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• Fill a Flash Drive with Portable Software using Lupo PenSuite

  - by Asian Angel

  A flash drive full of portable software is helpful to have along wherever you go. The Lupo PenSuite lets you choose from three different versions to get the best fit for your everyday needs. Note: If running the full version you will need a 512 MB USB flash drive or larger. Using Lupo PenSuite The one window to watch for during the setup process is where you have the opportunity to add a specific language pack if needed. Outside of that all that you need to do is sit back and wait for the suite to be extracted. Note: Extraction times will vary based on version and extraction location. Here we browsed to our flash drive to extract it to… Once the setup process is complete locate and double click the Lupo_PenSuite.exe file. This one time window will present you the opportunity to start using the suite immediately, or go directly into the options. When the suite is active you will have a new system tray icon that operates as a start menu button. At the bottom you can monitor the remaining room on your flash drive, and use the close button to exit the suite (may display as a power button based on menu theme). A quick look at the set up inside the suite. There is a pre-configured area for organizing and storing your personal files. Prefer a classic style menu? Just select for it in the options (various tab) and enjoy a smaller streamlined look. Note: You can also change the theme for the regular menu and add a user pic. The suite provides access to your portable software and online sites. You get to enjoy the best of both as shown in the following examples. Websites will open using the suite’s portable Firefox install. VLC is ready to play your downloaded videos. The suite also has some very nice photo editing programs added in. Installing Additional Apps If one of your favorite programs is not included in the suite version, it only takes a few minutes to add it in. Go to the Additional Apps webpage, download the app(s), and extract them onto your hard-drive. Note: Link for additional apps webpage provided below. Add the extracted app(s) to the MyApps folder in the suite’s folder hierarchy. Click on ASuite in the suite’s start menu. Drag and drop the portable app’s exe file into the MyApps section in the ASuite window. Your new software’s shortcut should display as shown here. Close this window when finished. Checking the suite’s start menu will show your new software ready to be used. Conclusion If you need a good portable software collection to carry with you on a flash drive then Lupo PenSuite is definitely worth taking a look at. We tested Lupo PenSuite on XP, Vista, and Windows 7 and it works great on all three. Another popular choice is PortableApps and you can check out our Review of that too they are essentially the same thing, each is just packaged differently. Links Download Lupo PenSuite (Full, Lite, & Zero versions) *Download links approximately one-third down the page. Download Additional Apps for Lupo PenSuite Download Additional Skins for Lupo PenSuite Start Menu View Video Tutorials *Has tutorial for easy updating of entire suite. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Install and Run Applications from Your iPod, Flash Drive or Mp3 PlayerRebit Backup Software [Review]BitLocker To Go Encrypts Portable Flash Drives in Windows 7Create a Bootable Ubuntu USB Flash Drive the Easy WaySpeed up Your Windows Vista Computer with ReadyBoost 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 All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 Google TV The iPod Revolution Ultimate Boot CD can help when disaster strikes Windows Firewall with Advanced Security – How To Guides Sculptris 1.0, 3D Drawing app AceStock, a Tiny Desktop Quote Monitor

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• SQL Developer Data Modeler v3.3 Early Adopter: Search

  - by thatjeffsmith

  photo: Stuck in Customs via photopin cc The next version of Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler is now available as an Early Adopter (read, beta) release. There are many new major feature enhancements to talk about, but today’s focus will be on the brand new Search mechanism. Data, data, data – SO MUCH data Google has made countless billions of dollars around a very efficient and intelligent search business. People have become accustomed to having their data accessible AND searchable. Data models can have thousands of entities or tables, each having dozens of attributes or columns. Imagine how hard it could be to find what you’re looking for here. This is the challenge we have tackled head-on in v3.3. Same location as the Search toolbar in Oracle SQL Developer (and most web browsers) Here’s how it works: Search as you type – wicked fast as the entire model is loaded into memory Supports regular expressions (regex) Results loaded to a new panel below Search across designs, models Search EVERYTHING, or filter by type Save your frequent searches Save your search results as a report Open common properties of object in search results and edit basic properties on-the-fly Want to just watch the video? We have a new Oracle Learning Library resource available now which introduces the new and improved Search mechanism in SQL Developer Data Modeler. Go watch the video and then come back. Some Screenshots This will be a pretty easy feature to pick up. Search is intuitive – we’ve already learned how to do search. Now we just have a better interface for it in SQL Developer Data Modeler. But just in case you need a couple of pointers… The SYS data dictionary in model form with Search Results If I type ‘translation’ in the search dialog, then the results will come up as hits are ‘resolved.’ By default, everything is searched, although I can filter the results after-the-fact. You can see where the search finds a match in the ‘Content’ column Save the Results as a Report If you limit the search results to a category and a model, then you can save the results as a report. All of the usual suspects You can optionally include the search string, which displays in the top of of the report as ‘PATTERN.’ You can save you common reporting setups as a template and reuse those as well. Here’s a sample HTML report: Yes, I like to search my search results report! Two More Ways to Search You can search ‘in context’ by opening the ‘Find’ dialog from an active design. You can do this using the ‘Search’ toolbar button or from a model context menu. Searching a specific model Instead of bringing up the old modal Find dialog, you now get to use the new and improved Search panel. Notice there’s no ‘Model’ drop-down to select and that the active Search form is now in the Search panel versus the search toolbar up top. What else is new in SQL Developer Data Modeler version 3.3? All kinds of goodies. You can send your model to Excel for quick edits/reviews and suck the changes back into your model, you can share objects between models, and much much more. You’ll find new videos and blog posts on the subject in the new few days and weeks. Enjoy! If you have any feedback or want to report bugs, please visit our forums.

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• MIXing it Up a Bit

  - by andrewbrust

  Another March, another MIX.  For the fifth year running now, Microsoft has chosen to put on a conference aimed less at software development, per se, and more at the products, experiences and designs that software development can generate.  In all four prior MIX events, the focus of the show, its keynotes and breakout sessions has been on Web products.  On day 1 of MIX 2010 that focus shifted to Windows Phone 7 Series (WP7). What little we had seen of WP7 had been shown to us in a keynote presentation, given by Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain last month.  And today, Mr. Belfiore reprised his showmanship for the MIX 2010 audience.  Joe showed us the ins and outs of WP7 and, in a breakout session, even gave us a sneak peek of Office (specifically, Excel) on WP7.  We didn’t get to see that one month ago in Barcelona, nor did get to see email messages opened for reading, which we saw today. But beyond a tour of the phone itself, impressive though that is, we got to see apps running on it.  Those apps included Associated Press news, Seesmic (a major Twitter client) and Foursquare (a social media darling).  All three ran, ran well, and looked markedly different and better from their corresponding versions on iPhone and Android.  And the games we saw looked even better. To me though, the best demos involved the creation of WP7 apps, using Silverlight in Visual Studio and Expression Blend.  These demos were so effective because they showed important apps being built in very few steps, and by Microsoft executives to boot.  Scott Guthrie showed us how to build a Twitter API app in Visual Strudio.   Jon Harris showed us how to build a photo management and viewer application in Expression Blend, using virtually no code.  Demos of apps built from scratch to F5 without the benefit of a teacher, could be challenging.  But they went off fine, without a hitch and without a ton of opaque, generated code.  Everything written, be it C# or XAML, was easily understood, and the results were impressive. That means lots of developers can do this, and I think it means a lot will.  What I’ve seen, thus far, of iPhone and Android development looks very tedious by comparison.  Development for those platforms involve a collection of tools that integrate only to a point.  Dev work for WP7 involves use of Visual Studio, Silverlight and the same debugging experience .NET developers already know.  This was very exciting for me. All the demos harkened back to days of building apps for with Visual Basic…design the front-end, put in code-behind and then hit F5.  And that makes sense, because the phone platform, and the PC of the early 90s are both, essentially, client OS machines.  The Web was minimal and the “device” was everything. Same is true of this phone.  It’s a client app contraption that fits in your pocket. And if the platforms are comparable, hopefully so too will be the draw of ease-of-development.   WP7 has the potential to make mobile developers want to switch over, and to convince enterprise developers to get into the phone scene.  Will this propel the new phone platform to new heights, and restore Microsoft’s competiveness in the mobile arena? I hope so.  I think so.  And if Microsoft uses developers to build themselves a victory, that would be beneficial and would show that Microsoft has learned from its failures, as well as its successes.  Today I saw a few beautiful apps.  Tomorrow I hope I see a slew of others; maybe not as polished, but plentiful, attractive and stable.  That would be a victory for Microsoft, and for developers.  And it would show everyone else that developers are the kingmakers.  They need cheap, efficient dev tools and lots of respect.  Microsoft has always been the company to provide that.  Hopefully, with WP7, they will return to that persona and see how very timeless it is.

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• How to Use Sparklines in Excel 2010

  - by DigitalGeekery

  One of the cool features of Excel 2010 is the addition of Sparklines. A Sparkline is basically a little chart displayed in a cell representing your selected data set that allows you to quickly and easily spot trends at a glance. Inserting Sparklines on your Spreadsheet You will find the Sparklines group located on the Insert tab.   Select the cell or cells where you wish to display your Sparklines. Select the type of Sparkline you’d like to add to your spreadsheet. You’ll notice there are three types of Sparklines, Line, Column, and Win/Loss. We’ll select Line for our example. A Create Sparklines pops up and will prompt you to enter a Data Range you are using to create the Sparklines. You’ll notice that the location range (the range where the Sparklines will appear) is already filled in. You can type in the data range manually, or click and drag with your mouse across to select the data range. This will auto-fill the data range for you. Click OK when you are finished.   You will see your Sparklines appear in the desired cells.   Customizing Sparklines Select the one of more of the Sparklines to reveal the Design tab. You can display certain value points like high and low points, negative points, and first and last points by selecting the corresponding options from the Show group. You can also mark all value points by selecting  Markers. Select your desired Sparklines and click one of the included styles from the Style group on the Design tab. Click the down arrow on the lower right corner of the box to display additional pre-defined styles…   or select Sparkline Color or Marker Color options to fully customize your Sparklines. The Axis options allow additional options such as Date Axis Type, Plotting Data Left to Right, and displaying an axis point to represent the zero line in your data with Show Axis. Column Sparklines Column Sparklines display your data in individual columns as opposed to the Line view we’ve been using for our examples. Win/Loss Sparklines Win/Loss shows a basic positive or negative representation of your data set.   You can easily switch between different Sparkline types by simply selecting the current cells (individually or the entire group), and then clicking the desired type on the Design tab. For those that may be more visually oriented, Sparklines can be a wonderful addition to any spreadsheet. Are you just getting started with Office 2010? Check out some of our other great Excel posts such as how to copy worksheets, print only selected areas of a spreadsheet, and how to share data with Excel in Office 2010. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Convert a Row to a Column in Excel the Easy WayShare Access Data with Excel in Office 2010Make Excel 2007 Print Gridlines In Workbook FileMake Excel 2007 Always Save in Excel 2003 FormatConvert 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 DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Office 2010 reviewed in depth by Ed Bott FoxClocks adds World Times in your Statusbar (Firefox) Have Fun Editing Photo Editing with Citrify Outlook Connector Upgrade Error Gadfly is a cool Twitter/Silverlight app Enable DreamScene in Windows 7

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• DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper! Scotland 2010 - DDDSCOT

  - by Plip

  DDD in Scotland was held on the 8th May 2010 in Glasgow and I was there, not as is uaual at these kind of things as an organiser but actually as a speaker and delegate. The weekend started for me back on Thursday with the arrival of Dave Sussman to my place in Lancashire, after a curry and watching the Electon night TV coverage we retired to our respective beds (yes, I know, I hate to shatter the illusion we both sleep in the same bed wearing matching pijamas is something I've shattered now) ready for the drive up to Glasgow the following afternoon. Before heading up to Glasgow we had to pick up Young Mr Hardy from Wigan then we began the four hour drive back in time... Something that struck me on the journey up is just how beautiful Scotland is. The menacing landscapes bordered with fluffy sheep and whirly-ma-gigs are awe inspiring - well worth driving up if you ever get the chance. Anywho we arrived in Glasgow, got settled intot he hotel and went in search of Speakers for pre conference drinks and food. We discovered a gaggle (I believe that's the collective term) of speakers in the Bar and when we reached critical mass headed off to the Speakers Dinner location. During dinner, SOMEONE set my hair on FIRE. That's all I'm going to say on the matter. Whilst I was enjoying my evening there was something nagging at me, I realised that I should really write my session as I was due to give it the following morning. So after a few more drinks I headed back to the hotel and got some well earned sleep (and washed the fire damage out of my hair). Next day, headed off to the conference which was a lovely stroll through Glasgow City Centre. Non of us got mugged, murdered (or set on fire) arriving safely at the venue, which was a bonus.   I was asked to read out the opening Slides for Barry Carr's session which I did dilligently and with such professionalism that I shocked even myself. At which point I reliased in just over an hour I had to give my presentation, so headed back to the speaker room to finish writing it. Wham, bam and it was all over. Session seemed to go well. I was speaking on Exception Driven Development, which isn't so much a technical solution but rather a mindset around how one should treat exceptions and their code. To be honest, I've not been so nervous giving a session for years - something about this topic worried me, I was concerned I was being too abstract in my thinking or that what I was saying was so obvious that everyone would know it, but it seems to have been well recieved which makes me a happy Speaker. Craig Murphy has some brilliant pictures of DDD Scotland 2010. After my session was done I grabbed some lunch and headed back to the hotel and into town to do some shopping (thus my conspicuous omission from the above photo). Later on we headed out to the geek dinner which again was a rum affair followed by a few drinks and a little boogie woogie. All in all a well run, well attended conference, by the community for the community. I tip my hat to the whole team who put on DDD Scotland!       

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• Cutting-Edge Demos Coming to Collaborate12

  - by mvaughan

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} By Kathy Miedema, Oracle Applications User Experience Are you building your Collaborate 2012 agenda? Leave room for a stop at the demogrounds while you’re in Las Vegas from April 22-26. In addition to several presentations on the Oracle user experience, the Applications User Experience (UX) team will be on the demo grounds with a new eye-tracking tool, as well as demos that showcase new user experience designs. Check out our cutting-edge technology, which we use to obtain feedback that helps improve the user experience of Oracle applications, and see what our next-generation designs are in the HCM and FIN user experiences.  Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Photo by Martin Taylor – Oracle Applications User Experience An Apps UX team member demonstrates what happens during an eye-tracking test. The dots on the screen show were test participants were looking and how long they spent at each point in the page. The UX team will also be staffing an on-site lab at Collaborate. At on-site labs, conference participants can sign up to join customer feedback sessions on several different kinds of work flow designs, from HCM to FIN to CRM to mobile. The feedback UX team members collect helps inform and fine-tune the user experiences being designed for next-generation applications. At Collaborate12, for example, user experience designs around Help and organizational charts will be tested for usability. The Apps UX team brings on-site labs to many major user group conferences, including OpenWorld 2012 in October in San Francisco. Stay tuned to find out when our recruiters are ready to sign up participants, or leave a comment below to find out whether an on-site lab will be at your next conference. For information on the following presentations, which will be delivered by Apps UX team members, check the Usable Apps Events page. • The Fusion Applications User Experience: Transforming Work into Insight • Customizations Under the Covers – Making Fusion Applications Your Own • OAUG Fusion Middleware SIG (FMWSIG) • 18 Months with Fusion Applications – Stories From The Trenhes • PeopleTools Tips and Techniques

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• How To Customize Wallpaper in Windows 7 Starter Edition

  - by Asian Angel

  If you have the Starter Edition of Windows 7 installed on your netbook you may be sick of looking at the default wallpaper. With Starter Background Changer you can access other customization options with ease. Before There is not a lot that you can say about the singular default wallpaper included with the Starter Edition…it just kind of sits there all boring like. Installing Starter Background Changer Since the installer part of the program is in French we have the entire set of install windows shown here with the appropriate buttons highlighted to get you through the whole process without any problems. Using Starter Background Changer Once the installation process has finished you will simply see a quiet screen with no desktop icons or Start Menu entries visible. Now if you are wondering at this point “Did the program finish installing or did it install at all?” the answer is yes. Right click on your desktop and you will notice a new entry on the Context Menu…the same one that is included in the other editions but not Starter. Time to have some fun… The Personalization Window will open maximized but we have reduced it here for our screenshots. You have four regular categories to choose from in the lower part of the window: Wallpaper, Colors, Sounds, & Screensavers. The first category that we chose for our example was Wallpaper. As you can see here the main display area (My Collection) has no wallpapers showing at the moment. You can use the drop-down menu to access your My Pictures Folder or browse for a different location. Notice that you can choose how the image fills the screen and set up a timed wallpaper slideshow at the bottom. Any picture (or pictures) selected will be added to the My Collection display for easy access the next time you open the window. Once you choose a picture click on Validate the modification to set the wallpaper for your desktop and return to the main window. When you return to the main window you will see a preview for your selection. At this point you can simply close the window or make further adjustments in the other categories. Starter Background Changer provides easy one-stop access to other customization areas. We started off with Colors… Followed by Sounds… And finally Screensavers. Before you do close the main window you can take a quick look at the Options if desired. We did set Optimization of the images to High on our system. Quick and easy wallpaper satisfaction. We did pin the Program Window to our Taskbar…nice if you prefer this method as opposed to the Desktop Context Menu. Conclusion If you have been longing for a way to change the wallpaper in Windows 7 Starter Edition then you will definitely want to give this program a try. Goodbye boring default wallpaper! For more wonderful ways to customize your Windows 7 Started Edition be sure to read our article here. Links Download Starter Background Changer Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Awesome Desktop Wallpapers: The Windows 7 EditionWindows 7 Welcome Screen Taking Forever? Here’s the Fix (Maybe)Desktop Fun: Starship Theme WallpapersDesktop Fun: Starscape Theme WallpapersDesktop Fun: Fantasy Theme Wallpapers 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 DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Office 2010 reviewed in depth by Ed Bott FoxClocks adds World Times in your Statusbar (Firefox) Have Fun Editing Photo Editing with Citrify Outlook Connector Upgrade Error Gadfly is a cool Twitter/Silverlight app Enable DreamScene in Windows 7

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• Why I Love the Social Management Platform I Use

  - by Mike Stiles

  Not long ago, I asked the product heads for the various components of the Oracle Social Cloud’s SRM to say what they thought was coolest about their component. And while they did a fine job, it was recently pointed out to me that no one around here uses the platform in a real-world setting more than I do, as I not only blog and podcast my brains out, I also run Oracle Social’s own social properties. Of course I’m pro-Oracle Social’s product. Duh. But if you can get around immediately writing this off as a puff piece, there are real reasons beyond my employment that the Oracle SRM works for me as a community manager. If it didn’t, I could have simply written about something else, like how people love smartphones or something genius like that. Post Grid I like seeing what I want to see. I’m difficult that way. Post grid lets me see all posts for all channels, with custom columns showing me how posts are doing. I can filter the grid by social channel, published, scheduled, draft, suggested, etc. Then there’s a pullout side panel that shows me post details, including engagement analytics. From the pullout, I can preview the post, do a quick edit, a full edit, or (my favorite) copy a post so I can edit it and schedule it for other times so I don’t have to repeat from scratch. I’m not lazy, just time conscious. The Post Creation Environment Given our post volume, I need this to be as easy as it can be. I can highlight which streams I want the post to go out on, edit for the individual streams, maintain a media library that’s easy to upload to and attach from, tag posts, insert links that auto-shorten to an orac.le shortlink, schedule with a nice calendar visual, geo-target, drop photos inline into Twitter, and review each post. Watching My Channels The Engage component of the Oracle SRM brings in and drops into a grid the activity that’s happening on all my channels. I keep this open round-the-clock. Again, I get to see only what I want; social network, stream, unread messages, engagement by how I labeled them, and date range. I can bring up a post with a click, reply, label it, retweet it, assign it, delete it, archive it, etc. So don’t bother trying to be a troll on my channels. Analytics Social publishing and engaging 24/7 would be pretty unrewarding if I couldn’t see how our audience was responding. Frankly, I get more analytics than I know what to do with (I’m a content creator, not a data analyst). But I do know what numbers I care about, and they’re available by channel, date range, and campaigns. I’m seeing fan count, sources and demographics. I’m seeing engagement, what kinds of posts are getting engagement, and top engagers. I’m seeing my reach, both organic and paid. I’m seeing how individual posts performed in terms of engagement and virality, and posting time/date insight. Have I covered all the value propositions? I’ve covered pathetically few of them. It would be impossible in blog length to give shout-outs to the vast number of features and functionalities. From organizing teams and managing permissions with Workflow to the powerful ability to monitor topics (and your competition) across the web in Listen, it’s a major, and increasingly necessary, weapon in your social marketing arsenal. The life of a Community Manager is not for everybody. So if the Oracle SRM can actually make a Community Manager’s life easier, what’s not to love? I invite you to take a look at and participate in our Oracle Social Cloud social channels! Facebook Twitter YouTube Google Plus LinkedIn Daily Podcast on iHeartRadio @mikestiles @oraclesocial Photo: freeimages.com

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• It’s official – Red Gate is a great place to work!

  - by red@work

  At a glittering award ceremony last week, we found out that we’re officially the 14th best small company to work for in the whole of the UK! This is no mean feat, considering that about 1,000 companies enter the Sunday Times Top 100 best companies awards each year. Most of these are in the small companies category too. It's the fourth year in a row for us to be in the Top 100 list and we're tickled pink because the results are based on employee opinion. We’re particularly proud to be the best small company in Cambridge (in the whole of East Anglia, in fact) and the best small software development company in the entire UK. So how does it all work? Well, 90% of us took the time to answer over 70 questions on categories such as management, benefits, wellbeing, leadership, giving something back and what we think of Red Gate as a whole. It makes you think about every part of day to day working life and how you feel about it. Do you slightly or strongly agree or disagree that your manager motivates your to do your best every day, or that you have confidence in Red Gate's leaders, or that you’re not spending too much time working? It's great to see that we had one of the best scores in the country for the question "Do you think your company takes advantage of you?" We got particularly high scores for management, wellbeing and for giving something back too. A few of us got dressed up and headed to London for the awards; very excited about where we’d place but slightly nervous about having to get up on stage. There was a last minute hic up with a bow tie but the Managing Editor of the Sunday Times kindly stepped in to offer his assistance just before we had our official photo taken. We were nominated for two Special Recognition Awards. Despite not bringing them home this year, we're very proud to be nominated as there are only three nominations in each category. First we were up for the Training and Development award. Best Companies loved that we get together at lunchtimes to teach each other photography, cookery and French, as well as our book clubs and techie talks. And of course they liked our opportunities to go on training courses and to jet off to international conferences. Our other nomination was for the Wellbeing award. Best Companies loved our free food (and let’s face it, so do we). Porridge or bacon sandwiches for breakfast, a three course hot dinner, and free fruit and cereals all day long. If all that has an affect on the waistline then there are plenty of sporty activities for us all to get involved in, such as yoga, running or squash. Or if that’s not your thing then a relaxing massage helps us all to unwind every few months or so. The awards were hosted by news presenter Kate Silverton. She gave us a special mention during the ceremony for having great customer engagement as well as employee engagement, after we told her about Rodney Landrum (a Friend of Red Gate) tattooing our logo on his arm. We showed off our customised dinner jacket (thanks to Dom from Usability) with a flashing Red Gate logo on the back and she seemed suitability impressed. Back in the office the next day, we popped open the champagne and raised a glass to our success. Neil, our joint CEO, talked about how pleased he was with the award because it's based on the opinions of the people that count – us. You can read more about the Sunday Times awards here. By the way, we're still growing and are still hiring. If you’d like to keep up with our latest vacancies then why not follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/redgatecareers. Right now we're busy hiring in development, test, sales, product management, web development, and project management. Here's a link to our current job opportunities page – we'd love to hear from great people who are looking for a great place to work! After all, we're only great because of the people who work here. Post by: Alice Chapman

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• The Power to Control Power

  - by speakjava

  I'm currently working on a number of projects using embedded Java on the Raspberry Pi and Beagle Board.  These are nice and small, so don't take up much room on my desk as you can see in this picture. As you can also see I have power and network connections emerging from under my desk.  One of the (admittedly very minor) drawbacks of these systems is that they have no on/off switch.  Instead you insert or remove the power connector (USB for the RasPi, a barrel connector for the Beagle).  For the Beagle Board this can potentially be an issue; with the micro-SD card located right next to the connector it has been known for people to eject the card when trying to power off the board, which can be quite serious for the hardware. The alternative is obviously to leave the boards plugged in and then disconnect the power from the outlet.  Simple enough, but a picture of underneath my desk shows that this is not the ideal situation either. This made me think that it would be great if I could have some way of controlling a mains voltage outlet using a remote switch or, even better, from software via a USB connector.  A search revealed not much that fit my requirements, and anything that was close seemed very expensive.  Obviously the only way to solve this was to build my own.Here's my solution.  I decided my system would support both control mechanisms (remote physical switch and USB computer control) and be modular in its design for optimum flexibility.  I did a bit of searching and found a company in Hong Kong that were offering solid state relays for 99p plus shipping (£2.99, but still made the total price very reasonable).  These would handle up to 380V AC on the output side so more than capable of coping with the UK 240V supply.  The other great thing was that being solid state, the input would work with a range of 3-32V and required a very low current of 7.5mA at 12V.  For the USB control an Arduino board seemed the obvious low-cost and simple choice.  Given the current requirments of the relay, the Arduino would not require the additional power supply and could be powered just from the USB.Having secured the relays I popped down to Homebase for a couple of 13A sockets, RS for a box and an Arduino and Maplin for a toggle switch.  The circuit is pretty straightforward, as shown in the diagram (only one output is shown to make it as simple as possible).  Originally I used a 2 pole toggle switch to select the remote switch or USB control by switching the negative connections of the low voltage side.  Unfortunately, the resistance between the digital pins of the Arduino board was not high enough, so when using one of the remote switches it would turn on both of the outlets.  I changed to a 4 pole switch and isolated both positive and negative connections. IMPORTANT NOTE: If you want to follow my design, please be aware that it requires working with mains voltages.  If you are at all concerned with your ability to do this please consult a qualified electrician to help you.It was a tight fit, especially getting the Arduino in, but in the end it all worked.  The completed box is shown in the photos. The remote switch was pretty simple just requiring the squeezing of two rocker switches and a 9V battery into the small RS supplied box.  I repurposed a standard stereo cable with phono plugs to connect the switch box to the mains outlets.  I chopped off one set of plugs and wired it to the rocker switches.  The photo shows the RasPi and the Beagle board now controllable from the switch box on the desk. I've tested the Arduino side of things and this works fine.  Next I need to write some software to provide an interface for control of the outlets.  I'm thinking a JavaFX GUI would be in keeping with the total overkill style of this project.

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• History of Mobile Technology

  - by David Dorf

  Over the last ten years, mobile phones have gone through several incremental technology leaps that have added capabilities that impact the retail industry.  I've listed the six major ones below, along with their long-lasting impact. 1. Location In the US, the FCC required mobile phones to implement E911 (emergency calls) by 2006, requiring the caller to be located to within 300 meters.  Back in 2000, GPS was opened up for civilian use, and by 2004 Qualcomm had figured out how to use GPS in mobile phones.  So mobile operators moved from cell tower triangulation to GPS, principally for E911.  But then lots of other uses became apparent, especially navigation.  The earliest mobile apps from retailers made it easy to find nearby stores, and companies are looking at ways to use WiFi triangulation inside stores. 2. Computer Vision In 1997 Philippe Kahn shared a photo of his newborn using a mobile phone thus launching the popularity of instant visual communications.  Over the years the quality of the cameras got better, reaching the point where barcodes could be read around 2008.  That's when Occipital came on the scene with their Red Laser application, which was eventually acquired by eBay.  This opened up the ability for consumers to easily price compare inside stores.  Other interesting apps included Tesco's Wine Finder and Amazon's Price Checker, both allowing products to be identified by picture. 3. Augmented Reality Once the mobile phone had GPS, a video camera, and compass functionality it was suddenly possible to overlay digital information on the screen in real-time.  Yelp, which was using GPS to find nearby merchants, created a backdoor called Monocle on the iPhone that showed nearby merchants overlayed on the video camera view.  Today AR apps are mostly used by retailers for marketing, like Moosejaw's app that undresses models in their catalog. 4. Geo-Fencing So if we're able to track the location of a mobile phone, why not use that context to offer timely information?  My first experience with geo-fencing came courtesy of North Face, the outdoor enthusiast store. When a mobile phone enters a predetermined area, like near a store, a text message is sent to phone with an offer or useful information.  Of course retailers can geo-fence their competitors as well and find out which customers are aren't so loyal. 5. Digital Wallet Mobile payments leverage different technologies such as NFC, QRCodes, bluetooth, and SMS to facilitate communication between the consumers's phone and the retailer's point-of-sale. The key here is the potential to consolidate loyalty cards, coupons, and bank cards into the mobile phone and enable faster checkout.  Nobody does this better than Starbucks today, but McDonald's and Duncan Donuts aren't far behind.  Google, Isis, Paypal, Square, and MCX are all vying for leadership in this area.  If NFC does finally take off, it will be leveraged by retailers in more places than just the POS. 6. Voice Response Mobile Phones have had the ability to interpret simple voice commands for a while, but Google and Amazon were the first to use voice to allow searches for products.  Allowing searches by text, barcode, and voice makes it easy to comparison shop in the aisles.  Walmart even uses voice to build shopping lists, and if the Siri API is even opened we could see lots more innovation in this area.

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• OpenGl / C++ and some strange light problem on half board

  - by mlodziaszka

  I have some problem with lights in my opengl "game". I have board with is square (-50,50), (50, 50), (50, -50), (-50,-50) x and z since y doesn't matter at all. I tried to make something like flashlight its moving and rotating with camera (me), but when i try to rotate more then 90 degree to left or right it just give diffrend light: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/688/lightij.jpg/ (left is spotlight, right point light) There is also a point light in the middle, but its working strange(not like a pointlight) it shines only on half of the board from (-50,50), (50, 50), (50, 0), (-50,-0) x and y: Link to my repo where u can find game exe in download and full code in source: https://bitbucket.org/mlodziaszka/my_game All more fragments of light: float gl_amb[] = { 0.2f, 0.2f, 0.2f, 1.0f }; glLightModelfv(GL_LIGHT_MODEL_AMBIENT, gl_amb); glEnable(GL_LIGHTING); // Wlaczenie oswietlenia glShadeModel(GL_SMOOTH); // Wybor techniki cieniowania glEnable(GL_LIGHT0); // Wlaczenie 0-go zrodla swiatla glEnable(GL_LIGHT1); Cubes parametri: float m1_amb[] = { 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f }; float m1_dif[] = { 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f }; float m1_spe[] = { 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f }; glMaterialfv(GL_FRONT, GL_AMBIENT, m1_amb); glMaterialfv(GL_FRONT, GL_DIFFUSE, m1_dif); glMaterialfv(GL_FRONT, GL_SPECULAR, m1_spe); glMaterialf(GL_FRONT, GL_SHININESS, 50.0f); Texture parametri: float m1_amb[] = { 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f }; float m1_dif[] = { 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f }; float m1_spe[] = { 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f }; glMaterialfv(GL_FRONT, GL_AMBIENT, m1_amb); glMaterialfv(GL_FRONT, GL_DIFFUSE, m1_dif); glMaterialfv(GL_FRONT, GL_SPECULAR, m1_spe); glMaterialf(GL_FRONT, GL_SHININESS, 0.0f); glTexEnvf( GL_TEXTURE_ENV, GL_TEXTURE_ENV_MODE, GL_MODULATE ); Light0: //with some magic sn't working anyway float l0_amb[] = { 0.2f, 0.2f, 0.2f, 1.0f }; float l0_dif[] = { 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f }; float l0_spe[] = { 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f }; float l0_pos[] = { g_Camera.m_vPosition.x, g_Camera.m_vPosition.y, g_Camera.m_vPosition.z, 1.0f }; float temp = 0.0f, temp2 = 0.0f, temp3 = 0.0f; if(g_Camera.m_vView.z < g_Camera.m_vPosition.z) { temp = g_Camera.m_vView.x - g_Camera.m_vPosition.x; temp2 = g_Camera.m_vView.z - g_Camera.m_vPosition.z; } else { temp = g_Camera.m_vView.x - g_Camera.m_vPosition.x; temp2 = g_Camera.m_vView.z - g_Camera.m_vPosition.z; } float l0_pos1[] = {temp, 0.0f, temp2}; //float l0_pos1[] = {-1.0f, 0.0f, -1.0f}; glLightfv(GL_LIGHT0, GL_AMBIENT, l0_amb); glLightfv(GL_LIGHT0, GL_DIFFUSE, l0_dif); glLightfv(GL_LIGHT0, GL_SPECULAR, l0_spe); glLightfv(GL_LIGHT0, GL_POSITION, l0_pos); glLightf (GL_LIGHT0, GL_SPOT_CUTOFF, 15.0f); glLightfv(GL_LIGHT0, GL_SPOT_DIRECTION, l0_pos1); Light1: float l1_amb[] = { 0.2f, 0.2f, 0.2f, 1.0f }; float l1_dif[] = { 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f }; float l1_spe[] = { 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f }; float l1_pos[] = { 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f }; glLightfv(GL_LIGHT1, GL_AMBIENT, l1_amb); glLightfv(GL_LIGHT1, GL_DIFFUSE, l1_dif); glLightfv(GL_LIGHT1, GL_SPECULAR, l1_spe); glLightfv(GL_LIGHT1, GL_POSITION, l1_pos); I know that way I made this very old, but for now i want to keep this like that. I wouldbe realy gratefull if someone can tell me what is wrong with my lights xD full code: link up ^^

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• Where Twitter Stands Heading Into 2013

  - by Mike Stiles

  As Twitter continued throughout 2012 to be a stage on which global politics and culture played itself out, the company itself underwent some adjustments that give us a good indication of what users and brands can expect from the platform in 2013. The power of the network did anything but fade. Celebrities continued to use it to connect one-on-one. Even the Pope signed on this year. It continued to fuel revolutions. It played an exponentially large factor in this US Presidential election. And around the world, the freedom to speak was challenged as users were fired, sued, sometimes even jailed for their tweets. Expect more of the same in 2013, as Twitter has entrenched itself, for individuals, causes and brands, as the fastest, easiest, most efficient way to message the masses so some measure of impact can come from it. It’s changed everything, and it’s not finished. These fun facts reveal the position of strength with which Twitter enters 2013: It now generates a billion tweets every 2.5 days It has 500 million+ users The average Twitter user has tweeted 307 times 32% of everyone using the Internet uses Twitter It’s expected to bring in $540 million in ad revenue by 2014 11 new accounts are created every second High-level Executive Summary: people love it, people use it, and they’re going to keep loving and using it. Whether or not outside developers love it is a different matter. 2012 marked a shift from welcoming the third party support that played at least some role in Twitter being so warmly embraced, to discouraging anything that replicates what Twitter can do itself…or plans to do itself. It’s not the open playground it once was. Now Twitter must spend 2013 proving it can innovate in-house and keep us just as entranced. Likewise, Twitter is distancing itself from Facebook. Images from the #1 platform’s Instagram don’t work on Twitter anymore, and Twitter’s rolling out their own photo filter product. Where the two have lived in a “plenty of room for everybody” symbiosis up to now, 2013 could see the giants ramping up a full-on rivalry. Twitter is exhibiting a deliberate strategy. Updates have centered on more visually appealing search results, and making finding and sharing content easier. Deals have been cut with some media entities so their content stands out. CEO Dick Costolo has said tweets aren’t the attraction, they’re what leads you to content. Twitter aims to be a key distributor of media and info. Add the addition of former News Corp. President Peter Chernin to the board, and their hashtag landing page experience for events, and their media behemoth ambitions get pretty clear. There are challenges ahead and Costolo has also laid those out; entry into China, figuring out how to have Twitter deliver both comprehensive and relevant, targeted experiences, and the visualization of big data. What does this mean for corporations? They can expect a more media-rich evolution and growing emphases on imagery. They can expect more opportunities to create great media content and leverage Twitter for its distribution. And they can expect new ways to surface in searches. Are brands diving in? 56% of customer tweets to companies get completely and totally ignored. Ugh. A study Twitter recently conducted with Compete shows people who see tweets from retailers are more likely to buy a product. And, the more retailer tweets they see, the more likely they are to purchase on the retail site. As more of those tweets point to engaging media content from the brand, the results should get even better. Twitter appears ready for 2013. Enterprise brands have some work to do. @mikestilesPhoto Stuart Miles, freedigitalphotos.net

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• WiFi stops working after a while in Lenovo ThinkPad W520 (Ubuntu 12.04)

  - by el10780

  After several minutes(I do not know how many) there is no internet connection on my laptop via Wi-Fi.Ubuntu doesn't show any kind of message that my WiFi was disconnected neither there is a signal drop,but suddenly Firefox stops connecting to web pages.I checked my modem/router and it seems that it is working fine.I tried also to reboot the WiFi device and nothing happens.The only thing that it makes it work again is a reboot of the system and if I do not want to do a reboot then I am enforced to connect to the Internet using Ethernet cable.Does anybody know what is happening? ## Some Hardware info that might be helpful ## el10780@ThinkPad-W520:~$ sudo lshw -class network *-network description: Ethernet interface product: 82579LM Gigabit Network Connection vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 19 bus info: pci@0000:00:19.0 logical name: eth0 version: 04 serial: f0:de:f1:f1:be:10 size: 100Mbit/s capacity: 1Gbit/s width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt-fd autonegotiation configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=e1000e driverversion=1.5.1-k duplex=full firmware=0.13-3 ip=192.168.0.10 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes port=twisted pair speed=100Mbit/s resources: irq:50 memory:f3a00000-f3a1ffff memory:f3a2b000-f3a2bfff ioport:6080(size=32) *-network description: Wireless interface product: Centrino Advanced-N + WiMAX 6250 vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0 logical name: wlan0 version: 5e serial: 64:80:99:63:14:74 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless configuration: broadcast=yes driver=iwlwifi driverversion=3.2.0-26-generic firmware=41.28.5.1 build 33926 ip=192.168.0.6 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11abgn resources: irq:52 memory:f3900000-f3901fff *-network description: Ethernet interface physical id: 1 bus info: usb@2:1.3 logical name: wmx0 serial: 00:1d:e1:53:b2:e8 capabilities: ethernet physical configuration: driver=i2400m firmware=i6050-fw-usb-1.5.sbcf link=no el10780@ThinkPad-W520:~$ lspci 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family DRAM Controller (rev 09) 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200/2nd Generation Core Processor Family PCI Express Root Port (rev 09) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09) 00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller #1 (rev 04) 00:16.3 Serial controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family KT Controller (rev 04) 00:19.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82579LM Gigabit Network Connection (rev 04) 00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 (rev 04) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev b4) 00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev b4) 00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 4 (rev b4) 00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 5 (rev b4) 00:1c.6 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 7 (rev b4) 00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 (rev 04) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation QM67 Express Chipset Family LPC Controller (rev 04) 00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family 6 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 04) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller (rev 04) 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GF108 [Quadro 1000M] (rev a1) 03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Centrino Advanced-N + WiMAX 6250 (rev 5e) 0d:00.0 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd Device e823 (rev 08) 0d:00.3 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 PCIe IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 04) 0e:00.0 USB controller: NEC Corporation uPD720200 USB 3.0 Host Controller (rev 04) el10780@ThinkPad-W520:~$ rfkill list all 0: hci0: Bluetooth Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no 1: tpacpi_bluetooth_sw: Bluetooth Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no 2: phy0: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no 3: i2400m-usb:2-1.3:1.0: WiMAX Soft blocked: yes Hard blocked: no The weirdest thing is this screenshot which I took after running the **Additional Drivers** program.I mean I have a NVidia Quadro 1000M and my Intel Centrino WiFi Card and this shows that there are not proprietay drivers for my system. http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/268/screenshotfrom201207062.png/

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• Any tips on getting hired as a software project manager straight out of college?

  - by MHarrison

  I graduated with a BS in compsci last September, and I've been trying (unsuccessfully) to find a job as a project manager ever since. I fell in love with software engineering (the formal practice behind it all, not just coding) in school, and I've dedicated the last 3-4 years of my life to learning everything I can about project management and gaining experience. I've managed several projects (with teams around 12 people) while in school, and I worked with my university's software engineering research lab. My résumé is also decent - I worked as a programmer before I went to school (I'm 27 now), and I did Google Summer of Code for 3 summers. I also have general "people management" experience via working as the photo editor for my university's newspaper for 2 years. My first problem with the job hunt is not getting enough interviews. I use careers.stackoverflow.com, which is awesome because I usually get contacted by non-HR people who know what they're talking about, but there's just not enough companies using it for me to get interviews on a regular basis. I've also tried sites like monster.com, and in a fit of desperation, I sent out no less than 60 applications to project management positions. I've gotten 3 automated rejection letters and that's it. At least careers.stackoverflow gets me a phone interview with 8/10 places I apply to. But the main (and extremely frustrating) problem is the matter of experience. I've successfully managed projects from start to finish (in my software engineering classes we had real customers come in with a real software need and we built it for them), but I've never had to deal with budgets and money (I know this is why HR people immediately turn me away). Most of these positions require 5+ years PM experience, and I've seen absurd things like 12+ years required. Interviews are also maddening. I've had so many places who absolutely loved me and I made it to the final round of interviews, and I left thinking things went extremely well and they'd consider me. However, when I check in with them a week later, they tell me "We really liked you and your qualifications are excellent, but we're hoping to find someone with more experience." The bad interviews I can understand - like the PM position that would have had me managing developers both locally and overseas - I had 3 interviews with them and the ENTIRE interview process was them asking me CS brainteasers and having me waste time on things like writing quicksort on paper or writing binary search trees. Even when I tried steering the discussion towards more relevant PM stuff, they gave me some vague generic replies and went back to the "We want to be Google/MS" crap. But when I have a GOOD interview, they say my "qualifications are excellent" but they want "more experience"...that makes me want to tear my hair out. What else can I DO? While I'm aiming for technically-involved PM positions (not just crunching budget numbers), I really don't want a straight development job because I like creating software from the very high-level vs. spending a lot of time debugging memory leaks. In fact, I can't even GET development positions that I'm qualified for because I make the mistake of telling them that my future career goals are as PM (which usually results in them saying something like "Well we already have PMs and this position isn't really set up to get you there." - which I take to mean "No, that's my job, stay away.") My apologies on the long rant, but I'm seriously hellbent on getting hired as a PM since it's both my career goal and the passion that keeps me awake at night. Any suggestions on what the heck else I can do? I'm currently writing a blog where I talk about my philosophies about software engineering, and I'm writing up specs for an iOS app which I will design, code, and show employers, but this takes an awful lot of time that I don't have.

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• The best computer ever

  - by Jeff

  (This is a repost from my personal blog… wow… I need to write more technical stuff!) About three years and three months ago, I bought a 17" MacBook Pro, and it turned out to be the best computer I've ever owned. You might think that every computer with better specs is automatically better than the last, but that hasn't been my experience. My first one was a Sony, back in the Pentium III days, and it cost an astonishing $2,500. That was even more ridiculous in 1999 dollars. It had a dial-up modem, and a CD-ROM, built-in! It may have even played DVD's. A few years later I bought an HP, and it ended up being a pile of shit. The power connector inside came loose from the board, and on occasion would even short. In 2005, I bought a Dell, and it wasn't bad. It had a really high resolution screen (complete with dead pixels, a problem in those days), and it was the first laptop I felt I could do real work on. When 2006 rolled around, Apple started making computers with Intel CPU's, and I bought the very first one the week it came out. I used Boot Camp to run Windows. I still have it in its box somewhere, and I used it for three years. The current 17" was new in 2009. The goodness was largely rooted in having a big screen with lots of dots. This computer has been the source of hundreds of blog posts, tens of thousands of lines of code, video and photo editing, and of course, a whole lot of Web surfing. It connected to corpnet at Microsoft, WiFi in Hawaii and has presented many a deck. It has traveled with me tens of thousands of miles. Last year, I put a solid state drive in it, and it was like getting a new computer. I can boot up a Windows 7 VM in about 19 seconds. Having 8 gigs of RAM has always been fantastic. Everything about it has been fast and fun. When new, the battery (when not using VM's) could get as much as 10 hours. I can still do 7 without much trouble. After 460 charge cycles, the battery health is still between 85 and 90%. The only real negative has been the size and weight. It's only an inch thick, but naturally it's pretty big with a 17" screen. You don't get battery life like that without a huge battery, either, so it's heavy. It was never a deal breaker, but sometimes a long haul across a large airport, you know you're carrying it. Today, Apple announced a new, thinner and lighter 15" laptop, with twice the RAM and CPU cores, and four times the screen resolution. It basically handles my size and weight issues while retaining the resolution, and it still costs less than my 17" did. So I ordered one. Three years is an excellent run, but I kind of budgeted for a new workhorse this year anyway. So if you're interested in a 17" MacBook Pro with a Core 2 Duo 2.66 GHz CPU, 8 gigs of RAM and a 320 gig hard drive (sorry, I'm keeping the SSD), I have one to sell. They've apparently discontinued the 17", which is going to piss off the video community. It's in excellent condition, with a few minor scratches, but I take care of my stuff.

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• Pinterest and the Rising Power of Imagery

  - by Mike Stiles

  If images keep you glued to a screen, you’re hardly alone. Countless social users are letting their eyes do the walking, waiting for that special photo to grab their attention. And perhaps more than any other social network, Pinterest has been giving those eyes plenty of room to walk. Pinterest came along in 2010. Its play was that users could simply create topic boards and pin pictures to the appropriate boards for sharing. Yes there are some words, captions mostly, but not many. The speed of its growth raised eyebrows. Traffic quadrupled in the last quarter of 2011, with 7.51 million unique visitors in December alone. It now gets 1.9 billion monthly page views. And it was sticky. In the US, the average time a user spends strolling through boards and photos on Pinterest is 15 minutes, 50 seconds. Proving the concept of browsing a catalogue is not dead, it became a top 5 referrer for several apparel retailers like Land’s End, Nordstrom, and Bergdorfs. Now a survey of online shoppers by BizRate Insights says that Pinterest is responsible for more purchases online than Facebook. Over 70% of its users are going there specifically to keep up with trends and get shopping ideas. And when they buy, the average order value is $179. Pinterest is also scoring better in terms of user engagement. 66% of pinners regularly follow and repin retailers, whereas 17% of Facebook fans turn to that platform for purchase ideas. (Facebook still wins when it comes to reach and driving traffic to 3rd-party sites by the way). Social posting best practices have consistently shown that posts with photos are rewarded with higher engagement levels. You may be downright Shakespearean in your writing, but what makes images in the digital world so much more powerful than prose? 1. They transcend language barriers. 2. They’re fun and addictive to look at. 3. They can be consumed in fractions of a second, important considering how fast users move through their social content (admit it, you do too). 4. They’re efficient gateways. A good picture might get them to the headline. A good headline might then get them to the written content. 5. The audience for them surpasses demographic limitations. 6. They can effectively communicate and trigger an emotion. 7. With mobile use soaring, photos are created on those devices and easily consumed and shared on them. Pinterest’s iPad app hit #1 in the Apple store in 1 day. Even as far back as 2009, over 2.5 billion devices with cameras were on the streets generating in just 1 year, 10% of the number of photos taken…ever. But let’s say you’re not a retailer. What if you’re a B2B whose products or services aren’t visual? Should you worry about your presence on Pinterest? As with all things, you need a keen awareness of who your audience is, where they reside online, and what they want to do there. If it doesn’t make sense to put a tent stake in Pinterest, fine. But ignore the power of pictures at your own peril. If not visually, how are you going to attention-grab social users scrolling down their News Feeds at top speed? You’re competing with every other cool image out there from countless content sources. Bore us and we’ll fly right past you.

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• Exchange 2010 OWA - a few questions about using multiple mailboxes

  - by Alexey Smolik

  We have an Exchange 2010 SP2 deployment and we need that our users could access multiple mailboxes in OWA. The problem is that a user (eg John Smith) needs to access not just somebody else's (eg Tom Anderson) mailboxes, but his OWN mailboxes, e.g. in different domains: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], etc. Of course it is preferable for the user to work with all of his mailboxes from a single window. Such mailboxes can be added as multiple Exchange accounts in Outlook, that works almost fine. But in OWA, there are problems: 1) In the left pane - as I've learned - we can open only Inbox folders from other mailboxes. No way to view all folders like in Outlook? 2) With Send-As permissions set, when trying to send a message from another address, that message is saved in the Sent Items folder of the mailbox that is opened in OWA, and not in the mailbox the message is sent from. The same thing with the trash can. Is there a way to fix that? Also, this problem exists in desktop Outlook when mailboxes are added automatically via the Auto Mapping feature, so that we need to turn it off and add the accounts manually. Is there a simpler workaround? 3) Okay, suppose we only open Inbox folders in the left pane. The problem is that the mailbox names shown there are formed from Display Name attributes. But those names are all identical! All the mailboxes are owned by John Smith, so they should be all named John Smith - so that letter recepient sees "John Smith" in the "from" field, no matter what mailbox it is sent from. Also, the user knows what's his name - no need to tell him. He wants to know what mailbox he works with. So we need a way to either: a) customize OWA to show mailbox email address instead of user Display Name, or b) make Exchange use another attribute to put in the "from" field when sending letters 4) Okay, we can switch between mailboxes using "Open Other Mailbox" in the upper-right corner menu. But: a) To select a mailbox we need to enter its name (or first letters). It there a way to show a list of links to mailboxes the user has full access to? Eg in the page header... b) If we start entering the first letters, we see a popup list with possible mailboxes to be opened. But there are all mailboxes (apparently from GAL), not only mailboxes the user has permission to open! How to filter that popup list? c) The same problem as in (3) with mailbox naming. We can see the opened mailbox email address ONLY in the page URL, which is insufficient for many users. In the left pane we see "John Smith" which is useless. 5) Each mailbox is tied with a separate user in AD. If one has several mailboxes, we need to have additional dummy AD accounts, create additional OUs to store them, etc. That's not very nice, is there any standartized, optimal way to build such a structure? We would really appreciate any answers or additional info for any of these questions. Thank you in advance.

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• TLS (STARTTLS) Failure After 10.6 Upgrade to Open Directory Master

  - by Thomas Kishel

  Hello, Environment: Mac OS X 10.6.3 install/import of a MacOS X 10.5.8 Open Directory Master server. After that upgrade, LDAP+TLS fails on our MacOS X 10.5, 10.6, CentOS, Debian, and FreeBSD clients (Apache2 and PAM). Testing using ldapsearch: ldapsearch -ZZ -H ldap://gnome.darkhorse.com -v -x -b "dc=darkhorse,dc=com" '(uid=donaldr)' uid ... fails with: ldap_start_tls: Protocol error (2) Testing adding "-d 9" fails with: res_errno: 2, res_error: <unsupported extended operation>, res_matched: <> Testing without requiring STARTTLS or with LDAPS: ldapsearch -H ldap://gnome.darkhorse.com -v -x -b "dc=darkhorse,dc=com" '(uid=donaldr)' uid ldapsearch -H ldaps://gnome.darkhorse.com -v -x -b "dc=darkhorse,dc=com" '(uid=donaldr)' uid ... succeeds with: # donaldr, users, darkhorse.com dn: uid=donaldr,cn=users,dc=darkhorse,dc=com uid: donaldr # search result search: 2 result: 0 Success # numResponses: 2 # numEntries: 1 result: 0 Success (We are specifying "TLS_REQCERT never" in /etc/openldap/ldap.conf) Testing with openssl: openssl s_client -connect gnome.darkhorse.com:636 -showcerts -state ... succeeds: CONNECTED(00000003) SSL_connect:before/connect initialization SSL_connect:SSLv2/v3 write client hello A SSL_connect:SSLv3 read server hello A depth=1 /C=US/ST=Oregon/L=Milwaukie/O=Dark Horse Comics, Inc./OU=Dark Horse Network/CN=DHC MIS Department verify error:num=19:self signed certificate in certificate chain verify return:0 SSL_connect:SSLv3 read server certificate A SSL_connect:SSLv3 read server done A SSL_connect:SSLv3 write client key exchange A SSL_connect:SSLv3 write change cipher spec A SSL_connect:SSLv3 write finished A SSL_connect:SSLv3 flush data SSL_connect:SSLv3 read finished A --- Certificate chain 0 s:/C=US/ST=Oregon/L=Milwaukie/O=Dark Horse Comics, Inc./OU=MIS/CN=gnome.darkhorse.com i:/C=US/ST=Oregon/L=Milwaukie/O=Dark Horse Comics, Inc./OU=Dark Horse Network/CN=DHC MIS Department 1 s:/C=US/ST=Oregon/L=Milwaukie/O=Dark Horse Comics, Inc./OU=Dark Horse Network/CN=DHC MIS Department i:/C=US/ST=Oregon/L=Milwaukie/O=Dark Horse Comics, Inc./OU=Dark Horse Network/CN=DHC MIS Department --- Server certificate -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE----- <deleted for brevity> -----END CERTIFICATE----- subject=/C=US/ST=Oregon/L=Milwaukie/O=Dark Horse Comics, Inc./OU=MIS/CN=gnome.darkhorse.com issuer=/C=US/ST=Oregon/L=Milwaukie/O=Dark Horse Comics, Inc./OU=Dark Horse Network/CN=DHC MIS Department --- No client certificate CA names sent --- SSL handshake has read 2640 bytes and written 325 bytes --- New, TLSv1/SSLv3, Cipher is AES256-SHA Server public key is 1024 bit Compression: NONE Expansion: NONE SSL-Session: Protocol : TLSv1 Cipher : AES256-SHA Session-ID: D3F9536D3C64BAAB9424193F81F09D5C53B7D8E7CB5A9000C58E43285D983851 Session-ID-ctx: Master-Key: E224CC065924DDA6FABB89DBCC3E6BF89BEF6C0BD6E5D0B3C79E7DE927D6E97BF12219053BA2BB5B96EA2F6A44E934D3 Key-Arg : None Start Time: 1271202435 Timeout : 300 (sec) Verify return code: 0 (ok) So we believe that the slapd daemon is reading our certificate and writing it to LDAP clients. Apple Server Admin adds ProgramArguments ("-h ldaps:///") to /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.openldap.slapd.plist and TLSCertificateFile, TLSCertificateKeyFile, TLSCACertificateFile, and TLSCertificatePassphraseTool to /etc/openldap/slapd_macosxserver.conf when enabling SSL in the LDAP section of the Open Directory service. While that appears enough for LDAPS, it appears that this is not enough for TLS. Comparing our 10.6 and 10.5 slapd.conf and slapd_macosxserver.conf configuration files yields no clues. Replacing our certificate (generated with a self-signed ca) with an Apple Server Admin generated self signed certificate results in no change in ldapsearch results. Setting -d to 256 in /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.openldap.slapd.plist logs: 4/13/10 5:23:35 PM org.openldap.slapd[82162] conn=384 op=0 EXT oid=1.3.6.1.4.1.1466.20037 4/13/10 5:23:35 PM org.openldap.slapd[82162] conn=384 op=0 do_extended: unsupported operation "1.3.6.1.4.1.1466.20037" 4/13/10 5:23:35 PM org.openldap.slapd[82162] conn=384 op=0 RESULT tag=120 err=2 text=unsupported extended operation Any debugging advice much appreciated. -- Tom Kishel

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• Expert iptables help needed?

  - by Asad Moeen

  After a detailed analysis, I collected these details. I am under a UDP Flood which is more of application dependent. I run a Game-Server and an attacker is flooding me with "getstatus" query which makes the GameServer respond by making the replies to the query which cause output to the attacker's IP as high as 30mb/s and server lag. Here are the packet details, Packet starts with 4 bytes 0xff and then getstatus. Theoretically, the packet is like "\xff\xff\xff\xffgetstatus " Now that I've tried a lot of iptables variations like state and rate-limiting along side but those didn't work. Rate Limit works good but only when the Server is not started. As soon as the server starts, no iptables rule seems to block it. Anyone else got more solutions? someone asked me to contact the provider and get it done at the Network/Router but that looks very odd and I believe they might not do it since that would also affect other clients. Responding to all those answers, I'd say: Firstly, its a VPS so they can't do it for me. Secondly, I don't care if something is coming in but since its application generated so there has to be a OS level solution to block the outgoing packets. At least the outgoing ones must be stopped. Secondly, its not Ddos since just 400kb/s input generates 30mb/s output from my GameServer. That never happens in a D-dos. Asking the provider/hardware level solution should be used in that case but this one is different. And Yes, Banning his IP stops the flood of outgoing packets but he has many more IP-Addresses as he spoofs his original so I just need something to block him automatically. Even tried a lot of Firewalls but as you know they are just front-ends to iptables so if something doesn't work on iptables, what would the firewalls do? These were the rules I tried, iptables -A INPUT -p udp -m state --state NEW -m recent --set --name DDOS --rsource iptables -A INPUT -p udp -m state --state NEW -m recent --update --seconds 1 --hitcount 5 --name DDOS --rsource -j DROP It works for the attacks on un-used ports but when the server is listening and responding to the incoming queries by the attacker, it never works. Okay Tom.H, your rules were working when I modified them somehow like this: iptables -A INPUT -p udp -m length --length 1:1024 -m recent --set --name XXXX --rsource iptables -A INPUT -p udp -m string --string "xxxxxxxxxx" --algo bm --to 65535 -m recent --update --seconds 1 --hitcount 15 --name XXXX --rsource -j DROP They worked for about 3 days very good where the string "xxxxxxxxx" would be rate-limited, blocked if someone flooded and also didn't affect the clients. But just today, I tried updating the chain to try to remove a previously blocked IP so for that I had to flush the chain and restore this rule ( iptables -X and iptables -F ), some clients were already connected to servers including me. So restoring the rules now would also block some of the clients string completely while some are not affected. So does this mean I need to restart the server or why else would this happen because the last time the rules were working, there was no one connected?

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• My 3D Games crashing in these scenarios

  - by desaivv

  I have a situation here which I am unable to solve. I bought a PC last year March, here are my specs: Intel Core i3 550 @ 3GHz 4 GB RAM @400 MHz XFX GeForce 9500 GT graphics card 1GB @550MHz 500 GB HDD Lately as soon as I load my save game of Skyrim, it crashes. I have been playing Skyrim since I joined Gaming.SE site. Crashes as in the entire scene gets red lines. I can not ALT + TAB back or even CTRL + ALT + DEL either. My only recourse is a hard reset via the power button. Can not take a screen shot either. I have the latest Forceware 296.10 drivers also. This has been happening since the last 2 weeks. I always use Driver Sweeper to clean my old drivers, since that is what XFXForce recommends before installing new drivers. I installed MSI Afterburner lately to see my GPU temperature. My GPU is default, never over-clocked it. In MSI's Afterburner, I can not adjust fan speed. It is greyed out. Also in settings there is no fan tab. With normal Internet browsing it stays at 51 C. Ran Memtest86 over night with level 11. Took about 13 hours, but no errors in my RAM. I even re-installed my OS, with just the 296 drivers. The fan for the GPU does come on. I can play Diablo 2. I can not get past Warcraft 3's menu selection. There WAS some dust in my machine, but I always try and keep everything clean, since in my home town dust is an issue. Always keep cool my entire PC cabinet. My friend came with his functioning graphics card, we bought our PCs at the same time with exact same specifications. His card did not work either. Same problem with the scene freezing with red lines. I did do my research before posting here. That is how I was able to learn about MSI Afterburner, Driver Sweeper, SpeedFan etc. I followed posts on Tom's Hardware too regarding people that had similar problems. One person suggested and was followed by worked as well the suggestion to "Bake the card in an oven". Since I bought it, played Diablo 2 for months, Starcraft 2 campaign for months and Skyrim recently for months. Bought ME3 also. I am at my wits end. I do not know what else to do. I can go out and buy a card, but my friend's card did not work either. I can use the machine for Eclipse or VS2010 development just fine. Just not with 3D gaming. I originally posted this question on Gaming.SE But I was directed here. I have browsed the SU database for my problem and found this, this, and this. But none of these cover my question. My machine is only one year old. Can some experienced superuser(s) shed some light on this scenario? Is it a 3D graphics card problem? Will a brand new card work? What else can I try to pin point the problem? Can it be the Motherboard? Thanks.

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• how can convert bitmap to byte array

  - by narasimha

  hi sir i am implementing image upload in sdcard image converting bitmap in bitmap convert in bytearray i am implementing this code import java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream; import java.io.DataInputStream; import java.io.EOFException; import java.io.File; import java.io.FileDescriptor; import java.io.FileInputStream; import java.io.FileNotFoundException; import java.io.IOException; import android.R.array; import android.app.Activity; import android.graphics.Bitmap; import android.graphics.BitmapFactory; import android.os.Bundle; import android.util.Log; import android.widget.ImageView; public class Photo extends Activity { @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.main); File f = new File("/sdcard/DCIM/1.jpg"); FileInputStream is = null; try { is = new FileInputStream(f); Bitmap bm; bm = BitmapFactory.decodeStream(is,null,null); ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream(1000); bm.compress(Bitmap.CompressFormat.JPEG,75, baos); System.out.println("3........................"+bm); ImageView pic=(ImageView)this.findViewById(R.id.picview); pic.setImageBitmap(bm); } catch (Exception e) { // TODO: handle exception e.printStackTrace(); } } }this code is i am implementing how can convert bitmap in byte array INFO/System.out(12658): 3........................android.graphics.Bitmap@4358e3d0 in debug this will be displayed how can retrieve bitmap to byte array

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• Using EigenObjectRecognizer

  - by Meko

  Hi. I am trying make Facial recognition using Emgu Cv. And using EigenObjectRecognizer could I do it? Also is some one can explain that usage of it? because if there is a no same foto it also returns value. Here is example from Internet Image<Gray, Byte>[] trainingImages = new Image<Gray,Byte>[5]; trainingImages[0] = new Image<Gray, byte>("brad.jpg"); trainingImages[1] = new Image<Gray, byte>("david.jpg"); trainingImages[2] = new Image<Gray, byte>("foof.jpg"); trainingImages[3] = new Image<Gray, byte>("irfan.jpg"); trainingImages[4] = new Image<Gray, byte>("joel.jpg"); String[] labels = new String[] { "Brad", "David", "Foof", "Irfan" , "Joel"} MCvTermCriteria termCrit = new MCvTermCriteria(16, 0.001); EigenObjectRecognizer recognizer = new EigenObjectRecognizer( trainingImages, labels, 5000, ref termCrit); Image<Gray,Byte> testImage = new Image<Gray,Byte>("brad_test.jpg"); String label = recognizer.Recognize(testImage); Console.Write(label); It returns brad .But if I change photo in testimage it also retunrs some name or even Brad.Is it good for face recognition to use this method?Or is there any better method?

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• Using LibraryStacks in a ScatterView on Surface

  - by HappyCodeMonkey

  We're trying to figure out how to drag an item from a LibraryStack container onto a ScatterView, like how the photo viewer sample applications work. Currently, the item just flies back into the LibraryStack after we drag it out. We can drag and drop items into other LibraryStacks or LibraryBars. Here's a sample of what we're trying: <s:SurfaceWindow x:Class="Idia_seminar.SurfaceWindow1" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:s="http://schemas.microsoft.com/surface/2008" Title="Idia_seminar" > <s:SurfaceWindow.Resources> <ImageBrush x:Key="WindowBackground" Stretch="None" Opacity="0.6" ImageSource="pack://application:,,,/Resources/WindowBackground.jpg"/> </s:SurfaceWindow.Resources> <Grid Background="{StaticResource WindowBackground}" > <s:ScatterView Name="scatterView1" AllowDrop="True"> <s:SurfaceButton Name="surfaceButton1">Button</s:SurfaceButton> <s:LibraryStack AllowDrop="True"> <s:LibraryStackItem Content="hello"></s:LibraryStackItem> </s:LibraryStack> </s:ScatterView> </Grid> </s:SurfaceWindow> Thanks!

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• UIImagePicker on full screen on iPad

  - by Archip

  For my tests, I need to create a simple app on the iPad to step 1. loads an image from the Photo library (UIImagePickerController). step 2. Then, this image is converted into texture and displayed into an OpenGL ES view. I started to define the app with the XCode Open GL ES template. Step 2 is Okay. But I have a problem launching the UIImagePickerController (step 1). On iPad, to create a UIImagePickerController, we need to use a UIPopoverController. But to create a UIPopover, we need to attach it to a content view controller In my app, I dont want to define a specific view controller (Navigation or SplitView or TabBar...). I just need to have the UIImagePicker displayed on full screen when launching the app. I am looking for a programatical solution with a minimum of lines of code added from the Open GL ES iPad template, to perform step 1 (step 2 is okay for me). any code available? Thank you for your help Seb

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