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• Event sourcing: Write event before or after updating the model

  - by Magnus

  I'm reasoning about event sourcing and often I arrive at a chicken and egg problem. Would be grateful for some hints on how to reason around this. If I execute all I/O-bound processing async (ie writing to the event log) then how do I handle, or sometimes even detect, failures? I'm using Akka Actors so processing is sequential for each event/message. I do not have any database at this time, instead I would persist all the events in an event log and then keep an aggregated state of all the events in a model stored in memory. Queries are all against this model, you can consider it to be a cache. Example Creating a new user: Validate that the user does not exist in model Persist event to journal Update model (in memory) If step 3 breaks I still have persisted my event so I can replay it at a later date. If step 2 breaks I can handle that as well gracefully. This is fine, but since step 2 is I/O-bound I figured that I should do I/O in a separate actor to free up the first actor for queries: Updating a user while allowing queries (A0 = Front end/GUI actor, A1 = Processor Actor, A2 = IO-actor, E = event bus). (A0-E-A1) Event is published to update user 'U1'. Validate that the user 'U1' exists in model (A1-A2) Persist event to journal (separate actor) (A0-E-A1-A0) Query for user 'U1' profile (A2-A1) Event is now persisted continue to update model (A0-E-A1-A0) Query for user 'U1' profile (now returns fresh data) This is appealing since queries can be processed while I/O-is churning along at it's own pace. But now I can cause myself all kinds of problems where I could have two incompatible commands (delete and then update) be persisted to the event log and crash on me when replayed up at a later date, since I do the validation before persisting the event and then update the model. My aim is to have a simple reasoning around my model (since Actor processes messages sequentially single threaded) but not be waiting for I/O-bound updates when Querying. I get the feeling I'm modeling a database which in itself is might be a problem. If things are unclear please write a comment.

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• Handling exceptions raised in observers

  - by sparky

  I have a Rails (2.3.5) application where there are many groups, and each Group has_many People. I have a Group edit form where users can create new people. When a new person is created, they are sent an email (the email address is user entered on the form). This is accomplished with an observer on the Person model. The problem comes when ActionMailer throws an exception - for example if the domain does not exist. Clearly that cannot be weeded out with a validation. There would seem to be 2 ways to deal with this: A begin...rescue...end block in the observer around the mailer. The problem with this is that the only way to pass any feedback to the user would be to set a global variable - as the observer is out of the MVC flow, I can't even set a flash[:error] there. A rescue_from in the Groups controller. This works fine, but has 2 problems. Firstly, there is no way to know which person threw the exception (all I can get is the 503 exception, no way to know which person caused the problem). This would be useful information to be able to pass back to the user - at the moment, there is no way for me to let them know which email address is the problem - at the moment, I just have to chuck the lot back at them, and issue an unhelpful message saying that one of them is not correct. Secondly (and to a certain extent this make the first point moot) it seems that it is necessary to call a render in the rescue_from, or it dies with a rather bizarre "can't convert Array into String" error from webbrick, with no stack trace & nothing in the log. Thus, I have to throw it back to the user when I come across the first error and have to stop processing the rest of the emails. Neither of the solutions are optimal. It would seem that the only way to get Rails to do what I want is option 1, and loathsome global variables. This would also rely on Rails being single threaded. Can anyone suggest a better solution to this problem?

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• How do you prevent IDisposable from spreading to all your classes?

  - by GrahamS

  Start with these simple classes... Let's say I have a simple set of classes like this: class Bus { Driver busDriver = new Driver(); } class Driver { Shoe[] shoes = { new Shoe(), new Shoe() }; } class Shoe { Shoelace lace = new Shoelace(); } class Shoelace { bool tied = false; } A Bus has a Driver, the Driver has two Shoes, each Shoe has a Shoelace. All very silly. Add an IDisposable object to Shoelace Later I decide that some operation on the Shoelace could be multi-threaded, so I add an EventWaitHandle for the threads to communicate with. So Shoelace now looks like this: class Shoelace { private AutoResetEvent waitHandle = new AutoResetEvent(false); bool tied = false; // ... other stuff .. } Implement IDisposable on Shoelace Buit now FxCop will complain: "Implement IDisposable on 'Shoelace' because it creates members of the following IDisposable types: 'EventWaitHandle'." Okay, I implement IDisposable on Shoelace and my neat little class becomes this horrible mess: class Shoelace : IDisposable { private AutoResetEvent waitHandle = new AutoResetEvent(false); bool tied = false; private bool disposed = false; public void Dispose() { Dispose(true); GC.SuppressFinalize(this); } ~Shoelace() { Dispose(false); } protected virtual void Dispose(bool disposing) { if (!this.disposed) { if (disposing) { if (waitHandle != null) { waitHandle.Close(); waitHandle = null; } } // No unmanaged resources to release otherwise they'd go here. } disposed = true; } } Or (as pointed out by commenters) since Shoelace itself has no unmanaged resources, I might use the simpler dispose implementation without needing the Dispose(bool) and Destructor: class Shoelace : IDisposable { private AutoResetEvent waitHandle = new AutoResetEvent(false); bool tied = false; public void Dispose() { if (waitHandle != null) { waitHandle.Close(); waitHandle = null; } GC.SuppressFinalize(this); } } Watch in horror as IDisposable spreads Right that's that fixed. But now FxCop will complain that Shoe creates a Shoelace, so Shoe must be IDisposable too. And Driver creates Shoe so Driver must be IDisposable. and Bus creates Driver so Bus must be IDisposable and so on. Suddenly my small change to Shoelace is causing me a lot of work and my boss is wondering why I need to checkout Bus to make a change to Shoelace. The Question How do you prevent this spread of IDisposable, but still ensure that your unmanaged objects are properly disposed?

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• What are the Options for Storing Hierarchical Data in a Relational Database?

  - by orangepips

  Good Overviews One more Nested Intervals vs. Adjacency List comparison: the best comparison of Adjacency List, Materialized Path, Nested Set and Nested Interval I've found. Models for hierarchical data: slides with good explanations of tradeoffs and example usage Representing hierarchies in MySQL: very good overview of Nested Set in particular Hierarchical data in RDBMSs: most comprehensive and well organized set of links I've seen, but not much in the way on explanation Options Ones I am aware of and general features: Adjacency List: Columns: ID, ParentID Easy to implement. Cheap node moves, inserts, and deletes. Expensive to find level (can store as a computed column), ancestry & descendants (Bridge Hierarchy combined with level column can solve), path (Lineage Column can solve). Use Common Table Expressions in those databases that support them to traverse. Nested Set (a.k.a Modified Preorder Tree Traversal) First described by Joe Celko - covered in depth in his book Trees and Hierarchies in SQL for Smarties Columns: Left, Right Cheap level, ancestry, descendants Compared to Adjacency List, moves, inserts, deletes more expensive. Requires a specific sort order (e.g. created). So sorting all descendants in a different order requires additional work. Nested Intervals Combination of Nested Sets and Materialized Path where left/right columns are floating point decimals instead of integers and encode the path information. Bridge Table (a.k.a. Closure Table: some good ideas about how to use triggers for maintaining this approach) Columns: ancestor, descendant Stands apart from table it describes. Can include some nodes in more than one hierarchy. Cheap ancestry and descendants (albeit not in what order) For complete knowledge of a hierarchy needs to be combined with another option. Flat Table A modification of the Adjacency List that adds a Level and Rank (e.g. ordering) column to each record. Expensive move and delete Cheap ancestry and descendants Good Use: threaded discussion - forums / blog comments Lineage Column (a.k.a. Materialized Path, Path Enumeration) Column: lineage (e.g. /parent/child/grandchild/etc...) Limit to how deep the hierarchy can be. Descendants cheap (e.g. LEFT(lineage, #) = '/enumerated/path') Ancestry tricky (database specific queries) Database Specific Notes MySQL Use session variables for Adjacency List Oracle Use CONNECT BY to traverse Adjacency Lists PostgreSQL ltree datatype for Materialized Path SQL Server General summary 2008 offers HierarchyId data type appears to help with Lineage Column approach and expand the depth that can be represented.

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• Implementing events to communicate between two processes - C

  - by Jamie Keeling

  Hello all! I have an application consisting of two windows, one communicates to the other and sends it a struct constaining two integers (In this case two rolls of a dice). I will be using events for the following circumstances: Process a sends data to process b, process b displays data Process a closes, in turn closing process b Process b closes a, in turn closing process a I have noticed that if the second process is constantly waiting for the first process to send data then the program will be just sat waiting, which is where the idea of implementing threads on each process occurred and I have started to implement this already. The problem i'm having is that I don't exactly have a lot of experience with threads and events so I'm not sure of the best way to actually implement what I want to do. Following is a small snippet of what I have so far in the producer application; Create thread: case IDM_FILE_ROLLDICE: { hDiceRoll = CreateThread( NULL, // lpThreadAttributes (default) 0, // dwStackSize (default) ThreadFunc(hMainWindow), // lpStartAddress NULL, // lpParameter 0, // dwCreationFlags &hDiceID // lpThreadId (returned by function) ); } break; The data being sent to the other process: DWORD WINAPI ThreadFunc(LPVOID passedHandle) { HANDLE hMainHandle = *((HANDLE*)passedHandle); WCHAR buffer[256]; LPCTSTR pBuf; LPVOID lpMsgBuf; LPVOID lpDisplayBuf; struct diceData storage; HANDLE hMapFile; DWORD dw; //Roll dice and store results in variable storage = RollDice(); hMapFile = CreateFileMapping( (HANDLE)0xFFFFFFFF, // use paging file NULL, // default security PAGE_READWRITE, // read/write access 0, // maximum object size (high-order DWORD) BUF_SIZE, // maximum object size (low-order DWORD) szName); // name of mapping object if (hMapFile == NULL) { dw = GetLastError(); MessageBox(hMainHandle,L"Could not create file mapping object",L"Error",MB_OK); return 1; } pBuf = (LPTSTR) MapViewOfFile(hMapFile, // handle to map object FILE_MAP_ALL_ACCESS, // read/write permission 0, 0, BUF_SIZE); if (pBuf == NULL) { MessageBox(hMainHandle,L"Could not map view of file",L"Error",MB_OK); CloseHandle(hMapFile); return 1; } CopyMemory((PVOID)pBuf, &storage, (_tcslen(szMsg) * sizeof(TCHAR))); //_getch(); MessageBox(hMainHandle,L"Completed!",L"Success",MB_OK); UnmapViewOfFile(pBuf); return 0; } I'm trying to find out how I would integrate an event with the threaded code to signify to the other process that something has happened, I've seen an MSDN article on using events but it's just confused me if anything, I'm coming up on empty whilst searching on the internet too. Thanks for any help Edit: I can only use the Create/Set/Open methods for events, sorry for not mentioning it earlier.

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• C#: My callback function gets called twice for every Sent Request

  - by Madi D.

  I've Got a program that uploads/downloads files into an online server,Has a callback to report progress and log it into a textfile, The program is built with the following structure: public void Upload(string source, string destination) { //Object containing Source and destination to pass to the threaded function KeyValuePair<string, string> file = new KeyValuePair<string, string>(source, destination); //Threading to make sure no blocking happens after calling upload Function Thread t = new Thread(new ParameterizedThreadStart(amazonHandler.TUpload)); t.Start(file); } private void TUpload(object fileInfo) { KeyValuePair<string, string> file = (KeyValuePair<string, string>)fileInfo; /* Some Magic goes here,Checking The file and Authorizing Upload */ var ftiObject = new FtiObject () { FileNameOnHDD = file.Key, DestinationPath = file.Value, //Has more data used for calculations. }; //Threading to make sure progress gets callback gets called. Thread t = new Thread(new ParameterizedThreadStart(amazonHandler.UploadOP)); t.Start(ftiObject); //Signal used to stop progress untill uploadCompleted is called. uploadChunkDoneSignal.WaitOne(); /* Some Extra Code */ } private void UploadOP(object ftiSentObject) { FtiObject ftiObject = (FtiObject)ftiSentObject; /* Some useless code to create the uri and prepare the ftiObject. */ // webClient.UploadFileAsync will open a thread that // will upload the file and report // progress/complete using registered callback functions. webClient.UploadFileAsync(uri, "PUT", ftiObject.FileNameOnHDD, ftiObject); } I got a callback that is registered to the Webclient's UploadProgressChanged event , however it is getting called twice per sent request. void UploadProgressCallback(object sender, UploadProgressChangedEventArgs e) { FtiObject ftiObject = (FtiObject )e.UserState; Logger.log(ftiObject.FileNameOnHDD, (double)e.BytesSent ,e.TotalBytesToSend); } Log Output: Filename: C:\Text1.txt Uploaded:1024 TotalFileSize: 665241 Filename: C:\Text1.txt Uploaded:1024 TotalFileSize: 665241 Filename: C:\Text1.txt Uploaded:2048 TotalFileSize: 665241 Filename: C:\Text1.txt Uploaded:2048 TotalFileSize: 665241 Filename: C:\Text1.txt Uploaded:3072 TotalFileSize: 665241 Filename: C:\Text1.txt Uploaded:3072 TotalFileSize: 665241 Etc... I am watching the Network Traffic using a watcher, and only 1 request is being sent. Some how i cant Figure out why the callback is being called twice, my doubt was that the callback is getting fired by each thread opened(the main Upload , and TUpload), however i dont know how to test if thats the cause. Note: The reason behind the many /**/ Comments is to indicate that the functions do more than just opening threads, and threading is being used to make sure no blocking occurs (there a couple of "Signal.WaitOne()" around the code for synchronization)

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• Using events in threads between processes - C

  - by Jamie Keeling

  Hello all! I have an application consisting of two windows, one communicates to the other and sends it a struct constaining two integers (In this case two rolls of a dice). I will be using events for the following circumstances: Process a sends data to process b, process b displays data Process a closes, in turn closing process b Process b closes a, in turn closing process a I have noticed that if the second process is constantly waiting for the first process to send data then the program will be just sat waiting, which is where the idea of implementing threads on each process occurred and I have started to implement this already. The problem i'm having is that I don't exactly have a lot of experience with threads and events so I'm not sure of the best way to actually implement what I want to do. Following is a small snippet of what I have so far in the producer application; Create thread: case IDM_FILE_ROLLDICE: { hDiceRoll = CreateThread( NULL, // lpThreadAttributes (default) 0, // dwStackSize (default) ThreadFunc(hMainWindow), // lpStartAddress NULL, // lpParameter 0, // dwCreationFlags &hDiceID // lpThreadId (returned by function) ); } break; The data being sent to the other process: DWORD WINAPI ThreadFunc(LPVOID passedHandle) { HANDLE hMainHandle = *((HANDLE*)passedHandle); WCHAR buffer[256]; LPCTSTR pBuf; LPVOID lpMsgBuf; LPVOID lpDisplayBuf; struct diceData storage; HANDLE hMapFile; DWORD dw; //Roll dice and store results in variable storage = RollDice(); hMapFile = CreateFileMapping( (HANDLE)0xFFFFFFFF, // use paging file NULL, // default security PAGE_READWRITE, // read/write access 0, // maximum object size (high-order DWORD) BUF_SIZE, // maximum object size (low-order DWORD) szName); // name of mapping object if (hMapFile == NULL) { dw = GetLastError(); MessageBox(hMainHandle,L"Could not create file mapping object",L"Error",MB_OK); return 1; } pBuf = (LPTSTR) MapViewOfFile(hMapFile, // handle to map object FILE_MAP_ALL_ACCESS, // read/write permission 0, 0, BUF_SIZE); if (pBuf == NULL) { MessageBox(hMainHandle,L"Could not map view of file",L"Error",MB_OK); CloseHandle(hMapFile); return 1; } CopyMemory((PVOID)pBuf, &storage, (_tcslen(szMsg) * sizeof(TCHAR))); //_getch(); MessageBox(hMainHandle,L"Completed!",L"Success",MB_OK); UnmapViewOfFile(pBuf); return 0; } I'm trying to find out how I would integrate an event with the threaded code to signify to the other process that something has happened, I've seen an MSDN article on using events but it's just confused me if anything, I'm coming up on empty whilst searching on the internet too. Thanks for any help Edit: I can only use the Create/Set/Open methods for events, sorry for not mentioning it earlier.

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• Linker Issues with boost::thread under linux using Eclipse and CMake

  - by OcularProgrammer

  I'm in the process of attempting to port some code across from PC to Ubuntu, and am having some issues due to limited experience developing under linux. We use CMake to generate all our build stuff. Under windows I'm making VS2010 projects, and under Linux I'm making Eclipse projects. I've managed to get my OpenCV stuff ported across successfully, but am having major headaches trying to port my threaded boost apps. Just so we're clear, the steps I have followed so-far on a clean Ubuntu 12 installation. (I've done 2 clean re-installs to try and fix potential library cock-ups, now I'm just giving up and asking): Install Eclipse and Eclipse CDT using my package manager Install CMake and CMake Gui using my package manager Install libboost-all-dev using my package manager So-far that's all I've done. I can create the eclipse project using CMake with no errors, so CMake is successfully finding my boost install. When I try and build through eclipse is when I get issues; The app I'm attempting to build uses boost::asio for some UDP I/O and boost::thread to create worker threads for the asio I/O services. I can successfully compile each module, but when I come to link I get spammed with errors such as: /usr/bin/c++ CMakeFiles/RE05DevelopmentDemo.dir/main.cpp.o CMakeFiles/RE05DevelopmentDemo.dir/RE05FusionListener/RE05FusionListener.cpp.o CMakeFiles/RE05DevelopmentDemo.dir/NewEye/NewEye.cpp.o -o RE05DevelopmentDemo -rdynamic -Wl,-Bstatic -lboost_system-mt -lboost_date_time-mt -lboost_regex-mt -lboost_thread-mt -Wl,-Bdynamic /usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.6/../../../../lib/libboost_thread-mt.a(thread.o): In function `void boost::call_once<void (*)()>(boost::once_flag&, void (*)()) [clone .constprop.98]': make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/david/Code/Build/Support/RE05DevDemo' (.text+0xc8): undefined reference to `pthread_key_create' /usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.6/../../../../lib/libboost_thread-mt.a(thread.o): In function `boost::this_thread::interruption_enabled()': (.text+0x540): undefined reference to `pthread_getspecific' make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/david/Code/Build/Support/RE05DevDemo' /usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.6/../../../../lib/libboost_thread-mt.a(thread.o): In function `boost::this_thread::disable_interruption::disable_interruption()': (.text+0x570): undefined reference to `pthread_getspecific' /usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.6/../../../../lib/libboost_thread-mt.a(thread.o): In function `boost::this_thread::disable_interruption::disable_interruption()': (.text+0x59f): undefined reference to `pthread_getspecific' Some Gotchas that I have collected from other StackOverflow posts and have already checked: The boost libs are all present at /usr/lib I am not getting any compile errors for inability to find the boost headers, so they must be getting found. I am trying to link statically, but I believe eclipse should be passing the correct arguments to make that happen since my CMakeLists.txt includes SET(Boost_USE_STATIC_LIBS ON) I'm officially out of ideas here, I have tried doing local builds of boost and a bunch of other stuff with no more success. I even re-installed Ubuntu to ensure I haven't completely fracked the libs directories and links with multiple weird versions or anything else. Any help would be muchly appreciated.

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• Java consistent synchronization

  - by ring0

  We are facing the following problem in a Spring service, in a multi-threaded environment: three lists are freely and independently accessed for Read once in a while (every 5 minutes), they are all updated to new values. There are some dependencies between the lists, making that, for instance, the third one should not be read while the second one is being updated and the first one already has new values ; that would break the three lists consistency. My initial idea is to make a container object having the three lists as properties. Then the synchronization would be first on that object, then one by one on each of the three lists. Some code is worth a thousands words... so here is a draft private class Sync { final List<Something> a = Collections.synchronizedList(new ArrayList<Something>()); final List<Something> b = Collections.synchronizedList(new ArrayList<Something>()); final List<Something> c = Collections.synchronizedList(new ArrayList<Something>()); } private Sync _sync = new Sync(); ... void updateRunOnceEveryFiveMinutes() { final List<Something> newa = new ArrayList<Something>(); final List<Something> newb = new ArrayList<Something>(); final List<Something> newc = new ArrayList<Something>(); ...building newa, newb and newc... synchronized(_sync) { synchronized(_sync.a) { _synch.a.clear(); _synch.a.addAll(newa); } synchronized(_sync.b) { ...same with newb... } synchronized(_sync.c) { ...same with newc... } } // Next is accessed by clients public List<Something> getListA() { return _sync.a; } public List<Something> getListB() { ...same with b... } public List<Something> getListC() { ...same with c... } The question would be, is this draft safe (no deadlock, data consistency)? would you have a better implementation suggestion for that specific problem? update Changed the order of _sync synchronization and newa... building. Thanks

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• c++ multithread array

  - by user1731972

  i'm doing something for fun, trying to learn multithreading Problems passing array by reference to threads but Arno pointed out that my threading via process.h wasn't going to be multi-threaded. What I'm hoping to do is something where I have an array of 100 (or 10,000, doesn't really matter I don't think), and split up the assignment of values to each thread. Example, 4 threads = 250 values per thread to be assigned. Then I can use this filled array for further calculations. Here's some code I was working on (which doesn't work) #include <process.h> #include <windows.h> #include <iostream> #include <fstream> #include <time.h> //#include <thread> using namespace std; void myThread (void *dummy ); CRITICAL_SECTION cs1,cs2; // global int main() { ofstream myfile; myfile.open ("coinToss.csv"); int rNum; long numRuns; long count = 0; int divisor = 1; float holder = 0; int counter = 0; float percent = 0.0; HANDLE hThread[1000]; int array[10000]; srand ( time(NULL) ); printf ("Runs (use multiple of 10)? "); cin >> numRuns; for (int i = 0; i < numRuns; i++) { //_beginthread( myThread, 0, (void *) (array1) ); //??? //hThread[i * 2] = _beginthread( myThread, 0, (void *) (array1) ); hThread[i*2] = _beginthread( myThread, 0, (void *) (array) ); } //WaitForMultipleObjects(numRuns * 2, hThread, TRUE, INFINITE); WaitForMultipleObjects(numRuns, hThread, TRUE, INFINITE); } void myThread (void *param ) { //thanks goes to stockoverflow //http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12801862/problems-passing-array-by-reference-to-threads int *i = (int *)param; for (int x = 0; x < 1000000; x++) { //param[x] = rand() % 2 + 1; i[x] = rand() % 2 + 1; } } Can anyone explain why it isn't working?

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• Yet another Memory Leak Issue (memory is still gone when program terminates)- C program on SLES

  - by user1426181

  I run my C program on Suse Linux Enterprise that compresses several thousand large files (between 10MB and 100MB in size), and the program gets slower and slower as the program runs (it's running multi-threaded with 32 threads on a Intel Sandy Bridge board). When the program completes, and it's run again, it's still very slow. When I watch the program running, I see that the memory is being depleted while the program runs, which you would think is just a classic memory leak problem. But, with a normal malloc()/free() mismatch, I would expect all the memory to return when the program terminates. But, most of the memory doesn't get reclaimed when the program completes. The free or top command shows Mem: 63996M total, 63724M used, 272M free when the program is slowed down to a halt, but, after the termination, the free memory only grows back to about 3660M. When the program is rerun, the free memory is quickly used up. The top program only shows that the program, while running, is using at most 4% or so of the memory. I thought that it might be a memory fragmentation problem, but, I built a small test program that simulates all the memory allocation activity in the program (many randomized aspects were built in - size/quantity), and it always returns all the memory upon completion. So, I don't think that's it. Questions: Can there be a malloc()/free() mismatch that will lose memory permanently, i.e. even after the process completes? What other things in a C program (not C++) can cause permanent memory loss, i.e. after the program completes, and even the terminal window closes? Only a reboot brings the memory back. I've read other posts about files not being closed causing problems, but, I don't think I have that problem. Is it valid to be looking at top and free for the memory statistics, i.e. do they accurately describe the memory situation? They do seem to correspond to the slowness of the program. If the program only shows a 4% memory usage, will something like valgrind find this problem?

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• Swing: How do I run a job from AWT thread, but after a window was layed out?

  - by java.is.for.desktop

  My complete GUI runs inside the AWT thread, because I start the main window using SwingUtilities.invokeAndWait(...). Now I have a JDialog which has just to display a JLabel, which indicates that a certain job is in progress, and close that dialog after the job was finished. The problem is: the label is not displayed. That job seems to be started before JDialog was fully layed-out. When I just let the dialog open without waiting for a job and closing, the label is displayed. The last thing the dialog does in its ctor is setVisible(true). Things such as revalidate(), repaint(), ... don't help either. Even when I start a thread for the monitored job, and wait for it using someThread.join() it doesn't help, because the current thread (which is the AWT thread) is blocked by join, I guess. Replacing JDialog with JFrame doesn't help either. So, is the concept wrong in general? Or can I manage it to do certain job after it is ensured that a JDialog (or JFrame) is fully layed-out? Simplified algorithm of what I'm trying to achieve: Create a subclass of JDialog Ensure that it and its contents are fully layed-out Start a process and wait for it to finish (threaded or not, doesn't matter) Close the dialog I managed to write a reproducible test case: EDIT Problem from an answer is now addressed: This use case does display the label, but it fails to close after the "simulated process", because of dialog's modality. import java.awt.*; import javax.swing.*; public class _DialogTest2 { public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception { SwingUtilities.invokeAndWait(new Runnable() { final JLabel jLabel = new JLabel("Please wait..."); @Override public void run() { JFrame myFrame = new JFrame("Main frame"); myFrame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE); myFrame.setSize(750, 500); myFrame.setLocationRelativeTo(null); myFrame.setVisible(true); JDialog d = new JDialog(myFrame, "I'm waiting"); d.setModalityType(Dialog.ModalityType.APPLICATION_MODAL); d.add(jLabel); d.setSize(300, 200); d.setLocationRelativeTo(null); d.setVisible(true); SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() { @Override public void run() { try { Thread.sleep(3000); // simulate process jLabel.setText("Done"); } catch (InterruptedException ex) { } } }); d.setVisible(false); d.dispose(); myFrame.setVisible(false); myFrame.dispose(); } }); } }

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• Lighttpd + fastcgi + python (for django) slow on first request

  - by EagleOne

  I'm having a problem with a django website I host with lighttpd + fastcgi. It works great but it seems that the first request always takes up to 3seconds. Subsequent requests are much faster (<1s). I activated access logs in lighttpd in order to track the issue. But I'm kind of stuck. Here are logs where I 'lose' 4s (from 10:04:17 to 10:04:21): 2012-12-01 10:04:17: (mod_fastcgi.c.3636) handling it in mod_fastcgi 2012-12-01 10:04:17: (response.c.470) -- before doc_root 2012-12-01 10:04:17: (response.c.471) Doc-Root : /var/www 2012-12-01 10:04:17: (response.c.472) Rel-Path : /finderauto.fcgi 2012-12-01 10:04:17: (response.c.473) Path : 2012-12-01 10:04:17: (response.c.521) -- after doc_root 2012-12-01 10:04:17: (response.c.522) Doc-Root : /var/www 2012-12-01 10:04:17: (response.c.523) Rel-Path : /finderauto.fcgi 2012-12-01 10:04:17: (response.c.524) Path : /var/www/finderauto.fcgi 2012-12-01 10:04:17: (response.c.541) -- logical -> physical 2012-12-01 10:04:17: (response.c.542) Doc-Root : /var/www 2012-12-01 10:04:17: (response.c.543) Rel-Path : /finderauto.fcgi 2012-12-01 10:04:17: (response.c.544) Path : /var/www/finderauto.fcgi 2012-12-01 10:04:21: (response.c.128) Response-Header: HTTP/1.1 200 OK Last-Modified: Sat, 01 Dec 2012 09:04:21 GMT Expires: Sat, 01 Dec 2012 09:14:21 GMT Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 Cache-Control: max-age=600 Transfer-Encoding: chunked Date: Sat, 01 Dec 2012 09:04:21 GMT Server: lighttpd/1.4.28 I guess that if there is a problem, it's whith my configuration. So here is the way I launch my django app: python manage.py runfcgi method=threaded host=127.0.0.1 port=3033 And here is my lighttpd conf: server.modules = ( "mod_access", "mod_alias", "mod_compress", "mod_redirect", "mod_rewrite", "mod_fastcgi", "mod_accesslog", ) server.document-root = "/var/www" server.upload-dirs = ( "/var/cache/lighttpd/uploads" ) server.errorlog = "/var/log/lighttpd/error.log" server.pid-file = "/var/run/lighttpd.pid" server.username = "www-data" server.groupname = "www-data" accesslog.filename = "/var/log/lighttpd/access.log" debug.log-request-header = "enable" debug.log-response-header = "enable" debug.log-file-not-found = "enable" debug.log-request-handling = "enable" debug.log-timeouts = "enable" debug.log-ssl-noise = "enable" debug.log-condition-cache-handling = "enable" debug.log-condition-handling = "enable" fastcgi.server = ( "/finderauto.fcgi" => ( "main" => ( # Use host / port instead of socket for TCP fastcgi "host" => "127.0.0.1", "port" => 3033, #"socket" => "/home/finderadmin/finderauto.sock", "check-local" => "disable", "fix-root-scriptname" => "enable", ) ), ) alias.url = ( "/media" => "/home/user/django/contrib/admin/media/", ) url.rewrite-once = ( "^(/media.*)$" => "$1", "^/favicon\.ico$" => "/media/favicon.ico", "^(/.*)$" => "/finderauto.fcgi$1", ) index-file.names = ( "index.php", "index.html", "index.htm", "default.htm", " index.lighttpd.html" ) url.access-deny = ( "~", ".inc" ) static-file.exclude-extensions = ( ".php", ".pl", ".fcgi" ) ## Use ipv6 if available #include_shell "/usr/share/lighttpd/use-ipv6.pl" dir-listing.encoding = "utf-8" server.dir-listing = "enable" compress.cache-dir = "/var/cache/lighttpd/compress/" compress.filetype = ( "application/x-javascript", "text/css", "text/html", "text/plain" ) include_shell "/usr/share/lighttpd/create-mime.assign.pl" include_shell "/usr/share/lighttpd/include-conf-enabled.pl" If any of you could help me finding out where I lose these 3 or 4 s. I would much appreciate. Thanks in advance!

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• Tools and Utilities for the .NET Developer

  - by mbcrump

  Tweet this list! Add a link to my site to your bookmarks to quickly find this page again! Add me to twitter! This is a list of the tools/utilities that I use to do my job/hobby. I wanted this page to load fast and contain information that only you care about. If I have missed a tool that you like, feel free to contact me and I will add it to the list. Also, this list took a lot of time to complete. Please do not steal my work, if you like the page then please link back to my site. I will keep the links/information updated as new tools/utilities are created.  Windows/.NET Development – This is a list of tools that any Windows/.NET developer should have in his bag. I have used at some point in my career everything listed on this page and below is the tools worth keeping. Name Description License AnkhSVN Subversion support for Visual Studio. It also works with VS2010. Free Aurora XAML Designer One of the best XAML creation tools available. Has a ton of built in templates that you can copy/paste into VS2010. COST/Trial BeyondCompare Beyond Compare 3 is the ideal tool for comparing files and folders on your Windows or Linux system. Visualize changes in your code and carefully reconcile them. COST/Trial BuildIT Automated Task Tool Its main purpose is to automate tasks, whether it is the final packaging of a product, an automated daily build, maybe sending out a mailing list, even backing-up files. Free C Sharper for VB Convert VB to C#. COST CLRProfiler Analyze and improve the behavior of your .NET app. Free CodeRush Direct competitor to ReSharper, contains similar feature. This is one of those decide for yourself. COST/Trial Disk2VHD Disk2vhd is a utility that creates VHD (Virtual Hard Disk - Microsoft's Virtual Machine disk format) versions of physical disks for use in Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs). Free Eazfuscator.NET Is a free obfuscator for .NET. The main purpose is to protect intellectual property of software. Free EQATEC Profiler Make your .NET app run faster. No source code changes are needed. Just point the profiler to your app, run the modified code, and get a visual report. COST Expression Studio 3/4 Comes with Web, Blend, Sketch Flow and more. You can create websites, produce beautiful XAML and more. COST/Trial Expresso The award-winning Expresso editor is equally suitable as a teaching tool for the beginning user of regular expressions or as a full-featured development environment for the experienced programmer or web designer with an extensive knowledge of regular expressions. Free Fiddler Fiddler is a web debugging proxy which logs all HTTP(s) traffic between your computer and the internet. Free Firebug Powerful Web development tool. If you build websites, you will need this. Free FxCop FxCop is an application that analyzes managed code assemblies (code that targets the .NET Framework common language runtime) and reports information about the assemblies, such as possible design, localization, performance, and security improvements. Free GAC Browser and Remover Easy way to remove multiple assemblies from the GAC. Assemblies registered by programs like Install Shield can also be removed. Free GAC Util The Global Assembly Cache tool allows you to view and manipulate the contents of the global assembly cache and download cache. Free HelpScribble Help Scribble is a full-featured, easy-to-use help authoring tool for creating help files from start to finish. You can create Win Help (.hlp) files, HTML Help (.chm) files, a printed manual and online documentation (on a web site) all from the same Help Scribble project. COST/Trial IETester IETester is a free Web Browser that allows you to have the rendering and JavaScript engines of IE9 preview, IE8, IE7 IE 6 and IE5.5 on Windows 7, Vista and XP, as well as the installed IE in the same process. Free iTextSharp iText# (iTextSharp) is a port of the iText open source java library for PDF generation written entirely in C# for the .NET platform. Use the iText mailing list to get support. Free Kaxaml Kaxaml is a lightweight XAML editor that gives you a "split view" so you can see both your XAML and your rendered content. Free LINQPad LinqPad lets you interactively query databases in a LINQ. Free Linquer Many programmers are familiar with SQL and will need a help in the transition to LINQ. Sometimes there are complicated queries to be written and Linqer can help by converting SQL scripts to LINQ. COST/Trial LiquidXML Liquid XML Studio 2010 is an advanced XML developers toolkit and IDE, containing all the tools needed for designing and developing XML schema and applications. COST/Trial Log4Net log4net is a tool to help the programmer output log statements to a variety of output targets. log4net is a port of the excellent log4j framework to the .NET runtime. We have kept the framework similar in spirit to the original log4j while taking advantage of new features in the .NET runtime. For more information on log4net see the features document. Free Microsoft Web Platform Installer The Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0 (Web PI) is a free tool that makes getting the latest components of the Microsoft Web Platform, including Internet Information Services (IIS), SQL Server Express, .NET Framework and Visual Web Developer easy. Free Mono Development Don't have Visual Studio - no problem! This is an open Source C# and .NET development environment for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X Free Net Mass Downloader While it’s great that Microsoft has released the .NET Reference Source Code, you can only get it one file at a time while you’re debugging. If you’d like to batch download it for reading or to populate the cache, you’d have to write a program that instantiated and called each method in the Framework Class Library. Fortunately, .NET Mass Downloader comes to the rescue! Free nMap Nmap ("Network Mapper") is a free and open source (license) utility for network exploration or security auditing. Many systems and network administrators also find it useful for tasks such as network inventory, managing service upgrade schedules, and monitoring host or service uptime. Free NoScript (Firefox add-in) The NoScript Firefox extension provides extra protection for Firefox, Flock, Seamonkey and other Mozilla-based browsers: this free, open source add-on allows JavaScript, Java and Flash and other plug-ins to be executed only by trusted web sites of your choice (e.g. your online bank), and provides the most powerful Anti-XSS protection available in a browser. Free NotePad 2 Notepad2, a fast and light-weight Notepad-like text editor with syntax highlighting. This program can be run out of the box without installation, and does not touch your system's registry. Free PageSpy PageSpy is a small add-on for Internet Explorer that allows you to select any element within a webpage, select an option in the context menu, and view detailed information about both the coding behind the page and the element you selected. Free Phrase Express PhraseExpress manages your frequently used text snippets in customizable categories for quick access. Free PowerGui PowerGui is a free community for PowerGUI, a graphical user interface and script editor for Microsoft Windows PowerShell! Free Powershell Comes with Win7, but you can automate tasks by using the .NET Framework. Great for network admins. Free Process Explorer Ever wondered which program has a particular file or directory open? Now you can find out. Process Explorer shows you information about which handles and DLLs processes have opened or loaded. Also, included in the SysInterals Suite. Free Process Monitor Process Monitor is an advanced monitoring tool for Windows that shows real-time file system, Registry and process/thread activity. Free Reflector Explore and analyze compiled .NET assemblies, viewing them in C#, Visual Basic, and IL. This is an Essential for any .NET developer. Free Regular Expression Library Stuck on a Regular Expression but you think someone has already figured it out? Chances are they have. Free Regulator Regulator makes Regular Expressions easy. This is a must have for a .NET Developer. Free RenameMaestro RenameMaestro is probably the easiest batch file renamer you'll find to instantly rename multiple files COST ReSharper The one program that I cannot live without. Supports VS2010 and offers simple refactoring, code analysis/assistance/cleanup/templates. One of the few applications that is worth the $$$. COST/Trial ScrewTurn Wiki ScrewTurn Wiki allows you to create, manage and share wikis. A wiki is a collaboratively-edited, information-centered website: the most famous is Wikipedia. Free SharpDevelop What is #develop? SharpDevelop is a free IDE for C# and VB.NET projects on Microsoft's .NET platform. Free Show Me The Template Show Me The Template is a tool for exploring the templates, be their data, control or items panel, that comes with the controls built into WPF for all 6 themes. Free SnippetCompiler Compiles code snippets without opening Visual Studio. It does not support .NET 4. Free SQL Prompt SQL Prompt is a plug-in that increases how fast you can work with SQL. It provides code-completion for SQL server, reformatting, db schema information and snippets. Awesome! COST/Trial SQLinForm SQLinForm is an automatic SQL code formatter for all major databases  including ORACLE, SQL Server, DB2, UDB, Sybase, Informix, PostgreSQL, Teradata, MySQL, MS Access etc. with over 70 formatting options. COST/OnlineFree SSMS Tools SSMS Tools Pack is an add-in for Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) including SSMS Express. Free Storm STORM is a free and open source tool for testing web services. Free Telerik Code Convertor Convert code from VB to C Sharp and Vice Versa. Free TurtoiseSVN TortoiseSVN is a really easy to use Revision control / version control / source control software for Windows.Since it's not an integration for a specific IDE you can use it with whatever development tools you like. Free UltraEdit UltraEdit is the ideal text, HTML and hex editor, and an advanced PHP, Perl, Java and JavaScript editor for programmers. UltraEdit is also an XML editor including a tree-style XML parser. An industry-award winner, UltraEdit supports disk-based 64-bit file handling (standard) on 32-bit Windows platforms (Windows 2000 and later). COST/Trial Virtual Windows XP Comes with some W7 version and allows you to run WinXP along side W7. Free VirtualBox Virtualization by Sun Microsystems. You can virtualize Windows, Linux and more. Free Visual Log Parser SQL queries against a variety of log files and other system data sources. Free WinMerge WinMerge is an Open Source differencing and merging tool for Windows. WinMerge can compare both folders and files, presenting differences in a visual text format that is easy to understand and handle. Free Wireshark Wireshark is one of the best network protocol analyzer's for Unix and windows. This has been used several times to get me out of a bind. Free XML Notepad 07 Old, but still one of my favorite XML viewers. Free Productivity Tools – This is the list of tools that I use to save time or quickly navigate around Windows. Name Description License AutoHotKey Automate almost anything by sending keystrokes and mouse clicks. You can write a mouse or keyboard macro by hand or use the macro recorder. Free CLCL CLCL is clipboard caching utility. Free Ditto Ditto is an extension to the standard windows clipboard. It saves each item placed on the clipboard allowing you access to any of those items at a later time. Ditto allows you to save any type of information that can be put on the clipboard, text, images, html, custom formats, ..... Free Evernote Remember everything from notes to photos. It will synch between computers/devices. Free InfoRapid Inforapid is a search tool that will display all you search results in a html like browser. If you click on a word in that browser, it will start another search to the word you clicked on. Handy if you want to trackback something to it's true origin. The word you looked for will be highlighted in red. Clicking on the red word will open the containing file in a text based viewer. Clicking on any word in the opened document will start another search on that word. Free KatMouse The prime purpose of the KatMouse utility is to enhance the functionality of mice with a scroll wheel, offering 'universal' scrolling: moving the mouse wheel will scroll the window directly beneath the mouse cursor (not the one with the keyboard focus, which is default on Windows OSes). This is a major increase in the usefulness of the mouse wheel. Free ScreenR Instant Screencast with nothing to download. Works with Mac or PC and free. Free Start++ Start++ is an enhancement for the Start Menu in Windows Vista. It also extends the Run box and the command-line with customizable commands.  For example, typing "w Windows Vista" will take you to the Windows Vista page on Wikipedia! Free Synergy Synergy lets you easily share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems, each with its own display, without special hardware. It's intended for users with multiple computers on their desk since each system uses its own monitor(s). Free Texter Texter lets you define text substitution hot strings that, when triggered, will replace hotstring with a larger piece of text. By entering your most commonly-typed snippets of text into Texter, you can save countless keystrokes in the course of the day. Free Total Commander File handling, FTP, Archive handling and much more. Even works with Win3.11. COST/Trial Available Wizmouse WizMouse is a mouse enhancement utility that makes your mouse wheel work on the window currently under the mouse pointer, instead of the currently focused window. This means you no longer have to click on a window before being able to scroll it with the mouse wheel. This is a far more comfortable and practical way to make use of the mouse wheel. Free Xmarks Bookmark sync and search between computers. Free General Utilities – This is a list for power user users or anyone that wants more out of Windows. I usually install a majority of these whenever I get a new system. Name Description License µTorrent µTorrent is a lightweight and efficient BitTorrent client for Windows or Mac with many features. I use this for downloading LEGAL media. Free Audacity Audacity® is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems. Learn more about Audacity... Also check our Wiki and Forum for more information. Free AVast Free FREE Antivirus. Free CD Burner XP Pro CDBurnerXP is a free application to burn CDs and DVDs, including Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs. It also includes the feature to burn and create ISOs, as well as a multilanguage interface. Free CDEX You can extract digital audio CDs into mp3/wav. Free Combofix Combofix is a freeware (a legitimate spyware remover created by sUBs), Combofix was designed to scan a computer for known malware, spyware (SurfSideKick, QooLogic, and Look2Me as well as any other combination of the mentioned spyware applications) and remove them. Free Cpu-Z Provides information about some of the main devices of your system. Free Cropper Cropper is a screen capture utility written in C#. It makes it fast and easy to grab parts of your screen. Use it to easily crop out sections of vector graphic files such as Fireworks without having to flatten the files or open in a new editor. Use it to easily capture parts of a web site, including text and images. It's also great for writing documentation that needs images of your application or web site. Free DropBox Drag and Drop files to sync between computers. Free DVD-Fab Converts/Copies DVDs/Blu-Ray to different formats. (like mp4, mkv, avi) COST/Trial Available FastStone Capture FastStone Capture is a powerful, lightweight, yet full-featured screen capture tool that allows you to easily capture and annotate anything on the screen including windows, objects, menus, full screen, rectangular/freehand regions and even scrolling windows/web pages. Free ffdshow FFDShow is a DirectShow decoding filter for decompressing DivX, XviD, H.264, FLV1, WMV, MPEG-1 and MPEG-2, MPEG-4 movies. Free Filezilla FileZilla Client is a fast and reliable cross-platform FTP, FTPS and SFTP client with lots of useful features and an intuitive graphical user interface. You can also download a server version. Free FireFox Web Browser, do you really need an explanation? Free FireGestures A customizable mouse gestures extension which enables you to execute various commands and user scripts with five types of gestures. Free FoxIt Reader Light weight PDF viewer. You should install this with the advanced setting or it will install a toolbar and setup some shortcuts. Free gSynchIt Synch Gmail and Outlook. Even supports Outlook 2010 32/64 bit COST/Trial Available Hulu Desktop At home or in a hotel, this has replaced my cable/satellite subscription. Free ImgBurn ImgBurn is a lightweight CD / DVD / HD DVD / Blu-ray burning application that everyone should have in their toolkit! Free Infrarecorder InfraRecorder is a free CD/DVD burning solution for Microsoft Windows. It offers a wide range of powerful features; all through an easy to use application interface and Windows Explorer integration. Free KeePass KeePass is a free open source password manager, which helps you to manage your passwords in a secure way. Free LastPass Another password management, synchronize between browsers, automatic form filling and more. Free Live Essentials One download and lots of programs including Mail, Live Writer, Movie Maker and more! Free Monitores MonitorES is a small windows utility that helps you to turnoff monitor display when you lock down your machine.Also when you lock your machine, it will pause all your running media programs & set your IM status message to "Away" / Custom message(via options) and restore it back to normal when you back. Free mRemote mRemote is a full-featured, multi-tab remote connections manager. Free Open Office OpenOffice.org 3 is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose. Free Paint.NET Simple, intuitive, and innovative user interface for editing photos. Free Picasa Picasa is free photo editing software from Google that makes your pictures look great. Free Pidgin Pidgin is an easy to use and free chat client used by millions. Connect to AIM, MSN, Yahoo, and more chat networks all at once. Free PING PING is a live Linux ISO, based on the excellent Linux From Scratch (LFS) documentation. It can be burnt on a CD and booted, or integrated into a PXE / RIS environment. Free Putty PuTTY is an SSH and telnet client, developed originally by Simon Tatham for the Windows platform. Free Revo Uninstaller Revo Uninstaller Pro helps you to uninstall software and remove unwanted programs installed on your computer easily! Even if you have problems uninstalling and cannot uninstall them from "Windows Add or Remove Programs" control panel applet.Revo Uninstaller is a much faster and more powerful alternative to "Windows Add or Remove Programs" applet! It has very powerful features to uninstall and remove programs. Free Security Essentials Microsoft Security Essentials is a new, free consumer anti-malware solution for your computer. Free SetupVirtualCloneDrive Virtual CloneDrive works and behaves just like a physical CD/DVD drive, however it exists only virtually. Point to the .ISO file and it appears in Windows Explorer as a Drive. Free Shark 007 Codec Pack Play just about any file format with this download. Also includes my W7 Media Playlist Generator. Free Snagit 9 Screen Capture on steroids. Add arrows, captions, etc to any screenshot. COST/Trial Available SysinternalsSuite Go ahead and download the entire sys internals suite. I have mentioned multiple programs in this suite already. Free TeraCopy TeraCopy is a compact program designed to copy and move files at the maximum possible speed, providing the user with a lot of features. Free for Home TrueCrypt Free open-source disk encryption software for Windows 7/Vista/XP, Mac OS X, and Linux Free TweetDeck Fully featured Twitter client. Free UltraVNC UltraVNC is a powerful, easy to use and free software that can display the screen of another computer (via internet or network) on your own screen. The program allows you to use your mouse and keyboard to control the other PC remotely. It means that you can work on a remote computer, as if you were sitting in front of it, right from your current location. Free Unlocker Unlocks locked files. Pretty simple right? Free VLC Media Player VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player and multimedia framework capable of reading most audio and video formats Free Windows 7 Media Playlist This program is special to my heart because I wrote it. It has been mentioned on podcast and various websites. It allows you to quickly create wvx video playlist for Windows Media Center. Free WinRAR WinRAR is a powerful archive manager. It can backup your data and reduce the size of email attachments, decompress RAR, ZIP and other files downloaded from Internet and create new archives in RAR and ZIP file format. COST/Trial Available Blogging – I use the following for my blog. Name Description License Insert Code for Windows Live Writer Insert Code for Windows Live Writer will format a snippet of text in a number of programming languages such as C#, HTML, MSH, JavaScript, Visual Basic and TSQL. Free LiveWriter Included in Live Essentials, but the ultimate in Windows Blogging Free PasteAsVSCode Plug-in for Windows Live Writer that pastes clipboard content as Visual Studio code. Preserves syntax highlighting, indentation and background color. Converts RTF, outputted by Visual Studio, into HTML. Free Desktop Management – The list below represent the best in Windows Desktop Management. Name Description License 7 Stacks Allows users to have "stacks" of icons in their taskbar. Free Executor Executor is a multi purpose launcher and a more advanced and customizable version of windows run. Free Fences Fences is a program that helps you organize your desktop and can hide your icons when they are not in use. Free RocketDock Rocket Dock is a smoothly animated, alpha blended application launcher. It provides a nice clean interface to drop shortcuts on for easy access and organization. With each item completely customizable there is no end to what you can add and launch from the dock. Free WindowsTab Tabbing is an essential feature of modern web browsers. Window Tabs brings the productivity of tabbed window management to all of your desktop applications. Free

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• Oracle Insurance Unveils Next Generation of Enterprise Document Automation: Oracle Documaker Enterprise Edition

  - by helen.pitts(at)oracle.com

  Oracle today announced the introduction of Oracle Documaker Enterprise Edition, the next generation of the company's market-leading Enterprise Document Automation (EDA) solution for dynamically creating, managing and delivering adaptive enterprise communications across multiple channels. "Insurers and other organizations need enterprise document automation that puts the power to manage the complete document lifecycle in the hands of the business user," said Srini Venkatasanthanam, vice president, Product Strategy, Oracle Insurancein the press release. "Built with features such as rules-based configurability and interactive processing, Oracle Documaker Enterprise Edition makes possible an adaptive approach to enterprise document automation - documents when, where and in the form they're needed." Key enhancements in Oracle Documaker Enterprise Edition include: Documaker Interactive, the newly renamed and redesigned Web-based iDocumaker module. Documaker Interactive enables users to quickly and interactively create and assemble compliant communications such as policy and claims correspondence directly from their desktops. Users benefits from built-in accelerators and rules-based configurability, pre-configured content as well as embedded workflow leveraging Oracle BPEL Process Manager. Documaker Documaker Factory, which helps enterprises reduce cost and improve operational efficiency through better management of their enterprise publishing operations. Dashboards, analytics, reporting and an administrative console provide insurers with greater insight and centralized control over document production allowing them to better adapt their resources based on business demands. Other enhancements include: enhanced business user empowerment; additional multi-language localization capabilities; and benefits from the use of powerful Oracle technologies such as the Oracle Application Development Framework for all interfaces and Oracle Universal Content Management (Oracle UCM) for enterprise content management. Drive Competitive Advantage and Growth: Deb Smallwood, founder of SMA Strategy Meets Action, a leading industry insurance analyst consulting firm and co-author of 3CM in Insurance: Customer Communications and Content Management published last month, noted in the press release that "maximum value can be gained from investments when Enterprise Document Automation (EDA) is viewed holistically and all forms of communication and all types of information are integrated across the entire enterprise. "Insurers that choose an approach that takes all communications, both structured and unstructured data, coming into the company from a wide range of channels, and then create seamless flows of information will have a real competitive advantage," Smallwood said. "This capability will soon become essential for selling, servicing, and ultimately driving growth through new business and retention." Learn More: Click here to watch a short flash demo that demonstrates the real business value offered by Oracle Documaker Enterprise Edition. You can also see how an insurance company can use Oracle Documaker Enterprise Edition to dynamically create, manage and publish adaptive enterprise content throughout the insurance business lifecycle for delivery across multiple channels by visiting Alamere Insurance, a fictional model insurance company created by Oracle to showcase how Oracle applications can be leveraged within the insurance enterprise. Meet Our Newest Oracle Insurance Blogger: I'm pleased to introduce our newest Oracle Insurance blogger, Susanne Hale. Susanne, who manages product marketing for Oracle Insurance EDA solutions, will be sharing insights about this topic along with examples of how our customers are transforming their enterprise communications using Oracle Documaker Enterprise Edition in future Oracle Insurance blog entries. Helen Pitts is senior product marketing manager for Oracle Insurance.

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• Windows Azure: Backup Services Release, Hyper-V Recovery Manager, VM Enhancements, Enhanced Enterprise Management Support

  - by ScottGu

  This morning we released a huge set of updates to Windows Azure.  These new capabilities include: Backup Services: General Availability of Windows Azure Backup Services Hyper-V Recovery Manager: Public preview of Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager Virtual Machines: Delete Attached Disks, Availability Set Warnings, SQL AlwaysOn Configuration Active Directory: Securely manage hundreds of SaaS applications Enterprise Management: Use Active Directory to Better Manage Windows Azure Windows Azure SDK 2.2: A massive update of our SDK + Visual Studio tooling support All of these improvements are now available to use immediately.  Below are more details about them. Backup Service: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Backup Today we are releasing Windows Azure Backup Service as a general availability service.  This release is now live in production, backed by an enterprise SLA, supported by Microsoft Support, and is ready to use for production scenarios. Windows Azure Backup is a cloud based backup solution for Windows Server which allows files and folders to be backed up and recovered from the cloud, and provides off-site protection against data loss. The service provides IT administrators and developers with the option to back up and protect critical data in an easily recoverable way from any location with no upfront hardware cost. Windows Azure Backup is built on the Windows Azure platform and uses Windows Azure blob storage for storing customer data. Windows Server uses the downloadable Windows Azure Backup Agent to transfer file and folder data securely and efficiently to the Windows Azure Backup Service. Along with providing cloud backup for Windows Server, Windows Azure Backup Service also provides capability to backup data from System Center Data Protection Manager and Windows Server Essentials, to the cloud. All data is encrypted onsite before it is sent to the cloud, and customers retain and manage the encryption key (meaning the data is stored entirely secured and can’t be decrypted by anyone but yourself). Getting Started To get started with the Windows Azure Backup Service, create a new Backup Vault within the Windows Azure Management Portal.  Click New->Data Services->Recovery Services->Backup Vault to do this: Once the backup vault is created you’ll be presented with a simple tutorial that will help guide you on how to register your Windows Servers with it: Once the servers you want to backup are registered, you can use the appropriate local management interface (such as the Microsoft Management Console snap-in, System Center Data Protection Manager Console, or Windows Server Essentials Dashboard) to configure the scheduled backups and to optionally initiate recoveries. You can follow these tutorials to learn more about how to do this: Tutorial: Schedule Backups Using the Windows Azure Backup Agent This tutorial helps you with setting up a backup schedule for your registered Windows Servers. Additionally, it also explains how to use Windows PowerShell cmdlets to set up a custom backup schedule. Tutorial: Recover Files and Folders Using the Windows Azure Backup Agent This tutorial helps you with recovering data from a backup. Additionally, it also explains how to use Windows PowerShell cmdlets to do the same tasks. Below are some of the key benefits the Windows Azure Backup Service provides: Simple configuration and management. Windows Azure Backup Service integrates with the familiar Windows Server Backup utility in Windows Server, the Data Protection Manager component in System Center and Windows Server Essentials, in order to provide a seamless backup and recovery experience to a local disk, or to the cloud. Block level incremental backups. The Windows Azure Backup Agent performs incremental backups by tracking file and block level changes and only transferring the changed blocks, hence reducing the storage and bandwidth utilization. Different point-in-time versions of the backups use storage efficiently by only storing the changes blocks between these versions. Data compression, encryption and throttling. The Windows Azure Backup Agent ensures that data is compressed and encrypted on the server before being sent to the Windows Azure Backup Service over the network. As a result, the Windows Azure Backup Service only stores encrypted data in the cloud storage. The encryption key is not available to the Windows Azure Backup Service, and as a result the data is never decrypted in the service. Also, users can setup throttling and configure how the Windows Azure Backup service utilizes the network bandwidth when backing up or restoring information. Data integrity is verified in the cloud. In addition to the secure backups, the backed up data is also automatically checked for integrity once the backup is done. As a result, any corruptions which may arise due to data transfer can be easily identified and are fixed automatically. Configurable retention policies for storing data in the cloud. The Windows Azure Backup Service accepts and implements retention policies to recycle backups that exceed the desired retention range, thereby meeting business policies and managing backup costs. Hyper-V Recovery Manager: Now Available in Public Preview I’m excited to also announce the public preview of a new Windows Azure Service – the Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager (HRM). Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager helps protect your business critical services by coordinating the replication and recovery of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 SP1 and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 R2 private clouds at a secondary location. With automated protection, asynchronous ongoing replication, and orderly recovery, the Hyper-V Recovery Manager service can help you implement Disaster Recovery and restore important services accurately, consistently, and with minimal downtime. Application data in an Hyper-V Recovery Manager scenarios always travels on your on-premise replication channel. Only metadata (such as names of logical clouds, virtual machines, networks etc.) that is needed for orchestration is sent to Azure. All traffic sent to/from Azure is encrypted. You can begin using Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery today by clicking New->Data Services->Recovery Services->Hyper-V Recovery Manager within the Windows Azure Management Portal.  You can read more about Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager in Brad Anderson’s 9-part series, Transform the datacenter. To learn more about setting up Hyper-V Recovery Manager follow our detailed step-by-step guide. Virtual Machines: Delete Attached Disks, Availability Set Warnings, SQL AlwaysOn Today’s Windows Azure release includes a number of nice updates to Windows Azure Virtual Machines.  These improvements include: Ability to Delete both VM Instances + Attached Disks in One Operation Prior to today’s release, when you deleted VMs within Windows Azure we would delete the VM instance – but not delete the drives attached to the VM.  You had to manually delete these yourself from the storage account.  With today’s update we’ve added a convenience option that now allows you to either retain or delete the attached disks when you delete the VM:   We’ve also added the ability to delete a cloud service, its deployments, and its role instances with a single action. This can either be a cloud service that has production and staging deployments with web and worker roles, or a cloud service that contains virtual machines.  To do this, simply select the Cloud Service within the Windows Azure Management Portal and click the “Delete” button: Warnings on Availability Sets with Only One Virtual Machine In Them One of the nice features that Windows Azure Virtual Machines supports is the concept of “Availability Sets”.  An “availability set” allows you to define a tier/role (e.g. webfrontends, databaseservers, etc) that you can map Virtual Machines into – and when you do this Windows Azure separates them across fault domains and ensures that at least one of them is always available during servicing operations.  This enables you to deploy applications in a high availability way. One issue we’ve seen some customers run into is where they define an availability set, but then forget to map more than one VM into it (which defeats the purpose of having an availability set).  With today’s release we now display a warning in the Windows Azure Management Portal if you have only one virtual machine deployed in an availability set to help highlight this: You can learn more about configuring the availability of your virtual machines here. Configuring SQL Server Always On SQL Server Always On is a great feature that you can use with Windows Azure to enable high availability and DR scenarios with SQL Server. Today’s Windows Azure release makes it even easier to configure SQL Server Always On by enabling “Direct Server Return” endpoints to be configured and managed within the Windows Azure Management Portal.  Previously, setting this up required using PowerShell to complete the endpoint configuration.  Starting today you can enable this simply by checking the “Direct Server Return” checkbox: You can learn more about how to use direct server return for SQL Server AlwaysOn availability groups here. Active Directory: Application Access Enhancements This summer we released our initial preview of our Application Access Enhancements for Windows Azure Active Directory.  This service enables you to securely implement single-sign-on (SSO) support against SaaS applications (including Office 365, SalesForce, Workday, Box, Google Apps, GitHub, etc) as well as LOB based applications (including ones built with the new Windows Azure AD support we shipped last week with ASP.NET and VS 2013). Since the initial preview we’ve enhanced our SAML federation capabilities, integrated our new password vaulting system, and shipped multi-factor authentication support. We've also turned on our outbound identity provisioning system and have it working with hundreds of additional SaaS Applications: Earlier this month we published an update on dates and pricing for when the service will be released in general availability form.  In this blog post we announced our intention to release the service in general availability form by the end of the year.  We also announced that the below features would be available in a free tier with it: SSO to every SaaS app we integrate with – Users can Single Sign On to any app we are integrated with at no charge. This includes all the top SAAS Apps and every app in our application gallery whether they use federation or password vaulting. Application access assignment and removal – IT Admins can assign access privileges to web applications to the users in their active directory assuring that every employee has access to the SAAS Apps they need. And when a user leaves the company or changes jobs, the admin can just as easily remove their access privileges assuring data security and minimizing IP loss User provisioning (and de-provisioning) – IT admins will be able to automatically provision users in 3rd party SaaS applications like Box, Salesforce.com, GoToMeeting, DropBox and others. We are working with key partners in the ecosystem to establish these connections, meaning you no longer have to continually update user records in multiple systems. Security and auditing reports – Security is a key priority for us. With the free version of these enhancements you'll get access to our standard set of access reports giving you visibility into which users are using which applications, when they were using them and where they are using them from. In addition, we'll alert you to un-usual usage patterns for instance when a user logs in from multiple locations at the same time. Our Application Access Panel – Users are logging in from every type of devices including Windows, iOS, & Android. Not all of these devices handle authentication in the same manner but the user doesn't care. They need to access their apps from the devices they love. Our Application Access Panel will support the ability for users to access access and launch their apps from any device and anywhere. You can learn more about our plans for application management with Windows Azure Active Directory here.  Try out the preview and start using it today. Enterprise Management: Use Active Directory to Better Manage Windows Azure Windows Azure Active Directory provides the ability to manage your organization in a directory which is hosted entirely in the cloud, or alternatively kept in sync with an on-premises Windows Server Active Directory solution (allowing you to seamlessly integrate with the directory you already have).  With today’s Windows Azure release we are integrating Windows Azure Active Directory even more within the core Windows Azure management experience, and enabling an even richer enterprise security offering.  Specifically: 1) All Windows Azure accounts now have a default Windows Azure Active Directory created for them.  You can create and map any users you want into this directory, and grant administrative rights to manage resources in Windows Azure to these users. 2) You can keep this directory entirely hosted in the cloud – or optionally sync it with your on-premises Windows Server Active Directory.  Both options are free.  The later approach is ideal for companies that wish to use their corporate user identities to sign-in and manage Windows Azure resources.  It also ensures that if an employee leaves an organization, his or her access control rights to the company’s Windows Azure resources are immediately revoked. 3) The Windows Azure Service Management APIs have been updated to support using Windows Azure Active Directory credentials to sign-in and perform management operations.  Prior to today’s release customers had to download and use management certificates (which were not scoped to individual users) to perform management operations.  We still support this management certificate approach (don’t worry – nothing will stop working).  But we think the new Windows Azure Active Directory authentication support enables an even easier and more secure way for customers to manage resources going forward.  4) The Windows Azure SDK 2.2 release (which is also shipping today) includes built-in support for the new Service Management APIs that authenticate with Windows Azure Active Directory, and now allow you to create and manage Windows Azure applications and resources directly within Visual Studio using your Active Directory credentials.  This, combined with updated PowerShell scripts that also support Active Directory, enables an end-to-end enterprise authentication story with Windows Azure. Below are some details on how all of this works: Subscriptions within a Directory As part of today’s update, we have associated all existing Window Azure accounts with a Windows Azure Active Directory (and created one for you if you don’t already have one). When you login to the Windows Azure Management Portal you’ll now see the directory name in the URI of the browser.  For example, in the screen-shot below you can see that I have a “scottgu” directory that my subscriptions are hosted within: Note that you can continue to use Microsoft Accounts (formerly known as Microsoft Live IDs) to sign-into Windows Azure.  These map just fine to a Windows Azure Active Directory – so there is no need to create new usernames that are specific to a directory if you don’t want to.  In the scenario above I’m actually logged in using my @hotmail.com based Microsoft ID which is now mapped to a “scottgu” active directory that was created for me.  By default everything will continue to work just like you used to before. Manage your Directory You can manage an Active Directory (including the one we now create for you by default) by clicking the “Active Directory” tab in the left-hand side of the portal.  This will list all of the directories in your account.  Clicking one the first time will display a getting started page that provides documentation and links to perform common tasks with it: You can use the built-in directory management support within the Windows Azure Management Portal to add/remove/manage users within the directory, enable multi-factor authentication, associate a custom domain (e.g. mycompanyname.com) with the directory, and/or rename the directory to whatever friendly name you want (just click the configure tab to do this).  You can also setup the directory to automatically sync with an on-premises Active Directory using the “Directory Integration” tab. Note that users within a directory by default do not have admin rights to login or manage Windows Azure based resources.  You still need to explicitly grant them co-admin permissions on a subscription for them to login or manage resources in Windows Azure.  You can do this by clicking the Settings tab on the left-hand side of the portal and then by clicking the administrators tab within it. Sign-In Integration within Visual Studio If you install the new Windows Azure SDK 2.2 release, you can now connect to Windows Azure from directly inside Visual Studio without having to download any management certificates.  You can now just right-click on the “Windows Azure” icon within the Server Explorer and choose the “Connect to Windows Azure” context menu option to do so: Doing this will prompt you to enter the email address of the username you wish to sign-in with (make sure this account is a user in your directory with co-admin rights on a subscription): You can use either a Microsoft Account (e.g. Windows Live ID) or an Active Directory based Organizational account as the email.  The dialog will update with an appropriate login prompt depending on which type of email address you enter: Once you sign-in you’ll see the Windows Azure resources that you have permissions to manage show up automatically within the Visual Studio server explorer and be available to start using: No downloading of management certificates required.  All of the authentication was handled using your Windows Azure Active Directory! Manage Subscriptions across Multiple Directories If you have already have multiple directories and multiple subscriptions within your Windows Azure account, we have done our best to create a good default mapping of your subscriptions->directories as part of today’s update.  If you don’t like the default subscription-to-directory mapping we have done you can click the Settings tab in the left-hand navigation of the Windows Azure Management Portal and browse to the Subscriptions tab within it: If you want to map a subscription under a different directory in your account, simply select the subscription from the list, and then click the “Edit Directory” button to choose which directory to map it to.  Mapping a subscription to a different directory takes only seconds and will not cause any of the resources within the subscription to recycle or stop working.  We’ve made the directory->subscription mapping process self-service so that you always have complete control and can map things however you want. Filtering By Directory and Subscription Within the Windows Azure Management Portal you can filter resources in the portal by subscription (allowing you to show/hide different subscriptions).  If you have subscriptions mapped to multiple directory tenants, we also now have a filter drop-down that allows you to filter the subscription list by directory tenant.  This filter is only available if you have multiple subscriptions mapped to multiple directories within your Windows Azure Account:   Windows Azure SDK 2.2 Today we are also releasing a major update of our Windows Azure SDK.  The Windows Azure SDK 2.2 release adds some great new features including: Visual Studio 2013 Support Integrated Windows Azure Sign-In support within Visual Studio Remote Debugging Cloud Services with Visual Studio Firewall Management support within Visual Studio for SQL Databases Visual Studio 2013 RTM VM Images for MSDN Subscribers Windows Azure Management Libraries for .NET Updated Windows Azure PowerShell Cmdlets and ScriptCenter I’ll post a follow-up blog shortly with more details about all of the above. Additional Updates In addition to the above enhancements, today’s release also includes a number of additional improvements: AutoScale: Richer time and date based scheduling support (set different rules on different dates) AutoScale: Ability to Scale to Zero Virtual Machines (very useful for Dev/Test scenarios) AutoScale: Support for time-based scheduling of Mobile Service AutoScale rules Operation Logs: Auditing support for Service Bus management operations Today we also shipped a major update to the Windows Azure SDK – Windows Azure SDK 2.2.  It has so much goodness in it that I have a whole second blog post coming shortly on it! :-) Summary Today’s Windows Azure release enables a bunch of great new scenarios, and enables a much richer enterprise authentication offering. If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using all of the above features today.  Then visit the Windows Azure Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with it. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• SharePoint 2010 Hosting :: Error – HTTP Error 401.1 when Accessing Your SharePoint 2010 Site

  - by mbridge

  When attempting to view a MOSS (SharePoint) 2007 or SharePoint 2010 site locally from a Web Front End (WFE) you get an error stating: “HTTP Error 401.1 – Unauthorized: Access is denied due to invalid credentials.” I have noticed that this happens on Windows 2003/2008 Server SP1/SP2/R2 when using Host Headers and Alternate Access Mappings on a web application in MOSS 2007. If you can access the site from remote machines and cannot access the site from the server itself, then this might be your issue. For all my newer farm installs this includes SharePoint 2007 (MOSS) and SharePoint 2010. I use method number 2 on all SharePoint and SQL Servers in the farm. If you cannot access the web site locally or remotely from other machines then there is an issue with security on the site and/or possibly a Kerberos related security issue I implemented fix #2 listed in the following Microsoft KB Article. I implemented this fix on all servers in the MOSS 2007 Farm (WFE’s and Indexing/Search Server). If using method 1, you would add all Host Headers and Alternate Access Mappings for all web applications to the BackConnectionHostNames value, then you will be able to access the sites locally from the WFE’s. Microsoft KB Link: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896861 Method 1: Specify Host Names Please follow this steps: 1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK. 2. In Registry Editor, locate and then click the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa\MSV1_0 3. Right-click MSV1_0, point to New, and then click Multi-String Value. 4. Type BackConnectionHostNames, and then press ENTER. 5. Right-click BackConnectionHostNames, and then click Modify. 6. In the Value data box, type the host name or the host names for the sites that are on the local computer, and then click OK. 7. Quit Registry Editor, and then restart the IISAdmin service. Method 2: Disable the Loopback Check  Please follow this steps: 1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK 2. In Registry Editor, locate and then click the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa 3. Right-click Lsa, point to New, and then click DWORD Value. 4. Type DisableLoopbackCheck, and then press ENTER. 5. Right-click DisableLoopbackCheck, and then click Modify. 6. In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK. 7. Quit Registry Editor, and then restart your computer. Give it try and good luck.

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• Serious about Embedded: Java Embedded @ JavaOne 2012

  - by terrencebarr

  It bears repeating: More than ever, the Java platform is the best technology for many embedded use cases. Java’s platform independence, high level of functionality, security, and developer productivity address the key pain points in building embedded solutions. Transitioning from 16 to 32 bit or even 64 bit? Need to support multiple architectures and operating systems with a single code base? Want to scale on multi-core systems? Require a proven security model? Dynamically deploy and manage software on your devices? Cut time to market by leveraging code, expertise, and tools from a large developer ecosystem? Looking for back-end services, integration, and management? The Java platform has got you covered. Java already powers around 10 billion devices worldwide, with traditional desktops and servers being only a small portion of that. And the ‘Internet of Things‘ is just really starting to explode … it is estimated that within five years, intelligent and connected embedded devices will outnumber desktops and mobile phones combined, and will generate the majority of the traffic on the Internet. Is your platform and services strategy ready for the coming disruptions and opportunities? It should come as no surprise that Oracle is keenly focused on Java for Embedded. At JavaOne 2012 San Francisco the dedicated track for Java ME, Java Card, and Embedded keeps growing, with 52 sessions, tutorials, Hands-on-Labs, and BOFs scheduled for this track alone, plus keynotes, demos, booths, and a variety of other embedded content. To further prove Oracle’s commitment, in 2012 for the first time there will be a dedicated sub-conference focused on the business aspects of embedded Java: Java Embedded @ JavaOne. This conference will run for two days in parallel to JavaOne in San Francisco, will have its own business-oriented track and content, and targets C-level executives, architects, business leaders, and decision makers. Registration and Call For Papers for Java Embedded @ JavaOne are now live. We expect a lot of interest in this new event and space is limited, so be sure to submit your paper and register soon. Hope to see you there! Cheers, – Terrence Filed under: Mobile & Embedded Tagged: ARM, Call for Papers, Embedded Java, Java Embedded, Java Embedded @ JavaOne, Java ME, Java SE Embedded, Java SE for Embedded, JavaOne San Francisco, PowerPC

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• WPF vs. WinForms - a Delphi programmer's perspective?

  - by Robert Oschler

  I have read most of the major threads on WPF vs. WinForms and I find myself stuck in the unfortunate ambivalence you can fall into when deciding between the tried and true previous tech (Winforms), and it's successor (WPF). I am a veteran Delphi programmer of many years that is finally making the jump to C#. My fellow Delphi programmers out there will understand that I am excited to know that Anders Hejlsberg, of Delphi fame, was the architect behind C#. I have a strong addiction to Delphi's VCL custom components, especially those involved in making multi-step Wizards and components that act as a container for child components. With that background, I am hoping that those of you that switched from Delphi to C# can help me with my WinForms vs. WPF decision for writing my initial applications. Note, I am very impatient when coding and things like full fledged auto-complete and proper debugger support can make or break a project for me, including being able to find readily available information on API features and calls and even more so, workarounds for bugs. The SO threads and comments in the early 2009 date range give me great concern over WPF when it comes to potential frustrations that could mar my C# UI development coding. On the other hand, spending an inordinate amount of time learning an API tech that is, even if it is not abandoned, soon to be replaced (WinForms), is equally troubling and I do find the GPU support in WPF tantalizing. Hence my ambivalence. Since I haven't learned either tech yet I have a rare opportunity to get a fresh start and not have to face the big "unlearning" curve I've seen people mention in various threads when a WinForms programmer makes the move to WPF. On the other hand, if using WPF will just be too frustrating or have other major negative consequences for an impatient RAD developer like myself, then I'll just stick with WinForms until WPF reaches the same level of support and ease of use. To give you a concrete example into my psychology as a programmer, I used VB and subsequently Delphi to completely avoid altogether the very real pain of coding with MFC, a Windows UI library that many developers suffered through while developing early Windows apps. I have never regretted my luck in avoiding MFC. It would also be comforting to know if Anders Hejlsberg had a hand in the architecture of WPF and/or WinForms, and if there are any disparities in the creative vision and ease of use embodied in either code base. Finally, for the Delphi programmers again, let me know how much "IDE schock" I'm in for when using WPF as opposed to WinForms, especially when it comes to debugger support. Any job market comments updated for 2011 would be appreciated too. -- roschler

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• Desktop Fun: Triple Monitor Wallpaper Collection Series 1

  - by Asian Angel

  Triple monitor setups provide spacious amounts of screen real-estate but can be extremely frustrating to find good wallpapers for. Today we present the first in a series of wallpaper collections to help decorate your triple monitor setup with lots of wallpaper goodness. Note: Click on the picture to see the full-size image—these wallpapers vary in size so you may need to crop, stretch, or place them on a colored background in order to best match them to your screen’s resolution. Special Note: The screen resolution sizes available for each of these wallpapers has been included to help you match them up to your individual settings as easily as possible. All images shown here are thumbnail screenshots of the largest size available for download. Available in the following resolutions: 3840*1024, 4096*1024, 4320*900, 4800*1200, 5040*1050, and 5760*1200. Available in the following resolutions: 4800*1200. Available in the following resolutions: 3840*960, 3840*1024, 4096*1024, 4320*900, and 4800*1200. Available in the following resolutions: 3840*960, 3840*1024, 4096*1024, 4320*900, and 4800*1200. Available in the following resolutions: 3840*960, 3840*1024, 4096*1024, 4320*900, 4800*1200, 5040*1050, and 5760*1200. Available in the following resolutions: 3840*960, 3840*1024, 4096*1024, 4320*900, and 4800*1200. Available in the following resolutions: 3840*960, 3840*1024, 4096*1024, 4320*900, 4800*1200, and 5040*1050. Available in the following resolutions: 3840*960, 3840*1024, 4096*1024, 4320*900, 4800*1200, and 5040*1050. Available in the following resolutions: 3840*960, 3840*1024, 4096*1024, 4320*900, and 4800*1200. Available in the following resolutions: 3840*960, 3840*1024, 4096*1024, 4320*900, 4800*1200, and 5040*1050. Available in the following resolutions: 3840*960, 3840*1024, 4096*1024, 4800*1200, and 5040*1050. Available in the following resolutions: 3840*960, 3840*1024, 4096*1024, 4320*900, 4800*1200, 5040*1050, 5760*1200, and 7680*1600. Available in the following resolutions: 3840*960, 3840*1024, 4096*1024, 4320*900, 4800*1200, 5040*1050, and 5760*1200. Available in the following resolutions: 5760*1200. Available in the following resolutions: 5760*1200. More Triple Monitor Goodness Beautiful 3 Screen Multi-Monitor Space Wallpaper Span the same wallpaper across multiple monitors or use a different wallpaper for each. Dual Monitors: Use a Different Wallpaper on Each Desktop in Windows 7, Vista or XP For more wallpapers be certain to see our great collections in the Desktop Fun section. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Upgrade Windows 7 Easily (And Understand Whether You Should) The How-To Geek Guide to Audio Editing: Basic Noise Removal Install a Wii Game Loader for Easy Backups and Fast Load Times The Best of CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in 2011 The Worst of CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in 2011 HTG Projects: How to Create Your Own Custom Papercraft Toy Firefox 4.0 Beta 9 Available for Download – Get Your Copy Now The Frustrations of a Computer Literate Watching a Newbie Use a Computer [Humorous Video] Season0nPass Jailbreaks Current Gen Apple TVs IBM’s Jeopardy Playing Computer Watson Shows The Pros How It’s Done [Video] Tranquil Juice Drop Abstract Wallpaper Pulse Is a Sleek Newsreader for iOS and Android Devices

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• WPF vs. WinForms - a Delphi programmer's perspective?

  - by Robert Oschler

  Hello all. I have read most of the major threads on WPF vs. WinForms and I find myself stuck in the unfortunate ambivalence you can fall into when deciding between the tried and true previous tech (Winforms), and it's successor (WPF). I am a veteran Delphi programmer of many years that is finally making the jump to C#. My fellow Delphi programmers out there will understand that I am excited to know that Anders Hejlsberg, of Delphi fame, was the architect behind C#. I have a strong addiction to Delphi's VCL custom components, especially those involved in making multi-step Wizards and components that act as a container for child components. With that background, I am hoping that those of you that switched from Delphi to C# can help me with my WinForms vs. WPF decision for writing my initial applications. Note, I am very impatient when coding and things like full fledged auto-complete and proper debugger support can make or break a project for me, including being able to find readily available information on API features and calls and even more so, workarounds for bugs. The SO threads and comments in the early 2009 date range give me great concern over WPF when it comes to potential frustrations that could mar my C# UI development coding. On the other hand, spending an inordinate amount of time learning an API tech that is, even if it is not abandoned, soon to be replaced (WinForms), is equally troubling and I do find the GPU support in WPF tantalizing. Hence my ambivalence. Since I haven't learned either tech yet I have a rare opportunity to get a fresh start and not have to face the big "unlearning" curve I've seen people mention in various threads when a WinForms programmer makes the move to WPF. On the other hand, if using WPF will just be too frustrating or have other major negative consequences for an impatient RAD developer like myself, then I'll just stick with WinForms until WPF reaches the same level of support and ease of use. To give you a concrete example into my psychology as a programmer, I used VB and subsequently Delphi to completely avoid altogether the very real pain of coding with MFC, a Windows UI library that many developers suffered through while developing early Windows apps. I have never regretted my luck in avoiding MFC. It would also be comforting to know if Anders Hejlsberg had a hand in the architecture of WPF and/or WinForms, and if there are any disparities in the creative vision and ease of use embodied in either code base. Finally, for the Delphi programmers again, let me know how much "IDE schock" I'm in for when using WPF as opposed to WinForms, especially when it comes to debugger support. Any job market comments updated for 2011 would be appreciated too. -- roschler

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• The broken Promise of the Mobile Web

  - by Rick Strahl

  High end mobile devices have been with us now for almost 7 years and they have utterly transformed the way we access information. Mobile phones and smartphones that have access to the Internet and host smart applications are in the hands of a large percentage of the population of the world. In many places even very remote, cell phones and even smart phones are a common sight. I’ll never forget when I was in India in 2011 I was up in the Southern Indian mountains riding an elephant out of a tiny local village, with an elephant herder in front riding atop of the elephant in front of us. He was dressed in traditional garb with the loin wrap and head cloth/turban as did quite a few of the locals in this small out of the way and not so touristy village. So we’re slowly trundling along in the forest and he’s lazily using his stick to guide the elephant and… 10 minutes in he pulls out his cell phone from his sash and starts texting. In the middle of texting a huge pig jumps out from the side of the trail and he takes a picture running across our path in the jungle! So yeah, mobile technology is very pervasive and it’s reached into even very buried and unexpected parts of this world. Apps are still King Apps currently rule the roost when it comes to mobile devices and the applications that run on them. If there’s something that you need on your mobile device your first step usually is to look for an app, not use your browser. But native app development remains a pain in the butt, with the requirement to have to support 2 or 3 completely separate platforms. There are solutions that try to bridge that gap. Xamarin is on a tear at the moment, providing their cross-device toolkit to build applications using C#. While Xamarin tools are impressive – and also *very* expensive – they only address part of the development madness that is app development. There are still specific device integration isssues, dealing with the different developer programs, security and certificate setups and all that other noise that surrounds app development. There’s also PhoneGap/Cordova which provides a hybrid solution that involves creating local HTML/CSS/JavaScript based applications, and then packaging them to run in a specialized App container that can run on most mobile device platforms using a WebView interface. This allows for using of HTML technology, but it also still requires all the set up, configuration of APIs, security keys and certification and submission and deployment process just like native applications – you actually lose many of the benefits that  Web based apps bring. The big selling point of Cordova is that you get to use HTML have the ability to build your UI once for all platforms and run across all of them – but the rest of the app process remains in place. Apps can be a big pain to create and manage especially when we are talking about specialized or vertical business applications that aren’t geared at the mainstream market and that don’t fit the ‘store’ model. If you’re building a small intra department application you don’t want to deal with multiple device platforms and certification etc. for various public or corporate app stores. That model is simply not a good fit both from the development and deployment perspective. Even for commercial, big ticket apps, HTML as a UI platform offers many advantages over native, from write-once run-anywhere, to remote maintenance, single point of management and failure to having full control over the application as opposed to have the app store overloads censor you. In a lot of ways Web based HTML/CSS/JavaScript applications have so much potential for building better solutions based on existing Web technologies for the very same reasons a lot of content years ago moved off the desktop to the Web. To me the Web as a mobile platform makes perfect sense, but the reality of today’s Mobile Web unfortunately looks a little different… Where’s the Love for the Mobile Web? Yet here we are in the middle of 2014, nearly 7 years after the first iPhone was released and brought the promise of rich interactive information at your fingertips, and yet we still don’t really have a solid mobile Web platform. I know what you’re thinking: “But we have lots of HTML/JavaScript/CSS features that allows us to build nice mobile interfaces”. I agree to a point – it’s actually quite possible to build nice looking, rich and capable Web UI today. We have media queries to deal with varied display sizes, CSS transforms for smooth animations and transitions, tons of CSS improvements in CSS 3 that facilitate rich layout, a host of APIs geared towards mobile device features and lately even a number of JavaScript framework choices that facilitate development of multi-screen apps in a consistent manner. Personally I’ve been working a lot with AngularJs and heavily modified Bootstrap themes to build mobile first UIs and that’s been working very well to provide highly usable and attractive UI for typical mobile business applications. From the pure UI perspective things actually look very good. Not just about the UI But it’s not just about the UI - it’s also about integration with the mobile device. When it comes to putting all those pieces together into what amounts to a consolidated platform to build mobile Web applications, I think we still have a ways to go… there are a lot of missing pieces to make it all work together and integrate with the device more smoothly, and more importantly to make it work uniformly across the majority of devices. I think there are a number of reasons for this. Slow Standards Adoption HTML standards implementations and ratification has been dreadfully slow, and browser vendors all seem to pick and choose different pieces of the technology they implement. The end result is that we have a capable UI platform that’s missing some of the infrastructure pieces to make it whole on mobile devices. There’s lots of potential but what is lacking that final 10% to build truly compelling mobile applications that can compete favorably with native applications. Some of it is the fragmentation of browsers and the slow evolution of the mobile specific HTML APIs. A host of mobile standards exist but many of the standards are in the early review stage and they have been there stuck for long periods of time and seem to move at a glacial pace. Browser vendors seem even slower to implement them, and for good reason – non-ratified standards mean that implementations may change and vendor implementations tend to be experimental and  likely have to be changed later. Neither Vendors or developers are not keen on changing standards. This is the typical chicken and egg scenario, but without some forward momentum from some party we end up stuck in the mud. It seems that either the standards bodies or the vendors need to carry the torch forward and that doesn’t seem to be happening quickly enough. Mobile Device Integration just isn’t good enough Current standards are not far reaching enough to address a number of the use case scenarios necessary for many mobile applications. While not every application needs to have access to all mobile device features, almost every mobile application could benefit from some integration with other parts of the mobile device platform. Integration with GPS, phone, media, messaging, notifications, linking and contacts system are benefits that are unique to mobile applications and could be widely used, but are mostly (with the exception of GPS) inaccessible for Web based applications today. Unfortunately trying to do most of this today only with a mobile Web browser is a losing battle. Aside from PhoneGap/Cordova’s app centric model with its own custom API accessing mobile device features and the token exception of the GeoLocation API, most device integration features are not widely supported by the current crop of mobile browsers. For example there’s no usable messaging API that allows access to SMS or contacts from HTML. Even obvious components like the Media Capture API are only implemented partially by mobile devices. There are alternatives and workarounds for some of these interfaces by using browser specific code, but that’s might ugly and something that I thought we were trying to leave behind with newer browser standards. But it’s not quite working out that way. It’s utterly perplexing to me that mobile standards like Media Capture and Streams, Media Gallery Access, Responsive Images, Messaging API, Contacts Manager API have only minimal or no traction at all today. Keep in mind we’ve had mobile browsers for nearly 7 years now, and yet we still have to think about how to get access to an image from the image gallery or the camera on some devices? Heck Windows Phone IE Mobile just gained the ability to upload images recently in the Windows 8.1 Update – that’s feature that HTML has had for 20 years! These are simple concepts and common problems that should have been solved a long time ago. It’s extremely frustrating to see build 90% of a mobile Web app with relative ease and then hit a brick wall for the remaining 10%, which often can be show stoppers. The remaining 10% have to do with platform integration, browser differences and working around the limitations that browsers and ‘pinned’ applications impose on HTML applications. The maddening part is that these limitations seem arbitrary as they could easily work on all mobile platforms. For example, SMS has a URL Moniker interface that sort of works on Android, works badly with iOS (only works if the address is already in the contact list) and not at all on Windows Phone. There’s no reason this shouldn’t work universally using the same interface – after all all phones have supported SMS since before the year 2000! But, it doesn’t have to be this way Change can happen very quickly. Take the GeoLocation API for example. Geolocation has taken off at the very beginning of the mobile device era and today it works well, provides the necessary security (a big concern for many mobile APIs), and is supported by just about all major mobile and even desktop browsers today. It handles security concerns via prompts to avoid unwanted access which is a model that would work for most other device APIs in a similar fashion. One time approval and occasional re-approval if code changes or caches expire. Simple and only slightly intrusive. It all works well, even though GeoLocation actually has some physical limitations, such as representing the current location when no GPS device is present. Yet this is a solved problem, where other APIs that are conceptually much simpler to implement have failed to gain any traction at all. Technically none of these APIs should be a problem to implement, but it appears that the momentum is just not there. Inadequate Web Application Linking and Activation Another important piece of the puzzle missing is the integration of HTML based Web applications. Today HTML based applications are not first class citizens on mobile operating systems. When talking about HTML based content there’s a big difference between content and applications. Content is great for search engine discovery and plain browser usage. Content is usually accessed intermittently and permanent linking is not so critical for this type of content.  But applications have different needs. Applications need to be started up quickly and must be easily switchable to support a multi-tasking user workflow. Therefore, it’s pretty crucial that mobile Web apps are integrated into the underlying mobile OS and work with the standard task management features. Unfortunately this integration is not as smooth as it should be. It starts with actually trying to find mobile Web applications, to ‘installing’ them onto a phone in an easily accessible manner in a prominent position. The experience of discovering a Mobile Web ‘App’ and making it sticky is by no means as easy or satisfying. Today the way you’d go about this is: Open the browser Search for a Web Site in the browser with your search engine of choice Hope that you find the right site Hope that you actually find a site that works for your mobile device Click on the link and run the app in a fully chrome’d browser instance (read tiny surface area) Pin the app to the home screen (with all the limitations outline above) Hope you pointed at the right URL when you pinned Even for you and me as developers, there are a few steps in there that are painful and annoying, but think about the average user. First figuring out how to search for a specific site or URL? And then pinning the app and hopefully from the right location? You’ve probably lost more than half of your audience at that point. This experience sucks. For developers too this process is painful since app developers can’t control the shortcut creation directly. This problem often gets solved by crazy coding schemes, with annoying pop-ups that try to get people to create shortcuts via fancy animations that are both annoying and add overhead to each and every application that implements this sort of thing differently. And that’s not the end of it - getting the link onto the home screen with an application icon varies quite a bit between browsers. Apple’s non-standard meta tags are prominent and they work with iOS and Android (only more recent versions), but not on Windows Phone. Windows Phone instead requires you to create an actual screen or rather a partial screen be captured for a shortcut in the tile manager. Who had that brilliant idea I wonder? Surprisingly Chrome on recent Android versions seems to actually get it right – icons use pngs, pinning is easy and pinned applications properly behave like standalone apps and retain the browser’s active page state and content. Each of the platforms has a different way to specify icons (WP doesn’t allow you to use an icon image at all), and the most widely used interface in use today is a bunch of Apple specific meta tags that other browsers choose to support. The question is: Why is there no standard implementation for installing shortcuts across mobile platforms using an official format rather than a proprietary one? Then there’s iOS and the crazy way it treats home screen linked URLs using a crazy hybrid format that is neither as capable as a Web app running in Safari nor a WebView hosted application. Moving off the Web ‘app’ link when switching to another app actually causes the browser and preview it to ‘blank out’ the Web application in the Task View (see screenshot on the right). Then, when the ‘app’ is reactivated it ends up completely restarting the browser with the original link. This is crazy behavior that you can’t easily work around. In some situations you might be able to store the application state and restore it using LocalStorage, but for many scenarios that involve complex data sources (like say Google Maps) that’s not a possibility. The only reason for this screwed up behavior I can think of is that it is deliberate to make Web apps a pain in the butt to use and forcing users trough the App Store/PhoneGap/Cordova route. App linking and management is a very basic problem – something that we essentially have solved in every desktop browser – yet on mobile devices where it arguably matters a lot more to have easy access to web content we have to jump through hoops to have even a remotely decent linking/activation experience across browsers. Where’s the Money? It’s not surprising that device home screen integration and Mobile Web support in general is in such dismal shape – the mobile OS vendors benefit financially from App store sales and have little to gain from Web based applications that bypass the App store and the cash cow that it presents. On top of that, platform specific vendor lock-in of both end users and developers who have invested in hardware, apps and consumables is something that mobile platform vendors actually aspire to. Web based interfaces that are cross-platform are the anti-thesis of that and so again it’s no surprise that the mobile Web is on a struggling path. But – that may be changing. More and more we’re seeing operations shifting to services that are subscription based or otherwise collect money for usage, and that may drive more progress into the Web direction in the end . Nothing like the almighty dollar to drive innovation forward. Do we need a Mobile Web App Store? As much as I dislike moderated experiences in today’s massive App Stores, they do at least provide one single place to look for apps for your device. I think we could really use some sort of registry, that could provide something akin to an app store for mobile Web apps, to make it easier to actually find mobile applications. This could take the form of a specialized search engine, or maybe a more formal store/registry like structure. Something like apt-get/chocolatey for Web apps. It could be curated and provide at least some feedback and reviews that might help with the integrity of applications. Coupled to that could be a native application on each platform that would allow searching and browsing of the registry and then also handle installation in the form of providing the home screen linking, plus maybe an initial security configuration that determines what features are allowed access to for the app. I’m not holding my breath. In order for this sort of thing to take off and gain widespread appeal, a lot of coordination would be required. And in order to get enough traction it would have to come from a well known entity – a mobile Web app store from a no name source is unlikely to gain high enough usage numbers to make a difference. In a way this would eliminate some of the freedom of the Web, but of course this would also be an optional search path in addition to the standard open Web search mechanisms to find and access content today. Security Security is a big deal, and one of the perceived reasons why so many IT professionals appear to be willing to go back to the walled garden of deployed apps is that Apps are perceived as safe due to the official review and curation of the App stores. Curated stores are supposed to protect you from malware, illegal and misleading content. It doesn’t always work out that way and all the major vendors have had issues with security and the review process at some time or another. Security is critical, but I also think that Web applications in general pose less of a security threat than native applications, by nature of the sandboxed browser and JavaScript environments. Web applications run externally completely and in the HTML and JavaScript sandboxes, with only a very few controlled APIs allowing access to device specific features. And as discussed earlier – security for any device interaction can be granted the same for mobile applications through a Web browser, as they can for native applications either via explicit policies loaded from the Web, or via prompting as GeoLocation does today. Security is important, but it’s certainly solvable problem for Web applications even those that need to access device hardware. Security shouldn’t be a reason for Web apps to be an equal player in mobile applications. Apps are winning, but haven’t we been here before? So now we’re finding ourselves back in an era of installed app, rather than Web based and managed apps. Only it’s even worse today than with Desktop applications, in that the apps are going through a gatekeeper that charges a toll and censors what you can and can’t do in your apps. Frankly it’s a mystery to me why anybody would buy into this model and why it’s lasted this long when we’ve already been through this process. It’s crazy… It’s really a shame that this regression is happening. We have the technology to make mobile Web apps much more prominent, but yet we’re basically held back by what seems little more than bureaucracy, partisan bickering and self interest of the major parties involved. Back in the day of the desktop it was Internet Explorer’s 98+%  market shareholding back the Web from improvements for many years – now it’s the combined mobile OS market in control of the mobile browsers. If mobile Web apps were allowed to be treated the same as native apps with simple ways to install and run them consistently and persistently, that would go a long way to making mobile applications much more usable and seriously viable alternatives to native apps. But as it is mobile apps have a severe disadvantage in placement and operation. There are a few bright spots in all of this. Mozilla’s FireFoxOs is embracing the Web for it’s mobile OS by essentially building every app out of HTML and JavaScript based content. It supports both packaged and certified package modes (that can be put into the app store), and Open Web apps that are loaded and run completely off the Web and can also cache locally for offline operation using a manifest. Open Web apps are treated as full class citizens in FireFoxOS and run using the same mechanism as installed apps. Unfortunately FireFoxOs is getting a slow start with minimal device support and specifically targeting the low end market. We can hope that this approach will change and catch on with other vendors, but that’s also an uphill battle given the conflict of interest with platform lock in that it represents. Recent versions of Android also seem to be working reasonably well with mobile application integration onto the desktop and activation out of the box. Although it still uses the Apple meta tags to find icons and behavior settings, everything at least works as you would expect – icons to the desktop on pinning, WebView based full screen activation, and reliable application persistence as the browser/app is treated like a real application. Hopefully iOS will at some point provide this same level of rudimentary Web app support. What’s also interesting to me is that Microsoft hasn’t picked up on the obvious need for a solid Web App platform. Being a distant third in the mobile OS war, Microsoft certainly has nothing to lose and everything to gain by using fresh ideas and expanding into areas that the other major vendors are neglecting. But instead Microsoft is trying to beat the market leaders at their own game, fighting on their adversary’s terms instead of taking a new tack. Providing a kick ass mobile Web platform that takes the lead on some of the proposed mobile APIs would be something positive that Microsoft could do to improve its miserable position in the mobile device market. Where are we at with Mobile Web? It sure sounds like I’m really down on the Mobile Web, right? I’ve built a number of mobile apps in the last year and while overall result and response has been very positive to what we were able to accomplish in terms of UI, getting that final 10% that required device integration dialed was an absolute nightmare on every single one of them. Big compromises had to be made and some features were left out or had to be modified for some devices. In two cases we opted to go the Cordova route in order to get the integration we needed, along with the extra pain involved in that process. Unless you’re not integrating with device features and you don’t care deeply about a smooth integration with the mobile desktop, mobile Web development is fraught with frustration. So, yes I’m frustrated! But it’s not for lack of wanting the mobile Web to succeed. I am still a firm believer that we will eventually arrive a much more functional mobile Web platform that allows access to the most common device features in a sensible way. It wouldn't be difficult for device platform vendors to make Web based applications first class citizens on mobile devices. But unfortunately it looks like it will still be some time before this happens. So, what’s your experience building mobile Web apps? Are you finding similar issues? Just giving up on raw Web applications and building PhoneGap apps instead? Completely skipping the Web and going native? Leave a comment for discussion. Resources Rick Strahl on DotNet Rocks talking about Mobile Web© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2014Posted in HTML5  Mobile   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Windows Phone 7 Design using Expression Blend - Resources

  - by Nikita Polyakov

  I’ve been doing a series of talks across Florida regarding Windows Phone 7 Design using Microsoft Expression Blend 4. I discuss the WP7 phone and application experience; show how to use Expression Blend toolset to effectively design such apps. Next presentation is on 5/4/2010 at 6:30PM EST will be a webcast format over LiveMeeting at Ft. Lauderdale Online group. Registration and the LiveMeeting link are both here: http://www.fladotnet.com/Reg.aspx?EventID=459 [I will post a link if it’s recorded]   Here are the resources from my presentations: The Biggest source is the Windows Phone UI and Design Language video from MIX10 Windows Phone 7 Design Guide as it’s found on the WP7 Dev Home Page Study The Silverlight Mobile Tutorials on official Silverlight website I will be blogging a separate entry for a new demo app that will showcase the elements I presented. I suggest you actually watch all of the MIX videos about SL and Design as great primer to get you thinking the WP7 way.   A lot happening with WP7Dev and it’s just the beginning! So watch these Twitter accounts and blogs: @Ckindel - Charlie Kindel - WP7 Dev Head http://blogs.msdn.com/ckindel @WP7Dev - Official Dev Twitter @WP7 - Official WP7 Twitter Peter Torr - http://blogs.msdn.com/ptorr Mike Harsh - http://blogs.msdn.com/mharsh Shawn Oster - http://www.shawnoster.com   Other worthwhile mention my local friends speaking and blogging about Windows Phone 7: Bill Reiss is doing great presentations on Building games with XNA for Windows Phone 7. Be on the lookout for those around Florida. Bill is a Silverlight MVP and has a legacy of XNA and Silverlight games, see his site. Kevin Wolf aka ByteMaster he is a Device Application Developer MVP with tremendous experience building mobile applications. He has developed WinMo-GF a multi-platform gaming framework. Get these tools and get creating! You will need the following components installed in this order: Expression Blend 4 Beta Windows Phone Developer Tools Microsoft Expression Blend Add-in Preview for Windows Phone Microsoft Expression Blend SDK Preview for Windows Phone Want more training? Don’t forget that Channel 9 has complete walkthroughs of their WP7 Training Kit posted online. PS: To continue with all this design talk check out Microsoft .toolbox “Learn to create Silverlight applications using Expression Studio and to apply fundamental design principles.” A great website with a lot of design tutorials set up as a wonderful full course on design all for free, including a great forum community and neat little avatars you can build yourself.

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• Multiple Monitors

  - by mroberts

  At my workplace .Net developers get pretty much the same equipment. A decent Dell workstation / Desktop, mine is a Dell Precision 390. One dual core 2.40 GHz. Eight GB RAM. Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit. Two Dell 20.1 Monitors. I'm happy with this.  The machine is about 3 years old but still runs with some decent speed. New developers are getting a Dell workstation with dual quad processors. I just put in a request for myself and three other developers for an upgraded video card and two additional monitors, for a total of four monitors per person.  We suggested this card, BTW, mainly for the cost.  The move from one monitor to two was fantastic (one might even say life (or work) changing) and truly did increase productivity. Now what about going from 2 monitors to 4?  I'm sure the change is not as dramatic as one to two, but I can't help but to think four monitors is better than two.  But if four is better than two, should we have asked for six?!? Also what about mixing monitor types?  Right now my monitors are the older square type vs. wide-screen.  It's been rumored that we will be getting monitors out of current stock and they will be 22 inch wide-screens.  I understand this, recession and all.  2-20 inch square monitors with 2-22 inch wide-screen monitors...hmmmmm.  I'm thinking I'd rather get 2 additional 17 inch square monitors to put on each side of my 20's. Also, a question was raised about the layout of four monitors. By default, my thought was I'll just put them all on my desk, kinda in a line. I've heard others say they want to stack them in a 2 x 2 square. BTW, loving multi monitor support in Visual studio 2010! I’d love some comments on your experience with one, two, four, or however many monitors from a developers perspective.

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• ActAs and OnBehalfOf support in WIF

  - by cibrax

  I discussed a time ago how WIF supported a new WS-Trust 1.4 element, “ActAs”, and how that element could be used for authentication delegation.  The thing is that there is another feature in WS-Trust 1.4 that also becomes handy for this kind of scenario, and I did not mention in that last post, “OnBehalfOf”. Shiung Yong wrote an excellent summary about the difference of these two new features in this forum thread. He basically commented the following, “An ActAs RST element indicates that the requestor wants a token that contains claims about two distinct entities: the requestor, and an external entity represented by the token in the ActAs element. An OnBehalfOf RST element indicates that the requestor wants a token that contains claims only about one entity: the external entity represented by the token in the OnBehalfOf element. In short, ActAs feature is typically used in scenarios that require composite delegation, where the final recipient of the issued token can inspect the entire delegation chain and see not just the client, but all intermediaries to perform access control, auditing and other related activities based on the whole identity delegation chain. The ActAs feature is commonly used in multi-tiered systems to authenticate and pass information about identities between the tiers without having to pass this information at the application/business logic layer. OnBehalfOf feature is used in scenarios where only the identity of the original client is important and is effectively the same as identity impersonation feature available in the Windows OS today. When the OnBehalfOf is used the final recipient of the issued token can only see claims about the original client, and the information about intermediaries is not preserved. One common pattern where OnBehalfOf feature is used is the proxy pattern where the client cannot access the STS directly but is instead communicating through a proxy gateway. The proxy gateway authenticates the caller and puts information about him into the OnBehalfOf element of the RST message that it then sends to the real STS for processing. The resulting token is going to contain only claims related to the client of the proxy, making the proxy completely transparent and not visible to the receiver of the issued token.” Going back to WIF, “ActAs” and “OnBehalfOf” are both supported as extensions methods in the WCF client channel. public static class ChannelFactoryOperations {   public static T CreateChannelActingAs<T>(this ChannelFactory<T> factory,     SecurityToken actAs);     public static T CreateChannelOnBehalfOf<T>(this ChannelFactory<T> factory,     SecurityToken onBehalfOf); } Both methods receive the security token with the identity of the original caller.

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