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• Apache POI rows number

  - by sys_debug

  I am using Apache POI java and want to get the total number of rows which are not empty. I successfully processed a whole row with all its columns. Now I am assuming that I get an excel sheet with multiple rows and not a single row...so how to go about that? I was thinking of getting total number of rows (int n) and then loop until i<=n but not sure. Suggestions are most welcome :) Note: Apache POI version is 3.8. I am not dealing with Xlsx format...only xls. Yes I tried this code but got 20 in return....which is not possible given I have only 5 rows FileInputStream fileInputStream = new FileInputStream("COD.xls"); HSSFWorkbook workbook = new HSSFWorkbook(fileInputStream); HSSFSheet worksheet = workbook.getSheet("COD"); HSSFRow row1 = worksheet.getRow(3); Iterator rows = worksheet.rowIterator(); int noOfRows = 0; while( rows.hasNext() ) { HSSFRow row = (HSSFRow) rows.next(); noOfRows++; } System.out.println("Number of Rows: " + noOfRows);

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• c# creating a database query METHOD

  - by Sinaesthetic

  I'm not sure if im delluded but what I would like to do is create a method that will return the results of a query, so that i can reuse the connection code. As i understand it, a query returns an object but how do i pass that object back? I want to send the query into the method as a string argument, and have it return the results so that I can use them. Here's what i have which was a stab in the dark, it obviously doesn't work. This example is me trying to populate a listbox with the results of a query; the sheet name is Employees and the field/column is name. The error i get is "Complex DataBinding accepts as a data source either an IList or an IListSource.". any ideas? public Form1() { InitializeComponent(); openFileDialog1.ShowDialog(); openedFile = openFileDialog1.FileName; lbxEmployeeNames.DataSource = Query("Select [name] FROM [Employees$]"); } public object Query(string sql) { System.Data.OleDb.OleDbConnection MyConnection; System.Data.OleDb.OleDbCommand myCommand = new System.Data.OleDb.OleDbCommand(); string connectionPath; //build connection string connectionPath = "provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source='" + openedFile + "';Extended Properties=Excel 8.0;"; MyConnection = new System.Data.OleDb.OleDbConnection(connectionPath); MyConnection.Open(); myCommand.Connection = MyConnection; myCommand.CommandText = sql; return myCommand.ExecuteNonQuery(); }

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• sqlite database help

  - by mamila

  Hi all i have some questions regarding database in android. 1. in my project, I would like to create a database with single table. i would also like to insert data on this table from word or excel document. is it possible? if so please how can i do it? some code snippets would be of great help. 2. i have four different activities which i would like them to interact with this single table. the first is the main activity and its purpose is just to launch the other three activities according to user choice. so it has no interaction with the db. but the other three activities will read from the table whenever called. can you please tell me how to call the dbhelper on these activities. am kind of unable to do this.and am currently creating one db per each activity which is not the optimal way. any help is really appreciated and would be better if very soon tahnks

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• Best way to implement some type of ITaggable interface

  - by Jack

  I've got a program I'm creating that reports on another certain programs backup xml files. I've gotten to the point where I need to implement some type of ITaggable interface - but am unsure how to go about it code wise. My idea is that each item (BackupClient, BackupVersion, and BackupFile) should implement an ITaggable interface for highlighting old, out of date, or non-existent files in their HTML or Excel report. The user will be able to specify tags in the settings. My question is this, how can a user dynamically specify a "tag" such as File Date 3 days old? - Background Color = Red. Actually I guess my question is more, how can I, the programmer, implement this dynamically? I was thinking Expression trees, but am unsure this is the way to go as I havn't studied them much. I know my ITaggable interface would have methods such as AddTag(T tag), RemoveTag(T tag), but what exactly specifies the criteria for the tag to be added? I realize this may be subjective, and can be marked as wiki if need be, but I truly am stuck. Any input would be greatly helpful!

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• Crystal Reports Cross Tab Conditional Formatting

  - by ltran

  I would like to achieve a simplified result similar to the "Color Scale" function in Excel i.e. gradient colouring based on the lowest value (red) to highest value (green), except in my cross tab using Crystal Reports 2008. My cross tab looks a little like this: HOURS L1 L2 L3 L4 Total 1 hours | 5 | 0 | 1 | 16 | 22 | 2 hours | 0 | 1 | 0 | 10 | 11 | 3 hours | 8 | 2 | 6 | 12 | 28 | TOTAL |13 | 3 | 7 | 38 | 61 | The principle of my function is find the maximum value in the cross table then use 20%, 40%, 60%, 80% values to colour the background. Function is as follows (in the format background section): if currentfieldvalue < ((Maximum (MakeArray (CurrentColumnIndex, CurrentRowIndex, 1)))*0.2) then color(255,0,0) else if (currentfieldvalue >= ((Maximum (MakeArray (CurrentColumnIndex, CurrentRowIndex, 1)))*0.2) and currentfieldvalue < ((Maximum (MakeArray (CurrentColumnIndex, CurrentRowIndex, 1)))*0.4)) then color(255,192,0) else if (currentfieldvalue >= ((Maximum (MakeArray (CurrentColumnIndex, CurrentRowIndex, 1)))*0.4) and currentfieldvalue < ((Maximum (MakeArray (CurrentColumnIndex, CurrentRowIndex, 1)))*0.6)) then color(255,255,0) else if (currentfieldvalue >= ((Maximum (MakeArray (CurrentColumnIndex, CurrentRowIndex, 1)))*0.6) and currentfieldvalue < ((Maximum (MakeArray (CurrentColumnIndex, CurrentRowIndex, 1)))*0.8)) then color(146,208,80) else if (currentfieldvalue >= ((Maximum (MakeArray (CurrentColumnIndex, CurrentRowIndex, 1)))*0.8)) then color(0,176,80) It's not elegant, nor does it work properly, any assistance/suggestions would be much appreciated. I wasn't expecting it to be so complicated as originally I was working with the below assuming it would work, except it tells me that "CurrentFieldValue" is not a field. if CurrentFieldValue < ((Maximum (CurrentFieldValue))*0.2) then color(255,0,0) else if ... etc.

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• Can someone answer this for me?

  - by Dcurvez

  okay I am totally stuck. I have been getting some help off and on throughout this project and am anxious to get this problem solved so I can continue on with the rest of this project. I have a gridview that is set to save to a file, and has the option to import into excel. I keep getting an error of this: Invalid cast exception was unhandled. At least one element in the source array could not be cast down to the destination array type. Can anyone tell me in layman easy to understand what this error is speaking of? This is the code I am trying to use: Dim fileName As String = "" Dim dlgSave As New SaveFileDialog dlgSave.Filter = "Text files (*.txt)|*.txt|CSV Files (*.csv)|*.csv" dlgSave.AddExtension = True dlgSave.DefaultExt = "txt" If dlgSave.ShowDialog = Windows.Forms.DialogResult.OK Then fileName = dlgSave.FileName SaveToFile(fileName) End If End Sub Private Sub SaveToFile(ByVal fileName As String) If DataGridView1.RowCount > 0 AndAlso DataGridView1.Rows(0).Cells(0) IsNot Nothing Then Dim stream As New System.IO.FileStream(fileName, IO.FileMode.Append, IO.FileAccess.Write) Dim sw As New System.IO.StreamWriter(stream) For Each row As DataGridViewRow In DataGridView1.Rows Dim arrLine(9) As String Dim line As String **row.Cells.CopyTo(arrLine, 0)** line = arrLine(0) line &= ";" & arrLine(1) line &= ";" & arrLine(2) line &= ";" & arrLine(3) line &= ";" & arrLine(4) line &= ";" & arrLine(5) line &= ";" & arrLine(6) line &= ";" & arrLine(7) line &= ";" & arrLine(8) sw.WriteLine(line) Next sw.Flush() sw.Close() End If I bolded the line where it shows in debug, and I really dont see what all the fuss is about LOL

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• Export to csv, string w/ comma in it, splits it up

  - by Brad

  This code exports data into a csv file, which is opened within Excel. When a string has a comma within it, it messes up the order of the data. I need help modifying my code below to resolve any data that contains a comma within it, to not to create a new column. I am assuming it will pass each string within double quotes, so any comma within those quotes, then it will make an exception. Any help is appreciated. $result = mysql_query("select lname, fname, email, dtelephone, etelephone, contactwhen, comments, thursday, friday, saturday, sunday, monday FROM volunteers_2010"); $csv_output .= "Last Name,First Name,Email,Telephone (Day),Telephone (Evening),Contact When,Comments,Thursday,Friday,Saturday,Sunday,Monday,Comments\n"; $i = 0; if (mysql_num_rows($result) > 0) { while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) { $csv_output .= $row['Field'].", "; $i++; } } $csv_output .= "\n"; $values = mysql_query("SELECT lname, fname, email, dtelephone, etelephone, contactwhen, comments, thursday, friday, saturday, sunday, monday FROM volunteers_2010 WHERE venue_id = $venue_id"); while ($rowr = mysql_fetch_row($values)) { for ($j=0;$j<$i;$j++) { $csv_output .= $rowr[$j].", "; } $csv_output .= "\n"; }

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• How can I integrate advanced computations into a database field?

  - by ciclistadan

  My biological research involves the measurement of a cellular structure as it changes length throughout the course of observation (capturing images every minute for several hours). As my data sets have become larger I am trying to store them in an Access database, from which I would like to perform various queries about their changes in size. I know that the SELECT statement can incorporate some mathematical permutations, but I have been unable to incorporate many of my necessary calculations (probably due to my lack of knowledge). For example, one calculation involves determining the rate of change during specifically defined periods of growth. This calculation is entirely dependent on the raw data saved in the table, therefore I didn't this it would be appropriate to just calculate it in excel prior to entry into the field. So my question is, what would be the most appropriate method of performing this calculation. Should I attempt to string together a huge SELECT calculation in my QUERY, or is there a way to use another language (I know perl?) which can be called to populate the new query field? I'm not looking for someone to write the code, just where is it appropriate to incorporate each step. Also, I am currently using Office Access but would be interested in any mySQL answers as I may be moving to this platform at a later date. Thanks all!

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• Dynamic Data Extract Tools

  - by Kevin McGovern

  I've been searching around for a few weeks now for a tool that either is fully built or a direction of something I could build for dynamically extracting data via a web interface. Basically, what I'm looking for is a way to give users a list of all available data objects from our database and then let them pick ones from the list they'd like to view and set parameters then export the results to an excel file. Right now we're doing it purely with SQL statements but we have hundreds of objects so as you might imagine, those statements are really complex and prone to errors. It would be great if there was a tool available to do this or if someone had an idea of an easy way to organize this. Any help would be greatly appreciated. We've looked at BI tools like QlikView and Tableau but that is probably overkill for what we're trying to do. The open-source BI tools we've looked at seemed really primitive in their functionality. The other thing we looked at was MSAS (our DB is SQL Server) but I'd prefer something that was more database-agnostic and lived on a web server instead of on the database.

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• More than one unique key for HashMap problem (Java)

  - by Alex Cheng

  This question is a continuation of this thread: In short: To solve my problem, I want to use Map<Set<String>, String>. However, after I sort my data entries in Excel, remove the unnecessary parameters, and the following came out: flow content ==> content content flow content ==> content depth distance flow content ==> content depth within flow content ==> content depth within distance flow content ==> content within flow content ==> content within distance I have more than one unique key for the hashmap if that is the case. How do I go around this... anyone have any idea? I was thinking of maybe Map<Set <String>, List <String>> so that I can do something like: Set <flow content>, List <'content content','content depth distance','content depth within ', ..., 'content within distance'> But because I am parsing the entries line by line I can't figure out the way how to store values of the same repeated keys (flow content) into the same list and add it to the map. Anyone have a rough logic on how can this be done in Java? Thanks in advance.

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• How do I grab hold of a pop-up that is opened from a frame?

  - by KLA

  I am testing a website using WatiN. On one of the pages I get a "report" in an Iframe, within this I frame there is a link to download and save the report. But since the only way to get to the link is to use frame.Link(...) the pop-up closes immediately after opening; Code snippet below //Click the create graph button ie.Button(Find.ById("ctl00_ctl00_ContentPlaceHolder1_TopBoxContentPlaceHolder_btnCreateGraph")).Click(); //Lets export the data ie.Div(Find.ById("colorbox")); ie.Div(Find.ById("cboxContent")); ie.Div(Find.ById("cboxLoadedContent")); Thread.Sleep(1000);//Used to cover performance issues Frame frame = ie.Frame(Find.ByName(frameNameRegex)); for (int Count = 0; Count < 10000000; Count++) {double nothing = (Count/12); }//Do nothing I just need a short pause //SelectList waits for a postback which does not occur. try { frame.SelectList(Find.ById("rvReport_ctl01_ctl05_ctl00")).SelectByValue("Excel"); } catch (Exception) { //Do nothing } //Now click export frame.Link(Find.ById("rvReport_ctl01_ctl05_ctl01")).ClickNoWait(); IE ieNewBrowserWindow = IE.AttachTo<IE>(Find.ByUrl(urlRegex)); fileDownloadHandler.WaitUntilFileDownloadDialogIsHandled(150); fileDownloadHandler.WaitUntilDownloadCompleted(200); I have tried using ie instead of frame which is why all those ie.Div's are present. if I use frame the pop-up window opens and closes instantly. If I use ie I get a link not found error. If I click on the link manually, while the test is "trying to find the link" the file will download correctly.

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• Categorize data without consolidating?

  - by sqlnoob

  I have a table with about 1000 records and 2000 columns. What I want to do is categorize each row such that all records with equal column values for all columns except 'ID' are given a category ID. My final answer would look like: ID A B C ..... Category ID 1 1 0 3 1 2 2 1 3 2 3 1 0 3 1 4 2 1 3 2 5 4 5 6 3 6 4 5 6 3 where all columns (besides ID) are equal for IDs 1,3 so they get the same category ID and so on. I guess my thought was to just write a SQL query that does a group by on every single column besides 'ID' and assign a number to each group and then join back to my original table. My current input is a text file, and I have SAS, MS Access, and Excel to work with. (I could use proc sql from within SAS). Before I go this route and construct the whole query, I was just wondering if there was a better way to do this? It will take some work just to write the query, and I'm not even sure if it is practical to join on 2000 columns (never tried), so I thought I'd ask for ideas before I got too far down the wrong path. EDIT: I just realized my title doesn't really make sense. What I was originally thinking was "Is there a way I can group by and categorize at the same time without actually consolidating into groups?"

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• Get last row of many matrices (ASCII text files) and create a new matrix from these rows

  - by nofunsally

  I have over a thousand matrices (6 x 2000, ASCII files, comma delimited) that I generated from MATLAB. I want to get the last row of each matrix / text file and save them in a new matrix / text file. The text files have crazy names so when I load them I can name them whatever. Right now I would do this to achieve my goal: % A = load('crazyname.txt'); % B = load('crazynameagain.txt'); % C = load('crazynameyetagain.txt'); A = [5 5 5; 5 5 5; 1 1 1]; B = [5 5 5; 5 5 5; 2 2 2]; C = [5 5 5; 5 5 5; 3 3 3]; D(1,:)=A(end,:); D(2,:)=B(end,:); D(3,:)=C(end,:); I will create each command (e.g. load, building D step by step) in Excel by combining text cells to create a command. Is there a better way to do this? Could I load / assign the matrices with a name that would better suit them to be used in a for loop? Or is some other MATLAB command that would facilitate this? Thanks.

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• Import/rip/convert DVD to Adobe Premiere Pro for Mac

  - by alexyu2010

  For those who want to edit their videos, Adobe Premiere Pro will inevitably a good choice, it is a professional, real time, timeline based video editing software application that supports many video editing cards and plug-ins for accelerated processing, additional file format support and video/audio effects. Although Adobe Premiere Pro is said to be for professionals, is not so complicated that a hobbyist can't excel at using it in an hour or so. General file formats supported by Adobe Premiere Pro Up to now, Adobe Creative Suite has released several versions of Adobe Premiere Pro, including Adobe Premiere 1.0, Adobe Premiere 2.0, Adobe Premiere Pro CS3, Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 and the newly published Adobe Premiere Pro CS5. Although I saw diversity in file formats they support, I did find some common file formats supported by all of them, such as AVI, MOV, MPG. Importing DVD, Adobe Premiere Pro says "NO" It is obvious to all of us that Adobe Premiere Pro will never give DVD a hug, and it isn't rare to see that many people are really confused when they want to import their DVDs to Adobe Premiere Pro for editing. What to do? Yes, you may have noticed that, there is only a way out, that is ripping your DVDs to some formats workable with Adobe Premiere Pro natively, and this is what DVD to Adobe Premiere Pro can do. Importing DVD to Adobe Premiere Pro on Mac DVD to Adobe Premiere Pro converter for Mac is the specially designed application for ripping/converting DVD movies, DVD VOB files or DVD clips to Adobe Premiere Pro compatible AVI, MOV, MPG files with either DVD ripping tool and video converting tool within the versatile DVD to Adobe Premiere Pro converter who is a powerful program for dealing with DVD and videos perfectly. Mac DVD to Adobe Premiere Pro converter can work with a wide variety of files including DVD, VOB, AVI, WMV, MPG, MOV, MP4, DV, FLV, MKV, ASF, SWF, HD video for using with other editing tools like iMovie, FCP etc, play on QuickTime, iTunes, put on portable devices like iPod, iPhone, iPad, iRiver, BlackBerry, Gphone, Mobile Phone or upload to webistes such as YouTube, MySpace. DVD to Adobe Premiere Pro converter for Mac can also help you do some basic editing. You can trim, crop your DVD movie or DVD clip, apply special effect to make it more artistic, merge several DVD clips to a single one or tweak the output parameters for video and audio separately to get a better quality rendering. Besides, to get a good common of the process the preview widnows is also available for you.

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• Windows explorer locks files

  - by John Prince

  I'm using Office 2010 & Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. My problem starts when I attempt to save e-mail messages to my PC that I have received via Outlook (my ISP is Comcast). I'm using the default .msg file extension option when I attempt to save these e-mails. The resultant files are locked and do not show the normal "envelope" icon. Instead, it’s a “blank page” icon with the right upper corner folded in. These files refuse to open either by double clicking on them or right clicking and trying to open them with Outlook. And when I return to Outlook, I discover that Outlook is now hung up and I have to close it via the Task Manager. To make matters worse, I’ve also discovered that every e-mail message that I've saved on my PC over the years has also somehow become locked and their original "envelope" icon has been replaced with the "blank page" icon. I found and installed an application called LockHunter. As a result, when I right click on a saved and locked e-mail message, I’ve given an option to find out what's locking it. Each time I'm told that the culprit is Windows explorer.exe. When I unlock the file the normal envelope icon is sometimes displayed (but not always) but at least the file can then be opened. But the file is still “squirrely” as it can’t be moved or saved to a folder until it’s unlocked again. On this second attempt, LockHunter says it’s now locked by Outlook.exe. By the way, I don't have this issue when I save Word, Excel & PowerPoint files; only with Outlook. I've exhausted every remedy that I can think of including: making sure that the file and folder options are checked to always show icons and not thumbnails; running the Windows 7 & Office 2010 repair options which find nothing amiss; running a complete system scan with Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool with negative results; verifying that Outlook is the default for opening e-mails; updating all of my applications via Secunia Personal Software Inspector; uninstalling every application that I felt was unnecessary; doing a registry cleanup via CC Cleaner; having Windows Security Essentials always on (it did find one Java Trojan recently which was quarantined and then deleted); uninstalling a bunch of non-Microsoft shell extensions; and deactivating all of the Outlook Add-ins and then re-activating each one. None of this solves the problem. I’d welcome any advice on how to resolve this.

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• X:\ is not accessible. Insufficient system resources exist to complete the requested service. Help [

  - by Katherine

  I keeping getting the error message from above on multiple computers that I administer. I wasn't sure if I should be posting this on SuperUser or ServerFault so my apologizes if it should go there... Basically, I have at least 5 computers of varying ages (some fresh out of the box!) throwing the above error. X:\ is one of our network drives that is mapped for users. Most of the time if you shut down the biggest application it will fix the problem, but it's becoming an increasing issue, and I can't keep running around fixing it manually. I have tried to do some research, but most of it just states the obvious without supplying a permanent fix. The machines are all running Win XP SP3, with at least 2gb of ram. Sorry for the delay in getting back to people... a lot of good questions. To respond back to people... It is a windows 2003 server that houses the file share. We have about 175 users, however i cannot state how many are actually accessing the information at a single moment. Considering that this is our largest file share, I would say that probably at least 100+. The files we work with are large, but not that big considering that we do a lot of graphical and video work. ~50mb. That being said, this is error occurs simply when trying to gain access to the server itself, not actual files. When I say close a program, I mean that it can be any program. It doesn't matter which program. It varies from machine to machine, and from day to day. Some days it is Firefox, some days it is Outlook, some days it is Excel. There doesn't seem to be a common bond behind which application could be causing the problem. Thank you for the articles, and the recommendation on paging files. I will have to look into that. None of our computers are set to hibernate, so I am going to rule that out.

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• Nginx + Passenger running a RoR app is returning 401 when 302 is expected

  - by DBruns

  I've got a RoR app running on Passenger on top of Nginx. I'm using devise for my authentication method and have a link that gets sent in an email to users that requires authentication to view. If a user clicks the link from Outlook, and IE is the default browser, IE makes an HTTP request using the following headers: GET http://www.company.com/custom_layouts/108 HTTP/1.1 Accept: */* Accept-Language: en-us User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; Trident/4.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0; InfoPath.2; .NET4.0C; .NET4.0E) Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate Connection: Keep-Alive Host: www.company.com Returning: HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized Content-Type: /; charset=utf-8 Transfer-Encoding: chunked Connection: keep-alive Status: 401 X-Powered-By: Phusion Passenger (mod_rails/mod_rack) 2.2.15 WWW-Authenticate: Basic realm="Application" Cache-Control: no-cache X-UA-Compatible: IE=Edge,chrome=1 Set-Cookie: _vxwer_session=[sessionstr]; path=/; HttpOnly X-Runtime: 0.011918 Server: nginx/0.7.67 + Phusion Passenger 2.2.15 (mod_rails/mod_rack) 31 You need to sign in or sign up before continuing. 0 When the exact same URL is typed into the address bar, it does this: GET http://www.company.com/custom_layouts/108 HTTP/1.1 Accept: image/jpeg, application/x-ms-application, image/gif, application/xaml+xml, image/pjpeg, application/x-ms-xbap, application/vnd.ms-excel, application/vnd.ms-powerpoint, application/msword, */* Accept-Language: en-US User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; Trident/4.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0; InfoPath.2; .NET4.0C; .NET4.0E) Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate Connection: Keep-Alive Host: www.company.com Returning: HTTP/1.1 302 Found Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 Transfer-Encoding: chunked Connection: keep-alive Status: 302 X-Powered-By: Phusion Passenger (mod_rails/mod_rack) 2.2.15 Location: http://www.company.com/users/sign_in Cache-Control: no-cache X-UA-Compatible: IE=Edge,chrome=1 Set-Cookie: _xswer_session=[session_info_here]; path=/; HttpOnly X-Runtime: 0.010798 Server: nginx/0.7.67 + Phusion Passenger 2.2.15 (mod_rails/mod_rack) 6f <html><body>You are being <a href="http://www.company.com/users/sign_in">redirected</a>.</body></html> 0 I expect them to return the same thing regardless.

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• Switching efficiently between windows, not apps, in OS X

  - by Vultan

  Previous questions have asked "how can I efficiently switch between windows, not applications, in OS X"? (Switching windows on OS X, Switch between windows on Mac OS X? and others). The most recommended suggestions seem to be: Use some combo of cmd-tab and cmd-~. Use Expose, and possibly Spaces Use Witch I spent the money on Witch, and have been using it for a few weeks; it's ok, but it is sometimes slow to respond, sometimes buggy on window order, crashes my system if I disable and re-enable it too many times, and doesn't work properly with X11 apps. The built-in cmd-tab and cmd-~ are ok, but still bring an entire application to the forefront. I find a very common workflow I use is to bounce back and forth between two windows (for example, a browser window and a Thunderbird email in progress), when both apps (the browser and email software) have multiple windows open. I can use Cmd-Tab to get back and forth between apps, but whenever I switch to an app, ALL windows from that app pop up. That suddenly fills my screen with irrelevant data and windows, and often drops those other windows in front of the single window from the other app that I was using and would conveniently like to keep viewing even though it isn't in focus. Expose seems to be the preferred "OS X natural way," but I can't seem to get myself to use it efficiently. I hit F9, and see 10 windows; I then need to squint, try to find the window I want, then use the mouse or the cursor keys to navigate to the one I want. Given the number of power users who say they use Expose, I must be missing the boat here. My goal is not to make this a repeat of previous questions. I'm not asking "what are my alternatives?" (unless I've missed one above!) Rather, I'm asking: what are you, OS X power users, actually doing to handle the use case I described above? Another common use case for me is having multiple Excel spreadsheets open and multiple browser windows open, and I'm rapidly switching back and forth between one spreadsheet in particular and one browser window. Every time I Cmd-Tab, all spreadsheets or all browser windows appear: I don't want to see the ones I'm not working with, and they tend to hide the windows from the alternative app that I don't have in focus but I'd like to at least eyeball. Can you describe what your workflow is like, and how you rapidly and thoughtlessly switch between windows from apps that have multiple windows open?

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• Map a Network Drive from XP to Windows 7

  - by Mysticgeek

  We’ve received a lot of questions about mapping a drive from XP to Windows 7 to access data easily. Today we look at how to map a drive in Windows 7, and how to map to an XP drive from Windows 7. With the new Homegroup feature in Windows 7, it makes sharing data between computers a lot easier. But you might need to map a network drive so you can go directly into a folder to access its contents. Mapping a network drive may sound like “IT talk”, but the process is fairly easy. Map Network Drive in Windows 7 Note: All of the computers used in this article are part of the same workgroup on a home network. In this first example we’re mapping to another Windows 7 drive on the network. Open Computer and from the toolbar click on Map Network Drive. Alternately in Computer you can hit “Alt+T” to pull up the toolbar and click on Tools \ Map Network Drive. Now give it an available drive letter, type in the path or browse to the folder you want to map to. Check the box next to Reconnect at logon if you want it available after a reboot, and click Finish. If both machines aren’t part of the same Homegroup, you may be prompted to enter in a username and password. Make sure and check the box next to Remember my credentials if you don’t want to log in every time to access it. The drive will map and the contents of the folder will open up. When you look in Computer, you’ll see the drive under network location. This process works if you want to connect to a server drive as well. In this example we map to a Home Server drive. Map an XP Drive to Windows 7 There might be times when you need to map a drive on an XP machine on your network. There are extra steps you’ll need to take to make it work however. Here we take a look at the problem you’ll encounter when trying to map to an XP machine if things aren’t set up correctly. If you try to browse to your XP machine you’ll see a message that you don’t have permission. Or if you try to enter in the path directly, you’ll be prompted for a username and password, and the annoyance is, no matter what credentials you put in, you can’t connect. To solve the problem we need to set up the Windows 7 machine as a user on the XP machine and make them part of the Administrators group. Right-click My Computer and select Manage. Under Computer Management expand Local Users and Groups and click on the Users folder. Right-click an empty area and click New User. Add in the user credentials, uncheck User must change password at next logon, then check Password never expires then click Create. Now you see the new user you created in the list. After the user is added you might want to reboot before proceeding to the next step.   Next we need to make the user part of the Administrators group. So go back into Computer Management \ Local Users and Groups \ Groups then double click on Administrators. Click the Add button in Administrators Properties window. Enter in the new user you created and click OK. An easy way to do this is to enter the name of the user you created then click Check Names and the path will be entered in for you. Now you see the user as a member of the Administrators group. Back on the Windows 7 machine we’ll start the process of mapping a drive. Here we’re browsing to the XP Media Center Edition machine. Now we can enter in the user name and password we just created. If you only want to access specific shared folders on the XP machine you can browse to them. Or if you want to map to the entire drive, enter in the drive path where in this example it’s “\\XPMCE\C$” –Don’t forget the “$” sign after the local drive letter. Then login… Again the contents of the drive will open up for you to access. Here you can see we have two drives mapped. One to another Windows 7 machine on the network, and the other one to the XP computer.   If you ever want to disconnect a drive, just right-click on it and then Disconnect. There are several scenarios where you might want to map a drive in Windows 7 to access specific data. It takes a little bit of work but you can map to an XP drive from Windows 7 as well. This comes in handy where you have a network with different versions of Windows running on it. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Find Your Missing USB Drive on Windows XPMake Vista Index Your Network ConnectionsEasily Backup & Import Your Wireless Network Settings in Windows 7Quickly Open Network Connections List in Windows 7 or VistaHow To Find Drives Easily with Desk Drive TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Kill Processes Quickly with Process Assassin Need to Come Up with a Good Name? Try Wordoid StockFox puts a Lightweight Stock Ticker in your Statusbar Explore Google Public Data Visually The Ultimate Excel Cheatsheet Convert the Quick Launch Bar into a Super Application Launcher

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• Creating an ASP.NET report using Visual Studio 2010 - Part 3

  - by rajbk

  We continue building our report in this three part series. Creating an ASP.NET report using Visual Studio 2010 - Part 1 Creating an ASP.NET report using Visual Studio 2010 - Part 2 Adding the ReportViewer control and filter drop downs. Open the source code for index.aspx and add a ScriptManager control. This control is required for the ReportViewer control. Add a DropDownList for the categories and suppliers. Add the ReportViewer control. The markup after these steps is shown below. <div> <asp:ScriptManager ID="smScriptManager" runat="server"> </asp:ScriptManager> <div id="searchFilter"> Filter by: Category : <asp:DropDownList ID="ddlCategories" runat="server" /> and Supplier : <asp:DropDownList ID="ddlSuppliers" runat="server" /> </div> <rsweb:ReportViewer ID="rvProducts" runat="server"> </rsweb:ReportViewer> </div> The design view for index.aspx is shown below. The dropdowns will display the categories and suppliers in the database. Changing the selection in the drop downs will cause the report to be filtered by the selections in the dropdowns. You will see how to do this in the next steps.   Attaching the RDLC to the ReportViewer control by clicking on the top right of the control, going to Report Viewer tasks and selecting Products.rdlc.   Resize the ReportViewer control by dragging at the bottom right corner. I set mine to 800px x 500px. You can also set this value in source view. Defining the data sources. We will now define the Data Source used to populate the report. Go back to the “ReportViewer Tasks” and select “Choose Data Sources” Select a “New data source..” Select “Object” and name your Data Source ID “odsProducts”   In the next screen, choose “ProductRepository” as your business object. Choose “GetProductsProjected” in the next screen.   The method requires a SupplierID and CategoryID. We will set these so that our data source gets the values from the drop down lists we defined earlier. Set the parameter source to be of type “Control” and set the ControlIDs to be ddlSuppliers and ddlCategories respectively. Your screen will look like this: We are now going to define the data source for our drop downs. Select the ddlCategory drop down and pick “Choose Data Source”. Pick “Object” and give it an id “odsCategories”   In the next screen, choose “ProductRepository” Select the GetCategories() method in the next screen.   Select “CategoryName” and “CategoryID” in the next screen. We are done defining the data source for the Category drop down. Perform the same steps for the Suppliers drop down.   Select each dropdown and set the AppendDataBoundItems to true and AutoPostback to true.     The AppendDataBoundItems is needed because we are going to insert an “All“ list item with a value of empty. Go to each drop down and add this list item markup as shown below> Finally, double click on each drop down in the designer and add the following code in the code behind. This along with the “Autopostback= true” attribute refreshes the report anytime a drop down is changed. protected void ddlCategories_SelectedIndexChanged(object sender, EventArgs e) { rvProducts.LocalReport.Refresh(); }   protected void ddlSuppliers_SelectedIndexChanged(object sender, EventArgs e) { rvProducts.LocalReport.Refresh(); } Compile your report and run the page. You should see the report rendered. Note that the tool bar in the ReportViewer control gives you a couple of options including the ability to export the data to Excel, PDF or word.   Conclusion Through this three part series, we did the following: Created a data layer for use by our RDLC. Created an RDLC using the report wizard and define a dataset for the report. Used the report design surface to design our report including adding a chart. Used the ReportViewer control to attach the RDLC. Connected our ReportWiewer to a data source and take parameter values from the drop downlists. Used AutoPostBack to refresh the reports when the dropdown selection was changed. RDLCs allow you to create interactive reports including drill downs and grouping. For even more advanced reports you can use Microsoft® SQL Server™ Reporting Services with RDLs. With RDLs, the report is rendered on the report server instead of the web server. Another nice thing about RDLs is that you can define a parameter list for the report and it gets rendered automatically for you. RDLCs and RDLs both have their advantages and its best to compare them and choose the right one for your requirements. Download VS2010 RTM Sample project NorthwindReports.zip   Alfred Borden: Are you watching closely?

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• Using an alternate search platform in Commerce Server 2009

  - by Lewis Benge

  Although Microsoft Commerce Server 2009's architecture is built upon Microsoft SQL Server, and has the full power of the SQL Full Text Indexing Search Platform, there are time however when you may require a richer or alternate search platform. One of these scenarios if when you want to implement a faceted (refinement) search into your site, which provides dynamic refinements based on the search results dataset. Faceted search is becoming popular in most online retail environments as a way of providing an enhanced user experience when browsing a larger catalogue. This is powerful for two reasons, firstly with a traditional search it is down to a user to think of a search term suitable for the product they are trying to find. This typically will not return similar products or help in any way to refine a larger dataset. Faceted searches on the other hand provide a comprehensive list of product properties, grouped together by similarity to help the user narrow down the results returned, as the user progressively restricts the search criteria by selecting additional criteria to search again, these facets needs to continually refresh. The whole experience allows users to explore alternate brands, price-ranges, or find products they hadn't initially thought of or where looking for in a bid to enhance cross sell in the retail environment. The second advantage of this type of search from a business perspective is also to harvest the search result to start to profile your user. Even though anonymous users may routinely visit your site, and will not necessarily register or complete a transaction to build up marketing data- profiling, you can still achieve the same result by recording search facets used within the search sequence. Below is a faceted search scenario generated from eBay using the search term "server". By creating a search profile of clicking through Computer & Networking -> Servers -> Dell - > New and recording this information against my user profile you can start to predict with a lot more certainty what types of products I am interested in. This will allow you to apply shopping-cart analysis against your search data and provide great cross-sale or advertising opportunity, or personalise the user experience based on your prediction of what the user may be interested in. This type of search is extremely beneficial in e-Commerce environments but achieving it out of the box with Commerce Server and SQL Full Text indexing can be challenging. In many deployments it is often easier to use an alternate search platform such as Microsoft's FAST, Apache SOLR, or Endecca, however you still want these products to integrate natively into Commerce Server to ensure that up-to-date inventory information is presented, profile information is generated, and you provide a consistant API. To do so we make the most of the Commerce Server extensibilty points called operation sequence components. In this example I will be talking about Apache Solr hosted on Apache Tomcat, in this specific example I have used the SolrNet C# library to interface to the Java platform. Also I am not going to talk about Solr configuration of indexing – but in a production envionrment this would typically happen by using Powershell to call the Commerce Server management webservice to export your catalog as XML, apply an XSLT transform to the file to make it conform to SOLR and use a simple HTTP Post to send it to the search enginge for indexing. Essentially a sequance component is a step in a serial workflow used to call a data repository (which in most cases is usually the Commerce Server pipelines or databases) and map to and from a Commerce Entity object whilst enforcing any business rules. So the first step in the process is to add a new class library to your existing Commerce Server site. You will need to use a new library as Sequence Components will need to be strongly named to be deployed. Once you are inside of your new project, add a new class file and add a reference to the Microsoft.Commerce.Providers, Microsoft.Commerce.Contracts and the Microsoft.Commerce.Broker assemblies. Now make your new class derive from the base object Microsoft.Commerce.Providers.Components.OperationSequanceComponent and overide the ExecuteQueryMethod. Your screen will then look something similar ot this: As all we are doing on this component is conducting a search we are only interested in the ExecuteQuery method. This method accepts three arguments, queryOperation, operationCache, and response. The queryOperation will be the object in which we receive our search parameters, the cache allows access to the Commerce Server cache allowing us to store regulary accessed information, and the response object is the object which we will return the result of our search upon. Inside this method is simply where we are going to inject our logic for our third party search platform. As I am not going to explain the inner-workings of actually making a SOLR call, I'll simply provide the sample code here. I would highly recommend however looking at the SolrNet wiki as they have some great explinations of how the API works. What you will find however is that there are some further extensions required when attempting to integrate a custom search provider. Firstly you out of the box the CommerceQueryOperation you will receive into the method when conducting a search against a catalog is specifically geared towards a SQL Full Text Search with properties such as a Where clause. To make the operation you receive more relevant you will need to create another class, this time derived from Microsoft.Commerce.Contract.Messages.CommerceSearchCriteria and within this you need to detail the properties you will require to allow you to submit as parameters to the SOLR search API. My exmaple looks like this: [DataContract(Namespace = "http://schemas.microsoft.com/microsoft-multi-channel-commerce-foundation/types/2008/03")] public class CommerceCatalogSolrSearch : CommerceSearchCriteria { private Dictionary<string, string> _facetQueries;   public CommerceCatalogSolrSearch() { _facetQueries = new Dictionary<String, String>();   }     public Dictionary<String, String> FacetQueries { get { return _facetQueries; } set { _facetQueries = value; } }   public String SearchPhrase{ get; set; } public int PageIndex { get; set; } public int PageSize { get; set; } public IEnumerable<String> Facets { get; set; }   public string Sort { get; set; }   public new int FirstItemIndex { get { return (PageIndex-1)*PageSize; } }   public int LastItemIndex { get { return FirstItemIndex + PageSize; } } }  To allow you to construct a CommerceQueryOperation call within the API you will also need to construct another class to derived from Microsoft.Commerce.Common.MessageBuilders.CommerceSearchCriteriaBuilder and is simply used to construct an instance of the CommerceQueryOperation you have just created and expose the properties you want set. My Message builder looks like this: public class CommerceCatalogSolrSearchBuilder : CommerceSearchCriteriaBuilder { private CommerceCatalogSolrSearch _solrSearch;   public CommerceCatalogSolrSearchBuilder() { _solrSearch = new CommerceCatalogSolrSearch(); }   public String SearchPhrase { get { return _solrSearch.SearchPhrase; } set { _solrSearch.SearchPhrase = value; } }   public int PageIndex { get { return _solrSearch.PageIndex; } set { _solrSearch.PageIndex = value; } }   public int PageSize { get { return _solrSearch.PageSize; } set { _solrSearch.PageSize = value; } }   public Dictionary<String,String> FacetQueries { get { return _solrSearch.FacetQueries; } set { _solrSearch.FacetQueries = value; } }   public String[] Facets { get { return _solrSearch.Facets.ToArray(); } set { _solrSearch.Facets = value; } } public override CommerceSearchCriteria ToSearchCriteria() { return _solrSearch; } }  Once you have these two classes in place you can now safely cast the CommerceOperation you receive as an argument of the overidden ExecuteQuery method in the SequenceComponent to the CommerceCatalogSolrSearch operation you have just created, e.g. public CommerceCatalogSolrSearch TryGetSearchCriteria(CommerceOperation operation) { var searchCriteria = operation as CommerceQueryOperation; if (searchCriteria == null) throw new Exception("No search criteria present");   var local = (CommerceCatalogSolrSearch) searchCriteria.SearchCriteria; if (local == null) throw new Exception("Unexpected Search Criteria in Operation");   return local; }  Now you have all of your search parameters present, you can go off an call the external search platform API. You will of-course get proprietry objects returned, so the next step in the process is to convert the results being returned back into CommerceEntities. You do this via another extensibility point within the Commerce Server API called translatators. Translators are another separate class, this time derived inheriting the interface Microsoft.Commerce.Providers.Translators.IToCommerceEntityTranslator . As you can imaginge this interface is specific for the conversion of the object TO a CommerceEntity, you will need to implement a separate interface if you also need to go in the opposite direction. If you implement the required method for the interace you will get a single translate method which has a source onkect, destination CommerceEntity, and a collection of properties as arguments. For simplicity sake in this example I have hard-coded the mappings, however best practice would dictate you map the objects using your metadatadefintions.xml file . Once complete your translator would look something like the following: public class SolrEntityTranslator : IToCommerceEntityTranslator { #region IToCommerceEntityTranslator Members   public void Translate(object source, CommerceEntity destinationCommerceEntity, CommercePropertyCollection propertiesToReturn) { if (source.GetType().Equals(typeof (SearchProduct))) { var searchResult = (SearchProduct) source;   destinationCommerceEntity.Id = searchResult.ProductId; destinationCommerceEntity.SetPropertyValue("DisplayName", searchResult.Title); destinationCommerceEntity.ModelName = "Product";   } }  Once you have a translator in place you can then safely map the results of your search platform into Commerce Entities and attach them on to the CommerceResponse object in a fashion similar to this: foreach (SearchProduct result in matchingProducts) { var destinationEntity = new CommerceEntity(_returnModelName);   Translator.ToCommerceEntity(result, destinationEntity, _queryOperation.Model.Properties); response.CommerceEntities.Add(destinationEntity); }  In SOLR I actually have two objects being returned – a product, and a collection of facets so I have an additional translator for facet (which maps to a custom facet CommerceEntity) and my facet response from SOLR is passed into the Translator helper class seperatley. When all of this is pieced together you have sucessfully completed the extensiblity point coding. You would have created a new OperationSequanceComponent, a custom SearchCritiera object and message builder class, and translators to convert the objects into Commerce Entities. Now you simply need to configure them, and can start calling them in your code. Make sure you sign you assembly, compile it and identiy its signature. Next you need to put this a reference of your new assembly into the Channel.Config configuration file replacing that of the existing SQL Full Text component: You will also need to add your translators to the Translators node of your Channel.Config too: Lastly add any custom CommerceEntities you have developed to your MetaDataDefintions.xml file. Your configuration is now complete, and you should now be able to happily make a call to the Commerce Foundation API, which will act as a proxy to your third party search platform and return back CommerceEntities of your search results. If you require data to be enriched, or logged, or any other logic applied then simply add further sequence components into the OperationSequence (obviously keeping the search response first) to the node of your Channel.Config file. Now to call your code you simply request it as per any other CommerceQuery operation, but taking into account you may be receiving multiple types of CommerceEntity returned: public KeyValuePair<FacetCollection ,List<Product>> DoFacetedProductQuerySearch(string searchPhrase, string orderKey, string sortOrder, int recordIndex, int recordsPerPage, Dictionary<string, string> facetQueries, out int totalItemCount) { var products = new List<Product>(); var query = new CommerceQuery<CatalogEntity, CommerceCatalogSolrSearchBuilder>();   query.SearchCriteria.PageIndex = recordIndex; query.SearchCriteria.PageSize = recordsPerPage; query.SearchCriteria.SearchPhrase = searchPhrase; query.SearchCriteria.FacetQueries = facetQueries;     totalItemCount = 0; CommerceResponse response = SiteContext.ProcessRequest(query.ToRequest()); var queryResponse = response.OperationResponses[0] as CommerceQueryOperationResponse;   // No results. Return the empty list if (queryResponse != null && queryResponse.CommerceEntities.Count == 0) return new KeyValuePair<FacetCollection, List<Product>>();   totalItemCount = (int)queryResponse.TotalItemCount;   // Prepare a multi-operation to retrieve the product variants var multiOperation = new CommerceMultiOperation();     //Add products to results foreach (Product product in queryResponse.CommerceEntities.Where(x => x.ModelName == "Product")) { var productQuery = new CommerceQuery<Product>(Product.ModelNameDefinition); productQuery.SearchCriteria.Model.Id = product.Id; productQuery.SearchCriteria.Model.CatalogId = product.CatalogId;   var variantQuery = new CommerceQueryRelatedItem<Variant>(Product.RelationshipName.Variants);   productQuery.RelatedOperations.Add(variantQuery);   multiOperation.Add(productQuery); }   CommerceResponse variantsResponse = SiteContext.ProcessRequest(multiOperation.ToRequest()); foreach (CommerceQueryOperationResponse queryOpResponse in variantsResponse.OperationResponses) { if (queryOpResponse.CommerceEntities.Count() > 0) products.Add(queryOpResponse.CommerceEntities[0]); }   //Get facet collection FacetCollection facetCollection = queryResponse.CommerceEntities.Where(x => x.ModelName == "FacetCollection").FirstOrDefault();     return new KeyValuePair<FacetCollection, List<Product>>(facetCollection, products); }    ..And that is it – simply a few classes and some configuration will allow you to extend the Commerce Server query operations to call a third party search platform, whilst still maintaing a unifed API in the remainder of your code. This logic stands for any extensibility within CommerceServer, which requires excution in a serial fashioon such as call to LOB systems or web service to validate or enrich data. Feel free to use this example on other applications, and if you have any questions please feel free to e-mail and I'll help out where I can!

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• Convert Video and Remove Commercials in Windows 7 Media Center with MCEBuddy 1.1

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Today look at MCEBuddy for Windows 7 Media Center. This handy app automatically takes your recorded TV files and converts them to MP4, AVI, WMV, or MPEG format. It even has the option to cut out those annoying commercials during the conversion process. Installation and Configuration Download and extract MCE Buddy. (Download link below) Run the setup.exe file and take all the default settings.   Open MCEBuddy Configuration by going to Start > All Programs > MCEBuddy > MCEBuddy Configuration.   Video Paths The MCEBuddy application is comprised of a single window. The first step you’ll want to take is to define your Source and Destination paths. The “Source” will most likely be your Recorded TV directory. The Destination should NOT be the same as the Source folder. Note: The Recorded TV directory in Windows 7 Media Center will only display and play WTV & DVR-MS files. To watch the converted MP4, AVI, WMV, or MPEG files in Windows Media Center you’ll need to add them to your Video Library or Movie Library. Video Conversion Next, choose your preferred format for conversion from the “Convert to” drop down list. The default is MP4 with the H.264 codec. You’ll find a wide variety of formats. The first set of conversion options in the drop down list will resize the video to 720 pixels wide. The next two sections maintain the original size, and the final section is for a variety of portable devices.   Next, you’ll see a group of check boxes below the “Convert to” drop down list. The Commercial Skipping option will cut the commercials while converting the file. Sort By Series will create a sub-folder in your Destination folder for each TV show. Delete Original will delete the WTV file after conversion is complete. (This option is not recommended unless you are sure your files are converting properly and you no longer need the WTV file.) Start Minimized is ideal if you want to run MCEBuddy on Windows startup. Note: MCEBuddy installs and uses Comskip for commercial cutting by default. However, if you have ShowAnalyzer installed, it will use that application instead. Advanced Options To choose a specific time of day to perform the conversions, click the checkbox under the “Advanced Options,” and select the starting and ending times for conversion. For example, convert between 2 hours and 5 hours would be between 2 am and 5am. If you want MCEBuddy to constantly look for and immediately convert new recordings, leave the box unchecked.   The “Video age” option lets you choose a specific number of days to wait before performing the conversion. This can be useful if you want to watch the recordings first and delete those you don’t wish to convert. You can also choose the “Sub Directories” if you’d like MCEBuddy to convert files that are in a sub-folder in your “Source” directory. Second Conversion As you might expect, this option allows MCEBuddy to perform a second conversion of your file. This can be useful if you want to use your first conversion to create a higher quality MP4 or AVI file for playback on a larger screen, and a second one for a portable device such as Zune or iPhone. The same options from the first conversion are also available for the second. You’ll want to choose a separate Destination folder for the second conversion.   Start and Monitor Progress To start converting your video files, simply press the “Start” button at the bottom. You’ll be able to follow the progress in the “Current Activity” section. When all the video files have finished converting, or there are no current files to convert, MCEBuddy will display a “Started – Idle” status. Click “Stop” if you don’t want MCEBuddy to continue scanning for new files.   Conclusion MCEBuddy 1.1 will convert all WTV files in it’s source folder. If you want to pick and choose which recordings to convert, you may want to define a source folder different than the Recorded TV folder and then just copy or move the files you wish to convert into the new source folder. The conversion process does take a good bit of time. If you choose the commercial skipping and second conversion options it can take several hours to fully convert one TV recording. Overall, MCEBuddy makes a nice Media Center addition for those that want to save some space with smaller size files, convert Recorded TV files for their portable device, or automatically remove commercials. If you’re looking for a different method to skip commercials check out our post on how to skip commercials in Windows 7 Media Center. Download MCEBuddy 1.1 Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Using Netflix Watchnow in Windows Vista Media Center (Gmedia)How To Skip Commercials in Windows 7 Media CenterHow To Convert Video Files to MP3 with VLCStartup Customizations for Media Center in Windows 7Add Folders to the Movie Library in Windows 7 Media Center TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional The Ultimate Excel Cheatsheet Convert the Quick Launch Bar into a Super Application Launcher Automate Tasks in Linux with Crontab Discover New Bundled Feeds in Google Reader Play Music in Chrome by Simply Dragging a File 15 Great Illustrations by Chow Hon Lam

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• Windows Azure: General Availability of Web Sites + Mobile Services, New AutoScale + Alerts Support, No Credit Card Needed for MSDN

  - by ScottGu

  This morning we released a major set of updates to Windows Azure.  These updates included: Web Sites: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Web Sites with SLA Mobile Services: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Mobile Services with SLA Auto-Scale: New automatic scaling support for Web Sites, Cloud Services and Virtual Machines Alerts/Notifications: New email alerting support for all Compute Services (Web Sites, Mobile Services, Cloud Services, and Virtual Machines) MSDN: No more credit card requirement for sign-up All of these improvements are now available to use immediately (note: some are still in preview).  Below are more details about them. Web Sites: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Web Sites I’m incredibly excited to announce the General Availability release of Windows Azure Web Sites. The Windows Azure Web Sites service is perfect for hosting a web presence, building customer engagement solutions, and delivering business web apps.  Today’s General Availability release means we are taking off the “preview” tag from the Free and Standard (formerly called reserved) tiers of Windows Azure Web Sites.  This means we are providing: A 99.9% monthly SLA (Service Level Agreement) for the Standard tier Microsoft Support available on a 24x7 basis (with plans that range from developer plans to enterprise Premier support) The Free tier runs in a shared compute environment and supports up to 10 web sites. While the Free tier does not come with an SLA, it works great for rapid development and testing and enables you to quickly spike out ideas at no cost. The Standard tier, which was called “Reserved” during the preview, runs using dedicated per-customer VM instances for great performance, isolation and scalability, and enables you to host up to 500 different Web sites within them.  You can easily scale your Standard instances on-demand using the Windows Azure Management Portal.  You can adjust VM instance sizes from a Small instance size (1 core, 1.75GB of RAM), up to a Medium instance size (2 core, 3.5GB of RAM), or Large instance (4 cores and 7 GB RAM).  You can choose to run between 1 and 10 Standard instances, enabling you to easily scale up your web backend to 40 cores of CPU and 70GB of RAM: Today’s release also includes general availability support for custom domain SSL certificate bindings for web sites running using the Standard tier. Customers will be able to utilize certificates they purchase for their custom domains and use either SNI or IP based SSL encryption. SNI encryption is available for all modern browsers and does not require an IP address.  SSL certificates can be used for individual sites or wild-card mapped across multiple sites (we charge extra for the use of a SSL cert – but the fee is per-cert and not per site which means you pay once for it regardless of how many sites you use it with).  Today’s release also includes the following new features: Auto-Scale support Today’s Windows Azure release adds preview support for Auto-Scaling web sites.  This enables you to setup automatic scale rules based on the activity of your instances – allowing you to automatically scale down (and save money) when they are below a CPU threshold you define, and automatically scale up quickly when traffic increases.  See below for more details. 64-bit and 32-bit mode support You can now choose to run your standard tier instances in either 32-bit or 64-bit mode (previously they only ran in 32-bit mode).  This enables you to address even more memory within individual web applications. Memory dumps Memory dumps can be very useful for diagnosing issues and debugging apps. Using a REST API, you can now get a memory dump of your sites, which you can then use for investigating issues in Visual Studio Debugger, WinDbg, and other tools. Scaling Sites Independently Prior to today’s release, all sites scaled up/down together whenever you scaled any site in a sub-region. So you may have had to keep your proof-of-concept or testing sites in a separate sub-region if you wanted to keep them in the Free tier. This will no longer be necessary.  Windows Azure Web Sites can now mix different tier levels in the same geographic sub-region. This allows you, for example, to selectively move some of your sites in the West US sub-region up to Standard tier when they require the features, scalability, and SLA of the Standard tier. Full pricing details on Windows Azure Web Sites can be found here.  Note that the “Shared Tier” of Windows Azure Web Sites remains in preview mode (and continues to have discounted preview pricing).  Mobile Services: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Mobile Services I’m incredibly excited to announce the General Availability release of Windows Azure Mobile Services.  Mobile Services is perfect for building scalable cloud back-ends for Windows 8.x, Windows Phone, Apple iOS, Android, and HTML/JavaScript applications.  Customers We’ve seen tremendous adoption of Windows Azure Mobile Services since we first previewed it last September, and more than 20,000 customers are now running mobile back-ends in production using it.  These customers range from startups like Yatterbox, to university students using Mobile Services to complete apps like Sly Fox in their spare time, to media giants like Verdens Gang finding new ways to deliver content, and telcos like TalkTalk Business delivering the up-to-the-minute information their customers require.  In today’s Build keynote, we demonstrated how TalkTalk Business is using Windows Azure Mobile Services to deliver service, outage and billing information to its customers, wherever they might be. Partners When we unveiled the source control and Custom API features I blogged about two weeks ago, we enabled a range of new scenarios, one of which is a more flexible way to work with third party services.  The following blogs, samples and tutorials from our partners cover great ways you can extend Mobile Services to help you build rich modern apps: New Relic allows developers to monitor and manage the end-to-end performance of iOS and Android applications connected to Mobile Services. SendGrid eliminates the complexity of sending email from Mobile Services, saving time and money, while providing reliable delivery to the inbox. Twilio provides a telephony infrastructure web service in the cloud that you can use with Mobile Services to integrate phone calls, text messages and IP voice communications into your mobile apps. Xamarin provides a Mobile Services add on to make it easy building cross-platform connected mobile aps. Pusher allows quickly and securely add scalable real-time messaging functionality to Mobile Services-based web and mobile apps. Visual Studio 2013 and Windows 8.1 This week during //build/ keynote, we demonstrated how Visual Studio 2013, Mobile Services and Windows 8.1 make building connected apps easier than ever. Developers building Windows 8 applications in Visual Studio can now connect them to Windows Azure Mobile Services by simply right clicking then choosing Add Connected Service. You can either create a new Mobile Service or choose existing Mobile Service in the Add Connected Service dialog. Once completed, Visual Studio adds a reference to Mobile Services SDK to your project and generates a Mobile Services client initialization snippet automatically. Add Push Notifications Push Notifications and Live Tiles are a key to building engaging experiences. Visual Studio 2013 and Mobile Services make it super easy to add push notifications to your Windows 8.1 app, by clicking Add a Push Notification item: The Add Push Notification wizard will then guide you through the registration with the Windows Store as well as connecting your app to a new or existing mobile service. Upon completion of the wizard, Visual Studio will configure your mobile service with the WNS credentials, as well as add sample logic to your client project and your mobile service that demonstrates how to send push notifications to your app. Server Explorer Integration In Visual Studio 2013 you can also now view your Mobile Services in the the Server Explorer. You can add tables, edit, and save server side scripts without ever leaving Visual Studio, as shown on the image below: Pricing With today’s general availability release we are announcing that we will be offering Mobile Services in three tiers – Free, Standard, and Premium.  Each tier is metered using a simple pricing model based on the # of API calls (bandwidth is included at no extra charge), and the Standard and Premium tiers are backed by 99.9% monthly SLAs.  You can elastically scale up or down the number of instances you have of each tier to increase the # of API requests your service can support – allowing you to efficiently scale as your business grows. The following table summarizes the new pricing model (full pricing details here):   You can find the full details of the new pricing model here. Build Conference Talks The //BUILD/ conference will be packed with sessions covering every aspect of developing connected applications with Mobile Services. The best part is that, even if you can’t be with us in San Francisco, every session is being streamed live. Be sure not to miss these talks: Mobile Services – Soup to Nuts — Josh Twist Building Cross-Platform Apps with Windows Azure Mobile Services — Chris Risner Connected Windows Phone Apps made Easy with Mobile Services — Yavor Georgiev Build Connected Windows 8.1 Apps with Mobile Services — Nick Harris Who’s that user? Identity in Mobile Apps — Dinesh Kulkarni Building REST Services with JavaScript — Nathan Totten Going Live and Beyond with Windows Azure Mobile Services — Kirill Gavrylyuk , Paul Batum Protips for Windows Azure Mobile Services — Chris Risner AutoScale: Dynamically scale up/down your app based on real-world usage One of the key benefits of Windows Azure is that you can dynamically scale your application in response to changing demand. In the past, though, you have had to either manually change the scale of your application, or use additional tooling (such as WASABi or MetricsHub) to automatically scale your application. Today, we’re announcing that AutoScale will be built-into Windows Azure directly.  With today’s release it is now enabled for Cloud Services, Virtual Machines and Web Sites (Mobile Services support will come soon). Auto-scale enables you to configure Windows Azure to automatically scale your application dynamically on your behalf (without any manual intervention) so you can achieve the ideal performance and cost balance. Once configured it will regularly adjust the number of instances running in response to the load in your application. Currently, we support two different load metrics: CPU percentage Storage queue depth (Cloud Services and Virtual Machines only) We’ll enable automatic scaling on even more scale metrics in future updates. When to use Auto-Scale The following are good criteria for services/apps that will benefit from the use of auto-scale: The service/app can scale horizontally (e.g. it can be duplicated to multiple instances) The service/app load changes over time If your app meets these criteria, then you should look to leverage auto-scale. How to Enable Auto-Scale To enable auto-scale, simply navigate to the Scale tab in the Windows Azure Management Portal for the app/service you wish to enable.  Within the scale tab turn the Auto-Scale setting on to either CPU or Queue (for Cloud Services and VMs) to enable Auto-Scale.  Then change the instance count and target CPU settings to configure the Auto-Scale ranges you want to maintain. The image below demonstrates how to enable Auto-Scale on a Windows Azure Web-Site.  I’ve configured the web-site so that it will run using between 1 and 5 VM instances.  The exact # used will depend on the aggregate CPU of the VMs using the 40-70% range I’ve configured below.  If the aggregate CPU goes above 70%, then Windows Azure will automatically add new VMs to the pool (up to the maximum of 5 instances I’ve configured it to use).  If the aggregate CPU drops below 40% then Windows Azure will automatically start shutting down VMs to save me money: Once you’ve turned auto-scale on, you can return to the Scale tab at any point and select Off to manually set the number of instances. Using the Auto-Scale Preview With today’s update you can now, in just a few minutes, have Windows Azure automatically adjust the number of instances you have running  in your apps to keep your service performant at an even better cost. Auto-scale is being released today as a preview feature, and will be free until General Availability. During preview, each subscription is limited to 10 separate auto-scale rules across all of the resources they have (Web sites, Cloud services or Virtual Machines). If you hit the 10 limit, you can disable auto-scale for any resource to enable it for another. Alerts and Notifications Starting today we are now providing the ability to configure threshold based alerts on monitoring metrics. This feature is available for compute services (cloud services, VM, websites and mobiles services). Alerts provide you the ability to get proactively notified of active or impending issues within your application.  You can define alert rules for: Virtual machine monitoring metrics that are collected from the host operating system (CPU percentage, network in/out, disk read bytes/sec and disk write bytes/sec) and on monitoring metrics from monitoring web endpoint urls (response time and uptime) that you have configured. Cloud service monitoring metrics that are collected from the host operating system (same as VM), monitoring metrics from the guest VM (from performance counters within the VM) and on monitoring metrics from monitoring web endpoint urls (response time and uptime) that you have configured. For Web Sites and Mobile Services, alerting rules can be configured on monitoring metrics from monitoring endpoint urls (response time and uptime) that you have configured. Creating Alert Rules You can add an alert rule for a monitoring metric by navigating to the Setting -> Alerts tab in the Windows Azure Management Portal. Click on the Add Rule button to create an alert rule. Give the alert rule a name and optionally add a description. Then pick the service which you want to define the alert rule on: The next step in the alert creation wizard will then filter the monitoring metrics based on the service you selected:   Once created the rule will show up in your alerts list within the settings tab: The rule above is defined as “not activated” since it hasn’t tripped over the CPU threshold we set.  If the CPU on the above machine goes over the limit, though, I’ll get an email notifying me from an Windows Azure Alerts email address ([email protected]). And when I log into the portal and revisit the alerts tab I’ll see it highlighted in red.  Clicking it will then enable me to see what is causing it to fail, as well as view the history of when it has happened in the past. Alert Notifications With today’s initial preview you can now easily create alerting rules based on monitoring metrics and get notified on active or impending issues within your application that require attention. During preview, each subscription is limited to 10 alert rules across all of the services that support alert rules. No More Credit Card Requirement for MSDN Subscribers Earlier this month (during TechEd 2013), Windows Azure announced that MSDN users will get Windows Azure Credits every month that they can use for any Windows Azure services they want. You can read details about this in my previous Dev/Test blog post. Today we are making further updates to enable an easier Windows Azure signup for MSDN users. MSDN users will now not be required to provide payment information (e.g. no credit card) during sign-up, so long as they use the service within the included monetary credit for the billing period. For usage beyond the monetary credit, they can enable overages by providing the payment information and remove the spending limit. This enables a super easy, one page sign-up experience for MSDN users.  Simply sign-up for your Windows Azure trial using the same Microsoft ID that you use to manage your MSDN account, then complete the one page sign-up form below and you will be able to spend your free monthly MSDN credits (up to $150 each month) on any Windows Azure resource for dev/test:   This makes it trivially easy for every MDSN customer to start using Windows Azure today.  If you haven’t signed up yet, I definitely recommend checking it out. Summary Today’s release includes a ton of great features that enable you to build even better cloud solutions.  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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• Use Advanced Font Ligatures in Office 2010

  - by Matthew Guay

  Fonts can help your documents stand out and be easier to read, and Office 2010 helps you take your fonts even further with support for OpenType ligatures, stylistic sets, and more.  Here’s a quick look at these new font features in Office 2010. Introduction Starting with Windows 7, Microsoft has made an effort to support more advanced font features across their products.  Windows 7 includes support for advanced OpenType font features and laid the groundwork for advanced font support in programs with the new DirectWrite subsystem.  It also includes the new font Gabriola, which includes an incredible number of beautiful stylistic sets and ligatures. Now, with the upcoming release of Office 2010, Microsoft is bringing advanced typographical features to the Office programs we love.  This includes support for OpenType ligatures, stylistic sets, number forms, contextual alternative characters, and more.  These new features are available in Word, Outlook, and Publisher 2010, and work the same on Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. Please note that Windows does include several OpenType fonts that include these advanced features.  Calibri, Cambria, Constantia, and Corbel all include multiple number forms, while Consolas, Palatino Linotype, and Gabriola (Windows 7 only) include all the OpenType features.  And, of course, these new features will work great with any other OpenType fonts you have that contain advanced ligatures, stylistic sets, and number forms. Using advanced typography in Word To use the new font features, open a new document, select an OpenType font, and enter some text.  Here we have Word 2010 in Windows 7 with some random text in the Gabriola font.  Click the arrow on the bottom of the Font section of the ribbon to open the font properties. Alternately, select the text and click Font. Now, click on the Advanced tab to see the OpenType features. You can change the ligatures setting… Choose Proportional or Tabular number spacing… And even select Lining or Old-style number forms. Here’s a comparison of Lining and Old-style number forms in Word 2010 with the Calibri font. Finally, you can choose various Stylistic sets for your font.  The dialog always shows 20 styles, whether or not your font includes that many.  Most include only 1 or 2; Gabriola includes 6. Here’s lorem ipsum text, using the Gabriola font with Stylistic set 6. Impressive, huh?  The font ligatures change based on context, so they will automatically change as you are typing.  Watch the transition as we typed the word Microsoft in Word with Gabriola stylistic set 6. Here’s another example, showing the fi and tt ligatures in Calibri. These effects work great in Word 2010 in XP, too. And, since Outlook uses Word as it’s editing engine, you can use the same options in Outlook 2010.  Note that these font effects may not show up the same if the recipient’s email client doesn’t support advanced OpenType typography.  It will, of course, display perfectly if the recipient is using Outlook 2010. Using advanced typography in Publisher 2010 Publisher 2010 includes the same advanced font features.  This is especially nice for those using Publisher for professional layout and design.  Simply insert a text box, enter some text, select it, and click the arrow on the bottom of the font box as in Word to open the font properties. This font options dialog is actually more advanced than Word’s font options.  You can preview your font changes on sample text right in the properties box.  You can also choose to add or remove a swash from your characters.   Conclusion Advanced typographical effects are a welcome addition to Word and Publisher 2010, and they are very impressive when coupled with modern fonts such as Gabriola.  From designing elegant headers to using old-style numbers, these features are very useful and fun. Do you have a favorite OpenType font that includes advanced typographical features?  Let us know in the comments! More Reading Advances in typography in Windows 7 – Engineering 7 Blog New features in Microsoft Word 2010 Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Change the Default Font in Excel 2007Ask the Readers: Do You Use a Laptop, Desktop, or Both?Keep Websites From Using Tiny Fonts in SafariAdd or Remove Apps from the Microsoft Office 2007 or 2010 SuiteFriday Fun: Desktop Tower Defense Pro TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional SpeedyFox Claims to Speed up your Firefox Beware Hover Kitties Test Drive Mobile Phones Online With TryPhone Ben & Jerry’s Free Cone Day, 3/23/10 New Stinger from McAfee Helps Remove ‘FakeAlert’ Threats Google Apps Marketplace: Tools & Services For Google Apps Users

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• How to Sync Specific Folders With Dropbox

  - by Matthew Guay

  Would you like to sync specific folders with Dropbox instead of automatically syncing all of your folders to all of your computers?  Here’s how using Selective Sync available in the latest Beta version of Dropbox. Dropbox is a great tool for keeping your important files synced between your computers, and we have covered many interesting things you can do with your Dropbox account.  But until now, there was no way to only sync certain folders with each computer; it was all or nothing.  This could be frustrating if you wanted to store large files from one computer but didn’t want them on a computer with a smaller hard drive.  The latest Beta version of Dropbox allows you to selectively choose which folders to sync between computers. Please Note: This feature is currently only available in the 0.8 beta version of Dropbox. Setup the new Beta Download the new beta version of Dropbox 0.8 (link below); choose the correct download for your system.  Run the installer as normal. It only took a couple seconds to install, though it made the taskbar disappear briefly at the end of the installation on our tests.  Strangely, the installer doesn’t let you know it’s finished installing; if you already had a previous version of Dropbox installed, it will simply start working from your system tray as before.  If this is a new installation of Dropbox, you will be asked to enter your Dropbox account info or create a new account.   Selectively Sync Folders By default, Dropbox will still sync all of your Dropbox folders to all of your computers.  Once this beta is installed, you can choose individual folders or subfolders you don’t want to sync.  Right-click the Dropbox icon in your system tray and select Preferences. Click the Advanced tab on the top, and then click the new Selective Sync button. Now uncheck any folders you don’t want to sync to this computer.  These folders will still exist on your other machines and in the Dropbox web interface, but they will not be downloaded to this computer. The default view only shows your top-level folders in your Dropbox account.  If you wish to sync certain folders but exclude their subfolders, click the Switch to Advanced View button.   Expand any folder and uncheck any subfolders you don’t want to sync.  Notice that the parent folder’s check box is filled now, showing that it is partially synced. Click OK when you’ve made the changes you want.  Dropbox will then make sure you know these folders will stop syncing to this computer; click OK again if you’re sure you don’t want to sync these folders.   Dropbox will cleanup your folder and remove the files and folders you don’t want synced.   Next time you open your Dropbox folder, you’ll notice that the folders we unchecked are no longer in this computer’s Dropbox folder.  They are still in our Dropbox online account, and on any other computers we’re syncing with. If you add a new folder with the same name as a folder you stopped syncing, you’ll notice a grey minus icon over the folder.  This folder will not sync with your other computers or your online Dropbox account. If you want to add these folders back to this computer’s Dropbox, just repeat the steps, this time checking the folders you want to sync.  If you have any folders that were not syncing before, their names will have (Selective Sync Conflict) added to the end, and will sync with all of your computers. Conclusion We’re excited that we can now choose exactly which folders we want synced on each computer.  Since everything is still synced with the online Dropbox, we can still access any of the folders from anywhere.  This makes your Dropbox much more versatile, and can help you keep the folders synced exactly the way you want. Links Download the new Dropbox 0.8.64 beta Signup for Dropbox Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Add "My Dropbox" to Your Windows 7 Start MenuSync Your Pidgin Profile Across Multiple PCs with DropboxUser Guide to Dropbox Shared FoldersUse Any Folder For Your Ubuntu Desktop (Even a Dropbox Folder)Shut Down or Reboot a Solaris System TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 2010 World Cup Schedule Boot Snooze – Reboot and then Standby or Hibernate Customize Everything Related to Dates, Times, Currency and Measurement in Windows 7 Google Earth replacement Icon (Icons we like) Build Great Charts in Excel with Chart Advisor tinysong gives a shortened URL for you to post on Twitter (or anywhere)

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