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• Best photo management software?

  - by Niels Basjes

  Hi, What I would like is a single piece of software (or a smart combination of tools) that allow me to manage my photos in a better way than what I've found so far. 1. Tags Primarily I need a way of tagging the images. So I can manually tag photos the same way we tag questions here at SO/SF/SU. I want this software to place a lot of the tags automagically (obvious things like date and resolution). 2. Face recognition What I would really like is that this software has a feature that it can recognize faces in images and places tags with the name of the person. So far I've only heard of one online photo system that can do that (Picasa) and not yet of any offline tool. 3. Version database I must have some way of having a central GIT/SVN/... that contains all images. I have had a harddrive corruption a few years ago and it took me a long time to figure out which images had been damaged. I always want to be able to go back to what the camera produced. 4. Website I want to be able to generate a website (few 'tag' specific websites) based on the actual content. 5. Easy bulk uploading Many photo tools have a one on one uploading option. I prefer simply 'throwing' my images on a file server under Linux (Samba) and let the system automagically integrate, tag, recognize, etc. all images. Ok, I know these are a bit much. Perhaps you guy's have some suggestions about existing tools that can make this possible. Or even a complete system that does this. EDIT: To clarify on the OS. I prefer Linux for any 'server' task and Windows XP for any 'desktop' task. Thanks for all your input. Niels Basjes

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• Compress a folder of PDF files into separate zip archives

  - by Panrubius

  I wanted to take a folder full of PDF files and create a number of separate zip files, after following the advice on this question everything worked *almost*perfectly. Here's what happened: When I issued this command in Terminal: zip -s 5m -r ~/Desktop/invoices ~/Desktop/Invoices/ Everything worked really well, in that I got 11 ZIP files of approximately 5 MB each; placed in the folder specified. However, the files they outputted were named as follows: invoices.z01 invoices.z02 invoices.z03 invoices.z04 invoices.z05 invoices.z06 invoices.z07 invoices.z08 invoices.z09 invoices.z10 invoices.zip So as you can see only invoices.zip has been named correctly. I could go through and rename them one by one, but seriously, if we start doing that then what in the name of Evolution are computers for?! Now, I am also aware that I'm relatively new to the Terminal; so I could be making a very silly mistake somewhere. If that's the case, please be patient :-) Any help would be greatly appreciated. One last note: I'm quadriplegic so I would like to avoid GUI applications as much as possible, I use voice recognition software you see this working in the Terminal is much much easier.

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• IP Blacklists and suspicious inbound and outbound traffic

  - by Pantelis Sopasakis

  I administer a web server and recently we had our IP banned (!) from our host after they received a notification e-mail for abuse. In particular our server is allegedly involved in spam attacks over HTTP. The content of the abuse report email we received was not much informative - for example the IP addresses our server is supposed to have attacked against are not included - so I started a wireshark session checking for suspicious traffic over TCP/HTTP while trying to locate possible security holes on the system. (Let me note that the machine runs a Debian OS). Here is an example of such a request... Source: 89.74.188.233 Destination: 12.34.56.78 // my ip Protocol: HTTP Info: GET 'http://www.media.apniworld.com/image.php?type=hv' HTTP/1.0 I manually blacklisted this host (as well as some other ones) blocking them with iptables, but I can't keep on doing manually all day long... I'm looking for an automated way to block such IPs based on: Statistical analysis, pattern recognition or other AI-based analysis (Though, I'm reluctant to trust such a solution, if exists) Public blacklists Using DNSBL I actually found out that 89.74.188.233 is blacklisted. However other IPs which are strongly suspicious like 93.199.112.126 (i.e. http://www.pornstarnetwork.com/account/signin), unfortunately were not blacklisted! What I would like to do is to automatically connect my firewall with DNSBL (or some other blacklist database) and block all traffic towards blacklisted IPs or somehow have my local blacklist automatically updated.

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• Backup Picasa 'people' tags data

  - by pelms

  OK, so I've spent a fair amount of time putting names to faces in Picasa 3.5 but in a few days (hopefully) my copy of Windows 7 should arrive and I'll need to reinstall Windows. So, does anyone know what I need to backup so that I don't have to re-enter all those name tags? N.B. I'm on Windows 7 RC and know that I don't have to do a clean reinstall but I would prefer to. Outcome: I clean installed Windows 7 and downloaded and installed Picasa. Unfortunately, the download link on the UK Picasa homepage still pointed to Picasa 3.0 (rather than 3.5) which doesn't have face recognition. This scanned my photos folders and overwrote the picasa.ini files along with the people information   :¬( Fortunately I'd backed up the photos before installing Win 7, so after uninstalling Picasa 3.0 (along with it's database), restoring the photos from backup and installing Picasa 3.5, I finally got my face names back. Extra... Google has now posted advice on how to migrate to Windows 7 and keep your Picasa database, meaning that it will not need to rescan you photos and will retain all information about then including name tags. They have a method for upgrading and for a clean install of Win 7. Basically you need to back up: "C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Google\Picasa2" and "C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Google\Picasa2Albums"

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• How to find Stolen MacBook with iCloud

  - by user1518089

  My MacBook Air was stolen about 6 weeks ago. Through iCloud and "Find Phone", I have some pictures and a location down to about 2 blocks. The pictures are from the current user taking photos which automatically appear on my local devices. (Yes they probably saw my pictures until I stopped taking them. Yes, they are stupid.) I was thinking about going there and hanging out until I recognized the current users, but it is in a very bad neighborhood and I would be noticed. The police have not done anything. Yes, the MacBook can be locked or a message sent. I am hoping to get it back. Does anyone have ideas on how to track them down? While Find Phone shows their location, it does not report an ip address. Is there a way to get an ip address? Does Facebook face recognition work on strangers? Come on tech geniuses, help me play detective. It does not have Drop Box installed.

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• A tool to aid completion of missing or incomplete source code documentation

  - by Pekka

  I have several finished, older PHP projects with a lot of includes that I would like to document in javadoc/phpDocumentor style. While working through each file manually and being forced to do a code review alongside the documenting would be the best thing, I am, simply out of time constraints, interested in tools to help me automate the task as much as possible. The tool I am thinking about would ideally have the following features: Parse a PHP project tree and tell me where there are undocumented files, classes, and functions/methods (i.e. elements missing the appropriate docblock comment) Provide a method to half-way easily add the missing docblocks by creating the empty structures and, ideally, opening the file in an editor (internal or external I don't care) so I can put in the description. Optional: Automatic recognition of parameter types, return values and such. But that's not really required. The language in question is PHP, though I could imagine that a C/Java tool might be able to handle PHP files after some tweaking. Looking forward to your suggestions! Bounty There are already very good suggestions for this (that I have not yet had the time to check out) to point out the gaps, but none yet providing aid in filling them. I want to give the question some more exposure, maybe there is some sort of a graphical extension to php_codesniffer to achieve the level of automation I'm dreaming of. Looking forward to any additional input!

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• Modify python USB device driver to only use vendor_id and product_id, excluding BCD

  - by Tony

  I'm trying to modify the Android device driver for calibre (an e-book management program) so that it identifies devices by only vendor id and product id, and excludes BCD. The driver is a fairly simply python plugin, and is currently set up to use all three numbers, but apparently, when Android devices use custom Android builds (ie CyanogenMod for the Nexus One), it changes the BCD so calibre stops recognizing it. The current code looks like this, with a simple list of vendor id's, that then have allowed product id's and BCD's with them: VENDOR_ID = { 0x0bb4 : { 0x0c02 : [0x100], 0x0c01 : [0x100]}, 0x22b8 : { 0x41d9 : [0x216]}, 0x18d1 : { 0x4e11 : [0x0100], 0x4e12: [0x0100]}, 0x04e8 : { 0x681d : [0x0222]}, } The line I'm specifically trying to change is: 0x18d1 : { 0x4e11 : [0x0100], 0x4e12: [0x0100]}, Which is, the line for identifying a Nexus One. My N1, running CyanogenMod 5.0.5, has the BCD 0x0226, and rather than just adding it to the list, I'd prefer to eliminate the BCD from the recognition process, so that any device with vendor id 0x18d1 and product id 0x4e11 or 0x4e12 would be recognized. The custom Android rom doesn't change enough for the specifics to matter. The syntax seems to require the BCD in brackets. How can I edit this so that it matches anything in that field?

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• OCR: How to improve accuracy - existing libraries for removing non-text 'furniture', shapes, etc to

  - by Rob

  I want to remove rectangles etc that enclose text in a screenshot image, so that I can perform optical character recognition to get accurate text from the screenshot. Background: I doing this to extract data from a legacy application for use with other applications. This is the only way to get at this data as associated files are in a closed, proprietary, binary format. I will be using AutoItScript to drive the application to show data in its UI, then I will screenshot this and feed this to tesseract. I've already had some success in automating the UI, and have been able to use tesseract to get plain ascii text out of the bitmap. There are several AutoItScripr forum articles discussing its use with tesseract/OCR but not specifically for my question. http://www.autoitscript.com/forum/index.php?s=6c32c3ece12756e635a619cdf175eff9&showforum=2 What I need to do There are thin, 1-pixel wide rectangles that closely enclose some text, when fed to tesseract, it sees them as I for example for a verticle line of the rectangle. Any thoughts on how to remove the rectangles, or best practices? I'm asking if there is a generic command line based toolset to overwrite rectangles, for example, in .png files. I could then pass the .png through this, then pass it to tesseract. Details on the tesseract release/setup I've used are as follows: Go here: http://code.google.com/p/tesseract-ocr/downloads/list - For the basic english generic character set to get Tesseract up and running and recognising your bitmapped text into ascii text, use tesseract-2.00.eng.tar.gz (current version at time of writing is: "English language data for Tesseract (2.00 and up) Jul 2007 989 KB 84845") Related questions I have already looked at on Stack Overflow http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1335581/how-to-give-best-chance-of-success-to-an-ocr-software http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2296568/analysis-and-transformation-of-the-image-on-the-basis-of-this-analysis-for-better http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2268028/reading-characters-off-of-the-screen In these, my question is not completely answered or a commercial solution is being sold. I do not want to consider a commercial solution at this stage.

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• Beginner video capture and processing/Camera selection

  - by mattbauch

  I'll soon be undertaking a research project in real-time event recognition but have no experience with the programming aspect of video capture (I'm an upperclassman undergraduate in computer engineering). I want to start off on the right foot so advice from anyone with experience would be great. The ultimate goal is to track events such as a person standing up/sitting down, entering/leaving a room, possibly even shrugging/slumping in posture, etc. from a security camera-like vantage point. First of all, which cameras/companies would you recommend? I'm looking to spend ~$100, more if necessary but not much. Great resolution isn't a must, but is desirable if affordable. What about IP network cameras vs. a USB type webcam? Webcams are less expensive, but IP cameras seem like they'd be much less work to deal with in software. What features should I look for in the camera? Once I've selected a camera, what does converting its output to a series of RGB bitmaps entail? I've never dealt with video encoding/decoding so a starting point or a tutorial that will guide me up to this point would be great if anyone has suggestions. Finally, what is the best (least complicated/most efficient) way to display video from the camera plus my own superimposed images (boxes around events in progress, for instance) in a GUI application? I can work on any operating system in any language. I have some experience with win32 GUIs and Java GUIs. The focus of the project is on the algorithm and so I'm trying to get the video capture/display portion of the app done cleanly and quickly. Thanks for any responses!!

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• Parsec: backtracking not working

  - by Nathan Sanders

  I am trying to parse F# type syntax. I started writing an [F]Parsec grammar and ran into problems, so I simplified the grammar down to this: type ::= identifier | type -> type identifier ::= [A-Za-z0-9.`]+ After running into problems with FParsec, I switched to Parsec, since I have a full chapter of a book dedicated to explaining it. My code for this grammar is typeP = choice [identP, arrowP] identP = do id <- many1 (digit <|> letter <|> char '.' <|> char '`') -- more complicated code here later return id arrowP = do domain <- typeP string "->" range <- typeP return $ "("++domain++" -> "++range++")" run = parse (do t <- typeP eof return t) "F# type syntax" The problem is that Parsec doesn't backtrack by default, so > run "int" Right "int" -- works! > run "int->int" Left "F# type syntax" unexpected "-" expecting digit, letter, ".", "`" or end of input -- doesn't work! The first thing I tried was to reorder typeP: typeP = choice [arrowP, identP] But this just stack overflows because the grammar is left-recursive--typeP never gets to trying identP because it keeps trying arrowP over and over. Next I tried try in various places, for example: typeP = choice [try identP, arrowP] But nothing I do seems to change the basic behaviours of (1) stack overflow or (2) non-recognition of "-" following an identifier. My mistake is probably obvious to anybody who has successfully written a Parsec grammar. Can somebody point it out?

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• how to better (inambiguaously) use the terms CAPTCHA and various types of interactions?

  - by vgv8

  I am working on survey of state-of-the-art and trends of spam prevention techniques. I observe that non-intrusive, transparent to visitor spam prevention techniques (like context-based filtering or honey traps) are frequently called non-captcha. Is it correct understanding of term CAPTCHA which is "type of challenge-response [ 2 ]test used in computing to ensure that the response is not generated by a compute" [ 1 ] and challenge-response does not seem to imply obligatory human involvement. So, which understanding (definition) of term and classification I'd better to stick with? How would I better call CAPTCHA without direct human interaction in order to avoid ambiguity and confusion of terms understnding? How would I better (succinctly and unambiguously) coin the term for captchas requiring human interaction but without typing into textbox? How would I better (succinctly and unambiguously) coin the terms to mark the difference between human interaction with images (playing, drag&dropping, rearranging, clicking with images) vs. just recognizing them (and then typing into a textbox the answer without interaction with images)? PS. The problem is that recognition of a wiggled word in an image or typing the answer to question is also interaction and when I start to use the terms "interaction", "interactive", "captcha", "protection", "non-captcha", "non-interactive", "static", "dynamic", "visible", "hidden" the terms overlap ambiguously with which another (especailly because the definitions or their actual practice of usage are vague or contradictive). [ 1 ] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAPTCHA

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• osCommerce custom PHP page

  - by Afrosimon

  Hello! One of my client has an old osCommerce website and while working on it I have to implement what I would call "custom php page", i.e. a page which query a MySQL table, not related to osCommerce, and list the result. I'm not sure of the version, this trick I have seen a lot didn't gave me any result : http://www.clubosc.com/how-to-know-what-version-of-oscommerce-you-are-using.html . And I'm having a hard time doing this seemingly simple task, since osCommerce doesn't allow any php code in the page creation, and I didn't find any module giving me this possibility (not that it is easy to search in this mess : http://addons.oscommerce.com/). At this point I figured it would be easier to just hack'n slash through the code and come up with a custom page : I copied the index.php (the entry point in the application) : <?php require('includes/application_top.php'); if(!$smarty->is_cached($sContentPage, $sCachingGroup)) { //we switch on the content recognition require('includes/pages/' . $sContentClass . '.php'); } $smarty->display($sContentPage, $sCachingGroup); require(DIR_WS_INCLUDES . 'application_bottom.php'); ?> Here I gave a specific value to $sContentClass (with or without the if makes no difference) and customize the corresponding PHP file so it show my custom content but also initialize the same variable than those other PHP file in the pages/ folder. But alas, all of this curious and dubious code simply return me the home page. So here I am, is there an osCommerce Guru around here, or would anyone has a better idea (oh and I also posted on the osCommerce forum, but I'm still waiting for a response...)? Thanks a lot in advance.

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• Fast, very lightweight algorithm for camera motion detection?

  - by Ertebolle

  I'm working on an augmented reality app for iPhone that involves a very processor-intensive object recognition algorithm (pushing the CPU at 100% it can get through maybe 5 frames per second), and in an effort to both save battery power and make the whole thing less "jittery" I'm trying to come up with a way to only run that object recognizer when the user is actually moving the camera around. My first thought was to simply use the iPhone's accelerometers / gyroscope, but in testing I found that very often people would move the iPhone at a consistent enough attitude and velocity that there wouldn't be any way to tell that it was still in motion. So that left the option of analyzing the actual video feed and detecting movement in that. I got OpenCV working and tried running their pyramidal Lucas-Kanade optical flow algorithm, which works well but seems to be almost as processor-intensive as my object recognizer - I can get it to an acceptable framerate if I lower the depth levels / downsample the image / track fewer points, but then accuracy suffers and it starts to miss some large movements and trigger on small hand-shaking-y ones. So my question is, is there another optical flow algorithm that's faster than Lucas-Kanade if I just want to detect the overall magnitude of camera movement? I don't need to track individual objects, I don't even need to know which direction the camera is moving, all I really need is a way to feed something two frames of video and have it tell me how far apart they are.

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• Could you please provide me with comments on a Java game of mine?

  - by Peter Perhác

  Hello there. I have marked this question as community wiki, so no rep points are thrown around. I made this game, Forest Defender, a proof-of-feasibility little project, which I would like to share with you and collect your constructive comments, first impressions, etc. It is a the first playable (and enjoyable) game I have released to the public, so I am, naturally, very eager to get some recognition by you, as my peers. I read in a StackOverflow blog, that One of the major reasons we created Stack Overflow to give every programmer a chance to be recognized by their peers. Recognized for their knowledge, their passion, [...] It comes in the form of a Java applet, I used an animation framework called PulpCore and I must say that it's been extremely enjoyable to work with it. I do recommend to people interested in Java game development. Since the product is free, fun, entirely commercial-free and I am willing to share the code to it (on request), I thought it would be OK to post this as a topic here. Moderators, please feel free to move this to another place if you deem the other place more appropriate. EDIT: I am ever so stupid to forget to include a link :-) http://www.perhac.com/shared/forest-defender/index.html

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• Tablet interface for the physically disabled?

  - by Glenn

  My sister has Cerebral Palsy, which in her case means she has only gross motor control and her speech is slurred. Implications should be obvious: traditional computer/phone/tablet interfaces won't work for her and she can't speak clearly enough for speech recognition software to help her at all. She enjoys reading but has difficulty holding the book and/or turning a page. There are a few options for helping her use a computer, but nothing for tablets or eReaders. That's where you come in. I would like to make (or buy, if such a thing exists) a better interface to an Android tablet that would work for someone with little to no physical dexterity or speech ability. I'd also be interested in work on the Kindle or iPad, but I'm most familiar with Android so I'm starting there. I know Android has Bluetooth capability. Is it possible to interface a joystick to control the Android device? By "control", I mean the entire operating system - selecting an app, launching it, controlling the menus, etc. I want to give her control over the whole thing, not just a specific app. On a PC this can be accomplished by creating a generic USB HID interface and an arcade joystick to move the mouse over the screen and click on thigns. Is it possible to do something like that in Android? Any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

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• SpeechRecognizer causes ANR... I need help with Android speech API.

  - by Dondo Chaka

  I'm trying to use Android's speech recognition package to record user speech and translate it to text. Unfortunately, when I attempt initiate listening, I get an ANR error that doesn't point to anything specific. As the SpeechRecognizer API indicates, a RuntimeException is thrown if you attempt to call it from the main thread. This would make me wonder if the processing was just too demanding... but I know that other applications use the Android API for this purpose and it is typically pretty snappy. java.lang.RuntimeException: SpeechRecognizer should be used only from the application's main thread Here is a (trimmed) sample of the code I'm trying to call from my service. Is this the proper approach? Thanks for taking the time to help. This has been a hurdle I haven't been able to get over yet. Intent intent = new Intent(RecognizerIntent.ACTION_RECOGNIZE_SPEECH); intent.putExtra(RecognizerIntent.EXTRA_LANGUAGE_MODEL, RecognizerIntent.LANGUAGE_MODEL_FREE_FORM); intent.putExtra(RecognizerIntent.EXTRA_CALLING_PACKAGE, "com.domain.app"); SpeechRecognizer recognizer = SpeechRecognizer .createSpeechRecognizer(this.getApplicationContext()); RecognitionListener listener = new RecognitionListener() { @Override public void onResults(Bundle results) { ArrayList<String> voiceResults = results .getStringArrayList(RecognizerIntent.EXTRA_RESULTS); if (voiceResults == null) { Log.e(getString(R.string.log_label), "No voice results"); } else { Log.d(getString(R.string.log_label), "Printing matches: "); for (String match : voiceResults) { Log.d(getString(R.string.log_label), match); } } } @Override public void onReadyForSpeech(Bundle params) { Log.d(getString(R.string.log_label), "Ready for speech"); } @Override public void onError(int error) { Log.d(getString(R.string.log_label), "Error listening for speech: " + error); } @Override public void onBeginningOfSpeech() { Log.d(getString(R.string.log_label), "Speech starting"); } }; recognizer.setRecognitionListener(listener); recognizer.startListening(intent);

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• How do you work on Strategic Development initiatives when Tactical work takes priority?

  - by Shaun F

  My day-to-day job consists of maintaining large volume websites and this has given me exposure to developing better methods to develop and maintain the code. This has also given me a large body of knowledge in the code base in terms of troubleshooting that is beneficial to the company. I'm also the maintainer of an IDE plug in I created to help navigate and generate code that is used. Operationally though, my job is to handle any client requests that come in of that are emergencies and make any enhancements and additions to the code base required. This work, along with the daily managing and feeding of the the project managers will take up my entire day. How does one manage the time between the tactical day job and the strategic initiatives? How does one get and ask for recognition for taking strategic initiatives? Is the 8-9 hour day just not going to cut it? Is there even a job out there for programmers to develop strategic initiatives and solutions for a company? I want to also point out that this isn't a problem with the company at all. I think this is more of a personal-improvement decision. Nobody will say no to the improvements at all. I believe in making the things happen but I don't think I'm going to get time from the company to do it...

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• Recursive function for copy of multilevel folder is not working.

  - by OM The Eternity

  Recursive function for copy of multilevel folder is not working. I have a code to copy all the mulitilevel folder to new folder. But in between I feel there is problem of proper path recognition, see the code below.. <?php $source = '/var/www/html/pranav_test'; $destination = '/var/www/html/parth'; copy_recursive_dirs($source, $destination); function copy_recursive_dirs($dirsource, $dirdest) { // recursive function to copy // all subdirectories and contents: if(is_dir($dirsource)) { $dir_handle=opendir($dirsource); } if(!is_dir($dirdest)) { mkdir($dirdest, 0777); } while($file=readdir($dir_handle)) {/*echo "<pre>"; print_r($file);*/ if($file!="." && $file!="..") { if(!is_dir($dirsource.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.$file)) { copy ($dirsource.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.$file, $dirdest.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.$dirsource.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.$file); } else{ copy_recursive_dirs($dirsource.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.$file, $dirdest); } } } closedir($dir_handle); return true; } ?> from the above code the if loop has a copy function as per requirement, but the path applied for destination here is not proper, I have tried with basename function as well.. but it didnt got the expected result.. below is the if loop i am talking about with comment describing the output... if(!is_dir($dirsource.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.$file)) { $basefile = basename($dirsource.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.$file);//it gives the file name echo "Pranav<br>".$dirdest.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.$dirsource.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.$file;//it outputs for example "/var/www/html/parth//var/www/html/pranav_test/media/system/js/caption.js" which is not correct.. copy ($dirsource.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.$file, $dirdest.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.$dirsource.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.$file); } as shown above the i cannot get the files and folders copied to expected path.. please guide me to place proper path in the function....

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• Developer’s Life – Every Developer is a Superman

  - by Pinal Dave

  I enjoyed comparing developers to Spiderman so much, that I have decided to continue the trend and encourage some of my favorite people (developers) with another favorite superhero – Superman.  Superman is probably the most famous superhero – and one of the most inspiring. Everyone has their own favorite, but Superman has been the longest enduring of all comic book characters.  Clark Kent has inspired multiple movie series, TV shows, books, cartoons, and costumes.  Superman’s enduring popularity has been attributed to his superhuman strength, integrity, dedication to good, and his humility in keeping his identity a secret. So how are developers like Superman? Well, read on my list of reasons. Secret Identities They have secret identities.  I’m not saying that all developers wear thick glasses and go by an alias like “Clark Kent.”  But developers certainly work in the background, making sure everything runs smoothly, often without recognition.  Like Superman, when they have done their job right, no one knows they were there. Working Alone You don’t have to work alone.  Superman doesn’t have a sidekick like Robin or Bat Girl, but he is a major player in the Justice League.  Developers have amazing skills, and they shouldn’t be afraid to unite those skills to solve some of the world’s major problems (like slow networks). Daily Inspiration Developers are inspiring.  Clark Kent works at The Daily Planet, Metropolis’ newspaper, which is lucky because he can keep some of the publicity Superman inspires under wraps.  Developers might go unnoticed sometimes, but when people hear about some of the tasks they accomplish on a daily basis, it inspires awe. Discover Your Superpowers You have to discover your superpowers.  Clark Kent didn’t just wake up one morning with the full understanding that he could fly, leap tall buildings in a single bound, and was stronger than a speeding locomotive.  He slowly discovered these powers (after a few comic book-worthy misunderstandings!).  Developers are always learning and growing as well.  You probably won’t wake up with super powers, either, but years of practice and continuing education can get you close. Every Day is a New Day The story continues.  The Superman comic books are still being printed, and have been in print since 1938.  There have been two TV series, (one, Smallville, was on TV for ten seasons) and multiple cartoon adaptations.  There have been multiple movies, with many different actors.  A new reboot came out last year, and another is set to premier in 2016.   So, developers, when you are having a bad day or a problem seems unsolvable – remember, the story will continue!  There is always tomorrow. I hope you are all enjoying reading about developers-as-superheroes as much as I am enjoying writing about them.  Please tell me how else developers are like Superheroes in the comments – especially if you know any developers who are faster than a speeding bullet and can leap tall buildings in a single bound. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: Developer, Superhero

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• Smart Help with UPK

  - by [email protected]

  A short lesson on how awesome Smart Help is. In Oracle UPK speak, there are targeted and non-targeted applications. Targeted applications are Oracle EBS, PeopleSoft, Siebel, JD Edwards, SAP and a few others. Non-targeted applications are either custom built or other third party off the shelf applications. For most targeted applications you'll see better object recognition (during recording) and also Help Integration for that application. Help integration means that someone technical modifies the help link in your application to call up the UPK content that has been created. If you have seen this presented before, this is usually where the term context sensitive help is mentioned and the Do It mode shows off. The fact that UPK builds context sensitive help for its targeted applications automatically is awesome enough, but there is a whole new world out there and it's called "custom and\or third party apps." For the purposes of Smart Help and this discussion, I'm talking about the browser based applications. How does UPK support these apps? It used to be that you had to have your vendor try to modify the Help link to point to UPK or if your company had control over the applications configuration menus, then you get someone on your team to modify this for you. But as you start to use UPK for more than one, two or three applications, the administration of this starts to become daunting. Multiple administrators, multiple player packages, multiple call points, multiple break points, help doesn't always work the same way for every application (picture the black white infomercial with an IT person trying to configure a bunch of wires or something funny like that). Introducing Smart Help! (in color of course, new IT person, probably wearing a blue shirt and smiling). Smart help eliminates the need to configure multiple browser help integration points, and adds a icon to the users browser itself. You're using your browser to read this now correct? Look up at the icons on your browser, you have the home link icon, print icon, maybe an RSS feed icon. Smart Help is icon that gets added to the users browser just like the others. When you click it, it first recognizes which application you're in and then finds the UPK created material for you and returns the best possible match, for (hold on to your seat now) both targeted and non-targeted applications (browser based applications). But wait, there's more. It does this automatically! You don't have to do anything! All you have to do is record content, UPK and Smart Help do the rest! This technology is not new. There are customers out there today that use this for as many as six applications! The real hero here is SMART MATCH. Smart match is the technology that's used to determine which application you're in and where you are when you click on Smart Help. We'll save that for a one-on-one conversation. Like most other awesome features of UPK, it ships with the product. All you have to do is turn it on. To learn more about Smart Help, Smart Match, Targeted and Non-Targeted applications, contact your UPK Sales Consultant or me directly at [email protected]

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• Silverlight Cream for March 25, 2010 -- #820

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: René Schulte, Jeremy Likness, Hassan, Victor Gaudioso, SilverLaw, Mike Taulty, Phani Raj, Tim Heuer, Christian Schormann, Brad Abrams, David Anson, Diptimaya Patra, and Daniel Vaughan. Shoutouts: Last week, Koen Zwikstra announced Silverlight Spy at MIX10 Anand Iyer announced this for students on the Windows Team Blog: Be a Windows Phone 7 “Rockstar” Justin Angel blogged that Silverlight Isn't Fully Cross-Platform ... let him know if you think it's a yawn or important. On behalf of SilverlightShow, Cigdem Patlak posted MIX10: Laurent Bugnion on Silverlight adoption, WP7 and the EcoContest From SilverlightCream.com: Coding4Fun - Silverlight Real Time Face Detection René Schulte has a Coding 4 Fun article posted on facial recognition. Who better to be manipulating graphics like this than René? Sequential Asynchronous Workflows Part 2: Simplified Jeremy Likness follows up his previous post with another one that is 'simplified'. Remember his previous post began with a post on the Silverlight.net forum and Rob Eisenburg's MVVM presentation from MIX10 Windows Phone 7 Video Tutorial Hassan has a new video up on his AfricanGeek site, and that's a continuation of his previous WP7 video tutorial, adding a listbox and databinding it to the selected index of another listbox. The Los Angeles Silverlight Usergorup will be Streaming its March Meeting LIVE in Silverlight – Tonight! Victor Gaudioso used his Live Streaming knowledge to stream his User Group meeting last night from LA where Michael Washington presented on MVVM followed by Victor himself. That was last night. Today he has a couple of the videos up to view. Shining 3D Font Design - Silverlight 3 SilverLaw has a "Shining 3D Font" tutorial up, and a video on it here: New Video: How to create a 3D effect on a Silverlight 3 Textblock ... this is also available in the Expression Gallery. Silverlight 4 RC – Signing trusted apps with home made certificates Mike Taulty has a post up about building a hand-rolled cert to test out the XAP signing features, and then gives a nod to John Papa with a link to the Silverlight White Paper I've posted about before, because this info is in there as well. Developing a Windows Phone 7 Application that consumes OData Phani Raj has a tutorial up on consuming the NetFlix OData catalog on the WP7 emulator ... now *that* is cool! Make your Silverlight applications Speak to you with Microsoft Translator Tim Heuer used Silverlight to demonstrate Microsoft Translator as a speech synthesis tool using the Speak API included ... pretty cool, Tim ... lots of external links and code. Blend 4: About Path Layout, Sidebar – More About ListBox Than You Ever Wanted To Know Christian Schormann has another outstanding tutorial up on the ListBox and PathLayout in Expression Blend ... just check out the screen shots and you'll wanna read it! Silverlight 4 + RIA Services: Ready for Business: Updating Data in the Client This is the continuation of Brad Abrams' series on WCF RIA Services and is a tutorial on setting up to deal with updating the data. Tip: The CLR wrapper for a DependencyProperty should do its job and nothing more David Anson is posting some "Development Tips", and this is the first ... discussing making sure your DependencyProperty CLR wrapper stays on point... Create and Apply Theme Silverlight Application Diptimaya Patra has a tutorial up on creating and using themes. He states that "Themes are nothing but some predefined styles" ... check it out and see if it's really that easy :) Building a Windows Phone 7 Puzzle Game Daniel Vaughan has a great post up starting with installing all the tools and ending with a maze game for WP7 using XNA for sound... this is the first I've seen that integrates XNA (I think). 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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• SharePoint OCR image files indexing

  Introduction This article describes how to setup indexing of the image files (including TIFF, PDF, JPEG, BMP...) using OCR technology. The indexing described below utilizes Microsoft IFilter technology and as such is not specific to SharePoint, but can be used with any product that uses Microsoft indexing: Microsoft Search, Desktop search, SQL Server search, and through the plug-ins with Google desktop search. I however use it with Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 2003. For those other products, the registration may need to be slightly different. Background  One of the projects I was working on required a storage of old documents scanned into PDF files. Then there was a separate team of people responsible for providing a tags for a search engine so those image documents could be found. The whole process was clumsy, labor intensive, and error prone. That was what started me on my exploration path. OCR The first search I fired was for the Open Source OCR products. Pretty quickly, I narrowed it down to TESSERACT (http://code.google.com/p/tesseract-ocr/). Tesseract is an orphaned brain child of HP that worked on it from 1985 to 1995. Then it was moved to the Open Source, and now if I understand it correctly, Google is working on it. With credentials like that, it's no wonder that Tesseract scores one of the highest marks on OCR recognition and accuracy. After downloading and struggling just a bit, I got Tesseract to work. The struggling part was that the home page claims that its base input format is a TIFF file. May be my TIFFs were bad, but I was able to get it to work only for BMP files. Image files conversion So now that I have an OCR that can convert BMP files into text, how do I get text out of the image PDF files? One more search, and I settled down on ImageMagic (http://www.imagemagick.org/). This is another wonderful Open Source utility that can convert any file into image. It did work out of the box, converting any TIFF files into bitmaps, but to get PDF files converted, it requires a GhostScript (http://mirror.cs.wisc.edu/pub/mirrors/ghost/GPL/gs864/gs864w32.exe). Dealing with text PDFs With that utility installed, I was cooking - I can convert any file (in particular PDF and TIFF) into bitmap, and then I can extract the text out of the bitmap. The only consideration was to somehow treat PDF files containing text differently - after all, OCR is very computation intensive and somewhat error prone even with perfect image quality and resolution. So another quick search, and I have a PDFTOTEXT (ftp://ftp.foolabs.com/pub/xpdf/xpdf-3.02pl4-win32.zip) - thank God for Open Source! With these guys, I can pull text out of PDF in an eye blink. However, I would get nothing for pure image PDFs, but I already have a solution for that! Batch process It took another 15 minutes to setup a batch script to automate the process: Check the file extension If file is a PDF file try to extract text out of it if there is more than certain amount of text in the file - done! if there is no text, convert first page into bitmap run OCR on the bitmap For any other file type, convert file into bitmap Run OCR on the bitmap Once you unzip the attached project, check out the bin\OCR.BAT file. It will create a temporary file in the directory where your source file is with the same name + the '.txt' extension.Continue span.fullpost {display:none;}

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• Google TV Gets Bad Reception. Can Media Center Pull in the Signal?

  - by andrewbrust

  The news hit Monday morning that Google has decided to delay the release of its Google TV platform, and has asked its OEMs to delay any products that embed the software.  Coming just about two weeks prior to the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Google’s timing is about the worst imaginable.  CES is where the platform should have had its coming out party, especially given all the anticipation that has built up since its initial announcement came 7 months ago. At last year’s CES, it seemed every consumer electronics company had fashioned its own software stack for Internet-based video programming and applications/widgets on its TVs, optical disc players and set top boxes.  In one case, I even saw two platforms on a single TV set (one provided by Yahoo and the other one native to the TV set). The whole point of Google TV was to solve this problem and offer a standard, embeddable platform.  But that won’t be happening, at least not for a while.  Google seems unable to get it together, and more proprietary approaches, like Apple TV, don’t seem to be setting the world of TV-Internet convergence on fire, either. It seems to me, that when it comes to building a “TV operating system,” Windows Media Center is still the best of a bad bunch.  But it won’t stay so for much longer without some changes.  Will Redmond pick up the ball that Google has fumbled?  I’m skeptical, but hopeful.  Regardless, here are some steps that could help Microsoft make the most of Google’s faux pas: Introduce a new Media Center version that uses XBox 360, rather than Windows 7 (or 8), as the platform.  TV platforms should be appliance-like, not PC-like.  Combine that notion with the runaway sales numbers for Xbox 360 Kinect, and the mass appeal it has delivered for Xbox, and the switch form Windows makes even more sense. As I have pointed out before, Microsoft’s Xbox implementation of its Mediaroom platform (announced and demoed at last year’s CES) gets Redmond 80% of the way toward this goal.  Nothing stops Microsoft from going the other 20%, other than its own apathy, which I hope has dissipated. Reverse the decision to remove Drive Extender technology from Windows Home Server (WHS), and create deep integration between WHS and Media Center.  I have suggested this previously as well, but the recent announcement that Drive Extender would be dropped from WHS 2.0 creates the need for me to a) join the chorus of people urging Microsoft to reconsider and b) reiterate the importance of Media Center-WHS integration in the context of a Google compete scenario. Enable Windows Phone 7 (WP7) as a Media Center client.  This would tighten the integration loop already established between WP7, Xbox and Zune.  But it would also counter Echostar/DISH Network/Sling Media, strike a blow against Google/Android (and even Apple/iOS) and could be the final strike against TiVO. Bring the WP7 user interface to Media Center and Kinect-enable it.  This would further the integration discussed above and would be appropriate recognition of WP7’s Metro UI having been built on the heritage of the original Media Center itself.  And being able to run your DVR even if you can’t find the remote (or can’t see its buttons in the dark) could be a nifty gimmick. Microsoft can do this but its consumer-oriented organization, responsible for Xbox, Zune and WP7, has to take the reins here, or none of this will likely work.  There’s a significant chance that won’t happen, but I won’t let that stop me from hoping that it does and insisting that it must.  Honestly, this fight is Microsoft’s to lose.

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• Major Analyst Report Chooses Oracle As An ECM Leader

  - by brian.dirking(at)oracle.com

  Oracle announced that Gartner, Inc. has named Oracle as a Leader in its latest "Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management" in a press release issued this morning. Gartner's Magic Quadrant reports position vendors within a particular quadrant based on their completeness of vision and ability to execute. According to Gartner, "Leaders have the highest combined scores for Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision. They are doing well and are prepared for the future with a clearly articulated vision. In the context of ECM, they have strong channel partners, presence in multiple regions, consistent financial performance, broad platform support and good customer support. In addition, they dominate in one or more technology or vertical market. Leaders deliver a suite that addresses market demand for direct delivery of the majority of core components, though these are not necessarily owned by them, tightly integrated, unique or best-of-breed in each area. We place more emphasis this year on demonstrated enterprise deployments; integration with other business applications and content repositories; incorporation of Web 2.0 and XML capabilities; and vertical-process and horizontal-solution focus. Leaders should drive market transformation." "To extend content governance and best practices across the enterprise, organizations need an enterprise content management solution that delivers a broad set of functionality and is tightly integrated with business processes," said Andy MacMillan, vice president, Product Management, Oracle. "We believe that Oracle's position as a Leader in this report is recognition of the industry-leading performance, integration and scalability delivered in Oracle Enterprise Content Management Suite 11g." With Oracle Enterprise Content Management Suite 11g, Oracle offers a comprehensive, integrated and high-performance content management solution that helps organizations increase efficiency, reduce costs and improve content security. In the report, Oracle is grouped among the top three vendors for execution, and is the furthest to the right, placing Oracle as the most visionary vendor. This vision stems from Oracle's integration of content management right into key business processes, delivering content in context as people need it. Using a PeopleSoft Accounts Payable user as an example, as an employee processes an invoice, Oracle ECM Suite brings that invoice up on the screen so the processor can verify the content right in the process, improving speed and accuracy. Oracle integrates content into business processes such as Human Resources, Travel and Expense, and others, in the major enterprise applications such as PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Siebel, and E-Business Suite. As part of Oracle's Enterprise Application Documents strategy, you can see an example of these integrations in this webinar: Managing Customer Documents and Marketing Assets in Siebel. You can also get a white paper of the ROI Embry Riddle achieved using Oracle Content Management integrated with enterprise applications. Embry Riddle moved from a point solution for content management on accounts payable to an infrastructure investment - they are now using Oracle Content Management for accounts payable with Oracle E-Business Suite, and for student on-boarding with PeopleSoft e-Campus. They continue to expand their use of Oracle Content Management to address further use cases from a core infrastructure. Oracle also shows its vision in the ability to deliver content optimized for online channels. Marketers can use Oracle ECM Suite to deliver digital assets and offers as part of an integrated campaign that understands website visitors and ensures that they are given the most pertinent information and offers. Oracle also provides full lifecycle management through its built-in records management. Companies are able to manage the lifecycle of content (both records and non-records) through built-in retention management. And with the integration of Oracle ECM Suite and Sun Storage Archive Manager, content can be routed to the appropriate storage media based upon content type, usage data or other business rules. This ensures that the most accessed content is instantly available, and archived content is stored on a more appropriate medium like tape. You can learn more in this webinar - Oracle Content Management and Sun Tiered Storage. If you are interested in reading more about why Oracle was chosen as a Leader, view the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management.

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• asynchrony is viral

  - by Daniel Moth

  It is becoming hard to write code today without introducing some form of asynchrony and, if you are using .NET (e.g. for Windows Phone 8 or Windows Store apps), that means sooner or later you have to await something and mark your method as async. My most recent examples included introducing speech recognition in my Translator By Moth phone app where I had to await mySpeechRecognizerUI.RecognizeWithUIAsync() and when moving that code base to a Windows Store project just to show a MessageBox I had to await myMessageDialog.ShowAsync(). Any time you need to invoke an asynchronous method in your code, you have a choice to make: kick off the operation but don’t wait for it to complete (otherwise known as fire-and-forget), synchronously wait for it to complete (which will entail blocking, which can be bad, especially on a UI thread), or asynchronously wait for it to complete before continuing on with the rest of the method’s work. In most cases, you want the latter, and the await keyword makes that trivial to implement.  When you use the magical await keyword in front of an API call, then you typically have to make additional changes to your code: This await usage is within a method of course, and now you have to annotate that method with async. Furthermore, you have to change the return type of the method you just annotated so it returns a Task (if it previously returned void), or Task<myOldReturnType> (if it previously returned myOldReturnType). Note that if it returns void, in some cases you could cheat and stop there. Furthermore, any method that called this method you just annotated with async will now also be invoking an asynchronous operation, so you have to make that change in the body of the caller method to introduce the await keyword before the call to the method. …you guessed it, you now have to change this caller method to be annotated with async and have its return types tweaked... …and it goes on virally… At some point you reach the root of your user code, e.g. a GUI event handler, and whoever calls that void method can already deal with the fact that you marked it as async and the viral introduction of the keywords stops there… This is all wonderful progress and a very powerful mechanism, and I just wish someone had written a refactoring tool to take care of this… anyone? I mentioned earlier that you have a choice when invoking an asynchronous operation. If the first time you encounter this you wish to localize the impact of all these changes and essentially try to turn the asynchronous behavior into synchronous by blocking - don't! For reasons why you don't want to do that, read Toub's excellent blog post (and check out the rest of his blog with gems on async programming starting with the Async FAQ). Just embrace the pattern knowing that when you use one instance of an await, you'll propagate the change all the way to the root user code method, e.g. typically an event handler. Related aside: I just finished re-writing my MessageBox wrapper class for Phone projects, including making it work in Windows Store projects, and it does expect you to use it with an await :-). I'll share that in an upcoming post for those of you that have the same need… Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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