites you visit, you need to have at least a different password at each site.   But it’s easier than you think – if you use an algorithm.   What I’m describing is to pick a “root” password, and then modify that based on the site or purpose. That way, if the site is compromised, you can still use that root password for the other sites.   Let’s take that second password: P@ssw03d   And now you can append, prepend or intersperse that password with other characters to make it unique to the site. That way you can easily remember the root password, but make it unique to the site. For instance, perhaps you read a lot of information on Gawker – how about these:   P@ssw03dRead ReadP@ssw03d PR@esasdw03d   If you have lots of sites, tracking even this can be difficult, so I recommend you use password software such as Password Safe or some other tool to have a secure database of your passwords at each site. DO NOT store this on the web. DO NOT use an Office document (Microsoft or otherwise) that is “encrypted” – the encryption office automation packages use is very trivial, and easily broken. A quick web search for tools to do that should show you how bad a choice this is.   Change Your Password on a Schedule I know. It’s a real pain. And it doesn’t seem worth it…until your account gets hacked. A quick note here – whenever a site gets hacked (and I find out about it) I change the password at that site immediately (or quit doing business with them) and then change the root password on every site, as quickly as I can.   If you follow the tip above, it’s not as hard. Just add another number, year, month, day, something like that into the mix. It’s not unlike making a Primary Key in an RDBMS.   P@ssw03dRead10242010   Change the site, and then update your password database. I do this about once a month, on the first or last day, during staff meetings. (J)   If you have other tips, post them here. We can all learn from each other on this.

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• Welcome to Jackstown

  - by fatherjack

  I live in a small town, the population count isn't that great but let me introduce you to some of the population. We'll start with Martin the Doc, he fixes up anything that gets poorly, so much so that he could be classed as the doctor, the vet and even the garage mechanic. He's got a reputation that he can fix anything and that hasn't been proved wrong yet. He's great friends with Brian (who gets called "Brains") the teacher who seems to have a sound understanding of any topic you care to pass his way. If he isn't sure he tells you and then goes to find out and comes back with a full answer real quick. Its good to have that sort of research capability close at hand. Brains is also great at encouraging anyone who needs a bit of support to get them up to speed and working on their jobs. Steve sees Brains regularly, that's because he is the librarian, he keeps all sorts of reading material and nowadays there's even video to watch about any topic you like. Steve keeps scouring all sorts of places to get the content that's needed and he keeps it in good order so that what ever is needed can be found quickly. He also has to make sure that old stuff gets marked as probably out of date so that anyone reading it wont get mislead. Over the road from him is Greg, he's the town crier. We don't have a newspaper here so Greg keeps us all informed of what's going on "out of town" - what new stuff we might make use of and what wont work in a small place like this. If we are interested he goes ahead and gets people in to demonstrate their products  and tell us about the details. Greg is pretty good at getting us discounts too. Now Greg's brother Ian works for the mayors office in the "waste management department" nowadays its all about the recycling but he still has to make sure that the stuff that cant be used any more gets disposed of properly. It depends on the type of waste he's dealing with that decides how it need to be treated and he has to know a lot about the different methods and when to use which ones. There are two people that keep the peace in town, Brent is the detective, investigating wrong doings and applying justice where necessary and Bart is the diplomat who smooths things over when any people have a dispute or disagreement. Brent is meticulous in his investigations and fair in the way he handles any situation he finds. Discretion is his byword. There's a rumour that Bart used to work for the United Nations but what ever his history there is no denying his ability to get apparently irreconcilable parties working together to their combined benefit. Someone who works closely with Bart is Brad, he is the translator in town. He has several languages that he can converse in but he can also explain things from someone's point of view or  and make it understandable to someone else. To keep things on the straight and narrow from a legal perspective is Ben the solicitor, making sure we all abide by the rules.Two people who make for an interesting evening's conversation if you get them together are Aaron and Grant, Aaron is the local planning inspector and Grant is an inventor of some reputation. Anything being constructed around here needs Aarons agreement. He's quite flexible in his rules though; if you can justify what you want to do with solid logic but he wont stand for any development going on without his inclusion. That gets a demolition notice and there's no argument. Grant as I mentioned is the inventor in town, if something can be improved or created then Grant is your man. He mainly works on his own but isnt averse to getting specific advice and assistance from specialist from out of town if they can help him finish his creations.There aren't too many people left for you to meet in the town, there's Rob, he's an ex professional sportsman. He played Hockey, Football, Cricket, you name it. He was in his element as goal keeper / wicket keeper and that shows in his personal life. He just goes about his business and people often don't even know that he's helped them. Really low profile, doesn't get any glory but saves people from lots of problems, even disasters on occasion. There goes Neil, he's a bit of an odd person, some people say he's gifted with special clairvoyant powers, personally I think he's got his ear to the ground and knows where to find out the important news as soon as its made public. Anyone getting a visit from Neil is best off to follow his advice though, he's usually spot on and you wont be caught by surprise if you follow his recommendations – wherever it comes from.Poor old Andrew is the last person to introduce you to. Andrew doesn't show himself too often but when he does it seems that people find a reason to blame him for their problems, whether he had anything to do with their predicament or not. In all honesty, without fail, and to his great credit, he takes it in good grace and never retaliates or gets annoyed when he's out and about.  It pays off too as its very often the case that those who were blaming him recently suddenly find they need his help and they readily forget the issues pretty rapidly.And then there's me, what do I do in town? Well, I'm just a DBA with a lot of hats. (Jackstown Pop. 1)

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• ORACLE RIGHTNOW DYNAMIC AGENT DESKTOP CLOUD SERVICE - Putting the Dynamite into Dynamic Agent Desktop

  - by Andreea Vaduva

  Untitled Document There’s a mountain of evidence to prove that a great contact centre experience results in happy, profitable and loyal customers. The very best Contact Centres are those with high first contact resolution, customer satisfaction and agent productivity. But how many companies really believe they are the best? And how many believe that they can be? We know that with the right tools, companies can aspire to greatness – and achieve it. Core to this is ensuring their agents have the best tools that give them the right information at the right time, so they can focus on the customer and provide a personalised, professional and efficient service. Today there are multiple channels through which customers can communicate with you; phone, web, chat, social to name a few but regardless of how they communicate, customers expect a seamless, quality experience. Most contact centre agents need to switch between lots of different systems to locate the right information. This hampers their productivity, frustrates both the agent and the customer and increases call handling times. With this in mind, Oracle RightNow has designed and refined a suite of add-ins to optimize the Agent Desktop. Each is designed to simplify and adapt the agent experience for any given situation and unify the customer experience across your media channels. Let’s take a brief look at some of the most useful tools available and see how they make a difference. Contextual Workspaces: The screen where agents do their job. Agents don’t want to be slowed down by busy screens, scrolling through endless tabs or links to find what they’re looking for. They want quick, accurate and easy. Contextual Workspaces are fully configurable and through workspace rules apply if, then, else logic to display only the information the agent needs for the issue at hand . Assigned at the Profile level, different levels of agent, from a novice to the most experienced, get a screen that is relevant to their role and responsibilities and ensures their job is done quickly and efficiently the first time round. Agent Scripting: Sometimes, agents need to deliver difficult or sensitive messages while maximising the opportunity to cross-sell and up-sell. After all, contact centres are now increasingly viewed as revenue generators. Containing sophisticated branching logic, scripting helps agents to capture the right level of information and guides the agent step by step, ensuring no mistakes, inconsistencies or missed opportunities. Guided Assistance: This is typically used to solve common troubleshooting issues, displaying a series of question and answer sets in a decision-tree structure. This means agents avoid having to bookmark favourites or rely on written notes. Agents find particular value in these guides - to quickly craft chat and email responses. What’s more, by publishing guides in answers on support pages customers, can resolve issues themselves, without needing to contact your agents. And b ecause it can also accelerate agent ramp-up time, it ensures that even novice agents can solve customer problems like an expert. Desktop Workflow: Take a step back and look at the full customer interaction of your agents. It probably spans multiple systems and multiple tasks. With Desktop Workflows you control the design workflows that span the full customer interaction from start to finish. As sequences of decisions and actions, workflows are unique in that they can create or modify different records and provide automation behind the scenes. This means your agents can save time and provide better quality of service by having the tools they need and the relevant information as required. And doing this boosts satisfaction among your customers, your agents and you – so win, win, win! I have highlighted above some of the tools which can be used to optimise the desktop; however, this is by no means an exhaustive list. In approaching your design, it’s important to understand why and how your customers contact you in the first place. Once you have this list of “whys” and “hows”, you can design effective policies and procedures to handle each category of problem, and then implement the right agent desktop user interface to support them. This will avoid duplication and wasted effort. Five Top Tips to take away: Start by working out “why” and “how” customers are contacting you. Implement a clean and relevant agent desktop to support your agents. If your workspaces are getting complicated consider using Desktop Workflow to streamline the interaction. Enhance your Knowledgebase with Guides. Agents can access them proactively and can be published on your web pages for customers to help themselves. Script any complex, critical or sensitive interactions to ensure consistency and accuracy. Desktop optimization is an ongoing process so continue to monitor and incorporate feedback from your agents and your customers to keep your Contact Centre successful.   Want to learn more? Having attending the 3-day Oracle RightNow Customer Service Administration class your next step is to attend the Oracle RightNow Customer Portal Design and 2-day Dynamic Agent Desktop Administration class. Here you’ll learn not only how to leverage the Agent Desktop tools but also how to optimise your self-service pages to enhance your customers’ web experience.   Useful resources: Review the Best Practice Guide Review the tune-up guide   About the Author: Angela Chandler joined Oracle University as a Senior Instructor through the RightNow Customer Experience Acquisition. Her other areas of expertise include Business Intelligence and Knowledge Management.  She currently delivers the following Oracle RightNow courses in the classroom and as a Live Virtual Class: RightNow Customer Service Administration (3 days) RightNow Customer Portal Design and Dynamic Agent Desktop Administration (2 days) RightNow Analytics (2 days) Rightnow Chat Cloud Service Administration (2 days)

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• Rip and Convert DVD’s to an ISO Image

  - by Mysticgeek

  If you own a lot of DVD’s, you might want to convert them to an ISO image for backup and easily playing them on your media center. Today we take a look at ripping your discs using DVDFab, then using ImgBurn to create an ISO image of the ripped DVD files. Rip DVD with DVDFab6 DVDFab will remove copy protection and rip the DVD files for free. Other components in the suite require you to purchase a license after the 30 day trial, but you’ll still be able to rip DVD’s after the trial. Install DVDFab by accepting the defaults (link below)…a system restart is required to complete the install process. The first time you run it, a welcome screen is displayed. If you don’t want to see it again check the box Do not show again, then Start DVDFab.  Pop the DVD in your drive and click Next. Now select your region and check Do not show again, then OK. It will then open the DVD and begin to scan it. Under DVD to DVD you can select either Full Disc or Main Movie depending on what you want to rip. If you want to burn the DVD to a disc after it’s created select the Full Disc option. Now click the Start button to begin the ripping process. After the ripping process has completed, you’ll get a message telling you it’s waiting for you to put in a blank DVD. Since we aren’t burning the disc, just cancel the message. Click Finish and close out of DVDFab or just minimize it if you’re going to keep using it to rip another DVD. By default the temporary directory is in My Documents \ DVDFab \ Temp…however you can change it in settings. If you go to the Temp directory you’ll see the DVD files listed there… Convert Files to ISO with ImgBurn Now that we have the files ripped from the DVD, we need to convert them to an ISO image using ImgBurn (link below). Open it up and from the main menu click on Create image file from files/folders. Click on the folder icon to browse to the location of the ripped DVD files. Browse to the DVDFab temp directory and the VIDEO_TS folder for the source and click Ok. Then choose a destination directory, give the ISO a name, and click Save. In this case we ripped the Unbreakable DVD, so named it that.   So now in ImgBurn you have the source being the ripped DVD files, and the destination for the ISO…then click the Build button. If you don’t create a volume label, ImgBurn is kind enough to create on for you. If everything looks correct, click Ok. Now wait while ImgBurn goes through the process of converting the ripped DVD files to an ISO image. The process has successfully completed. The ISO image of the DVD will be in the output directory you selected earlier. Now you can burn the ISO image to a blank DVD or store it on an external hard drive for safe keeping. When you’re done, you’ll probably want to go into the temp DVDFab folder and delete the VOB and other files in the Video_TS folder as they will take up a lot of space on your hard drive.   Conclusion Although this method requires two programs to make an ISO out of a DVD, it’s extremely quick. When burning DVD’s of various lengths, it took less than 30 minutes to get the final ISO. Now, you’ll have your DVD movies backed up in case something were to happen to the discs and are no longer playable. If you use Windows Media Center to watch your movies, check out our article on how to automatically mount and view ISO files in Windows 7 Media Center. With DVDFab, you get a 30 day fully functional trial for all of its features. You’ll still be able rip DVD’s even after the 30 day trial has ended. The more we’ve been using DVDFab, the more impressed we are with its capabilities, so after the 30 day trial you should consider purchasing a license. We will have a full review of the of it to share with you soon.  Download DVDFab Download ImgBurn Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How To Rip DVDs with VLCCalculate with Qalculate on LinuxConvert a Row to a Column in Excel the Easy WayEnjoy Quick & Easy Unit Conversion with Convert for WindowsConvert Older Excel Documents to Excel 2007 Format TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Beware Hover Kitties Test Drive Mobile Phones Online With TryPhone Ben & Jerry’s Free Cone Day, 3/23/10 New Stinger from McAfee Helps Remove ‘FakeAlert’ Threats Google Apps Marketplace: Tools & Services For Google Apps Users Get News Quick and Precise With Newser

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• Red Gate in the Community

  - by Nick Harrison

  Much has been said recently about Red Gate's community involvement and commitment to the DotNet community. Much of this has been unduly negative. Before you start throwing stones and spewing obscenities, consider some additional facts: Red Gate's software is actually very good. I have worked on many projects where Red Gate's software was instrumental in finishing successfully. Red Gate is VERY good to the community. I have spoken at many user groups and code camps where Red Gate has been a sponsor. Red Gate consistently offers up money to pay for the venue or food, and they will often give away licenses as door prizes. There are many such community events that would not take place without Red Gate's support. All I have ever seen them ask for is to have their products mentioned or be listed as a sponsor. They don't insist on anyone following a specific script. They don't monitor how their products are showcased. They let their products speak for themselves. Red Gate sponsors the Simple Talk web site. I publish there regularly. Red Gate has never exerted editorial pressure on me. No one has ever told me we can't publish this unless you mention Red Gate products. No one has ever said, you need to say nice things about Red Gate products in order to be published. They have told me, "you need to make this less academic, so you don't alienate too many readers. "You need to actually write an introduction so people will know what you are talking about". "You need to write this so that someone who isn't a reflection nut will follow what you are trying to say." In short, they have been good editors worried about the quality of the content and what the readers are likely to be interested in. For me personally, Red Gate and Simple Talk have both been excellent to work with. As for the developer outrage… I am a little embarrassed by so much of the response that I am seeing. So much of the complaints remind me of little children whining "but you promised" Semantics aside. A promise is just a promise. It's not like they "pinky sweared". Sadly no amount name calling or "double dog daring" will change the economics of the situation. Red Gate is not a multibillion dollar corporation. They are a mid size company doing the best they can. Without a doubt, their pockets are not as deep as Microsoft's. I honestly believe that they did try to make the "freemium" model work. Sadly it did not. I have no doubt that they intended for it to work and that they tried to make it work. I also have no doubt that they labored over making this decision. This could not have been an easy decision to make. Many people are gleefully proclaiming a massive backlash against Red Gate swearing off their wonderful products and promising to bash them at every opportunity from now on. This is childish behavior that does not represent professionals. This type of behavior is more in line with bullies in the school yard than professionals in a professional community. Now for my own prediction… This back lash against Red Gate is not likely to last very long. We will all realize that we still need their products. We may look around for alternatives, but realize that they really do have the best in class for every product that they produce, and that they really are not exorbitantly priced. We will see them sponsoring Code Camps and User Groups and be reminded, "hey this isn't such a bad company". On the other hand, software shops like Red Gate, will remember this back lash and give a second thought to supporting open source projects. They will worry about getting involved when an individual wants to turn over control for a product that they developed but can no longer support alone. Who wants to run the risk of not being able to follow through on their best intentions. In the end we may all suffer, even the toddlers among us throwing the temper tantrum, "BUT YOU PROMISED!" Disclaimer Before anyone asks or jumps to conclusions, I do not get paid by Red Gate to say any of this. I have often written about their products, and I have long thought that they are a wonderful company with amazing products. If they ever open an office in the SE United States, I will be one of the first to apply.

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• About Me

  - by Jeffrey West

  I’m new to blogging.  This is the second blog post that I have written, and before I go too much further I wanted the readers of my blog to know a bit more about me… Kid’s Stuff By trade, I am a programmer (or coder, developer, engineer, architect, etc).  I started programming when I was 12 years old.  When I was 7, we got our first ‘family’ computer – an Apple IIc.  It was great to play games on, and of course what else was a 7-year-old going to do with it.  I did have one problem with it, though.  When I put in my 5.25” floppy to play a game, sometimes, instead loading my game I would get a mysterious ‘]’ on the screen with a flashing cursor.  This, of course, was not my game.  Much like the standard ‘Microsoft fix’ is to reboot, back then you would take the floppy out, shake it, and restart the computer and pray for a different result. One day, I learned at school that I could topple my nemesis – the ‘]’ and flashing cursor – by typing ‘load’ and pressing enter.  Most of the time, this would load my game and then I would get to play.  Problem solved.  However, I began to wonder – what else can I make it do? When I was in 5th grade my dad got a bright idea to buy me a Tandy 1000HX.  He didn’t know what I was going to do with it, and neither did I.  Least of all, my mom wasn’t happy about buying a 5th grader a $1,000 computer.  Nonetheless, Over time, I learned how to write simple basic programs out of the back of my Math book: 10 x=5 20 y=6 30 PRINT x+y That was fun for all of about 5 minutes.  I needed more – more challenges, more things that I could make the computer do.  In order to quench this thirst my parents sent me to National Computer Camps in Connecticut.  It was one of the best experiences of my childhood, and I spent 3 weeks each summer after that learning BASIC, Pascal, Turbo C and some C++.  There weren’t many kids at the time who knew anything about computers, and lets just say my knowledge of and interest in computers didn’t score me many ‘cool’ points.  My experiences at NCC set me on the path that I find myself on now, and I am very thankful for the experience.  Real Life I have held various positions in the past at different levels within the IT layer cake.  I started out as a Software Developer for a startup in the Dallas, TX area building software for semiconductor testing statistical process control and sampling.  I was the second Java developer that was hired, and the ninth employee overall, so I got a great deal of experience developing software.  Since there weren’t that many people in the organization, I also got a lot of field experience which meant that if I screwed up the code, I got yelled at (figuratively) by both my boss AND the customer.  Fun Times!  What made it better was that I got to help run pilot programs in Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and Malta.  Getting yelled at in Taiwan is slightly less annoying that getting yelled at in Dallas… I spent the next 5 years at Accenture doing systems integration in the ‘SOA’ group.  I joined as a Consultant and left as a Senior Manager.  I started out writing code in WebLogic Integration and left after I wrapped up project where I led a team of 25 to develop the next generation of a digital media platform to deliver HD content in a digital format.  At Accenture, I had the pleasure of working with some truly amazing people – mentoring some and learning from many others – and on some incredible real-world IT projects.  Given my background with the BEA stack of products I was often called in to troubleshoot and tune WebLogic, ALBPM and ALSB installations and have logged many hours digging through thread dumps, running performance tests with SoapUI and decompiling Java classes we didn’t have the source for so I could see what was going on in the code. I am now a Senior Principal Product Manager at Oracle in the Application Grid practice.  The term ‘Application Grid’ refers to a collection of software and hardware products within Oracle that enables customers to build horizontally scalable systems.  This collection of products includes WebLogic, GlassFish, Coherence, Tuxedo and the JRockit/HotSpot JVMs (HotSprocket, maybe?).  Now, with the introduction of Exalogic it has grown to include hardware as well. Wrapping it up… I love technology and have a diverse background ranging from software development to HW and network architecture & tuning.  I have held certifications for being an Oracle Certified DBA, MSCE and Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP), among others and I have put those to great use over my career.  I am excited about programming & technology and I enjoy helping people learn and be successful.  If you are having challenges with WebLogic, BPM or Service Bus feel free to reach out to me and I’ll be happy to help as I have time. Thanks for stopping by!   --Jeff

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• IndyTechFest Recap

  - by Johnm

  The sun had yet to raise above the horizon on Saturday, May 22nd and I was traveling toward the location of the 2010 IndyTechFest. In my freshly awaken, and pre-coffee, state I reflected on the months that preceded this day and how quickly they slipped away. The big day had finally come and the morning dew glistened with a unique brightness that morning. What is this all about? For those who are unfamiliar with IndyTechFest, it is a regional conference held in Indianapolis and hosted by the Indianapolis .NET Developers Association (IndyNDA) and the Indianapolis Professional Association for SQL Server (IndyPASS).  The event presents multiple tracks and sessions covering subjects such as Business Intelligence,  Database Administration, .NET Development, SharePoint Development, Windows Mobile Development as well as non-Microsoft topics such as Lean and MongoDB. This year's event was the third hosting of IndyTechFest. No man is an island No event such as IndyTechFest is executed by a single person. My fellow co-founders, with their highly complementary skill sets and philanthropy make the process very enjoyable. Our amazing volunteers and their aid were indispensible. The generous financial support of our sponsors that made the event and fabulous prizes possible. The spectacular line up of speakers who came from near and far to donate their time and knowledge. Our beloved attendees who sacrificed the first sunny Saturday in weeks to expand their skill sets and network with their peers. We are deeply appreciative. Challenges in preparation With the preparation of any event comes challenges. It is these challenges that makes the process of planning an event so interesting. This year's largest challenge was the location of the event. In the past two years IndyTechFest was held at the Gene B. Glick Junior Achievement Center in Indianapolis. This facility has been the hub of the Indy technical community for many years. As the big day drew near, the facility's availability came into question due to some recent changes that had occurred with those who operated the facility. We began our search for an alternative option. Thankfully, the Marriott Indianapolis East was available, was very spacious and willing to work within the range of our budget. Within days of our event, the decision to move proved to be wise since the prior location had begun renovations to the interior. Whew! Always trust your gut. Every day it's getting better At the ending of each year, we huddle together, review the evaluations and identify an area in which the event could improve. This year's big opportunity for improvement resided in the prize give-away portion at the end of the day. In the 2008 event, admittedly, this portion was rather chaotic, rushed and disorganized. This year, we broke the drawing into two sections, of which each attendee received two tickets. The first ticket was a drawing for the mountain of books that were given away. The second ticket was a drawing for the big prizes, the 2 Xboxes, 3 laptops and iPad. We peppered the ticket drawings with gift card raffles and tossing t-shirts into the audience. If at first you don't succeed, try and try again Each year of IndyTechFest, we have offered a means for ad-hoc sessions or discussion groups to pop-up. To our disappointment it was something that never quite took off. We have always believed that this unique type of session was valuable and wanted to figure out a way to make it work for this year. A special thanks to Alan Stevens, who took on and facilitated the "open space" track and made it an official success. Share with your tweety When the attendee badges were designed we decided to place an emphasis on the attendee's Twitter account as well as the events hash-tag (#IndyTechFest) to encourage some real-time buzz during the day. At the host table we displayed a Twitter feed for all to enjoy. It was quite successful and encouraging use of social media. My badge was missing my Twitter account since it was recently changed. For those who care to follow my rather sparse tweets, my address is @johnnydata. Man, this is one long blog post! All in all it was a very successful event. It is always great to see new faces and meet old friends. The planning for the 2011 IndyTechFest will kick off very soon. We have more capacity for future growth and a truck full of great ideas. Stay tuned!

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• Windows Azure Recipe: Software as a Service (SaaS)

  - by Clint Edmonson

  The cloud was tailor built for aspiring companies to create innovative internet based applications and solutions. Whether you’re a garage startup with very little capital or a Fortune 1000 company, the ability to quickly setup, deliver, and iterate on new products is key to capturing market and mind share. And if you can capture that share and go viral, having resiliency and infinite scale at your finger tips is great peace of mind. Drivers Cost avoidance Time to market Scalability Solution Here’s a sketch of how a basic Software as a Service solution might be built out: Ingredients Web Role – this hosts the core web application. Each web role will host an instance of the software and as the user base grows, additional roles can be spun up to meet demand. Access Control – this service is essential to managing user identity. It’s backed by a full blown implementation of Active Directory and allows the definition and management of users, groups, and roles. A pre-built ASP.NET membership provider is included in the training kit to leverage this capability but it’s also flexible enough to be combined with external Identity providers including Windows LiveID, Google, Yahoo!, and Facebook. The provider model provides extensibility to hook into other industry specific identity providers as well. Databases – nearly every modern SaaS application is backed by a relational database for its core operational data. If the solution is sold to organizations, there’s a good chance multi-tenancy will be needed. An emerging best practice for SaaS applications is to stand up separate SQL Azure database instances for each tenant’s proprietary data to ensure isolation from other tenants. Worker Role – this is the best place to handle autonomous background processing such as data aggregation, billing through external services, and other specialized tasks that can be performed asynchronously. Placing these tasks in a worker role frees the web roles to focus completely on user interaction and data input and provides finer grained control over the system’s scalability and throughput. Caching (optional) – as a web site traffic grows caching can be leveraged to keep frequently used read-only, user specific, and application resource data in a high-speed distributed in-memory for faster response times and ultimately higher scalability without spinning up more web and worker roles. It includes a token based security model that works alongside the Access Control service. Blobs (optional) – depending on the nature of the software, users may be creating or uploading large volumes of heterogeneous data such as documents or rich media. Blob storage provides a scalable, resilient way to store terabytes of user data. The storage facilities can also integrate with the Access Control service to ensure users’ data is delivered securely. Training & Examples These links point to online Windows Azure training labs and examples where you can learn more about the individual ingredients described above. (Note: The entire Windows Azure Training Kit can also be downloaded for offline use.) Windows Azure (16 labs) Windows Azure is an internet-scale cloud computing and services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers, which provides an operating system and a set of developer services which can be used individually or together. It gives developers the choice to build web applications; applications running on connected devices, PCs, or servers; or hybrid solutions offering the best of both worlds. New or enhanced applications can be built using existing skills with the Visual Studio development environment and the .NET Framework. With its standards-based and interoperable approach, the services platform supports multiple internet protocols, including HTTP, REST, SOAP, and plain XML SQL Azure (7 labs) Microsoft SQL Azure delivers on the Microsoft Data Platform vision of extending the SQL Server capabilities to the cloud as web-based services, enabling you to store structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. Windows Azure Services (9 labs) As applications collaborate across organizational boundaries, ensuring secure transactions across disparate security domains is crucial but difficult to implement. Windows Azure Services provides hosted authentication and access control using powerful, secure, standards-based infrastructure. Developing Applications for the Cloud, 2nd Edition (eBook) This book demonstrates how you can create from scratch a multi-tenant, Software as a Service (SaaS) application to run in the cloud using the latest versions of the Windows Azure Platform and tools. The book is intended for any architect, developer, or information technology (IT) professional who designs, builds, or operates applications and services that run on or interact with the cloud. Fabrikam Shipping (SaaS reference application) This is a full end to end sample scenario which demonstrates how to use the Windows Azure platform for exposing an application as a service. We developed this demo just as you would: we had an existing on-premises sample, Fabrikam Shipping, and we wanted to see what it would take to transform it in a full subscription based solution. The demo you find here is the result of that investigation See my Windows Azure Resource Guide for more guidance on how to get started, including more links web portals, training kits, samples, and blogs related to Windows Azure.

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• High Jinks, Hi Jacks, Exceptional DBA Awards and PASS

  - by Rodney

  The countdown to PASS has counted down.  The day after tomorrow I will board a plane, like many others, on my way for the 4th year in a row to SQL PASS Summit.  The anticipation has been excruciating but luckily I have this little thing called a day job as a DBA that has kept me busy and not thinking too much about the event. Well that is not exactly true since my beautiful wife works for PASS so we get to talk about SQL from the time we wake up until late in the evening. I would not have it any other way and I feel very fortunate to be a part of this great event and to have been chosen as the Exceptional DBA Award judge also for the 4th year in a row.  This year, I will have been again tasked with presenting the award to the winner, Mr. Jeff Moden and it will be a true honor to meet him in person as I have read many of his articles on SSC and have attended his session at PASS previously.  The speech is all ready but one item remains, which will be a surprise to all who attend the party on Tuesday night in Seattle (see links below).  Let's face it, Exceptional DBAs everywhere work very hard protecting our data stores, tuning queries, mentoring, saving money, installing clusters, etc and once in a while there is time to be exceptionally non-professional and have a bit of fun. Once incident that happened this year that falls under the High Jinks category was when my network admin asked if I could Telnet into a SQL instance and see if I could make the connection through the firewall that he had just configured. I was able to establish a connection on port 1433 and it occurred to me that it would be very interesting if I could actually run T-SQL queries via a Telnet session much like you might do with an SMTP server. With that thought, I proceeded to demonstrate this could be possible by convincing my senior DBA Shawn McGehee that I was able to do so. At first he did not believe me. It shook his world view.  It was inconceivable.  What I had done, behind the scenes, of course, was to copy and rename SQLCMD.exe to Telnet.exe and used it to connect and run a simple, "Select * from sys.databases" on the SQL instance. I think if it had been anyone other than Shawn I could have extended this ruse indefinitely but he caught on within 30 seconds. It was a fun thirty seconds though. On the High Jacks side of the house, which is really merged to be SQL HACKS, I finally, after several years of struggling with how to connect to an untrusted domain like in a DMZ with a windows account in SSMS, I stumbled upon a solution that does away with the requirement to use SQL Authentication.  While "Runas" is a great command to use to run an application with a higher privileged account, I had not previously been able to figure out how to connect to the remote domain with SSMS and "Runsas". It never connected and caused a login failure every time for the remote windows domain account. Then I ran across an option for "Runas",   "/netonly".  This option postpones the login until a connection is made and only then passes the remote login you supply when you first launch SSMS with the "Runas" command. So a typical shortcut would look like: "C:\Windows\System32\runas.exe /netonly /user:remotedomain.com\rodlandrum "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Tools\Binn\VSShell\Common7\IDE\Ssms.exe" You will want to make sure the passwords are synced between the two domains, your local domain and the remote domain, otherwise you may have account lockout issues, but I have found in weeks of testing this is a stable solution. Now it is time to get ready to head for Seattle. Please, if you see me (@SQLBeat) or my wife (@Karlakay22) please run up and high five me (wait..High Jinks.High Jacks.High Fives.Need to change the title) or give me a big bear hug if you are strong enough to lift me off the ground. And if you do actually do that, I will think you are awesome and will not embarrass you by crying out for help or complaining of a broken back or sciatic nerve damage. And now the links to others who have all of the details. First, for the MVP Deep Dives 2, of which, like John, I was lucky enough to be able to participate in this year. http://www.simple-talk.com/community/blogs/johnm/archive/2011/09/29/103577.aspx And the details of the SSC party where the Exceptional DBA of 2011, Jeff Moden, will be awarded. http://www.simple-talk.com/community/blogs/rebecca_amos/archive/2011/10/05/103661.aspx   Cheers! Rodney

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• A little primer on using TFS with a small team

  - by johndoucette

  The scenario; A small team of 3 developers mostly in maintenance mode with traditional ASP.net, classic ASP, .Net integration services and utilities with the company’s third party packages, and a bunch of java-based Coldfusion web applications all under Visual Source Safe (VSS). They are about to embark on a huge SharePoint 2010 new construction project and wanted to use subversion instead VSS. TFS was a foreign word and smelled of “high cost” and of an “over complicated process”. Since they had no preconditions about the old TFS versions (‘05 & ‘08), it was fun explaining how simple it was to install a TFS server and get the ball rolling, with or without all the heavy stuff one sometimes associates with such a huge and powerful application management lifecycle product. So, how does a small team begin using TFS? 1. Start by using source control and migrate current VSS source trees into TFS. You can take the latest version or migrate the entire version history. It’s up to you on whether you want a clean start or need quick access to all the version notes and history of the bits. 2. Since most shops are mainly in maintenance mode with existing applications, begin using bug workitems for everything. When you receive an issue/bug from your current tracking system, manually enter the workitem in TFS right through Visual Studio. You can automate the integration to the current tracking system later or replace it entirely. Believe me, this thing is powerful and can handle even the largest of help desks. 3. With new construction, begin work with requirements and task workitems and follow the traditional sprint-based development lifecycle. Obviously, some minor training will be needed, but don’t fear, this is very intuitive and MSDN has a ton of lesson based labs and videos. 4. For the java developers, use the new Team Explorer Everywhere 2010 plugin (recently known as Teamprise). There is a seamless interface in Eclipse, but also a good command-line utility for other environments such as Dreamweaver. 5. Wait to fully integrate the whole workitem/project management/testing process until your team is familiar with the integrated workitems for bugs and code. After a while, you will see the team wanting more transparency into the work they are all doing and naturally, everyone will want workitems to help them organize the chaos! 6. Management will be limited in the value of the reports until you have a fully blown implementation of project planning, construction, build, deployment and testing. However, there are some basic “bug rate” reports and current backlog listings that can provide good information. Some notable explanations of TFS; Work Item Tracking and Project Management - A workitem represents the unit of work within the system which enables tracking of all activities produced by a user, whether it is a developer, business user, project manager or tester. The properties of a workitem such as linked changesets (checked-in code), who updated the data and when, the states and reasons for change, are all transitioned to a data warehouse within TFS for reporting purposes. A workitem can be defines as a "bug", "requirement", test case", or a "change request". They drive the work effort by the individual assigned to it and also provide a key role in defining what needs to be done. Workitems are the things the team needs to do to accomplish a goal. Test Case Management - Starting with a workitem known as a "test case", a tester (or developer) can now author and manage test cases within a formal test plan subsystem. Although TFS supports the test case workitem type, there is a new product known as the VS Test Professional 2010 which allows a tester to facilitate manual tests including fast forwarding steps in the process to arrive at the assertion point quickly. This repeatable process provides quick regression tests and can be conducted by the business user to ensure completeness during UAT. In addition, developers no longer can provide a response to a bug with the line "cannot reproduce". With every test run, attachments including the recorded session, captured environment configurations and settings, screen shots, intellitrace (debugging history), and in some cases if the lab manager is being used, a snapshot of the tested environment is available. Version Control - A modern system allowing shared check-in/check-out, excellent merge conflict resolution, Shelvesets (personal check-ins), branching/merging visualization, public workspaces, gated check-ins, security hierarchy capabilities, and changeset/workitem tracking. Knowing what was done with the code by any developer has become much easier to picture and resolve issues. Team Build - Automate the compilation process whether you need it to be whenever a developer checks-in code, periodically such as nightly builds for testers in the morning, or manual builds to be deployed into production. Each build can run through pre-determined tests, perform code analysis to see if the developer conforms to the team standards, and reject the build if either fails. Project Portal & Reporting - Provide management with a dashboard with insight into the project(s). "Where are we" in each step of the way including past iterations and the current burndown rate. Enabling this feature is easy as it seamlessly interfaces with existing SharePoint implementations.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, May 13, 2014

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, May 13, 2014Popular ReleasesWinAudit: WinAudit Freeware v3.0: WinAudit.exe v3.0 MD5: 88750CCF49FF7418199B2645755830FA Known Issues: 1. Report creation can be very slow when right-to-left (Hebrew) characters are present. 2. Emsisoft Anti-Malware may stop and/or quarantine WinAudit. This happens when WinAudit attempts to obtain a list if running programmes. You will need to set an exception rule in Emsisoft to allow WinAudit to run.MVCwCMS - ASP.NET MVC CMS: MVCwCMS 2.2.2: Updated CKFinder config. For the installation instructions visit the documentation page: https://mvcwcms.codeplex.com/documentationTerraMap (Terraria World Map Viewer): TerraMap 1.0.4: Added support for the new Terraria v1.2.4 update. New items, walls, and tiles Fixed Issue 35206: Hightlight/Find doesn't work for Demon Altars Fixed finding Demon Hearts/Shadow Orbs Added ability to find Enchanted Swords (in the stone) and Water Bolt books Fixed installer not uninstalling older versions The setup file will make sure .NET 4 is installed, install TerraMap, create desktop and start menu shortcuts, add a .wld file association, and launch TerraMap. If you prefer the zip ...WPF Localization Extension: v2.2.1: Issue #9277 Issue #9292 Issue #9311 Issue #9312 Issue #9313 Issue #9314CtrlAltStudio Viewer: CtrlAltStudio Viewer 1.2.1.41167 Release: This release of the CtrlAltStudio Viewer includes the following significant features: Oculus Rift support. Stereoscopic 3D display support. Variable walking / flying speed. Xbox 360 Controller support. Kinect for Windows support. Based on Firestorm viewer 4.6.5 codebase. For more details, see the release notes linked to below. Release notes: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/release-notes/1-2-1-41167-release Support info: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/support Privacy policy: http:/...ExtJS based ASP.NET Controls: FineUI v4.0.6: FineUI（???） ?? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET ??? FineUI??? ?? No JavaScript，No CSS，No UpdatePanel，No ViewState，No WebServices ??????? ?????? IE 8.0+、Chrome、Firefox、Opera、Safari ???? Apache License v2.0 ?：ExtJS ?? GPL v3 ?????(http://www.sencha.com/license) ???? ??：http://fineui.com/ ??：http://fineui.com/bbs/ ??：http://fineui.com/demo/ ??：http://fineui.com/doc/ ??：http://fineui.codeplex.com/ FineUI ???? ExtJS ????????，???? ExtJS ?，?????： 1. ????? FineUI ? ExtJS ? http://fineui.com/bbs/forum.ph...Office App Model Samples: Office App Model Samples v2.0: Office App Model Samples v2.0GMare: GMare Beta 1.1: Features Added: Overhauled interface Re-wrote most controls and forms Automatic room creation on application open Room properties bar to change various room properties Now able to use a background from a supported Game Maker project file Block instances implemented More instance editing features like multi-Select, cherry pick select, replace, and set position More instance options on the instance list Flexible XML based .gmpx human readable project file format Game...Readable Passphrase Generator: KeePass Plugin 0.13.0: Version 0.13.0 Added "mutators" which add uppercase and numbers to passphrases (to help complying with upper, lower, number complexity rules). Additional API methods which help consuming the generator from 3rd party c# projects. 13,160 words in the default dictionary (~600 more than previous release).CS-Script for Notepad++ (C# intellisense and code execution): Release v1.0.25.0: Release v1.0.25.0 MemberInfo/MethodInfo popup is now positioned properly to fit the screen In MethodInfo popup method signatures are word-wrapped Implemented Debug text value visualizer Pining sub-values from Watch PanelxFunc: xFunc 2.15.3: Added #53R.NET: R.NET 1.5.12: R.NET 1.5.12 is a beta release towards R.NET 1.6. You are encouraged to use 1.5.12 now and give feedback. See the documentation for setup and usage instructions. Main changes for R.NET 1.5.12: The C stack limit was not disabled on Windows. For reasons possibly peculiar to R, this means that non-concurrent access to R from multiple threads was not stable. This is now fixed, with the fix validated with a unit test. Thanks to Odugen, skyguy94, and previously others (evolvedmicrobe, tomasp) fo...CTI Text Encryption: CTI Text Encryption 5.2: Change log: 5.2 - Remove Cut button. - Fixed Reset All button does not reset encrypted text column. - Switch button location between Copy and Paste. - Enable users to use local fonts to display characters of their language correctly. (A font settings file will be saved at the same folder of this program.) 5.1 - Improve encryption process. - Minor UI update. - Version 5.1 is not compatible with older version. 5.0 - Improve encryption algorithm. - Simply inner non-encryption related mec...SEToolbox: SEToolbox 01.029.006 Release 1: Fix to allow keyboard search on load dialog. (type the first few letters of your save) Fixed check for new release. Changed the way ship details are loaded to alleviate load time for worlds with very large ships (100,000+ blocks). Fixed Image importer, was incorrectly listing 'Asteroid' as import option. Minor changes to menus (text and appearance) for clarity and OS consistency. Added in reading of world palette for color dialog editor. WIP on subsystem editor. Can now multiselec...Media Companion: Media Companion MC3.597b: Thank you for being patient, againThere are a number of fixes in place with this release. and some new features added. Most are self explanatory, so check out the options in Preferences. Couple of new Features:* Movie - Allow save Title and Sort Title in Title Case format. * Movie - Allow save fanart.jpg if movie in folder. * TV - display episode source. Get episode source from episode filename. Fixed:* Movie - Added Fill Tags from plot keywords to Batch Rescraper. * Movie - Fixed TMDB s...SimCityPak: SimCityPak 0.3.0.0: Contains several bugfixes, newly identified properties and some UI improvements. Main new features UI overhaul for the main index list: Icons for each different index, including icons for different property files Tooltips for all relevant fields Removed clutter Identified hundreds of additional properties (thanks to MaxisGuillaume) - this should make modding gameplay easierMagick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.9.002: Magick.NET linked with ImageMagick 6.8.9.0.VidCoder: 1.5.22 Beta: Added ability to burn SRT subtitles. Updated to HandBrake SVN 6169. Added checks to prevent VidCoder from running with a database version newer than it expects. Tooltips in the Advanced Video panel now trigger on the field labels as well as the fields themselves. Fixed updating preset/profile/tune/level settings on changing video encoder. This should resolve some problems with QSV encoding. Fixed tunes and profiles getting set to blank when switching between x264 and x265. Fixed co...Tiny Deduplicator: Tiny Deduplicator 1.0.0.1: Project Description Tiny Deduplicator is a file deduplicator which can scan for duplicate files, and allows the user to control which duplicates they are going to keep, and which are going to be recycled. Tiny Deduplicator will never delete files directly-- rather, it sends them to the recycle bin for you to confirm the deletion of. In its current form, Tiny Deduplicator is a mere 23KB (including the GUI); however, it has the following features: Easily browse and select which directory to ...NuGet: NuGet 2.8.2: We will be releasing a 2.8.2 version of our own NuGet packages and the NuGet.exe command-line tool. The 2.8.2 release will not include updated VS or WebMatrix extensions. NuGet.Server.Extensions.dll needs to be used alongside NuGet-Signed.exe to provide the NuGet.exe mirror functionality.New Projects2112110004: bùi th? bé di?m2112110007: l?p trình hu?ng d?i tu?ng (OOP) Ph?m H?u Dung2112110019: Nguy?n Duy Hòa_2112110019 CCQ1211A2112110032: Truong Ha Mi2112110041: nguyen manh thuong quan2112110079: VU TH? MAI ANH - L?P TRÌNH HU?NG Ð?I TU?NG(OOP) - L?P CCQ1211B - MSSV 2112110079Adapter Pattern: Super duper simple project that explains how the Adapter Design Pattern works.Aspose for Sitefinity: Aspose Sitefinity Content Export Add-on allow users to export online content into Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat PDF document using Aspose.Words.baitapHDT: le ba thuan thanhCaltech Software: Caltech SoftwareDCM Ventas: DCMEntityBinder: Entity Binder is a C# library to help you to read data from xml or json file and bind them directly to data object.FATCAClient: A simple application for populating and viewing XML files which comply with the published FATCA schema.Grade Calculator For BTEC First Diploma in IT level 2: Grade Calculator For BTEC First Diploma in IT level 2HMS_TEST: ????? ???? ??????.lock Keywords Demo: ?? lock ????????，????? this、string、typeof(MyType) ?????mbtPdfAsm: command line pdf file assembler/merger.Orchard CMS Syndication: Implementation of a module that provides OData protocol and then enables third parties to query (custom) creatable content types embedded in an Orchard CMS SitePerfAnalyzer: TemporaryPluralSight Downloader: This project allow to Download PluralSight (PluralSight downloader) video tutorials even with free account and many more features. Use at your own risk.ProView: Image viewer and data entry application for renaming image files.Real Estate website Clark: Real Estate website ClarkSE Community Modding API: This project aims to simplify the modding process of Space Engineers® game from Keen Software HouseSirGorn robi PeHaPa: Projekt na prace zespolowa.TPC1 Grupo14: TPC1Grupo14TypeScriptSheet (Spreadsheet webapp create using TypeScript): TypeScriptSheet. This project is Spread sheet Web Application. It is medium featured spread sheet built using TypeScript and JQuery.VB Converter: Convert your VB6 code to .NET (C# and VB .NET) with this tool.Web Site For Instagram: This is a web app for Instagram using asp.net MVC.WorkProject: This is WorkProject.Z Entity Framework Extensions: ab??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????,?????????,?????????????。?????????????,?????????,???????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????????????????????,???????????????,????????????????！ ??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????????????,???????、????、????、??????、???????,??????,???????????。 ????-????【??】????????: ??????????????,???????、???????????,????????,????,?????????,??????,??????! ????-????【??】????????: ???????????????"????,????"???,????????????????????????,??????????????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????,????,??????????? ???? ???? ?????????,???,??,?????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ???????????? ???? ???? ???? ???? ???? ??????? ?????，????????????????. ????-????【??】????????: ??????????????、????、????、??????、????、????????,????????、?????????,?????。 ?????-?????【??】?????????: ??????????????????????????,???????????????????????,???????。 ?????-?????【??】?????????: ??????????????:?????? ???? ??????,???????,??????,???????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????????????,???????????????。?????????????,???????,?????????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????????,?????????????,???????????.????????????,????????????! ????-????【??】????????: ????????????:????,????,????,???????,????????,??????:????????,?????! ?????-?????【??】?????????: ?????????????????,??:??????,????,????,????,?????,??????????????. ?????-?????【??】?????????: ??????,??,????????。 ... ??????????????????、??????????????????... ??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????????????,??????????????、???????、???????、???????、?????！ ??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????????????,?????????????。????????????,???????,???????,?????,?????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????????????????????,???????????,????????,?????????????????????。 ????-????【??】????????: ??????????????????????,????,????,??????????。???????????????,??,??,??????????,??????... ??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????????、?????????,?????????,????,????????,????????????????! ????-????【??】????????: ??????????????????????,?????????,??????????,????????,?????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ???????????????、????、????、??????、????、???????,?????,?????????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????????????、??????,????、?????、????， ?????????，?????????????！ ????-????【??】????????: ????????????????、????、??????、????????,????????????,???????????！ ?????-?????【??】?????????: ????????????????????、????、????、??????、???????,??????、??????。 ?????-?????【??】?????????: ???????,??????,?????????????????????,???????????????????????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????????,?????????????????????,?????,????,???????. ??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????????、??????、????、?????、?????!????,????????????????!????。 ????-????【??】????????: ??????????????????,?????,???????,???????????,??????! ?????-?????【??】?????????: ???????????、??、???????????,??????,????????,??????????????????...????。 ?????-?????【??】?????????: ??????????????、???????,?????????,???????????????,?????????????。

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• MSCC: Career & IT Fair 2014

  Already a couple of weeks ago, I've been addressed by Ibraahim and Yunus to see whether it would be interesting to participate in the 1st Career & IT Fair organised by the UoM Computer Club. Well, luckily we met at the Global Windows Azure Bootcamp and I wasn't too sure whether it would be possible for me to attend after all. The main reason is given because of work demand and furthermore due to the fact that the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community currently has no advertising material at all. Here's the brief statement of the event: "The UOM Students' Computer Club in collaboration with the UOM Students' Union and UOM CSE Department is organising a 'Career & IT Fair' on the 23rd and 24th April 2014. This event has for objective to provide a platform to tertiary students, secondary students as well as vocational students, the opportunity to meet job recruiters." Luckily, I was reminded that the 23rd is a Wednesday, and therefore I decided that it might be interesting to move our weekly Code & Coffee session to the university and hence be able to attend the career fair. As it turned out it was a great choice and thankfully Pritvi, Nadim as well as Ishwon volunteered to be around at the "community booth". Thankfully, the computer club gave us - the MSCC and the LUGM - one of their spaces in the lobby area of the Paul Octave Wiéhé Auditorium. My impression about the event Very well and professionally organised. Seriously, the lads over at the UoM Computer Club did a great job in organising their 2 days event, and felt very comfortable at any time. Actually, it was kind of amusing to some of the members constantly running around and checking everything. Even though that the whole process went smooth and easy off the hand. There were a couple of interesting pieces of information and announcements during the opening ceremony. For example, the Computer Science faculty is a very young one and has been initiated back in 1988 only - just by 4 staff members at that time. Now, after 25 years they have achieved quite a lot and there are currently 1.000+ active students attending the numerous lectures and courses. But there is no room to rest on previous achievements, and I was kind of surprised to hear that there are plans to extend the campus, and offer new lectures in the fields of nanotechnology, big data handling, and - crossing fingers - the introduction and establishment of a space control centre. Mauritius is already part of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) and hopefully there will be more activities into that direction in the near future. Community - Awareness and collaboration As stated earlier, I could only spent one morning but luckily other members of the MSCC and the LUGM stayed during the whole two days and provided answers to any interested person. As for me, I took the opportunity to get in touch with the other companies in the lobby. Mainly, to create some awareness about our IT communities but also to see whether there might be options for future engagement in common activities, too. So far, I was able to speak to representatives of the following companies: ACCA Mauritius Business at Work Infomil LinkByNet Microsoft Indian Ocean Islands & French Pacific Spherinity Training Institute Spoon Consulting Ltd. State Informatics Ltd. Unfortunately, I only had a quick chat with an HR representative of LinkByNet but I fully count on our MSCC members like Nitin or LUGM member Ronny to spread our intentions over there.  So far, all of the representatives were really interested in our concepts and activities and I'm currently catching up with an introduction flyer for the MSCC that I'm going to send out to all those contacts via mail. It would be great to have more craftsmen as well as professional support on board. Some pictures from the event MSCC: Fantastic outlook for the near future. Announcements were made on Big data, nanotechnology, and space control centre in Mauritius. Interesting! MSCC: The lobby area was cramped with students. Great way to exchange and network. Good luck to all candidates! Passing the relay staff to... I recommend you to continue to read about the first Career & IT Fair on Ish's blog. He has a great summary and more details on those two days of IT activities than I have. Thanks and feel free to leave a comment (or two)... 

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• Must-see sessions at TCUK11

  - by Roger Hart

  Technical Communication UK is probably the best professional conference I've been to. Last year, I spoke there on content strategy, and this year I'll be co-hosting a workshop on embedded user assistance. Obviously, I'd love people to come along to that; but there are some other sessions I'd like to flag up for anybody thinking of attending. Tuesday 20th Sept - workshops This will be my first year at the pre-conference workshop day, and I'm massively glad that our workshop hasn't been scheduled along-side the one I'm really interested in. My picks: It looks like you're embedding user assistance. Would you like help? My colleague Dom and I are presenting this one. It's our paen to Clippy, to the brilliant idea he represented, and the crashing failure he was. Less precociously, we'll be teaching embedded user assistance, Red Gate style. Statistics without maths: acquiring, visualising and interpreting your data This doesn't need to do anything apart from what it says on the tin in order to be gold dust. But given the speakers, I suspect it will. A data-informed approach is a great asset to technical communications, so I'd recommend this session to anybody event faintly interested. The speakers here have a great track record of giving practical, accessible introductions to big topics. Go along. Wednesday 21st Sept - day one There's no real need to recommend the keynote for a conference, but I will just point out that this year it's Google's Patrick Hofmann. That's cool. You know what else is cool: Focus on the user, the rest follows An intro to modelling customer experience. This is a really exciting area for tech comms, and potentially touches on one of my personal hobby-horses: the convergence of technical communication and marketing. It's all part of delivering customer experience, and knowing what your users need lets you help them, sell to them, and delight them. Content strategy year 1: a tale from the trenches It's often been observed that content strategy is great at banging its own drum, but not so hot on compelling case studies. Here you go, folks. This is the presentation I'm most excited about so far. On a mission to communicate! Skype help their users communicate, but how do they communicate with them? I guess we'll find out. Then there's the stuff that I'm not too excited by, but you might just be. The standards geeks and agile freaks can get together in a presentation on the forthcoming ISO standards for agile authoring. Plus, there's a session on VBA for tech comms. I do have one gripe about day 1. The other big UK tech comms conference, UA Europe, have - I think - netted the more interesting presentation from Ellis Pratt. While I have no doubt that his TCUK case study on producing risk assessments will be useful, I'd far rather go to his talk on game theory for tech comms. Hopefully UA Europe will record it. Thursday 22nd Sept - day two Day two has a couple of slots yet to be confirmed. The rumour is that one of them will be the brilliant "Questions and rants" session from last year. I hope so. It's not ranting, but I'll be going to: RTFMobile: beyond stating the obvious Ultan O'Broin is an engaging speaker with a lot to say, and mobile is one of the most interesting and challenging new areas for tech comms. Even if this weren't a research-based presentation from a company with buckets of technology experience, I'd be going. It is, and you should too. Pattern recognition for technical communicators One of the best things about TCUK is the tendency to include sessions that tackle the theoretical and bring them towards the practical. Kai and Chris delivered cracking and well-received talks last year, and I'm looking forward to seeing what they've got for us on some of the conceptual underpinning of technical communication. Developing an interactive non-text learning programme Annoyingly, this clashes with Pattern Recognition, so I hope at least one of the streams is recorded again this year. The idea of communicating complex information without words us fascinating and this sounds like a great example of this year's third stream: "anything but text". For the localization and DITA crowds, there's rich pickings on day two, though I'm not sure how many of those sessions I'm interested in. In the 13:00 - 13:40 slot, there's an interesting clash between Linda Urban on re-use and training content, and a piece on minimalism I'm sorely tempted by. That's my pick of #TCUK11. I'll be doing a round-up blog after the event, and probably talking a bit more about it beforehand. I'm also reliably assured that there are still plenty of tickets.

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• Goals for 2010 Retrospective

  - by Brian Jackett

  As we approach the end of 2010 I’d like to take a  few minutes to reflect back on this past year and revisit the goals that I set for myself at the beginning of the year (click here to see those goals).  I feel it is important to track your goals not only to see if you accomplished them but also to see what new directions in life you pursued.  Once we enter into 2011 I’ll follow up with a new post on goals for the new year. Professional Blog – This year I intended to write at least 2 posts a month.  Looking back I far surpassed that goal by writing 47 posts (this one being my 48th).  As with many things in life, quantity does not mean quality.  A good example is a number of my posts announcing upcoming speaking engagements and providing links to presentation slides and scripts.  That aside, I like to at least keep content relatively fresh on this blog  which I was able to accomplish.  At the same time I’ve gotten much more comfortable in my blogging style and it has become much easier to write. Speaking – I didn’t define a clear goal for speaking engagements, but had a rough idea of wanting to speak at 2-3 events.  Once again I far exceeded that number by speaking at 10 separate events and delivering 12+ presentations.  I’m very thankful for all of the opportunities that I was given and all of the wonderful people I have met as a result. Volunteering – This year I intended to help out with the COSPUG (now Buckeye SPUG) steering committee and Stir Trek conference.  I fulfilled both goals and as well as taking on lead organizer duties for the first ever SharePoint Saturday Columbus.  Each of these events and groups turned out to be successful and I was glad to be a part of them all.  I look forward to continuing to volunteer with each next year in some capacity. Android Development – My goal for getting into Android development was a late addition, but one I didn’t necessarily fulfill.  I spent a couple nights downloading the tools, configuring my environment, and going through some “simple” tutorials.  I say “simple” because in my opinion the tutorials were not laid out very well, took a long time to get running properly, and confused me more than helped.  After about a week I was frustrated with the process and didn’t think it was a good use of my time.  On a side note, I’ve dabbled in Windows Phone 7 development over the past few months and have been very excited by how easy and intuitive it was to get started and develop some proof of concepts. Personal Getting in Shape – I had intended to play on recreational sports leagues and work out on a semi-regular basis.  For the most part I fulfilled this goal by playing on various softball and volleyball leagues as well as using the gym.  At the same time I had some major setbacks.  In the spring I badly sprained my ankle and got hit in the knee with a softball which kept me inactive for almost 2 months.  More recently I broke my knuckle (click here to read about it) which I am still recovering from. Volunteering – On the volunteering front I kept my commitments at my parish’s high school youth group.  As for other volunteering opportunities I got involved with a great organization called Columbus Gives Back (website).  I’ve volunteered with them a few times and really enjoy their goal to provide opportunities to people with busy schedules.  They  offer a variety of events typically after work hours and spread out around Columbus with no set commitments on time you need to put in.  If you have the time or motivation I highly recommend them. House/Condo – I had been thinking of buying a house or condo this past summer, but decided to extend my apartment lease for another year instead.  I have begun the search for a place in the past few weeks and am excited begin the process of owning a home. Conclusion     This year I was able to set and achieve many of my goals.  For next year I’ll try to put more specific numbers to all of my goals.  If any of you readers set goals for 2011 feel free to send me a link as I’d love to see what you are aiming to accomplish.  Have a great end of 2010 and best wishes for the start of 2011!       -Frog Out

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• More Quick Interview Tips

  - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

  In the last couple of years I have conducted a lot of interviews for application and database developers for my company, and I can tell you that the little things can mean a lot.  Here are a few quick tips to help you make a good first impression. A year ago I gave you my #1 interview tip: Do some basic research!  And a year later, I am still stunned by how few technical people do the most basic of research.  I can only guess that it is because it is so engrained in our psyche that technical competence is everything (see How to Manage Technical Employees for more on this idea) that we forget or ignore the importance of soft skills and the art of the interview.  Or maybe it is because we have heard the stories of the uber-geek who has zero personal skills but still makes a fortune working for Microsoft.  Well, here’s another quick tip:  You’re probably not as good as he is; and a large number of companies actually run small to medium sized teams and can’t really afford to have the social outcast in the group.  In a small team, everyone has to get along well, and that’s an important part of what I’m evaluating during the interview process. My #2 tip is to act alive!  I typically conduct screening interviews by phone before I bring someone in for an in-person.  I don’t care how laid-back you are or if you have a “quiet personality”, when we are talking, ACT like you are happy I called and you are interested in getting the job.  If you sound like you are bored-to-death and that you would be perfectly happy to never work again, I am perfectly happy to help you attain that goal, and I’ll move on to the next candidate. And closely related to #2, perhaps we’ll call it #2.1 is this tip:  When I call you on the phone for the interview, don’t answer your phone by just saying, “Hello”.  You know that the odds are about 999-to-1 that it is me calling for the interview because we have specifically arranged this time slot for the call.  And you can see on the caller ID that it is not one of your buddies calling, so identify yourself.  Don’t make me question whether I dialed the right number.  Answer your phone with a, “Hello, this is ___<your full name preferred, but at least your first name>___.”.  And when I say, “Hi, <your name>, this is Mark from <my company>” it would be really nice to hear you say, “Hi, Mark, I have been expecting your call.”  This sets the perfect tone for our conversation.  I know I have the right person; you are professional enough and interested enough in the job or contract to remember your appointments; and now we can move on to a little intro segment and get on with the reason for our call. As crazy as it sounds, I’ve actually had phone interviews that went like this: <Ring…> You:  “Hello?” Me:  “Hi, this is Mark from _______” You:  “Yeah?” Me:  “Is this <your name>?” You:  “Yeah.” Me:  “I had this time in my calendar for us to talk…were you expecting my call?” You:  “Oh, yeah, sure…” I used to be nice and would try to go ahead with the interview even after this bad start, thinking I was giving the candidate the benefit of the doubt…a second chance…but more often than not it was a struggle and 10 minutes into what was supposed to be a 45-minute call, I’m looking for a way to hang up without being rude myself.  It never worked out.  I never brought that person in for an in-person interview, much less offered them the job or contract.  Who knows, maybe they were some sort of wunderkind that we missed out on.  What I know is that they would never fit in with the rest of the team, and around here that is absolutely critical. So, in conclusion… Act alive!  Identify yourself!  And do at least the very basic of research.

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