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• WinMo > ASMX WebException - how to get details?

  - by eidylon

  Okay, we've got an application which consists of a website hosting several ASMX webservices, and a handheld application running on WinMo 6.1 which calls the webservices. Been developing in the office, everything works perfect. Now we've gone to install it at the client's and we got all the servers set up and the handhelds installed. However the handhelds are now no longer able to connect to the webservice. I added in extra code in my error handler to specifically trap WebException exceptions and handle them differently in the logging to put out extra information (.Status and .Response). I am getting out the status, which is returning a [7], or ProtocolError. However when I try to read out the ResponseStream (using WebException.Response.GetResponseStream), it is returning a stream with CanRead set to False, and I thus am unable to get any further details of what is going wrong. So I guess there are two things I am asking for help with... a) Any help with trying to get more information out of the WebException? b) What could be causing a ProtocolError exception? Things get extra complicated by the fact that the client has a full-blown log-in-enabled proxy setup going on-site. This was stopping all access to the website initially, even from a browser. So we entered in the login details in the network connection for HTTP on the WinMo device. Now it can get to websites fine. In fact, I can even pull up the webservice fine and call the methods from the browser (PocketIE). So I know the device is able to see the webservices okay via HTTP. But when trying to call them from the .NET app, it throws ProtocolError [7]. Here is my code which is logging the exception and failing to read out the Response from the WebException. Public Sub LogEx(ByVal ex As Exception) Try Dim fn As String = Path.Combine(ini.CorePath, "error.log") Dim t = File.AppendText(fn) t.AutoFlush = True t.WriteLine(<s>===== <%= Format(GetDateTime(), "MM/dd/yyyy HH:mm:ss") %> =====<%= vbCrLf %><%= ex.Message %></s>.Value) t.WriteLine() t.WriteLine(ex.ToString) t.WriteLine() If TypeOf ex Is WebException Then With CType(ex, WebException) t.WriteLine("STATUS: " & .Status.ToString & " (" & Val(.Status) & ")") t.WriteLine("RESPONSE:" & vbCrLf & StreamToString(.Response.GetResponseStream())) End With End If t.WriteLine("=".Repeat(50)) t.WriteLine() t.Close() Catch ix As Exception : Alert(ix) : End Try End Sub Private Function StreamToString(ByVal s As IO.Stream) As String If s Is Nothing Then Return "No response found." // THIS IS THE CASE BEING EXECUTED If Not s.CanRead Then Return "Unreadable response found." Dim rv As String = String.Empty, bytes As Long, buffer(4096) As Byte Using mem As New MemoryStream() Do While True bytes = s.Read(buffer, 0, buffer.Length) mem.Write(buffer, 0, bytes) If bytes = 0 Then Exit Do Loop mem.Position = 0 ReDim buffer(mem.Length) mem.Read(buffer, 0, mem.Length) mem.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin) rv = New StreamReader(mem).ReadToEnd() mem.Close() End Using Return rv.NullOf("Empty response found.") End Function Thanks in advance!

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• PHP: How do I loop through every XML file in a directory?

  - by celebritarian

  Hi! I'm building a simple application. It's a user interface to an online order system. Basically, the system is going to work like this: Other companies upload their purchase orders to our FTP server. These orders are simple XML files (containing things like customer data, address information, ordered products and the quantities…) I've built a simple user interface in HTML5, jQuery and CSS — all powered by PHP. PHP reads the content of an order (using the built-in features of SimpleXML) and displays it on the web page. So, it's a web app, supposed to always be running in a browser at the office. The PHP app will display the content of all orders. Every fifteen minutes or so, the app will check for new orders. How do I loop through all XML files in a directory? Right now, my app is able to read the content of a single XML file, and display it in a nice way on the page. My current code looks like this: // pick a random order that I know exists in the Order directory: $xml_file = file_get_contents("Order/6366246.xml",FILE_TEXT); $xml = new SimpleXMLElement($xml_file); // start echo basic order information, like order number: echo $xml->OrderHead->ShopPO; // more information about the order and the customer goes here… echo "<ul>"; // loop through each order line, and echo all quantities and products: foreach ($xml->OrderLines->OrderLine as $orderline) { echo "<tr>\n". "<li>".$orderline->Quantity." st.</li>\n". "<li>".$orderline->SKU."</li>\n"; } echo "</ul>"; // more information about delivery options, address information etc. goes here… So, that's my code. Pretty simple. It only needs to do one thing — print out the content of all order files on the screen — so me and my colleagues can see the order, confirm it and deliver it. That's it. But right now — as you can see — I'm selecting one single order at a time, located in the Order directory. But how do I loop through the entire Order directory, and read aand display the content of each order (like above)? I'm stuck. I don't really know how you get all (xml) files in a directory and then do something with the files (like reading them and echo out the data, like I want to). -- I'd really appreciate some help. I'm not very experienced with PHP/server-side programming, so if you could help me out here I'd be very grateful. Thanks a lot in advance! // Björn (celebritarian at me dot com)

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• Remote host: can tracert, can telnet, can*not* browse: what gives?

  - by MacThePenguin

  One of my customers of the company I work for has made a change to their Internet connection, and now we can't connect to them any more from our LAN. To help me troubleshoot this issue, the network guy on the customer's site has configured their firewall so that a HTTPS connection to their public IP address is open to any IP. I should put https://<customer's IP> in my browser and get a web page. Well, it works from any network I've tried (even from my smartphone), just not from my company's LAN. I thought it may be an issue with our firewall (though I checked its rules and it allows outbound TCP port 443 to anywhere), so I just connected a PC directly to the network connection of our provider, bypassing out firewall completely, and still it didn't work (everything else worked). So I asked for help to our Internet provider's customer service, and they asked me to do a tracert to our customer's IP. The tracert is successful, as the final hop shown in the output is the host I want to reach. So they said there's no problem. :( I also tried telnet <customer's IP> 443 and that works as well: I get a blank page with the cursor blinking (I've tried using another random port and that gives me an error message, as it should). Still, from any browser of any PC in my LAN I can't open that URL. I tried checking the network traffic with Wireshark: I see the packages going through and answers coming back, thought the packets I see passing are far less than they are if I successfully connect to another HTTPS website. See the attached screenshot: I had to blur the IPs, anyway the longer string is my PC's local IP address, the shorter one is the customer's public IP. I don't know what else to try. This is the only IP doing this... Any idea what could I try to find a solution to this issue? Thanks, let me know if you need further details. Edit: when I say "it doesn't work" I mean: the page doesn't open, the browser keeps loading for a long time and eventually shows an error saying that the page cannot be opened. I'm not in my office now so I can't paste the exact message, but it's the usual message you get when the browser reaches its timeout. When I say "it works", I mean the browser loads and shows a webpage (it's the logon page for the customers' firewall admin interface: so there's the firewall brand's logo and there are fields to enter a user id and a password). Update 13/09/2012: tried again to connect to the customer's network through our Internet connection without a firewall. This is what I did: Run a Kubuntu 12.04 live distro on a spare laptop; Updated all the packages I could and installed WireShark; Attached it to my LAN and verified that I couldn't open https://<customer's IP>. Verified that the Wireshark trace for this attempt was the same as the one I've already posted; Verified that I could connect to another customer's host using rdesktop (it worked); Tried to rdesktop to <customer's IP>, here's the output: kubuntu@kubuntu:/etc$ rdesktop <customer's IP> Autoselected keyboard map en-us ERROR: recv: Connection reset by peer Disconnected the laptop from the LAN; Disconnected the firewall from the Extranet connection, connected the laptop instead. Set its network configuration so that I could access the Internet; Verified that I could connect to other websites in http and https and in RDP to other customers' hosts - it all worked as expected; Verified that I could still traceroute to <customer's IP>: I could; Verified that I still couldn't open https://<customer's IP> (same exact result as before); Checked the WireShark trace for this attempt and noticed a different behaviour: I could see packets going out to the customer's IP, but no replies at all; Tried to run rdesktop again, with a slightly different result: kubuntu@kubuntu:/etc/network$ rdesktop <customer's IP> Autoselected keyboard map en-us ERROR: <customer's IP>: unable to connect Finally gave up, put everything back as it was before, turned off the laptop and lost the WireShark traces I had saved. :( I still remember them very well though. :) Can you get anything out of it? Thank you very much. Update 12/09/2012 n.2: I followed the suggestion by MadHatter in the comments. From inside the firewall, this is what I get: user@ubuntu-mantis:~$ openssl s_client -connect <customer's IP>:443 CONNECTED(00000003) If I now type GET / the output pauses for several seconds and then I get: write:errno=104 I'm going to try the same, but bypassing the firewall, as soon as I can. Thanks. Update 12/09/2012 n.3: So, I think ISA Server is altering the results of my tests... I tried installing Wireshark directly on the firewall and monitoring the packets on the Extranet network card. When the destination is the customer's IP, whatever service I try to connect to (HTTPS, RDP or SAProuter), I can only see outbound packets and no response packets whatsoever from their side. It looks like ISA Server is "faking" the remote server's replies, that's why I get a connection using telnet or the openSSL client. This is the wireshark trace from inside our LAN: But this is the trace on the Extranet network card: This makes a bit more sense... I'll send this info to the customer's tech and see if he can make anything out of it. Thanks to all that took the time to read my question and post suggestions. I'll update this post again.

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• Connecting a LAN to an OpenVPN server via a windows 7 client gateway

  - by user705142

  I've got OpenVPN set up between my windows 7 client and linux server. The goal is that I'll get secure access to a webapp running on the server from any computer on the client LAN. I'm using ccd to assign static ip addresses to each client connection, with key authentication. It's working on my client machine (10.83.41.9), and when you go to the gateway IP address (10.83.41.1), it loads up the webapp. Now I really need the other computers on the client LAN to be able to connect to the webapp as well, via the windows machine. The client has a static IP address of 192.168.2.100 on the LAN, and I've enabled IP forwarding in windows (confirmed by ipconfig /all). In my router I've forwarded 10.83.41.1 / 255.255.255.255 to 192.168.2.100. In server.conf I have.. route 192.168.2.0 255.255.255.0 And in the office ccd.. ifconfig-push 10.83.41.9 10.83.41.10 iroute 192.168.2.0 255.255.255.0 The client log is as follows: Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 OpenVPN 2.2.2 Win32-MSVC++ [SSL] [LZO2] [PKCS11] built on Dec 15 2011 Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 NOTE: OpenVPN 2.1 requires '--script-security 2' or higher to call user-defined scripts or executables Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 Control Channel Authentication: using 'ta.key' as a OpenVPN static key file Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 Outgoing Control Channel Authentication: Using 160 bit message hash 'SHA1' for HMAC authentication Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 Incoming Control Channel Authentication: Using 160 bit message hash 'SHA1' for HMAC authentication Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 LZO compression initialized Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 Control Channel MTU parms [ L:1558 D:166 EF:66 EB:0 ET:0 EL:0 ] Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 Socket Buffers: R=[8192->8192] S=[64512->64512] Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 Data Channel MTU parms [ L:1558 D:1450 EF:58 EB:135 ET:0 EL:0 AF:3/1 ] Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 Local Options hash (VER=V4): '9e7066d2' Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 Expected Remote Options hash (VER=V4): '162b04de' Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 UDPv4 link local: [undef] Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 UDPv4 link remote: 111.65.224.202:1194 Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 TLS: Initial packet from 111.65.224.202:1194, sid=ceb04c22 8cc6d151 Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 VERIFY OK: depth=1, /C=NZ/O=XXX./CN=XXX Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 VERIFY OK: nsCertType=SERVER Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 VERIFY OK: depth=0, /C=NZ/O=XXX./CN=XXX Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 Replay-window backtrack occurred [1] Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 Data Channel Encrypt: Cipher 'AES-256-CBC' initialized with 256 bit key Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 Data Channel Encrypt: Using 160 bit message hash 'SHA1' for HMAC authentication Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 Data Channel Decrypt: Cipher 'AES-256-CBC' initialized with 256 bit key Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 Data Channel Decrypt: Using 160 bit message hash 'SHA1' for HMAC authentication Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 Control Channel: TLSv1, cipher TLSv1/SSLv3 DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA, 1024 bit RSA Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 [server] Peer Connection Initiated with 111.65.224.202:1194 Thu Mar 15 20:19:58 2012 SENT CONTROL [server]: 'PUSH_REQUEST' (status=1) Thu Mar 15 20:19:59 2012 PUSH: Received control message: 'PUSH_REPLY,route 10.83.41.1,topology net30,ping 10,ping-restart 120,ifconfig 10.83.41.9 10.83.41.10' Thu Mar 15 20:19:59 2012 OPTIONS IMPORT: timers and/or timeouts modified Thu Mar 15 20:19:59 2012 OPTIONS IMPORT: --ifconfig/up options modified Thu Mar 15 20:19:59 2012 OPTIONS IMPORT: route options modified Thu Mar 15 20:19:59 2012 ROUTE default_gateway=192.168.2.1 Thu Mar 15 20:19:59 2012 TAP-WIN32 device [OpenVPN] opened: \\.\Global\{B32D85C9-1942-42E2-80BA-7E0B5BB5185F}.tap Thu Mar 15 20:19:59 2012 TAP-Win32 Driver Version 9.9 Thu Mar 15 20:19:59 2012 TAP-Win32 MTU=1500 Thu Mar 15 20:19:59 2012 Notified TAP-Win32 driver to set a DHCP IP/netmask of 10.83.41.9/255.255.255.252 on interface {B32D85C9-1942-42E2-80BA-7E0B5BB5185F} [DHCP-serv: 10.83.41.10, lease-time: 31536000] Thu Mar 15 20:19:59 2012 Successful ARP Flush on interface [45] {B32D85C9-1942-42E2-80BA-7E0B5BB5185F} Thu Mar 15 20:20:04 2012 TEST ROUTES: 1/1 succeeded len=1 ret=1 a=0 u/d=up Thu Mar 15 20:20:04 2012 C:\WINDOWS\system32\route.exe ADD 10.83.41.1 MASK 255.255.255.255 10.83.41.10 Thu Mar 15 20:20:04 2012 ROUTE: CreateIpForwardEntry succeeded with dwForwardMetric1=30 and dwForwardType=4 Thu Mar 15 20:20:04 2012 Route addition via IPAPI succeeded [adaptive] Thu Mar 15 20:20:04 2012 Initialization Sequence Completed From the other machines I can ping 192.169.2.100, but not 10.83.41.1. In the how-to, it mentions "Make sure your network interface is in promiscuous mode." as well. I can't find in the windows network config, so this may or may not be part of it. Ideally this would be achieved without any special configuration the other LAN computers. Not sure how far I'm going to get on my own at this point, any ideas? Is there something I'm missing, or anything I should need to know?

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• IPTables masquerading with one NIC

  - by Tuinslak

  Hi, I am running an OpenVPN server with only one NIC. This is my current layout: public.ip > Cisco firewall > lan.ip > OpenVPN server lan.ip = 192.168.22.70 The Cisco firewall forwards the requests to the oVPN server, thus so far everything works and clients are able to connect. However, all clients connected should be able to access 3 networks: lan1: 192.168.200.0 (vpn lan) > tun0 lan2: 192.168.110.0 (office lan) > eth1 (gw 192.168.22.1) lan3: 192.168.22.0 (server lan) > eth1 (broadcast network) So tun0 is mapped to eth1. Iptables output: # iptables-save # Generated by iptables-save v1.4.2 on Wed Feb 16 14:14:20 2011 *filter :INPUT ACCEPT [327:26098] :FORWARD DROP [305:31700] :OUTPUT ACCEPT [291:27378] -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT -A INPUT -i tun0 -j ACCEPT -A INPUT -i ! tun0 -p udp -m udp --dport 67 -j REJECT --reject-with icmp-port-unreachable -A INPUT -i ! tun0 -p udp -m udp --dport 53 -j REJECT --reject-with icmp-port-unreachable -A FORWARD -d 192.168.200.0/24 -i tun0 -j DROP -A FORWARD -s 192.168.200.0/24 -i tun0 -j ACCEPT -A FORWARD -d 192.168.200.0/24 -i eth1 -j ACCEPT COMMIT # Completed on Wed Feb 16 14:14:20 2011 # Generated by iptables-save v1.4.2 on Wed Feb 16 14:14:20 2011 *nat :PREROUTING ACCEPT [302:26000] :POSTROUTING ACCEPT [3:377] :OUTPUT ACCEPT [49:3885] -A POSTROUTING -o eth1 -j MASQUERADE COMMIT # Completed on Wed Feb 16 14:14:20 2011 Yet, clients are unable to ping any ip (including 192.168.200.1, which is the oVPN's IP) When the machine was directly connected to the internet, with 2 NICs, it was quite simply solved with masquerading and adding static routes in the oVPN client's config. However, as masquerading won't accept virtual interfaces (eth0:0, etc) I am unable to get masquerading to work again (and I'm not even sure whether I need virtual interfaces). Thanks. Edit: OpenVPN server: # ifconfig eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr ba:e6:64:ec:57:ac inet addr:192.168.22.70 Bcast:192.168.22.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::b8e6:64ff:feec:57ac/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:6857 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:4044 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:584046 (570.3 KiB) TX bytes:473691 (462.5 KiB) Interrupt:14 lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1 RX packets:334 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:334 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:33773 (32.9 KiB) TX bytes:33773 (32.9 KiB) tun0 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00 inet addr:192.168.200.1 P-t-P:192.168.200.2 Mask:255.255.255.255 UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:100 RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B) ifconfig on a client: # ifconfig eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:22:64:71:11:56 inet addr:192.168.110.94 Bcast:192.168.110.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::222:64ff:fe71:1156/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:3466 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:1838 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:997924 (974.5 KiB) TX bytes:332406 (324.6 KiB) Interrupt:17 lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1 RX packets:37847 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:37847 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:2922444 (2.7 MiB) TX bytes:2922444 (2.7 MiB) tun0 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00 inet addr:192.168.200.30 P-t-P:192.168.200.29 Mask:255.255.255.255 UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:689 errors:0 dropped:18 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:100 RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:468778 (457.7 KiB) wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:16:ea:db:ae:86 UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:704699 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:730176 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:520385963 (496.2 MiB) TX bytes:225210422 (214.7 MiB) static routes line at the end of the client's config (I've been playing around with the 192.168.200.0 -- (un)commenting to see if anything changes): route 192.168.200.0 255.255.255.0 route 192.168.110.0 255.255.255.0 route 192.168.22.0 255.255.255.0 route on a vpn client: # route -n Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface 192.168.200.29 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.255 UH 0 0 0 tun0 192.168.22.0 192.168.200.29 255.255.255.0 UG 0 0 0 tun0 192.168.200.0 192.168.200.29 255.255.255.0 UG 0 0 0 tun0 192.168.110.0 192.168.200.29 255.255.255.0 UG 0 0 0 tun0 192.168.110.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0 0.0.0.0 192.168.110.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0 edit: Weirdly enough, if I set push "redirect-gateway def1" in the server config, (and thus routes all traffic through VPN, which is not what I want), it seems to work.

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• help setting up an IPSEC vpn from my linux box

  - by robthewolf

  I have an office with a router and a remote server (Linux - Ubuntu 10.10). Both locations need to connect to a data supplier through a VPN. The VPN is an IPSEC gateway. I was able to configure my Linksys rv42 router to create a VPN connection successfully and now I need to do the same for Linux server. I have been messing around with this for too long. First I tried OpenVPN, but that is SSL and not IPSEC. Then I tried Shrew. I think I have the settings correct but I haven't been able to create the connection. It maybe that I have to use something else like a direct IPSEC config or something like that. If someone knows of a way to turn the following settings that I have been given below into a working IPSEC VPN connection I would be very grateful. Here are the settings I was given that must be used to connect to my supplier: Local destination network: 192.168.4.0/24 Local destination hosts: 192.168.4.100 Remote destination network: 192.167.40.0/24 Remote destination hosts: 192.168.40.27 VPN peering point: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx Then they have given me the following details: IPSEC/ISAKMP Phase 1 Parameters: Authentication method: pre shared secret Diffie Hellman group: group 2 Encryption Algorithm: 3DES Lifetime in seconds:28800 Phase 2 parameters: IPSEC security: ESP Encryption algortims: 3DES Authentication algorithms: MD5 lifetime in seconds: 28800 pfs: disabled Here are the settings from my attempt to use shrew: n:version:2 n:network-ike-port:500 n:network-mtu-size:1380 n:client-addr-auto:0 n:network-frag-size:540 n:network-dpd-enable:1 n:network-notify-enable:1 n:client-banner-enable:1 n:client-dns-used:1 b:auth-mutual-psk:YjJzN2QzdDhyN2EyZDNpNG42ZzQ= n:phase1-dhgroup:2 n:phase1-keylen:0 n:phase1-life-secs:28800 n:phase1-life-kbytes:0 n:vendor-chkpt-enable:0 n:phase2-keylen:0 n:phase2-pfsgroup:-1 n:phase2-life-secs:28800 n:phase2-life-kbytes:0 n:policy-nailed:0 n:policy-list-auto:1 n:client-dns-auto:1 n:network-natt-port:4500 n:network-natt-rate:15 s:client-dns-addr:0.0.0.0 s:client-dns-suffix: s:network-host:xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx s:client-auto-mode:pull s:client-iface:virtual s:client-ip-addr:192.168.4.0 s:client-ip-mask:255.255.255.0 s:network-natt-mode:enable s:network-frag-mode:disable s:auth-method:mutual-psk s:ident-client-type:address s:ident-client-data:192.168.4.0 s:ident-server-type:address s:ident-server-data:192.168.40.0 s:phase1-exchange:aggressive s:phase1-cipher:3des s:phase1-hash:md5 s:phase2-transform:3des s:phase2-hmac:md5 s:ipcomp-transform:disabled Finally here is the debug output from the shrew log: 10/12/22 17:22:18 ii : ipc client process thread begin ... 10/12/22 17:22:18 < A : peer config add message 10/12/22 17:22:18 DB : peer added ( obj count = 1 ) 10/12/22 17:22:18 ii : local address 217.xxx.xxx.xxx selected for peer 10/12/22 17:22:18 DB : tunnel added ( obj count = 1 ) 10/12/22 17:22:18 < A : proposal config message 10/12/22 17:22:18 < A : proposal config message 10/12/22 17:22:18 < A : client config message 10/12/22 17:22:18 < A : local id '192.168.4.0' message 10/12/22 17:22:18 < A : remote id '192.168.40.0' message 10/12/22 17:22:18 < A : preshared key message 10/12/22 17:22:18 < A : peer tunnel enable message 10/12/22 17:22:18 DB : new phase1 ( ISAKMP initiator ) 10/12/22 17:22:18 DB : exchange type is aggressive 10/12/22 17:22:18 DB : 217.xxx.xxx.xxx:500 <- 206.xxx.xxx.xxx:500 10/12/22 17:22:18 DB : c1a8b31ac860995d:0000000000000000 10/12/22 17:22:18 DB : phase1 added ( obj count = 1 ) 10/12/22 17:22:18 : security association payload 10/12/22 17:22:18 : - proposal #1 payload 10/12/22 17:22:18 : -- transform #1 payload 10/12/22 17:22:18 : key exchange payload 10/12/22 17:22:18 : nonce payload 10/12/22 17:22:18 : identification payload 10/12/22 17:22:18 : vendor id payload 10/12/22 17:22:18 ii : local supports nat-t ( draft v00 ) 10/12/22 17:22:18 : vendor id payload 10/12/22 17:22:18 ii : local supports nat-t ( draft v01 ) 10/12/22 17:22:18 : vendor id payload 10/12/22 17:22:18 ii : local supports nat-t ( draft v02 ) 10/12/22 17:22:18 : vendor id payload 10/12/22 17:22:18 ii : local supports nat-t ( draft v03 ) 10/12/22 17:22:18 : vendor id payload 10/12/22 17:22:18 ii : local supports nat-t ( rfc ) 10/12/22 17:22:18 : vendor id payload 10/12/22 17:22:18 ii : local supports DPDv1 10/12/22 17:22:18 : vendor id payload 10/12/22 17:22:18 ii : local is SHREW SOFT compatible 10/12/22 17:22:18 : vendor id payload 10/12/22 17:22:18 ii : local is NETSCREEN compatible 10/12/22 17:22:18 : vendor id payload 10/12/22 17:22:18 ii : local is SIDEWINDER compatible 10/12/22 17:22:18 : vendor id payload 10/12/22 17:22:18 ii : local is CISCO UNITY compatible 10/12/22 17:22:18 = : cookies c1a8b31ac860995d:0000000000000000 10/12/22 17:22:18 = : message 00000000 10/12/22 17:22:18 - : send IKE packet 217.xxx.xxx.xxx:500 - 206.xxx.xxx.xxx:500 ( 484 bytes ) 10/12/22 17:22:18 DB : phase1 resend event scheduled ( ref count = 2 ) 10/12/22 17:22:18 ii : opened tap device tap0 10/12/22 17:22:28 - : resend 1 phase1 packet(s) 217.xxx.xxx.xxx:500 - 206.xxx.xxx.xxx:500 10/12/22 17:22:38 - : resend 1 phase1 packet(s) 217.xxx.xxx.xxx:500 - 206.xxx.xxx.xxx:500 10/12/22 17:22:48 - : resend 1 phase1 packet(s) 217.xxx.xxx.xxx:500 - 206.xxx.xxx.xxx:500 10/12/22 17:22:58 ii : resend limit exceeded for phase1 exchange 10/12/22 17:22:58 ii : phase1 removal before expire time 10/12/22 17:22:58 DB : phase1 deleted ( obj count = 0 ) 10/12/22 17:22:58 ii : closed tap device tap0 10/12/22 17:22:58 DB : tunnel stats event canceled ( ref count = 1 ) 10/12/22 17:22:58 DB : removing tunnel config references 10/12/22 17:22:58 DB : removing tunnel phase2 references 10/12/22 17:22:58 DB : removing tunnel phase1 references 10/12/22 17:22:58 DB : tunnel deleted ( obj count = 0 ) 10/12/22 17:22:58 DB : removing all peer tunnel refrences 10/12/22 17:22:58 DB : peer deleted ( obj count = 0 ) 10/12/22 17:22:58 ii : ipc client process thread exit ...

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• Web browsing is fast, but downloads are slow

  - by Ricket

  I work for a company on my university's campus, helping with general IT problems and some web development. But lately there has been a problem that has me and my boss completely stumped. We, plus one contractor, make up the entire IT department, so I'm reaching out to you for help. All around the office, we have wall jacks. These collect in a closet down the hall and all plug into a switch. This switch, along with our individual server jacks, plugs into another switch, and that switch plugs into our firewall hardware. Then the firewall is connected out to our campus network. Our campus internet is, well, very fast. I don't know exactly the terms, tiers, etc., but we have thousands of students and downloads can run as fast as 10 MB/s at night; uploads are sometimes even faster. I think we're practically ISP level. In short, I have a lot of faith that it is not the campus side of things that is causing a problem, combined with other evidence I'll mention in a moment. So our symptoms: web browsing is fast. Web pages, images, etc. load instantly. No problems there. But then when I go to download something, the download starts fast but very quickly (a matter of seconds) drops to nearly 0. Often it will actually drop to 0 and time out. This happens with even very small files, 1 MB or less. It smells to me like a QoS sort of thing. I'm not entirely sure, and I wanted to get your opinions first. My boss is hesitant to touch our firewall, much less let me touch it, and it was set up and is managed by a consultant remotely. These problems don't seem tied to a time of the day. I've tried downloads after 5:00 and still the same thing happens. From my desk, I can turn on my wireless adapter and pick up the campus wireless access point. If I unplug ethernet and connect to it, downloads are fast. This adds to my suspicion that it's limited to our company network. Also, a number of weeks ago the consultant upgraded our firewall firmware. Suddenly everything was very fast. I tested with downloads from Sun and speedtest.net and things were blazing fast, as they should be with our campus internet! It was wonderful, and I figured the slow speeds were an old firmware bug. In a matter of days, things steadily declined until they were back to the old symptoms. Oh, and we have antivirus installed on every computer, and we keep it up to date. Though I suppose the possibility is still there that someone could have spyware which is bogging down our internet, in which case what is the easiest/best way to find this out? (maybe this should go in a separate question) Thank you for your patience in reading all of this. Do you have any ideas as to what I can try? Is this something that you've experienced before? What sort of tools or methods can I use to try and diagnose the problem? P.S. everything here is Windows. Windows Server 2003 and 2008 on our servers, and Windows XP on employees' machines. Update: We are submitting a ticket to the university to just take a look and see if they see anything unusual and/or can suggestion methods for us to try and pinpoint our problem. Hopefully they'll be helpful! I'll update this to let you know what goes on. Update again: We found a hub (yes, a HUB) right between our campus connection and our firewall. It had only those two ethernet cables plugged into it, nothing else. After removing the hub, our speeds have jumped up to several mbps. However in talking with the campus, we got them to run a gigabit line to our firewall in place of the 100mbps line. As of friday, we are at about 65 mbps up and down (according to speedtest.net at 8am)!! Go NC State!!

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• Windows XP - Repairing Corrupt System32\Config\System File

  - by SimonTewsi

  My apologies for this long post. I would like to describe the mess I'm in then ask some questions about how to fix it: Starting up my Windows XP SP1 machine I got the following message: Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM Tried restarting several times with same results then Googled the problem. Tried the fix described here: http://icrontic.com/articles/repair%5Fwindows%5Fxp (since my CPU does not have XD buffer overflow protection I did not set /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN as OS Load Option). This did not work. I then found another fix for the problem on hardwareanalysis.com: Basically, boot to dos prompt (or recovery console if available) and make backups of the following files:- c:\windows\system32\config\system (to c:\windows\tmp\system.bak) c:\windows\system32\config\software (to c:\windows\tmp\software.bak) c:\windows\system32\config\sam (to c:\windows\tmp\sam.bak) c:\windows\system32\config\security (to c:\windows\tmp\security.bak) c:\windows\system32\config\default (to c:\windows\tmp\default.bak) then delete the above files (not the backups!) then copy the above files in c:\windows\repair to the c:\windows\system32\config directory restart your computer This did work (and I wish I'd done it first, since it was completely reversible, unlike the first method). However, afterwards I found that all the user accounts on the PC were gone. I resurrected them by copying the backed up security file back into the system32\config folder (I may have copied the SAM file from backup as well, I cannot remember clearly now). Now the PC boots up and I can log in. However things are still not right. I tried to alter one of the user accounts and found I could not access the User Accounts in the Control Panel. Microsoft KB 919292 had a fix for the problem. However, the fix failed with a Windows Installer error: The Windows Installer Service could not be accessed. This can occur if you are running Windows in safe mode, or if Windows Installer is not correctly installed. Contact your support personnel for assistance. Windows Installer 3.1 was already installed. I reinstalled it but continued to get the Windows Installer error whenever I tried to run the fix in KB 919292. I have since noticed another three problems: 1) Several applications on the PC no longer run, eg Microsoft Word. Shortcuts no longer seem to do anything and if I run the executables directly (eg for Word by running C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office10\Winword.exe) I get a message similar to: "Microsoft Word has not been installed for the current user. Please run setup to install the application." even though the executable is clearly visible in Windows Explorer (and even though Word actually opens - the error dialog appears after Word has opened. Clicking OK to the error dialog closes Word). 2) One or the other of the two fixes I tried for the original problem caused new user profiles to be created. eg My old user profile under the Documents and Settings folder was Simon. The old one still exists but there is now a new one called Simon.DBQ2515. Obviously the new one is being used because Opera (my browser that still works) no longer sees the bookmarks file under my old profile. 3) Probably as a result of fooling around with the Security file, when I try to boot off the Windows XP CD and run the Recovery Console I am now asked for the administrator password. The only problem is there is no administrator account on the PC. There is one account, LocalAdmin, that has administrative rights but when I entered the password for that account it did not work. It is so long since I originally set up the PC that I cannot remember if the original administrator account ever had a password and, if so, what it was. So, my question is: How can I fix this mess? In particular: 1) Having tried the two fixes linked to above, have I irrepairably damaged the Windows instance, requiring a clean reinstallation of Windows + all applications, or should it be possible to get the machine working correctly again without such drastic measures? 2) Is there any way to get around the administrator password so I can use the Recovery Console again, given that there is no account called "administrator" and the password for the one account with admin privileges does not work (and that, before I started the second fix, I was not asked for an administrator password)? 3) Is there any easy way to fix the problem with the applications that think they are not installed? 4) Is there any easy way to fix the problem of the Windows Installer that does not work, even if reinstalled? Cheers Simon

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• How can I provide maximum integration between a calendar-like webapp and desktop calendar applicatio

  - by Joshua Carmody

  I've been assigned to upgrade/rewrite a webapp that my company uses to schedule conference calls. One of the goals of the upgrade is to improve integration between the application and our user's Outlook calendars (and ideally other calendar programs as well). At present, when a user is viewing the details of a scheduled conference call on the webapp, they can click an "Add to Outlook calendar" link, which points them to a dynamically generated .ical file. On most of our users' systems, Outlook opens the file by default, bringing up the "create calendar appointment" window with the concall information pre-populated. This link creates a 1-time appointment only, and has to be clicked on for each occurrence of the call. So if a call happened every Monday in June, you would have to click 4 links to add all the appointments to your calendar. This is the full extent of our current level of integration. Ideally, we will be able to upgrade the system so that users can "subscribe" to a con call, which would mean not just the current call, but all calls in a reoccurring series would appear in the user's calendar with a single click. If one call in a series was cancelled, or rescheduled, that call's appointment would change in the users' calendar, without the user having to do anything, and without upsetting the rest of the series' appointments. Also, any changes to the call's info (say, the phone number was changed) would automatically be updated in the Outlook calendars of anyone who subscribed, without them having to come back to the webapp to double-check that their information is up to date. Ideally this would also work with other popular calendar programs, as well as Google Calendar. I don't know if we'll be able to achieve that level of integration, but I'd like to get as close to that as we can. Additional details and challenges: We aren't running Exchange on a public server, and I'm not likely to be able to get that changed Assume that our users are basically "the general internet public". Our users are not members of our office's network, nor can they be. We can't set up network logins or Exchange accounts for them. Some of our users are not using Outlook, but some other calendar program. Of the ones that are using Outlook, not all are using the same version. We have users in more than 50 countries that are using this webapp. Synchronization would be one-directional. Nobody can make changes in their own calendars and expect the server to reflect them/replicate them to other users Current conference calling application is written in ColdFusion. Rewrite will probably be in ASP.NET, but I haven't confirmed that yet. Solutions that work with either or both technologies are appreciated. I know that .ical files can theoretically contain more than one event, but in my own experiments I haven't had success in getting Outlook (2003) to add more than one event at a time using the .ical file method. Maybe someone knows how to set up a multi-event .ical file that Outlook will accept? Could a link to such an .ical file be "subscribed" to? Is there such thing as a calendar RSS feed? Could I simulate running an exchange server? Any other ideas? Thanks everyone!

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• How you remember by default functionality/class name etc of the platform

  - by piemesons

  Hello everyone, I am 8 months experienced guy, (B.tech in computer science) In my college time i used to create simple programs in c/c++/java. Simple programs like creating linked list/binary trees programs. frankly saying those college bullshit exercise.(I am from India so Engg colleges in india sucks except few like IIT's etc). In my college time apart from my college exercises i created some better programs/games like arachnoid, snake. We had 6 months internship in our college curriculum. I worked on asp.net. Basically the work was to create a website with some random functionality. After that in my job i worked on php and successfully deployed 4 projects. All having lot of functionality and i was the only team member in all the projects. Now i am learning ruby on rails as i switched to a new firm. I also have to work on android or iphone depending upon on what mobile technology i want to choose or i can work on both of the technologies. My project manager says take your time to learn things. we are not in hurry to place you in any project. Work on things by your self. take 3 4 months to learn. But i am not getting good pace. I am quite confident with php/asp etc but i dont able to grasp things in android. Although my c/c++ background is quite good, having a good logical mind. But i am not able to grasp the things in android. Even learning some basics of rails i found it wtf. Why i have make model name singular and table name plural.By default that action name and name of the file in view is same I just hate the word MAGIC mentioned more than 100 times in the book. (agile-web-development-with-rails) (I am talking about default functionality, I can over ride them that i know, so please dont debate on that) I not saying i am not getting the things. My point is remembering the default functionality is a pissing me off. Lots of classes. Lots of files . specify this thing here. That thing there. All these things (remember which class does what) require some time or i am missing something. For my point of view i am having all these problems cause previously i never used object oriented programming approach in php. (I NEVER USED, I AM NOT SAYING THET ARE NOT) How you people explain it. How you people suggest me to do. I am looking suggestions from some seniors.From seniors in my office.They says you good dude. But i dont know i am not geting confidence in the things. When they ask me anythings about the topics i cover. I give them good answers. So when i discuss this problem with them they says there is no problem just keep on working. And sorry for my poor english.

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• PHP Mail Not Sending Messages

  - by Kenton de Jong

  I realize this question title is pretty overused, but I couldn't find an answer to my problem. This could be because either I'm not too good with PHP and I don't understand the problem, or because I have a different issue, but I thought I would post it and see if somebody can help me. I developed a website for a local church in my city and I made the site on my computer, put it onto my website as a sub directory and tested it all. It worked great. One of the things the client wanted was there to be an email form that can send emails. I made it and all was good. I then uploaded it onto the church server and thought it went good too. But then we decided to try the email form out, and for some reason it didn't work. I made the email form by having the user select a recipient (pastor, office manager, etc.) with a radio button, and that would change the action of the email form. I just did something like this: if (recipent == "pastor") { document.forms[0].action = "../scripts/php/pastor_contact.php"; } else if (recipent == "pastoralAssist") { document.forms[0].action = "../scripts/php/pastoral_assist_contact.php"; } else if (recipent == "famMinistry") { document.forms[0].action = "../scripts/php/sacra_assist_contact.php"; } else if (recipent == "sacraAssist") { document.forms[0].action = "../scripts/php/fam_ministry_contact.php"; } I know this isn't the cleanest, but it works great. The php files then, all look very similar to this (just a different email)" <?php $name = $_POST['name']; $email = $_POST['email']; $phone = $_POST['phone']; $message = $_POST['message']; $formcontent="From: $name \n Email: $email \n Phone Number: $phone \n Message: $message"; $recipient = "[email protected]"; $subject = $_POST['subject']; $mailheader = "$subject \r\n"; mail($recipient, $subject, $formcontent, $mailheader) or die("There seems to be an error with this form. Sorry about the inconveince. We are working to get this fixed."); header('Location: ../../quickylinks/message_sent.html') ; ?> What this does, briefly, is collect the information from the email form, submit it as an email and then redirect the user to a "Message Sent" page. This works on my server, but not theirs so I believe it's something to do with their server. You can see their server information here and mine here. When the user sends the message, they get "There seems to be an error with this form. Sorry about the inconveince. We are working to get this fixed." and the email doesn't go through, although the code is the same on my server and it works fine there. My initial thought was that PHP wasn't installed on their server (rare, but it does happen). But it was. So then I thought maybe it was installed, but the "mail" function was disabled. So I tried the following php code: <?php if (function_exists('mail')) { echo 'mail() is available'; } else { echo 'mail() has been disabled'; } ?> And it came back with "mail() is available". So now I'm stuck and I don't know the problem could be. As I said, I'm not very good at PHP yet so if somebody could give a detailed answer, I would be really really thankful! Thank you so much!

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• The How-To Geek Holiday Gift Guide (Geeky Stuff We Like)

  - by The Geek

  Welcome to the very first How-To Geek Holiday Gift Guide, where we’ve put together a list of our absolute favorites to help you weed through all of the junk out there to pick the perfect gift for anybody. Though really, it’s just a list of the geeky stuff we want. We’ve got a whole range of items on the list, from cheaper gifts that most anybody can afford, to the really expensive stuff that we’re pretty sure nobody is giving us. Stocking Stuffers Here’s a couple of ideas for items that won’t break the bank. LED Keychain Micro-Light   Magcraft 1/8-Inch Rare Earth Cube Magnets Best little LED keychain light around. If they don’t need the penknife of the above item this is the perfect gift. I give them out by the handfuls and nobody ever says anything but good things about them. I’ve got ones that are years old and still running on the same battery.  Price: $8   Geeks cannot resist magnets. Jason bought this pack for his fridge because he was sick of big clunky magnets… these things are amazing. One tiny magnet, smaller than an Altoid mint, can practically hold a clipboard right to the fridge. Amazing. I spend more time playing with them on the counter than I do actually hanging stuff.  Price: $10 Lots of Geeky Mugs   Astronomy Powerful Green Laser Pointer There’s loads of fun, geeky mugs you can find on Amazon or anywhere else—and they are great choices for the geek who loves their coffee. You can get the Caffeine mug pictured here, or go with an Atari one, Canon Lens, or the Aperture mug based on Portal. Your choice. Price: $7   No, it’s not a light saber, but it’s nearly bright enough to be one—you can illuminate low flying clouds at night or just blind some aliens on your day off. All that for an extremely low price. Loads of fun. Price: $15       Geeky TV Shows and Books Sometimes you just want to relax and enjoy a some TV or a good book. Here’s a few choices. The IT Crowd Fourth Season   Doctor Who, Complete Fifth Series Ridiculous, funny show about nerds in the IT department, loved by almost all the geeks here at HTG. Justin even makes this required watching for new hires in his office so they’ll get his jokes. You can pre-order the fourth season, or pick up seasons one, two, or three for even cheaper. Price: $13   It doesn’t get any more nerdy than Eric’s pick, the fifth all-new series of Doctor Who, where the Daleks are hatching a new master plan from the heart of war-torn London. There’s also alien vampires, humanoid reptiles, and a lot more. Price: $52 Battlestar Galactica Complete Series   MAKE: Electronics: Learning Through Discovery Watch the epic fight to save the human race by finding the fabled planet Earth while being hunted by the robotic Cylons. You can grab the entire series on DVD or Blu-ray, or get the seasons individually. This isn’t your average sci-fi TV show. Price: $150 for Blu-ray.   Want to learn the fundamentals of electronics in a fun, hands-on way? The Make:Electronics book helps you build the circuits and learn how it all works—as if you had any more time between all that registry hacking and loading software on your new PC. Price: $21       Geeky Gadgets for the Gadget-Loving Geek Here’s a few of the items on our gadget list, though lets be honest: geeks are going to love almost any gadget, especially shiny new ones. Klipsch Image S4i Premium Noise-Isolating Headset with 3-Button Apple Control   GP2X Caanoo MAME/Console Emulator If you’re a real music geek looking for some serious quality in the headset for your iPhone or iPod, this is the pair that Alex recommends. They aren’t terribly cheap, but you can get the less expensive S3 earphones instead if you prefer. Price: $50-100   Eric says: “As an owner of an older version, I can say the GP2X is one of my favorite gadgets ever. Touted a “Retro Emulation Juggernaut,” GP2X runs Linux and may be the only open source software console available. Sounds too good to be true, but isn’t.” Price: $150 Roku XDS Streaming Player 1080p   Western Digital WD TV Live Plus HD Media Player If you do a lot of streaming over Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon’s Video on Demand, Pandora, and others, the Roku box is a great choice to get your content on your TV without paying a lot of money.  It’s also got Wireless-N built in, and it supports full 1080P HD. Price: $99   If you’ve got a home media collection sitting on a hard drive or a network server, the Western Digital box is probably the cheapest way to get that content on your TV, and it even supports Netflix streaming too. It’ll play loads of formats in full HD quality. Price: $99 Fujitsu ScanSnap S300 Color Mobile Scanner   Doxie, the amazing scanner for documents Trevor said: “This wonderful little scanner has become absolutely essential to me. My desk used to just be a gigantic pile of papers that I didn’t need at the moment, but couldn’t throw away ‘just in case.’ Now, every few weeks, I’ll run that paper pile through this and then happily shred the originals!” Price: $300   If you don’t scan quite as often and are looking for a budget scanner you can throw into your bag, or toss into a drawer in your desk, the Doxie scanner is a great alternative that I’ve been using for a while. It’s half the price, and while it’s not as full-featured as the Fujitsu, it might be a better choice for the very casual user. Price: $150       (Expensive) Gadgets Almost Anybody Will Love If you’re not sure that one of the more geeky presents is gonna work, here’s some gadgets that just about anybody is going to love, especially if they don’t have one already. Of course, some of these are a bit on the expensive side—but it’s a wish list, right? Amazon Kindle       The Kindle weighs less than a paperback book, the screen is amazing and easy on the eyes, and get ready for the kicker: the battery lasts at least a month. We aren’t kidding, either—it really lasts that long. If you don’t feel like spending money for books, you can use it to read PDFs, and if you want to get really geeky, you can hack it for custom screensavers. Price: $139 iPod Touch or iPad       You can’t go wrong with either of these presents—the iPod Touch can do almost everything the iPhone can do, including games, apps, and music, and it has the same Retina display as the iPhone, HD video recording, and a front-facing camera so you can use FaceTime. Price: $229+, depending on model. The iPad is a great tablet for playing games, browsing the web, or just using on your coffee table for guests. It’s well worth buying one—but if you’re buying for yourself, keep in mind that the iPad 2 is probably coming out in 3 months. Price: $500+ MacBook Air  The MacBook Air comes in 11” or 13” versions, and it’s an amazing little machine. It’s lightweight, the battery lasts nearly forever, and it resumes from sleep almost instantly. Since it uses an SSD drive instead of a hard drive, you’re barely going to notice any speed problems for general use. So if you’ve got a lot of money to blow, this is a killer gift. Price: $999 and up. Stuck with No Idea for a Present? Gift Cards! Yeah, you’re not going to win any “thoughtful present” awards with these, but you might just give somebody what they really want—the new Angry Birds HD for their iPad, Cut the Rope, or anything else they want. ITunes Gift Card   Amazon.com Gift Card Somebody in your circle getting a new iPod, iPhone, or iPad? You can get them an iTunes gift card, which they can use to buy music, games or apps. Yep, this way you can gift them a copy of Angry Birds if they don’t already have it. Or even Cut the Rope.   No clue what to get somebody on your list? Amazon gift cards let them buy pretty much anything they want, from organic weirdberries to big screen TVs. Yeah, it’s not as thoughtful as getting them a nice present, but look at the bright side: maybe they’ll get you an Amazon gift card and it’ll balance out. That’s the highlights from our lists—got anything else to add? Share your geeky gift ideas in the comments. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The How-To Geek Holiday Gift Guide (Geeky Stuff We Like) LCD? LED? Plasma? The How-To Geek Guide to HDTV Technology The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 8: Filters Improve Digital Photography by Calibrating Your Monitor Our Favorite Tech: What We’re Thankful For at How-To Geek The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 7: Design and Typography Happy Snow Bears Theme for Chrome and Iron [Holiday] Download Full Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun Game for Free Scorched Cometary Planet Wallpaper Quick Fix: Add the RSS Button Back to the Firefox Awesome Bar Dropbox Desktop Client 1.0.0 RC for Windows, Linux, and Mac Released Hang in There Scrat! – Ice Age Wallpaper

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• December release of Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework is available now.

  - by Jialiang

  The code samples in Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework are updated on 2010-12-13. Download address: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/57459#DownloadId=185534 Updated code sample index categorized by technologies: http://1code.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=All-In-One%20Code%20Framework%20Sample%20Catalog (it also allows you to download individual code samples instead of the entire All-In-One Code Framework sample package.) If it’s the first time that you hear about Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework, please watch the introduction video on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO5Li3APU58, or read the introduction on our homepage http://1code.codeplex.com/,  and this Port25 article http://port25.technet.com/archive/2010/01/18/the-all-in-one-code-framework.aspx.  -------------- New ASP.NET Code Samples VBASPNETAJAXWebChat and CSASPNETAJAXWebChat Most of you have some experience in chatting with friends on the web. So you may want to know how to make a web chat application, it seems to be quite complicated. But ASP.NET gives you the power to buiild a chat room easily. In this code sample, we will construct our own web chat room with the amazing AJAX feature. The principle is simple relatively. As we all know, a base chat application need 4 base controls: one List control to show the chat room members, one List control to show the message list, one TextBox control to input messages and one button to send message. User inputs his message in the textbox first and then presses Send button, it will send the message to the server. The message list will update every 2 seconds to get the newest message list in the chat room from the server. We need to know, it is hard for us to make an AJAX web chat application like a windows form application because we cannot keep the connection after one web request ended. So a lot of events which communicates between client side and server side cannot be realized. The common workaround is to make web requests in every some seconds to check whether the server side has been updated. But another technique called COMET makes it possible. But it is different with AJAX and will not be talked in details in this KB. For more details about COMET, we can get some clues from the Reference.   CSASPNETCurrentOnlineUserList and VBASPNETCurrentOnlineUserList This sample demos a system that needs to display a list of current online users' information. As a matter of fact, Membership.GetNumberOfUsersOnline Method  can get the number of online users and there is a convenient approach to check whether the user is online by using Membership.GetUser(string userName).IsOnline property,however many asp.net projects are not using membership.So in this case,the sample shows how to display a list of current online users' information without using membership provider. It is not difficult to check whether the user is online by using session.Many projects tend to be used “Session_End” event to mark a user as “Offline”,however ,it may not be a good idea,because it can’t detect the user status accurately. In addition, "Session_End" event is only available in the "InProc" session mode. If you are storing session states in the State Server or SQL Server, "Session_End" event will never fire. To handle this issue, we need to save the user online status to a  global DataTable or  DataBase. In the sample application, define a global DataTable to store the information of online users.Use XmlHttpRequest in the pages to update and check user's last active time at intervals and also retrieve information on how many users are still online. The sample project can auto delete offline users' information from a global DataTable by checking users’ last active time. A step-by-step guide illustrating how to display a list of current online users' information without using membership provider: 1. Login page. Let user sign in and add current user’s information to a global datatable while Initialize the global datatable which used to store information of current online users. 2. Current online user list page. Use XmlHttpRequest in this page to update and check user's last active time at intervals and also retrieve information on how many users are still online. 3. If user closes the page without clicking  the sign out link button ,the sample project can auto mark the user as offline and delete offline users' information from a global DataTable which used to store information of current online users  by checking users’ last active time. Then the current online user list will be like this:   CSASPNETIPtoLocation This sample demonstrates how to find the geographical location from an IP address. As we know, it is not hard for us to get the IP address of visitors via Request.ServerVariable property, but it is really difficult for us to know where they come from. To achieve this feature, the sample uses a free third party web service from http://freegeoip.appspot.com/, which returns the information about an IP address we send to the server in the format of XML, JSON or CSV. It makes all things easier.   CSASPNETBackgroundWorker Sometimes we do an operation which needs long time to complete. It will stop the response and the page is blank until the operation finished. In this case, we want the operation to run in the background, and in the page, we want to display the progress of the running operation. Therefore, the user can know the operation is running and can know the progress. CSASPNETInheritingFromTreeNode In windows forms TreeView, each tree node has a property called "Tag" which can be used to store a custom object. Many customers want to implement the same tag feature in ASP.NET TreeView. This project creates a custom TreeView control named "CustomTreeView" to achieve this goal. CSASPNETRemoteUploadAndDownload and VBASPNETRemoteUploadAndDownload This code sample was created in response to a code sample request in our new code sample request frunction for customers. The code samples demonstrate uploading files to and downloading files from a remote HTTP or FTP server. In .NET Framework 2.0 and higher versions, there are some lightweight class libraries which support HTTP and FTP protocol transmission. By using these classes, we can achieve this programming requirement.   CSASPNETImageEditUpload and VBASPNETImageEditUpload This demo will shows how to insert, edit and update a common image with the type of "jpg", "png", "gif" or "bmp" . We mainly use two different SqlDataSources with the same database to bind to GridView and FormView in order to establish the “cascading” effort. Besides we apply our self-made ImageHanlder to encoding or decoding images of different types, and use context to output the stream of images. We will explicitly assign the binary streams of images through the event of “FormView_ItemInserting” or “Form_ItemUpdating” to synchronize the stream both in what we can see on an aspx page as well as in what’s really stored in the database.   WebBrowser Control, Network and other Windows General New Code Samples   CSWebBrowserSuppressError and VBWebBrowserSuppressError The sample demonstrates how to make WebBrowser suppress errors, such as script error, navigation error and so on.   CSWebBrowserWithProxy and VBWebBrowserWithProxy The sample demonstrates how to make WebBrowser use a proxy server.   CSWebDownloadProgress and VBWebDownloadProgress The sample demonstrates how to show progress during the download. It also supplies the features to Start, Pause, Resume and Cancel a download.   CppSetDesktopWallpaper, CSSetDesktopWallpaper and VBSetDesktopWallpaper This code sample application allows you select an image, view a preview (resized smaller to fit if necessary), select a display style among Tile, Center, Stretch, Fit (Windows 7 and later) and Fill (Windows 7 and later), and set the image as the Desktop wallpaper. CSWindowsServiceRecoveryProperty and VBWindowsServiceRecoveryProperty CSWindowsServiceRecoveryProperty example demonstrates how to use ChangeServiceConfig2 to configure the service "Recovery" properties in C#. This example operates all the options you can see on the service "Recovery" tab, including setting the "Enable actions for stops with errors" option in Windows Vista and later operating systems. This example also include how to grant the shut down privilege to the process, so that we can configure a special option in the "Recovery" tab - "Restart Computer Options...".   New Office Development Code Samples   CSOneNoteRibbonAddIn and VBOneNoteRibbonAddIn The code sample demonstrates a OneNote 2010 COM add-in that implements IDTExtensibility2. The add-in also supports customizing the Ribbon by implementing the IRibbonExtensibility interface. It is a skeleton OneNote add-in that developers can extend it to implement more functions. The code sample was requested by a customer in our code sample request service. We expect that this could help developers in the community.   New Windows Shell Code Samples   CppShellExtPreviewHandler, CSShellExtPreviewHandler and VBShellExtPreviewHandler In the past two months, we released the code samples of Windows Context Menu Handler, Infotip Handler, and Thumbnail Handler. This is the fourth part of the shell extension series: Preview Handler. The code samples demo the C++, C# and VB.NET implementation of a preview handler for a new file type registered with the .recipe extension. Preview handlers are called when an item is selected to show a lightweight, rich, read-only preview of the file's contents in the view's reading pane. This is done without launching the file's associated application. Windows Vista and later operating systems support preview handlers. To be a valid preview handler, several interfaces must be implemented. This includes IPreviewHandler (shobjidl.h); IInitializeWithFile, IInitializeWithStream, or IInitializeWithItem (propsys.h); IObjectWithSite (ocidl.h); and IOleWindow (oleidl.h). There are also optional interfaces, such as IPreviewHandlerVisuals (shobjidl.h), that a preview handler can implement to provide extended support. Windows API Code Pack for Microsoft .NET Framework makes the implementation of these interfaces very easy in .NET. The example preview handler provides previews for .recipe files. The .recipe file type is simply an XML file registered as a unique file name extension. It includes the title of the recipe, its author, difficulty, preparation time, cook time, nutrition information, comments, an embedded preview image, and so on. The preview handler extracts the title, comments, and the embedded image, and display them in a preview window.   In response to many customers' request, we added setup projects in every shell extension samples in this release. Those setup projects allow you to deploy the shell extensions to your end users' machines. ---------- Download address: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/57459#DownloadId=185534 Updated code sample index categorized by technologies: http://1code.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=All-In-One%20Code%20Framework%20Sample%20Catalog (it also allows you to download individual code samples instead of the entire All-In-One Code Framework sample package.) If you have any feedback for us, please email: [email protected]. We look forward to your comments.

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• Cutting edge technology, a lone Movember ranger and a 5-a-side football club ...meet the team at Oracle’s Belfast Offices.

  - by user10729410

  Normal 0 false false false EN-IE X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Normal 0 false false false EN-IE X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} By Olivia O’Connell To see what’s in store at Oracle’s next Open Day which comes to Belfast this week, I visited the offices with some colleagues to meet the team and get a feel for what‘s in store on November 29th. After being warmly greeted by Frances and Francesca, who make sure Front of House and Facilities run smoothly, we embarked on a quick tour of the 2 floors Oracle occupies, led by VP Bo, it was time to seek out some willing volunteers to be interviewed/photographed - what a shy bunch! A bit of coaxing from the social media team was needed here! In a male-dominated environment, the few women on the team caught my eye immediately. I got chatting to Susan, a business analyst and Bronagh, a tech writer. It becomes clear during our chat that the male/female divide is not an issue – “everyone here just gets on with the job,” says Suzanne, “We’re all around the same age and have similar priorities and luckily everyone is really friendly so there are no problems. ” A graduate of Queen’s University in Belfast majoring in maths & computer science, Susan works closely with product management and the development teams to ensure that the final project delivered to clients meets and exceeds their expectations. Bronagh, who joined us following working for a tech company in Montreal and gaining her post-grad degree at University of Ulster agrees that the work is challenging but “the environment is so relaxed and friendly”. Normal 0 false false false EN-IE X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Software developer David is taking the Movember challenge for the first time to raise vital funds and awareness for men’s health. Like other colleagues in the office, he is a University of Ulster graduate and works on Reference applications and Merchandising Tools which enable customers to establish e-shops using Oracle technologies. The social activities are headed up by Gordon, a software engineer on the commerce team who joined the team 4 years ago after graduating from the University of Strathclyde at Glasgow with a degree in Computer Science. Everyone is unanimous that the best things about working at Oracle’s Belfast offices are the casual friendly environment and the opportunity to be at the cutting edge of technology. We’re looking forward to our next trip to Belfast for some cool demos and meet candidates. And as for the camera-shyness? Look who came out to have their picture taken at the end of the day! Normal 0 false false false EN-IE X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} The Oracle offices in Belfast are located on the 6th floor, Victoria House, Gloucester Street, Belfast BT1 4LS, UK View Larger Map Normal 0 false false false EN-IE X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Open day takes place on Thursday, 29th November 4pm – 8pm. Visit the 5 Demo Stations to find out more about each teams' activities and projects to date. See live demos including "Engaging the Customer", "Managing Your Store", "Helping the Customer", "Shopping on-line" and "The Commerce Experience" processes. The "Working @Oracle" stand will give you the chance to connect with our recruitment team and get information about the Recruitment process and making your career path in Oracle. Register here.

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• Letter to Ballmer: Making Better Consumer Devices

  - by andrewbrust

  Last year, I wrote Steve Ballmer an email, and he was kind enough to write me back.  The email contained a scan of a column I wrote praising Microsoft’s BI strategy.  His reply contained three simple words: “Super nice  thanks.” Well, now I’d like to write to Steve again, in an open letter format, and this time the love may be a bit tougher.  But I’m still super earnest. The past two days have been eventful ones for Microsoft: The company announced the departure of company veterans Robbie Bach and J Allard and the market announced Apple is now besting Microsoft in market capitalization. Plus, announcements were made that make it plain that Ballmer will, in effect, be running Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices division himself. With that in mind, I’d like to offer my list of a dozen things I think Microsoft’s CEO should do to improve that division’s offerings and, hopefully, its bottom line. So here goes:   1. On Windows Phone 7, Stay the Course The press is teeming with headlines and reader comments proclaiming the death-before-arrival of Windows Phone 7.  That’s plain silly.  You’ve got the makings of a great and unique SmartPhone platform, and you’re the only company (even considering RIM) that can offer full fidelity Exchange integration, not to mention implementing Office on the device.  Let the existing team finish this puppy and ship it. And then have them pump out a few updates, over-the-air, quickly.  Show them that Google Android’s not the only product that can do good, rapid dot releases. And another thing: make sure your OEMs’ devices have flawless touch screens.  If they don’t, then you shouldn’t certify them for delivery to customers.  Period. Oh, and kill the Kin, quietly.  It was DOA, and you know it.   2. Move Media Center to the Xbox Platform Media Center is, at its core, a good product.  But delivering a media distribution and DVR platform on a sophisticated PC operating system like Windows 7 just creates too many moving parts.  Xbox already functions as the best Media Center extender device – it should actually be the hub as well. Media Center is mostly based on .NET code – and XNA is a .NET environment for Xbox – find a way to bridge that small gap and make Media Center a joy to work with instead of a frustration.  Beating Apple TV out of this sub-market is the lowest hanging fruit on the tree (goofy pun, but it’s true).   3. Integrate Media Center with Mediaroom, or Kill the Latter You have two media products with almost identical names.  One is for standalone DVRs and the other is for IPTV cable set tops with DVR capabilities.  Can we merge these please?  My previous request of putting Media Center on Xbox would seem to tie into this nicely, since you’ve announced plans to do that with Mediaroom already.   4. Fix the Red Ring of Death People love the Xbox, but they really don’t love sending their consoles back every 18-24 months, when they get a bunch of red lights flashing on power up.  You’ve handled this defect about as gracefully as possible, but it’s been around for a long time now and it doesn’t seem to be fixed yet.  You can do better.  In fact, you must do better, or you insult your customers.   5. Add Blu Ray to Xbox I know, streaming movies are the future; physical media is legacy technology.  So if that’s true, why did you back HD DVD so hard?  You know why: for now, the film studios won’t allow a large selection of new release, HD, surround sound content be distributed on any medium other than Blu Ray or cable pay per view/on-demand.  Don’t you want home theater buffs to see the Xbox as a fantastic device for their rigs?  Don’t you want to put PlayStation 3 out of its misery?  And if you follow my suggestions above (move Media Center to the Xbox and fix the Red Ring problem), you’d have it all sewn up.  Do I think Blu Ray functionality will move a lot of units?  No.  Do I think that it would move more units with desperately needed influential home theater consumers?  You bet.  And you might sell more ZunePass subscriptions in the process. But while you’re at it, make the fan quieter, please.   6. Make More of Windows Home Server Home Server is a fantastic product.  And for reasons unknown to me, it seems like you’re letting it languish.  Development of the add-in ecosystem seems underfunded.  WHS’ unparalleled ease of use and reliability for home PC backup (and emergency restores) goes unsung.  Product cycles are slow.  Support for your OEMs, who are doing great work, especially in the green space with Atom CPUs, seems lacking.  You’ve married a trophy girl and you keep her cloistered at home!  That’s cruel, unusual and, um, incredibly ill-advised.  Make use of this ace card, and while you’re at it, give it real integration with Media Center.  The integration thus far proof-of-concept quality.  You should go way past that – both products will benefit immeasurably.   7. Set Up a Partner Platform for Custom Installers There’s a whole sub-industry of companies that install, integrate and configure home theater, security and connected home products.  They have an industry group. They are influential in the high-end of the consumer electronics industry, and so are their customers.  They love Media Center and they love Windows Home Server.  But I have talked to several of them at the Consumer Electronics Show and they tell me you don’t love them.  They find it very difficult to do business with Microsoft, even though they want nothing more than to sell and evangelize your platform.  This is a travesty.  Please fix it.  Get Allison Watson and the Microsoft Partner Network on board and have her hire someone who knows how to run a channel program for consumer electronics companies.  Problem solved.  Markets expanded.   8. Make Your Own Hardware In other areas, I know you love your partners.  I help run one, so I appreciate that.  But when it came to Xbox and Zune you built them it yourself (albeit on a contract basis, which is fine).  Windows Phone 7 has a chance to work as an OEM play, but it would work better if you produced the devices.  At least consider building a reference device that sells alongside your OEMs’ offerings.  That’s what Google did with the Nexxus One.  And while that phone was not itself a big seller, it catalyzed two wonderful things : (1) a quality bar was set and (2) partners exceeded it.  Before the Nexxus One, the best Android handset out there was the Motorola Droid. The Nexxus One was better, and the HTC Droid Incredible and Evo 4G are now even better than Google’s phone, which is why Verizon and Sprint decided not to carry it.  Imagine if all Windows Phone 6.x devices were on par with the HTC HD2.  I tend to believe you’d have a lot bigger market share than you do now.   9. Continue with Your Retail Initiative From what I hear, it sounds like it’s going well.  And this goes right along with making your own hardware.  When you build it, they will come.  And then it makes the likes of Best Buy and Staples do better.   10. Make an Acquisition (or Two) TiVo and/or Moxi look ripe for the picking.  With their ability to build stuff people love and your ability to run a business, you might just have something.  But do a better job than you did when you bought Danger.  Buy the ideas, not just the customers, eh?   11. Make Beautiful Stuff You’ve heard this one before, I know.  But I have some head-shrinking advice on this one.  You know that Apple obsesses over its industrial design.  You know that appeals to consumers.  But it seems you think doing so is Apple’s game exclusively and so you shouldn’t even try.  Bull dinky.  Come to New York and visit the Museum of Modern Art’s Architecture and Design gallery.  You’ll see that lots of companies and product categories have had very high design value well before Apple existed.  You can do this, and the Zune HD was a great start.  Now run with that.  Find those negative voices in your head that are telling you that you can’t and shut them up.  For good.   12. Burst the Bubble Some of the products you’ve built seem like they were conceived in a bizarro world.  That would appear to be the result of groupthink.  You must do better.  And there’s lots of people willing to advise you.  This includes just about everyone in the Regional Director program, and probably a bunch of MVPs.  Heck, I bet the guys at Engadget could help out too.  Imagine if you let them see the Kin before it shipped.  Talk to high-end gear consumers.  Talk to Best Buy and CostCo customers too.   Signing Off I hope this was of value to you.  As I wrote this I kept telling myself how obvious, even trite, some of these pieces of advice were and then, because of that, doubting they’d really help.  But I decided that they must not be obvious to Microsoft.  Sometimes when you get wrapped up in stuff, it’s hard to clear your head.  I think my head’s pretty clear here though (I’m wrapped up in other stuff), so maybe my perspective can help.  If not, well, then, I guess they all can’t be super nice.

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• Top tweets SOA Partner Community – October 2013

  - by JuergenKress

  Send your tweets @soacommunity #soacommunity and follow us at http://twitter.com/soacommunity Ronald Luttikhuizen ?My latest upload: SOA Made Simple | Introduction to SOA on @slideshare http://www.slideshare.net/rluttikhuizen/soa-made-simple-introduction-to-soa … via @SlideShare OTNArchBeat ?ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for October 4, 2013 #cloud #linux #oaam #soa http://pub.vitrue.com/y4SK Lucas Jellema ?My blog article shows news on the new SOA Suite 12c release - as it was publicly available during #oow13 see: http://technology.amis.nl/2013/09/27/oow13-soa-suite-12c/ … Yogesh Sontakke ?Introducing OER's new Express Workflows - Simplified Lifecycle Management. Blog post: http://bit.ly/16JKHCf @soacommunity #soagovernance SrinivasPadmanabhuni ?"@OTNArchBeat: SOA and User Interfaces - by @soacommunity @HajoNormann @gschmutz @t_winterberg et al #industrialsoa http://pub.vitrue.com/KmOp " SOA Community ?SOA and User-Interfaces http://servicetechmag.com/I76/0913-2 article published part of #industrialSOA at Service Technology Magazine #soacommunity Estafet Limited ?@Estafet win @UKOUG Middleware Partner of the Year 2013 Yogesh Sontakke ?RT @VikasAatOracle: #Oracle #B2B - written by experts #soa #soacommunity #oraclesoa - time to get a copy ! @SOAScott Danilo Schmiedel ?Thanks a lot to Juergen @soacommunity for the super interesting and well-organized Partner Advisory Council yesterday! Such a Great Value! OTNArchBeat ?Case management supporting re-landscaping application portfolios | @leonsmiers http://pub.vitrue.com/MC5j Samantha Searle ?Apply for the #GartnerBPM 2014 Excellence Awards - find out how via this link http://ow.ly/ptaNQ #Gartner #bpm #process #entarch #cio OTNArchBeat ?SOA and User Interfaces - by @soacommunity @hajonormann @gschmutz @t_winterberg et al #industrialsoa http://pub.vitrue.com/KmOp Dain Hansen ?Hybrid #cloud is on the rise, but is the IT department's culture standing in the way? http://add.vc/eJN #CloudIntegration #OracleSOA OTNArchBeat #SOASuite 11g ps6 - Download your log files directly from the Enterprise Manager | @whitehorsenl http://pub.vitrue.com/KrJ2 Whitehorses ?Whiteblog: SOA Suite 11g ps6 - Download your log files directly from the Enterprise Manager (http://goo.gl/2Gqiax ) Rajesh Raheja ?Cloud integration session recap #oow13 http://blog.raastech.com/2013/09/recap-of-real-world-cloud-integration.html?m=1 … Vikas Anand ?@Ahmed_Aboulnaga thanks for the excellent summary and kind words. #oow13 #cloud #oraclesoa http://blog.raastech.com/2013/09/recap-of-real-world-cloud-integration.html?m=1 … Luis Augusto Weir ?REST is also SOA. Check it out http://www.soa4u.co.uk/2013/09/restful-is-also-soa.html?m=1 … #soacommunity Graham ?“@OracleBPM & @soacommunity: 5 Ways to Modernize Applications with BPM #AppAdvantage" #oracleday http://bit.ly/15yC6e3 SOA Community ?#ACED director asked me for BPM references in FSI - ever visited my #SOACommunity workspace? https://beehiveonline.oracle.com/teamcollab/overview/SOA_Community_Workspace … #soacommunity #bpm OracleBlogs ?SOA Community Newsletter September 2013 http://ow.ly/2Aj6oK OTNArchBeat ?OOW13: First glimpses of the new #SOASuite12c | @LucasJellema http://pub.vitrue.com/2YgX sbernhardt ?Just published new blog entry on OOW 2013 wrap up. http://thecattlecrew.wordpress.com/2013/09/30/oracle-open-world-2013-wrap-up/ … #oow13 @OC_WIRE @soacommunity Emiel Paasschens ?Home with family after an overwhelming #OOW week in San Francisco with lot of info & meetings. Special thanx to @OracleBelux & @soacommunity Robert van Mölken ?Had a awesome week at #OOW13 in SF. Highlights were the @soacommunity Wine tour, @OracleBelux meet-ups and @OracleSOA CAB. Thanks to all :) SOA Community ?The place Oracle Fusion middleware comes from - Oracle 200 - TKs office - next Oracle 100 - SOA & BPM #soacommunity pic.twitter.com/qibFOQVbRo Oracle BPM ?5 Ways to Modernize Applications with BPM #AppAdvantage http://pub.vitrue.com/l2dn Simon Haslam ?Ha ha - how did we miss that! RT @lucasjellema: Post conference announcement of a new middleware appliance? #oow13 pic.twitter.com/3NvcjPfjXb OTNArchBeat ?The OTNArchBeat Daily is out! http://paper.li/OTNArchBeat/1329828521 … ? Top stories today via @lucasjellema @myfear @TylerJewell Packt Publishing ?Get 50% off ALL our DRM-free eBooks - this weekend only! Go to http://www.packtpub.com/ and use code BIG50, as often as you like! #BIG50 OracleBlogs ?Global Perspective: ACE Director from EMEA Weighs in on AppAdvantage http://ow.ly/2Afek2 orclateamsoa ?#orclateamsoa Blog: BPM Auditing Demystified - I've heard from a couple of customers recently asking about BPM aud... http://ow.ly/2AfbAn AMIS, Oracle & Java ?Cool #soasuite 12c feature managed file transfer - visit Dave Barry at demo point sr212 #oow #soacommunity pic.twitter.com/gb4HLbUarR SOA Community ?Let us know what was best at #OOW @soacommunity save trip home - thanks for coming to #SF ;-) see you at #OOW2014 pic.twitter.com/xbWXjRapqh Lonneke Dikmans ?Nice @dschmied is talking about the different steps in his project. He starts with explaining the user interface design #oow13 #ux #acm Lonneke Dikmans ?Saving the best for the end: managing knowledge worker processes by @dschmied and Prasen.#oow13 #acm cool stuff: adaptive case management Luis Augusto Weir ?SOA Governance is more than just OER. Requires people, processes and tools. Check it out #SOA #soacommunity http://youtu.be/Ohn06smVKVw Lonneke Dikmans ?“@OracleSOA: #oow Join us for:Enterprise SOA Infrastructure Best Practices Thu 9/26 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM Moscone West - 2020 SOA Community ?Business Process Management (BPM) 11g PS6 Awareness Course http://wp.me/p10C8u-1as Ajay Khanna ?Detect, Analyze, Act - Fast! http://wp.me/p10C8u-1ao via @soacommunity #OracleBPM Simone Geib ?It took a while, but I finally reached 500 followers. Thanks everybody and especially @soacommunity :) SOA Community ?Functional Testing Business Processes In Oracle BPM Suite 11g by Arun Pareek http://wp.me/p10C8u-1aq SOA Community Distribute the September edition of the SOA Community newsletter READ it! Didn't receive it register http://www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa #soacommunity SOA Community ?Detect, Analyze, Act - Fast! by Ajay Khanna http://wp.me/p10C8u-1ao Robert van Mölken ?Finalised my #OOW presentation #CON8736 and live demo on wednesday 25th at 11:45am. Also giving a short version at the SOA CAB on thursday. Rajesh Raheja ?"The AppAdvantage of Oracle Cloud & On-premises Integration" http://bit.ly/14RYHmZ SOA Community ?Additional new content SOA & BPM Partner Community http://wp.me/p10C8u-1aw Dain Hansen ?Right now #oow13 SOA, BPM - Customer Advisory Boards. 'No tweeting' says @SOASimone. Instagram of funny cats still ok. leonsmiers ?Case Management with Oracle BPM Suite our presentation on #oow13 http://www.slideshare.net/leonsmiers/oracle-open-world-2013-case-management-smiers-kitson … #capgemini @nkitson72 Mark Simpson ?Flextronics reduced cost of processing an invoice to <$1 from $7 due to BPM @OracleBPM #oow13 saving millions. Way less than industry avg. Holger Mueller ?#Siemens Shared Services CIO says that #Fusion #Middleware made the difference for #Oracle over #Workday. #Integration matters. #OOW13 oracleopenworld ?Miss any #oow13 keynotes, or simply want to rewatch? Check out the live streaming site for keynotes on demand: http://pub.vitrue.com/RG4D SOA Community ?Analyze your m2m data and act on it! Big data Pattern matching, fast data & soa #soacommunity #oow pic.twitter.com/48Q1z4ckh7 SOA Community ?Top tweets SOA Partner Community – September 2013 http://wp.me/p10C8u-1cR Simone Geib ?#oraclesoa hands on lab at #oow13 pic.twitter.com/IJJrqXIMiu Danilo Schmiedel #oow13 CON8436: Managing Knowledge Worker Processes. Come & get a free Adaptive Case Management poster @soacommunity pic.twitter.com/FRc2CSyLwb John Sim ?Great job again Jurgen @soacommunity helping bring Ace Community together! Danilo Schmiedel ?Excellent #OracleBPM Adaptive Case Management intro by @heidibuelowBPM and Prasen at the #oow13 demo ground.Last chance today @soacommunity SOA Community ?Thanks to all our #bpm #soa and #weblogic partners for the great middleware business #oow #soacommunity pic.twitter.com/dBwZ8DMHfH Whitehorses ?Thanks @soacommunity for the party tonight. Great to meet product management & see all the talented EMEA middleware specialists. #oow13 Danilo Schmiedel ?Great tool demo from Link Consulting about managing your SOA with OER #oow13 @soacommunity Torsten Winterberg ?“@soacommunity: thanks to @dschmied and @OC_WIRE for making it happen to have our case management poster as printed version hier at #oow13 Ronald Luttikhuizen ?These were the architects involved in the diagram excitement :) just after State of SOA podcast with @OTNArchBeat pic.twitter.com/5B8jIrVTA9 SOA Community ?Tanks to AVIO for the excellent #bpmn poster and the great bpm business - visit then at #OOW & get the poster pic.twitter.com/ebTg9pFY1C Dain Hansen ?Kurian introducing Oracle Platform-as-a-Service developments. #oow13 #OracleCloud pic.twitter.com/evJLTU53rx Bruce Tierney ?API Management "multi-level pie chart" at #oow13 by Oracle's Tim Hall pic.twitter.com/q12OIRdaue Dain Hansen ?This is not your Daddy's BAM @soacommunity: Is this BAM? Very cool in #soasuite 12c get a demo at sr225 pic.twitter.com/EvwqXW9U5j SOA Community ?Is this BAM? Very cool in #soasuite 12c get a demo at sr225 pic.twitter.com/LybHxyF362 SOA Community ?SOA governance by @Yogesh_Sontakke at demo point sr214 many good new features - key for soa projects #oow #soa pic.twitter.com/DFK0ummsK1 SOA Community ?Cool #soasuite 12c feature managed file transfer - visit Dave Barry at demo point sr212 #oow #soacommunity pic.twitter.com/GDKcqDGhCF SOA Community ?Adaptive Case Management demo point at #OOW visit @heidibuelowBPM get a demo and cmmn notation poster #soacommunity pic.twitter.com/T7yEyI7tdn Lonneke Dikmans ?In case you missed it: http://blog.vennster.nl/2013/09/case-management-part-1.html?spref=tw … Lucas Jellema ?SOA Suite news: Cloud Adapters RightNow and SalesForce plus SDK to develop custom cloud adapters (CY13); REST/JSON support in SB/SCA (12c) Oracle SOA ?Cloud Integration and AppAdvantage: Transform your Enterprise #soa #oow13 http://pub.vitrue.com/UfPB Dain Hansen ?Cloud Integration and AppAdvantage: Transform your Enterprise #soa #oow13 http://pub.vitrue.com/4QWA Hajo Normann ?#BigData, eventing & real time #analytics suggest timely next actions in #oracleBPM & #oracleACM; #oow13 #FastData pic.twitter.com/aFVGrTXPqu Mark Simpson ?OEP CQL engine now used in BAM12c for event stream summary computation with temporal and pattern match features to feed dashboards. #oow13 Mark Simpson ?BAM12c virtually a new product. Analytics that senses ahead of time and also compares to historical trends to guide process or case #oow13 Andrejus Baranovskis ?Enabling UI Shell 12c/11g Multitasking Behavior http://fb.me/18l9vxQfA Amit Zavery ?Oracle Fusion Middleware Empowers Business Users, EVP Thomas Kurian's session summary http://onforb.es/18Ta1jf #oow13 #oraclemiddle #oracle Vikas Anand ?#oow13 #oracleopenworld BPM on display at Middleware keynote by Thomas Kurian pic.twitter.com/PMm719S0Ui SOA Community ?BPM composer - business user empowerment #oow #soacommunity #bpmsuite pic.twitter.com/0Qgl6oVh0h SOA Community ?Model your process in BPMN - make is executable and analyze & improve them #oow #soacommunity pic.twitter.com/jkLlObDdoi Bruce Tierney ?@demed and Thomas Kurian talk mobile and cloud at #oow13 pic.twitter.com/bAAeqn5a2V Amit Zavery ?Thomas Kurian showcasing all the new features of Oracle Fusion Middleware #oraclemiddle #oow13 SOA Community ?Demo time cloud adapters in #soasuite at Thomas Kurian keynote. Build and integrate mobile apps in minutes #oow pic.twitter.com/qTnCOJLLwS SOA Community ?Soa suite cloud adapters and mobile apps by @demed at Thomas Kurian keynote #oow #oracle #soacommunity pic.twitter.com/5aMLkNH4Ng Danilo Schmiedel ?First impressions from Oracle Open World 2013 http://wp.me/p2fG8x-77 @soacommunity @OC_WIRE SOA Community ?Good morning SFO let us know if you attend #OOW & #OPN keynote - #soacommunity pic.twitter.com/hzLYGDlRgE Simon Haslam ?Had a very useful @wlscommunity PAC meeting yesterday... & probably the best swag to date! pic.twitter.com/Lqus8ysbp7 Vikas Anand ?Oracle SOA Suite - Team Blog http://bit.ly/18I1Zj7 Rajesh Raheja ?Introducing new Cloud Connectivity Adapters #soa #demopod #oow13. I'll be there Sep 23 & 24 3-6pm to meetup http://bit.ly/18I1Zj7 leonsmiers ?..and again a very successful Oracle SOA/BPM partner council on the eve of #oow13. Thanks Jurgen! @soacommunity pic.twitter.com/aM1LMlb7Yw Vikas Anand ?#oow13 #soa #oep #exalogic Canon Delivers Fast Data with Oracle Event Processing (Oracle SOA Suite) http://bit.ly/1dwPeHb #soacommunity Rolf Scheuch ?The ACM poster is a big success. Great talks and .... I am soon out of posters! #bpmcon #ACM pic.twitter.com/TriaUyXRWK Oracle SOA ?British Telecom Sucess with Oracle B2B #oow #soa #b2b http://pub.vitrue.com/1RWi leonsmiers ?(Oracle) Case Management supporting re-platforming, a pre-read before our presentation at #oow13 http://leonsmiers.blogspot.com/2013/09/case-management-supporting-re.html … #capgemini #yammer SOA & BPM Partner CommunityFor regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. 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• Oracle Fusion Applications: Changing the Game

  - by kellsey.ruppel(at)oracle.com

  Originally posted in the Oracle Profit Magazine, November 2010 Edition. When the order processing system red-flags a customer's credit status, the IT department doesn't get the customer's call. When a supplier misses a delivery date for a key automotive assembly, it's not the CIO who has to answer for the error. Knowledge workers (known in IT circles as "users") are on the front lines when an exception occurs in an established business process. They're also the ones who study sales trends to decide when to open a new store in an up-and-coming neighborhood, which products are most profitable, how employee skill sets are evolving, and which suppliers are most efficient. In short, knowledge workers are masters of business as unusual. Traditional enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and other familiar enterprise applications excel at automating, managing, and executing standard business processes. These programs shine when everything goes as planned. Life gets even trickier when a traditional application needs to be extended with a new service or an extra step is added to a business process when new products are brought to market, divisions are merged, or companies are acquired. Monolithic applications often need the IT department to step in and make the necessary adjustments--incurring additional costs and delays. Until now. When Oracle unveiled the much-anticipated family of Oracle Fusion Applications at Oracle OpenWorld in September 2010, knowledge workers in particular had a lot to cheer about. Business users will soon have ready access to analytical information and collaboration tools in the context of what they are working on, so they can make better decisions when problems or opportunities arise. Additionally, the Oracle Fusion Applications platform will make it easy for business users to tweak processes, create new capabilities, and find information, often without the need for IT department assistance and while still following company guidelines. And IT leaders will be happy to hear about new deployment options, guided implementation and setup tools, and cost-saving management capabilities. Just as important, the underlying technologies in Oracle Fusion Applications will allow organizations to choose among their existing investments and next-generation enterprise applications so they can introduce innovations at a pace that makes the most business and financial sense. "Oracle Fusion Applications are architected so you don't have to do rip and replace," says Jim Hayes, managing director of the consulting firm Accenture. "That's very important for creating a business case that will get through the steering committee and be approved by the board. It shows you can drive value and make a difference in the near term." For these and other reasons, analysts and early adopters are calling Oracle Fusion Applications a game changer for enterprise customers. The differences become apparent in three key areas: the way we innovate, work, and adopt technology. Game Changer #1: New Standard for InnovationChange is a constant challenge for most businesses, whether the catalysts are market dynamics, new competition, or the ever-expanding regulatory environment. And, in an ongoing effort to differentiate, business leaders are constantly looking for new ways to do business, serve constituents, and bring new products and services to market. In addition, companies face significant costs to keep their applications up-to-date. For example, when a company adds new suppliers to a procurement system, the IT shop typically has to invest time, effort, and even consulting fees for custom integrations that allow various ERP systems to communicate with each other. Oracle Fusion Applications were built on Web services and a modular SOA foundation to ease customizations and integration activities among all applications--whether from Oracle or another vendor. Interfaces and updates written in ubiquitous Java, rather than a proprietary coding language, allow organizations to tap into existing in-house technical skills rather than seek expensive outside specialists. And with SOA, organizations can extend a feature set or integrate with other SOA environments by combining Web services such as "look up customer" into a new business process managed by the BPEL orchestration engine. Flexibility like this has long-term implications. "Because users capture these changes at a higher metadata layer, not in the application's code, changes and additions are protected even as new versions of Oracle Fusion Applications are released," says Steve Miranda, senior vice president of applications development at Oracle. "This is a much more sustainable approach because you don't incur costly customizations that prevent upgrades and other innovations." And changes are easier to make: if one change is made in the metadata, that change is automatically reflected throughout the application interface, business intelligence, business process, and business logic. Game Changer #2: New Standard for WorkBoosting productivity comes down to doing the basics right: running business processes more efficiently and managing exceptions more effectively, so users can accomplish more in the course of a day or spend more quality time with the most profitable customers. The fastest way to improve process efficiency is to reduce the number of steps it takes to execute common tasks, such as ordering office equipment from an internal procurement system. Oracle Fusion Applications will deliver a complete role-based user experience with business intelligence and collaboration capabilities provided in the context of the work at hand. "We created every Oracle Fusion Applications screen by asking 'What does the user need to know?' 'What does he or she need to do?' and 'Who do they need to work with to get the job done?'" Miranda explains. So when the sales department heads need new laptops, the self-service procurement screen will not only display a list of approved vendors and configurations, but also a running list of reviews by coworkers who recently purchased the various models. Embedded intelligence may also display prevailing delivery lead times based on actual order histories, not the generic shipping dates vendors may quote. The pervasive business intelligence serves many other business activities across all areas of the enterprise. For example, a manager considering whether to promote a direct report can see the person's employee profile, with a salary history, appraisal summaries, and a rundown of skills and training. This approach to business intelligence also has implications for supply chain management. "One of the challenges at Ingersoll Rand is lack of visibility in our supply chain," says Mike Macrie, global director of enterprise applications for global industrial firm Ingersoll Rand. "Oracle Fusion Applications are going to provide the embedded intelligence to give us that visibility and give us the ability to analyze those orders at any point in our supply chain." Oracle Fusion Applications will also create a "role-based user experience" that displays a work list of events that need attention, based on user job function. Role awareness guides users with daily lists of action items and exceptions. So a credit manager may see seven invoices with discounts that are about to expire or 12 suppliers that have been put on hold because credit memos are awaiting approval. Individualization extends to the search capabilities of Oracle Fusion Applications. The platform uses Web-style search screens powered by an Oracle enterprise search engine, with a security framework that filters search results so individuals will only see the internal information they're authorized to access. A further aid to productivity is Oracle Fusion Applications' integration with Web 2.0 collaboration and social networking resources for business environments. Hover-over text will reveal relevant contact information whenever the name of a person appears in an Oracle Fusion Application. Users can connect via an online chat, phone call, or instant message without leaving the main application, reducing the time required for an accounts payable staffer to resolve a mismatch between an invoiced charge and the service record, for example. Addresses of suppliers, customers, or partners will also initiate hover-over text to show contact details and Web-based maps. Finally, Oracle Fusion Applications will promote a new way of working with purpose-driven communities that can bring new efficiencies to everything from cultivating sales leads to managing new projects. As soon as a lead or project materializes, the applications will automatically gather relevant participants into an online community that shares member contact information, schedules, discussion forums, and Wiki pages. "Oracle Fusion Applications will allow us to take it to the next level with embedded Web 2.0 tools and the embedded analytics," says Steve Printz, CIO and vice president, supply chain management, at window-and-door manufacturer Pella. "[This] allows those employees today who are processing transactions to really contribute to the success of the company and become decision-makers." Game Changer #3: New Standard for Technology AdoptionAs IT becomes a dominant component of how businesses run and compete, organizations need to lower the cost of implementing applications and introducing new application features. In the past, rolling out new code often required creating a test bed system, moving beta code to a separate system for user feedback, and--once all the revisions were made--moving version one of the software onto production systems, where business users could finally get the needed new features. Oracle Fusion Applications will use a dedicated setup manager application to streamline this process. First, the setup manager will help scope out the project, querying users about their requirements. "From those questions and answers we determine the steps and the order of those steps that will enable that task," Miranda says. Next, system utilities will assign tasks to owners, track completion status, and monitor the overall status of a programming effort. Oracle Fusion Applications can then recommend Web services that allow users to migrate setup choices and steps across all the various deployments of the application. Those setup capabilities automate the migration from test systems to production systems, as well as between different business units that may be using the same application. "The self-service ability of the setup manager helps business users change setups with very little intervention from the IT team," says Ravi Kumar, vice president at IT services company Infosys. "That to me is a big difference from how we've viewed enterprise applications before." For additional flexibility, organizations will be able to adopt Oracle Fusion Applications modules in either of two modes: a single-instance alternative uses one database for all Oracle Fusion Applications, while a "pillar mode" creates separate databases to underpin each application. This means IT departments running any one of Oracle's applications or even third-party applications can plug Oracle Fusion Applications modules into their environment and see additional business value created on top of their existing systems. And Oracle Fusion Applications offer a hybrid approach to deployment. The applications are all software-as-a-service-ready, so customers can choose on-premises, public or private cloud, or a combination of these to suit their business needs. It's that combination of flexibility and a roadmap for the future that may be the biggest game changer of all. "The Oracle Fusion Applications architecture allows us to migrate our company at a pace that's consistent with our business strategy, whereas before we might have had to do it with a massive upgrade," says Macrie of Ingersoll Rand. "We're looking forward to that architecture to really give us more flexibility in how we migrate over time." For More InformationUser Input Key to the Success of Oracle Fusion ApplicationsTransforming Coexistence into Strategic ValueUnder the HoodOracle Fusion ApplicationsOracle Service-Oriented Architecture  

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• E-Business Suite Technology Sessions at OAUG Collaborate 12

  - by Max Arderius

  Members of our E-Business Suite Applications Technology Group will be at the OAUG Collaborate 12 conference at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada on April 22 to 26, 2012.  Please drop by any of our sessions to hear the latest news and meet up with us. Speaker Sessions Session 9675Planning Your Oracle E-Business Suite Upgrade from Release 11i to 12.1 and BeyondAnne Carlson, Senior Director, Applications Technology Group, OracleSunday, April 22, 2:00 pm - 3:00 pmLocation: Jasmine B Attend this session to hear the latest Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1 upgrade planning tips gleaned from customers who have already performed the upgrade. Youll get specific, cross-product advice on how to decide your project's scope, understand the factors that affect your project's duration, develop a robust testing strategy, leverage Oracle Support resources, and more. In a nutshell, this session tells you things you need to know before embarking upon your Release 12.1 upgrade project. Session 9401Minimizing Oracle E-Business Suite Maintenance DowntimesElke Phelps, Principal Product Manager, Applications Technology Group, OracleKevin Hudson, Sr. Director, Applications Technology Group, OracleSunday, April 22, 2:10 pm - 3:10 pmLocation: South Seas EThis session starts with an architecture review of Oracle E-Business Suite fundamentals and then moves to a practical view of the different tools and approaches for downtimes. Topics include patching shortcuts, merging patches, distributing worker processes across multiple servers, running ADPatch in no-interactive mode, staged APPL_TOPs, shared file systems, deferring system-wide database tasks, avoiding resource bottlenecks etc... This session also describes the online patching capabilities coming in Release 12.2. Session 9368Oracle E-Business Suite Technology: Latest Features and RoadmapLisa Parekh, Vice President, Applications Technology Group, Oracle Sunday, April 22, 4:30 pm - 5:30 pmLocation: South Seas EThis session provides an overview of Oracle E-Business Suite technology strategy, the capabilities and associated business benefits of recent releases, as well as a review of the product roadmap. As a cornerstone session for Oracle E-Business Suite technology, come hear about the latest usability enhancements, systems administration and configuration management tools, security-related updates, and tools and options for extending, customizing, and integrating the Oracle E-Business Suite with other applications. Session 10709Oracle E-Business Suite Applications Strategy and General Manager UpdateCliff Godwin, Sr. VP, Application Development, OracleMonday, April 23, 2:30 pm - 3:30 pmLocation: Mandalay Bay DIn this session, hear from Oracle E-Business Suite General Manager Cliff Godwin as he delivers an update on the Oracle E-Business Suite product line. The session covers the value delivered by the current release of Oracle E-Business Suite applications, the momentum, and how Oracle E-Business Suite applications integrate into Oracle’s overall applications strategy. You will come away with an understanding of the value Oracle E-Business Suite applications deliver now and in the future. Session 9398How to Reduce TCO Using Oracle Application Management Suite for Oracle E-Business SuiteAngelo Rosado, Principal Product Manager, Applications Technology Group, OracleKenneth Baxter, Principal Product Strategy Manager, Management Pack Fusion Middleware Management, OracleTuesday, April 24, 8:00 am - 9:00 amLocation: Breakers GThis session covers the methods and tools you can use to gain insights into your end users, troubleshoot performance problems, define service-level objectives, and proactively monitor your end-to-end Oracle E-Business Suite environment to meet your availability and performance targets. Come hear how you can manage, diagnose, and monitor the Oracle E-Business Suite environment from a single console by using Oracle Enterprise Manager together with the Oracle Application Management Suite for Oracle E-Business Suite. Session 9370 Coexistence of Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle Fusion Applications: Platform Perspective Nadia Bendjedou, Senior Director, Product Strategy, Oracle Tuesday, April 24, 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm Location: South Seas E Join us at this session if you are wondering which tools to integrate your data, your processes and your User Interface. Or what tools to customize and extend your screens and reports (OAF, Forms, ADF, Oracle Reports, BI etc....), what tools to secure, protect and manage your Oracle E-Business Suite etc... Or simply if you are looking for a technical roadmap for your Oracle E-Business Suite infrastructure to CO-EXIST with the rest of your enterprise applications including Oracle Fusion Applications. Session 9375 Oracle E-Business Suite Directions: Deployment and System AdministrationMax Arderius, Manager, Applications Development Group, OracleTuesday, April 24, 4:30 pm - 5:30 pmLocation: Breakers GWhat's coming in the next major version of Oracle E-Business Suite 12? This session covers the latest technology stack, including the use of Oracle WebLogic Server and Oracle Database 11g Release 2. Topics include an architectural overview, installation and upgrade options, new configuration options, and new tools for hot-cloning and automated "lights out" cloning. Learn about how online patching will reduce your database patching downtimes to the time it takes to bounce your database server.Session 9369Oracle E-Business Suite Technology Certification Primer and RoadmapSteven Chan, Sr. Director, Applications Technology Group, Oracle Wednesday, April 25, 8:15 am - 9:15 amLocation: South Seas FThis Oracle Development session summarizes the latest certifications and roadmap for the Oracle E-Business Suite technology stack, including database releases/options, Java, Oracle Forms, Oracle Containers for J2EE, desktop OS, browsers, JRE releases, Office/OpenOffice, development and Web authoring tools, user authentication and management, BI, security options, clouds, Oracle VM etc.... It also covers the most-commonly-asked questions about technology stack component support dates and upgrade implications. Session 9407The Latest Oracle E-Business Suite Release User Interface and Usability EnhancementsGustavo Jimenez, Sr. Manager, Applications Technology Group, Oracle Wednesday, April 25, 1:00 pm - 2:00 pmLocation: South Seas GIn this session, developers will get a detailed look at new features designed to enhance usability, offer more capabilities for personalization and extensions, and support the development and use of dashboards and Web services. Topics include rich new UI capabilities such as new home page features, Navigator and Favorites pull-down menus, Oracle ADF task flows etc.... In addition, we will cover the personalization/extensibility enhancements, business layer extensions, Oracle ADF integration and much more. Session 9374Best Practices for Oracle E-Business Suite Performance Tuning and Upgrade OptimizationIsam Alyousfi, Senior Director, Applications Performance, OracleUdayan Parvate, Director, Release Engineering, Quality and Release Management, Oracle Thursday, April 26, 8:30 am - 9:30 amLocation: South Seas FThis presentation will offer tips and techniques on tuning all the layers of the Oracle E-Business Suite stack including the various tiers of the Oracle E-Business Suite environment. You will learn about tuning Oracle Forms, Concurrent Manager, Apache, and Oracle Discoverer. Track down memory leaks and other issues on the Java and Java Virtual Machine layers. The session also covers Oracle E-Business Suite product-level tuning, including Oracle Workflow, Oracle Order Management, Oracle Payroll, and other modules.Session 9412 Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 Desktop Integration: Beyond Oracle Applications Desktop IntegratorGustavo Jimenez, Sr. Manager, Applications Technology Group, OracleThursday, April 26, 8:30 am - 9:30 amLocation: Breakers GThis session describes the new expanded functionality in Oracle Web Applications Desktop Integrator, Oracle Report Manager, and dedicated integrators. You have more options for desktop integration now, not fewer. Topics include an overview of prepackaged solutions for integrating Oracle E-Business Suite with desktop applications such as Microsoft Excel, Word, and Projects. The session also discusses how you can use the Desktop Integration Framework feature to create your own integrators quickly and easily.Session 9533 Upgrading your Customizations to Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1Sara Woodhull, Principal Product Manager, Applications Technology Group, Oracle Thursday, April 26, 11:00 am - 12:00 pmLocation: South Seas FHave you personalized Forms or OA Framework screens? Have you used mod_plsql or Applications Express to tailor your Release 11i functionality? Have you extended or customized your Release 11i environment using other tools? This session will help you understand customization scenarios, use cases, tools, and technologies for ensuring that your Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1 environment fits your users' needs closely and that any future customizations will be easy to upgrade. Special Interest Groups (SIG) Session 10535OAUG Database SIG- Part IMichael Brown, Colibri Limited Company Sunday, April 22, 3:20 pm - 4:20 pmLocation: South Seas FThis is the annual meeting of the Database SIG at Collaborate. The call for candidates for the chair will be closed at the meeting. Plans include a speaker from Oracle and a presentation on applications performance. The details of the meeting will be posted on http://www.dbsig.com. Guest Presentation: Oracle E-Business Suite Database PerformanceIsam Alyousfi, Senior Director, Applications Performance, Oracle Session 10720OAUG EBS Applications Technology SIG- Part ISrini Chaval, Cummins Monday, April 23, 2:30 pm - 3:30 pmLocation: South Seas F Guest Presentation:Oracle E-Business Suite Technology Certification RoadmapSteven Chan, Sr. Director, Applications Technology Group, Oracle Session 10510OAUG EBS Applications Technology SIG- Part IISrini Chaval, CumminsMonday, April 23, 3:45 pm - 4:45 pmLocation: South Seas F Guest Presentation:Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2 Online Patching Kevin Hudson, Sr. Director, Applications Technology Group, Oracle Session 10522 OAUG Upgrade SIG- Part IISandra Vucinic, VLAD Group, Inc. Wednesday, April 25, 3:00 pm - 4:00 pmLocation: South Seas FUpgrade SIG will host a business meeting followed by panel (Q&A) related to EBS Upgrade topics and Oracle presentation. Guest Presentation:Upgrading E-Business Suite Amrita Mehrok, Director, Financials Product Strategy, Oracle Nadia Bendjedou, Senior Director, Product Strategy, Oracle Session 10722OAUG Upgrade SIG- Part IISandra Vucinic, VLAD Group, Inc. Wednesday, April 25, 4:15 pm - 5:15 pmLocation: South Seas FUpgrade SIG will host a business meeting followed by panel (Q&A) related to EBS Upgrade topics and Oracle presentation. Guest Presentation:Tuning the Oracle E-Business Suite Upgrade Isam Alyousfi, Senior Director, Applications Performance, Oracle Panels Session 9360Oracle E-Business Suite Cloning PanelSandra Vucinic, VLAD Group, Inc. Guest Speaker: Max Arderius, Manager, Applications Technology Group, OracleWednesday, April 25, 9:30 am - 10:30 amLocation: South Seas FThis panel will discuss differences between available release 11i, R12 and R12.1 cloning methods. Advantages and disadvantages of each cloning method will be discussed in depth. This panel of experienced database administrators will lead a discussion focusing on the questions such as “which cloning method is best to use in your particular environment”. Attendees will gain practical knowledge, tips and tricks to assist with cloning of Oracle E-Business Suite release 11i, R12 and R12.1 environments. Session 10022Oracle Applications Tuning PanelMark Farnham, Rightsizing, Inc.Guest Speaker: Isam Alyousfi, Senior Director, Applications Performance, OracleThursday, April 26, 09:45 am - 10:45 amLocation: South Seas FThis applications performance panel session, sponsored by the OAUG Database SIG, provides a Q&A forum focused on helping you address your Oracle Applications (Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle's PeopleSoft Enterprise and Siebel applications) performance- and scalability-related issues. The panel comprises several well-known Oracle Applications performance experts. Topic areas include Oracle Database; the network; and the applications tier, including patching and upgrade performance. For complete listing of all speaker sessions and other activities, please visit the OAUG Collaborate Web Site.

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• SQLAuthority Book Review – DBA Survivor: Become a Rock Star DBA

  - by pinaldave

  DBA Survivor: Become a Rock Star DBA – Thomas LaRock Link to Amazon Link to Flipkart First of all, I thank all my readers when I wrote that I could not get this book in any local book stores, because they offered me to send a copy of this good book. A very special mention goes to Sripada and Jayesh for they gave so much effort in finding my home address and sending me the hard copy. Before, I did not have the copy of the book, but now I have two of it already! It surprises me how my readers were able to find my home address, which I have not publicly shared. Quick Review: This is indeed a one easy-to-read and fun book. We all work day and night with technology yet we should not forget to show our love and care for our family at home. For our souls that starve for peace and guidance, this one book is the “it” book for all the technology enthusiasts. Though this book was specifically written for DBAs, the reach is not limited to DBAs only because the lessons incorporated in it actually applies to all. This is one of the most motivating technical books I have read. Detailed Review: Let us go over a few questions first: Who wants to be as famous as rockstars in the field of Database Administration? How can one learn what it takes to become a top notch software developer? If you are a beginner in your field, how will you go to next level? Your boss may be very kind or like Dilbert’s Boss, what will you do? How do you keep growing when Eco-system around you does not support you? You are almost at top but there is someone else at the TOP, what do you do and how do you avoid office politics? As a database developer what should be your basic responsibility? and many more… I was able to completely read book in one sitting and I loved it. Before I continue with my opinion, I want to echo the opinion of Kevin Kline who has written the Forward of the book. He has truly suggested that “You hold in your hands a collection of insights and wisdom on the topic of database administration gained through many years of hard-won experience, long nights of study, and direct mentorship under some of the industry’s most talented database professionals and information technology (IT) experts.” Today, IT field is getting bigger and better, while talking about terabytes of the database becomes “more” normal every single day. The gods and demigods of database professionals are taking care of these large scale databases and are carefully maintaining them. In this world, there are only a few beginnings on the first step. There are many experts in different technology fields who are asked to address the issues with databases. There is YOU and ME, who is just new to this work. So we ask ourselves WHERE to begin and HOW to begin. We adore and follow the religion of our rockstars, but oftentimes we really have no idea about their background and their struggles. Every rockstar has his success story which needs to be digested before learning his tricks and tips. This book starts with the same note and teaches the two most important lessons for anybody who wants to be a DBA Rockstar –  to focus on their single goal of learning and to excel the technology. The story starts with three simple guidelines – Get Prepared, Get Trained, Get Certified. Once a person learns the skills, and then, it would be about time that he needs to enrich or to improve those skills you have learned. I am sure that the right opportunity will come finding themselves and they will not have to go run behind it. However, the real challenge for any person is the first day or first week. A new employee, no matter how much experienced he is, sometimes has no clue about what should one do at new job. Chapter 2 and chapter 3 precisely talk about what one should do as soon as the new job begins. It is also written with keeping the fact in focus that each job can be very much different but there are few infrastructure setups and programming concepts are the same. Learning basics of database was really interesting. I like to focus on the roots of any technology. It is important to understand the structure of the database before suggesting what indexes needs to be created, the same way this book covers the most essential knowledge one must learn by most database developers. I think the title of the fourth chapter is my favorite sentence in this book. I can see that I will be saying this again and again in the future – “A Development Server Is a Production Server to a Developer“. I have worked in the software industry for almost 8 years now and I have seen so many developers sitting on their chairs and waiting for instructions from their lead about how to improve the code or what to do the next. When I talk to them, I suggest that the experiment with their server and try various techniques. I think they all should understand that for them, a development server is their production server and needs to pay proper attention to the code from the beginning. There should be NO any inappropriate code from the beginning. One has to fully focus and give their best, if they are not sure they should ask but should do something and stay active. Chapter 5 and 6 talks about two essential skills for any developer and database administration – what are the ethics of developers when they are working with production server and how to support software which is running on the production server. I have met many people who know the theory by heart but when put in front of keyboard they do not know where to start. The first thing they do opening the browser and searching online, instead of opening SQL Server Management Studio. This can very well happen to anybody who is experienced as well. Chapter 5 and 6 addresses that situation as well includes the handy scripts which can solve almost all the basic trouble shooting issues. “Where’s the Buffet?” By far, this is the best chapter in this book. If you have ever met me, you would know that I love food. I think after reading this chapter, I felt Thomas has written this just keeping me in mind. I think there will be many other people who feel the same way, too. Even my wife who read this chapter thought this was specifically written for me. I will not talk any more about this chapter as this is one must read chapter. And of course this is about real ‘FOOD‘. I am an SQL Server Trainer and Consultant and I totally agree with the point made in the chapter 8 of this book. Yes, it says here that what is necessary to train employees and people. Millions of dollars worth the labor is continuously done in the world which has faults and incorrect. Once something goes wrong, very expensive consultant comes in and fixes the problem. This whole cycle which can be stopped and improved if proper training is done. There is plenty of free trainings available as well, if one cannot afford paid training. “Connect. Learn. Share” – I think this is a great summary and bird’s eye view of this book. Networking is the key. Everything which is discussed in this book can be taken to next level if one properly uses this tips and continuously grow with it. Connecting with others, helping learn each other and building the good knowledge sharing environment should be the goal of everyone. Before I end the review I want to share a real experience. I have personally met one DBA who has worked in a single department in a company for so long that when he was put in a different department in his company due to closing that department, he could not adjust and quit the job despite the same people and company around him. Adjusting in the new environment gets much tougher as one person gets more and more experienced. This book precisely addresses the same issue along with their solutions. I just cannot stop comparing the book with my personal journey. I found so many things which are coincidently in the book is written as how we developer and DBA think. I must express special thanks to Thomas for taking time in his personal life and write this book for us. This book is indeed a book for everybody who wants to grow healthy in the tough and competitive environment. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Book Review, SQLAuthority News, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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• Connecting Linux to WatchGuard Firebox SSL (OpenVPN client)

  Recently, I got a new project assignment that requires to connect permanently to the customer's network through VPN. They are using a so-called SSL VPN. As I am using OpenVPN since more than 5 years within my company's network I was quite curious about their solution and how it would actually be different from OpenVPN. Well, short version: It is a disguised version of OpenVPN. Unfortunately, the company only offers a client for Windows and Mac OS which shouldn't bother any Linux user after all. OpenVPN is part of every recent distribution and can be activated in a couple of minutes - both client as well as server (if necessary). WatchGuard Firebox SSL - About dialog Borrowing some files from a Windows client installation Initially, I didn't know about the product, so therefore I went through the installation on Windows 8. No obstacles (and no restart despite installation of TAP device drivers!) here and the secured VPN channel was up and running in less than 2 minutes or so. Much appreciated from both parties - customer and me. Of course, this whole client package and my long year approved and stable installation ignited my interest to have a closer look at the WatchGuard client. Compared to the original OpenVPN client (okay, I have to admit this is years ago) this commercial product is smarter in terms of file locations during installation. You'll be able to access the configuration and key files below your roaming application data folder. To get there, simply enter '%AppData%\WatchGuard\Mobile VPN' in your Windows/File Explorer and confirm with Enter/Return. This will display the following files: Application folder below user profile with configuration and certificate files From there we are going to borrow four files, namely: ca.crt client.crt client.ovpn client.pem and transfer them to the Linux system. You might also be able to isolate those four files from a Mac OS client. Frankly, I'm just too lazy to run the WatchGuard client installation on a Mac mini only to find the folder location, and I'm going to describe why a little bit further down this article. I know that you can do that! Feedback in the comment section is appreciated. Configuration of OpenVPN (console) Depending on your distribution the following steps might be a little different but in general you should be able to get the important information from it. I'm going to describe the steps in Ubuntu 13.04 (Raring Ringtail). As usual, there are two possibilities to achieve your goal: console and UI. Let's what it is necessary to be done. First of all, you should ensure that you have OpenVPN installed on your system. Open your favourite terminal application and run the following statement: $ sudo apt-get install openvpn network-manager-openvpn network-manager-openvpn-gnome Just to be on the safe side. The four above mentioned files from your Windows machine could be copied anywhere but either you place them below your own user directory or you put them (as root) below the default directory: /etc/openvpn At this stage you would be able to do a test run already. Just in case, run the following command and check the output (it's the similar information you would get from the 'View Logs...' context menu entry in Windows: $ sudo openvpn --config client.ovpn Pay attention to the correct path to your configuration and certificate files. OpenVPN will ask you to enter your Auth Username and Auth Password in order to establish the VPN connection, same as the Windows client. Remote server and user authentication to establish the VPN Please complete the test run and see whether all went well. You can disconnect pressing Ctrl+C. Simplifying your life - authentication file In my case, I actually set up the OpenVPN client on my gateway/router. This establishes a VPN channel between my network and my client's network and allows me to switch machines easily without having the necessity to install the WatchGuard client on each and every machine. That's also very handy for my various virtualised Windows machines. Anyway, as the client configuration, key and certificate files are located on a headless system somewhere under the roof, it is mandatory to have an automatic connection to the remote site. For that you should first change the file extension '.ovpn' to '.conf' which is the default extension on Linux systems for OpenVPN, and then open the client configuration file in order to extend an existing line. $ sudo mv client.ovpn client.conf $ sudo nano client.conf You should have a similar content to this one here: dev tunclientproto tcp-clientca ca.crtcert client.crtkey client.pemtls-remote "/O=WatchGuard_Technologies/OU=Fireware/CN=Fireware_SSLVPN_Server"remote-cert-eku "TLS Web Server Authentication"remote 1.2.3.4 443persist-keypersist-tunverb 3mute 20keepalive 10 60cipher AES-256-CBCauth SHA1float 1reneg-sec 3660nobindmute-replay-warningsauth-user-pass auth.txt Note: I changed the IP address of the remote directive above (which should be obvious, right?). Anyway, the required change is marked in red and we have to create a new authentication file 'auth.txt'. You can give the directive 'auth-user-pass' any file name you'd like to. Due to my existing OpenVPN infrastructure my setup differs completely from the above written content but for sake of simplicity I just keep it 'as-is'. Okay, let's create this file 'auth.txt' $ sudo nano auth.txt and just put two lines of information in it - username on the first, and password on the second line, like so: myvpnusernameverysecretpassword Store the file, change permissions, and call openvpn with your configuration file again: $ sudo chmod 0600 auth.txt $ sudo openvpn --config client.conf This should now work without being prompted to enter username and password. In case that you placed your files below the system-wide location /etc/openvpn you can operate your VPNs also via service command like so: $ sudo service openvpn start client $ sudo service openvpn stop client Using Network Manager For newer Linux users or the ones with 'console-phobia' I'm going to describe now how to use Network Manager to setup the OpenVPN client. For this move your mouse to the systray area and click on Network Connections => VPN Connections => Configure VPNs... which opens your Network Connections dialog. Alternatively, use the HUD and enter 'Network Connections'. Network connections overview in Ubuntu Click on 'Add' button. On the next dialog select 'Import a saved VPN configuration...' from the dropdown list and click on 'Create...' Choose connection type to import VPN configuration Now you navigate to your folder where you put the client files from the Windows system and you open the 'client.ovpn' file. Next, on the tab 'VPN' proceed with the following steps (directives from the configuration file are referred): General Check the IP address of Gateway ('remote' - we used 1.2.3.4 in this setup) Authentication Change Type to 'Password with Certificates (TLS)' ('auth-pass-user') Enter User name to access your client keys (Auth Name: myvpnusername) Enter Password (Auth Password: verysecretpassword) and choose your password handling Browse for your User Certificate ('cert' - should be pre-selected with client.crt) Browse for your CA Certificate ('ca' - should be filled as ca.crt) Specify your Private Key ('key' - here: client.pem) Then click on the 'Advanced...' button and check the following values: Use custom gateway port: 443 (second value of 'remote' directive) Check the selected value of Cipher ('cipher') Check HMAC Authentication ('auth') Enter the Subject Match: /O=WatchGuard_Technologies/OU=Fireware/CN=Fireware_SSLVPN_Server ('tls-remote') Finally, you have to confirm and close all dialogs. You should be able to establish your OpenVPN-WatchGuard connection via Network Manager. For that, click on the 'VPN Connections => client' entry on your Network Manager in the systray. It is advised that you keep an eye on the syslog to see whether there are any problematic issues that would require some additional attention. Advanced topic: routing As stated above, I'm running the 'WatchGuard client for Linux' on my head-less server, and since then I'm actually establishing a secure communication channel between two networks. In order to enable your network clients to get access to machines on the remote side there are two possibilities to enable that: Proper routing on both sides of the connection which enables both-direction access, or Network masquerading on the 'client side' of the connection Following, I'm going to describe the second option a little bit more in detail. The Linux system that I'm using is already configured as a gateway to the internet. I won't explain the necessary steps to do that, and will only focus on the additional tweaks I had to do. You can find tons of very good instructions and tutorials on 'How to setup a Linux gateway/router' - just use Google. OK, back to the actual modifications. First, we need to have some information about the network topology and IP address range used on the 'other' side. We can get this very easily from /var/log/syslog after we established the OpenVPN channel, like so: $ sudo tail -n20 /var/log/syslog Or if your system is quite busy with logging, like so: $ sudo less /var/log/syslog | grep ovpn The output should contain PUSH received message similar to the following one: Jul 23 23:13:28 ios1 ovpn-client[789]: PUSH: Received control message: 'PUSH_REPLY,topology subnet,route 192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0,dhcp-option DOMAIN ,route-gateway 192.168.6.1,topology subnet,ping 10,ping-restart 60,ifconfig 192.168.6.2 255.255.255.0' The interesting part for us is the route command which I highlighted already in the sample PUSH_REPLY. Depending on your remote server there might be multiple networks defined (172.16.x.x and/or 10.x.x.x). Important: The IP address range on both sides of the connection has to be different, otherwise you will have to shuffle IPs or increase your the netmask. {loadposition content_adsense} After the VPN connection is established, we have to extend the rules for iptables in order to route and masquerade IP packets properly. I created a shell script to take care of those steps: #!/bin/sh -eIPTABLES=/sbin/iptablesDEV_LAN=eth0DEV_VPNS=tun+VPN=192.168.1.0/24 $IPTABLES -A FORWARD -i $DEV_LAN -o $DEV_VPNS -d $VPN -j ACCEPT$IPTABLES -A FORWARD -i $DEV_VPNS -o $DEV_LAN -s $VPN -j ACCEPT$IPTABLES -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o $DEV_VPNS -d $VPN -j MASQUERADE I'm using the wildcard interface 'tun+' because I have multiple client configurations for OpenVPN on my server. In your case, it might be sufficient to specify device 'tun0' only. Simplifying your life - automatic connect on boot Now, that the client connection works flawless, configuration of routing and iptables is okay, we might consider to add another 'laziness' factor into our setup. Due to kernel updates or other circumstances it might be necessary to reboot your system. Wouldn't it be nice that the VPN connections are established during the boot procedure? Yes, of course it would be. To achieve this, we have to configure OpenVPN to automatically start our VPNs via init script. Let's have a look at the responsible 'default' file and adjust the settings accordingly. $ sudo nano /etc/default/openvpn Which should have a similar content to this: # This is the configuration file for /etc/init.d/openvpn## Start only these VPNs automatically via init script.# Allowed values are "all", "none" or space separated list of# names of the VPNs. If empty, "all" is assumed.# The VPN name refers to the VPN configutation file name.# i.e. "home" would be /etc/openvpn/home.conf#AUTOSTART="all"#AUTOSTART="none"#AUTOSTART="home office"## ... more information which remains unmodified ... With the OpenVPN client configuration as described above you would either set AUTOSTART to "all" or to "client" to enable automatic start of your VPN(s) during boot. You should also take care that your iptables commands are executed after the link has been established, too. You can easily test this configuration without reboot, like so: $ sudo service openvpn restart Enjoy stable VPN connections between your Linux system(s) and a WatchGuard Firebox SSL remote server. Cheers, JoKi

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• How to Reuse Your Old Wi-Fi Router as a Network Switch

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  Just because your old Wi-Fi router has been replaced by a newer model doesn’t mean it needs to gather dust in the closet. Read on as we show you how to take an old and underpowered Wi-Fi router and turn it into a respectable network switch (saving your $20 in the process). Image by mmgallan. Why Do I Want To Do This? Wi-Fi technology has changed significantly in the last ten years but Ethernet-based networking has changed very little. As such, a Wi-Fi router with 2006-era guts is lagging significantly behind current Wi-Fi router technology, but the Ethernet networking component of the device is just as useful as ever; aside from potentially being only 100Mbs instead of 1000Mbs capable (which for 99% of home applications is irrelevant) Ethernet is Ethernet. What does this matter to you, the consumer? It means that even though your old router doesn’t hack it for your Wi-Fi needs any longer the device is still a perfectly serviceable (and high quality) network switch. When do you need a network switch? Any time you want to share an Ethernet cable among multiple devices, you need a switch. For example, let’s say you have a single Ethernet wall jack behind your entertainment center. Unfortunately you have four devices that you want to link to your local network via hardline including your smart HDTV, DVR, Xbox, and a little Raspberry Pi running XBMC. Instead of spending $20-30 to purchase a brand new switch of comparable build quality to your old Wi-Fi router it makes financial sense (and is environmentally friendly) to invest five minutes of your time tweaking the settings on the old router to turn it from a Wi-Fi access point and routing tool into a network switch–perfect for dropping behind your entertainment center so that your DVR, Xbox, and media center computer can all share an Ethernet connection. What Do I Need? For this tutorial you’ll need a few things, all of which you likely have readily on hand or are free for download. To follow the basic portion of the tutorial, you’ll need the following: 1 Wi-Fi router with Ethernet ports 1 Computer with Ethernet jack 1 Ethernet cable For the advanced tutorial you’ll need all of those things, plus: 1 copy of DD-WRT firmware for your Wi-Fi router We’re conducting the experiment with a Linksys WRT54GL Wi-Fi router. The WRT54 series is one of the best selling Wi-Fi router series of all time and there’s a good chance a significant number of readers have one (or more) of them stuffed in an office closet. Even if you don’t have one of the WRT54 series routers, however, the principles we’re outlining here apply to all Wi-Fi routers; as long as your router administration panel allows the necessary changes you can follow right along with us. A quick note on the difference between the basic and advanced versions of this tutorial before we proceed. Your typical Wi-Fi router has 5 Ethernet ports on the back: 1 labeled “Internet”, “WAN”, or a variation thereof and intended to be connected to your DSL/Cable modem, and 4 labeled 1-4 intended to connect Ethernet devices like computers, printers, and game consoles directly to the Wi-Fi router. When you convert a Wi-Fi router to a switch, in most situations, you’ll lose two port as the “Internet” port cannot be used as a normal switch port and one of the switch ports becomes the input port for the Ethernet cable linking the switch to the main network. This means, referencing the diagram above, you’d lose the WAN port and LAN port 1, but retain LAN ports 2, 3, and 4 for use. If you only need to switch for 2-3 devices this may be satisfactory. However, for those of you that would prefer a more traditional switch setup where there is a dedicated WAN port and the rest of the ports are accessible, you’ll need to flash a third-party router firmware like the powerful DD-WRT onto your device. Doing so opens up the router to a greater degree of modification and allows you to assign the previously reserved WAN port to the switch, thus opening up LAN ports 1-4. Even if you don’t intend to use that extra port, DD-WRT offers you so many more options that it’s worth the extra few steps. Preparing Your Router for Life as a Switch Before we jump right in to shutting down the Wi-Fi functionality and repurposing your device as a network switch, there are a few important prep steps to attend to. First, you want to reset the router (if you just flashed a new firmware to your router, skip this step). Following the reset procedures for your particular router or go with what is known as the “Peacock Method” wherein you hold down the reset button for thirty seconds, unplug the router and wait (while still holding the reset button) for thirty seconds, and then plug it in while, again, continuing to hold down the rest button. Over the life of a router there are a variety of changes made, big and small, so it’s best to wipe them all back to the factory default before repurposing the router as a switch. Second, after resetting, we need to change the IP address of the device on the local network to an address which does not directly conflict with the new router. The typical default IP address for a home router is 192.168.1.1; if you ever need to get back into the administration panel of the router-turned-switch to check on things or make changes it will be a real hassle if the IP address of the device conflicts with the new home router. The simplest way to deal with this is to assign an address close to the actual router address but outside the range of addresses that your router will assign via the DHCP client; a good pick then is 192.168.1.2. Once the router is reset (or re-flashed) and has been assigned a new IP address, it’s time to configure it as a switch. Basic Router to Switch Configuration If you don’t want to (or need to) flash new firmware onto your device to open up that extra port, this is the section of the tutorial for you: we’ll cover how to take a stock router, our previously mentioned WRT54 series Linksys, and convert it to a switch. Hook the Wi-Fi router up to the network via one of the LAN ports (consider the WAN port as good as dead from this point forward, unless you start using the router in its traditional function again or later flash a more advanced firmware to the device, the port is officially retired at this point). Open the administration control panel via  web browser on a connected computer. Before we get started two things: first,  anything we don’t explicitly instruct you to change should be left in the default factory-reset setting as you find it, and two, change the settings in the order we list them as some settings can’t be changed after certain features are disabled. To start, let’s navigate to Setup ->Basic Setup. Here you need to change the following things: Local IP Address: [different than the primary router, e.g. 192.168.1.2] Subnet Mask: [same as the primary router, e.g. 255.255.255.0] DHCP Server: Disable Save with the “Save Settings” button and then navigate to Setup -> Advanced Routing: Operating Mode: Router This particular setting is very counterintuitive. The “Operating Mode” toggle tells the device whether or not it should enable the Network Address Translation (NAT)  feature. Because we’re turning a smart piece of networking hardware into a relatively dumb one, we don’t need this feature so we switch from Gateway mode (NAT on) to Router mode (NAT off). Our next stop is Wireless -> Basic Wireless Settings: Wireless SSID Broadcast: Disable Wireless Network Mode: Disabled After disabling the wireless we’re going to, again, do something counterintuitive. Navigate to Wireless -> Wireless Security and set the following parameters: Security Mode: WPA2 Personal WPA Algorithms: TKIP+AES WPA Shared Key: [select some random string of letters, numbers, and symbols like JF#d$di!Hdgio890] Now you may be asking yourself, why on Earth are we setting a rather secure Wi-Fi configuration on a Wi-Fi router we’re not going to use as a Wi-Fi node? On the off chance that something strange happens after, say, a power outage when your router-turned-switch cycles on and off a bunch of times and the Wi-Fi functionality is activated we don’t want to be running the Wi-Fi node wide open and granting unfettered access to your network. While the chances of this are next-to-nonexistent, it takes only a few seconds to apply the security measure so there’s little reason not to. Save your changes and navigate to Security ->Firewall. Uncheck everything but Filter Multicast Firewall Protect: Disable At this point you can save your changes again, review the changes you’ve made to ensure they all stuck, and then deploy your “new” switch wherever it is needed. Advanced Router to Switch Configuration For the advanced configuration, you’ll need a copy of DD-WRT installed on your router. Although doing so is an extra few steps, it gives you a lot more control over the process and liberates an extra port on the device. Hook the Wi-Fi router up to the network via one of the LAN ports (later you can switch the cable to the WAN port). Open the administration control panel via web browser on the connected computer. Navigate to the Setup -> Basic Setup tab to get started. In the Basic Setup tab, ensure the following settings are adjusted. The setting changes are not optional and are required to turn the Wi-Fi router into a switch. WAN Connection Type: Disabled Local IP Address: [different than the primary router, e.g. 192.168.1.2] Subnet Mask: [same as the primary router, e.g. 255.255.255.0] DHCP Server: Disable In addition to disabling the DHCP server, also uncheck all the DNSMasq boxes as the bottom of the DHCP sub-menu. If you want to activate the extra port (and why wouldn’t you), in the WAN port section: Assign WAN Port to Switch [X] At this point the router has become a switch and you have access to the WAN port so the LAN ports are all free. Since we’re already in the control panel, however, we might as well flip a few optional toggles that further lock down the switch and prevent something odd from happening. The optional settings are arranged via the menu you find them in. Remember to save your settings with the save button before moving onto a new tab. While still in the Setup -> Basic Setup menu, change the following: Gateway/Local DNS : [IP address of primary router, e.g. 192.168.1.1] NTP Client : Disable The next step is to turn off the radio completely (which not only kills the Wi-Fi but actually powers the physical radio chip off). Navigate to Wireless -> Advanced Settings -> Radio Time Restrictions: Radio Scheduling: Enable Select “Always Off” There’s no need to create a potential security problem by leaving the Wi-Fi radio on, the above toggle turns it completely off. Under Services -> Services: DNSMasq : Disable ttraff Daemon : Disable Under the Security -> Firewall tab, uncheck every box except “Filter Multicast”, as seen in the screenshot above, and then disable SPI Firewall. Once you’re done here save and move on to the Administration tab. Under Administration -> Management:  Info Site Password Protection : Enable Info Site MAC Masking : Disable CRON : Disable 802.1x : Disable Routing : Disable After this final round of tweaks, save and then apply your settings. Your router has now been, strategically, dumbed down enough to plod along as a very dependable little switch. Time to stuff it behind your desk or entertainment center and streamline your cabling.     

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, June 05, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, June 05, 2010New Projects555 Calculator: A simple calculator to help choosing resistor and capacitor values to get the frequency you're looking for on a 555 timer.BleQua .NET: PL: Program sieciowy BleQua .NET jest multi-komunikatorem. EN: Network program BleQua .NET is multicomunicator.ChatDiplomaWork: ChatSample is the sample project.CSUFVGDC Summer Jam: Repository for VGDC summer game jam.Database Export Wizard: ExportWizard is a Step Wizard for Database Export using ASP.net and SQL Server. It allows easy export in any of the standard formats: CSV, TXT, HTM...Dozer Enterprise Library for .NET: a light .net framework for enterprise applications developmentEmployee Management System: This is an Employee Management System. the goal here is to offer a software that caters to small to mid sized businesses for free. This program a...Fanray: My project on Codeplex.Infragistics Analytics Framework: This project includes wrappers for the Infragistics controls that integrate with the recently launched Microsoft Silverlight Analytics Framework. ...KIME Simio Extensions: This is the official project of KIME Solutions. Here you find any current developments of KIME that are publicly available. KIME develops extension...MindTouch Community Extensions: MindTouch Community Extentions is a Native C# extention library for MindTouch Core that will have Dekiscript functions for full coverage of the API...NginxTray: NginxTray allows you manage easily Nginx Web Server by a Tray icon.NStore: NStore is a virtual store example done with ASP.NET MVC 2.0 tecnologyProjet Campus Numerique + Appli Mobile: Projet de création d'un campus numérique pour l'ISEN et d'un application mobile d'accès.SharePoint 2010 Feature Upgrade Kit: A set of tools for managing upgradable Features in SharePoint 2010. (Upgrading Features is a means of deploying code/artifact updates to existing S...SiteMap Utility for DNN Blog Module: This is a mini-project which allows you to easily add or generate an XML site map to your DotNetNuke® website for the search engines to use to inde...Space Explorer: A small app to help users examine folders to see which files and subfolders are taking up space. Still in development, no releases available curren...SQL Compact Toolbox: SQL Compact Toolbox is a Visual Studio 2010 add-in, that adds scripting, import, export, migrate, rename, run script and other upcoming SQL Server ...Twilverlight: Twliverlight is TweetDeck mixed with Silverlight. Much as I like using TweetDeck, it hogs my memory out, so this is an attempt to write a memory-ef...Visual Studio 2010 FxCop Extension: Visual Studio 2010 FxCop Extension allows to integrate stand-alone FxCop into Visual Studio 2010. You'll be able to analysis your source code with ...VisualStudio 2010 JavaScript Outlining: Visual Studio 2010 editor extension for JavaScript code blocks and custom regions outlining Wiki Shelf: Wiki Shelf is a Wikipedia browser app. The goal is to bring the library experience of browsing books, studying, and researching to the Wikipedia u...X-Arena - Magic: Projeto de PDS2 no Curso de Tecnologia em Desenvolvimento de Software no CEFETRN. O desenvolvimento do jogo Quiz Arena possui como pr...New Releases555 Calculator: 555Calc release v1.0: The initial 1 point uh-oh release of 555Calc.BleQua .NET: BleQua .NET 1.0.0.0: First releaseChatterbot JBot: JBot 1.0.1.155: Change presentation technology from Window Forms to Widndown Presentation Fundation.Community Forums NNTP bridge: Community Forums NNTP Bridge V26: Release of the Community Forums NNTP Bridge to access the social and anwsers MS forums with a single, open source NNTP bridge. This release has ad...Community Forums NNTP bridge: Community Forums NNTP Bridge V27: Release of the Community Forums NNTP Bridge to access the social and anwsers MS forums with a single, open source NNTP bridge. This release has ad...Community Forums NNTP bridge: Community Forums NNTP Bridge V28: Release of the Community Forums NNTP Bridge to access the social and anwsers MS forums with a single, open source NNTP bridge. This release has ad...CSS 360 Planetary Calendar: Final Release: =============================================================================== Final Release Version: 2.0 Tools Used: - Collaboration, Releas...Database Export Wizard: Version 3: As described in CodeProject article: Database Export Wizard for ASP.net and SQL Server. http://www.codeproject.com/KB/aspnet/DatabaseExportWizard.aspxEdu Math: Edu Math 2.0.10.122: Change version .NET Framework.Employee Management System: V1 (beta): This version is still in beta testing. Any issues, comments or suggestions are greatly appreciated. The export to excel function in this release o...ESB.NET: ESBDeploy_7.0.27.0 (x64 and x86) [ESB.NET 7.0 RC1]: Release Details Changes Since Last Release (since 6.3.47.1) - Targets .NET Framework 4, Visual Studio.NET 2010, Workflow 4 - Flowchart workflow ada...Free Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire SL and WPF Charts v3.1.1 beta 2 Released: Hi, This release contains the following enhancements: *ShowIndicator() and HideIndicator() function has been implemented in Chart. So now user wi...Free Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire SL and WPF Charts v3.5.4 beta 2 Released: Hi, This release contains the following enhancements: *ShowIndicator() and HideIndicator() function has been implemented in Chart. So now user wi...FsCheck: A random testing framework: FsCheck 0.7: What to download? If you use F# April 2010 CTP with Visual Studio 2008 or Visual Studio 2010, either Source or Binaries will do. To open source in...Git Source Control Provider: V 0.5: For VS 2010 users, it is recommanded to install it within Visual Studio by selecting Tools | Extension Manager. Run Visual Studio. Go to Tools ...GPdotNET - Genetic Programming Tool: GPdotNETv0.95: 1. Localization support 2. Export functionality for GP Model with training and testing data. 3. Export GPModel with Testing and Training data. 4....JoshDOS: JoshDOS 1.1: 1.1 adds a toutorial of how to create new commands and of course, you need the COMSOS user kit or dev kit. Ver 1.1 also includes a demo called Gue...KIME Simio Extensions: KIME.SimioDebugStep: This simple Simio step allows you to debug any number of expressions from within the simulation run. The debug information is displayed using a mes...NginxTray: NginxTray 0.3 Beta 2: NginxTray 0.3 Beta 2NginxTray: NginxTray 0.5 Beta 3: NginxTray 0.5 Beta 3NginxTray: NginxTray 0.6 RC1: NginxTray 0.6 RC1Open Source PLM Activities: Prodeos_OC beta 1.0: The “Innovator – MS Office Connector” is a product developed by Prodeos (www.prodeos.com). It is a light connector made to facilitate the use of Mi...Paint.NET PSD Plugin: 1.5.1: Changes in this release: Bitmap-mode images can now be loaded. Thanks to dhnc for filing the bug. Plugin no longer crashes on files with user m...SharePoint 2010 Feature Upgrade Kit: 1.0.0.0: This release contains:- - Custom application page to manage the upgrade of Site and Web-scoped Features. To come in the next release: - Companio...SiteMap Utility for DNN Blog Module: Blog SiteMap Utility v01.00.01: This is the first public release of the SiteMap Utility for the core DotNetNuke® Blog Module. Please see the documentation on this site on how to...SqlDiffFramework-A Visual Differencing Engine for Dissimilar Data Sources: SqlDiffFramework 1.0.2.0: Maintenance Release Defect Fixes: Issue # 3: 3 Issue # 4: 4 Enhancements: About Box now displays regional and language settings in effect. SDF...SuperSocket: First release of SuperSocket: !First release of SuperSocketThe Fastcopy Helper: FastcopyHelper: Fastcopy Helper 2.0 This is a final one. You can use it on the way. In order to use it , you should have the .NET3.5 ! 此软件必须下载 .NET3.5平台，方可使用！TV Show Renamer: TV Show Renamer Beta 3: I found the bug the prevented it from closing correctly so I fixed it and had to release it right away. If anyone else finds any problems. contact me.UrzaGatherer: UrzaGatherer v2.0: UrzaGatherer is the first stable version. This release include UrzaBackgroundPictures.VisualStudio 2010 JavaScript Outlining: VisualStudion 2010 Javascript Outlining 1.0: Features Outlines JavaScript codeblock regions for the code placed between { }. Both places on a new line. Outlines custom regions defined by: //...Wouter's SharePoint Demo Land: Navigation Service with Proxy: A SharePoint 2010 Service Application that uses service proxies to relay commands to the actual service. The demo proxy makes use of in-memory comm...盘古分词-开源中文分词组件: V2.0.0.0: 进一步优化性能，分词速度达到将近 500K ，1.2.0.1 版本只有 320K 修改 PanGu.Lucene.Analyzer, 支持 Lucene.net 2.9 版本。 增加对字典中以数字开头的专业非中文词汇的识别 增加英文分词开关，权重由英文小写权重和英文词根权重两个参数来决定...Most Popular ProjectsCommunity Forums NNTP bridgeOutSyncASP.NET MVC Time PlannerNeatUploadMoonyDesk (windows desktop widgets)AgUnit - Silverlight unit testing with ReSharperViperWorks IgnitionASP.NET MVC ExtensionsAviva Solutions C# Coding GuidelinesMute4Most Active ProjectsCommunity Forums NNTP bridgeRawrpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryIonics Isapi Rewrite FilterGMap.NET - Great Maps for Windows Forms & PresentationN2 CMSStyleCopFarseer Physics Enginesmark C# LibraryMirror Testing System

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, April 29, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, April 29, 2010New ProjectsDesign Technology Laboratory: DTL project is prominent.Em-Lib: Electronic Music Library เป็นโปรแกรมที่พัฒนาขึ้นเพื่อให้เป็นห้องสมุดอิเล็กทรอนิกส์ โดยตัวโปรแกรมจะสามารถจำลองเครื่องดนตรี พร้อมข้อมูลที่เกี่ย...Extensions For ASP.NET: Extensions For ASP.NETFIM 2010 PowerShell Cmdlets: These PowerShell cmdlets let you manage objects in the Forefront Identity Manager 2010 web service easily and concisely. The five cmdlets let you e...Grunty OS: Grunty OS is a Free open source OS made my GruntXproductionsIrishDevelopers.net Test: IrishDevelopers.net TestJobping Url Shortener: MVC 2 project that Shortens urls Fully functioning 'bare bones' url shortening website. Just 1 page to create and display the short url. 'API' ...Made In Hell: Small console game. Just a training in code writings.manx: manx is a system for managing catalogs of technical documents. The system was created to handle the needs of the vintage computing community with ...ntn: playing around with new featuresOpen Bitrac: Bitrac is ASP.NET Blog SystemOpenNETCF.WindowsMobile.Ink: The Mobile Ink Library is a .NET component that provides support for the new Windows Mobile 6 WISP Lite API in your .NET Compact Framework applicat...Proxy Switch: Proxy switch is a program which allows the user to easily switch between a configured proxy server and a home network. The program is developed in ...Samcrypt: .Seoftware Evoluion Repository Mining: Project for mining data about develpoment effort from svn repository.SharePoint 2010 Bulk Document Importer: Need to import/migrate files and folders from servers and network shares into SharePoint 2010 document libraries? This free commandline application...SL2 - A Scala interpreter for L2: A simple L2 Interpreter. Just a project for a class.sMAPedit: -SocialCare: SocialCare - Team EUSOCIALSqlDiffFramework-A Visual Differencing Engine for Dissimilar Data Sources: Unique in database comparison, SDF lets you compare live data--or saved snapshots--from any combination of SQL Server, Oracle, MySql, or ODBC data ...Yasminuroban: Yasminuroban is an open source "Sokoban" (aka "Warehouse Keeper" or "Boxes") alike game totally written in DHTML (JavaScript, CSS and HTML) that us...Хрень для ао: Test project to implement Bot.New ReleasesAntySpam Microsoft Outlook Plugin: AntySpam Microsoft Outlook 2010 Plugin v.2.0.1: this release only tested on MS Outlook 2010 version: 14.0.4536.1000 (32-bit and 64-bit) part of Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010. Source pro...AppFabric Caching Admin Tool: AppFabric Caching Admin Tool 1.2: System Requirements:.NET 4.0 RC AppFabric Caching Beta2 Refresh Test On:Win 7 (64x) Note: Must run as Administrator !!!AutoSPInstaller: Powershell script to pre-download prerequisites: This script will download all files required by Prerequisiteinstaller.exe in advance, in order to support an 'offline' installation of SharePoint 2...BeanProxy: BeanProxy 2.5: BeanProxy is a C# (.NET 3.5) library housing classes that facilitates unit testing. Any non-static, public interface/class/or abstract class can be...Bluetooth Radar: Verison 2.2.1: Please follow this link for the latest release - http://bluetoothradar.codeplex.com/releases/view/44232CSS 360 Planetary Calendar: LCA: Upload your LCA ppt pieces here. Then someone can merge them together.DeskNotes: DeskNotes 2.1.2: Version in development which features following improvements over DeskNotes 2.1.1: Each DeskNote can be made switchable between other windows on Wi...DotNetNuke Russian Language packs: Core Russian Language Pack for DNN 05.04.01: Core Russian Resource Language Pack for DNN 05.04.01 Русский языковый пакет для DNN 05.04.01DotNetNuke® Community Edition: 05.04.01: Major Highlights Fixed issue with assembly version type. Fixed issue with multiple cancel buttons on Add User screen. Fixed issue with ve...Event Scavenger: Version 3.2: Tweaked the import foreign logs functionality. Set version to 3.2 for Admin tool, service and database. Viewer unaffected.Event Scavenger: Version 3.2 stable: Update viewer version to 3.2 for consistency. Minor changes for rest.Event Scavenger: Version 3.2.2: Added setting to enable/disable creation of historic data.FIM 2010 PowerShell Cmdlets: Initial Release of FIM 2010 PowerShell Cmdlets: Initial release of FIM 2010 PowerShell cmdlets based on open source FIM web service client. Install by running installutil on Quest.FIMPowerhellSna...Fix.ly: Fix.ly 0.2: Fixed a bug where non-verbose mode would not workJobping Url Shortener: Deployment Code v0.1: Contains only the files necessary to run the Url Shortener website. Just provide a valid connection string in the web.configMetabolite Enterprise Libraries for EPiServer CMS using Page Type Builder: Metabolite Enterprise Libraries 1.1: This is the release of the Metabolite Enterprise Libraries 1.1 for use with EPiServer 5 R2 SP2 and Page Type Builder 1.1. If you want to get the s...Metabolite Enterprise Libraries for EPiServer CMS using Page Type Builder: Metabolite Enterprise Libraries 1.1 (source): This is the source code release of the Metabolite Enterprise Libraries 1.1 for use with EPiServer 5 R2 SP2 and Page Type Builder 1.1.MVC Music Store: MVC Music Store v0.8: This is the initial release of the MVC Music Store Tutorial. Download contains source and a tutorial document in PDF format.MyWSAT - ASP.NET Membership Administration Tool: MyWSAT v3.5.2: MyWSAT 3.5.2 Update Notes - April 28th 2010 1.) Fixed theme engine for administration area. Now I can create theme packages to make them available ...N2 CMS: 2.0 rc2: N2 is a lightweight CMS framework for ASP.NET. It helps you build great web sites that anyone can update. Major Changes (1.5 -> 2.0 release candid...NodeXL: Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for Excel: NodeXL Excel 2007 Template, version 1.0.1.122: The NodeXL Excel 2007 template displays a network graph using edge and vertex lists stored in an Excel 2007 workbook. What's NewThis version signi...nRoute Framework: nRoute.Toolkit Release Version 0.4.5: Release Targets, Silverlight and WPF: - Targets Silverlight 4 for Web - Targets WPF in .NET 4 for Desktop nRoute Dependencies: - System.Windows...NSIS Autorun: NSIS Autorun 0.1.4: NSIS Autorun 0.1.4 This release includes source code, application binary, and example materials.OpenNETCF.WindowsMobile.Ink: Initial Release: This is the source as originally hosted in the OpenNETCF SVN server.Resharper Settings Manager: RSM v2.1: Warning! The 'Load Settings File...' menu item won't show up in VS 2008. Will release an update soon. ChangesReworked plug-in options UI: Split RSM...RoTwee: RoTwee (11.1.0.0): Rotation is improved from 11.0.0.3.SharePoint 2010 Bulk Document Importer: SharePoint 2010 Bulk Document Importer 1.0.0.0: Features in 1.0.0.0 Command line interface Import folders and files with all subfolders Can be run from outside the SharePoint Server. Every a...sMAPedit: sMAPedit v0.6 (Base): + base version containing the applicaion & html resourcesSocialCare: SocialCare_src: Codigo Fonte da Aplicação e Banco de DadosTFS Code Comment Checking Policy (CCCP): CCCP 4.0 for VS2010: This release installs side-by-side with CCCP 3.0 for VS2008 SP1.VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30428.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVCC: Latest build, v2.1.30428.1: Automatic drop of latest buildVCC: Latest build, v2.1.30428.2: Automatic drop of latest buildХрень для ао: Первый релиз: Пробую что это такое.Most Popular ProjectsRawrWBFS ManagerAJAX Control Toolkitpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibrarySilverlight ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETiTuner - The iTunes CompanionMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesMost Active Projectspatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryRawrHydroServer - CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System ServerIonics Isapi Rewrite FilterGMap.NET - Great Maps for Windows Forms & PresentationNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleParticle Plot PivotSqlDiffFramework-A Visual Differencing Engine for Dissimilar Data SourcesN2 CMSBlogEngine.NET

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• Configure TFS portal afterwards

  Update #1 January 8th, 2010: There is an updated post on this topic for Beta 2: http://www.ewaldhofman.nl/post/2009/12/10/Configure-TFS-portal-afterwards-Beta-2.aspx Update #2 October 10th, 2010: In the new Team Foundation Server Power Tools September 2010, there is now a command to create a portal. tfpt addprojectportal   Add or move portal for an existing team project Usage: tfpt addprojectportal /collection:uri                              /teamproject:"project name"                              /processtemplate:"template name"                              [/webapplication:"webappname"]                              [/relativepath:"pathfromwebapp"]                              [/validate]                              [/verbose] /collection Required. URL of Team Project Collection. /teamproject Required. Specifies the name of the team project. /processtemplate Required. Specifies that name of the process template. /webapplication The name of the SharePoint Web Application. Must also specify relativepath. /relativepath The path for the site relative to the root URL for the SharePoint Web Application. Must also specify webapplication. /validate Specifies that the user inputs are to be validated. If specified, only validation will be done and no portal setting will be changed. /verbose Switches on the verbose mode. I created a new Team Project in TFS 2010 Beta 1 and choose not to configure SharePoint during the creation of the Team Project. Of course I found out fairly quickly that a portal for TFS is very useful, especially the Iteration and the Product backlog workbooks and the dashboard reports. This blog describes how you can configure the sharepoint portal afterwards. Update: September 9th, 2009 Adding the portal afterwards is much easier as described below. Here are the steps Step 1: Create a new temporary project (with a SharePoint site for it). Open the Team Explorer Right click in the Team Explorer the root node (i.e. the project collection) Select "New team project" from the menu Walk throught he wizard and make sure you check the option to create the portal (which is by default checked) Step 2: Disable the site for the new project Open the Team Explorer Select the team project you created in step 1 In the menu click on Team -> Show Project Portal. In the menu click on Team -> Team Project Settings -> Portal Settings... The following dialog pops up Uncheck the option "Enable team project portal" Confirm the dialog with OK Step 3: Enable the site for the original one. Point it to the newly created site. Open the Team Explorer Select the team project you want to add the portal to In the menu open Team -> Team Project Settings -> Portal Settings... The same dialog as in step 2 pops up Check the option "Enable team project portal" Click on the "Configure URL" button The following dialog pops up   In the dialog select in the combobox of the web application the TFS server Enter in the Relative site path the text "sites/[Project Collection Name]/[Team Project Name created in step 1]" Confirm the "Specify an existing SharePoint Site" with OK Check the "Reports and dashboards refer to data for this team project" option Confirm the dialog "Project Portal Settings" with OK Step 4: Delete the temporary project you created. In Beta 1, I have found no way to delete a team project. Maybe it will be available in TFS 2010 Beta 2. Original post Step 1: Create new portal site Go to the sharepoint site of your project collection (/sites//default.aspx">/sites//default.aspx">http://<servername>/sites/<project_collection_name>/default.aspx) Click on the Site Actions at the left side of the screen and choose the option Site Settings In the site settings, choose the Sites and workspaces option Create a new site Enter the values for the Title, the description, the site address. And choose for the TFS2010 Agile Dashboard as template. Create the site, by clicking on the Create button Step 2: Integrate portal site with team project Open Visual Studio Open the Team Explorer (View -> Team Explorer) Select in the Team Explorer tool window the Team Project for which you are create a new portal Open the Project Portal Settings (Team -> Team Project Settings -> Portal Setings...) Check the Enable team project portal checkbox Click on Configure URL... You will get a new dialog as below Enter the url to the TFS server in the web application combobox And specify the relative site path: sites/<project collection>/<site name> Confirm with OK Check in the Project Portal Settings dialog the checkbox "Reports and dashboards refer to data for this team project" Confirm the settings with OK (this takes a while...) When you now browse to the portal, you will see that the dashboards are now showing up with the data for the current team project. Step 3: Download process template To get a copy of the documents that are default in a team project, we need to have a fresh set of files that are not attached to a team project yet. You can do that with the following steps. Start the Process Template Manager (Team -> Team Project Collection Settings -> Process Template Manager...) Choose the Agile process template and click on download Choose a folder to download Step 4: Add Product and Iteration backlog Go to the Team Explorer in Visual Studio Make sure the team project is in the list of team projects, and expand the team project Right click the Documents node, and choose New Document Library Enter "Shared Documents", and click on Add Right click the Shared Documents node and choose Upload Document Go the the file location where you stored the process template from step 3 and then navigate to the subdirectory "Agile Process Template 5.0\MSF for Agile Software Development v5.0\Windows SharePoint Services\Shared Documents\Project Management" Select in the Open Dialog the files "Iteration Backlog" and "Product Backlog", and click Open Step 5: Bind Iteration backlog workbook to the team project Right click on the "Iteration Backlog" file and select Edit, and confirm any warning messages Place your cursor in cell A1 of the Iteration backlog worksheet Switch to the Team ribbon and click New List. Select your Team Project and click Connect From the New List dialog, select the Iteration Backlog query in the Workbook Queries folder. The final step is to add a set of document properties that allow the workbook to communicate with the TFS reporting warehouse. Before we create the properties we need to collect some information about your project. The first piece of information comes from the table created in the previous step.  As you collect these properties, copy them into notepad so they can be used in later steps. Property How to retrieve the value? [Table name] Switch to the Design ribbon and select the Table Name value in the Properties portion of the ribbon [Project GUID] In the Visual Studio Team Explorer, right click your Team Project and select Properties.  Select the URL value and copy the GUID (long value with lots of characters) at the end of the URL [Team Project name] In the Properties dialog, select the Name field and copy the value [TFS server name] In the Properties dialog, select the Server Name field and copy the value [UPDATE] I have found that this is not correct: you need to specify the instance of your SQL Server. The value is used to create a connection to the TFS cube. Switch back to the Iteration Backlog workbook. Click the Office button and select Prepare – Properties. Click the Document Properties – Server drop down and select Advanced Properties. Switch to the Custom tab and add the following properties using the values you collected above. Variable name Value [Table name]_ASServerName [TFS server name] [Table name]_ASDatabase tfs_warehouse [Table name]_TeamProjectName [Team Project name] [Table name]_TeamProjectId [Project GUID] Click OK to close the properties dialog. It is possible that the Estimated Work (Hours) is showing the #REF! value. To resolve that change the formula with: =SUMIFS([Table name][Original Estimate]; [Table name][Iteration Path];CurrentIteration&"*";[Table name][Area Path];AreaPath&"*";[Table name][Work Item Type]; "Task") For example =SUMIFS(VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Original Estimate]; VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Iteration Path];CurrentIteration&"*";VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Area Path];AreaPath&"*";VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Work Item Type]; "Task") Also the Total Remaining Work in the Individual Capacity table may contain #REF! values. To resolve that change the formula with: =SUMIFS([Table name][Remaining Work]; [Table name][Iteration Path];CurrentIteration&"*";[Table name][Area Path];AreaPath&"*";[Table name][Assigned To];[Team Member];[Table name][Work Item Type]; "Task") For example =SUMIFS(VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Remaining Work]; VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Iteration Path];CurrentIteration&"*";VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Area Path];AreaPath&"*";VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Assigned To];[Team Member];VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Work Item Type]; "Task") Save and close the workbook. Step 6: Bind Product backlog workbook to the team project Repeat the steps for binding the Iteration backlog for thiw workbook too. In the worksheet Capacity, the formula of the Storypoints might be missing. You can resolve it with: =IF([Iteration]="";"";SUMIFS([Table name][Story Points];[Table name][Iteration Path];[Iteration]&"*")) Example =IF([Iteration]="";"";SUMIFS(VSTS_487f1e4c_db30_4302_b5e8_bd80195bc2ec[Story Points];VSTS_487f1e4c_db30_4302_b5e8_bd80195bc2ec[Iteration Path];[Iteration]&"*"))

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, December 14, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, December 14, 2010Popular ReleasesFlickrNet API Library: 3.1.4000: Newest release. Now contains dedicated Windows Phone 7 DLL as well as all previous DLLs. Also contains Windows Help file documentation now as standard.mojoPortal: 2.3.5.8: see release notes on mojoportal.com http://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2358-released.aspx Note that we have separate deployment packages for .NET 3.5 and .NET 4.0 The deployment package downloads on this page are pre-compiled and ready for production deployment, they contain no C# source code. To download the source code see the Source Code Tab I recommend getting the latest source code using TortoiseHG, you can get the source code corresponding to this release here.Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework: Visual Studio 2010 Code Samples 2010-12-13: Code samples for Visual Studio 2010SuperWebSocket: SuperWebSocket Drop 2: Changes: based on SuperSocket 1.3 supported sub protocol supported SSL/TLS encryption (wss) in Sync socket mode fixed some data communication bugsSSH.NET Library: 2010.12.13: Fixes SFTP issue when you try to uploaded or download multiple files simultaneously. Usage example can be found hereRequest Tracker Data Access: 1.0.0.0: First releaseSQL Monitor: SQL Monitor 2.4: 1. auto adjust datagrids in query 2. disable activities related commands until activities tab is active.SuperSocket, an extensible socket application framework: SuperSocket 1.3 beta 1: SuperSocket 1.3 is built on .NET 4.0 framework. Bug fixes: fixed a potential bug that the running state hadn't been updated after socket server stopped fixed a synchronization issue when clearing timeout session fixed a bug in ArraySegmentList fixed a bug on getting configuration value Third-part library upgrades: upgraded SuperSocket to .NET 4.0 upgraded EntLib 4.1 to 5.0 New features: supported UDP socket support custom protocol (can support binary protocol and other complecate...Wii Backup Fusion: Wii Backup Fusion 0.9 Beta: - Aqua or brushed metal style for Mac OS X - Shows selection count beside ID - Game list selection mode via settings - Compare Files <-> WBFS game lists - Verify game images/DVD/WBFS - WIT command line for log (via settings) - Cancel possibility for loading games process - Progress infos while loading games - Localization for dates - UTF-8 support - Shortcuts added - View game infos in browser - Transfer infos for log - All transfer routines rewritten - Extract image from image/WBFS - Support....NETTER Code Starter Pack: v1.0.beta: '.NETTER Code Starter Pack ' contains a gallery of Visual Studio 2010 solutions leveraging latest and new technologies and frameworks based on Microsoft .NET Framework. Each Visual Studio solution included here is focused to provide a very simple starting point for cutting edge development technologies and framework, using well known Northwind database (for database driven scenarios). The current release of this project includes starter samples for the following technologies: ASP.NET Dynamic...NuGet (formerly NuPack): NuGet 1.0 Release Candidate: NuGet is a free, open source developer focused package management system for the .NET platform intent on simplifying the process of incorporating third party libraries into a .NET application during development. This release is a Visual Studio 2010 extension and contains the the Package Manager Console and the Add Package Dialog. This new build targets the newer feed (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=206669) and package format. See http://nupack.codeplex.com/documentation?title=Nuspe...Free Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire Silverlight, WPF Charts v3.6.5 Released: Hi, Today we are releasing final version of Visifire, v3.6.5 with the following new feature: * New property AutoFitToPlotArea has been introduced in DataSeries. AutoFitToPlotArea will bring bubbles inside the PlotArea in order to avoid clipping of bubbles in bubble chart. You can visit Visifire documentation to know more. http://www.visifire.com/visifirechartsdocumentation.php Also this release includes few bug fixes: * Chart threw exception while adding new Axis in Chart using Vi...PHPExcel: PHPExcel 1.7.5 Production: DonationsDonate via PayPal via PayPal. If you want to, we can also add your name / company on our Donation Acknowledgements page. PEAR channelWe now also have a full PEAR channel! Here's how to use it: New installation: pear channel-discover pear.pearplex.net pear install pearplex/PHPExcel Or if you've already installed PHPExcel before: pear upgrade pearplex/PHPExcel The official page can be found at http://pearplex.net. Want to contribute?Please refer the Contribute page.SwapWin: SwapWin 0.2: Updates: Bring all windows that are swapped to foreground. Make the window sent to primary screen active.??????????: All-In-One Code Framework ??? 2010-12-10: ?????All-In-One Code Framework（??） 2010?12??????！！http://i3.codeplex.com/Project/Download/FileDownload.aspx?ProjectName=1code&DownloadId=128165 ?????release?，???????ASP.NET, WinForm, Silverlight????12?Sample Code。???，??????????sample code。 ?????：http://blog.csdn.net/sjb5201/archive/2010/12/13/6072675.aspx ??，??????MSDN????????????。 http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/zh-CN/codezhchs/threads ?????????????????，??Email ????UOB & ME: UOB_ME 2.5: latest versionAutoLoL: AutoLoL v1.4.3: AutoLoL now supports importing the build pages from Mobafire.com as well! Just insert the url to the build and voila. (For example: http://www.mobafire.com/league-of-legends/build/unforgivens-guide-how-to-build-a-successful-mordekaiser-24061) Stable release of AutoChat (It is still recommended to use with caution and to read the documentation) It is now possible to associate *.lolm files with AutoLoL to quickly open them The selected spells are now displayed in the masteries tab for qu...SubtitleTools: SubtitleTools 1.2: - Added auto insertion of RLE (RIGHT-TO-LEFT EMBEDDING) Unicode character for the RTL languages. - Fixed delete rows issue.PHP Manager for IIS: PHP Manager 1.1 for IIS 7: This is a final stable release of PHP Manager 1.1 for IIS 7. This is a minor incremental release that contains all the functionality available in 53121 plus additional features listed below: Improved detection logic for existing PHP installations. Now PHP Manager detects the location to php.ini file in accordance to the PHP specifications Configuring date.timezone. PHP Manager can automatically set the date.timezone directive which is required to be set starting from PHP 5.3 Ability to ...Algorithmia: Algorithmia 1.1: Algorithmia v1.1, released on December 8th, 2010.New ProjectsAugmented Reality system in Soccer video: Augmented reality system and camera calibration system in soccer videos based on homography and vanishing points. Code generated with Visual C++ (best compiler is .net)Database Schema Provider: Database Schema Provider gets a database schema in unified format independent on the type of database. It uses ADO.NET data provider for Entity Framework. Dicke Bertha: Many many cool features... DNN Bookmark: DNN Bookmarks is a DNN module that aggregates the most popular social bookmarking tools and also allows you to bookmark your DNN web siteDough: Dough is a UI starter kit built using ASP.Net MVC and ExtJS. It's name comes from the concept of Amish friendship bread, a type of bread or cake made from a sourdough starter that is often shared in a manner similar to a chain letter.Garra - Gerenciador Financeiro: Garra é um sistema completo de controle financeiro: contas a pagar, contas a receber, investimentos, etc...ghcwp7: ghcwp7Hackathon - DotNetNuke Razor User Locator: The DotNetNuke Razor User Locator module demonstrates how Razor can be used to author DNN modules. This module shows where recent users to a web site came from based on their IP address. Hackathon. DotNetNuke Razor. Flickr Badge: Flickr badge desktop module allows you to display image thumbnails from Flickr and preview them inside DotNetNuke or on Flickr (controlled by module settings). Image thumbnails can be loaded by tag, user id, user group id, user set id and more.Hackathon: Razor Youtube Gallery: This is a DotNetNuke module which allows a website admin to add several relevant Youtube videos to a pane. The end user watches the selected Youtube video play, while scrolling through thumbnails of other videos to play those without refreshing the page. jQuery UI MVC3 Demo: Demo and possibly a skeleton for using jQuery UI in MVC3 (currently RC2).Microsoft Office Communicator History manager: Needs to save conversation history just on the local workstation (folder) then application could redstore it and show in simple window (mode) or user could open folder and lock on it manuallyMSTest Extensions - Msbuild: This project contains various msbuild tasks that extend helps with test execution using Mcrosoft testing frameworkRayCharlesTracer: this is a scholar project for a raytracer.Refunctor: F# interactive inside Reflector.Request Tracker Data Access: Best Practical RT (Request Tracker) data access .NET library for REST interface.SurfzApp: An application that does data mining on web resources of interest for Swedish windsurfers...Tesseract Solutions Corp. Data Access Base: Tesseract Data Access speeds up data access in .Net projects. Developed in C# .Net 4. It is a C#, class based ORM.TimBazinga EVoting: Undergrad project - designing an e-voting software system.Tiny Library CQRS: Tiny Library CQRS is a small demonstration project which demonstrates the concept of Domain Driven Design and the CQRS architecture pattern. This project relies on the Apworks DDD framework.Toptoys: toptoysWebGroup: WebGroup makes it easier for your website members to comunicate online. It work like Web IM + Forum + Twitter. It can be easily used in your current project. Developed in C#.WpfCustomChromeLibrary: WpfCustomChromeLibrary makes it easier to create WPF applications with custom chrome and caption buttons (min/max/close). You'll no longer have to do all the dirty work yourself in each application where you want a custom chrome. It's developed in XAML and C#.

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