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• Getting Started with Media Browser for Windows Media Center

  - by DigitalGeekery

  If you are a Windows Media Center user, you’ll really want to check out Media Browser. The Media Browser plug-in for Windows Media Center takes your digital media files and displays them in a visually appealing, user friendly interface, complete with images and metadata. Requirements Windows 7 or Vista Microsoft .Net 3.5 Framework  Preparing your Media Files For Media Browser to be able to automatically download images and metadata for your media libraries, your files will have to be correctly named. For example, if you have an mp4 file of the movie Batman Begins, it needs to be named Batman Begins.mp4. It cannot be Batmanbegins.mp4 or Batman-begins.mp4. Otherwise, it’s unlikely that Media Browser will display images and metadata. If you find some of your files aren’t pulling cover art or metadata, double-check the official title of the media on a site like IMBD.com. TV Show files TV show files are handled a bit differently. Every TV series in your collection must have a main folder with the show’s name and individual subfolders for each season. Here is an example of folder structure and supported naming conventions. TV Shows\South Park\Season 1\s01e01 – episode 1.mp4 TV Shows\South Park\Season 1\South Park 1×01 – episode 1.mp4 TV Shows\South Park\Season 1\101 – episode 1.mp4  Note: You need to always have a Season 1 folder even if the show only has only one season. If you have several seasons of a particular show, but don’t happen to have Season 1, simply create a blank season 1 folder. Without a season 1 folder, other seasons will not display properly. Installation and Configuration Download and run the latest Media Browser .msi file by taking the defaults. (Download link below) When you reach the final window, leave the “Configure initial settings” box checked, and click “Finish.” You may get a pop up window informing you that folder permissions are not set correctly for Media Browser. Click “Yes.” Adding Your Media The Browser Configuration Tool should have opened automatically. If not, you can open it by going to Start > All Programs > Media Browser > Media Browser Configuration Wizard. To begin adding media files, click “Add.” Browse for a folder that contains media files and click “OK.” Here we are adding a folder with a group of movie files. You can add multiple folders to each media library. For example, if you have movie files stored in 4 or 5 different folders, you can add them all under a single library in Media Browser.  To add additional folders, click the “Add” button on the right side under your currently added folder. The “Add” button to the left will add an additional Media Library, such as one for TV Shows. When you are finished, close out of the Media Browser Configuration Tool. Open Windows Media Center. You will see Media Browser tile on the main interface. Click to open it. When you initially open Media Browser, you will be prompted to run the initial configuration. Click “OK.” You will see a few general configuration options. The important option is the Metadata. Leave this option checked (it is by default) if you wish to pull images & other metadata for your media. When finished, click “Continue,” and then “OK” to restart Media Browser. When you re-enter Media Browser you’ll see your Media Categories listed below, and recently added files in the main display. Click on a Media Library to view the files.   Click “View” at the top to check out some of the different display options to choose from. Below you see can “Detail.” This presents your videos in a list to the left. When you hover over a title, the synopsis and cover art is displayed to the right. “Cover Flow” displays your titles in a right to left format with mirror cover art. “Thumb Strip” displays your titles in a strip along the bottom with a synopsis, image, and movie data above. Configurations Settings and options can be changed through the Media Browser Configuration Tool, or directly in Media Browser by clicking on the “Wrench” at the bottom right of the main Media Browser page. Certain settings may only be available in one location or the other. Some will be available in both places.   Plug-ins and Themes Media Browser features a variety of Plug-ins and Themes that can add optional customization and slick visual appeal. To install plug-ins or themes, open the Media Browser Configuration Tool. Click on the “plug-ins” tab, and then the “More Plug-ins…” button. Note: Clicking on “Advanced” at the top will reveal several additional configuration tabs. Browse the list of plug-ins on the left. When you find want you like, select it and then click “Install.” When the install is complete, you’ll see them listed under “Installed Plug-ins.” To activate any installed theme, click on the “Display” tab. Select it from the Visual Theme drop down list. Close out of the Media Browser Configuration Tool when finished. Some themes, such as the “Diamond” theme shown below, include optional views and settings which can be accessed through a configuration button at the top of the screen. Clicking on the movie gives you additional images and information such as a synopsis, runtime, IMDB rating…   … and even actors and character names.   All that’s left is to hit “Play” when you’re ready to watch.   Conclusion Media Browser is a fantastic plug-in that brings an entirely different level of media management and aesthetics to Windows Media Center. There are numerous additional customizations and configurations we have not covered here such as adding film trailers, music support, and integrating Recorded TV. Media Browser will run on both Windows 7 and Vista. Extenders are also supported but may require additional configuration. Download Media Browser Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Using Netflix Watchnow in Windows Vista Media Center (Gmedia)Schedule Updates for Windows Media CenterIntegrate Hulu Desktop and Windows Media Center in Windows 7Add Color Coding to Windows 7 Media Center Program GuideIntegrate Boxee with Media Center in Windows 7 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 If it were only this easy SyncToy syncs Files and Folders across Computers on a Network (or partitions on the same drive) Classic Cinema Online offers 100’s of OnDemand Movies OutSync will Sync Photos of your Friends on Facebook and Outlook Windows 7 Easter Theme YoWindoW, a real time weather screensaver

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• Use an Ubuntu Live CD to Securely Wipe Your PC’s Hard Drive

  - by Trevor Bekolay

  Deleting files or quickly formatting a drive isn’t enough for sensitive personal information. We’ll show you how to get rid of it for good using a Ubuntu Live CD. When you delete a file in Windows, Ubuntu, or any other operating system, it doesn’t actually destroy the data stored on your hard drive, it just marks that data as “deleted.” If you overwrite it later, then that data is generally unrecoverable, but if the operating system don’t happen to overwrite it, then your data is still stored on your hard drive, recoverable by anyone who has the right software. By securely delete files or entire hard drives, your data will be gone for good. Note: Modern hard drives are extremely sophisticated, as are the experts who recover data for a living. There is no guarantee that the methods covered in this article will make your data completely unrecoverable; however, they will make your data unrecoverable to the majority of recovery methods, and all methods that are readily available to the general public. Shred individual files Most of the data stored on your hard drive is harmless, and doesn’t reveal anything about you. If there are just a few files that you know you don’t want someone else to see, then the easiest way to get rid of them is a built-in Linux utility called shred. Open a terminal window by clicking on Applications at the top-left of the screen, then expanding the Accessories menu and clicking on Terminal. Navigate to the file that you want to delete using cd to change directories and ls to list the files and folders in the current directory. As an example, we’ve got a file called BankInfo.txt on a Windows NTFS-formatted hard drive. We want to delete it securely, so we’ll call shred by entering the following in the terminal window: shred <file> which is, in our example: shred BankInfo.txt Notice that our BankInfo.txt file still exists, even though we’ve shredded it. A quick look at the contents of BankInfo.txt make it obvious that the file has indeed been securely overwritten. We can use some command-line arguments to make shred delete the file from the hard drive as well. We can also be extra-careful about the shredding process by upping the number of times shred overwrites the original file. To do this, in the terminal, type in: shred –remove –iterations=<num> <file> By default, shred overwrites the file 25 times. We’ll double this, giving us the following command: shred –remove –iterations=50 BankInfo.txt BankInfo.txt has now been securely wiped on the physical disk, and also no longer shows up in the directory listing. Repeat this process for any sensitive files on your hard drive! Wipe entire hard drives If you’re disposing of an old hard drive, or giving it to someone else, then you might instead want to wipe your entire hard drive. shred can be invoked on hard drives, but on modern file systems, the shred process may be reversible. We’ll use the program wipe to securely delete all of the data on a hard drive. Unlike shred, wipe is not included in Ubuntu by default, so we have to install it. Open up the Synaptic Package Manager by clicking on System in the top-left corner of the screen, then expanding the Administration folder and clicking on Synaptic Package Manager. wipe is part of the Universe repository, which is not enabled by default. We’ll enable it by clicking on Settings > Repositories in the Synaptic Package Manager window. Check the checkbox next to “Community-maintained Open Source software (universe)”. Click Close. You’ll need to reload Synaptic’s package list. Click on the Reload button in the main Synaptic Package Manager window. Once the package list has been reloaded, the text over the search field will change to “Rebuilding search index”. Wait until it reads “Quick search,” and then type “wipe” into the search field. The wipe package should come up, along with some other packages that perform similar functions. Click on the checkbox to the left of the label “wipe” and select “Mark for Installation”. Click on the Apply button to start the installation process. Click the Apply button on the Summary window that pops up. Once the installation is done, click the Close button and close the Synaptic Package Manager window. Open a terminal window by clicking on Applications in the top-left of the screen, then Accessories > Terminal. You need to figure our the correct hard drive to wipe. If you wipe the wrong hard drive, that data will not be recoverable, so exercise caution! In the terminal window, type in: sudo fdisk -l A list of your hard drives will show up. A few factors will help you identify the right hard drive. One is the file system, found in the System column of  the list – Windows hard drives are usually formatted as NTFS (which shows up as HPFS/NTFS). Another good identifier is the size of the hard drive, which appears after its identifier (highlighted in the following screenshot). In our case, the hard drive we want to wipe is only around 1 GB large, and is formatted as NTFS. We make a note of the label found under the the Device column heading. If you have multiple partitions on this hard drive, then there will be more than one device in this list. The wipe developers recommend wiping each partition separately. To start the wiping process, type the following into the terminal: sudo wipe <device label> In our case, this is: sudo wipe /dev/sda1 Again, exercise caution – this is the point of no return! Your hard drive will be completely wiped. It may take some time to complete, depending on the size of the drive you’re wiping. Conclusion If you have sensitive information on your hard drive – and chances are you probably do – then it’s a good idea to securely delete sensitive files before you give away or dispose of your hard drive. The most secure way to delete your data is with a few swings of a hammer, but shred and wipe from a Ubuntu Live CD is a good alternative! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Reset Your Ubuntu Password Easily from the Live CDScan a Windows PC for Viruses from a Ubuntu Live CDRecover Deleted Files on an NTFS Hard Drive from a Ubuntu Live CDCreate a Bootable Ubuntu 9.10 USB Flash DriveCreate a Bootable Ubuntu USB Flash Drive the Easy Way TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Office 2010 Product Guides Google Maps Place marks – Pizza, Guns or Strip Clubs Monitor Applications With Kiwi LocPDF is a Visual PDF Search Tool Download Free iPad Wallpapers at iPad Decor Get Your Delicious Bookmarks In Firefox’s Awesome Bar

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• Stream Music and Video Over the Internet with Windows Media Player 12

  - by DigitalGeekery

  A new feature in Windows Media Player 12, which is included with Windows 7, is being able to stream media over the web to other Windows 7 computers.  Today we will take a look at how to set it up and what you need to begin. Note: You will need to perform this process on each computer that you want to use. What You’ll Need Two computers running Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional, or Ultimate. The host, or home computer that you will be streaming the media from, cannot be on a public network or part of domain. Windows Live ID UPnP or Port Forwarding enabled on your home router Media files added to your Windows Media Player library Windows Live ID Sign up online for a Windows Live ID if you do not already have one. See the link below for a link to Windows Live.   Configuring the Windows 7 Computers Open Windows Media Player and go to the library section. Click on Stream and then “Allow Internet access to home media.”   The Internet Home Media Access pop up window will prompt you to link your Windows Live ID to a user account. Click “Link an online ID.” If you haven’t already installed the Windows Live ID Sign-In Assistant, you will be taken to Microsoft’s website and prompted to download it. Once you have completed the Windows Live download assistant install, you will see Windows Live ID online provider appear in the “Link Online IDs” window. Click on “Link Online ID.” Next, you’ll be prompted for a Windows Live ID and password. Enter your Windows Live ID and password and click “Sign In.” A pop up window will notify you that you have successfully allowed Internet access to home media. Now, you will have to repeat the exact same configuration on the 2nd Windows 7 computer. Once you have completed the same configuration on your 2nd computer, you might also need to configure your home router for port forwarding. If your router supports UPnP, you may not need to manually forward any ports on your router. So, this would be a good time to test your connection. Go to a nearby hotspot, or perhaps a neighbor’s house, and test to see if you can stream your media. If not, you’ll need to manually forward the ports. You can always choose to forward the ports anyway, just in case. Note: We tested on a Linksys WRT54GL router, which supports UPnP, and found we still needed to manually forward the ports. Finding the ports to forward on the router Open Windows Media Player and make sure you are in Library view. Click on “Stream” on the top menu, and select “Allow Internet access to home media.”   On the “Internet Home Media Access” window, click on “Diagnose connections.” The “Internet Streaming Diagnostic Tool” will pop up. Click on “Port forwarding information” near the bottom.   On the “Port Forwarding Information” window you will find both the Internal and External Port numbers you will need to forward on your router. The Internal port number should always be 10245. The external number will be different depending on your computer. Microsoft also recommends forwarding port 443. Configuring the Router Next, you’ll need to configure Port Forwarding on your home router. We will show you the steps for a Linksys WRT54GL router, however, the steps for port forwarding will vary from router to router. On the Linksys configuration page, click on the Administration Tab along the top, click the “Applications & Gaming Tab, and then the “Port Range Forward” tab below it. Under “Application,” type in a name. It can be any name you choose. In both the “Start” and “End” boxes, type the port number. Enter the IP address of your home computer in the IP address column. Click the check box under “Enable.” Do this for both the internal and external port numbers and port 443. When finished, click the “Save Settings” button. Note: It’s highly recommended that you configure your home computer with a static IP address When you’re ready to play your media over the Internet, open up Windows Media Player and look for your host computer and username listed under “Other Libraries.” Click on it expand the list to see your media libraries. Choose a library and a file to play. Now you can enjoy your streaming media over the Internet. Conclusion We found media streaming over the Internet to work fairly well. However, we did see a loss of quality with streaming video. Also, Recorded TV .wtv and dvr-ms files did not play at all. Check out our previous article to see how to stream media share and stream media between Windows 7 computers on your home network. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Enable Media Streaming in Windows Home Server to Windows Media PlayerFixing When Windows Media Player Library Won’t Let You Add FilesShare Digital Media With Other Computers on a Home Network with Windows 7Share and Stream Digital Media Between Windows 7 Machines On Your Home NetworkLearning Windows 7: Manage Your Music with Windows Media Player TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Stormpulse provides slick, real time weather data Geek Parents – Did you try Parental Controls in Windows 7? Change DNS servers on the fly with DNS Jumper Live PDF Searches PDF Files and Ebooks Converting Mp4 to Mp3 Easily Use Quick Translator to Translate Text in 50 Languages (Firefox)

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• How To Skip Commercials in Windows 7 Media Center

  - by DigitalGeekery

  If you use Windows 7 Media Center to record live TV, you’re probably interested in skipping through commercials. After all, a big reason to record programs is to avoid commercials, right? Today we focus on a fairly simple and free way to get you skipping commercials in no time. In Windows 7, the .wtv file format has replaced the dvr-ms file format used in previous versions of Media Center for Recorded TV. The .wtv file format, however, does not work very well with commercial skipping applications.  The Process Our first step will be to convert the recorded .wtv files to the previously used dvr-ms file format. This conversion will be done automatically by WtvWatcher. It’s important to note that this process deletes the original .wtv file after successfully converting to .dvr-ms. Next, we will use DVRMSToolBox with the DTB Addin to handle commercials skipping. This process does not “cut” or remove the commercials from the file. It merely skips the commercials during playback. WtvWatcher Download and install the WTVWatcher (link below). To install WtvWatcher, you’ll need to have Windows Installer 3.1 and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1. If you get the Publisher cannot be verified warning you can go ahead and click Install. We’ve completely tested this app and it contains no malware and runs successfully.   After installing, the WtvWatcher will pop up in the lower right corner of your screen. You will need to set the path to your Recorded TV directory. Click on the button for “Click here to set your recorded TV path…”   The WtvWatcher Preferences window will open…   …and you’ll be prompted to browse for your Recorded TV folder. If you did not change the default location at setup, it will be found at C:\Users\Public\Recorded TV. Click “OK” when finished. Click the “X” to close the Preferences screen. You should now see WtvWatcher begin to convert any existing WTV files.   The process should only take a few minutes per file. Note: If WtvWatcher detects an error during the conversion process, it will not delete the original WTV file.    You will probably want to run WtvWatcher on startup. This will allow WtvWatcher too constantly scan for new .wtv files to convert. There is no setting in the application to run on startup, so you’ll need to copy the WTV icon from your desktop into your Windows start menu “Startup” directory. To do so, click on Start > All Programs, right-click on Startup and click on Open all users. Drag and drop, or cut and paste, the WtvWatcher desktop shortcut into the Startup folder. DVRMSToolBox and DTBAddIn Next, we need to download and install the DVRMSToolBox and the DTBAddIn. These two pieces of software will do the actual commercial skipping. After downloading the DVRMSToolBox zip file, extract it and double-click the setup.exe file.  Click “Next” to begin the installation.   Unless DVRMSToolBox will only be used by Administrator accounts, check the “Modify File Permissions” box. Click “Next.” When you get to the Optional Components window, uncheck Download/Install ShowAnalyzer. We will not be using that application. When the installation is complete, click “Close.”    Next we need to install the DTBAddin. Unzip the download folder and run the appropriate .msi file for your system. It is available in 32 & 64 bit versions. Just double click on the file and take the default options. Click “Finish” when the install is completed. You will then be prompted to restart your computer. After your computer has restarted, open DVRMSToolBox settings by going to Start > All Programs, DVRMSToolBox, and click on DVRMStoMPEGSettings. On the MC Addin tab, make sure that Skip Commercials is checked. It should be by default.   On the Commercial Skip tab, make sure the Auto Skip option is selected. Click “Save.”   If you try to watch recorded TV before the file conversion and commercial indexing process is complete you’ll get the following message pop up in Media Center. If you click Yes, it will start indexing the commercials if WtvWatcher has already converted it to dvr-ms. Now you’re ready to kick back and watch your recorded tv without having to wait through those long commercial breaks. Conclusion The DVRMSToolBox is a powerful and complex application with a multitude of features and utilities. We’ve showed you a quick and easy way to get your Windows Media Center setup to skip commercials. This setup, like virtually all commercial skipping setups, is not perfect. You will occasionally find a commercial that doesn’t get skipped. Need help getting your Windows 7 PC configured for TV? Check out our previous tutorial on setting up live TV in Windows Media Center. Links Download WTV Watcher Download DVRMSToolBox Download DTBAddin Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Using Netflix Watchnow in Windows Vista Media Center (Gmedia)Increase Skip and Replay Intervals in Windows 7 Media CenterSchedule Updates for Windows Media CenterIntegrate Hulu Desktop and Windows Media Center in Windows 7Add Color Coding to Windows 7 Media Center Program Guide TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Make your Joomla & Drupal Sites Mobile with OSMOBI Integrate Twitter and Delicious and Make Life Easier Design Your Web Pages Using the Golden Ratio Worldwide Growth of the Internet How to Find Your Mac Address Use My TextTools to Edit and Organize Text

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• Convert a DVD Movie Directly to AVI with FairUse Wizard 2.9

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Are you looking for a way to backup your DVD movie collection to AVI?  Today we’ll show you how to rip a DVD movie directly to AVI with FairUse Wizard. About FairUse Wizard FairUse Wizard 2.9 uses the DivX, Xvid, or h.264 codec to convert DVD to an AVI file. It comes in both a free version and commercial version. The free, or “Light” version, can create files up 700MB while the commercial version can output a 1400MB file. This will allow you to back up your movies to CD, or even multiple movies on a single DVD. FairUse Wizard states that it does not work on copy protected discs, but we’ve seen it work on all but some of the most recent copy protection. For this tutorial we’re using the free Light Edition to convert a DVD to AVI. They also offer a commercial version that you can get for $29.99 and it offers even more encoding possibilities for converting video to you portable digital devices. Installation and Configuration Download and install FairUse Wizard. (Download link below). Once the install is complete, open FairUse Wizard by going to Start > All Programs >  FairUse Wizard 2 >  FairUse Wizard 2.   FairUse Wizard will open on the new project screen. Select “Create a new project” and type a project name into the text box. This will be used as the file output name.  Ex: A project name of Simpsons Movie will give you an output file of Simpsons Movie.avi.   Next, browse for a destination folder for the output file and temp files. Note that you will need a minimum of 6 GB of free disk space for the conversion process. Note: Much of that 6 GB will be used for temporary files that we will delete after the conversion process.   Click on the Options button at the bottom.   Under Preferences, choose your preferred video codec and file output size. XviD and x264 are installed by default. If you prefer to use DivX, you will have to install it separately. Also note the “Two pass” option. Checking the “Two pass” box will encode your video twice for higher quality, but will take more time. Un-checking the box will speed up the conversion process.   Under Audio track, note that English subtitles are enabled by default, so to remove the subtitles, you will need to change the dropdown list so it shows only a dash (-). You can also select “Use TV Mode” if your primary playback will be on a 4:3 TV screen. Click “Next.” Full Auto Mode vs. Manual Mode You should now be back to the initial screen. Next, we’ll need to determine whether or not we can use “Full Auto Mode” to convert the movie. The difference is that “Full Auto Mode” will automatically perform a few steps that you will otherwise have to do manually. If you choose the “Full Auto Mode” option, FairUse Wizard will look for the video on the DVD with the longest duration and assume it is the chain that it should convert to AVI. It’s possible, however, your disc may contain a few chains of similar size, such as a theatrical cut and director’s cut, and the longest chain may not be the one you wish to convert. Make sure that “Full auto mode” is not checked yet, and click “Next.”   FairUse Wizard will parse the IFO files and display all video chains longer than 60  seconds. In most cases, you will only find that the largest chain is the one closely matching the duration of the movie. In these instances, you can use “Full Auto Mode.” If you find more than one chain that are close in duration to the length of the movie, consult the literature on the DVD case, or search online, to find the actual running time of the movie. If the proper file chain is not the longest chain, you won’t be able to use “Full Auto Mode.”   Full Auto Mode To use “Full Auto Mode,” simply click the “Back” button to return to the initial screen Now, place a check in the “Full auto mode” check box. Click “Next.” You will then be prompted to chose your DVD drive, then click “OK.” FairUse Wizard will parse the IFO files… … and then prompt you to Select your drive that contains the DVD one more time before beginning the conversion process. Click “OK.”   Manual Mode If you cannot (or don’t wish to) use Full Auto Mode, choose the appropriate video chain and click “Next.” FairUse Wizard will first go through the process of indexing the video. Note: If you get a runtime error during this portion of the process, it likely means that FairUse Wizard cannot handle the copy protection, and thus cannot convert the DVD. FairUse Wizard will automatically detect a cropping region. If necessary, you can edit the cropping region by adjusting the cropping region settings to the left. Click “Next.” Next, click “Auto Detect” to choose the proper field combination. Click “OK” on the pop up window that displays your Field Mode. Then click “Next.” This next screen is mainly comprised of settings from the Options screen. You can make changes at this point such as codec or output size. Click “Next” when ready.   Video Conversion Now the video conversion process will begin. This may take a few hours depending on your system’s hardware. Note: There is a check box to “Shutdown computer when done” if you choose to run the conversion overnight or before leaving for work. The first phase will be video encoding… Then the audio… If you chose the “Two Pass” option, your video video will be encoded again on 2nd pass. Then you’re finished. Unfortunately, FairUse Wizard doesn’t clean up after itself very well. After the process is complete, you’ll want to browse to your output directory and delete all the temporary files as they take up a considerable amount of hard drive space. Now you’re ready to enjoy your movie. Conclusion FairUse Wizard is a nice way to backup your DVD movies to good quality .avi files. You can store them on your hard drive, watch them on a media PC, or burn them to disc. Many DVD players even allow for playback of DivX or XviD encoded video from a CD or DVD. For those of you with children, you can burn that AVI file to CD for your kids, and keep your original DVDs stored safely out of harms way. Download Download FairUse Wizard 2.9 LE Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Kantaris is a Unique Media Player Based on VLCHow to Make/Edit a movie with Windows Movie Maker in Windows VistaAutomatically Mount and View ISO files in Windows 7 Media CenterTune Your ClearType Font Settings in Windows VistaAdd Images and Metadata to Windows 7 Media Center Movie Library TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Make your Joomla & Drupal Sites Mobile with OSMOBI Integrate Twitter and Delicious and Make Life Easier Design Your Web Pages Using the Golden Ratio Worldwide Growth of the Internet How to Find Your Mac Address Use My TextTools to Edit and Organize Text

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• Customize your icons in Windows 7 and Vista

  - by Matthew Guay

  Want to change out the icons on your desktop and more?  Personalizing your icons is a great way to make your PC uniquely yours,, and today we show you how to grab unique icons, and default Winnows. to be your own. Change the icon for Computer, Recycle Bin, Network, and your User folder Right-click on the desktop, and select Personalize. Now, click the “Change desktop icons” link on the left sidebar in the Personalization window. The window looks slightly different in Windows Vista, but the link is the same. Select the icon you wish to change, and click the Change Icon button.  In Windows 7, you will also notice a box to choose whether or not to allow themes to change icons, and you can uncheck it if you don’t want themes to change your icon settings. You can select one of the other included icons, or click browse to find the icon you want.  Click Ok when you are finished. Change Folder icons You can easily change the icon on most folders in Windows Vista and 7.  Simply right-click on the folder and select properties. Click the Customize tab, and then click the Change Icon button.  This will open the standard dialog to change your icon, so proceed as normal. This basically just creates a hidden desktop.ini file in the folder containing the following or similar data: [.ShellClassInfo]IconFile=%SystemRoot%\system32\SHELL32.dllIconIndex=20 You could manually create or edit the file if you choose, instead of using the dialogs. Simply create a new text file named desktop.ini with this same information, or edit the existing one.  Change the IconFile line to the location of your icon. If you are pointing to a .ico file you should change the IconIndex line to 0 instead. Note that this isn’t available for all folders, for instance you can’t use this to change the icon for the Windows folder.   In Windows 7, please note that you cannot change the icon of folder inside a library.  So if you are browsing your Documents library and would like to change an icon in that folder, right-click on it and select Open folder location.  Now you can change the icon as above. And if you would like to change a Library’s icon itself, then check out this tutorial: Change Your Windows 7 Library Icons the Easy Way Change the icon of any file type Want to make you files easier to tell apart?  Check out our tutorial on how to simply do this: Change a File Type’s Icon in Windows 7 Change the icon of any Application Shortcut To change the icon of a shortcut on your desktop, start menu, or in Explorer, simply right-click on the icon and select Properties. In the Shortcut tab, click the Change Icon button. Now choose one of the other available icons or click browse to find the icon you want. Change Icons of Running Programs in the Windows 7 taskbar If your computer is running Windows 7, you can customize the icon of any program running in the taskbar!  This only works on applications that are running but not pinned to the taskbar, so if you want to customize a pinned icon you may want to unpin it before customizing it.  But the interesting thing about this trick is that it can customize any icon anything running in the taskbar, including things like Control Panel! Right-click or click and push up to open the jumplist on the icon, and then right-click on the program’s name and select Properties.  Here we are customizing Control Panel, but you can do this on any application icon. Now, click Change Icon as usual. Select an icon you want (We switched the Control Panel icon to the Security Shield), or click Browse to find another icon.  Click Ok when finished, and then close the application window. The next time you open the program (or Control Panel in our example), you will notice your new icon on its taskbar icon. Please note that this only works on applications that are currently running and are not pinned to the taskbar.  Strangely, if the application is pinned to the taskbar, you can still click Properties and change the icon, but the change will not show up. Change the icon on any Drive on your Computer You can easily change the icon on your internal hard drives and portable drives with the free Drive Icon Changer application.  Simply download and unzip the file (link below), and then run the application as administrator by right-clicking on the icon and selecting “Run as administrator”. Now, select the drive that you want to change the icon of, and select your desired icon file. Click Save, and Drive Icon Changer will let you know that the icon has been changed successfully. You will then need to reboot your computer to complete the changes.  Simply click Yes to reboot. Now, our Drive icon is changed from this default image: to a Laptop icon we chose! You can do this to any drive in your computer, or to removable drives such as USB flash drives.  When you change these drives icons, the new icon will appear on any computer you insert the drive into.  Also, if you wish to remove the icon change, simply run the Drive Icon Changer again and remove the icon path. Download Drive Icon Changer This application actually simply creates or edits a hidden Autorun.inf file on the top of your drive.  You can edit or create the file yourself by hand if you’d like; simply include the following information in the file, and save it in the top directory of your drive: [autorun]ICON=[path of your icon] Remove Arrow from shortcut icons Many people don’t like the arrow on the shortcut icon, and there are two easy ways to do this. If you’re running the 32 bit version of Windows Vista or 7, simply use the Vista Shortcut Overlay Remover. If your computer is running the 64 bit version of Windows Vista or 7, use the Ultimate Windows Tweaker instead.  Simply select the Additional Tweaks section, and check the “Remove arrows from Shortcut Icons.” For more info and download links check out this article: Disable Shortcut Icon Arrow Overlay in Windows 7 or Vista Closing: This gives you a lot of ways to customize almost any icon on your computer, so you can make it look just like you want it to.  Stay tuned for more great desktop customization articles from How-to Geek! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Change Start Menu to Use Small Icons in Windows 7 or VistaResize Icons Quickly in Windows 7 or Vista ExplorerRoundup: 16 Tweaks to Windows Vista Look & FeelRestore Missing Desktop Icons in Windows 7 or VistaClean Up Past Notification Icons in Windows Vista TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Change DNS servers on the fly with DNS Jumper Live PDF Searches PDF Files and Ebooks Converting Mp4 to Mp3 Easily Use Quick Translator to Translate Text in 50 Languages (Firefox) Get Better Windows Search With UltraSearch Scan News With NY Times Article Skimmer

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• Turn A Flash Drive Into a Portable Web Server

  - by Matthew Guay

  Portable applications are very useful for getting work done on the go, but how about portable servers?  Here’s how you can turn your flash drive into a portable web server. Getting Started To put a full web server on our flash drive, we’re going to use XAMPP Lite.  This lightweight, preconfigured server includes recent versions of Apache, MySQL, and PHP so you can run most websites and webapps directly from it.  You could use the full XAMPP, which includes more features such as a FileZilla FTP server and OpenSSL, but for most purposes, the light version is plenty for a portable server. Download the latest version of XAMPP Lite (link below).  In this tutorial, we used the self-extracting EXE version; you could choose the ZIP file and extract the files yourself, but we found it easier to use the executable. Run the installer, and click Browse choose where to install your server. Select your flash drive, or a folder in it, and click Ok.  Make sure your flash drive has at least 250MB of available storage space.  XAMPP will create an xampplite folder and store all the files in it during the installation.   Click Install, and all of the files will be extracted to your flash drive.  This may take a few moments depending on your flash drive’s speed. When the extraction process is finished, a Command Prompt window will open to finish the installation.  The first prompt will ask if you want to add shortcuts to the start menu and desktop; enter “n” since we don’t want to create start menu links to our portable server. Now enter “y” to configure XAMPP’s directories automatically. Finally, enter “y” to make XAMPP fully portable.  It will set up the servers to run without specific drive letters so your server will run from any computer. XAMPP will finalize your changes; press Enter when everything is completed. Setup will automatically launch the command line version of XAMPP.  On first run, confirm that your time zone is correct. And that’s it!  You can now run XAMPP’s control panel by entering 1, or you can exit and run XAMPP from any other computer with your flash drive. To complete your portable webserver kit, you may want to install Portable Firefox or Iron Browser on your flash drive so you always have your favorite browser ready to use. Running your portable server Using your portable server is very simple.  Open the xampplite folder on your flash drive and launch xampp-control.exe. Click Start beside Apache and MySql to get your webserver running. Please note: Do not check the Svc box, as this will run the server as a Windows service.  To keep XAMPP portable, you do not want it running as a service! Windows Firewall may prompt you that it blocked the server; click Allow access to let your server run. Once they’re running, you can click Admin to open the default XAMPP admin page running from your local webserver.  Or, you can view it by browsing to http://localhost/ or http://127.0.0.1/ in your browser. If everything is working correctly, you should see this page in your browser.  Choose your default language… And then you’ll see the default XAMPP admin page.   Click the Status link on the left sidebar to make sure everything is running correctly. If you click the Admin button for MySql in the XAMPP Control Panel, it will open phpMyAdmin in your default browser.  Alternately, you can open the MySql admin page by entering http://localhost/phpmyadmin/ or http://127.0.0.1/phpmyadmin/ in your favorite browser. Now you can add your own webpages to your webserver.  Save all of your web files in the \xampplight\htdocs\ folder on your flash drive. Install WordPress in your portable server Since XAMPP Lite includes MySql and PHP, you can even run webapps such as WordPress, the popular CMS and blogging platform.  Download WordPress (link below), and extract the files to the \xampplite\htdocs folder on your flash drive. Now all of the WordPress files are stored in \xampplite\htdocs\wordpress on your flash drive. We still need to setup WordPress on our portable server.  Open your MySql admin page http://localhost/phpmyadmin/ to create a new database for WordPress.  Enter a name for your database in the “Create new database” box, and click Create. Click the Privileges tab on the top, and the select “Add a new User”.   Enter a username and password for the database, and then click the Go button on the bottom of the page. Using WordPress Now, in your browser, enter http://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php.  Click Create a Configuration File to continue. Make sure you have your Database name, username, and password we created previously, and click “Let’s Go!” Enter your WordPress database name, username, and password, leave the other two entries as default, and click Submit. You should now have the database all ready to go.  Click “Run the install” to finish installing WordPress. Enter a title, username, and password for your test blog, as well as your email address, and then click “Install WordPress”. You now have a portable install of WordPress.  Click “Log In” to  access your WordPress admin page. Enter your username and password, and click Log In. Here you can add pages, posts, themes, extensions, and anything else just like you would on a normal WordPress site.  This is a great way to experiment with WordPress without messing up your real website. You can view your portable WordPress site by entering http://localhost/wordpress/ in your address bar. Closing your server When you’re done running your test server, click the Stop button on each of the services and then click the Exit button in the XAMPP control panel.  If you press the exit button on the top of the window, it will just minimize the control panel to the tray.   Alternately, you can shutdown your server by running xampp_stop.exe from your xampplite folder. Conclusion XAMPP Lite gives you a great way to run a full webserver directly from your flash drive.  Now, anywhere you go, you can test and tweak your webpages and webapps from any Windows computer.  Links Download XAMPP Lite Download WordPress Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips BitLocker To Go Encrypts Portable Flash Drives in Windows 7How To Use BitLocker on Drives without TPMSpeed up Your Windows Vista Computer with ReadyBoostView and Manage Flash Cookies the Easy WayInstall and Run Applications from Your iPod, Flash Drive or Mp3 Player TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 OutlookStatView Scans and Displays General Usage Statistics How to Add Exceptions to the Windows Firewall Office 2010 reviewed in depth by Ed Bott FoxClocks adds World Times in your Statusbar (Firefox) Have Fun Editing Photo Editing with Citrify Outlook Connector Upgrade Error

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• Quick guide to Oracle IRM 11g: Creating your first sealed document

  - by Simon Thorpe

  Quick guide to Oracle IRM 11g indexThe previous articles in this guide have detailed how to install, configure and secure your Oracle IRM 11g service. This article walks you through the process of now creating your first context and securing a document against it. I should mention that it would be worth reviewing the following to ensure your installation is ready for that all important first document. Ensure you have correctly configured the keystore for the IRM wrapper keys. If this is not correctly configured, creating the context below will fail. Make sure the IRM server URL correctly resolves and uses the right protocol (HTTP or HTTPS) ContentsCreate the first contextInstall the Oracle IRM Desktop Seal your first document Create the first contextIn Oracle 11g there is a built in classification and rights system called the "standard rights model" which is based on 10 years of customer use cases and innovation. It is a system which enables IRM to scale massively whilst retaining the ability to balance security and usability and also separate duties by allowing contacts in the business to own classifications. The final article in this guide goes into detail on this inbuilt classification model, but for the purposes of this current article all we need to do is create at least one context to test our system out.With a new IRM server there are a set of predefined context templates and roles which again are setup in a way which reflects the most common use we've learned from our customers. We will use these out of the box configurations as they are to create the first context against which we will seal some content.First login to your Oracle IRM Management Website located at https://irm.company.com/irm_rights/. Currently the system is only configured to use the built in LDAP for users, so use the only account we have at the moment, which by default is weblogic. Once logged in switch to the Contexts tab. Click on the New Context icon () in the menu bar on the left. In the resulting dialog select the Standard context template and enter in a name for the context. Then just hit finish, the weblogic account will automatically be made the manager. You'll now see your brand new context ready for users to be assigned. Now click on the Assign Role icon () in the menu bar and in the resulting dialog search for your only user account, weblogic, and add to the list on the right. Now select a role for this user. Because we need to create a document with this user we must select contributor, as this is the only role which allows for the ability to seal. Finally hit next and then finish. We now have a context with a user that has the rights to create a document. The next step is to configure the IRM Desktop to get these rights from the server. Install the Oracle IRM Desktop Before we can seal a document we need the client software installed. Oracle IRM has a very small, lightweight client called the Oracle IRM Desktop which can be freely downloaded in 27 languages from here. Double click on the installer and click on next... Next again... And finally on install... Very easy. You may get a warning about closing Outlook, Word or another application and most of the time no reboots are required. Once it is installed you will see the IRM Desktop icon running in your tool tray, bottom right of the desktop. Seal your first document Finally the prize is within reach, creating your first sealed document. The server is running, we've got a context ready, a user assigned a role in the context but there is the simple and obvious hoop left to jump through. To seal a document we need to have the users rights cached to the local machine. For this to take place, the IRM Desktop needs to know where the Oracle IRM server is on the network so we can synchronize these rights and then be able to seal a document. The usual way for the IRM Desktop to know about the IRM server is it learns automatically when you open an existing piece of content that someone has sent you... ack. Bit of a chicken or the egg dilemma. The solution is to manually tell the IRM Desktop the location of the IRM Server and then force a synchronization of rights. Right click on the Oracle IRM Desktop icon in the system tray and select Options.... Then switch to the Servers tab in the resulting dialog. There are no servers in the list because you've never opened any content. This list is usually populated automatically but we are going to add a server manually, so click on New.... Into the dialog enter in the full URL to the IRM server. Note that this time you use the path /irm_desktop/ and not /irm_rights/. You can see an example from the image below. Click on the validate button and you'll be asked to authenticate. Enter in your weblogic username and password and also check the Remember my password check box. Click OK and the IRM Desktop will confirm a successful connection to the server. OK all the dialogs and we are ready to Synchronize this users rights to the desktop. Right click once more on the Oracle IRM Desktop icon in the system tray. Now the Synchronize menu option is available. Select this and the IRM Desktop will now talk to the IRM server, authenticate using your weblogic account and get your rights to the context we created. Because this is the first time this users has communicated with the IRM server the IRM Desktop presents a privacy policy dialog. This is a chance for the business to ask users to agree to any policy about the use of IRM before opening secured documents. In our guide we've not bothered to setup this URL so just click on the check box and hit Accept. The IRM Desktop will then talk to the server, get your rights and display a success dialog. Lets protect a documentNow we are ready to seal a piece of content. In my guide i'm going to protect a Microsoft Word document. This mean's I have to have copy of Office installed, in this guide i'm using Microsoft Office 2007. You could also seal a PDF document, you'll need to download and install Adobe Acrobat Reader. A very simple test could be to seal a GIF/JPG/PNG or piece of HTML because this is rendered using Internet Explorer. But as I say, i'm going to protect a Word document. The following example demonstrates choosing a file in Windows Explorer, there are many ways to seal a file and you can watch a few in this video.Open a copy of Windows Explorer and locate the file you wish to seal. Right click on the document and select Seal To -> Context You are now presented with the Select Context dialog. You'll now have a sealed copy of the document sat in the same location. Double click on this document and it will open, again using the credentials you've already provided. That is it, now you just need to add more users, more documents, more classifications and start exploring the different roles and experiment with different offline periods etc. You may wish to setup the server against an existing LDAP or Active Directory environment instead of using the built in WebLogic LDAP store. You can read how to use your corporate directory here. But before we finish this guide, there is one more article and arguably the most important article of all. Next I discuss the all important decision making surrounding the actually implementation of Oracle IRM inside your business. Who has rights to what? How do you map contexts to your existing business practices? It is the next article which actually ensures you deploy a successful IRM solution by looking at the business and understanding how they use your sensitive information and then configuring Oracle IRM to reflect their use.

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• Scott Guthrie in Glasgow

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  Last week Scott Guthrie was in Glasgow for his new Guathon tour, which was a roaring success. Scott did talks on the new features in Visual Studio 2010, Silverlight 4, ASP.NET MVC 2 and Windows Phone 7. Scott talked from 10am till 4pm, so this can only contain what I remember and I am sure lots of things he discussed just went in one ear and out another, however I have tried to capture at least all of my Ohh’s and Ahh’s. Visual Studio 2010 Right now you can download and install Visual Studio 2010 Candidate Release, but soon we will have the final product in our hands. With it there are some amazing improvements, and not just in the IDE. New versions of VB and C# come out of the box as well as Silverlight 4 and SharePoint 2010 integration. The new Intellisense features allow inline support for Types and Dictionaries as well as being able to type just part of a name and have the list filter accordingly. Even better, and my personal favourite is one that Scott did not mention, and that is that it is not case sensitive so I can actually find things in C# with its reasonless case sensitivity (Scott, can we please have an option to turn that off.) Another nice feature is the Routing engine that was created for ASP.NET MVC is now available for WebForms which is good news for all those that just imported the MVC DLL’s to get at it anyway. Another fantastic feature that will need some exploring is the ability to add validation rules to your entities and have them validated automatically on the front end. This removes the need to add your own validators and means that you can control an objects validation rules from a single location, the object. A simple command “GridView.EnableDynamicData(gettype(product))“ will enable this feature on controls. What was not clear was wither there would be support for this in WPF and WinForms as well. If there is, we can write our validation rules once and use everywhere. I was disappointed to here that there would be no inbuilt support for the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) with VS2010, but I think it will be there for .vNext. Because I have been concentrating on the Visual Studio ALM enhancements to VS2010 I found this section invaluable as I now know at least some of what I missed. Silverlight 4 I am not a big fan of Silverlight. There I said it, and I will probably get lynched for it. My big problem with Silverlight is that most of the really useful things I leaned from WPF do not work. I am only going to mention one thing and that is “x:Type”. If you are a WPF developer you will know how much power these 6 little letters provide; the ability to target templates at object types being the the most magical and useful. But, and this is a massive but, if you are developing applications that MUST run on platforms other than windows then Silverlight is your only choice (well that and Flash, but lets just not go there). And Silverlight has a huge install base as well.. 60% of all internet connected devices have Silverlight. Can Adobe say that? Even though I am not a fan of it my current project is a Silverlight one. If you start your XAML experience with Silverlight you will not be disappointed and neither will the users of the applications you build. Scott showed us a fantastic application called “Silverface” that is a Silverlight 4 Out of Browser application. I have looked for a link and can’t find one, but true to form, here is a fantastic WPF version called Fish Bowl from Microsoft. ASP.NET MVC 2 ASP.NET MVC is something I have played with but never used in anger. It is definitely the way forward, but WebForms is not dead yet. there are still circumstances when WebForms are better. If you are starting from greenfield and you are using TDD, then MVC is ultimately the only way you can go. New in version 2 are Dynamic Scaffolding helpers that let you control how data is presented in the UI from the Entities. Adding validation rules and other options that make sense there can help improve the overall ease of developing the UI. Also the Microsoft team have heard the cries of help from the larger site builders and provided “Areas” which allow a level of categorisation to your Controllers and Views. These work just like add-ins and have their own folder, but also have sub Controllers and Views. Areas are totally pluggable and can be dropped onto existing sites giving the ability to have boxed products in MVC, although what you do with all of those views is anyone's guess. They have been listening to everyone again with the new option to encapsulate UI using the Html.Action or Html.ActionRender. This uses the existing  .ascx functionality in ASP.NET to render partial views to the screen in certain areas. While this was possible before, it makes the method official thereby opening it up to the masses and making it a standard. At the end of the session Scott pulled out some IIS goodies including the IIS SEO Toolkit which can be used to verify your own site is “good” for search engine consumption. Better yet he suggested that you run it against your friends sites and shame them with how bad they are. note: make sure you have fixed yours first. Windows Phone 7 Series I had already seen the new UI for WP7 and heard about the developer story, but Scott brought that home by building a twitter application in about 20 minutes using the emulator. Scott’s only mistake was loading @plip’s tweets into the app… And guess what, it was written in Silverlight. When Windows Phone 7 launches you will be able to use about 90% of the codebase of your existing Silverlight application and use it on the phone! There are two downsides to the new WP7 architecture: No, your existing application WILL NOT work without being converted to either a Silverlight or XNA UI. NO, you will not be able to get your applications onto the phone any other way but through the Marketplace. Do I think these are problems? No, not even slightly. This phone is aimed at consumers who have probably never tried to install an application directly onto a device. There will be support for enterprise apps in the future, but for now enterprises should stay on Windows Phone 6.5.x devices. Post Event drinks At the after event drinks gathering Scott was checking out my HTC HD2 (released to the US this month on T-Mobile) and liked the Windows Phone 6.5.5 build I have on it. We discussed why Microsoft were not going to allow Windows Phone 7 Series onto it with my understanding being that it had 5 buttons and not 3, while Scott was sure that there was more to it from a hardware standpoint. I think he is right, and although the HTC HD2 has a DX9 compatible processor, it was never built with WP7 in mind. However, as if by magic Saturday brought fantastic news for all those that have already bought an HD2: Yes, this appears to be Windows Phone 7 running on a HTC HD2. The HD2 itself won't be getting an official upgrade to Windows Phone 7 Series, so all eyes are on the ROM chefs at the moment. The rather massive photos have been posted by Tom Codon on HTCPedia and they've apparently got WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth and other bits working. The ROM isn't online yet but according to the post there's a beta version coming soon. Leigh Geary - http://www.coolsmartphone.com/news5648.html  What was Scott working on on his flight back to the US?   Technorati Tags: VS2010,MVC2,WP7S,WP7 Follow: @CAMURPHY, @ColinMackay, @plip and of course @ScottGu

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• Change or Reset Windows Password from a Ubuntu Live CD

  - by Trevor Bekolay

  If you can’t log in even after trying your twelve passwords, or you’ve inherited a computer complete with password-protected profiles, worry not – you don’t have to do a fresh install of Windows. We’ll show you how to change or reset your Windows password from a Ubuntu Live CD. This method works for all of the NT-based version of Windows – anything from Windows 2000 and later, basically. And yes, that includes Windows 7. You’ll need a Ubuntu 9.10 Live CD, or a bootable Ubuntu 9.10 Flash Drive. If you don’t have one, or have forgotten how to boot from the flash drive, check out our article on creating a bootable Ubuntu 9.10 flash drive. The program that lets us manipulate Windows passwords is called chntpw. The steps to install it are different in 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Ubuntu. Installation: 32-bit Open up Synaptic Package Manager by clicking on System at the top of the screen, expanding the Administration section, and clicking on Synaptic Package Manager. chntpw is found in the universe repository. Repositories are a way for Ubuntu to group software together so that users are able to choose if they want to use only completely open source software maintained by Ubuntu developers, or branch out and use software with different licenses and maintainers. To enable software from the universe repository, click on Settings > Repositories in the Synaptic window. Add a checkmark beside the box labeled “Community-maintained Open Source software (universe)” and then click close. When you change the repositories you are selecting software from, you have to reload the list of available software. In the main Synaptic window, click on the Reload button. The software lists will be downloaded. Once downloaded, Synaptic must rebuild its search index. The label over the text field by the Search button will read “Rebuilding search index.” When it reads “Quick search,” type chntpw in the text field. The package will show up in the list. Click on the checkbox near the chntpw name. Click on Mark for Installation. chntpw won’t actually be installed until you apply the changes you’ve made, so click on the Apply button in the Synaptic window now. You will be prompted to accept the changes. Click Apply. The changes should be applied quickly. When they’re done, click Close. chntpw is now installed! You can close Synaptic Package Manager. Skip to the section titled Using chntpw to reset your password. Installation: 64-bit The version of chntpw available in Ubuntu’s universe repository will not work properly on a 64-bit machine. Fortunately, a patched version exists in Debian’s Unstable branch, so let’s download it from there and install it manually. Open Firefox. Whether it’s your preferred browser or not, it’s very readily accessible in the Ubuntu Live CD environment, so it will be the easiest to use. There’s a shortcut to Firefox in the top panel. Navigate to http://packages.debian.org/sid/amd64/chntpw/download and download the latest version of chntpw for 64-bit machines. Note: In most cases it would be best to add the Debian Unstable branch to a package manager, but since the Live CD environment will revert to its original state once you reboot, it’ll be faster to just download the .deb file. Save the .deb file to the default location. You can close Firefox if desired. Open a terminal window by clicking on Applications at the top-left of the screen, expanding the Accessories folder, and clicking on Terminal. In the terminal window, enter the following text, hitting enter after each line: cd Downloadssudo dpkg –i chntpw* chntpw will now be installed. Using chntpw to reset your password Before running chntpw, you will have to mount the hard drive that contains your Windows installation. In most cases, Ubuntu 9.10 makes this simple. Click on Places at the top-left of the screen. If your Windows drive is easily identifiable – usually by its size – then left click on it. If it is not obvious, then click on Computer and check out each hard drive until you find the correct one. The correct hard drive will have the WINDOWS folder in it. When you find it, make a note of the drive’s label that appears in the menu bar of the file browser. If you don’t already have one open, start a terminal window by going to Applications > Accessories > Terminal. In the terminal window, enter the commands cd /medials pressing enter after each line. You should see one or more strings of text appear; one of those strings should correspond with the string that appeared in the title bar of the file browser earlier. Change to that directory by entering the command cd <hard drive label> Since the hard drive label will be very annoying to type in, you can use a shortcut by typing in the first few letters or numbers of the drive label (capitalization matters) and pressing the Tab key. It will automatically complete the rest of the string (if those first few letters or numbers are unique). We want to switch to a certain Windows directory. Enter the command: cd WINDOWS/system32/config/ Again, you can use tab-completion to speed up entering this command. To change or reset the administrator password, enter: sudo chntpw SAM SAM is the file that contains your Windows registry. You will see some text appear, including a list of all of the users on your system. At the bottom of the terminal window, you should see a prompt that begins with “User Edit Menu:” and offers four choices. We recommend that you clear the password to blank (you can always set a new password in Windows once you log in). To do this, enter “1” and then “y” to confirm. If you would like to change the password instead, enter “2”, then your desired password, and finally “y” to confirm. If you would like to reset or change the password of a user other than the administrator, enter: sudo chntpw –u <username> SAM From here, you can follow the same steps as before: enter “1” to reset the password to blank, or “2” to change it to a value you provide. And that’s it! Conclusion chntpw is a very useful utility provided for free by the open source community. It may make you think twice about how secure the Windows login system is, but knowing how to use chntpw can save your tail if your memory fails you two or eight times! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Reset Your Ubuntu Password Easily from the Live CDChange Your Forgotten Windows Password with the Linux System Rescue CDHow to Create and Use a Password Reset Disk in Windows Vista & Windows 7Reset Your Forgotten Password the Easy Way Using the Ultimate Boot CD for WindowsHow to install Spotify in Ubuntu 9.10 using Wine TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Add a Custom Title in IE using Spybot or Spyware Blaster When You Need to Hail a Taxi in NYC Live Map of Marine Traffic NoSquint Remembers Site Specific Zoom Levels (Firefox) New Firefox release 3.6.3 fixes 1 Critical bug Dark Side of the Moon (8-bit)

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• Sync Your Pidgin Profile Across Multiple PCs with Dropbox

  - by Matthew Guay

  Pidgin is definitely our favorite universal chat client, but adding all of your chat accounts to multiple computers can be frustrating.  Here’s how you can easily transfer your Pidgin settings to other computers and keep them in sync using Dropbox. Getting Started Make sure you have both Pidgin and Dropbox installed on any computers you want to sync.  To sync Pidgin, you need to: Move your Pidgin profile folder on your first computer to Dropbox Create a symbolic link from the new folder in Dropbox to your old profile location Delete the default pidgin profile on your other computer, and create a symbolic link from your Dropbox Pidgin profile to the default Pidgin profile location This sounds difficult, but it’s actually easy if you follow these steps.  Here we already had all of our accounts setup in Pidgin in Windows 7, and then synced this profile with an Ubuntu and a XP computer with fresh Pidgin installs.  Our instructions for each OS are based on this, but just swap the sync order if your main Pidgin install is in XP or Ubuntu. Please Note:  Please make sure Pidgin isn’t running on your computer while you are making the changes! Sync Your Pidgin Profile from Windows 7 Here is Pidgin with our accounts already setup.  Our Pidgin profile has a Gtalk, MSN Messenger, and Facebook Chat account, and lots of log files. Let’s move this profile to Dropbox to keep it synced.  Exit Pidgin, and then enter %appdata% in the address bar in Explorer or press Win+R and enter %appdata%.  Select the .purple folder, which is your Pidgin profiles and settings folder, and press Ctrl+X to cut it. Browse to your Dropbox folder, and press Ctrl+V to paste the .purple folder there. Now we need to create the symbolic link.  Enter  “command” in your Start menu search, right-click on the Command Prompt shortcut, and select “Run as administrator”. We can now use the mklink command to create a symbolic link to the .purple folder.  In Command Prompt, enter the following and substitute username for your own username. mklink /D “C:\Users\username\Documents\My Dropbox\.purple” “C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\.purple” And that’s it!  You can open Pidgin now to make sure it still works as before, with your files being synced with Dropbox. Please Note:  These instructions work the same for Windows Vista.  Also, if you are syncing settings from another computer to Windows 7, then delete the .purple folder instead of cutting and pasting it, and reverse the order of the file paths when creating the symbolic link. Add your Pidgin Profile to Ubuntu Our Ubuntu computer had a clean install of Pidgin, so we didn’t need any of the information in its settings.  If you’ve run Pidgin, even without creating an account, you will need to first remove its settings folder.  Open your home folder, and click View, and then “Show Hidden Files” to see your settings folders. Select the .purple folder, and delete it. Now, to create the symbolic link, open Terminal and enter the following, substituting username for your username: ln –s /home/username/Dropbox/.purple /home/username/ Open Pidgin, and you will see all of your accounts that were on your other computer.  No usernames or passwords needed; everything is setup and ready to go.  Even your status is synced; we had our status set to Away in Windows 7, and it automatically came up the same in Ubuntu. Please Note: If your primary Pidgin account is in Ubuntu, then cut your .purple folder and paste it into your Dropbox folder instead.  Then, when creating the symbolic link, reverse the order of the folder paths. Add your Pidgin Profile to Windows XP In XP we also had a clean install of Pidgin.  If you’ve run Pidgin, even without creating an account, you will need to first remove its settings folder.  Click Start, the Run, and enter %appdata%. Delete your .purple folder. XP does not include a way to create a symbolic link, so we will use the free Junction tool from Sysinternals.  Download Junction (link below) and unzip the folder. Open Command Prompt (click Start, select All Programs, then Accessories, and select Command Prompt), and enter cd followed by the path of the folder where you saved Junction.   Now, to create the symbolic link, enter the following in Command Prompt, substituting username with your username. junction –d “C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\.purple” “C:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents\My Dropbox\.purple” Open Pidgin, and you will see all of your settings just as they were on your other computer.  Everything’s ready to go.   Please Note: If your primary Pidgin account is in Windows XP, then cut your .purple folder and paste it into your Dropbox folder instead.  Then, when creating the symbolic link, reverse the order of the folder paths. Conclusion This is a great way to keep all of your chat and IM accounts available from all of your computers.  You can easily access logs from chats you had on your desktop from your laptop, or if you add a chat account on your work computer you can use it seamlessly from your home computer that evening.  Now Pidgin is the universal chat client that is always ready whenever and wherever you need it! Links Downlaod Pidgin Download and signup for Dropbox Download Junction for XP Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Add "My Dropbox" to Your Windows 7 Start MenuUse Multiple Firefox Profiles at the Same TimeEasily Add Facebook Chat to PidginPut Your Pidgin Buddy List into the Windows Vista SidebarBackup and Restore Firefox Profiles Easily TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Download Free iPad Wallpapers at iPad Decor Get Your Delicious Bookmarks In Firefox’s Awesome Bar Manage Photos Across Different Social Sites With Dropico Test Drive Windows 7 Online Download Wallpapers From National Geographic Site Spyware Blaster v4.3

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• SharePoint – The Most Important Feature

  - by Bil Simser

  Watching twitter and doing a search for SharePoint and you see a lot (almost one every few minutes) of tweets about the top 10 new features in SharePoint. What answer do you get when you ask the question, “What’s the most important feature in SharePoint?”. Chances are the answer will vary. Some will say it’s the collaboration aspect, others might say it’s the new ribbon interface, multi-item editing, external content types, faceted search, large list support, document versioning, Silverlight, etc. The list goes on. However I think most people might be missing the most important feature that’s sitting right under their noses all this time. The most important feature of SharePoint? It’s called User Empowerment. Huh? What? Is that something I find in the Site Actions menu? Nope. It’s something that’s always been there in SharePoint, you just need to get the word out and support it. How many times have you had a team ask you for a team site (assuming you had SharePoint up and running). Or to create them a contact list. Or how long have you employed that guy in the corner who’s been copying and pasting content from Corporate Communications into the web from a Word document. Let’s stop the insanity. It doesn’t have to be this way. SharePoint’s strongest feature isn’t anything you can find in the Site Settings screen or Central Admin. It’s all about empowering your users and letting them take control of their content. After all, SharePoint really is a bunch of tools to allow users to collaborate on content isn’t it? So why are you stepping in as IT and helping the user every moment along the way. It’s like having to ask users to fill out a help desk ticket or call up the Windows team to create a folder on their desktop or rearrange their Start menu. This isn’t something IT should be spending their time doing nor is it something the users should be burdened with having to wait until their friendly neighborhood tech-guy (or gal) shows up to help them sort the icons on their desktop. SharePoint IS all about empowerment. Site owners can create whatever lists and libraries they need for their team, and if the template isn’t there they can always turn to my friend and yours, the Custom List. From that can spew forth approval tracking systems, new hire checklists, and server inventory. You’re only limited by your imagination and needs. Users should be able to create new sites as they need. Want a blog to let everyone know what your team is up to? Go create one, here’s how. What’s a blog you ask? Here’s what it is and why you would use one. SharePoint is the shift in the balance of power and you need, and an IT group, let go of certain responsibilities and let your users run with the tools. A power user who knows how to create sites and what features are available to them can help a team go from the forming stage to the storming stage overnight. Again, this all hinges on you as an IT organization and what you can and empower your users with as far as features go. Running with tools is great if you know how to use them, running with scissors not recommended unless you enjoy trips to the hospital. With Great Power comes Great Responsibility so don’t go out on Monday and send out a memo to the organization saying “This Bil guy says you peeps can do anything so here it is, knock yourself out” (for one, they’ll have *no* idea who this Bil guy is). This advice comes with the task of getting your users ready for empowerment. Whether it’s through some kind of internal training sessions, in-house documentation; videos; blog posts; on how to accomplish things in SharePoint, or full blown one-on-one sit downs with teams or individuals to help them through their problems. The work is up to you. Helping them along also should be part of your governance (you do have one don’t you?). Just because you have InfoPath client deployed with your Office suite, doesn’t mean users should just start publishing forms all over your SharePoint farm. There should be some governance behind that in what you’ll support and what is possible. The other caveat to all this is that SharePoint is not everything for everyone. It can’t cook you breakfast and impregnate your cat or solve world hunger. It also isn’t suited for every IT solution out there. It’s a horrible source control system (even though some people try to use it as such) and really can’t do financials worth a darn. Again, governance is key here and part of that governance and your responsibility in setting up and unleashing SharePoint into your organization is to provide users guidance on what should be in SharePoint and (more importantly) what should not be in SharePoint. There are boundaries you have to set where you don’t want your end users going as they might be treading into trouble. Again, this is up to you to set these constraints and help users understand why these pylons are there. If someone understands why they can’t do something they might have a better understanding and respect for those that put them there in the first place. Of course you’ll always have the power-users who want to go skiing down dead mans curve so this doesn’t work for everyone, but you can catch the majority of the newbs who don’t wander aimlessly off the beaten path. At the end of the day when all things are going swimmingly your end users should be empowered to solve the needs they have on a day to day basis and not having to keep bugging the IT department to help them create a view to show only approved documents. I wouldn’t go as far as business users building out full blown solutions and handing the keys to SharePoint Designer or (worse) Visual Studio to power-users might not be a path you want to go down but you also don’t have to lock up the SharePoint system in a tight box where users can’t use what’s there. So stop focusing on the shiny things in SharePoint and maybe consider making a shift to what’s really important. Making your day job easier and letting users get the most our of your technology investment.

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• OFM 11g: OAM SSO for Forms and ADF Faces

  - by olaf.heimburger

  In my blog entry OFM 11g: Implementing OAM SSO with Forms we set the foundation for providing a complete Single Sign-On solution based on Oracle Access Manager (OAM). This foundation should now be used to combine Forms 11g and ADF Faces 11g applications with a transparent login. The Beginning Before we start, lets re-consider the requirements to achieve the ultimate goal. These are:- Access to the Forms 11g Application must be authenticated by OAM (protected). Access to the ADF Faces 11g Application must be authenticated by OAM (protected). Switching from one application to the other should not result in a re-authentication (aka single sign-on). User identity should be availble to the application without any extra work in the application code. All these are the common requirements for a single sign-on solution. The challenge here is that Forms relies on Oracle AS SSO (OSSO or "the old SSO") while ADF Faces is quite open and can be protected by Oracle AS SSO and Oracle Access Manager SSO (OAM SSO or "the modern SSO"). Both application types can use their own login mechanism. The Forms 11g Application To demonstrate the SSO functionality, we use the standard Forms test (/forms/frmservlet?form=test.fmx). Although this shows nothing specific in the Forms application, it is good enough to demonstrate that it is protected. The ADF Faces 11g Application With ADF 11g you can develop quite a number of useful Faces based applications. Among many features, it comes with the ADF Security feature that provides you with functionality to protect your pages, regions, and even TaskFlows from un-authenticated usage in a declarative way.To demonstrate that functionality a sample application with different access levels plus a login dialog is used. This application comes with a publc page that has protected content (a button). Once you are authenticated for the application, the protected content and some personalisation (the users name) is shown. Protecting Forms 11g As already explained in the OFM 11g: Implementing OAM SSO with Forms, the easiest way to protect a Forms application is to configure it as a OSSO partner application, setup mod_osso, test it, migrate OSSO to OAM SSO with the Upgrade Agent, reconfigure mod_osso, and you are done.Sort of. By default the OAM is configured to run in co-exist mode. This means that a user has to re-authenticate to the Forms application when logged into an OAM SSO application before. To avoid this, you must disable the co-exist mode, for example by using WLST and issue the disableCoexistMode on the OAM server. Protecting ADF Faces 11g To protect an ADF Faces 11g application we have to consider two scenarios: Use a HTTPD server in front of WLS Use WLS without a HTTPD server Both scenarios have their pro's and cons' and we won't get into details and just describe how to configure both. Scenario 1: HTTPD Server with WLS In this scenario we have to setup the environment in some steps:- Configure a WebGate at OAMThis configuration can be done through the OAM console or by a script. No matter which way you choose, the WebGate configuration files will be created for you. Install the OAM WebGate into an HTTPD serverThe type of webgate you need to install depends on you HTTPD server. With Oracle HTTP Server 11g you can use the latest OAM 11g WebGate. With other HTTPD servers you must resort to OAM 10g WebGates. A OAM 11g WebGate can use the pre-created configuration files supplied during the WebGate configuration at OAM. An OAM 10g WebGate asks for the specific configuration and verifies it during installation. Configure the WLS plugin to forward the requests to WLSAgain, depending on your HTTPD Server you have different plugins to forward requests to WLS. With OHS 11g you can use the pre-installed mod_wl_ohs plugin. Its configuration is quite simple and straightforward. Configure an OAM SSPI Provider as a IdentityAsserter in WLS to retrieve the user identifierThis configuration is quite important as it retrieves the user identifier for the next step. If you have a SOA Suite installation within your OFM_HOME, the necessary software is already installed and you only need to setup your Security Realm within WLS.You can do this by pointing your browser to the WLS Console, log in as administrator, select the Security Realm (usually myrealm), and select Providers. We add the OAMIdentityAsserter as the first SSPI Provider. It is important that the Control Flag is set to SUFFICIENT. Every other configuration can be left as is, no changes are necessary here. Configure an OAM Identity Provider to get the real user identityIn OFM 11g: Implementing OAM SSO with Forms we have configured an OID as Identity Store. To get the user identity we need to configure the same OID as an SSPI Provider for WLS. This will retrieve the real user information from OID and creates the JAAS Subject and Principals to be used by any application within WLS.Again, you can do this by pointing your browser to the WLS Console, log in as administrator, select the Security Realm (usually myrealm), and select Providers. Now add the OIDAuthenticator as the second SSPI Provider. It is important that the Control Flag is set to OPTIONAL. After we saved this setup, we need to configure this provider by setting the Provider Specific details to access OID. Scenario 2: WLS only This scenario is a bit easier but requires more work in the WLS setup:- Configure a WebGate at OAMThis configuration can be done through the OAM console or by a script. No matter which way you choose, the WebGate configuration files will be created for you. Configure the OAM SSPI Provider as IdentityAuthenticator to authenticate and set the user identifierWhen using the OAM SSPI Provider as OAMAuthenticator we create it with the Control Flag as SUFFICIENT. Afte saving it, the Provider Specific settings must be configured to allow the OAM SSPI Provider to connect to the OAM Server. Configure an OAM Identity Provider to get the real user identity providerAgain, you can do this by pointing your browser to the WLS Console, log in as administrator, select the Security Realm (usually myrealm), and select Providers. Now add the OIDAuthenticator as the second SSPI Provider. It is important that the Control Flag is set to OPTIONAL. After we saved this setup, we need to configure this provider by setting the Provider Specific details to access OID. Configure ADF 11g Application for OAM Actually, there are no changes to be made within the ADF application. We only need to add the value CLIENT_CERT to the <auth-mode> tag in the <login-config> tag in the web.xml file. Testing To test the configuration, simply point your browser to one of both appliction URLs. OAM should kick in and redirect you to the OAM Login page. After you have entered the correct credentials, access to the URLs is granted and you will see the application. Enjoy!

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• C# in Depth, Third Edition by Jon Skeet, Manning Publications Co. Book Review

  - by Compudicted

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/Compudicted/archive/2013/10/24/c-in-depth-third-edition-by-jon-skeet-manning-publications.aspx I started reading this ebook on September 28, 2013, the same day it was sent my way by Manning Publications Co. for review while it still being fresh off the press. So 1st thing – thanks to Manning for this opportunity and a free copy of this must have on every C# developer’s desk book! Several hours ago I finished reading this book (well, except a for a large portion of its quite lengthy appendix). I jumped writing this review right away while still being full of emotions and impressions from reading it thoroughly and running code examples. Before I go any further I would like say that I used to program on various platforms using various languages starting with the Mainframe and ending on Windows, and I gradually shifted toward dealing with databases more than anything, however it happened with me to program in C# 1 a lot when it was first released and then some C# 2 with a big leap in between to C# 5. So my perception and experience reading this book may differ from yours. Also what I want to tell is somewhat funny that back then, knowing some Java and seeing C# 1 released, initially made me drawing a parallel that it is a copycat language, how wrong was I… Interestingly, Jon programs in Java full time, but how little it was mentioned in the book! So more on the book: Be informed, this is not a typical “Recipes”, “Cookbook” or any set of ready solutions, it is rather targeting mature, advanced developers who do not only know how to use a number of features, but are willing to understand how the language is operating “under the hood”. I must state immediately, at the same time I am glad the author did not go into the murky depths of the MSIL, so this is a very welcome decision on covering a modern language as C# for me, thank you Jon! Frankly, not all was that rosy regarding the tone and structure of the book, especially the the first half or so filled me with several negative and positive emotions overpowering each other. To expand more on that, some statements in the book appeared to be bias to me, or filled with pre-justice, it started to look like it had some PR-sole in it, but thankfully this was all gone toward the end of the 1st third of the book. Specifically, the mention on the C# language popularity, Java is the #1 language as per https://sites.google.com/site/pydatalog/pypl/PyPL-PopularitY-of-Programming-Language (many other sources put C at the top which I highly doubt), also many interesting functional languages as Clojure and Groovy appeared and gained huge traction which run on top of Java/JVM whereas C# does not enjoy such a situation. If we want to discuss the popularity in general and say how fast a developer can find a new job that pays well it would be indeed the very Java, C++ or PHP, never C#. Or that phrase on language preference as a personal issue? We choose where to work or we are chosen because of a technology used at a given software shop, not vice versa. The book though it technically very accurate with valid code, concise examples, but I wish the author would give more concrete, real-life examples on where each feature should be used, not how. Another point to realize before you get the book is that it is almost a live book which started to be written when even C# 3 wasn’t around so a lot of ground is covered (nearly half of the book) on the pre-C# 3 feature releases so if you already have a solid background in the previous releases and do not plan to upgrade, perhaps half of the book can be skipped, otherwise this book is surely highly recommended. Alas, for me it was a hard read, most of it. It was not boring (well, only may be two times), it was just hard to grasp some concepts, but do not get me wrong, it did made me pause, on several occasions, and made me read and re-read a page or two. At times I even wondered if I have any IQ at all (LOL). Be prepared to read A LOT on generics, not that they are widely used in the field (I happen to work as a consultant and went thru a lot of code at many places) I can tell my impression is the developers today in best case program using examples found at OpenStack.com. Also unlike the Java world where having the most recent version is nearly mandated by the OSS most companies on the Microsoft platform almost never tempted to upgrade the .Net version very soon and very often. As a side note, I was glad to see code recently that included a nullable variable (myvariable? notation) and this made me smile, besides, I recommended that person this book to expand her knowledge. The good things about this book is that Jon maintains an active forum, prepared code snippets and even a small program (Snippy) that is happy to run the sample code saving you from writing any plumbing code. A tad now on the C# language itself – it sure enjoyed a wonderful road toward perfection and a very high adoption, especially for ASP development. But to me all the recent features that made this statically typed language more dynamic look strange. Don’t we have F#? Which supposed to be the dynamic language? Why do we need to have a hybrid language? Now the developers live their lives in dualism of the static and dynamic variables! And LINQ to SQL, it is covered in depth, but wasn’t it supposed to be dropped? Also it seems that very little is being added, and at a slower pace, e.g. Roslyn will come in late 2014 perhaps, and will be probably the only main feature. Again, it is quite hard to read this book as various chapters, C# versions mentioned every so often only if I only could remember what was covered exactly where! So the fact it has so many jumps/links back and forth I recommend the ebook format to make the navigations easier to perform and I do recommend using software that allows bookmarking, also make sure you have access to plenty of coffee and pizza (hey, you probably know this joke – who a programmer is) ! In terms of closing, if you stuck at C# 1 or 2 level, it is time to embrace the power of C# 5! Finally, to compliment Manning, this book unlike from any other publisher so far, was the only one as well readable (put it formatted) on my tablet as in Adobe Reader on a laptop.

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• How to pass XML to DB using XMLTYPE

  - by James Taylor

  Probably not a common use case but I have seen it pop up from time to time. The question how do I pass XML from a queue or web service and insert it into a DB table using XMLTYPE.In this example I create a basic table with the field PAYLOAD of type XMLTYPE. I then take the full XML payload of the web service and insert it into that database for auditing purposes.I use SOA Suite 11.1.1.2 using composite and mediator to link the web service with the DB adapter.1. Insert Database Objects Normal 0 false false false 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-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} --Create XML_EXAMPLE_TBL Normal 0 false false false 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-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} CREATE TABLE XML_EXAMPLE_TBL (PAYLOAD XMLTYPE); Normal 0 false false false 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-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} --Create procedure LOAD_TEST_XML Normal 0 false false false 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-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} CREATE or REPLACE PROCEDURE load_test_xml (xmlFile in CLOB) IS   BEGIN     INSERT INTO xml_example_tbl (payload) VALUES (XMLTYPE(xmlFile));   --Handle the exceptions EXCEPTION   WHEN OTHERS THEN     raise_application_error(-20101, 'Exception occurred in loadPurchaseOrder procedure :'||SQLERRM || ' **** ' || xmlFile ); END load_test_xml; / 2. Creating New SOA Project TestXMLTYPE in JDeveloperIn JDeveloper either create a new Application or open an existing Application you want to put this work.Under File -> New -> SOA Tier -> SOA Project   Provide a name for the Project, e.g. TestXMLType Choose Empty Composite When selected Empty Composite click Finish.3. Create Database Connection to Stored ProcedureA Blank composite will be displayed. From the Component Palette drag a Database Adapter to the  External References panel. and configure the Database Adapter Wizard to connect to the DB procedure created above.Provide a service name InsertXML Select a Database connection where you installed the table and procedure above. If it doesn't exist create a new one. Select Call a Stored Procedure or Function then click NextChoose the schema you installed your Procedure in step 1 and query for the LOAD_TEST_XML procedure.Click Next for the remaining screens until you get to the end, then click Finish to complete the database adapter wizard.4. Create the Web Service InterfaceDownload this sample schema that will be used as the input for the web service. It does not matter what schema you use this solution will work with any. Feel free to use your own if required. singleString.xsd Drag from the component palette the Web Service to the Exposed Services panel on the component.Provide a name InvokeXMLLoad for the service, and click the cog icon.Click the magnify glass for the URL to browse to the location where you downloaded the xml schema above.  Import the schema file by selecting the import schema iconBrowse to the location to where you downloaded the singleString.xsd above.Click OK for the Import Schema File, then select the singleString node of the imported schema.Accept all the defaults until you get back to the Web Service wizard screen. The click OK. This step has created a WSDL based on the schema we downloaded earlier.Your composite should now look something like this now.5. Create the Mediator Routing Rules Drag a Mediator component into the middle of the Composite called ComponentsGive the name of Route, and accept the defaultsLink the services up to the Mediator by connecting the reference points so your Composite looks like this.6. Perform Translations between Web Service and the Database Adapter.From the Composite double click the Route Mediator to show the Map Plan. Select the transformation icon to create the XSLT translation file.Choose Create New Mapper File and accept the defaults.From the Component Palette drag the get-content-as-string component into the middle of the translation file.Your translation file should look something like thisNow we need to map the root element of the source 'singleString' to the XMLTYPE of the database adapter, applying the function get-content-as-string.To do this drag the element singleString to the left side of the function get-content-as-string and drag the right side of the get-content-as-string to the XMLFILE element of the database adapter so the mapping looks like this. You have now completed the SOA Component you can now save your work, deploy and test.When you deploy I have assumed that you have the correct database configurations in the WebLogic Console based on the connection you setup connecting to the Stored Procedure. 7. Testing the ApplicationOpen Enterprise Manager and navigate to the TestXMLTYPE Composite and click the Test button. Load some dummy variables in the Input Arguments and click the 'Test Web Service' buttonOnce completed you can run a SQL statement to check the install. In this instance I have just used JDeveloper and opened a SQL WorksheetSQL Statement Normal 0 false false false 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-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} select * from xml_example_tbl; Result, you should see the full payload in the result.

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• Recover Deleted Files on an NTFS Hard Drive from a Ubuntu Live CD

  - by Trevor Bekolay

  Accidentally deleting a file is a terrible feeling. Not being able to boot into Windows and undelete that file makes that even worse. Fortunately, you can recover deleted files on NTFS hard drives from an Ubuntu Live CD. To show this process, we created four files on the desktop of a Windows XP machine, and then deleted them. We then booted up the same machine with the bootable Ubuntu 9.10 USB Flash Drive that we created last week. Once Ubuntu 9.10 boots up, open a terminal by clicking Applications in the top left of the screen, and then selecting Accessories > Terminal. To undelete our files, we first need to identify the hard drive that we want to undelete from. In the terminal window, type in: sudo fdisk –l and press enter. What you’re looking for is a line that ends with HPSF/NTFS (under the heading System). In our case, the device is “/dev/sda1”. This may be slightly different for you, but it will still begin with /dev/. Note this device name. If you have more than one hard drive partition formatted as NTFS, then you may be able to identify the correct partition by the size. If you look at the second line of text in the screenshot above, it reads “Disk /dev/sda: 136.4 GB, …” This means that the hard drive that Ubuntu has named /dev/sda is 136.4 GB large. If your hard drives are of different size, then this information can help you track down the right device name to use. Alternatively, you can just try them all, though this can be time consuming for large hard drives. Now that you know the name Ubuntu has assigned to your hard drive, we’ll scan it to see what files we can uncover. In the terminal window, type: sudo ntfsundelete <HD name> and hit enter. In our case, the command is: sudo ntfsundelete /dev/sda1 The names of files that can recovered show up in the far right column. The percentage in the third column tells us how much of that file can be recovered. Three of the four files that we originally deleted are showing up in this list, even though we shut down the computer right after deleting the four files – so even in ideal cases, your files may not be recoverable. Nevertheless, we have three files that we can recover – two JPGs and an MPG. Note: ntfsundelete is immediately available in the Ubuntu 9.10 Live CD. If you are in a different version of Ubuntu, or for some other reason get an error when trying to use ntfsundelete, you can install it by entering “sudo apt-get install ntfsprogs” in a terminal window. To quickly recover the two JPGs, we will use the * wildcard to recover all of the files that end with .jpg. In the terminal window, enter sudo ntfsundelete <HD name> –u –m *.jpg which is, in our case, sudo ntfsundelete /dev/sda1 –u –m *.jpg The two files are recovered from the NTFS hard drive and saved in the current working directory of the terminal. By default, this is the home directory of the current user, though we are working in the Desktop folder. Note that the ntfsundelete program does not make any changes to the original NTFS hard drive. If you want to take those files and put them back in the NTFS hard drive, you will have to move them there after they are undeleted with ntfsundelete. Of course, you can also put them on your flash drive or open Firefox and email them to yourself – the sky’s the limit! We have one more file to undelete – our MPG. Note the first column on the far left. It contains a number, its Inode. Think of this as the file’s unique identifier. Note this number. To undelete a file by its Inode, enter the following in the terminal: sudo ntfsundelete <HD name> –u –i <Inode> In our case, this is: sudo ntfsundelete /dev/sda1 –u –i 14159 This recovers the file, along with an identifier that we don’t really care about. All three of our recoverable files are now recovered. However, Ubuntu lets us know visually that we can’t use these files yet. That’s because the ntfsundelete program saves the files as the “root” user, not the “ubuntu” user. We can verify this by typing the following in our terminal window: ls –l We want these three files to be owned by ubuntu, not root. To do this, enter the following in the terminal window: sudo chown ubuntu <Files> If the current folder has other files in it, you may not want to change their owner to ubuntu. However, in our case, we only have these three files in this folder, so we will use the * wildcard to change the owner of all three files. sudo chown ubuntu * The files now look normal, and we can do whatever we want with them. Hopefully you won’t need to use this tip, but if you do, ntfsundelete is a nice command-line utility. It doesn’t have a fancy GUI like many of the similar Windows programs, but it is a powerful tool that can recover your files quickly. See ntfsundelete’s manual page for more detailed usage information Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Reset Your Ubuntu Password Easily from the Live CDUse Ubuntu Live CD to Backup Files from Your Dead Windows ComputerCreate a Bootable Ubuntu 9.10 USB Flash DriveCreate a Bootable Ubuntu USB Flash Drive the Easy WayGuide to Using Check Disk in Windows Vista TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Windows 7 Easter Theme YoWindoW, a real time weather screensaver Optimize your computer the Microsoft way Stormpulse provides slick, real time weather data Geek Parents – Did you try Parental Controls in Windows 7? 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• Regression testing with Selenium GRID

  - by Ben Adderson

  A lot of software teams out there are tasked with supporting and maintaining systems that have grown organically over time, and the web team here at Red Gate is no exception. We're about to embark on our first significant refactoring endeavour for some time, and as such its clearly paramount that the code be tested thoroughly for regressions. Unfortunately we currently find ourselves with a codebase that isn't very testable - the three layers (database, business logic and UI) are currently tightly coupled. This leaves us with the unfortunate problem that, in order to confidently refactor the code, we need unit tests. But in order to write unit tests, we need to refactor the code :S To try and ease the initial pain of decoupling these layers, I've been looking into the idea of using UI automation to provide a sort of system-level regression test suite. The idea being that these tests can help us identify regressions whilst we work towards a more testable codebase, at which point the more traditional combination of unit and integration tests can take over. Ending up with a strong battery of UI tests is also a nice bonus :) Following on from my previous posts (here, here and here) I knew I wanted to use Selenium. I also figured that this would be a good excuse to put my xUnit [Browser] attribute to good use. Pretty quickly, I had a raft of tests that looked like the following (this particular example uses Reflector Pro). In a nut shell the test traverses our shopping cart and, for a particular combination of number of users and months of support, checks that the price calculations all come up with the correct values. [BrowserTheory] [Browser(Browsers.Firefox3_6, "http://www.red-gate.com")] public void Purchase1UserLicenceNoSupport(SeleniumProvider seleniumProvider) {     //Arrange     _browser = seleniumProvider.GetBrowser();     _browser.Open("http://www.red-gate.com/dynamic/shoppingCart/ProductOption.aspx?Product=ReflectorPro");                  //Act     _browser = ShoppingCartHelpers.TraverseShoppingCart(_browser, 1, 0, ".NET Reflector Pro");     //Assert     var priceResult = PriceHelpers.GetNewPurchasePrice(db, "ReflectorPro", 1, 0, Currencies.Euros);         Assert.Equal(priceResult.Price, _browser.GetText("ctl00_content_InvoiceShoppingItemRepeater_ctl01_Price"));     Assert.Equal(priceResult.Tax, _browser.GetText("ctl00_content_InvoiceShoppingItemRepeater_ctl02_Tax"));     Assert.Equal(priceResult.Total, _browser.GetText("ctl00_content_InvoiceShoppingItemRepeater_ctl02_Total")); } These tests are pretty concise, with much of the common code in the TraverseShoppingCart() and GetNewPurchasePrice() methods. The (inevitable) problem arose when it came to execute these tests en masse. Selenium is a very slick tool, but it can't mask the fact that UI automation is very slow. To give you an idea, the set of cases that covers all of our products, for all combinations of users and support, came to 372 tests (for now only considering purchases in dollars). In the world of automated integration tests, that's a very manageable number. For unit tests, it's a trifle. However for UI automation, those 372 tests were taking just over two hours to run. Two hours may not sound like a lot, but those cases only cover one of the three currencies we deal with, and only one of the many different ways our systems can be asked to calculate a price. It was already pretty clear at this point that in order for this approach to be viable, I was going to have to find a way to speed things up. Up to this point I had been using Selenium Remote Control to automate Firefox, as this was the approach I had used previously and it had worked well. Fortunately,  the guys at SeleniumHQ also maintain a tool for executing multiple Selenium RC tests in parallel: Selenium Grid. Selenium Grid uses a central 'hub' to handle allocation of Selenium tests to individual RCs. The Remote Controls simply register themselves with the hub when they start, and then wait to be assigned work. The (for me) really clever part is that, as far as the client driver library is concerned, the grid hub looks exactly the same as a vanilla remote control. To create a new browser session against Selenium RC, the following C# code suffices: new DefaultSelenium("localhost", 4444, "*firefox", "http://www.red-gate.com"); This assumes that the RC is running on the local machine, and is listening on port 4444 (the default). Assuming the hub is running on your local machine, then to create a browser session in Selenium Grid, via the hub rather than directly against the control, the code is exactly the same! Behind the scenes, the hub will take this request and hand it off to one of the registered RCs that provides the "*firefox" execution environment. It will then pass all communications back and forth between the test runner and the remote control transparently. This makes running existing RC tests on a Selenium Grid a piece of cake, as the developers intended. For a more detailed description of exactly how Selenium Grid works, see this page. Once I had a test environment capable of running multiple tests in parallel, I needed a test runner capable of doing the same. Unfortunately, this does not currently exist for xUnit (boo!). MbUnit on the other hand, has the concept of concurrent execution baked right into the framework. So after swapping out my assembly references, and fixing up the resulting mismatches in assertions, my example test now looks like this: [Test] public void Purchase1UserLicenceNoSupport() {    //Arrange    ISelenium browser = BrowserHelpers.GetBrowser();    var db = DbHelpers.GetWebsiteDBDataContext();    browser.Start();    browser.Open("http://www.red-gate.com/dynamic/shoppingCart/ProductOption.aspx?Product=ReflectorPro");                 //Act     browser = ShoppingCartHelpers.TraverseShoppingCart(browser, 1, 0, ".NET Reflector Pro");    var priceResult = PriceHelpers.GetNewPurchasePrice(db, "ReflectorPro", 1, 0, Currencies.Euros);    //Assert     Assert.AreEqual(priceResult.Price, browser.GetText("ctl00_content_InvoiceShoppingItemRepeater_ctl01_Price"));     Assert.AreEqual(priceResult.Tax, browser.GetText("ctl00_content_InvoiceShoppingItemRepeater_ctl02_Tax"));     Assert.AreEqual(priceResult.Total, browser.GetText("ctl00_content_InvoiceShoppingItemRepeater_ctl02_Total")); } This is pretty much the same as the xUnit version. The exceptions are that the attributes have changed,  the //Arrange phase now has to handle setting up the ISelenium object, as the attribute that previously did this has gone away, and the test now sets up its own database connection. Previously I was using a shared database connection, but this approach becomes more complicated when tests are being executed concurrently. To avoid complexity each test has its own connection, which it is responsible for closing. For the sake of readability, I snipped out the code that closes the browser session and the db connection at the end of the test. With all that done, there was only one more step required before the tests would execute concurrently. It is necessary to tell the test runner which tests are eligible to run in parallel, via the [Parallelizable] attribute. This can be done at the test, fixture or assembly level. Since I wanted to run all tests concurrently, I marked mine at the assembly level in the AssemblyInfo.cs using the following: [assembly: DegreeOfParallelism(3)] [assembly: Parallelizable(TestScope.All)] The second attribute marks all tests in the assembly as [Parallelizable], whilst the first tells the test runner how many concurrent threads to use when executing the tests. I set mine to three since I was using 3 RCs in separate VMs. With everything now in place, I fired up the Icarus* test runner that comes with MbUnit. Executing my 372 tests three at a time instead of one at a time reduced the running time from 2 hours 10 minutes, to 55 minutes, that's an improvement of about 58%! I'd like to have seen an improvement of 66%, but I can understand that either inefficiencies in the hub code, my test environment or the test runner code (or some combination of all three most likely) contributes to a slightly diminished improvement. That said, I'd love to hear about any experience you have in upping this efficiency. Ultimately though, it was a saving that was most definitely worth having. It makes regression testing via UI automation a far more plausible prospect. The other obvious point to make is that this approach scales far better than executing tests serially. So if ever we need to improve performance, we just register additional RC's with the hub, and up the DegreeOfParallelism. *This was just my personal preference for a GUI runner. The MbUnit/Gallio installer also provides a command line runner, a TestDriven.net runner, and a Resharper 4.5 runner. For now at least, Resharper 5 isn't supported.

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• WWDC and Tech Ed: A Tale of Two DevCons

  - by andrewbrust

  Next week marks the first full week of June.  Summer will feel in full swing and it will be a pretty big season for technology.  In seeming acknowledgement of that very fact, both Apple and Microsoft will be holding large developers conferences starting Monday.  Apple will hold its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in lovely San Francisco and Microsoft will hold its Tech Ed conference in muggy, oil-laden yet soulful New Orleans.  A brief survey of each show reveals much about the differences in each company’s offerings, strategy, and approach to customers and partners. In the interest of full disclosure, I must explain that I will be speaking at Microsoft’s Tech Ed show, and have done so, on and off, since 2003.  I have never been to an Apple conference and, as readers of this blog may know, I acquired my first ever Apple product 2 months ago when I bought an iPad on the day of that product’s launch.  I think I have keen insights into Microsoft’s conference.  My ability to comment on Apple’s event ranges somewhere between backseat driver and naive observer.  Just so you know. Although both shows cater to their respective company’s developers, there are a number of differences in the events’ purposes and content approaches.  First off, let’s consider each show as a news and PR vehicle.  WWDC will feature Steve Jobs’ keynote address and most likely will be where Apple officially reveals details of its 4th-generation iPhone. Jobs will likely also provide deep background information on the corresponding iPhone OS release.  These presumed announcements will make the show a magnet for the tech press and tech blogger elite.  Apple’s customers will be interested too, especially since the iPhone OS release will likely be made available to owners of existing iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad devices. Tech Ed, on the other hand, may not be especially newsworthy at all.  The keynote address will be given by Bob Muglia, who is President of the company’s Server and Tools Division, and he’ll likely be reviewing things more than previewing them. That’s because the company has, in the last 6-8 months, already released new versions of a majority of its products, including Windows, Office, SharePoint, SQL Server, Exchange, its Azure cloud platform, its .NET software development layer, its Silverlight Rich Internet Application (RIA) technology and its Visual Studio developer suite.  Redmond’s product pipeline has functioned more like a firehose of late, and the company has a ton of work to do to get developers up to speed on everything that’s new. I know I keep saying “developers,” but in Tech Ed’s case, that’s not really accurate.  In North America, Tech Ed caters to both developers and IT pros (i.e. technologists who work with physical IT infrastructure, as well as security and administration of the server software that runs on it).  This pairing has, since its inception, struck some as anomalous and others, including many exhibitors, as very smart. Certainly, it means Tech Ed ends up being a confab for virtually all professionals in Microsoft’s ecosystem.  And this year, Microsoft’s Business Intelligence (BI) conference will be co-located with Tech Ed, further enhancing that fusion effect. Clearly then, Microsoft’s show will focus on education, as its name assures us.  Apple’s will serve as both a press event and an opportunity to get its own App Store developer channel synced up with its newest technology advances.  For example, we already know that iPhone OS 4.0 will provide for a limited multitasking capability; that will only work well if people know how to code to it in a capable way.  Apple also told us its iAd advertising platform will be part of the new OS, and Steve Jobs insists that’s to provide a revenue opportunity for developers.  This too, then, needs to be explicated and soaked up buy the faithful. A look at each show’s breakout session lineup provides some interesting takeaways.  WWDC will have very few Mac-specific sessions on offer, and virtually no sessions that at are IT- or “Enterprise-“ related.  It’s all about the phone, music players and tablets.  However, WWDC will have plenty of low-level, hardcore tech coverage of such things as Advanced Memory Analysis and Creating Secure Applications, as well as lots of rich media-related content like Core Animation and Game Design and Development.  Beyond Apple’s proprietary platform, WWDC will also feature an array of sessions on HTML 5 and other Web standards.  In all, WWDC offers over 100 technical sessions and hands-on labs. What about Tech Ed’s editorial content?  Like the target audience, it really runs the gamut.  The show has 21 tracks (versus WWDC’s 5) and more than 745 “learning opportunities” which include breakout sessions, demo stations, hands-on labs and BIrds of a Feather discussion sessions.  Topics range from Architecture talks like Patterns of Parallel Programming to cloud computing talks like Building High Capacity Compute Applications with Windows Azure to IT-focused topics like Virtualization of Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Farm Architecture.  I also count 19 sessions on Windows Phone 7.  Unfortunately, with regard to Web standards and HTML 5, only a few sessions are offered, all of them specific to Internet Explorer. All-in-all, Apple’s show looks more exciting and “sexier” than Tech Ed. Microsoft’s show seems a lot more enterprise-focused than WWDC. This is, of course, well in sync with each company’s approach and products.  Microsoft’s content is much wider ranging and bests WWDC in sheer volume of sessions and labs.  I suppose some might argue that less is more; others that Apple’s consumer-focused offerings simply don’t provide for the same depth of coverage to a business audience.  Microsoft has a serious focus on the cloud and  a paucity of coverage on client-side Web standards; Apple has virtually no cloud offering at all.  Again, this reflects each tech titan’s go-to-market strategy. My own take is that employees of each company should attend the other’s event.  The amount of mutual exclusivity in content may make sense in terms of corporate philosophy, but the reality is that each company could stand to diversify into the other’s territory, at least somewhat. My own talk at Tech Ed will focus on competitive analysis around Microsoft’s BI products.  Apple does not today figure into that analysis. Maybe one day it will.

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• So, how is the Oracle HCM Cloud User Experience? In a word, smokin’!

  - by Edith Mireles-Oracle

  By Misha Vaughan, Oracle Applications User Experience Oracle unveiled its game-changing cloud user experience strategy at Oracle OpenWorld 2013 (remember that?) with a new simplified user interface (UI) paradigm.  The Oracle HCM cloud user experience is about light-weight interaction, tailored to the task you are trying to accomplish, on the device you are comfortable working with. A key theme for the Oracle user experience is being able to move from smartphone to tablet to desktop, with all of your data in the cloud. The Oracle HCM Cloud user experience provides designs for better productivity, no matter when and how your employees need to work. Release 8  Oracle recently demonstrated how fast it is moving development forward for our cloud applications, with the availability of release 8.  In release 8, users will see expanded simplicity in the HCM cloud user experience, such as filling out a time card and succession planning. Oracle has also expanded its mobile capabilities with task flows for payslips, managing absences, and advanced analytics. In addition, users will see expanded extensibility with the new structures editor for simplified pages, and the with the user interface text editor, which allows you to update language throughout the UI from one place. If you don’t like calling people who work for you “employees,” you can use this tool to create a term that is suited to your business.  Take a look yourself at what’s available now. What are people saying?Debra Lilley (@debralilley), an Oracle ACE Director who has a long history with Oracle Applications, recently gave her perspective on release 8: “Having had the privilege of seeing a preview of release 8, I am again impressed with the enhancements around simplified UI. Even more so, at a user group event in London this week, an existing Cloud HCM customer speaking publically about his implementation said he was very excited about release 8 as the absence functionality was so superior and simple to use.”  In an interview with Lilley for a blog post by Dennis Howlett  (@dahowlett), we probably couldn’t have asked for a more even-handed look at the Oracle Applications Cloud and the impact of user experience. Take the time to watch all three videos and get the full picture.  In closing, Howlett’s said: “There is always the caveat that getting from the past to Fusion [from the editor: Fusion is now called the Oracle Applications Cloud] is not quite as simple as may be painted, but the outcomes are much better than anticipated in large measure because the user experience is so much better than what went before.” Herman Slange, Technical Manager with Oracle Applications partner Profource, agrees with that comment. “We use on-premise Financials & HCM for internal use. Having a simple user interface that works on a desktop as well as a tablet for (very) non-technical users is a big relief. Coming from E-Business Suite, there is less training (none) required to access HCM content.  From a technical point of view, having the abilities to tailor the simplified UI very easy makes it very efficient for us to adjust to specific customer needs.  When we have a conversation about simplified UI, we just hand over a tablet and ask the customer to just use it. No training and no explanation required.” Finally, in a story by Computer Weekly  about Oracle customer BG Group, a natural gas exploration and production company based in the UK and with a presence in 20 countries, the author states: “The new HR platform has proved to be easier and more intuitive for HR staff to use than the previous SAP-based technology.” What’s Next for Oracle’s Applications Cloud User Experiences? This is the question that Steve Miranda, Oracle Executive Vice President, Applications Development, asks the Applications User Experience team, and we’ve been hard at work for some time now on “what’s next.”  I can’t say too much about it, but I can tell you that we’ve started talking to customers and partners, under non-disclosure agreements, about user experience concepts that we are working on in order to get their feedback. We recently had a chance to talk about possibilities for the Oracle HCM Cloud user experience at an Oracle HCM Southern California Customer Success Summit. This was a fantastic event, hosted by Shane Bliss and Vance Morossi of the Oracle Client Success Team. We got to use the uber-slick facilities of Allergan, our hosts (of Botox fame), headquartered in Irvine, Calif., with a presence in more than 100 countries. Photo by Misha Vaughan, Oracle Applications User Experience Vance Morossi, left, and Shane Bliss, of the Oracle Client Success Team, at an Oracle HCM Southern California Customer Success Summit.  We were treated to a few really excellent talks around human resources (HR). Alice White, VP Human Resources, discussed Allergan's process for global talent acquisition -- how Allergan has designed and deployed a global process, and global tools, along with Oracle and Cognizant, and are now at the end of a global implementation. She shared a couple of insights about the journey for Allergan: “One of the major areas for improvement was on role clarification within the company.” She said the company is “empowering managers and deputizing them as recruiters. Now it is a global process that is nimble and efficient."  Deepak Rammohan, VP Product Management, HCM Cloud, Oracle, also took the stage to talk about pioneering modern HR. He reflected modern HR problems of getting the right data about the workforce, the importance of getting the right talent as a key strategic initiative, and other workforce insights. "How do we design systems to deal with all of this?” he asked. “Make sure the systems are talent-centric. The next piece is collaborative, engaging, and mobile. A lot of this is influenced by what users see today. The last thing is around insight; insight at the point of decision-making." Rammohan showed off some killer HCM Cloud talent demos focused on simplicity and mobility that his team has been cooking up, and closed with a great line about the nature of modern recruiting: "Recruiting is a team sport." Deepak Rammohan, left, and Jake Kuramoto, both of Oracle, debate the merits of a Google Glass concept demo for recruiters on-the-go. Later, in an expo-style format, the Apps UX team showed several concepts for next-generation HCM Cloud user experiences, including demos shown by Jake Kuramoto (@jkuramoto) of The AppsLab, and Aylin Uysal (@aylinuysal), Director, HCM Cloud user experience. We even hauled out our eye-tracker, a research tool used to show where the eye is looking at a particular screen, thanks to teammate Michael LaDuke. Dionne Healy, HCM Client Executive, and Aylin Uysal, Director, HCM Cloud user experiences, Oracle, take a look at new HCM Cloud UX concepts. We closed the day with Jeremy Ashley (@jrwashley), VP, Applications User Experience, who brought it all back together by talking about the big picture for applications cloud user experiences. He covered the trends we are paying attention to now, what users will be expecting of their modern enterprise apps, and what Oracle’s design strategy is around these ideas.   We closed with an excellent reception hosted by ADP Payroll services at Bistango. Want to read more?Want to see where our cloud user experience is going next? Read more on the UsableApps web site about our latest design initiative: “Glance, Scan, Commit.” Or catch up on the back story by looking over our Applications Cloud user experience content on the UsableApps web site.  You can also find out where we’ll be next at the Events page on UsableApps.

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• Use Those Extra Mouse Buttons to Increase Efficiency

  - by Mark Virtue

  Did you know that the most commonly used mouse actions are clicking a window’s “Close” button (the X in the top-right corner), and clicking the “Back” button (in a browser and various other programs)?  How much time do you spend every day locating the Close button or the Back button with your mouse so that you can click on them?  And what about that mouse you’re using – how many buttons does it have, besides the two main ones?  Most mouses these days have at least four (including the scroll-wheel, which a lot of people don’t realize is also a button as well).  Why not assign those extra buttons to your most common mouse actions, and save yourself a bundle of mousing-around time every day? If your mouse was manufactured by one of the “premium” mouse manufacturers (Microsoft, Logitech, etc), it almost certain came with driver software to allow you to customize your mouse’s controls and take advantage of your mouse’s special features.  Microsoft, for example, provides driver software called IntelliPoint (link below), while Logitech provides SetPoint.  It’s possible that your mouse has some extra buttons but doesn’t come with its own driver software (the author is using a Microsoft Bluetooth Notebook Mouse 5000, which amazingly is not supported by the Microsoft IntelliPoint software!).  If your mouse falls into this category, you can use a marvelous free product called X-Mouse Button Control, from Highresolution Enterprises (link below).  It provides a truly amazing array of mouse configuration options, including assigning actions to buttons on a per-application basis. Once X-Mouse Button Control is downloaded, its setup process is quite straightforward. Once downloaded, you can start the program via Start / Highresolution Enterprises / X-Mouse Button Control.  You will find the program’s icon in the system tray: Right-click on the icon and select Setup from the pop-up menu.  The program’s configuration window appears: It’s extremely unlikely that we will want to change the functionality of our mouse’s two main buttons (left and right), so instead we’ll look at the rest of the options on the right side of the window.  The Middle Button refers to either the third, middle button (found on some old mouses), or the pressing of the wheel itself, as a button (if you didn’t know you could press your wheel like a button, try it out now).  Mouse Button 4 and Mouse Button 5 usually refer to the extra buttons found on the side of the mouse, often near your thumb. So what can we use these extra mouse buttons for?  Well, clearly Close and Back are two obvious candidates.  Each of these can be found by selecting them from the drop-down menu next to each button field: Once the two options are chosen, the window will look something like this: If you’re not interested in choosing Back or Close, you may like to try some of the other options in the list, including: Cut, Copy and Paste Undo Show the Desktop Next/Previous track (for media playback) Open any program Simulate any keystroke or combination of keystrokes ….and many other options.  Explore the drop-down list to see them all. You may decide, for example, that closing the current document (as opposed to the current program) would be a good use for Mouse Button 5.  In other words, we need to simulate the keypress of Ctrl-F4.  Let’s see how we achieve this. First we select Simulated Keystrokes from the drop-down list: The Simulated Keystrokes window opens: The instructions on the page are pretty comprehensive.  If you want to simulate the Ctrl-F4 keystroke, you need to type {CTRL}{F4} into the box: …and then click OK. Assigning Actions to Buttons on a Per-Application Basis One of the most powerful features of X-Mouse Button Control is the ability to assign actions to buttons on a per-application basis.  This means that if we have a particular program open, then our mouse will behave differently – our buttons will do different things. For example, when we have Windows Media Player open, for example, we may wish to have buttons assigned to Play/Pause, Next track and Previous track, as well as changing the volume with the mouse!  This is easy with X-Mouse Button Control.  We start by opening Windows Media Player.  This makes the next step easier.  Then we return to X-Mouse Button Control and add a new “configuration”.  This is done by clicking the Add button: A window opens containing a list of all running programs, including our recently opened Windows Media Player: We select Windows Media Player and click OK.  A new, blank “configuration” is created: We repeat the earlier steps to assign buttons to Play/Pause, Next track and Previous track, and assign scrolling the wheel to alter the volume:   To save all our changes and close the window, we click Apply. Now spend a few minutes thinking of all the applications you use the most, and what are the most common simple tasks you perform in each of those applications.  Those tasks are then perfect candidates for per-application button assignments. There are many more configuration options and capabilities of X-Mouse Button Control – too many to list here.  We encourage you to spend a bit of time exploring the Setup window.  Then, most important of all, don’t forget to use your new mouse buttons!  Get into the habit of using them, and then after a while you’ll start to wonder how you ever tolerated the laborious, tedious, time-consuming process of actually locating each window’s Close button… Download X-Mouse Button Control Highresolution Enterprise Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Add Specialized Toolbar Buttons to Firefox the Easy WayBoost Your Mouse Pointing Accuracy in WindowsMake Mouse Navigation Faster in WindowsVista Style Popup Previews for Firefox TabsStupid Geek Tricks: Using the Quick Zoom Feature in Outlook TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Download Videos from Hulu Pixels invade Manhattan Convert PDF files to ePub to read on your iPad Hide Your Confidential Files Inside Images Get Wildlife Photography Tips at BBC’s PhotoMasterClasses Mashpedia is a Real-time Encyclopedia

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• Windows Azure Evolution &ndash; Caching (Preview)

  - by Shaun

  Caching is a popular topic when we are building a high performance and high scalable system not only on top of the cloud platform but the on-premise environment as well. On March 2011 the Windows Azure AppFabric Caching had been production launched. It provides an in-memory, distributed caching service over the cloud. And now, in this June 2012 update, the cache team announce a grand new caching solution on Windows Azure, which is called Windows Azure Caching (Preview). And the original Windows Azure AppFabric Caching was renamed to Windows Azure Shared Caching.   What’s Caching (Preview) If you had been using the Shared Caching you should know that it is constructed by a bunch of cache servers. And when you want to use you should firstly create a cache account from the developer portal and specify the size you want to use, which means how much memory you can use to store your data that wanted to be cached. Then you can add, get and remove them through your code through the cache URL. The Shared Caching is a multi-tenancy system which host all cached items across all users. So you don’t know which server your data was located. This caching mode works well and can take most of the cases. But it has some problems. The first one is the performance. Since the Shared Caching is a multi-tenancy system, which means all cache operations should go through the Shared Caching gateway and then routed to the server which have the data your are looking for. Even though there are some caches in the Shared Caching system it also takes time from your cloud services to the cache service. Secondary, the Shared Caching service works as a block box to the developer. The only thing we know is my cache endpoint, and that’s all. Someone may satisfied since they don’t want to care about anything underlying. But if you need to know more and want more control that’s impossible in the Shared Caching. The last problem would be the price and cost-efficiency. You pay the bill based on how much cache you requested per month. But when we host a web role or worker role, it seldom consumes all of the memory and CPU in the virtual machine (service instance). If using Shared Caching we have to pay for the cache service while waste of some of our memory and CPU locally. Since the issues above Microsoft offered a new caching mode over to us, which is the Caching (Preview). Instead of having a separated cache service, the Caching (Preview) leverage the memory and CPU in our cloud services (web role and worker role) as the cache clusters. Hence the Caching (Preview) runs on the virtual machines which hosted or near our cloud applications. Without any gateway and routing, since it located in the same data center and same racks, it provides really high performance than the Shared Caching. The Caching (Preview) works side-by-side to our application, initialized and worked as a Windows Service running in the virtual machines invoked by the startup tasks from our roles, we could get more information and control to them. And since the Caching (Preview) utilizes the memory and CPU from our existing cloud services, so it’s free. What we need to pay is the original computing price. And the resource on each machines could be used more efficiently.   Enable Caching (Preview) It’s very simple to enable the Caching (Preview) in a cloud service. Let’s create a new windows azure cloud project from Visual Studio and added an ASP.NET Web Role. Then open the role setting and select the Caching page. This is where we enable and configure the Caching (Preview) on a role. To enable the Caching (Preview) just open the “Enable Caching (Preview Release)” check box. And then we need to specify which mode of the caching clusters we want to use. There are two kinds of caching mode, co-located and dedicate. The co-located mode means we use the memory in the instances we run our cloud services (web role or worker role). By using this mode we must specify how many percentage of the memory will be used as the cache. The default value is 30%. So make sure it will not affect the role business execution. The dedicate mode will use all memory in the virtual machine as the cache. In fact it will reserve some for operation system, azure hosting etc.. But it will try to use as much as the available memory to be the cache. As you can see, the Caching (Preview) was defined based on roles, which means all instances of this role will apply the same setting and play as a whole cache pool, and you can consume it by specifying the name of the role, which I will demonstrate later. And in a windows azure project we can have more than one role have the Caching (Preview) enabled. Then we will have more caches. For example, let’s say I have a web role and worker role. The web role I specified 30% co-located caching and the worker role I specified dedicated caching. If I have 3 instances of my web role and 2 instances of my worker role, then I will have two caches. As the figure above, cache 1 was contributed by three web role instances while cache 2 was contributed by 2 worker role instances. Then we can add items into cache 1 and retrieve it from web role code and worker role code. But the items stored in cache 1 cannot be retrieved from cache 2 since they are isolated. Back to our Visual Studio we specify 30% of co-located cache and use the local storage emulator to store the cache cluster runtime status. Then at the bottom we can specify the named caches. Now we just use the default one. Now we had enabled the Caching (Preview) in our web role settings. Next, let’s have a look on how to consume our cache.   Consume Caching (Preview) The Caching (Preview) can only be consumed by the roles in the same cloud services. As I mentioned earlier, a cache contributed by web role can be connected from a worker role if they are in the same cloud service. But you cannot consume a Caching (Preview) from other cloud services. This is different from the Shared Caching. The Shared Caching is opened to all services if it has the connection URL and authentication token. To consume the Caching (Preview) we need to add some references into our project as well as some configuration in the Web.config. NuGet makes our life easy. Right click on our web role project and select “Manage NuGet packages”, and then search the package named “WindowsAzure.Caching”. In the package list install the “Windows Azure Caching Preview”. It will download all necessary references from the NuGet repository and update our Web.config as well. Open the Web.config of our web role and find the “dataCacheClients” node. Under this node we can specify the cache clients we are going to use. For each cache client it will use the role name to identity and find the cache. Since we only have this web role with the Caching (Preview) enabled so I pasted the current role name in the configuration. Then, in the default page I will add some code to show how to use the cache. I will have a textbox on the page where user can input his or her name, then press a button to generate the email address for him/her. And in backend code I will check if this name had been added in cache. If yes I will return the email back immediately. Otherwise, I will sleep the tread for 2 seconds to simulate the latency, then add it into cache and return back to the page. 1: protected void btnGenerate_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) 2: { 3: // check if name is specified 4: var name = txtName.Text; 5: if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(name)) 6: { 7: lblResult.Text = "Error. Please specify name."; 8: return; 9: } 10:  11: bool cached; 12: var sw = new Stopwatch(); 13: sw.Start(); 14:  15: // create the cache factory and cache 16: var factory = new DataCacheFactory(); 17: var cache = factory.GetDefaultCache(); 18:  19: // check if the name specified is in cache 20: var email = cache.Get(name) as string; 21: if (email != null) 22: { 23: cached = true; 24: sw.Stop(); 25: } 26: else 27: { 28: cached = false; 29: // simulate the letancy 30: Thread.Sleep(2000); 31: email = string.Format("{0}@igt.com", name); 32: // add to cache 33: cache.Add(name, email); 34: } 35:  36: sw.Stop(); 37: lblResult.Text = string.Format( 38: "Cached = {0}. Duration: {1}s. {2} => {3}", 39: cached, sw.Elapsed.TotalSeconds.ToString("0.00"), name, email); 40: } The Caching (Preview) can be used on the local emulator so we just F5. The first time I entered my name it will take about 2 seconds to get the email back to me since it was not in the cache. But if we re-enter my name it will be back at once from the cache. Since the Caching (Preview) is distributed across all instances of the role, so we can scaling-out it by scaling-out our web role. Just use 2 instances and tweak some code to show the current instance ID in the page, and have another try. Then we can see the cache can be retrieved even though it was added by another instance.   Consume Caching (Preview) Across Roles As I mentioned, the Caching (Preview) can be consumed by all other roles within the same cloud service. For example, let’s add another web role in our cloud solution and add the same code in its default page. In the Web.config we add the cache client to one enabled in the last role, by specifying its role name here. Then we start the solution locally and go to web role 1, specify the name and let it generate the email to us. Since there’s no cache for this name so it will take about 2 seconds but will save the email into cache. And then we go to web role 2 and specify the same name. Then you can see it retrieve the email saved by the web role 1 and returned back very quickly. Finally then we can upload our application to Windows Azure and test again. Make sure you had changed the cache cluster status storage account to the real azure account.   More Awesome Features As a in-memory distributed caching solution, the Caching (Preview) has some fancy features I would like to highlight here. The first one is the high availability support. This is the first time I have heard that a distributed cache support high availability. In the distributed cache world if a cache cluster was failed, the data it stored will be lost. This behavior was introduced by Memcached and is followed by almost all distributed cache productions. But Caching (Preview) provides high availability, which means you can specify if the named cache will be backup automatically. If yes then the data belongs to this named cache will be replicated on another role instance of this role. Then if one of the instance was failed the data can be retrieved from its backup instance. To enable the backup just open the Caching page in Visual Studio. In the named cache you want to enable backup, change the Backup Copies value from 0 to 1. The value of Backup Copies only for 0 and 1. “0” means no backup and no high availability while “1” means enabled high availability with backup the data into another instance. But by using the high availability feature there are something we need to make sure. Firstly the high availability does NOT means the data in cache will never be lost for any kind of failure. For example, if we have a role with cache enabled that has 10 instances, and 9 of them was failed, then most of the cached data will be lost since the primary and backup instance may failed together. But normally is will not be happened since MS guarantees that it will use the instance in the different fault domain for backup cache. Another one is that, enabling the backup means you store two copies of your data. For example if you think 100MB memory is OK for cache, but you need at least 200MB if you enabled backup. Besides the high availability, the Caching (Preview) support more features introduced in Windows Server AppFabric Caching than the Windows Azure Shared Caching. It supports local cache with notification. It also support absolute and slide window expiration types as well. And the Caching (Preview) also support the Memcached protocol as well. This means if you have an application based on Memcached, you can use Caching (Preview) without any code changes. What you need to do is to change the configuration of how you connect to the cache. Similar as the Windows Azure Shared Caching, MS also offers the out-of-box ASP.NET session provider and output cache provide on top of the Caching (Preview).   Summary Caching is very important component when we building a cloud-based application. In the June 2012 update MS provides a new cache solution named Caching (Preview). Different from the existing Windows Azure Shared Caching, Caching (Preview) runs the cache cluster within the role instances we have deployed to the cloud. It gives more control, more performance and more cost-effect. So now we have two caching solutions in Windows Azure, the Shared Caching and Caching (Preview). If you need a central cache service which can be used by many cloud services and web sites, then you have to use the Shared Caching. But if you only need a fast, near distributed cache, then you’d better use Caching (Preview).   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, September 07, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, September 07, 2012Popular ReleasesUmbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.9.0: Whats newThe media section has been overhauled to support HTML5 uploads, just drag and drop files in, even multiple files are supported on any HTML5 capable browser. The folder content overview is also much improved allowing you to filter it and perform common actions on your media items. The Rich Text Editor’s “Media” button now uses an embedder based on the open oEmbed standard (if you’re upgrading, enable the media button in the Rich Text Editor datatype settings and set TidyEditorConten...menu4web: menu4web 0.4.1 - javascript menu for web sites: This release is for those who believe that global variables are evil. menu4web has been wrapped into m4w singleton object. Added "Vertical Tabs" example which illustrates object notation.WinRT XAML Toolkit: WinRT XAML Toolkit - 1.2.1: WinRT XAML Toolkit based on the Windows 8 RTM SDK. Download the latest source from the SOURCE CODE page. For compiled version use NuGet. You can add it to your project in Visual Studio by going to View/Other Windows/Package Manager Console and entering: PM> Install-Package winrtxamltoolkit Features AsyncUI extensions Controls and control extensions Converters Debugging helpers Imaging IO helpers VisualTree helpers Samples Recent changes NOTE: Namespace changes DebugConsol...iPDC - Free Phasor Data Concentrator: iPDC-v1.3.1: iPDC suite version-1.3.1, Modifications and Bug Fixed (from v 1.3.0) New User Manual for iPDC-v1.3.1 available on websites. Bug resolved : PMU Simulator TCP connection error and hang connection for client (PDC). Now PMU Simulator (server) can communicate more than one PDCs (clients) over TCP and UDP parallely. PMU Simulator is now sending the exact data frames as mentioned in data rate by user. PMU Simulator data rate has been verified by iPDC database entries and PMU Connection Tes...Microsoft SQL Server Product Samples: Database: AdventureWorks OData Feed: The AdventureWorks OData service exposes resources based on specific SQL views. The SQL views are a limited subset of the AdventureWorks database that results in several consuming scenarios: CompanySales Documents ManufacturingInstructions ProductCatalog TerritorySalesDrilldown WorkOrderRouting How to install the sample You can consume the AdventureWorks OData feed from http://services.odata.org/AdventureWorksV3/AdventureWorks.svc. You can also consume the AdventureWorks OData fe...Desktop Google Reader: 1.4.6: Sorting feeds alphabetical is now optional (see preferences window)DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 06.02.03: Major Highlights Fixed issue where mailto: links were not working when sending bulk email Fixed issue where uses did not see friendship relationships Problem is in 6.2, which does not show in the Versions Affected list above. Fixed the issue with cascade deletes in comments in CoreMessaging_Notification Fixed UI issue when using a date fields as a required profile property during user registration Fixed error when running the product in debug mode Fixed visibility issue when...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.65: Fixed null-reference error in the build task constructor.B INI Sharp Library: B INI Sharp Library v1.0.0.0 Final Realsed: The frist realsedActive Social Migrator: ActiveSocialMigrator 1.0.0 Beta: Beta release for the Active Social Migration tool.EntLib.com????????: ??????demo??-For SQL 2005-2008: EntLibShopping ???v3.0 - ??????demo??，?????SQL SERVER 2005/2008/2008 R2/2012 ??????。 ??（??）??????。 THANKS.Sistem LPK Pemkot Semarang: Panduan Penggunaan Sistem LPK: Panduan cara menggunakan Aplikasi Sistem LPK Bagian Pembangunan Kota SemarangActive Forums for DotNetNuke CMS: Active Forums 5.0.0 RC: RC release of Active Forums 5.0.Droid Explorer: Droid Explorer 0.8.8.7 Beta: Bug in the display icon for apk's, will fix with next release Added fallback icon if unable to get the image/icon from the Cloud Service Removed some stale plugins that were either out dated or incomplete. Added handler for *.ab files for restoring backups Added plugin to create device backups Backups stored in %USERPROFILE%\Android Backups\%DEVICE_ID%\ Added custom folder icon for the android backups directory better error handling for installing an apk bug fixes for the Runn...The Visual Guide for Building Team Foundation Server 2012 Environments: Version 1: --Nearforums - ASP.NET MVC forum engine: Nearforums v8.5: Version 8.5 of Nearforums, the ASP.NET MVC Forum Engine. New features include: Built-in search engine using Lucene.NET Flood control improvements Notifications improvements: sync option and mail body View Roadmap for more details webdeploy package sha1 checksum: 961aff884a9187b6e8a86d68913cdd31f8deaf83WiX Toolset: WiX Toolset v3.6: WiX Toolset v3.6 introduces the Burn bootstrapper/chaining engine and support for Visual Studio 2012 and .NET Framework 4.5. Other minor functionality includes: WixDependencyExtension supports dependency checking among MSI packages. WixFirewallExtension supports more features of Windows Firewall. WixTagExtension supports Software Id Tagging. WixUtilExtension now supports recursive directory deletion. Melt simplifies pure-WiX patching by extracting .msi package content and updating .w...Iveely Search Engine: Iveely Search Engine （0.2.0）: ????ISE?0.1.0??，?????，ISE?0.2.0?????????，???????，????????20???follow?ISE，????，??ISE??????????，??????????，?????????，?????????0.2.0??????，??????????。 Iveely Search Engine ?0.2.0?????????“??????????”，??????，?????????，???????，???????????????????，????、????????????。???0.1.0????????????： 1. ??“????” ??。??????????，?????????，???????????????????。??：????????，????????????，??????????????????。??????。 2. ??“????”??。?0.1.0??????，???????，???????????????，?????????????，????????，?0.2.0?，???????...GmailDefaultMaker: GmailDefaultMaker 3.0.0.2: Add QQ Mail BugfixSmart Data Access layer: Smart Data access Layer Ver 3: In this version support executing inline query is added. Check Documentation section for detail.New ProjectsAdding 2013 Jewish Holidays for Outlook2003: Instruction: Copy the outlook.hol file to your compuer where Outlook2003 is installed. Double click the file, choose "Israel" and continue. That's it Agilcont System: Sistema de contabilidad para empresas privadas de preferencia para cajas que trabajan con efectivo en soles, dolares y con el material oroARB (A Request Broker): The idea is something like a Request Broker, but with some additional functionality.BATTLE.NET - SDK: This SDK provides the ability to use the Battle.net (Blizzard) Services for all supported Games such Diablo 3, World of Warcraft. Container Terminal System: SummaryDeclarative UX Streaming Data Language for the Cloud: Bringing a better communication paradigm for media and data..Get User Profile Information from SharePoint UserProfile Service: Used SharePoint object model to get the user profile information from the User Profile Service.Guess The City & State Windows 8 Source Code: Source code for Guess The City & State in Malaysia Windows 8 AppJquery Tree: This project is to demonstrate tree basic functionality.MCEBuddy 2.x: Convert and Remove Commercials for your Windows Media CenterMvcDesign: MvcDesign engine implementation projectMy Task Manager: This is a task manager module for DotNetNuke. I am using it to get started developing modules.MyAppwithbranches: MyAppwithbranchesProjecte prova: rpyGEO: pyGEO is a python package capable of parsing microarray data files. It also has a primitive plotting function.Scarlet Road: Scarlet Road is a top-down shooter. It's you against an unending horde of monsters.simplecounter: A simple counter, cick and counter.SiteEmpires: ????????Soundcloud Loader: Simple Tool for downloading Tracks from Soundcloud.Windows Phone Samples: Windows Phone code samples.

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• Customize the Default Screensavers in Windows 7 and Vista

  - by Matthew Guay

  Windows 7 and Vista include a nice set of backgrounds, but unfortunately most of them aren’t configurable by default.  Thanks to a free app and some registry changes, however, you can make the default screensavers uniquely yours! Customize the default screensavers If you’ve ever pressed the Customize button on most of the default screensavers in Windows 7 and Vista, you were probably greeted with this message: A little digging in the registry shows that this isn’t fully correct.  The default screensavers in Vista and 7 do have options you can set, but they’re not obvious.  With the help of an app or some registry tips, you can easily customize the screensavers to be uniquely yours.  Here’s how you can do it with an app or in the registry. Customize Windows Screensavers with System Screensavers Tweaker Download the System Screensavers Tweaker (link below), and unzip the folder.  Run nt6srccfg.exe in the folder to tweak your screensavers.  This application lets you tweak the screensavers’ registry settings graphically, and it works great in all editions of Windows Vista and 7, including x64 versions. Change any of the settings you want in the screensaver tweaker, and click Apply. To preview the changes to your screensaver, open the Screen Saver settings window as normal by right-clicking on the desktop, and selecting Personalize. Click on the Screensaver button on the bottom right. Now, select your modified screensaver, and click Preview to see your changes. You can change a wide variety of settings for the Bubbles, Ribbons, and Mystify screensavers in Windows 7 and Vista, as well as the Aurora screensaver in Windows Vista.  The tweaks to the Bubbles screensaver are especially nice.  Here’s how the Bubbles look without transparency. And, by tweaking a little more, you get a screensaver that looks more like a screen full of marbles. Ribbons and Mystify each have less settings, but still can produce some unique effects.   How’s that for a brilliant screensaver? And, if you want to return your screensavers to their default settings, simply run the System Screensavers Tweaker and select Reset to defaults on any screensaver you wish to reset. Customize Windows Screensavers in the Registry If you prefer to roll up your sleeves and tweak Windows under-the-hood, then here’s how you can customize the screensavers yourself in the Registry.  Type regedit into the search box in the Start menu, browse to the key for each screensaver, and add or modify the DWORD values listed for that screensaver using the Decimal base. Please Note: Tweaking the Registry can be difficult, so if you’re unsure, just use the tweaking application above. Also, you’ll probably want to create a System Restore Point.   Bubbles To edit the Bubbles screensaver, browse to the following in regedit: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Screensavers\Bubbles Now, add or modify the following DWORD values to tweak the screensaver: MaterialGlass – enter 0 for solid or 1 for transparent bubbles Radius – enter a number between 1090000000 and 1130000000; the larger the number, the larger the bubbles’ radius ShowBubbles – enter 0 to show a black background or 1 to show the current desktop behind the bubbles ShowShadows – enter 0 for no shadow or 1 for shadows behind the bubbles SphereDensity – enter a number from 1000000000 to 2100000000; the higher the number, the more bubbles on the screen. TurbulenceNumOctaves – enter a number from 1 to 255; the higher the number, the faster the bubble colors will change. Ribbons To edit the Ribbons screensaver, browse to the following in regedit: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Screensavers\Ribbons Now, add or modify the following DWORD values to tweak the screensaver: Blur – enter 0 to prevent ribbons from fading, or 1 to have them fade away after a few moments. Numribbons – enter a number from 1 to 100; the higher the number, the more ribbons on the screen. RibbonWidth – enter a number from 1000000000 to 1080000000; the higher the number, the thicker the ribbons. Mystify To edit the Mystify screensaver, browse to the following in regedit: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Screensavers\Mystify Now, add or modify the following DWORD values to tweak the screensaver: Blur – enter 0 to prevent lines from fading, or 1 to have them fade away after a few moments. LineWidth – enter a number from 1000000000 to 1080000000; the higher the number, the wider the lines. NumLines – enter a number from 1 to 100; the higher the value, the more lines on the screen. Aurora – Windows Vista only To edit the Aurora screensaver in Windows Vista, browse to the following in regedit: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Screensavers\Aurora Now, add or modify the following DWORD values to tweak the screensaver: Amplitude – enter a value from 500000000 to 2000000000; the higher the value, the slower the motion. Brightness – enter a value from 1000000000 to 1050000000; the higher the value, the brighter the affect. NumLayers – enter a value from 1 to 15; the higher the value, the more aurora layers displayed. Speed – enter a value from 1000000000 to 2100000000; the higher the value, the faster the cycling. Conclusion Although the default screensavers are nice, they can be boring after awhile with their default settings.  But with these tweaks, you can create a variety of vibrant screensavers that should keep your desktop fresh and interesting. Link Download the System Screensavers Tweaker Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Create Icons to Start the Screensaver on Windows 7 or VistaMake Your Windows XP Logon Screen Look Like Windows VistaSpeed up Windows Vista Start Menu Search By Limiting ResultsRoundup: 16 Tweaks to Windows Vista Look & FeelSet XP as the Default OS in a Windows Vista Dual-Boot Setup TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 NachoFoto Searches Images in Real-time Office 2010 Product Guides Google Maps Place marks – Pizza, Guns or Strip Clubs Monitor Applications With Kiwi LocPDF is a Visual PDF Search Tool Download Free iPad Wallpapers at iPad Decor

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• Customize the Five Windows Folder Templates

  - by Mark Virtue

  Are you’re particular about the way Windows Explorer presents each folder’s contents? Here we show you how to take advantage of Explorer’s built-in templates, which cuts down the time it takes to do customizations. Note: The techniques in this article apply to Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7. When opening a folder for the first time in Windows Explorer, we are presented with a standard default view of the files and folders in that folder. It may be that the items are presented are perfectly fine, but on the other hand, we may want to customize the view.  The aspects of it that we can customize are the following: The display type (list view, details, tiles, thumbnails, etc) Which columns are displayed, and in which order The widths of the visible columns The order in which the files and folders are sorted Any file groupings Thankfully, Windows offers us a shortcut.  A particular folder’s settings can be used as a “template” for other, similar folders.  In fact, we can store up to five separate sets of folder presentation configurations.  Once we save the settings for a particular template, that template can then be applied to other folders. Customize Your First Folder We’ll start by setting up the first of our templates – the default one.  Once we create this template and apply it, the vast majority of the folders in our file system will change to match it, so it’s important that we set it up very carefully.  The first step in creating and applying the template is to customize one folder with the settings that all the rest will have. Choose a folder that is typical of the folders that you wish to have this default template.  Select it in Windows Explorer.  To ensure that it is a suitable candidate, right-click the folder name and select Properties, then go to the Customize tab.  Ensure that this folder is marked as General Items.  If it is not, either choose a different folder or select General Items from the list. Click OK.  Now we’re ready to customize our first folder. Changing the way one single folder is presented is straightforward.  We start with the folder’s display type.  Click the Change your view button in the top-right corner of every Explorer window. Each time you click the button, the folder’s view cycles to the next view type.  Alternatively you can click the little down-arrow next to the button to see all the display types at once, and select the one you want. Click the view you want, or drag the slider next to the one you want. If you have chosen Details, then the next thing you may wish to change is which columns are displayed, and the order of these.  To choose which columns are displayed, simply right-click on any column heading.  A list of the columns currently being display appears. Simply uncheck a column if you don’t want it displayed, and check the columns that you want displayed.  If you want some information displayed about your files that is not listed here, then click the More… button for a full list of file attributes. There’s a lot of them! To change the order of the columns that are currently being displayed, simply click on a column heading and drag it to where you think it should be.  To change the width of a column, click the line that represents the right-hand edge of the column and drag it left or right. To sort by a column, click once on that column.  To reverse the sort-order, click that same column again. To change the groupings of the files in the folder, right-click in a blank area of the folder, select Group by, and select the appropriate column. Apply This Default Template to All Similar Folders Once you have the folder exactly the way you want it, we now use this folder as our default template for most of the folders in our file system.  To do this, ensure that you are still in the folder you just customized, and then, from the Organize menu in Explorer, click on Folder and search options. Then select the View tab and click the Apply to Folders button. After you’ve clicked OK, visit some of the other folders in your file system.  You should see that most have taken on these new settings. What we’ve just done, in effect, is we have customized the General Items template.  This is one of five templates that Windows Explorer uses to display folder contents.  The five templates are called (in Windows 7): General Items Documents Pictures Music Videos When a folder is opened, Windows Explorer examines the contents to see if it can automatically determine which folder template to use to display the folder contents.  If it is not obvious that the folder contents falls into any of the last four templates, then Windows Explorer chooses the General Items template.  That’s why most of the folders in your file system are shown using the General Items template. Changing the Other Four Templates If you want to adjust the other four templates, the process is very similar to what we’ve just done.  If you wanted to change the “Music” template, for example, the steps would be as follows: Select a folder that contains music items Apply the existing Music template to the folder (even if it doesn’t look like you want it to) Customize the folder to your personal preferences Apply the new template to all “Music” folders A fifth step would be:  When you open a folder that contains music items but is not automatically displayed using the Music template, you manually select the Music template for that folder. First, select a folder that contains music items.  It will probably be displayed using the existing Music template: Next, ensure that it is using the Music template.  If it’s not, then manually select the Music template. Next, customize the folder to suit your personal preferences (here we’ve added a couple of columns, and sorted by Artist). Now we can set this view to be our Music template.  Choose Organize, then the View tab, and click the Apply to Folders button. Note: The only folders that will inherit these settings are the ones that are currently (or will soon be) using the Music template. Now, if you have any folder that contains music items, and you want it to inherit all of these settings, then right-click the folder name, choose Properties, and select that this folder should use the Music template.  You can also cehck the box entitled Also apply this template to all subfolders if you want to save yourself even more time with all the sub-folders. Conclusion It’s neat to be able to set up templates for your folder views like this.  It’s a shame that Microsoft didn’t take the concept just a little further and allow you to create as many templates as you want. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Fix For When Windows Explorer in Vista Stops Showing File NamesCustomize the Windows 7 or Vista Send To MenuFix for New Contact Group Button Not Displaying in VistaWhy Did Windows Vista’s Music Folder Icon Turn Yellow?Make Your Last Minute Holiday Cards with Microsoft Word TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Office 2010 reviewed in depth by Ed Bott FoxClocks adds World Times in your Statusbar (Firefox) Have Fun Editing Photo Editing with Citrify Outlook Connector Upgrade Error Gadfly is a cool Twitter/Silverlight app Enable DreamScene in Windows 7

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, May 30, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, May 30, 2010New ProjectsAviva Solutions C# Coding Guidelines: A set of C# coding guidelines, coding standards, layout rules, FxCop rulesets and (upcoming) custom FxCop and StyleCop rules for improving the over...BKWork: private project.classbook: du an trong vong 10 ngay. Nhom (Do Bao Linh, Phan Thanh Tai, Nguyen Dang Loc)Du an - 01: Du an mon thay LuongEndNote助手: EndNote Helper is a assistant tool for EndNote, which make your task of reference management more convinent. EndNote 助手是一个用于辅助EndNote进行文献管理的小工具，它可...Evoucher: Simple Evoucher Sales SystemFiddler Delayed Responses Extension: A fiddler extension that help developers delay the delivery of HTML Responses to applications. Some delay user stories: - Delivery of css to HTML ...Generic Entity Model 2: GEM2 is lightweight entity framework for building custom business solutions. It enables rapid approach to entity logic design, while offering out o...GY06: 这个是长大工院于2009年发起的项目，因为种种原因没有完成。JoshDOS: JoshDOS is a command line operating system kernel based off COSMOS. It can be booted from actual hardware and built in Visual Studio using .NET la...PhysicsFMUDeluxe.NET: Este projeto é desenvolvido com o intuíto de treinar o desenvolvimento de aplicações em C#. Ele contém ferramentas para cálculos de física e matemá...Reactor Services Platform: Reactor is a service composition and deployment grid that streamlines developing, composing, deploying and managing services. Reactor Services are ...SerafinApartment: Simple MVC 2 application for apartment rental. It is multingual booking system, that allows users to register, book and subscribe for notifications...Silverlight Audio Effect Box: This is a C# Silverlight 4 sample application which process audio sample in near real time. It allows to capture the default audio input device and...Smart Voice: Smart Voice let's you control Skype using your voice. It allows you to write messages, issue phone calls, etc. This application was developed think...WebDotNet - The minimalist web framework inspired by web.py: WebDotNet is an experiment in web frameworks. Inspired by the python web framework, web.py, it is an exercise in extreme minimalism in a framework...New ReleasesAcies: Acies - Alpha Build 0.0.7: Alpha release. Requires Microsoft XNA Framework Redistributable 3.1 (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=53867a2a-e249-4560-...AdventureWorksLT 2008 Sample Database Script: AdventureWorksLT 2008 R2 DB Script: This script is based on latest download from the Sample database for SQL Server 2008 R2. The original download from the sample is approx 84 MB and ...ASP.NET Wiki Control: Release 1.3.1: - Removed ASP.NET Session dependency. BreadCrumbs will now work with sessions disabled. Can now also share a URL and have the breadcrumb appropriat...Aviva Solutions C# Coding Guidelines: Visual Studio 2010 Rule Sets: Rule Sets targetting different styles of projects.bvcms - Bellevue Church Management System: Source: This source was used to build the latest {church}.bvcms.comCC.Yacht: CC.Yacht 1.0.10.529: This is the initial release of CC.Yacht. Marked as beta since I don't have any testing/feedback beyond that of myself and my wife.Community Forums NNTP bridge: Community Forums NNTP Bridge V14: 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 add...Community Forums NNTP bridge: Community Forums NNTP Bridge V15: 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 add...Coronasoft Cryostasis scripting engine: CCSE v0.0.1.0 BETA: This is the 0.0.1.0 Beta Release. If you find any bugs Post them as a comment or in the Discussions tabEndNote助手: EndNote助手2.1.0..0: 去除了注册验证机制。Fiddler Delayed Responses Extension: v0.1: Version 0.1 of Fiddler Delayed Responses Extension. See ChangeLog for more information.Generic Entity Model 2: GEM2 build 52510: This is first BETA release of GEM2! Following implementation is still missing from initial plan: Detailed documentation MySQL operational databa...JoshDOS: JoshDOS Souce: This is the souce for the JoshDOS 1.0 OS kernel. You need the COSMOS user kit to use.JoshDOS: Shell Version 1.0: Whats in this download *JoshDOS user kit *JoshDOS VStudio starter kit *JoshDOS documentation Note: You will need the COSMOS user kit to start deve...miniTodo: mini Todo version 0.3: Todo完了時に音が出なかったのを修正Model Virtual Casting - ASPItalia.com: Model Virtual Casting 0.2: Model Virtual Casting 0.2Questa seconda release di ModelVC è corrispondente a quella mostrata in occasione della Real Code Conference 4.0 tenutasi ...PhysicsFMUDeluxe.NET: PhysicsFMUDeluxe.NET - Setup: Primeira versão pública do PhysicsFMUDeluxe.NETSilverlight Audio Effect Box: Echo Box 1.0: First realease - zip contains : web page + xap file :Smart Voice: Smart Voice 0.1: Here is the first alpha release of Smart Voice. Please remember this was done for a curricular unit project at my university and i understand that ...StyleCop Contrib: Custom rules v0.2: This release of the custom rules target StyleCop 4.3.3. Included rules are: Spacing Rules - NoTrailingWhiteSpace - IndentUsingTabs Ordering Rules ...System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations Contrib: 0.2.46280.0: Built with Visual Studio 2010/.Net 4.0. Compiled from source code changeset 46280.VB Styler: VB Styler Suite V 1.3.0.0: This is the newest version of the VB Styler. Here are the new features. New Imaging ColorPicker A template for getting colors via sliders ColorR...VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30529.0: Automatic drop of latest buildWPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 1.0.0.90 RC: Version: 1.0.0.90 (Release Candidate): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. ...XNA Collision Detection: XNA Collision Detection Sample Program: I have coded a compact program which shows the collision detection working, and provides a camera class for rendering and moving the "player." Agai...Most Popular ProjectsRawrWBFS ManagerAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)patterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesPHPExcelASP.NETMost Active ProjectsAStar.netpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryCommunity Forums NNTP bridgeBlogEngine.NETGMap.NET - Great Maps for Windows Forms & PresentationIonics Isapi Rewrite FilterRawrCustomer Portal Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRMFacebook Developer ToolkitPAP

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