Search Results

Search found 13800 results on 552 pages for 'the great monkey'.

Page 19/552 | < Previous Page | 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26  | Next Page >

• Outsourcing a private project: can it be done?

  - by Stafford Williams

  I'm an employed software designer/developer/analyst/monkey and I'm pondering the possibility of outsourcing the coding component(s) of some private(ly funded) projects. I have never used outsourcing before and am hesitant due to the contractors i've seen in the workplace that seem to have a reverse relationship on renumeration vs results/quality. Has anyone had any luck with outsourcing private coding jobs and can you offer any pointers?

  Read the article

• Scaling Down Pixel Art?

  - by Michael Stum

  There's plenty of algorithms to scale up pixel art (I prefer hqx personally), but are there any notable algorithms to scale it down? In my case, the game is designed to run at 1280x720, but if someone plays at a lower resolution I want it to still look good. Most Pixel Art discussions center around 320x200 or 640x480 and upscaling for use in console emulators, but I wonder how modern 2D games like the Monkey Island Remake look good on lower resolutions? (Ignoring the options of having multiple versions of assets (essentially, mipmapping))

  Read the article

• Web.NET event coming in October

  - by Chris Massey

  If you’re a web developer in Europe (or would like an excuse to travel to Europe), you should definitely take a look at the Web.NET event coming in October. It’s being organized by two Italian web maestros (Simone Chiaretta and Ugo Lattanzi) and the session list looks fantastic. The event site pretty much speaks for itself, but here’s a quick version: It’s a free one-day event on October 20th, with a huge variety of great sessions by great speakers, all 100% focused on web development. There’s a pizza-fuelled hackathon in the evening; thrills, spills and hot new skills. It’s a great chance to network with the local (in relative terms) web development community. It’s free (although all donations are very greatly appreciated). It’s in Milan, darling. Here’s what you need to do: Go and register on www.webnetconf.eu, and vote on which sessions you think look the most interesting. I know this will be a difficult process – it’s *very* hard to choose – but persevere! Grab your place when the free tickets become available early next month (places are limited). Come to Milan in October, learn some new skills, meet some great people, and maybe build something awesome if you feel like staying up late. I’ll be there, and hopefully I’ll see you on the day.

  Read the article

• Masters vs. PhD - long [closed]

  - by Sterling

  I'm 21 years old and a first year master's computer science student. Whether or not to continue with my PhD has been plaguing me for the past few months. I can't stop thinking about it and am extremely torn on the issue. I have read http://www.cs.unc.edu/~azuma/hitch4.html and many, many other masters vs phd articles on the web. Unfortunately, I have not yet come to a conclusion. I was hoping that I could post my ideas about the issue on here in hopes to 1) get some extra insight on the issue and 2) make sure that I am correct in my assumptions. Hopefully having people who have experience in the respective fields can tell me if I am wrong so I don't make my decision based on false ideas. Okay, to get this topic out of the way - money. Money isn't the most important thing to me, but it is still important. It's always been a goal of mine to make 6 figures, but I realize that will probably take me a long time with either path. According to most online salary calculating sites, the average starting salary for a software engineer is ~60-70k. The PhD program here is 5 years, so that's about 300k I am missing out on by not going into the workforce with a masters. I have only ever had ~1k at one time in my life so 300k is something I can't even really accurately imagine. I know that I wouldn't have at once obviously, but just to know I would be earning that is kinda crazy to me. I feel like I would be living quite comfortably by the time I'm 30 years old (but risk being too content too soon). I would definitely love to have at least a few years of my 20s to spend with that kind of money before I have a family to spend it all on. I haven't grown up very financially stable so it would be so nice to just spend some money…get a nice car, buy a new guitar or two, eat some good food, and just be financially comfortable. I have always felt like I deserved to make good money in my life, even as a kid growing up, and I just want to have it be a reality. I know that either path I take will make good money by the time I'm ~40-45 years old, but I guess I'm just sick of not making money and am getting impatient about it. However, a big idea pushing me towards a PhD is that I feel the masters path would give me a feeling of selling out if I have the capability to solve real questions in the computer science world. (pretty straight-forward - not much to elaborate on, but this is a big deal) Now onto other aspects of the decision. I originally got into computer science because of programming. I started in high school and knew very soon that it was what I wanted to do for a career. I feel like getting a masters and being a software engineer in the industry gives me much more time to program in my career. In research, I feel like I would spend more time reading, writing, trying to get grant money, etc than I would coding. A guy I work with in the lab just recently published a paper. He showed it to me and I was shocked by it. The first two pages was littered with equations and formulas. Then the next page or so was followed by more equations and formulas that he derived from the previous ones. That was his work - breaking down and creating all of these formulas for robotic arm movement. And whenever I read computer science papers, they all seem to follow this pattern. I always pictured myself coding all day long…not proving equations and things of that nature. I know that's only one part of computer science research, but that part bores me. A couple cons on each side - Phd - I don't really enjoy writing or feel like I'm that great at technical writing. Whenever I'm in groups to make something, I'm always the one who does the large majority of the work and then give it to my team members to write up a report. Presenting is different though - I don't mind presenting at all as long as I have a good grasp on what I am presenting. But writing papers seems like such a chore to me. And because of this, the "publish or perish" phrase really turns me off from research. Another bad thing - I feel like if I am doing research, most of it would be done alone. I work best in small groups. I like to have at least one person to bounce ideas off of when I am brainstorming. The idea of being a part of some small elite group to build things sounds ideal to me. So being able to work in small groups for the majority of my career is a definite plus. I don't feel like I can get this doing research. Masters - I read a lot online that most people come in as engineers and eventually move into management positions. As of now, I don't see myself wanting to be a part of management. Lets say my company wanted to make some new product or system - I would get much more pride, enjoyment, and overall satisfaction to say "I made this" rather than "I managed a group of people that made this." I want to be a big part of the development process. I want to make things. I think it would be great to be more specialized than other people. I would rather know everything about something than something about everything. I always have been that way - was a great pitcher during my baseball years, but not so good at everything else, great at certain classes in school, but not so good at others, etc. To think that my career would be the same way sounds okay to me. Getting a PhD would point me in this direction. It would be great to be some guy who is someone that people look towards and come to ask for help because of being such an important contributor to a very specific field, such as artificial neural networks or robotic haptic perception. From what I gather about the software industry, being specialized can be a very bad thing because of the speed of the new technology. I When it comes to being employed, I have pretty conservative views. I don't want to change companies every 5 years. Maybe this is something everyone wishes, but I would love to just be an important person in one company for 10+ (maybe 20-25+ if I'm lucky!) years if the working conditions were acceptable. I feel like that is more possible as a PhD though, being a professor or researcher. The more I read about people in the software industry, the more it seems like most software engineers bounce from company to company at rapid paces. Some even work like a hired gun from project to project which is NOT what I want AT ALL. But finding a place to make great and important software would be great if that actually happens in the real world. I'm a very competitive person. I thrive on competition. I don't really know why, but I have always been that way even as a kid growing up. Competition always gave me a reason to practice that little extra every night, always push my limits, etc. It seems to me like there is no competition in the research world. It seems like everyone is very relaxed as long as research is being conducted. The only competition is if someone is researching the same thing as you and its whoever can finish and publish first (but everyone seems to careful to check that circumstance). The only noticeable competition to me is just with yourself and your own discipline. I like the idea that in the industry, there is real competition between companies to put out the best product or be put out of business. I feel like this would constantly be pushing me to be better at what I do. One thing that is really pushing me towards a PhD is the lifetime of the things you make. I feel like if you make something truly innovative in the industry…just some really great new application or system…there is a shelf-life of about 5-10 years before someone just does it faster and more efficiently. But with research work, you could create an idea or algorithm that last decades. For instance, the A* search algorithm was described in 1968 and is still widely used today. That is amazing to me. In the words of Palahniuk, "The goal isn't to live forever, its to create something that will." Over anything, I just want to do something that matters. I want my work to help and progress society. Seriously, if I'm stuck programming GUIs for the next 40 years…I might shoot myself in the face. But then again, I hate the idea that less than 1% of the population will come into contact with my work and even less understand its importance. So if anything I have said is false then please inform me. If you think I come off as a masters or PhD, inform me. If you want to give me some extra insight or add on to any point I made, please do. Thank you so much to anyone for any help.

  Read the article

• Frontend development, where to start?

  - by glitch

  I've been stuck on the backend for years now, working on webservices, DBs, SDKs, APIs and all that jazz, and so that's an area that I have a decent grasp of, but I've absolutely no clue about how the frontend works. What's a good place to start for a backend monkey like me who wants to learn the best practices, latest technologies and the philosophy behind modern web page design and its interaction with the server? I want to be cool like all of the other javascript kids. Thanks!

  Read the article

• As a developer, how do I learn sales? [closed]

  - by Dan Abramov

  I quit the company I was working for to pursuit an opportunity as a startup, and I believe in our product. I'm sure it's going to be great if we attract some customers first to keep going. (I don't want funding.) Our product is targeted at private schools and courses, and helps organize the mess other LMSs introduce. The problem is, our team is basically just me and I have very little idea about sales and marketing. I can do reasonably good copywriting but I'm sure I can do better—and being nervous or too techy in a real world conversation with the client doesn't help. I want to get better, in fact, a lot better at negotiating with clients and pitching my product. I did look for some “sales articles” on the web, and a lot of what I found is plain bullshit on SEO-engineered websites promoting books or $5000 courses. What I need instead is a developer's perspective on how to sale a product you think is great. What are typical programmer's mistakes and misconceptions about sales, and how to avoid them? How do you evolve into a reasonably great salesman? I can't believe it's in the mindset and unlearnable. Your own experience, combined with great articles available on the web is most welcome. To Future Readers The question got closed because it is not a good fit for this site. I found some helpful tips in a similar question asked on a sister StackExchange site about startups: I'm a terrible salesperson. What can I do about it?

  Read the article

• 25 Passwords to Avoid to Thwart Hackers

  SplashData, a vendor of smartphone productivity applications for consumers and businesses, recently released a list of the top 25 most commonly used passwords for 2011. The company compiled the list after analyzing files of stolen passwords that hackers posted online to share with their cybercriminal colleagues. Without further adieu, here is the list of passwords that made SplashData's top 25: password, 123456, 12345678, qwerty, abc123, monkey, 1234567, letmein, trustno1, dragon, baseball, 111111, iloveyou, master, sunshine, ashley, bailey, passw0rd, shadow, 123123, 654321, superman, qazwsx...

  Read the article

• The Microsoft/Novell Mono Lobby

  <b>Tech Rights:</b> "Summary: Why there is increased pressure for GNOME and for other projects to love the patents-encumbered monkey (Mono)"

  Read the article

• Exit stage right...

  - by Peter Korn

  I joined Sun Microsystems in December of 1996, not quite 17 years ago. Over the course of those years, it has been my great pleasure and honor to work with a many talented folks, on a many incredible projects - first at Sun, and then at Oracle. In those nearly 17 years, we made quite a few platforms and products accessible - including Java, GNOME, Solaris, and Linux. We pioneered many of the accessibility techniques that are now used throughout the industry, including accessibility API techniques which first appeared in the Java and GNOME accessibility APIs; and screen access techniques like the API-based switch access of the GNOME Onscreen Keyboard. Our work was recognized as groundbreaking by many in the industry, both through awards for the innovations we had delivered (such as those we received from the American Foundation for the Blind), and awards of money to develop new innovations (the two European Commission accessibility grants we received). Our knowledge and expertise contributed to the first Section 508 accessibility standard, and provided significantly to the upcoming refresh of that standard, to the European Mandate 376 accessibility standard, and to a number of web accessibility standards. After 17 years of helping Sun and Oracle accomplish great things, it is time to start a new chapter... Today is my last day at Oracle. It is not, however, my last day in the field of accessibility. Next week I will begin working with another group of great people, and I am very much looking forward to the great things I will help contribute to in the future. Starting tomorrow, please follow me on my new, still under constriction, Wordpress blog: http://peterkorn.wordpress.com/.

  Read the article

• Feedback on IE9 developer tool

  - by anirudha

  if you already love IE9 this post really not for you. but still you need something more this post for you and want to know about IE9 why not use product guide they give you IE9 product guide well i already put the bad experience into many post here but a little practice more to show what IE9 actually is or what they show. well i believe that their is no one on MSDN can sure that IE9 is another thing for developer to struggle with. because they never thing about the thing they make. the thinking they have that we product windows who are best so everything we do are best and best. come to the point i means Web browsing we can divide them in two parts 1. someone who are developer and use browser mainly for development , debugging and testing what they produced and make better software. 2. user who are not know things more technically but use the web as their passion. so as a developer what developer want. are IE9 is really for developer now make a comparison. commonly every developer have a twitter account to follow the link of someone else to learn and read the best article on web and share to all follower of themselves. chrome and Firefox have many utilities for that but IE still have nothing. social networking is a good way to communicate with others. in IE their is no plug-in to make experience better as firefox and chrome have a list of plug-in to use browser with more comfort. their are a huge list of plug-in on Firefox and chrome is available for making experience better. but IE9 still have no plug-in for that. if you see http://ieaddons.com/ you still see that they are joking yeah white joke who believe on them. they still have no plug-in. are they fool or making other fool. on 2011 whenever Firefox and chrome claim many thing on the plug-in IE9 still have no plug-in. not for developer not for everyone else. yeah a list of useless stuff you can see their. IE9 developer tool maybe better if they copycat the firebug as they copycat Google’s search result for Bing. well it’ not sure but Google claim that. but what is in IE9 developer tool so great that MSDN developer talking about. i found nothing in IE9 developer tool still feel frustrated their is a big trouble to edit css. means you never can change the css without going to CSS tab. but i thing great many thing they make better their but they still produce not better option in IE9 developer tool. as a comparison firebug is great we all know but chrome is a good option if someone want to try their hands on new things. in firebug their is a list of plugin inside firebug available also to make task easier. like firepicker in firebug make colorpicking easier. firebug autocomplete make console script writing better and yslow show you the performance step you need to take for making site better. IE9 still have no plugin or that. IE9 maybe useful stuff whenever the interface they thing to make better. the problem with MSFT these days that they want to ship next version of every softare in WPF. yeah they make live 2011 in wpf. many of user go for someone else or downgrade their 2011 live. the problem they have that they never want to spent the time on learning to use a software again. IE9 not have the serius problem like live have but still IE9 is not so great as chrome. like in chrome their is smooth tabbing. IE9 ditto copycat the things for tabbing. but a little step more in IE have a problem that IE9 tab slip whenever you want to use them. in chrome never slip the tab without user want. well as user someone also want to paint their browser in the style they want or like. in firefox the sollution called personas or themes. same in chrome the things called themes but in IE they still believe that their is no need for them. means use same themes everytime no customization in 2011 yeah great joke. well i read a post [written in 2008] of developer who still claim that they never used Firefox because they have a license for visual studio and some other software and have IE in their system. i not what they want to show. means they always want or thing to show that firefox and chrome is pity and IE is great as all do. but what’s true we all know. when MSFT release IE9 RC they show the ads with comparison of IE9 RC with chrome6 but why not today with chrome 11 developer version. the many things on IE testdrive now work perfect on chrome. well what’s performance matter when a silly browser never give a better experience. yeah performance have matter in useful software. anyone can prove many things whenever they produce a featureless software. well IE9 is looking great in blogger’s post on many kind of website where developer not independently write. actually they are mentally forced to write for IE9 better and show blah blah even blah is very small as they show. i am not believe on some blogger when they write in a style who are easily known that the post in favor of IE9. if you thing of mine then i am not want to hide myself i am one of the lover of open source so i love Firefox and chrome both. but i am not wrong you find yourself that what is difference between IE9 and Firefox and chrome. so don’t believe on someone who are not mentally independent because most of them are write about IE9 because they want to show them better they are forced themselves to show IE9 as a tool and chrome and firefox as pity. well read everything but never believe on everyone without any confident of them. they actually all want to show the things they have as i have with chrome and firefox is better then IE9. so my feedback on IE9 is :- without any plugin , customization or many thing i described in the post make no sense of use of IE9. i still fall in love of firefox and chrome they both give a better support and things to make experience better on the web. so conclusion is that i not forced you to other not IE9. you need to use the tool who save your time. means if your IE9 save your time you should use them because time was more subjective then others. so use the software who save the time as i save my time in chrome and in firefox. i still found nothing inIE9 who save time of mine.

  Read the article

• Thoughts on Build 2013

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/dlussier/archive/2013/06/30/153294.aspxAnd so another Build conference has come to an end. Below are my thoughts/perspectives on various aspects of the event. I’ll do a separate blog post on my thoughts of the Build message for developers. The Good Moscone center was a great venue for Build! Easy to get around, easy to get to, and well maintained, it was a very comfortable conference venue. Yeah, the free swag was nice. Build has built up an expectation that attendees will always get something; it’ll be interesting to see how Microsoft maintains this expectation over the next few Build events. I still maintain that free swag should never be the main reason one attends an event, and for me this was definitely just an added bonus. I’m planning on trying to use the Surface as a dedicated 2nd device at work for meetings, I’ll share my experiences over the next few months. The hackathon event was a great idea, although personally I couldn’t justify spending the money on a conference registration just to spend the entire conference coding. Still, the apps that were created were really great and there was a lot of passion and excitement around the hackathon. I wonder if they couldn’t have had the hackathon on the Monday/Tuesday for those that wanted to participate so they didn’t miss any of the actual conference over Wed/Thurs. San Francisco was a great city to host Build. Getting from hotels to the conference center was very easy (well especially for me, I was only 3 blocks away) and the city itself felt very safe. However, if I never have to fly into SFO again I’ll be alright with that! Delays going into and out of SFO and both apparently were due to the airport itself. The Bad Build is one of those oddities on the conference landscape where people will pay to commit to attending an event without knowing anything about the sessions. We got our list of conference sessions when we registered on Tuesday, not before. And even then, we only got titles and not descriptions (those were eventually made available via the conference’s mobile application). I get it…they’re going to make announcements and they don’t want to give anything away through the session titles. But honestly, there wasn’t anything in the session titles that I would have considered a surprise. Breakfasts were brutal. High-carb pastries, donuts, and muffins with fruit and hard boiled eggs does not a conference breakfast make. I can’t believe that the difference between a continental breakfast per person and a hot breakfast buffet would have been a huge impact to a conference fee that was already around $2000. The vendor area was anemic. I don’t know why Microsoft forces the vendors into cookie-cutter booth areas (this year they were all made of plywood material). WPC, TechEd – booth areas there allow the vendors to be creative with their displays. Not so much for Build. Really odd was the lack of Microsoft’s own representation around Bing. In the day 1 keynote Microsoft made a big deal about Bing as an API. Yet there was nobody in the vendor area set up to provide more information or have discussions with about the Bing API. The Ugly Our name badges were NFC enabled. The purpose of this, beyond the vendors being able to scan your info, wasn’t really made clear. An attendee I talked to showed how you could get a reader app on your phone so you can scan other members cards and collect their contact info – which is a kewl idea; business cards are so 1990’s. But I was *shocked* at the amount of information that was on our name badges! Here’s what’s displayed on our name badge: - Name - Company - Twitter Handle I’m ok with that. But here’s what actually gets read: - Name - Company - Address Used for Registration - Phone Number Used for Registration So sharing that info with another attendee, they get way more of my info than just how to find me on Twitter! Microsoft, you need to fix this for the future. If vendors want to collect information on attendees, they should be able to collect an ID from the badge, then get a report with corresponding records afterwards. My personal information should not be so readily available, and without my knowledge! Final Verdict Maybe its my older age, maybe its where I’m at in life with family, maybe its where I’m at in my career, but when I consider whether a conference experience was valuable I get to the core reason I attend: opportunities to learn, opportunities to network, opportunities to engage with Microsoft. Opportunities to Learn:  Sessions I attended were generally OK, with some really stand out ones on Day 2. I would love to see Microsoft adopt the Dojo format for a portion of their sessions. Hands On Labs are dull, lecture style sessions are great for information sharing. But a guided hands-on coding session (Read: Dojo) provides the best of both worlds. Being that all content is publically available online to everyone (Build attendee or not), the value of attending the conference sessions is decreased. The value though is in the discussions that take part in person afterwards, which leads to… Opportunities to Network: I enjoyed getting together with old friends and connecting with Twitter friends in person for the first time. I also had an opportunity to meet total strangers. So from a networking perspective, Build was fantastic! I still think it would have been great to have an area for ad-hoc discussions – where speakers could announce they’d be available for more questions after their sessions, or attendees who wanted to discuss more in depth on a topic with other attendees could arrange space. Some people have no problems being outgoing and making these things happen, but others are not and a structured model is more attractive. Opportunities to Engage with Microsoft: Hit and miss on this one. Outside of the vendor area, unless you cornered or reached out to a speaker, there wasn’t any defined way to connect with blue badges. And as I mentioned above, Microsoft didn’t have full representation in the vendor area (no Bing). All in all, Build was a fun party where I was informed about some new stuff and got some free swag. Was it worth the time away from home and the hit to my PD budget? I’d say Somewhat. Build is a great informational conference, but I wouldn’t call it a learning conference. Considering that TechEd seems to be moving to more of an IT Pro focus, independent developer conferences seem to be the best value for those looking to learn and not just be informed. With the rapid development cycle Microsoft is embracing, we’re already seeing Build happening twice within a 12 month period. If that continues, the value of attending Build in person starts to diminish – especially with so much content available online. If Microsoft wants Build to be a must-attend event in the future, they need to start incorporating aspects of Tech Ed, past PDCs, and other conferences so those that want to leave with more than free swag have something to attract them.

  Read the article

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

  - by ToStringTheory

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

  Read the article

• Apache Reverse Proxy not working inside a VirtualHost running a Mono Web Application

  - by Arwen

  I have a mono web application running with this virtual host below. It is running on Apache 2.2.20 / Ubuntu 11.10. I tried to add a reverse proxy inside this virtualhost so I can make asynchronous or AJAX type calls back to this same domain. My asynchronous requests would have problems in many browsers calling services that are on another domain (cross domain requests problem). I am wanting to do reverse proxy calls to this other service using http://www.whatever.com/monkey/. So, I added the directive and top directive to try to make this work. It is weird though...nothing I do seems to have any effect. I can put the exact same markup in my default website virtualhost file and it works great. What is the deal? Are some of these Mono directives causing problems? <VirtualHost *:80> ServerName www.whatever.com ServerAlias whatever.com *.whatever.com ServerAdmin [email protected] DocumentRoot /home/myuser/web/whatever ProxyRequests off <Proxy *> Order allow,deny Allow from all </Proxy> <Location /monkey/> ProxyPass http://www.google.com/ ProxyPassReverse http://www.google.com/ </Location> MonoServerPath www.whatever.com "/usr/bin/mod-mono-server2" MonoSetEnv www.whatever.com MONO_IOMAP=all MonoApplications www.whatever.com "/:/home/myuser/web/whatever" <Location "/"> Allow from all Order allow,deny MonoSetServerAlias www.whatever.com SetHandler mono SetOutputFilter DEFLATE SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI "\.(?:gif|jpe?g|png)$" no-gzip dont-vary </Location> <IfModule mod_deflate.c> AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml text/javascript </IfModule> </VirtualHost>

  Read the article

• Working with Legacy code

  - by andrewstopford

  I'm going to start a series on working with legacy code based on some of things I have learnt over the years. First I define my terms for 'legacy', I define legacy as (as someone on twitter called it) not brownfield but blackfield. Brownfield can be code you did yesterday, last week or last month etc. Blackfield tends to be a great older (think years old) and worked on by a great deal many people. Sure brownfield can also be legacy code but often has far less smells and technical debt, due to it's age the problems are often far worse and far harder to treat.  I'm not sure how many posts I'll write for the series or how long it will run for but I'll add them as and when they occur to me. Finally if you are working with the kind of codebase I describe then Michael Feathers 'Working with Legacy code' is a great resource.

  Read the article

• Visual Studio 2010 Professional special launch offer!

  - by Etienne Tremblay

  Hello everyone, long time no blog… I’ll try to get back in the game soon but with 2 customer and user group and life in general let’s just say I’m busy.  In the meantime I’m passing along this great offer. Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional will launch on April 12 but you can beat the rush and secure your copy today by pre-ordering at the affordable estimated retail price of $549, a saving of $250. If you use a previous version of Visual Studio or any other development tool then you are eligible for this upgrade. Along with all the great new features in Visual Studio 2010 (see www.microsoft.com/visualstudio) Visual Studio 2010 Professional includes a 12-month MSDN Essentials subscription which gives you access to core Microsoft platforms: Windows 7 Ultimate, Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise, and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Datacenter. So visit http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/pre-order-visual-studio-2010 to check out all the new features and sign up for this great offer.   Cheers, ET Technorati Tags: VS2010

  Read the article

• Jetzt geht’s los - speaking in Germany!

  - by Hugo Kornelis

  It feels just like yesterday that I went to Munich for the very first German edition of SQL Saturday – and it was a great event. An agenda that was packed with three tracks of great sessions, and lots of fun with the organization, attendees, and other speakers. That was such a great time that I didn’t have to hesitate long before deciding that I wanted to repeat this event this year. Especially when I heard that it will be held in Rheinland, on July 13 – that is a distance I can travel by car! The...(read more)

  Read the article

• Windows Embedded Compact 7

  - by Valter Minute

  I’m back from Seattle where I attended the MVP Summit and presented the Windows Embedded Compact 7 training materials during the Train The Trainer in Bellevue (many thanks to all the people attending and providing great suggestions to improve the materials!). The MVP summit was a great chance to discover new things about all the different technologies, to see old friends and meet new ones. The TTT location (Microsoft training facilities at Lincoln square in Bellevue) was great and here’s the landscape that the attendees could enjoy (partially ruined by my presence in the foreground!). In the meantime Windows Embedded Compact 7 has been released: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsembedded/en-us/evaluate/windows-embedded-compact-7.aspx You can download an evaluation version and start to discover its new features (SMP support, support for 3GBs of RAM, Silverlight for Windows Embedded tools, ARM v5,v6 and v7 compilers and many more…) and, maybe, decide to attend a training about it.

  Read the article

• Meet our 2009 Oracle Graduates in South Africa

  - by anca.rosu

  Focusing on the broader Oracle community, Oracle South Africa initiated its first skills development programme in May 1988. Since its inception the programme has developed and improved and every year more graduates are taken on board. The Oracle Graduate Programme is made up of specific learning paths designed around customer, partner and Oracle specifications and is structured to meet the urgent skills requirements in the Oracle “economy”. The training programmes have a specific duration and incorporate both theoretical and practical application of Oracle product sets. It is aimed at creating: Meaningful employment for graduates; Learning opportunities for individuals within the organization so that career growth opportunities are exploited to the fullest; Capacity building for small enterprises which is aligned to Oracle’s Enterprise Development Programme Meet our five graduates who joined us in December 2008 and have spent over a year with us! Let’s get their initial feedback on the graduate programme and on their assignment to Jordan. Lector   On the Oracle Graduate Programme: “The Oracle Graduate Programme is an experience of a life time. I would not trade it for anything. It’s challenging and rewarding. I am proud and happy to be in an organization like Oracle” On the assignment in Jordan: "Friendly, welcoming people, world class instructors always willing to go the extra mile. What more can you ask for?"   Lungile On the Oracle Graduate Programme: “I joined Oracle as part of the graduate intake for pre-sales in order to develop my skills and knowledge. Working at Oracle has been an overwhelmingly positive experience as it has encouraged me to progress with my personal development. I am hugely grateful. It has been a great challenge and an awesome opportunity.” On the assignment to Jordan: “Going to Jordan was a great opportunity and the experience of a lifetime. The people were very welcoming and friendly. The culture was totally different from ours - the food, the clothes and the weather. It was an amazingly different experience to work from Sunday to Thursday with Friday and Saturday as the weekend.” Thabo On the Oracle Graduate Programme: “Life is an infinite learning path. I truly value growth. I believe for one to grow, one needs to be challenged to your full potential. The Oracle Graduate Programme offers real growth – and so much more.” On the assignment to Jordan: “I was amazed by the cultural differences. I now understood that to be part of the global community, I must embrace our similarities and understand our differences.”   Albeauty On the Oracle Graduate Programme: “Responsibility, dedication, focus and taking initiative … these are the key points I learned from Oracle. It is such an honour to finally be part of the Oracle family. The graduate programme itself was a great experience as I managed to learn how Oracle operates – it has been the highlight of my year. I believe that my hard work will assist in the growth of the company.” On the Jordan assignment: “A memory worth embracing. Going to Jordan was a great opportunity as I learned a lot with respect to integration between different cultures and getting to adapt to all things different. I, along with almost every other graduate, discovered that Oracle is far more than a database company. Now I know there is far more to the ‘Big Red’ name.” Emmanuel On the Oracle Graduate Programme: “The programme gave me invaluable exposure to the ICT sector and also provided an opportunity to travel, network and exchange ideas with others. The formal training helped me to improve my presentation skills and gave me a better understanding of business etiquette and communication.” On the assignment to Jordan: “It was my first trip abroad. It was a great chance to get to know each other. I had the opportunity to share ideas, share personal stuff as a team. We met experts who gave us superb training in Oracle Technologies. It was great.”   If you have any questions related to this article feel free to contact  [email protected].  You can find our job opportunities via http://campus.oracle.com.   Technorati Tags: Oracle community,South Africa,Graduate Programme,Jordan,Technologies

  Read the article

• Windows Azure: Caching

  - by xamlnotes

  I was poking around today and found this great article on caching: http://www.cloudcomputingdevelopment.net/cache-management-with-windows-azure/ Caching is a great way to boost application performance and keep down overhead on a database or file system. Its also great when you have say 3 web roles as shown in this articles Figure 2 that can share the same cache. If one of the roles goes offline then the cache is still there and can be used. You can change out your asp.net caching to use this pretty easy. Its pretty cool. There’s a sample that’s mentioned in the article that shows how to use this. You can download the cache here.

  Read the article

• New Year, New Position, New Opportunity and Adventures!

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  2010 was an incredible year of change for me. On the personal side, we celebrated our youngest daughter’s first birthday and welcomed my oldest daughter into our family (both my girls are adopted). Professionally, I put on the first ever Prairie Developer Conference, the 3rd annual Winnipeg Code Camp, the Software Development and Evolution Conference, continued to build the technology community in Winnipeg, was awarded a Microsoft MVP award for the 4th year, created a certification program to help my employer, Protegra, attain Microsoft Partner status, and had great project work throughout the year. So now its 2011, and I’m looking ahead to new challenges and opportunities with a new employer. Starting in mid February I’ll be the Microsoft Practice Lead with Online Business Systems, a Microsoft partner here in Winnipeg! I’m very excited about working with such great people and helping continue delivering quality solutions and consulting that the organization has become known for. 2010 was great, but 2011 is shaping up to be a banner year both personally and professionally!

  Read the article

• Are there any plans to create a standard based on libunity?

  - by Sebastian Billaudelle

  In the last few month and maybe even years, Ubuntu and Canonical often were criticised for developing software and desktop components without talking to other groups in the free software community. I don't want to comment on this topic, but I see problems arising with creating a "proprietary" solution for displaying indicators and progressbars with a launcher like Unity. In the world of free and open Desktop Environments we often try to standardize parts and libraries or write specifications to increase collaboration between different desktops. We have the instrument of http://freedesktop.org and a lot of specifications are getting implemented by the major Desktop Environments. In this context, proposing a standard for those indicators would be a great step towards better interoperability between desktops. These indicators represent a great feature on the Linux Desktop and I'm sure that other projects like AWN, Docky, etc. would pick them up. With the great market share of Ubuntu, Canonical is in a position to propose it as a standard and encourage projects to implement it. Thank you in advance, Sebastian Billaudelle

  Read the article

• Upgrade Workshop in Wellington - Recap

  - by Mike Dietrich

  Wow! Wellington is really a wonderful city - except for the weather situation But it was the first time that Roy and me did arrive to a workshop with a ferry boat. We flew in on Friday to Christchurch (btw, this was the longest customs and border control I've ever went through - and I traveled to Israel by Bus via Allenby Bridge from the West Bank some years ago - it took us two hours to go through immigration and customs in the night from Friday to Saturday) and drove up the Southern Island. Very nice Great landscapes, great wines and great people! I'f you'd like to download the slides please download them from the Slides Download section to your right. And next time you'll have to ask more questions Don't be this shy - Roy and me (usually) don't bite -Mike

  Read the article

• Idoc Script Plug-in for Notepad++

  - by Kyle Hatlestad

  For those of you that caught it in an earlier post, Arnoud Koot wrote a great Idoc Script plug-in for Notepad++.  Well, he's back at it and has written an update for 11g! Arnoud made his announcement a few days ago on the WebCenter Content forum. And it looks like Jonathan Hult caught it as well and posted to his blog. A great addition to his plug-in is context sensitive help.  Now you can look up the variables and functions without having to switch to the formal Oracle documentation. He's even provided a tool to update the help automatically based on the Oracle documentation.  A couple of things to look for that I had missed the instructions was the note about updating the LanguageHelp.ini with your own path to the iDoc11g.chm file as well as the <ctrl><space> keystroke for the auto-complete. Great work Arnoud!

  Read the article

• 5 Android Keyboard Replacements to Help You Type Faster

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Android allows developers to replace its keyboard with their own keyboard apps. This has led to experimentation and great new features, like the gesture-typing feature that’s made its way into Android’s official keyboard after proving itself in third-party keyboards. This sort of customization isn’t possible on Apple’s iOS or even Microsoft’s modern Windows environments. Installing a third-party keyboard is easy — install it from Google Play, launch it like another app, and it will explain how to enable it. Google Keyboard Google Keyboard is Android’s official keyboard, as seen on Google’s Nexus devices. However, there’s a good chance your Android smartphone or tablet comes with a keyboard designed by its manufacturer instead. You can install the Google Keyboard from Google Play, even if your device doesn’t come with it. This keyboard offers a wide variety of features, including a built-in gesture-typing feature, as popularized by Swype. It also offers prediction, including full next-word prediction based on your previous word, and includes voice recognition that works offline on modern versions of Android. Google’s keyboard may not offer the most accurate swiping feature or the best autocorrection, but it’s a great keyboard that feels like it belongs in Android. SwiftKey SwiftKey costs $4, although you can try it free for one month. In spite of its price, many people who rarely buy apps have been sold on SwiftKey. It offers amazing auto-correction and word-prediction features. Just mash away on your touch-screen keyboard, typing as fast as possible, and SwiftKey will notice your mistakes and type what you actually meant to type. SwiftKey also now has built-in support for gesture-typing via SwiftKey Flow, so you get a lot of flexibility. At $4, SwiftKey may seem a bit pricey, but give the month-long trial a try. A great keyboard makes all the typing you do everywhere on your phone better. SwiftKey is an amazing keyboard if you tap-to-type rather than swipe-to-type. Swype While other keyboards have copied Swype’s swipe-to-type feature, none have completely matched its accuracy. Swype has been designing a gesture-typing keyboard for longer than anyone else and its gesture feature still seems more accurate than its competitors’ gesture support. If you use gesture-typing all the time, you’ll probably want to use Swype. Swype can now be installed directly from Google Play without the old, tedious process of registering a beta account and sideloading the Swype app. Swype offers a month-long free trial and the full version is available for $1 afterwards. Minuum Minuum is a crowdfunded keyboard that is currently still in beta and only supports English. We include it here because it’s so interesting — it’s a great example of the kind of creativity and experimentation that happens when you allow developers to experiment with their own forms of keyboard. Minuum uses a tiny, minimum keyboard that frees up your screen space, so your touch-screen keyboard doesn’t hog your device’s screen. Rather than displaying a full keyboard on your screen, Minuum displays a single row of letters.  Each letter is small and may be difficult to hit, but that doesn’t matter — Minuum’s smart autocorrection algorithms interpret what you intended to type rather than typing the exact letters you press. Just swipe to the right to type a space and accept Minuum’s suggestion. At $4 for a beta version with no trial, Minuum may seem a bit pricy. But it’s a great example of the flexibility Android allows. If there’s a problem with this keyboard, it’s that it’s a bit late — in an age of 5″ smartphones with 1080p screens, full-size keyboards no longer feel as cramped. MessagEase MessagEase is another example of a new take on text input. Thankfully, this keyboard is available for free. MessagEase presents all letters in a nine-button grid. To type a common letter, you’d tap the button. To type an uncommon letter, you’d tap the button, hold down, and swipe in the appropriate direction. This gives you large buttons that can work well as touch targets, especially when typing with one hand. Like any other unique twist on a traditional keyboard, you’d have to give it a few minutes to get used to where the letters are and the new way it works. After giving it some practice, you may find this is a faster way to type on a touch-screen — especially with one hand, as the targets are so large. Google Play is full of replacement keyboards for Android phones and tablets. Keyboards are just another type of app that you can swap in. Leave a comment if you’ve found another great keyboard that you prefer using. Image Credit: Cheon Fong Liew on Flickr     

  Read the article

• Upgrade Workshop in Sydney - Recap

  - by Mike Dietrich

  Late, but hopefully not too late, a big THANK YOU to everybody who did attend the Upgrade and Migration Workshop in Sydney at the Cliftons past week. You were a really good crowd, thanks for all your questions, the great conversations in the breaks, thanks to the local marketing team for the excellent organization - and we'll looking forward to see you next time again with all your databases then live on Oracle Database 11.2  To download the slides please find them in the Slides Download Center to your right - or use the direct link to download the workshop slide deck. And I really don't understand how you can go to daily work (or to a workshop) with such beaches nearby ... I would immediatelly change my job profile Honestly, Sydney is really a great place. Australia and New Zealand generally are wonderful places and we've met so many great people in Perth, Brisbane, Melbourne, Wellington, Sydney and during our travel in between. Just if there wouldn't be over 20 hours pure flight time in between Germany and Down Under Hope to see you all again next time for 12c -Mike

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26  | Next Page >