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• Identity R2 - Experts Podcast Series

  - by Tanu Sood

  To follow up on the Identity Management R2 launch, a series of podcasts were recorded with subject matter experts from customer organizations, our partners and Oracle’s PM team to discuss key trends, R2 capabilities, implementation best practices and more. Below is a roll-up of the podcast series that is available on Fusion Middleware radio. R2 Podcasts:   ·         Designing the Next-Generation Identity Platform Vadim Lander, Oracle Highlights: Common architecture model, integration, interoperability and the driving factors behind R2 innovation IT Departments are shifting their Identity Management strategy to be able to support mobile, cloud and social applications. Oracle has anticipated this shift and has built a product roadmap to take advantage of this focus. Join Vadim as he discusses the design strategy behind the latest 11gR2 release and talks about how IDM services have to evolve to meet this new challenge.   ·         BETA Customer Perspective on R2 Ravi Meduri, Kaiser Permanente Highlights: R2 scalability and high availability In this podcast Ravi discusses the new features in 11gR2 that he is most interested in, including High Availability options for Access Management, multi-datacenter architecture, and what it was like working with the Oracle product team during the BETA program.   ·         Partner Perspective on R2 Rex Thexton, PricewaterhouseCoopers Highlights: Usability Enhancements for Users and Administrators A lot of new usability features went into the 11gR2 release making this the most business friendly IDM release to date. In this podcast Rex Thexton, Managing Director from PwC, talks about some of the new UI changes for both end users and administrators, and also about the new connector creation framework.   Access Request Updates in R2 Marc Boroditsky, Oracle Highlights: Access request User Interface innovations A lot of changes have been made to the Access Request user interface in the latest version of Oracle Identity Manager 11gR2. A real focus has been put on making the request process more business user friendly, and a lot of new customization capability has been added for the IT administrators. Hear Marc discuss the updated UI, and explain how administrators will be able to customize OIM to meet their company's requirements   ·         Oracle Optimized System for Oracle Unified Directory (OOS4OUD) Nick Kloski, Oracle Highlights: New Optimized System configuration for Unified Directory One of the new features in 11gR2 is the availability of an Optimized System configuration for Oracle Unified Directory. Oracle engineers installed the OUD software onto off the shelf hardware and then created a performance tuned configuration. Join us as we talk to Nick Kloski, Infrastructure Solutions Manager, all about the testing process and the resulting performance metrics.   Privileged Account Management Mark Wilcox, Oracle Highlights: Oracle Privileged Account Manager key capabilities, use cases The new release of Oracle Identity Management 11g R2 includes the capability to manage privileged accounts. Privileged accounts, if compromised, create a risk for fraud in the enterprise and as a result controlling access to privileged accounts is critical. Hear what Mark Wilcox, Principal Product Manager of Oracle Privileged Account Manager has to say about the capabilities of the offering in this podcast.   ·         Browser-based User Interface (UI) Customization Clayton Donley, Oracle Highlights: Benefits of Durable UI Configuration framework Business users need user interfaces that are not only friendly but also easily customizable. However the downside of any customization project is the cost and complexity involved in developing, testing, deploying and managing custom code. In this podcast, we examine how a new capability in Oracle Identity Management around browser based UI customization can reduce costs and complexity of customization while simplifying self service integration with corporate portal strategies.   ·         Simplifying Mobile and Social Sign-On Dan Killmer, Oracle Highlights: Secure mobile sign-on and consumption of social identities with Oracle Access Management The proliferation of mobile devices has spurred a new trend where employees tend to bring their own mobile devices to work and access corporate applications the same way they would access from a desktop or laptop. In this podcast, we examine how Oracle's latest innovation in Identity Management around Mobile and Social Sign On can simplify security and access management challenges posed by the widespread adoption of mobile devices in the enterprise. ·         Enabling Your Business with IDM R2 Scott Bonnell, Oracle Highlights: Self service, mobile access, personalization Gone are the days when Identity Management was just about stopping unauthorized users in their tracks. Identity Management if done right, can also enable your business. Join Scott Bonnell as he discusses how the IDM 11gR2 release enables the enterprise by providing self service, personalization and mobile access to corporate resources.

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• BizTalk 2009 - Installing BizTalk Server 2009 on XP for Development

  - by StuartBrierley

  At my previous employer, when developing for BizTalk Server 2004 using Visual Studio 2003, we made use of separate development and deployment environments; developing in Visual Studio on our client PCs and then deploying to a seperate shared BizTalk 2004 Server from there.  This server was part of a multi-server Standard BizTalk environment comprising of separate BizTalk Server 2004 and SQL Server 2000 servers.  This environment was implemented a number of years ago by an outside consulting company, and while it worked it did occasionally cause contention issues with three developers deploying to the same server to carry out unit testing! Now that I am making the design and implementation decisions about the environment that BizTalk will be developed in and deployed to, I have chosen to create a single "server" installation on my development PC, installling SQL Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and BizTalk Server 2009 on a single system.  The client PC in use is actually a MacBook Pro running Windows XP; not the most powerful of systems for high volume processing but it should be powerful enough to allow development and initial unit testing to take place. I did not need to, and so chose not to, install all of the components detailed in the Microsoft guide for installing BizTalk 2009 on Windows XP but I did follow the basics of the procedures detailed within.  Outlined below are the highlights of this process and any details of what choices I made.   Install IIS I had previsouly installed Windows XP, including all current service packs and critical updates.  At the time of installation this included Service Pack 3, the .Net Framework 3.5 and MS Windows Installer 3.1.  Having a running XP system, my first step was to install IIS - this is quite straightforward and posed no difficulties. Install Visual Studio 2008 The next step for me was to install Visual Studio 2008.  Making sure to select a custom installation is crucial at this point, as you need to make sure that you deselect SQL Server 2005 Express Edition as it can cause the BizTalk installation to fail.  The installation guide suggests that you only select Visual C# when selecting features to install, but  I decided that due to some legacy systems I have code for that I would also select the VB and ASP options. Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 Following the completion of the installation of Visual Studio itself you should then install the Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1. SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition The next step before intalling BizTalk Server 2009 itself is to install SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition. On the feature selection screen make sure that you select the follwoing options: Database Engine Services SQL Server Replication Full-Text Search Analysis Services Reporting Services Business Intelligence Development Studio Client Tools Connectivity Integration Services Management Tools Basic and Complete Use the default instance and the same accounts for all SQL server instances - in my case I used the Network Service and Local Service accounts for the two sets of accounts. On the database engine configuration screen I selected windows authentication and added the current user, adding the same user again on the Analysis services Configuration screen.  All other screens were left on the default settings. The SQL Server 2008 installation also included the installation of hotfix for XP KB942288-v3, the Windows Installer 4.5 Redistributable. System Configuration At this stage I took a moment to disable the SQL Server shared memory protocol and enable the Named Pipes and TCP/IP protocols.  These can be found in the SQL Server Configuration Manager > SQL Server Network Configuration > Protocols for MSSQLServer.  I also made sure that the DTC settings were configured correctley.   BizTalk Server 2009 The penultimate step is to install BizTalk Server 2009 Standard Edition. I had previsouly downloaded the redistributable prerequisites as a CAB file so was able to make use of this when carrying out the installation. When selecting which components to install I selected: Server Runtime BizTalk EDI/AS2 Runtime WCF Adapter Runtime Portal Components Administrative Tools WFC Administartion Tools Developer Tools and SDK, Enterprise SSO Administration Module Enterprise SSO Master Secret Server Business Rules Components BAM Alert Provider BAM Client BAM Eventing Once installation has completed clear the launch BizTalk Server Configuration check box and select finish. Verify the Installation Before configuring BizTalk Server it is a good idea to check that BizTalk Server 2009 is installed and that SQL Server 2008 has started correctly.  The easiest way to verify the BizTalk installation is check the Programs and Features in Control panel.  Check that SQL is started by looking in the SQL Server Configuration Manager. Configure BizTalk Server 2009 Finally we are ready to configure BizTalk Server 2009.  To start this I opted for a custom configuration that allowed me to choose in more detail the settings to be used. For all databases I selected the local server and default database names. For all Accounts I used a local account that had been created specifically for the BizTalk Services. For all windows groups I allowed the configuration wizard to create the default local groups. The configuration wizard then ran:   Upon completion you will be presented with a screen detailing the success or failure of the configuration.  If your configuration failed you will need to sort out the issues and try again (it is possible to save the configuration settings for later use if you want too - except passwords of course!).  If you see lots of nice green ticks - congratulations BizTalk Server 2009 on XP is now installed and configured ready for development.

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• Oracle Optimized Solutions at Oracle OpenWorld 2012

  - by ferhatSF

  Have you registered for Oracle OpenWorld 2012 in San Francisco from September 30 to October 4? Visit the Oracle OpenWorld 2012 site today for registration and more information. Come join us to hear how Oracle Optimized Solutions can help you save money, reduce integration risks, and improve user productivity. Oracle Optimized Solutions are designed, pre-tested, tuned and fully documented architectures for optimal performance and availability. They provide written guidelines to help size, configure, purchase and deploy enterprise solutions that address common IT problems. Built with flexibility in mind, Oracle Optimized Solutions can be deployed as complete solutions or easily tailored to meet your specific needs - they are proven to save money, reduce integration risks and improve user productivity. Here is a preview of the planned Oracle OpenWorld sessions(*) on Oracle Optimized Solutions. October 1, 2012 Monday Time Session ID Title Location 12:15 PM CON7916 Accelerate Oracle E-Business Suite Deployment with SPARC SuperCluster Moscone West - 2001 03:15 PM GEN9691 General Session: Accelerate Your Business with the Oracle Hardware Advantage Moscone North - Hall D 04:45 PM CON4821 Building a Flexible Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure on Oracle SPARC Systems Moscone West - 2001 October 2, 2012 Tuesday Time Session ID Title Location 10:15 AM CON4561 Backup-and-Recovery Best Practices with Oracle Engineered Systems Products Moscone South - 252 11:45 AM CON3851 Optimizing JD Edwards EnterpriseOne on SPARC T4 Servers for Best Performance Moscone West - 2000 01:15 PM GEN11472 General Session: Breakthrough Efficiency in Private Cloud Infrastructure Moscone West - 3014 01:15 PM CON4600 Extreme Storage Scale and Efficiency: Lessons from a 100,000-Person Organization Moscone South - 252 05:00 PM CON9465 Next-Generation Directory: Oracle Unified Directory Moscone West - 3008 05:00 PM CON4088 Accelerate Your SAP Landscape with the Oracle SPARC SuperCluster Moscone West - 2001 05:00 PM CON7743 High-Performance Security for Oracle Applications Using SPARC T4 Systems Moscone West - 2000 05:00 PM CON3857 Archive Strategies for 100 Percent Data Availability Moscone South - 270 October 3, 2012 Wednesday Time Session ID Title Location 10:15 AM CON6528 Configure Oracle Hybrid Columnar Compression to Optimize Query Database Performance up to 10x Moscone South - 252 11:45 AM CON2590 Breakthrough in Private Cloud Management on SPARC T-Series Servers Moscone South - 270 01:15 PM CON4289 Oracle Optimized Solution for Siebel CRM at ACCOR Moscone West - 2000 05:00 PM CON7570 Improve PeopleSoft HCM Performance and Reliability with SPARC SuperCluster Moscone South - 252 * Schedule subject to change In addition, there will be Oracle Optimized Solutions Hands-On-Labs sessions planned. Please enroll ahead of time as space is limited: Oracle Optimized Solutions: Hands on Labs in Oracle OpenWorld Place: Marriott Marquis - Salon 14/15 Date and Time Session ID Title Monday October 1, 2012 01:45 PM HOL9868 Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure for SPARC with Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c Monday October 1, 2012 03:15 PM HOL9907 Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Performance and Tablet Mobility Wednesday October 3, 2012 05:00 PM HOL9870 x86 Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure with Oracle VM 3.x and Sun ZFS Storage Appliance Thursday October 4, 2012 11:15 AM HOL9869 0 to Database Backup and Recovery in 60 Minutes Oracle Optimized Solutions executives and experts will also be at hand for discussions and follow ups. And don’t forget to catch live demonstrations of our complete Oracle Optimized Solutions while at Oracle OpenWorld 2012 in San Francisco. We recommend the use of the Schedule Builder tool to plan your visit to the conference and for pre-enrollment in sessions of your interest. We hope to see you there!

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• Take Steps to Mitigate the Threat of Insiders

  - by Troy Kitch

  Register now for our upcoming Feb 23 Webcast The Insider Threat, Understand and Mitigate Your Risks. Insiders, by virtue of legitimate access to their organizations' information and IT infrastructure, pose a significant risk to employers. Employees, motivated by financial problems, greed, revenge, the desire to obtain a business advantage, or the wish to impress a new employer, have stolen confidential data, proprietary information, or intellectual property from their employers. Since this data typically resides in databases, organizations need to consider a database security defense in depth approach that takes into account preventive and detective controls to protect their data against abuse by insiders. Register now and learn about: Actual cases of insider cyber crimes Three primary types of insider cyber crimes: IT sabotage, theft of intellectual property (e.g. trade secrets), and employee fraud Lack of controls around data that allow these crimes to be successful Solutions to help secure data and database infrastructure

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• Long Running Service Request or COLD CASE?

  - by chris.warticki

  What's going on? Why is it taking so long? Is anyone out there? Resolving Service Requests can seem to take forever. If your Service Request is taking more than a few days, moving into weeks or months, here are few things to consider.  Details here.  Comments welcome. -Chris Warticki twittering @cwarticki Join one of the Twibes - http://twibes.com/OracleSupport or http://twibes.com/MyOracleSupport

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• How To: Use Monitoring Rules and Policies

  - by Owen Allen

  One of Ops Center's most useful features is its asset monitoring capability. When you discover an asset - an operating system, say, or a server - a default monitoring policy is applied to it, based on the asset type. This policy contains rules that specify what properties are monitored and what thresholds are considered significant. Ops Center will send a notification if a monitored asset passes one of the specified thresholds. But sometimes you want different assets to be monitored in different ways. For example, you might have a group of mission-critical systems, for which you want to be notified immediately if their file system usage rises above a specific threshold. You can do so by creating a new monitoring policy and applying it to the group. You can also apply monitoring policies to individual assets, and edit them to meet the requirements of your environment. The Tuning Monitoring Rules and Policies How-To walks you through all of these procedures.

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• A Generic, IDisposable WCF Service Client

  - by Steve Wilkes

  WCF clients need to be cleaned up properly, but as they're usually auto-generated they don't implement IDisposable. I've been doing a fair bit of WCF work recently, so I wrote a generic WCF client wrapper which effectively gives me a disposable service client. The ServiceClientWrapper is constructed using a WebServiceConfig instance, which contains a Binding, an EndPointAddress, and whether the client should ignore SSL certificate errors - pretty useful during testing! The Binding can be created based on configuration data or entirely programmatically - that's not the client's concern. Here's the service client code: using System; using System.Net; using System.Net.Security; using System.ServiceModel; public class ServiceClientWrapper<TService, TChannel> : IDisposable     where TService : ClientBase<TChannel>     where TChannel : class {     private readonly WebServiceConfig _config;     private TService _serviceClient;     public ServiceClientWrapper(WebServiceConfig config)     {         this._config = config;     }     public TService CreateServiceClient()     {         this.DisposeExistingServiceClientIfRequired();         if (this._config.IgnoreSslErrors)         {             ServicePointManager.ServerCertificateValidationCallback =                 (obj, certificate, chain, errors) => true;         }         else         {             ServicePointManager.ServerCertificateValidationCallback =                 (obj, certificate, chain, errors) => errors == SslPolicyErrors.None;         }         this._serviceClient = (TService)Activator.CreateInstance(             typeof(TService),             this._config.Binding,             this._config.Endpoint);         if (this._config.ClientCertificate != null)         {             this._serviceClient.ClientCredentials.ClientCertificate.Certificate =                 this._config.ClientCertificate;         }         return this._serviceClient;     }     public void Dispose()     {         this.DisposeExistingServiceClientIfRequired();     }     private void DisposeExistingServiceClientIfRequired()     {         if (this._serviceClient != null)         {             try             {                 if (this._serviceClient.State == CommunicationState.Faulted)                 {                     this._serviceClient.Abort();                 }                 else                 {                     this._serviceClient.Close();                 }             }             catch             {                 this._serviceClient.Abort();             }             this._serviceClient = null;         }     } } A client for a particular service can then be created something like this: public class ManagementServiceClientWrapper :     ServiceClientWrapper<ManagementServiceClient, IManagementService> {     public ManagementServiceClientWrapper(WebServiceConfig config)         : base(config)     {     } } ...where ManagementServiceClient is the auto-generated client class, and the IManagementService is the auto-generated WCF channel class - and used like this: using(var serviceClientWrapper = new ManagementServiceClientWrapper(config)) {     serviceClientWrapper.CreateServiceClient().CallService(); } The underlying WCF client created by the CreateServiceClient() will be disposed after the using, and hey presto - a disposable WCF service client.

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• Sea Monkey Sales & Marketing, and what does that have to do with ERP?

  - by user709270

  Tier One Defined By Lyle Ekdahl, Oracle JD Edwards Group Vice President and General Manager  I recently became aware of the latest Sea Monkey Sales & Marketing tactic. Wait now, what is Sea Monkey Sales & Marketing and what does that have to do with ERP? Well if you grew up in USA during the 50’s, 60’s and maybe a bit in the early 70’s there was a unifying media of culture known as the comic book. I was a big Iron Man fan. I always liked the troubled hero aspect of Tony Start and hey he was a technologist. This is going somewhere, just hold on. Of course comic books like most media contained advertisements. Ninety pound weakling transformed by Charles Atlas in just 15 minutes per day. Baby Ruth, Juicy Fruit Gum and all assortments of Hostess goodies were on display. The best ad was for the “Amazing Live Sea-Monkeys – The real live fun-pets you grow yourself!” These ads set the standard for exaggeration and half-truth; “…they love attention…so eager to please, they can even be trained…” The cartoon picture on the ad is of a family of royal looking sea creatures – daddy, mommy, son and little sis – sea monkey? There was a disclaimer at the bottom in fine print, “Caricatures shown not intended to depict Artemia.” Ok what ten years old knows what the heck artemia is? Well you grow up fast once you’ve been separated from your buck twenty five plus postage just to discover that it is brine shrimp. Really dumb brine shrimp that don’t take commands or do tricks. Unfortunately the technology industry is full of sea monkey sales and marketing. Yes believe it or not in some cases there is subterfuge and obfuscation used to secure contracts. Hey I get it; the picture on the box might not be the actual size. Make up what you want about your product, but here is what I don’t like, could you leave out the obvious falsity when it comes to my product, especially the negative stuff. So here is the latest one – “Oracle’s JD Edwards is NOT tier one”. Really? Definition please! Well a whole host of googleable and reputable sources confirm that a tier one vendor is large, well known, and enjoys national and international recognition. Let me see large, so thousands of customers? Oh and part of the world’s largest business software and hardware corporation? Check and check JD Edwards has that and that. Well known, enjoying national and international recognition? Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne is available in 21 languages and is directly localized in 33 countries that support some of the world’s largest multinationals and many midsized domestic market companies. Something on the order of half the JD Edwards customer base is outside North America. My passport is on its third insert after 2 years and not from vacations. So if you don’t mind I am going to mark national and international recognition in the got it column. So what else is there? Well let me offer a few criteria. Longevity – The JD Edwards products benefit from 35+ years of intellectual property development; through booms, busts, mergers and acquisitions, we are still here Vision & innovation – JD Edwards is the first full suite ERP to run on the iPad as just one example Proven track record of execution – Since becoming part of Oracle, JD Edwards has released to the market over 20 deliverables including major release, point releases, new apps modules, tool releases, integrations…. Solid, focused functionality with a flexible, interoperable, extensible underlying architecture – JD Edwards offers solid core ERP with specialty modules for verticals all delivered on a well defined independent tools layer that helps enable you to scale your business without an ERP reimplementation A continuation plan – Oracle’s JD Edwards offers our customers a 6 year roadmap as well as interoperability with Oracle’s next generation of applications Oh I almost forgot that the expert sources agree on one additional thing, tier one may be a preferred vendor that offers product and services to you with appealing value. You should check out the TCO studies of JD Edwards. I think you will see what the thousands of customers that rely on these products to run their businesses enjoy – that is the tier one solution with the lowest TCO. Oh and if you get an offer to buy an ERP for no license charge, remember the picture on the box might not be the actual size. 

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• How Do You Make Your Animated GIFs?

  - by thatjeffsmith

  I get this question a lot. The question tells me a few things: you LIKE the animated GIFs here on thatjeffsmith – cool, I’ll keep doing more you want to make your own – awesome, I’m helping make the world a more animated place that’s pretty much it, I should have said a couple of things, oh well I use Camtasia Studio 7 from TechSmith A gif of me making a gif If you want a more official ‘answer’ to this question, the cool folks at Techsmith have their own blog post on the subject.

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• Awesome new feature for HCC

  - by Steve Tunstall

  I've talked about HCC (Hybrid Columnar Compression) before. This is Oracle's built-in compression feature, free of charge in 11Gr2, that allows a CRAZY amount of compression on historical data inside an Oracle database. It only works if the database is being stored in a ZFSSA, Exadata or Axiom. You can read all about it in this whitepaper, which shows the huge value of HCC when used with the ZFSSA. http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/perf-hybrid-columnar-compression-1689701.html Now, even better, Oracle has announced  a great new feature in Oracle 12c called "Automatic Data Optimization". This allows one to setup HCC to AUTOMATICALLY compress data AS IT AGES.  So this is now ILM all built into the Oracle database. It's free for crying out loud. It just needs to be sitting on Oracle storage, such as the ZFSSA, Exadata or Axiom.  Read about ADO here: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/automatic-data-optimization-wp-12c-1896120.pdf?ssSourceSiteId=ocomen

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• Silverlight Cream for February 02, 2011 -- #1039

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Tony Champion, Gill Cleeren, Alex van Beek, Michael James, Ollie Riches, Peter Kuhn, Mike Ormond, WindowsPhoneGeek(-2-), Daniel N. Egan, Loek Van Den Ouweland, and Paul Thurott. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Using the AutoCompleteBox" Peter Kuhn WP7: "Windows Phone Image Button" Loek Van Den Ouweland Training: "New WP7 Virtual Labs" Daniel N. Egan Shoutouts: SilverlightShow has their top 5 most popular news articles up: SilverlightShow for Jan 24-30, 2011 Rudi Grobler posted answers he gives to questions about Silverlight - Where do I start? Brian Noyes starts a series of Webinars at SilverlightShow this morning at 10am PDT: Free Silverlight Show Webinar: Querying and Updating Data From Silverlight Clients with WCF RIA Services Join your fellow geeks at Gangplank in Chandler Arizona this Saturday as Scott Cate and AZGroups brings you Azure Boot Camp – Feb 5th 2011 From SilverlightCream.com: Deploying Silverlight with WCF Services Tony Champion takes a step out of his norm (Pivot) and has a post up about deploying WCF Services with your SL app, and how to take the pain out of that without pulling out your hair. Getting ready for Microsoft Silverlight Exam 70-506 (Part 3) Gill Cleeren's part 3 of getting ready for the Silverlight Exam is up at SilverlightShow... with links to the first two parts. There's so much good information linked off these... thanks Gill and 'The Show'! A guide through WCF RIA Services attributes Alex van Beek has a post up you will probably want to bookmark unless you're not using WCF RIA... do you know all the attributes by heart? ... how about an excellent explanation of 10 of them? Using DeferredLoadListBox in a Pivot Control Michael James discusses using the DeferredLoadListBox, and then also using it with the Pivot control... but not without some pain points which he defines and gives the workaround for. WP7: Know your data Ollie Riches' latest is about Data and WP7 ... specifically 'knowing' what data you're needing/using to avoid the 90MB memory limit... He gives a set of steps to follow to measure your data model to avoid getting in trouble. Using the AutoCompleteBox Peter Kuhn takes a great look at the AutoCompleteBox... the basics, and then well beyond with custom data, item templates, custom filters, asynchronous filtering, and a behavior for MVVM async filtering. OData and Windows Phone 7 Part 2 Mike Ormond has part 2 of his OData/WP7 post up... lashing up the images to go along with the code this time out... nice looking app. WP7 RoundToggleButton and RoundButton in depth WindowsPhoneGeek is checking out the RoundToggleButton and RoundButton controls from the Coding4fun Toolkit in detail... of course where to get them, and then the setup, demo project included. All about Dependency Properties in Silverlight for WP7 WindowsPhoneGeek's latest post is a good dependency-property discussion related to WP7 development, but if you're just learning, it's a good place to learn about the subject. New WP7 Virtual Labs Daniel N. Egan posted links to 6 new WP7 Virtual Labs released on 1/25. Windows Phone Image Button Loek Van Den Ouweland has a style up on his blog that gives you an imageButton for your WP7 apps, and a sweet little video showing how it's done in Expression Blend too. Yet another free Windows Phone book for developers Paul Thurott found a link to another Free eBook for WP7 development. This one is by Puja Pramudya and is an English translation of the original, and is an introductory text, but hey... it's free... give it a look! Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Patch an Existing NK.BIN

  - by Kate Moss' Open Space

  As you know, we can use MAKEIMG.EXE tool to create OS Image file, NK.BIN, or ROMIMAGE.EXE with a BIB for more accurate. But what if the image file is already created but need to be patched or you want to extract a file from NK.BIN? The Platform Builder provide many useful command line utilities, and today I am going to introduce one, BINMOD.EXE. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee504622.aspx is the official page for BINMOD tool. As the page says, The BinMod Tool (binmod.exe) extracts files from a run-time image, and replaces files in a run-time image and its usage binmod [-i imagename] [-r replacement_filename.ext | -e extraction_filename.ext] This is a simple tool and is easy to use, if we want to extract a file from nk.bin, just type binmod –i nk.bin –e filename.ext And that's it! Or use can try -r command to replace a file inside NK.BIN. The small tool is good but there is a limitation; due to the files in MODULES section are fixed up during ROMIMAGE so the original file format is not preserved, therefore extract or replace file in MODULE section will be impossible. So just like this small tool, this post supposed to be end here, right? Nah... It is not that easy. Just try the above example, and you will find, the tool is not work! Double check the file is in FILES section and the NK.BIN is good, but it just quits. Before you throw away this useless toy, we can try to fix it! Yes, the source of this tool is available in your CE6, private\winceos\COREOS\nk\tools\romimage\binmod. As it is a tool run in your Windows so you need to Windows SDK or Visual Studio to build the code. (I am going to save you some time by skipping the detail as building a desktop console mode program is fairly trivial) The cbinmod.cpp is the core logic for this program and follow up the error message we got, it looks like the following code is suspected.   //   // Extra sanity check...   //   if((DWORD)(HIWORD(pTOCLoc->dllfirst) << 16) <= pTOCLoc->dlllast &&       (DWORD)(LOWORD(pTOCLoc->dllfirst) << 16) <= pTOCLoc->dlllast)   {     dprintf("Found pTOC  = 0x%08x\n", (DWORD)dwpTOC);     fFoundIt = true;     break;   }    else    {     dprintf("NOTICE! Record %d looked like a TOC except DLL first = 0x%08X, and DLL last = 0x%08X\r\n", i, pTOCLoc->dllfirst, pTOCLoc->dlllast);   } The logic checks if dllfirst <= dlllast but look closer, the code only separated the high/low WORD from dllfirst but does not apply the same to dlllast, is that on purpose or a bug? While the TOC is created by ROMIMAGE.EXE, so let's move to ROMIMAGE. In private\winceos\coreos\nk\tools\romimage\romimage\bin.cpp    Module::s_romhdr.dllfirst  = (HIWORD(xip_mem->dll_data_bottom) << 16) | HIWORD(xip_mem->kernel_dll_bottom);   Module::s_romhdr.dlllast   = (HIWORD(xip_mem->dll_data_top) << 16)    | HIWORD(xip_mem->kernel_dll_top); It is clear now, the high word of dll first is the upper 16 bits of XIP DLL bottom and the low word is the upper 16 bits of kernel dll bottom; also, the high word of dll last is the upper 16 bits of XIP DLL top and the low word is the upper 16 bits of kernel dll top. Obviously, the correct statement should be if((DWORD)(HIWORD(pTOCLoc->dllfirst) << 16) <= (DWORD)(HIWORD(pTOCLoc->dlllast) << 16) &&    (DWORD)(LOWORD(pTOCLoc->dllfirst) << 16) <= (DWORD)(LOWORD(pTOCLoc->dlllast) << 16)) So update the code like this should fix this issue or just like the comment, it is an extra sanity check, you can just get rid of it, either way can make the code moving forward and everything worked as advertised.  "Extracting out copies of files from the nk.bin... replacing files... etc." Since the NK.BIN can be compressed, so the BinMod needs the compress.dll to decompress the data, the DLL can be found in C:\program files\microsoft platform builder\6.00\cepb\idevs\imgutils.

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• Tab Sweep: Java EE 6 Scopes, Observer, SSL, Workshop, Virtual Server, JDBC Connection Validation

  - by arungupta

  Recent Tips and News on Java, Java EE 6, GlassFish & more : • How Java EE 6 Scopes Affect User Interactions (DevX.com) • Why is Java EE 6 better than Spring ? (Arun Gupta) • JavaEE Revisits Design Patterns: Observer (Murat Yener) • Getting started with Glassfish V3 and SSL (JavaDude) • Software stacks market share within Jelastic: March 2012 (Jelastic) • All aboard the Java EE 6 Love Boat! (Bert Ertman) • Full stack Java EE workshop (Kito Mann) • Create a virtual server from console in glassfish (Hector Guzman) • Glassfish – JDBC Connection Validation explained (Alexandru Ersenie) • Automatically setting the label of a component in JSF 2 (Arjan Tijms) • JSF2 + Primefaces3 + Spring3 & Hibernate4 Integration Project (Eren Avsarogullari) • THE EXECUTABLE FEEL OF JAX-RS 2.0 CLIENT (Adam Bien) Here are some tweets from this week ... web-app dtd(s) on http://t.co/4AN0057b R.I.P. using http://t.co/OTZrOEEr instead. Thank you Oracle! finally got GlassFish and Cassandra running embedded so I can unit test my app #jarhell #JavaEE6 + #NetBeans is really a pleasure to work with! Reading latest chapter in #Spring vs #JavaEE wars https://t.co/RqlGmBG9 (and yes, #JavaEE6 is better :P) @javarebel very easy install and very easy to use in combination with @netbeans and @glassfish. Save your time.

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• Planning for the Recovery

  - by john.orourke(at)oracle.com

  As we plan for 2011, there are many positive signs in the global economy, but also some lingering issues. Planning no longer is about extrapolating past performance and adjusting for growth. It is now about constantly testing the temperature of the water, formulating scenarios, assessing risk and assigning probabilities.  So how does one plan for recovery and improve forecast accuracy in such a volatile environment?  Here are some suggestions from a recent article I wrote, which was published in the December Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) newsletter from the AFP (Association of Financial Professionals): Increase the frequency of forecasting Get more line managers involved in the planning and forecasting process Re-consider what's being measured - i.e. key financial and operational metrics Incorporate risk and probability into forecasts Reduce reliance on spreadsheets - leverage packaged EPM applications To learn more about these best practices, check out the FP&A section of the AFP website and register to receive the FP&A newsletter.  AFP recently launched a new topic area focused on the FP&A function and items of interest to this group of finance professionals.  In addition to the FP&A quarterly newsletter, AFP will be publishing articles, running webinars and will have an FP&A track in their annual conference, which is in Boston next November.  Brian Kalish, AFP's Finance Lead, is hoping this initiative creates a valuable networking and information-sharing resource for FP&A professionals. Here's a link to the FP&A page on the AFP web site:  http://www.afponline.org/pub/res/topics/topics_fpa.html If you register on the site you can access and subscribe to the FP&A newsletter and other resources. Best of luck in your planning for 2011 and beyond!   

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• Database Machine gyakorlati tapasztalatok!

  - by Fekete Zoltán

  Ketto héttel ezelott gyakorlati tapasztalatokat szereztünk egy magyarországon muködo vállalat adattárházával egy igazi Database Machine / Exadata környezetben, egy Sun Oracle Database Machine Half Rack kiépítéssel. Az eredmények valóban lenyugözöek. Az Exadata Storage izgalmas és egyedi tulajdonságai: Smart Scan, Smart Flash Cache, Storage Index, tömörítés: Exadata Hybrid Columnar Compression, a hihetetlen mértéku párhuzamosság olyan teljesítmény elonyhöz juttatja a felhasználót, ami szemelkerekedést, ujjongást és hosszantartó belso mosolyt eredményez. Hogy ez hasznos-e az Ön és adatbázis környezete egészségére nézve? :) Kérdezze meg orvosát, gyógyszerészét és a white paper leírásokat, továbbá publikált ügyfél történeteket. A technikai és kereskedelmi részletekrol kérdezzen engem. :) A holnapi (2010. máricius 24. szerda) eloadáson a HOUG Konferencián személyesen is meghallgathatók ezek a gyakorlati tapasztalatok, authentikus forrásból. Hasonlóan szép napokat kívánok mindenkinek!

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• Chrome Web Browser Messages: Some Observations

  - by ultan o'broin

  I'm always on the lookout for how different apps handle errors and what kind of messages are shown (I probably need to get out more), I use this 'research' to reflect on our own application error messages patterns and guidelines and how we might make things better for our users in future. Users are influenced by all sorts of things, but their everyday experiences of technology, and especially what they encounter on the internet, increasingly sets their expectations for the enterprise user experience too. I recently came across a couple of examples from Google's Chrome web browser that got me thinking. In the first case, we have a Chrome error about not being able to find a web page. I like how simple, straightforward messaging language is used along with an optional ability to explore things a bit further--for those users who want to. The 'more information' option shows the error encountered by the browser (or 'original' error) in technical terms, along with an error number. Contrasting the two messages about essentially the same problem reveals what's useful to users and what's not. Everyone can use the first message, but the technical version of the message has to be explicitly disclosed for any more advanced user to pursue further. More technical users might search for a resolution, using that Error 324 number, but I imagine most users who see the message will try again later or check their URL again. Seems reasonable that such an approach be adopted in the enterprise space too, right? Maybe. Generally, end users don't go searching for solutions based on those error numbers, and help desk folks generally prefer they don't do so. That's because of the more critical nature of enterprise data or the fact that end users may not have the necessary privileges to make any fixes anyway. What might be more useful here is a link to a trusted source of additional help provided by the help desk or reputable community instead. This takes me on to the second case, this time more closely related to the language used in messaging situations. Here, I first noticed by the using of the (s) approach to convey possibilities of there being one or more pages at the heart of the problem. This approach is a no-no in Oracle style terms (the plural would be used) and it can create translation issues (though it is not a show-stopper). I think Google could have gone with the plural too. However, of more interest is the use of the verb "kill", shown in the message text and as an action button label. For many writers, words like "kill" and "abort" are to be avoided as they can give offense. I am not so sure about that judgment, as really their use cannot be separated from the context. Certainly, for more technical users, they're fine and have been in use for years, so I see no reason to avoid these terms if the audience has accepted them. Most end users too, I think would find the idea of "kill" usable and may even use the term in every day speech. Others might disagree--Apple uses a concept of Force Quit, for example. Ultimately, the only way to really know how to proceed is to research these matter by asking users of differing roles and expertise to perform some tasks, encounter these messages and then make recommendations based on those findings for our designs. Something to do in 2011!

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• Technology vs. Antiquated Methods

  - by AreYouSerious

  So Here I am talking with my Program lead, about technology, and how while my father is the VP of a major company, he still doesn't have a blackberry, or a smart phone. and I think it's funny. Most people would say it's a generational thing. That because he's older, he dosen't accept technology, and that's why. I have trouble swallowing that because this is the same man, who bought a satellite radio for his car, and made sure that the printer for the house was networked so that his and my mom's laptop could print wirelessly from the living room through their wireless network. I think it has to do with more with necessity, and partially with finical responsibility. My father is very financially conciencious. Think about it yourself. you pay for internet at your home. You have internet access at your office. But if you get a smart phone you're going to pay almost the same amount just for that access. A lot of people take it as just another fixed cost... I'm one of those. I don't even think about it, as I check my facebook from the bus, train, or even while sitting in traffic... The convience of having connection everywhere outweigh the financial responsible person screaming at in the back of my mind. However This conversation lead us to another venue of discussion.... what happens when the power dies. if you left your charger at home, or you phone or navi just stops working... are you going to be able to continue on as you did when it was working... let take the navi as an example... if your navi stops working, how many of you know how to use a map, and navigate? can you even find where you are on a map using the cross streets that your stopped at? This is a skill that unfortunatelly is overlooked these days in the child rearing process. Most people don't see the value, while some others can't do it themselves, so how can they teach their offspring? Take another example.... what if your phone gets lost... or stolen, or you drive over it? do you have the numbers in their memorized? are they recorded somewhere? I know that if it weren't for google sync I wouldn't have them backed up... not sufficiently. And what good does that do if you're in timbuckto and your phone dies, think you can get on the internet to look up those numbers? Don't get me wrong. I'm the first to see the value in technology, and am willing to pay the price to not have to wait for prices to come down. I will pay extra to have that newest thing right now. but let me tell you what.... I know that should I ever procreate it will be a requirement for my offspring (children) to learn how to do something manually before I'll let them use technology. Food for thought?? Let everyone else know what you think.... just sayin'

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• OracleServiceBus+SOA in same server

  - by Manoj Neelapu

  Oracle Service Bus 11gR1 (11.1.1.3) supports running in same JVM as SOA. This tutorial covers on how to do create domain in of SOA+OSB combined to run in single JVM .For this tutorial we will use a flavor  WebLogic installer bundled with both OEPE and coherence components (eg oepe111150_wls1033_win32.exe). WebLogic installer bundled with coherence and OEPE components can be seen in the screen shot.Oracle Service Bus 11gR1 (11.1.1.3) has built-in caching support for Business Services using coherence. Because of this we will have to install coherence before  installing OSB.  To get SOAand OSB running in the same domain, we have to install the SOA and OSB on the above ORACLE_HOME. After installation we should see both the SOA and OSB homes has highlighted in red.We could also see the coherence components which is mandatory for OSB and optional OEPE also installed.                     Now we will execute RCU(ofm_rcu_win_11.1.1.3.0_disk1_1of1) to install the schema for SOA and OSB. New RCU contains OSB tables (WLI_QS_REPORT_DATA , WLI_QS_REPORT_ATTRIBUTE) gets loaded as part of SOAINFRA schema  After this step we will have to create soa+osb domain using config wizard. It is located under $WEBLOGIC_HOME\common\bin\config.* (.cmd or .sh as per your platform) .While creating a domain we will select options for SOA Suite  and Oracle Service Bus Extension-All Domain Topologies.We can also bundle Enterprise Manager in the same installation or in a different server. Here in this case we will use the enterprise manager in the same domain. So we selected the Enterprise Manager component also. There is another option for OSB  Oracle Service Bus Extension-Single server Domain Topology. This topology is for users who want to use OSB in single server configuration. Currently SOA doesn't support single server topology. So this topology cannot be used with SOA domain but can only be used for stand alone OSB installations.We can continue with domain configuration till we reach the below screen. Following steps are mandatory if we want to have the SOA and OSB run in same JVMwe should select Managed Server, Clusters and Machines as shown below   After this selection you should see a screen with two servers One managed server for OSB and one managed for SOA.  Since we would like to have both the servers in one managed server (one JVM) we will have to do one  

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• JRockit Virtual Edition Debug Key

  - by changjae.lee

  There are a few keys that can help the debugging of the JRVE env in console. you can type in each keys in JRVE console to see what's happening under the hood. key '0' : System information key '5' : Enable shutdown key '7' : Start JRockit Management Server (port 7091) key '8' : Statistics Counters key '9' : Full Thread Dump key '0' : Status of Debug-key Below is the sample out from each keys. Debug-key '1' pressed ============ JRockitVE System Information ============ JRockitVE version : 11.1.1.3.0-67-131044 Kernel version : 6.1.0.0-97-131024 JVM version : R27.6.6-28_o-125824-1.6.0_17-20091214-2104-linux-ia32 Hypervisor version : Xen 3.4.0 Boot state : 0x007effff Uptime : 0 days 02:04:31 CPU : uniprocessor @2327 Mhz CPU usage : 0% ctx/s: 285 preempt/s: 0 migrations/s: 0 Physical pages : 82379/261121 (321/1020 MB) Network info : 10.179.97.64 (10.179.97.64/255.255.254.0) GateWay : 10.179.96.1 MAC address : 00:16:3e:7e:dc:78 Boot options : vfsCwd : /application/user_projects/domains/wlsve_domain mainArgs : java -javaagent:/jrockitve/services/sshd/sshd.jar -cp /jrockitve/jrockit/lib/tools.jar:/jrockitve/lib/common.jar:/application/patch_wls1032/profiles/default/sys_manifest_classpath/weblogic_patch.jar:/application/wlserver_10.3/server/lib/weblogic.jar -Dweblogic.Name=WlsveAdmin -Dweblogic.Domain=wlsve_domain -Dweblogic.management.username=weblogic -Dweblogic.management.password=welcome1 -Dweblogic.management.GenerateDefaultConfig=true weblogic.Server consLog : /jrockitve/log/jrockitve.log mounts : ext2 / dev0; posixLocale : en_US posixTimezone : Asia/Seoul posixEncoding : ISO-8859-1 Local disk : Size: 1024M, Used: 728M, Free: 295M ======================================================== Debug-key '5' pressed Shutdown enabled. Debug-key '7' pressed [JRockit] Management server already started. Ignoring request. Debug-key '8' pressed Starting stat recording Debug-key '8' pressed ========= Statistics Counters for the last second ========= dev.eth0_rx.cnt : 22 packets dev.eth0_rx_bytes.cnt : 2704 bytes dev.net_interrupts.cnt : 22 interrupts evt.timer_ticks.cnt : 123 ticks hyper.priv_entries.cnt : 144 entries schedule.context_switches.cnt : 271 switches schedule.idle_cpu_time.cnt : 997318849 nanoseconds schedule.idle_cpu_time_0.cnt : 997318849 nanoseconds schedule.total_cpu_time.cnt : 1000031757 nanoseconds time.system_time.cnt : 1000 ns time.timer_updates.cnt : 123 updates time.wallclock_time.cnt : 1000 ns ======================================= Debug-key '9' pressed ===== FULL THREAD DUMP =============== Fri Jun 4 08:22:12 2010 BEA JRockit(R) R27.6.6-28_o-125824-1.6.0_17-20091214-2104-linux-ia32 "Main Thread" id=1 idx=0x4 tid=1 prio=5 alive, in native, waiting -- Waiting for notification on: weblogic/t3/srvr/T3Srvr@0x646ede8[fat lock] at jrockit/vm/Threads.waitForNotifySignal(JLjava/lang/Object;)Z(Native Method) at java/lang/Object.wait(J)V(Native Method) at java/lang/Object.wait(Object.java:485) at weblogic/t3/srvr/T3Srvr.waitForDeath(T3Srvr.java:919) ^-- Lock released while waiting: weblogic/t3/srvr/T3Srvr@0x646ede8[fat lock] at weblogic/t3/srvr/T3Srvr.run(T3Srvr.java:479) at weblogic/Server.main(Server.java:67) at jrockit/vm/RNI.c2java(IIIII)V(Native Method) -- end of trace "(Signal Handler)" id=2 idx=0x8 tid=2 prio=5 alive, in native, daemon Open lock chains ================ Chain 1: "ExecuteThread: '0' for queue: 'weblogic.socket.Muxer'" id=23 idx=0x50 tid=20 waiting for java/lang/String@0x630c588 held by: "ExecuteThread: '1' for queue: 'weblogic.socket.Muxer'" id=24 idx=0x54 tid=21 (active) ===== END OF THREAD DUMP =============== Debug-key '0' pressed Debug-keys enabled Happy Cloud Walking :)

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• Thank you GeeksWithBlogs.com

  - by Miguel A. Castro

  It’s been a great ride guys.  I joined GeeksWithBlogs.com in order to get my first blog up and running and have been with you guys for some time.   I’m not leaving because of any problem whatsoever, I just wanted to get my blog up on my own domain with more control over the customization of many of its pages.    My new blog is now at http://www.dotnetdude.com.   For those of you out there who just want a good blog service up and running in a few minutes, I can’t recommend anyone better than GeeksWithBlogs.com.   Thanks Jeff and John !   Miguel

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• ASP.Net 4.5 Garbage Collection Improvement

  - by Aligned

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/Aligned/archive/2013/06/24/asp.net-4.5-garbage-collection-improvement.aspxI just read Five Great .NET Framework 4.5 Features on CodeProject by Shivprasad koirala. Feature 5 in his article mentions the GC background cleanup and has a good explanation of the work the GC has to do for ASP.Net on the server. “Garbage collector is one real heavy task in a .NET application. And it becomes heavier when it is an ASP.NET application. ASP.NET applications run on the server and a lot of clients send requests to the server thus creating loads of objects, making the GC really work hard for cleaning up unwanted objects.” “To overcome the above problem, server GC was introduced. In server GC there is one more thread created which runs in the background. This thread works in the background and keeps cleaning…objects thus minimizing the load on the main GC thread. Due to double GC threads running, the main application threads are less suspended, thus increasing application throughput. To enable server GC, we need to use the gcServer XML tag and enable it to true.” <configuration> <runtime> <gcServer enabled="true"/> </runtime> </configuration> This is not done by default. The MSDN information page says “There are only two garbage collection options, workstation or server. For single-processor computers, the default workstation garbage collection should be the fastest option. Either workstation or server can be used for two-processor computers. Server garbage collection should be the fastest option for more than two processors. Use the GCSettingsIsServerGC property to determine if server garbage collection is enabled.” “In the .NET Framework 4 and earlier versions, concurrent garbage collection is not available when server garbage collection is enabled. Starting with the .NET Framework 4.5, server garbage collection is concurrent. To use non-concurrent server garbage collection, set the <gcServer> element to true and the <gcConcurrent> element to false. “ So if you’re using ASP.Net 4.5 and have a multi-core server, you should try turning on the Server Garbage Collection and do some profiling to see if it improves the performance of your site.

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• Silverlight Cream for April 18, 2010 -- #840

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: CrocusGirl, Giorgetti Alessandro(-2-), smartyP, Pete Brown, David Poll, David Anson, and Bill Reiss. Shoutouts: Yasser Makram has a post up discussing Human Centered ALM with Telerik TeamPulse and Team Foundation Server. I saw this demo'd at DevConnnections and it definitely deserves a look. Shawn Wildermuth posted his materials from DevConnections all on one post: Back from DevConnections with SourceCode Shawn Wildermuth also posted an Updated RIA Services + MVVM Example Laurent Bugnion announced a Small change in MVVM Light Toolkit templates for Blend 4 RC Laurent Bugnion also announced Crowdsourcing MVVM Light Toolkit support The Expression Blend and Design Blog announced Expression Blend 4 Release Candidate Available! Dan Wahlin posted Slides and Code from my Silverlight MVVM Talk at DevConnections From SilverlightCream.com: Windows Phone 7 Design Notes – Part#1: Metro Resources CrocusGirl has blogged about WP7 and the Metro design concept. She has a bunch of resources up and information about Metro and the design methodology. Stay tuned for Part 2. Silverlight, M-V-VM ... and IoC - part 1 Giorgetti Alessandro has part 1 of a multi-parter up on IoC and MVVM for LOB apps in Silverlight ... a pretty quick into to MVVM. Silverlight, M-V-VM … and IoC – part 2 Giorgetti Alessandro also posted part 2 of his series, and this one digs deeper into the code and discusses what goes into the view and the model. Using the Facebook Developer Toolkit With Windows Phone 7 smartyP has a post addressing using the Facebook Developer toolkit with WP7... it took some hacking, and he explains it, and provides it for download. Silverlight and WPF Tip: Fitting items in a ListBox Having trouble fitting items into a Listbox in Silverlight or WPF without getting horizontal scrollbars? Pete Brown has a solution for you in 4 steps. Making printing easier in Silverlight 4 David Poll has a great detailed post up about printing in SL4, taking it to building a higher-level API that allows printing of collections... all demos and source included. Detailed information about the Silverlight Toolkit's new stacked series support David Anson details the improvements to Data Visualization in the Toolkit release from last week. Space Rocks game step 9: the asteroid sprite Bill Reiss has his latest game episode up and this time he's putting asteroid sprites in play. No placement, movement, or collisions yet, but it's a beginning. And, he's updated all his code to Silverlight 4. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Find The Bug

  - by Alois Kraus

  What does this code print and why?             HashSet<int> set = new HashSet<int>();             int[] data = new int[] { 1, 2, 1, 2 };             var unique = from i in data                          where set.Add(i)                          select i;   // Compiles to: var unique = Enumerable.Where(data, (i) => set.Add(i));             foreach (var i in unique)             {                 Console.WriteLine("First: {0}", i);             }               foreach (var i in unique)             {                 Console.WriteLine("Second: {0}", i);             }   The output is: First: 1 First: 2 Why is there no output of the second loop? The reason is that LINQ does not cache the results of the collection but it does recalculate the contents for every new enumeration again. Since I have used state (the Hashset does decide which entries are part of the output) I do arrive with an empty sequence since Add of the Hashset will return false for all values I have already passed in leaving nothing to return a second time. The solution is quite simple: Use the Distinct extension method or cache the results by calling .ToList() or ToArray() for the result of the LINQ query. Lession Learned: Do never forget to think about state in Where clauses!

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• Motorola Droid App Recommendations

  - by Brian Jackett

  Just as a disclaimer, the views and opinions expressed in this post are solely my own and I’m not getting paid or compensated for anything.     Ok, so I’m one of the crazy few who went out and bought a Droid the week it was released a few months back.  The Motorola Droid was a MAJOR upgrade in phone capabilities for me as my previous phone had no GPS, no web access, limited apps, etc.  I now use my Droid for so much of my life from work to personal to community based events.  Since I’ve been using my Droid for awhile, a number of friends (@toddklindt, @spmcdonough, @jfroushiii, and many more) who later got a Droid asked me which apps I recommended.  While there are a few sites on the web listing out useful Android apps, here’s my quick list (with a few updates since first put together.) Note: * denotes a highly recommended app     Android App Recommendations for Motorola Droid (Updated after 2.1 update) RemoteDroid – install a thin client on another computer and Droid becomes mouse pad / keyboard, control computer remotely PdaNet – free version allows tethering (only to HTTP, no HTTPS) without paying extra monthly charge.  A paid version allows HTTPS access. SportsTap – keep track of about a dozen sports, favorite teams, etc *Movies – setup favorite theaters, find movie times, buy tickets, etc WeatherBug elite – paid app, but gives weather alerts, 4 day forecast, etc.  Free version also exists.  (Update: Android 2.1 offers free weather app, but I still prefer WeatherBug.) *Advanced Task Killer – manually free up memory and kill apps not needed Google Voice – have to have a Google Voice account to really use, but allows visual voice mail, sending calls to specific phones, and too many other things to list AndroZip – access your phone memory like a file system Twidroid – best Twitter client I’ve found so far, but personal preference varies.  I’m using free version and suits me just fine. Skype (beta) – I only use this to send chat messages, not sure how/if phone calls works on this. (Update: Skype Mobile app just released, but uninstalled after few days as it kept launching in background and using up memory when not wanted.) *NewsRob – RSS reader syncs to Google Reader.  I use this multiple times a day, excellent app. (Update: this app does ask for your Google username and password, so security minded folks be cautioned.) ConnectBot – don’t use often myself, but allows SSH into remote computer.  Great if you have a need for remote manage server. Speed Test – same as the online website, allows finding upload/download speeds. WiFinder – store wifi preferences and find wifi spots in area. TagReader – simple Microsoft Tag Reader, works great. *Google Listen – audible podcast catcher that allows putting items into a queue, sync with Google Reader RSS, etc. I personally love this app which has now replaced the iPod I used to use in my car, but have heard mixed reviews from others. Robo Defense – (paid app) tower defense game but with RPG elements to upgrade towers over lifetime playing. I’ve never played FieldRunners but I’m told very similar in offering. Nice distraction when in airport or have some time to burn. Phit Droid 3rd Edition – drag and drop block shapes into a rectangle box, simple game to pass the time with literally 1000s of levels. Note this game has been updated dozens of times with numerous editions so unsure exactly which are still on the market. Google Sky Map – impress your friends by holding Droid up to sky and viewing constellations using Droid screen. wootCheck Lite – check up on daily offerings on Woot.com and affiliated wine, sellout, shirt, and kids sites.   Side notes: I’ve seen that Glympse and TripIt have recently come out with Android apps.  I’ve installed but haven’t gotten to use either yet, but I hear good things.  Will try out on 2 upcoming trips in May and update with impressions.         -Frog Out   Image linked from http://images.tolmol.com/images/grpimages/200910191814100_motorola-droid.gif

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• What Makes a Good Design Critic? CHI 2010 Panel Review

  - by jatin.thaker

  Author: Daniel Schwartz, Senior Interaction Designer, Oracle Applications User Experience Oracle Applications UX Chief Evangelist Patanjali Venkatacharya organized and moderated an innovative and stimulating panel discussion titled "What Makes a Good Design Critic? Food Design vs. Product Design Criticism" at CHI 2010, the annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. The panelists included Janice Rohn, VP of User Experience at Experian; Tami Hardeman, a food stylist; Ed Seiber, a restaurant architect and designer; John Kessler, a food critic and writer at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution; and Larry Powers, Chef de Cuisine at Shaun's restaurant in Atlanta, Georgia. Building off the momentum of his highly acclaimed panel at CHI 2009 on what interaction design can learn from food design (for which I was on the other side as a panelist), Venkatacharya brought together new people with different roles in the restaurant and software interaction design fields. The session was also quite delicious -- but more on that later. Criticism, as it applies to food and product or interaction design, was the tasty topic for this forum and showed that strong parallels exist between food and interaction design criticism. Figure 1. The panelists in discussion: (left to right) Janice Rohn, Ed Seiber, Tami Hardeman, and John Kessler. The panelists had great insights to share from their respective fields, and they enthusiastically discussed as if they were at a casual collegial dinner. John Kessler stated that he prefers to have one professional critic's opinion in general than a large sampling of customers, however, "Web sites like Yelp get users excited by the collective approach. People are attracted to things desired by so many." Janice Rohn added that this collective desire was especially true for users of consumer products. Ed Seiber remarked that while people looked to the popular view for their target tastes and product choices, "professional critics like John [Kessler] still hold a big weight on public opinion." Chef Powers indicated that chefs take in feedback from all sources, adding, "word of mouth is very powerful. We also look heavily at the sales of the dishes to see what's moving; what's selling and thus successful." Hearing this discussion validates our design work at Oracle in that we listen to our users (our diners) and industry feedback (our critics) to ensure an optimal user experience of our products. Rohn considers that restaurateur Danny Meyer's book, Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business, which is about creating successful restaurant experiences, has many applicable parallels to user experience design. Meyer actually argues that the customer is not always right, but that "they must always feel heard." Seiber agreed, but noted "customers are not designers," and while designers need to listen to customer feedback, it is the designer's job to synthesize it. Seiber feels it's the critic's job to point out when something is missing or not well-prioritized. In interaction design, our challenges are quite similar, if not parallel. Software tasks are like puzzles that are in search of a solution on how to be best completed. As a food stylist, Tami Hardeman has the demanding and challenging task of presenting food to be as delectable as can be. To present food in its best light requires a lot of creativity and insight into consumer tastes. It's no doubt then that this former fashion stylist came up with the ultimate catch phrase to capture the emotion that clients want to draw from their users: "craveability." The phrase was a hit with the audience and panelists alike. Sometime later in the discussion, Seiber remarked, "designers strive to apply craveability to products, and I do so for restaurants in my case." Craveabilty is also very applicable to interaction design. Creating straightforward and smooth workflows for users of Oracle Applications is a primary goal for my colleagues. We want our users to really enjoy working with our products where it makes them more efficient and better at their jobs. That's our "craveability." Patanjali Venkatacharya asked the panel, "if a design's "craveability" appeals to some cultures but not to others, then what is the impact to the food or product design process?" Rohn stated that "taste is part nature and part nurture" and that the design must take the full context of a product's usage into consideration. Kessler added, "good design is about understanding the context" that the experience necessitates. Seiber remarked how important seat comfort is for diners and how the quality of seating will add so much to the complete dining experience. Sometimes if these non-food factors are not well executed, they can also take away from an otherwise pleasant dining experience. Kessler recounted a time when he was dining at a restaurant that actually had very good food, but the photographs hanging on all the walls did not fit in with the overall décor and created a negative overall dining experience. While the tastiness of the food is critical to a restaurant's success, it is a captivating complete user experience, as in interaction design, which will keep customers coming back and ultimately making the restaurant a hit. Figure 2. Patanjali Venkatacharya enjoyed the Sardinian flatbread salad. As a surprise Chef Powers brought out a signature dish from Shaun's restaurant for all the panelists to sample and critique. The Sardinian flatbread dish showcased Atlanta's taste for fresh and local produce and cheese at its finest as a salad served on a crispy flavorful flat bread. Hardeman said it could be photographed from any angle, a high compliment coming from a food stylist. Seiber really enjoyed the colors that the dish brought together and thought it would be served very well in a casual restaurant on a summer's day. The panel really appreciated the taste and quality of the different components and how the rosemary brought all the flavors together. Seiber remarked that "a lot of effort goes into the appearance of simplicity." Rohn indicated that the same notion holds true with software user interface design. A tremendous amount of work goes into crafting straightforward interfaces, including user research, prototyping, design iterations, and usability studies. Design criticism for food and software interfaces clearly share many similarities. Both areas value expert opinions and user feedback. Both areas understand the importance of great design needing to work well in its context. Last but not least, both food and interaction design criticism value "craveability" and how having users excited about experiencing and enjoying the designs is an important goal. Now if we can just improve the taste of software user interfaces, people may choose to dine on their enterprise applications over a fresh organic salad.

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