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• Business Insight, IT Execution: 9 Project Management Tips

  - by Sylvie MacKenzie, PMP

  Excerpt from Profit Magazine - by David Rosenbaum When Marcos Baccetto was first asked to be the business-side project lead on Eaton Corporation’s Vehicle Group South America (VGSA) Oracle project, the operations services manager responsible for running manufacturing was, he confesses, “a little afraid” because of his lack of IT experience. Today, Baccetto calls the project “a fantastic experience,” and he is a true believer in the benefits of a close relationship between IT implementers and their line-of-business peers. Through his partnership with Jesiele Lima, then VGSA IT manager, Baccetto and Eaton’s South American operations team came to understand several important principles of business and IT. Here he shares nine tips managers should consider when working on an enterprise technology project. 1. Make it a business project, not an IT project. All levels of functional management must have ownership, responsibility, and accountability for the success of the implementation. 2. Share responsibility. Business owners should sign off on tests and data conversion. 3. Clean your data. Dedicating a team to improve core data quality prior to project launch can be a significant time-saver. 4. Select resources properly. Have functional people who can translate business needs to IT and can influence organizational change. 5. Manage scope. Follow project management methodologies and disciplines. 6. Adopt common processes, global solutions. Avoid customized, local solutions. The big-picture business goals can get lost in the details. 7. Implement processes prior to the go-live date. Change management can be key. Keep the workforce informed and train users in advance. 8. Define metrics milestones. Assume there will be a crisis during deployment. Having baseline metrics to compare against will help implementers keep their cool—and the project moving forward. 9. The sponsor’s commitment is critical. It is needed to support the truly difficult decisions.

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• Tools for Enterprise Architects: OmniGraffle for iPad?

  - by pat.shepherd

  Well, I have to admit to being a bit of an Apple fan and, of course, and early adopter of gadgets and technology in general.  So, when FedEx showed up with my iPad 3G last week, I was a kid in a candy store.  One of the apps that my “buy finger” was hovering over for a while (like all of 3 days) was Omnigraffle for the iPad.  I imagined that it would be very cool to use this with a customer’s EA’s to sketch out Business, Application, Information and Technology architectures.  Instead of using the blackboard, this seemed to offer promise as a white-boarding tool with obvious benefits over a traditional white-board.  I figured I’d get a VGA adapter, plug it into the customer’s projector and off we would go with a great JAD tool.  The touch pad approach offered an additional hands-on kind of feel. So, I made the $49.99 purchase + the $29.99 VGA adapter and tried to give it a go.  Well, I was both pleasantly and unpleasantly surprised.  It is both powerful and easy to use.  There are great stencils included for shapes, software icons, Visio shapes, and even UML notation.  There is even a free-hand tool that works well.  I created some diagrams pretty quickly.   The one below was just a test and took all of 10 minuets to do. The only problem was that Onmigraffle does not recognize the VGA output, so I was stopped dead in my tracks, as it were.  My use case was as a collaborative diagramming tool with other architects, though I can still use it off line.  I called Omnigraffle and they said that VGA support is on the feature request list so, hopefully, in a short amount of time, I can use the tool as I envisioned.   Review: Criteria Result Is it fun? Yes Is it Useful? Yes Does it Show Promise? Yes Did the VGA Output Work? No File/diagram Formats PDF, Onmigraffle proprietary, image   Quick Sample:     OmniGraffle for iPad - Products - The Omni Group

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• Obtaining positional information in the IEnumerable Select extension method

  - by Kyle Burns

  This blog entry is intended to provide a narrow and brief look into a way to use the Select extension method that I had until recently overlooked. Every developer who is using IEnumerable extension methods to work with data has been exposed to the Select extension method, because it is a pretty critical piece of almost every query over a collection of objects.  The method is defined on type IEnumerable and takes as its argument a function that accepts an item from the collection and returns an object which will be an item within the returned collection.  This allows you to perform transformations on the source collection.  A somewhat contrived example would be the following code that transforms a collection of strings into a collection of anonymous objects: 1: var media = new[] {"book", "cd", "tape"}; 2: var transformed = media.Select( item => 3: { 4: Media = item 5: } ); This code transforms the array of strings into a collection of objects which each have a string property called Media. If every developer using the LINQ extension methods already knows this, why am I blogging about it?  I’m blogging about it because the method has another overload that I hadn’t seen before I needed it a few weeks back and I thought I would share a little about it with whoever happens upon my blog.  In the other overload, the function defined in the first overload as: 1: Func<TSource, TResult> is instead defined as: 1: Func<TSource, int, TResult>   The additional parameter is an integer representing the current element’s position in the enumerable sequence.  I used this information in what I thought was a pretty cool way to compare collections and I’ll probably blog about that sometime in the near future, but for now we’ll continue with the contrived example I’ve already started to keep things simple and show how this works.  The following code sample shows how the positional information could be used in an alternating color scenario.  I’m using a foreach loop because IEnumerable doesn’t have a ForEach extension, but many libraries do add the ForEach extension to IEnumerable so you can update the code if you’re using one of these libraries or have created your own. 1: var media = new[] {"book", "cd", "tape"}; 2: foreach (var result in media.Select( 3: (item, index) => 4: new { Item = item, Index = index })) 5: { 6: Console.ForegroundColor = result.Index % 2 == 0 7: ? ConsoleColor.Blue : ConsoleColor.Yellow; 8: Console.WriteLine(result.Item); 9: }

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• TalkTalk Business Succeeds with Engaging Conversations on an Eloqua platform

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 “Everybody from online, CRM and data, channel management, communications, and content had to pull together to deliver one campaign and Eloqua was the glue that held it all together.” says Paul Higgins, Marketing Director, TalkTalk Business (UK, telco) in this 2'23 video. Challenges Nurturing multiple sales channels with very diverse customers. Generating leads qualified to a very high standard. Engaging a fatigued and apathetic target audience. Positioning the brand as industry thought leaders. Solutions “What’s Your Business Grade?” campaign Eloqua automated email nurture strategy Eloqua Partner Network – Stein IAS Results ROI of 20:1. 40% uplift in sales opportunities in the smaller end with a 25% reduction in costs. 20–25% increase in sales qualified leads for mid-market, corporate, and enterprise customer sets. Open rate highs of 61.84% and click to open highs of 15.97%. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• It's Here! Visual Studio 2010 and ASP.NET 4.0 Ship

  Today Microsoft released Visual Studio 2010 and ASP.NET 4.0. I've been using the RC version of Visual Studio 2010 quite a bit for the past couple of months and have really grown to like it. It has a host of features and enhancements that improve developer productivity, from improved IntelliSense to better multiple monitor support. Plus there's something about the user experience that, to me, makes it feel better than Visual Studio 2008. I don't know if it's the new blue color motif or what, but the IDE seems more modern looking and more responsive to my mouse movements and other input. Anyway, if you've not yet downloaded Visual Studio 2010 and ASP.NET 4.0, why not? As with previous versions of Visual Studio there's a free Express Edition and VS2010 and ASP.NET 4.0 runs side-by-side with earlier versions of Visual Studio and ASP.NET. And with Visual Studio 2010's multi-targeting you can even use VS2010 as your development editor for ASP.NET 2.0 and ASP.NET 3.5 web applications. (Although be forewarned if you have multiple developers working on the application that the project files in VS2010 and earlier versions of Visual Studio differ.) This week's article on 4Guys explores my favorite new features of Visual Studio 2010. Here's an excerpt: The Visual Studio 2010 user experience is noticeably different than with previous versions. Some of the changes are cosmetic - gone is the decades-old red and orange color scheme, having been replaced with blues and purples - while others are more substantial. For instance, the Visual Studio 2010 shell was rewritten from the ground up to use Microsoft's Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). In addition to an updated user experience, Visual Studio introduces an array of new features designed to improve developer productivity. There are new tools for searching for files, types, and class members; it's now easier than ever to use IntelliSense; the Toolbox can be searched using the keyboard; and you can use a single editor - Visual Studio 2010 - to work on. This article explores some of the new features in Visual Studio 2010. It is not meant to be an exhaustive list, but rather highlights those features that I, as an ASP.NET developer, find most useful in my line of work. Read on to learn more! And, in closing, here are some helpful VS2010 and ASP.NET 4.0 links: One click installation for ASP.NET 4.0, Visual Web Developer 2010, .NET Framework 4.0, and ASP.NET MVC 2 Eight Quick Hit videos showing some of the cool new VS2010 features VS2010 and ASP.NET 4.0 Release Announcement with some great info/links from none other than Scott Guthrie Happy Programming!Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Office 2010 Professional Plus (Top 10 reasons to upgrade)

  - by mbcrump

  Being a huge nerd, I decided that I would go ahead and upgrade to the latest and greatest office. That being, Office 2010 Professional Plus. The biggest concern that I had was loosing all my mail settings from Outlook 2007. Thankfully, it upgrade gracefully and worked like a charm. So lets start this top 10 list. 1) You can upgrade without fear of loosing all your stuff! As you can tell by the screenshot below, you can select what you want to do. I selected to remove all previous versions.    2) Outlook conversations: Just like GMail, you can now group emails by conversations. This is simply awesome and a must have. 3) The ability to ignore conversations. If you are on a email thread that has nothing to do with you. Simply “ignore” the conversation and all emails go into the deleted folder. 4) Quick Steps, do you send an email to the same team member or group constantly. With quick steps, its just one click away. 5) Spell check in the Subject line! 6)  Easier Screenshots, built in just click the button. No more ALT-Printscreen for those that are not aware of the awesome SnagIT 10 that's out. 7) Open in protected view. When you open a document from an email attachment, it lets you know the file may be unsafe. You can click a button to enable editing. This is great for preventing macros.       8) Excel has always had a variety of charts and graphs available to visually depict data and trends. With Excel 2010, though, Microsoft has added a new feature called Sparklines, which allows you to place a mini-graph or trend line in a single cell. The Sparklines are a cool way to quickly and simply add a visual element without having to go through the effort of inserting a graph or chart that overwhelms the worksheet. 9) Contact actions. If you hover over a name in the form or fields on an email, you get a popup giving you several actions you can perform on the person such as adding them to your Outlook contacts, scheduling a meeting, viewing their stored contact information if they are already in your contacts, sending an instant message or even starting a telephone call. 10) Windows 7 Task Bar Context Menu – I love the jumplist. I don’t know how much that I would actually use it but it just rocks.

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• 2D water with dynamic waves

  - by user1103457

  New Super Mario Bros has really cool 2D water that I'd like to learn how to create. Here's a video showing it. When something hits the water, it creates a wave. There are also constant "background" waves. You can get a good look at the constant waves just after 00:50 when the camera isn't moving. I assume the splashes in NSMB work as in the first part of this tutorial. But in NSMB the water also has constant waves on the surface, and the splashes look very different. Another difference is that in the tutorial, if you create a splash, it first creates a deep "hole" in the water at the origin of the splash. In new super mario bros this hole is absent or much smaller. I am referring to the splashes that the player creates when jumping in and out of the water. How do they create the constant waves and the splashes? I am especially interested in the splashes, and how they work together with the constant waves. I am programming in XNA. I've tried this myself, but couldn't really get it all to work well together. Bonus questions: How do they create the light spots just under the surface of the waves and how do they texture the deeper parts of the water? This is the first time I try to create water like this. EDIT: I assume the constant waves are created using a sine function. The splashes are probably created in a way like in the tutorial. (But they are not the same, so I am still interested in how to make this kind of splashes) But I have a lot of trouble combining those things. I know I can use the sine function to set the height of a specific watercolumn but the splashes are using the speed, to determine the new height. I can't figure out how to combine those. Not that I am not asking how the developers of new super mario bros did this exactly. I am just interested in ways to recreate an effect like it. This week I have an examweek so I don't have time to work on the code. After this week I will spend a lot of time on it. But I am constantly thinking about it, so that's why I will be checking comments etc. I just won't be looking at the code since it might be too time-consuming.

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• Make the Taskbar Buttons Switch to the Last Active Window in Windows 7

  - by The Geek

  The new Windows 7 taskbar’s Aero Peek feature, with the live thumbnails of every window, is awesome… but sometimes you just want to be able to click the taskbar button and have the last open window show up instead. Here’s a quick hack to make it work better. To better understand the problem, imagine having nine windows of the same type open on your screen, but you are primarily working in just one of the windows at a time. So every time you want to switch back, you have to click the taskbar button, and then choose the one you are using from the list, which can be pretty annoying… Now if you know your Windows 7 shortcuts, you’d know that you can simply hold down the Ctrl key while clicking on the taskbar button, and the last window will show up. In fact, you can keep holding down the Ctrl key and keep clicking, and Windows will cycle through the open windows. It’s a useful shortcut, but hardly something you want to do every single time. Instead, we’ll use a quick registry hack to make the normal click switch to the last open window—if you still want to see the thumbnail list, just hover your mouse over the button for half a second to see the full list. Manual Registry Hack for Last Active Window Open up regedit.exe through the start menu search or run box, and then head down to the following registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced Once you’re there, create a new 32-bit DWORD value on the right hand side, give it the name LastActiveClick, and set the value to 1. Once you are done, it should look something like this: Once you are done, you’ll have to log off and back on, or you can kill Explorer.exe through Task Manager and re-open it. Download the Registry Hack Instead Since you probably don’t feel like registry hacking, we’ve provided you an easy downloadable version. You can simply download the file, extract it, and then double-click on the LastActiveClick.reg file. Once you are done, you’ll have to log off and back on, just like with the manual registry hack. Download LastActiveClick Registry Hack from howtogeek.com Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Make the Windows 7 Taskbar Work More Like Windows XP or VistaStupid Geek Tricks: Select Multiple Windows on the TaskbarReorganize Your Taskbar Buttons and Tray Icons in XP/VistaKeyboard Ninja: Create a Hotkey to Switch to Your Open Outlook WindowTaskbar Eliminator Does What the Name Implies: Hides Your Windows Taskbar 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 Gadfly is a cool Twitter/Silverlight app Enable DreamScene in Windows 7 Microsoft’s “How Do I ?” Videos Home Networks – How do they look like & the problems they cause Check Your IMAP Mail Offline In Thunderbird Follow Finder Finds You Twitter Users To Follow

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• Calling home, receiving calls and smartphone data from the US

  - by Rob Farley

  I got asked about calling home from the US, by someone going to the PASS Summit. I found myself thinking “there should be a blog post about this”... The easiest way to phone home is Skype - no question. Use WiFi, and if you’re calling someone who has Skype on their phone at the other end, it’s free. Even if they don’t, it’s still pretty good price-wise. The PASS Summit conference centre has good WiFI, as do the hotels, and plenty of other places (like Starbucks). But if you’re used to having data all the time, particularly when you’re walking from one place to another, then you’ll want a sim card. This also lets you receive calls more easily, not just solving your data problem. You’ll need to make sure your phone isn’t locked to your local network – get that sorted before you leave. It’s no trouble to drop by a T-mobile or AT&T store and getting a prepaid sim. You can’t get one from the airport, but if the PASS Summit is your first stop, there’s a T-mobile store on 6th in Seattle between Pine & Pike, so you can see it from the Sheraton hotel if that’s where you’re staying. AT&T isn’t far away either. But – there’s an extra step that you should be aware of. If you talk to one of these US telcos, you’ll probably (hopefully I’m wrong, but this is how it was for me recently) be told that their prepaid sims don’t work in smartphones. And they’re right – the APN gets detected and stops the data from working. But luckily, Apple (and others) have provided information about how to change the APN, which has been used by a company based in New Zealand to let you get your phone working. Basically, you send your phone browser to http://unlockit.co.nz and follow the prompts. But do this from a WiFi place somewhere, because you won’t have data access until after you’ve sorted this out... Oh, and if you get a prepaid sim with “unlimited data”, you will still need to get a Data Feature for it. And just for the record – this is WAY easier if you’re going to the UK. I dropped into a T-mobile shop there, and bought a prepaid sim card for five quid, which gave me 250MB data and some (but not much) call credit. In Australia it’s even easier, because you can buy data-enabled sim cards that work in smartphones from the airport when you arrive. I think having access to data really helps you feel at home in a different place. It means you can pull up maps, see what your friends are doing, and more. Hopefully this post helps, but feel free to post comments with extra information if you have it. @rob_farley

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• Mobile Apps: An Ongoing Revolution

  - by Steve Walker

  a guest post from Suhas Uliyar, VP Mobile Strategy, Product Management, Oracle The rise of smartphone apps have proved transformational for businesses, increasing the productivity of employees while simultaneously creating some seriously cool end user experiences. But this is a revolution that is only just beginning. Over the next few years, apps will change everything about the way enterprises work as well as overhauling the experiences of customers. The spark for this revolution is simplicity. Simplicity has already proved important for the front-end of apps, which are now often as compelling and intuitive as consumer apps. Businesses will encourage this trend, both to further increase employee productivity and to attract ‘digital natives’ (as employees and customers). With the variety of front-end development tools available already, this should be a simple mission for developers to accomplish – but front-end simplicity alone is not enough for the enterprise mobile revolution. Without the right content even the most user-friendly app is useless. Yet when it comes to integrating apps with ‘back-end’ systems to enable this content, developers often face a complex, costly and time-consuming task. Then there is security: how can developers strike a balance between complying with enterprise security policies and keeping the user experience simple? Complexity has acted as a brake on innovation, with integration and security compliance swallowing enterprise resources. This is why the simplification of integration, security and scalability is so important: it frees time and money for revolutionary innovation. The key is to put in place a complete and unified SOA integration platform that runs across the entire enterprise and enables organizations to easily integrate and connect applications across IT environments. The platform must also be capable of abstracting apps from the underlying OS and enabling a ‘write-once, run- anywhere’ capability for mobile devices - essential for BYOD environments and integrating third-party apps. Mobile Back-end-as-a-Service can also be very important in streamlining back-end integration. Mobile services offered through the cloud can simplify mobile application development with a standard approach to dealing with complex server-side programming and integration issues. This allows the business to innovate at its own pace while providing developers with a choice of tools to speed development and integration. Finally, there is security, which must be done in a way that encourages users to make the most of their mobile devices and applications. As mobile users, we want convenience and that is why we generally approve of businesses that adopt BYOD policies. Enterprises can safely encourage BYOD as they can separate, protect, and wipe corporate applications by installing a secure ‘container’ around corporate applications on any mobile device. BYOD management also means users’ personal applications and data can be kept separate from the enterprise information – giving them the confidence they need to embrace the use of their devices for corporate apps. Enterprises that place mobility at the heart of what they do will fundamentally transform their businesses and leap ahead of the competition. As businesses take to mobile platforms that simplify integration, security and scalability we will see a blossoming of innovation that will drive new levels of user convenience and create new ways of working that we are only beginning to imagine.

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• TouchDevelop: The Fast Path to Windows 8 and Phone Apps

  - by Clint Edmonson

  Are you looking for a little extra cash for the upcoming holidays? Then you might be interested in creating some cool apps to sell in the Windows Store. Or maybe you’re simply curious and want to try your hand at developing for Windows 8 and Windows Phone. In either case, the newly released TouchDevelop Web App is for you. TouchDevelop Web App is a development environment to create apps on your tablet or smartphone, without requiring a separate PC. Scripts written by using TouchDevelop can access data, media, and sensors on the phone, tablet, and PC. The script can interact with cloud services, including storage, computing, and social networks. TouchDevelop lets you quickly create fun games and useful tools, turning your scripts into true Windows Phone and Windows 8 apps. A year ago, Microsoft Research released TouchDevelop for Windows Phone, which is being used by enthusiasts, students, and researchers to program their phones in fun, inventive, and interesting ways. These scripts are available at TouchDevelop for anyone to download and use. Ever since we released TouchDevelop, we’ve been eyeing the tablet form factor and working on a version for the browser. Now, with the release of TouchDevelop Web App, the wait is over: the tablet version is ready, so go play around with it. All TouchDevelop scripts that are developed on the smartphone can be downloaded to the tablet and run (if hardware allows). Any script that is developed on the tablet can also be accessed on the phone. And scripts can be converted to Windows Phone or Windows 8 apps and submitted to the Windows Phone Store or Windows Store, respectively. TouchDevelop Web App’s editor and programming language have been designed for tablet devices with touchscreens, but you can also use a keyboard and a mouse. So grab your web-enabled device and give the TouchDevelop Web App a try. It’s fun and easy, and could even put a little cash in your holiday-depleted wallet. Or at least give you bragging rights at family get-togethers. Are you interested in further tips on Windows 8 development?  Sign up for the 30 to launch program which will help you build a Windows Store application in 30 days.  You will receive a tip per day for 30 days, along with potential free design consultations and technical support from a Windows 8 expert. As always, stay tuned to my twitter feed for Windows 8, Windows Azure and other Microsoft announcements, updates, and links: @clinted

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• Reporting on common code smells : A POC

  - by Dave Ballantyne

  Over the past few blog entries, I’ve been looking at parsing TSQL scripts in a variety of ways for a variety of tasks.  In my last entry ‘How to prevent ‘Select *’ : The elegant way’, I looked at parsing SQL to report upon uses of SELECT *.  The obvious question leading on from this is, “Great, what about other code smells ?”  Well, using the language service parser to do that was turning out to be a bit of a hard job,  sure I was getting tokens but no real context.  I wasn't even being told when an end of statement had been reached. One of the other parsing options available from Microsoft is exposed in the assembly ‘Microsoft.SqlServer.TransactSql.ScriptDom’,  this is ,I believe, installed with the client development tools with SQLServer.  It is much more feature rich than the original parser I had used and breaks a TSQL script into intuitive classes for analysis. So, what sort of smells can I now find using it ?  Well, for an opening gambit quite a nice little list. Use of NOLOCK Set of READ UNCOMMITTED Use of SELECT * Insert without column references Explicit datatype conversion on Sargs Cross server selects Non use of two-part naming convention Table and Query hint usage Changes in set options Use of single line comments Use of ordinal column positions in ORDER BY clause Now, lets not argue the point that “It depends” as smells on some of these, but as an academic exercise it is quite interesting.  The code is available from this link :https://www.dropbox.com/s/rfk32sou4fzl2cw/TSQLDomTest.zip  All the usual disclaimers apply to this code, I cannot be held responsible for anything ranging from mild annoyance through to universe destruction due to the use of this code or examples. The zip file contains a powershell script and my test cases.  The assembly used requires .Net 4 to run, which means that you will need powershell 3 ( though im running through PowerGUI and all works ok ) .  The code searches for all .sql files in the folder hierarchy for the workingpath,  you can override this if you want by simply changing the $Folder variable, and processes each in turn for the smells.  Feedback is not great at the moment, all it does is output to an xml file (Smells.xml) the offset position and a description of the smell found. Right now, I am interested in your feedback.  What do you think ?  Is this (or should it be) more than an academic exercise ?  Can tooling such as this be used as some form of code quality measure ?  Does it Work ? Do you have a case listed above which is not being reported ? Do you have a case that you would love to be reported ? Let me know , please mailto: [email protected].uk. Thanks

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• How exactly is Google Webmaster Tools measuring "Site Performance"?

  - by Rémi

  I've been working for two months now on improving our response time (mainly server side) on a new forum (a brand new product on a technical point of view) we've launched in Germany a few month ago and I'm a lot surprised by the results I get. I monitor our response time using Apache logs and our own implementation of Boomerang beacon. Using my stats, I can see that our new product responds in about 680 ms where our old product was responding in about 1050 ms. On the other side, Google Webmaster Tool tells us that our pages have an average reponse time of about 1500 ms today where it was 700 three months ago with our old product. I've figured that GWT was taking client side metrics into account so I've added some measures on our Boomerang beacon and everything looks just fine. I've also ran some random pages on ySlow and Google's Page Speed and everything looks better than it was before. We event have a 82% on Google's Page Speed tool which is quite cool for a site with some ads in it :) Lately, we have signed a deal with Akamai to use two of their products : CDN for our static files (we were using another CDN before but it wasn't very effective) and RMA to improve Networks routes. We have also introduced a new agressive cache mecanism to ensure that most of the pages served to crawlers are cached by our memcache grid. After checking my metrics, it seems that this changes have improved from 650ms to about 500ms, which is good (still not great but it is definitly an improvement). But webmaster tools continues to report an increasing average response time where we see it decreasing in the same time. Have you ever had the same kind of wierd behavior on your sites while doing performance improvements ? Do you have any idea how to monitor the same thing Google does with Site Performance in Google Webmaster Tools so that we could improve our site and constantly check if it is what Google wants ? Edit 2011/07/26 : Thanks for your answers guys ! Nevertheless, I was not precise enough. The main issue we have is not with the Site Performance page but with the Crawl Stats one for now. We probably found an issue on our side with some very slow pages (around 3000 ms !!) and we are trying to fix them. I'll keep you posted as soon I'll have some infos. Thanks again !

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• The Nine Cs of Customer Engagement

  - by Michael Snow

  Avoid Social Media Fatigue - Learn the 9 C's of Customer Engagement inside the Click Here The order you must follow to make the colored link appear in browsers. If not the default window link will appear 1. Select the word you want to use for the link 2. Select the desired color, Red, Black, etc 3. Select bold if necessary ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Templates use two sizes of fonts and the sans-serif font tag for the email. All Fonts should be (Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif) tags Normal size reading body fonts should be set to the size of 2. Small font sizes should be set to 1 !!!!!!!DO NOT USE ANY OTHER SIZE FONT FOR THE EMAILS!!!!!!!! ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ -- Have We Hit a Social-Media Plateau? In recent years, social media has evolved from a cool but unproven medium to become the foundation of pragmatic social business and a driver of business value. Yet, time is running out for businesses to make the most out of this channel. This isn’t a warning. It’s a fact. Join leading industry analyst R “Ray” Wang as he explains how to apply the nine Cs of engagement to strengthen customer relationships. Learn: How to overcome social-media fatigue and make the most of the medium Why engagement is the most critical factor in the age of overexposure The nine pillars of successful customer engagement Register for the eighth Webcast in the Social Business Thought Leaders series today. Register Now Thurs., Sept. 20, 2012 10 a.m. PT / 1 p.m. ET Presented by: R “Ray” Wang Principal Analyst and CEO, Constellation Research Christian Finn Senior Director, Product Management Oracle Copyright © 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Contact Us | Legal Notices and Terms of Use | Privacy Statement SEV100103386 Oracle Corporation - Worldwide Headquarters, 500 Oracle Parkway, OPL - E-mail Services, Redwood Shores, CA 94065, United States Your privacy is important to us. You can login to your account to update your e-mail subscriptions or you can opt-out of all Oracle Marketing e-mails at any time.Please note that opting-out of Marketing communications does not affect your receipt of important business communications related to your current relationship with Oracle such as Security Updates, Event Registration notices, Account Management and Support/Service communications.

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• Application Integration Future &ndash; BizTalk Server &amp; Windows Azure (TechEd 2012)

  - by SURESH GIRIRAJAN

  I am really excited to see lot of new news around BizTalk in TechEd 2012. I was recently watching the session presented by Sriram and Rajesh on “Application Integration Futures: The Road Map and What's Next on Windows Azure”. It was great session and lot of interesting stuff about the feature updates for BizTalk and Azure integration. I have highlighted them below, definitely customers who haven’t started using Microsoft BizTalk ESB Toolkit should start using them which is going to be part of the core BizTalk product in future release, which is cool… BizTalk Server feature enhancements Manageability: ESB Tool Kit is going to be part of the core BizTalk product and Setup. Visualize BizTalk artifact dependencies in BizTalk administration console. HIS administration using configuration files. Performance: Improvements in ordered send port scenarios Improved performance in dynamic send ports and ESB, also to configure BizTalk host handler for dynamic send ports. Right now it runs under default host, which does not enable to scale. MLLP adapter enhancements and DB2 client transaction load balancing / client bulk insert. Platform Support: Visual Studio 2012, Windows 8 Server, SQL Server 2012, Office 15 and System Center 2012. B2B enhancements to support latest industry standards natively. Connectivity Improvements: Consume REST service directly in BizTalk SharePoint integration made easier. Improvements to SMTP adapter, to add macros for sending same email with different content to different parties. Connectivity to Azure Service Bus relay, queues and topics. DB2 client connectivity to SQL Server and SQL Server connectivity to Informix. CICS Http client connectivity to Windows. Azure: Use Azure as IaaS/PaaS for BizTalk environment. Use Azure to provision BizTalk environment for test environment / development. Later move to On-premises or build a Hybrid cloud approach. Eliminate HW procurement for BizTalk environment for testing / demos / development etc. Enable to create BizTalk farm easily and remove/add more servers as needed. EAI Service: EAI Bridge Protocol transformation Message Transformation Running custom code Message Enrichment Hybrid Connectivity LOB Applications On-premises Application On-premises Connectivity to Applications in the cloud Queues/ Topics Ftp Devices Web Services Bridge can be customized based on the service needs to provide different capabilities needed as part of the bridge. Look at the sample for EDI bridge for EDI service sample. Also with Tracking enabled through the portal. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/hh674490 Adapters: Service Bus Messaging adapter - New adapter added. WebHttp adapter - For REST services. NetTcpRelay adapter - New adapter added. I will start posting more and once I start playing with this…

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• Size doesn't matter

  - by ssoolsma

  Whenever I start a new project I *always* break up my code in different projects. Also known as n-tier solution. The scale of  the project doesn't matter, but make sure that each project is responsible for himself (or herself if you prefer). I make sure that i ....At least thought about how the project should work on the toilet or in a project team meeting.Have a solution directory and create my projects within. I like to name my project (and it's folders by the namespaces). For instance: When i'm creating a piece of (web)software called: ChuckNorris, i always include the software name in my projects. Start off with designing the DataAccess project. I name it: ChuckNorris.DataAccess which lets me easily identify the project incase the project scales alot.Build the classes which represent the database structure. Don't stop working on a class untill it's finished for now. Also, don't over-do the methods. Build stuff only when it's needed, and not think: "Hm, that would be cool to have". Cause most of the time you end up with unused code, and we don't want that.Build a unittest project and make sure you create the folder inside the project that it's testing. So, create the ChuckNorris.DataAccess.UnitTest project inside the folder of the dataaccess project. I would suggest using the nUnit testframework.Incase you though, hm i skip unittest: Don't! Just build it - it will safe you alot of time later onNow, read 5 again. Build that bloody unittest. Don't skip. (i cant emphasize this enough)Now, every class in the dataaccess project is responsible for itself. They don't rely on each other. This is where we use the BusinessLogic project for. Start creating the ChuckNorris.BusinessLogic project. (not inside the data-access project ofcourse, but withing the ChuckNorris folder.Combine stuff from data-access. This usual involves alot of copying the data-access classes and feels silly at first. (we'll get to that later on)Now you come up to a point of creating a service project. You might not always see why to use it, but see it as a way to expose your businesslogic to any application (including your own). Sometimes i use it as a so-called "Factory". Every call goes through this factory, so that's the only thing i'm exposing to any program, and make sure that those methods are the only ones that I allow you to invoke.Build any UI (website, phoneapp, forms application, silverlight, wpf or whatever) and reference it to you service project. Fall in love (cough) with this approach.It's possible that it doesn't seem to make much sense, and very incomplete. Well, that last part is correct. Next post will go in to detail of setting up your Data-Access project and use the entity framework.

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• Getting Started Plugging into the "Find in Projects" Dialog

  - by Geertjan

  In case you missed it amidst all the code in yesterday's blog entry, the "Find in Projects" dialog is now pluggable. I think that's really cool. The code yesterday gives you a complete example, but let's break it down a bit and deconstruct down to a very simple hello world scenario. We'll end up with as many extra tabs in the "Find in Projects" dialog as we need, for example, three in this case:  And clicking on any of those extra tabs will, in this simple example, simply show us this: Once we have that, we'll be able to continue adding small bits of code over the next few blog entries until we have something more useful. So, in this blog entry, you'll literally be able to display "Hello World" within a new tab in the "Find in Projects" dialog: import javax.swing.JComponent; import javax.swing.JLabel; import org.netbeans.spi.search.provider.SearchComposition; import org.netbeans.spi.search.provider.SearchProvider; import org.netbeans.spi.search.provider.SearchProvider.Presenter; import org.openide.NotificationLineSupport; import org.openide.util.lookup.ServiceProvider; @ServiceProvider(service = SearchProvider.class) public class ExampleSearchProvider1 extends SearchProvider { @Override public Presenter createPresenter(boolean replaceMode) { return new ExampleSearchPresenter(this); } @Override public boolean isReplaceSupported() { return false; } @Override public boolean isEnabled() { return true; } @Override public String getTitle() { return "Demo Extension 1"; } public class ExampleSearchPresenter extends SearchProvider.Presenter { private ExampleSearchPresenter(ExampleSearchProvider1 sp) { super(sp, true); } @Override public JComponent getForm() { return new JLabel("Hello World"); } @Override public SearchComposition composeSearch() { return null; } @Override public boolean isUsable(NotificationLineSupport nls) { return true; } } } That's it, not much code, works fine in NetBeans IDE 7.2 Beta, and is easier to digest than the big chunk from yesterday. If you make three classes like the above in a NetBeans module, and you install it, you'll have three new tabs in the "Find in Projects" dialog. The only required dependencies are Dialogs API, Lookup API, and Search in Projects API. Read the javadoc linked above and then in next blog entries we'll continue to build out something like the sample you saw in yesterday's blog entry.

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• Access Offline or Overloaded Webpages in Firefox

  - by Asian Angel

  What do you do when you really want to access a webpage only to find that it is either offline or overloaded from too much traffic? You can get access to the most recent cached version using the Resurrect Pages extension for Firefox. The Problem If you have ever encountered a website that has become overloaded and unavailable due to sudden popularity (i.e. Slashdot, Digg, etc.) then this is the result. No satisfaction to be had here… Resurrect Pages in Action Once you have installed the extension you can add the Toolbar Button if desired…it will give you the easiest access to Resurrect Pages. Or you can wait for a problem to occur when trying to access a particular website and have it appear as shown here. As you can see there is a very nice selection of cache services to choose from, therefore increasing your odds of accessing a copy of that webpage. If you would prefer to have the access attempt open in a new tab or window then you should definitely use the Toolbar Button. Clicking on the Toolbar Button will give you access to the popup window shown here…otherwise the access attempt will happen in the current tab. Here is the result for the website that we wanted to view using the Google Listing. Followed by the Google (text only) Listing. The results with the different services will depend on how recently the webpage was published/set up. View Older Versions of Currently Accessible Websites Just for fun we decided to try the extension out on the How-To Geek website to view an older version of the homepage. Using the Toolbar Button and clicking on The Internet Archive brought up the following page…we decided to try the Nov. 28, 2006 listing. As you can see things have really changed between 2006 and now…Resurrect Pages can be very useful for anyone who is interested in how websites across the web have grown and changed over the years. Conclusion If you encounter a webpage that is offline or overloaded by sudden popularity then the Resurrect Pages extension can help you get access to the information that you need using a cached version. Links Download the Resurrect Pages extension (Mozilla Add-ons) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Remove Colors and Background Images in WebpagesGet Last Accessed File Time In Ubuntu LinuxCustomize the Reading Format for Webpages in FirefoxGet Access to 100+ URL Shortening Services in FirefoxAccess Cached Versions of Webpages When a Website is Down 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 VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Enable or Disable the Task Manager Using TaskMgrED Explorer++ is a Worthy Windows Explorer Alternative Error Goblin Explains Windows Error Codes Twelve must-have Google Chrome plugins Cool Looking Skins for Windows Media Player 12 Move the Mouse Pointer With Your Face Movement Using eViacam

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• Halloween: Season for Java Embedded Internet of Spooky Things (IoST) (Part 4)

  - by hinkmond

  And now here's the Java code that you'll need to read your ghost sensor on your Raspberry Pi The general idea is that you are using Java code to access the GPIO pin on your Raspberry Pi where the ghost sensor (JFET trasistor) detects minute changes in the electromagnetic field near the Raspberry Pi and will change the GPIO pin to high (+3 volts) when something is detected, otherwise there is no value (ground). Here's that Java code: try { /*** Init GPIO port(s) for input ***/ // Open file handles to GPIO port unexport and export controls FileWriter unexportFile = new FileWriter("/sys/class/gpio/unexport"); FileWriter exportFile = new FileWriter("/sys/class/gpio/export"); for (String gpioChannel : GpioChannels) { System.out.println(gpioChannel); // Reset the port File exportFileCheck = new File("/sys/class/gpio/gpio"+gpioChannel); if (exportFileCheck.exists()) { unexportFile.write(gpioChannel); unexportFile.flush(); } // Set the port for use exportFile.write(gpioChannel); exportFile.flush(); // Open file handle to input/output direction control of port FileWriter directionFile = new FileWriter("/sys/class/gpio/gpio" + gpioChannel + "/direction"); // Set port for input directionFile.write(GPIO_IN); } /*** Read data from each GPIO port ***/ RandomAccessFile[] raf = new RandomAccessFile[GpioChannels.length]; int sleepPeriod = 10; final int MAXBUF = 256; byte[] inBytes = new byte[MAXBUF]; String inLine; int zeroCounter = 0; // Get current timestamp with Calendar() Calendar cal; DateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy/MM/dd HH:mm:ss.SSS"); String dateStr; // Open RandomAccessFile handle to each GPIO port for (int channum=0; channum And, then we just load up our Java SE Embedded app, place each Raspberry Pi with a ghost sensor attached in strategic locations around our Santa Clara office (which apparently is very haunted by ghosts from the Agnews Insane Asylum 1906 earthquake), and watch our analytics for any ghosts. Easy peazy. See the previous posts for the full series on the steps to this cool demo: Halloween: Season for Java Embedded Internet of Spooky Things (IoST) (Part 1) Halloween: Season for Java Embedded Internet of Spooky Things (IoST) (Part 2) Halloween: Season for Java Embedded Internet of Spooky Things (IoST) (Part 3) Halloween: Season for Java Embedded Internet of Spooky Things (IoST) (Part 4) Hinkmond

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• CES 2011–Microsoft Keynote Impressions

  - by guybarrette

  Microsoft has been kicking off the CES for a number of years by doing a keynote the evening of the event first day.  This year, SteveB talked about Xbox, Kinect, Windows 7 new laptops, Surface 2 and Windows vNext running on the ARM architecture. Some of the design of the new laptops showed are quite amazing.  This one has a dual screen with no physical keyboard.  The image is split between both screens.  A software keyboard appears when you place your 10 fingers on the lower screen. This one from Samsung has a sliding keyboard somewhat like numerous cell phones have. What I found the most amazing is that Intel was able to miniaturized a full Intel architecture (CPU, motherboard, memory) in a tiny form factor.  Imagine having the power of a full PC running .NET apps in a Zune/iPod form factor! They also showed V2 of the Surface device.  This one is called the Samsung SUR40 for Surface PC.  It’s much sleeker and it will likely loose the BAT (Big Ass Table) moniker  More info here SteveB announced that Windows vNext will run on ARM chips.  I’m intrigued by this announcement (you can read about it here) and I have many questions: -In the past ARM devices were slow, what now makes the ARM architecture able to run Windows? -ARM is 32-bit only, I think. -Does this mean that Intel wasn't able to provide such a lightweight architecture or simply that they weren't interested? -From what I understand, apps would need to be recompiled for ARM. Will we need to do that from an ARM PC or could it be done natively on Intel or on an Intel PC running in an ARM VM?  VS 2012? Ahhhh, smells like a cool PDC is coming up    Clearly it looks like PC have enough power for most of us right now and that the race is now about miniaturization, power consumption and battery life. You can watch the Microsoft CES 2011 keynote here var addthis_pub="guybarrette";

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• cocos2d-x simple shader usage [on hold]

  - by Narek

  I want to obtain color ramp effect from this tutorial: http://www.raywenderlich.com/10862/how-to-create-cool-effects-with-custom-shaders-in-opengl-es-2-0-and-cocos2d-2-x Here is my code in cocos2d-x 3: bool HelloWorld::init() { ////////////////////////////// // 1. super init first if ( !Layer::init() ) { return false; } Vec2 origin = Director::getInstance()->getVisibleOrigin(); sprite = Sprite::create("HelloWorld.png"); sprite->setAnchorPoint(Vec2(0, 0)); sprite->setRotation(3); sprite->setPosition(origin); addChild(sprite); std::string str = FileUtils::getInstance()->getStringFromFile("CSEColorRamp.fsh"); const GLchar * fragmentSource = str.c_str(); GLProgram* p = GLProgram::createWithByteArrays(ccPositionTextureA8Color_vert, fragmentSource); p->bindAttribLocation(GLProgram::ATTRIBUTE_NAME_POSITION, GLProgram::VERTEX_ATTRIB_POSITION); p->bindAttribLocation(GLProgram::ATTRIBUTE_NAME_TEX_COORD, GLProgram::VERTEX_ATTRIB_TEX_COORD); p->link(); p->updateUniforms(); sprite->setGLProgram(p); // 3 colorRampUniformLocation = glGetUniformLocation(sprite->getGLProgram()->getProgram(), "u_colorRampTexture"); glUniform1i(colorRampUniformLocation, 1); // 4 colorRampTexture = Director::getInstance()->getTextureCache()->addImage("colorRamp.png"); colorRampTexture->setAliasTexParameters(); // 5 sprite->getGLProgram()->use(); glActiveTexture(GL_TEXTURE1); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, colorRampTexture->getName()); glActiveTexture(GL_TEXTURE0); return true; } And here is the fragment shader as it is in the tutorial: #ifdef GL_ES precision mediump float; #endif // 1 varying vec2 v_texCoord; uniform sampler2D u_texture; uniform sampler2D u_colorRampTexture; void main() { // 2 vec3 normalColor = texture2D(u_texture, v_texCoord).rgb; // 3 float rampedR = texture2D(u_colorRampTexture, vec2(normalColor.r, 0)).r; float rampedG = texture2D(u_colorRampTexture, vec2(normalColor.g, 0)).g; float rampedB = texture2D(u_colorRampTexture, vec2(normalColor.b, 0)).b; // 4 gl_FragColor = vec4(rampedR, rampedG, rampedB, 1); } As a result I get a black screen with 2 draw calls. What is wrong? Do I miss something?

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• Them and us

  - by Plip

  As much as we try and create inclusive societies throughout the globe time and time again we revert to our tribal and clan origins back in the distant past, be those line split across the obvious like  Nationality, Religion or even the Football teams we follow. Microsoft to me has always been a “them”. I was always on the outside looking in, free to say as I wished and have an external objective viewpoint. Now, after my first week (well four days but who’s counting) Microsoft is an “us” for me. So when I look up in the Atrium of Building 1 at Microsoft’s UK headquarters I see banners like the one above and I already genuinely feel a part of this much bigger community. I looked up at that and I felt a sense of pride to be part of something bigger, something which is out there touching peoples lives everywhere (for the good and the bad). My objectivity has made me who I am today. I’m open to other ideas and concepts, I’ve worked hard to be understanding across the board be it from technology through to cultural differences in my life and it’s vital to me that I preserve that so I now have to learn how I balance the “them” of Microsoft to the “us” of Microsoft and maintain the objectivity. It’s my job to advise people on the best way to do things, which won’t always mean “Use Microsoft Technology X”, sometimes it’ll be my responsibility to say “Don’t use Microsoft Technology X”. My first and foremost responsibility is to the customer, to give them the best advice that I can and I want to maintain that. Yeah, I’m sure I’ll be tarred by some as a Microsoft guy, for many years I’ve had just that, but those out there in the non Microsoft communities I’ve engaged in I think know that I’m the first to say when I think something is a bit naff. So, here’s my ask to you ‘the community’. Keep me honest. If I start to sound like a fanboi I want you to find me and give me a slap. It’s all too easy to forget reality sometimes and I want to make sure I stay well and truly routed in that reality. Also, no matter how much I embed myself within Microsoft I fear I will never understand Microsoft’s marketing team. In the Gents just under the WP7 banner shown above I was faced with this. Draw your own conclusions on what it’s message is.

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• Big Companies Influence Retail in 2010

  - by David Dorf

  From a retail industry perspective, 2010 will go down as the year mobile went mainstream, the economy recovered from the crash, and Facebook surpassed Google as the most influential online property. While the economy certainly had the biggest impact on the retail industry, a few big companies also exerted influence. Here's a rundown and a look back at 2010: Apple -- Steve Jobs and company continued to lead the mobile pack. Consumers are using their iPhones to shop, retailers are using the iPod Touch for mobile checkout, and both are embracing the iPad as the next wave of technology. The Next Technology from Apple Mobile Platforms in Retail Apple Stores, Touch2Systems, and the iPad Google -- Not to be outdone, Google's Android platform grew faster than Apple's, plus they support QRCodes natively and will probably beat Apple to NFC. Google Checkout, Product Search, and Boutiques.com continue to impact the e-commerce scene. Google Leverages Like.com Facebook -- While the movie The Social Network certainly made Facebook a household name, Connect, Places, and seeing the "like" button all over the Web really pushed Facebook everywhere. 2010 set the foundations for f-commerce. Facebook Participatory Promotions Crowd Savers What's the value of a Facebook fan? Step Aside Google Leveraging Social Networks for Retail Social Shopping at Nine West Groupon -- This newcomer executed on a simple concept flawlessly, making them the fasted company to reach $1B in revenue. (See cool chart from Silicon Alley Insider.) Google's offer of $5-6B wasn't enough, so now they are raising an additional $1B in funding, presumably to buy-up all the copycats across the globe. Changing the Way We Shop Amazon -- As if leading the e-commerce charge wasn't enough, Amazon shook things up with their purchase of Woot and release of their Price Checker mobile app. They continue to push boundaries with Kindle, and don't seem worried about the iPad at all. You Can't Win on Price Amazon Looks at Your Social Graph eBay -- Acquiring Skype didn't exactly work out, but eBay's purchase of PayPal and RedLaser are driving the company forward. They are still a major force. Bump the Bill Oracle, SAP, HP, IBM, and Cisco left their marks on the retail industry as well with various acquisitions and CxO shake-ups. We'll just have to wait and see what 2011 brings next.

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• The Birth of SSAS Compare

  - by Red Gate Software BI Tools Team

  Noemi Moreno, Red Gate Business Intelligence Specialist Software vendors – even Microsoft – tend to forget about the needs of business intelligence developers. We are a rare and rather invisible species. For example, BIDS remained in VS 2008 until SQL Server 2012. It took until this release before we got something as simple as an “undo” function. Before I joined Red Gate as a BI specialist, I worked on SQL Development. I’ll never forget the time I discovered Red Gate’s SQL Compare tool and how it reduced the task of preparing a database release from a couple of days to ten minutes. When I moved to SSAS, MDX and cubes, I became frustrated with the deployment process because I couldn’t find a tool that made Cube releases as easy as they are with SQL Compare. This became my quest. I pitched the idea to a few people in Red Gate’s regular Down Tools Week, when everyone puts down their day-to-day tasks and works on their own projects. My task was to reason with a roomful of cynical developers, hardened to the blandishments of project managers, for help to develop a tool that would compare two different SSAS databases and create the script to process only the objects that needed processing, thereby reducing release time to only a few minutes. I walked to the podium and gave them the full story of the distressed BI specialists, doomed to spend tedious hours preparing deployment scripts. A few developers recovered from their torpor to cast a languid eye at my presentation. It wasn’t enough. In a sudden impulse, I blurted out a promise to perform a flamenco dance for just the team if the tool was able to successfully compare two SSAS databases and generate a script by the end of the week. I was lucky enough that some of them believed me and jumped in: David Pond (Dev), Matt Burton (Dev), Tilman Bregler (Dev), Shobana Sekar (Test), Ruchija Raj (Test), Nick Sutherland (Product Manager) and Irma Tanovic (BI). They didn’t know that Irma and I would be away on a conference in Amsterdam and would leave them without our support. But to my surprise, they had a working tool by the time we came back – basic, and with a few bugs, but a working tool nonetheless! Seeing it compare a very basic SSAS database, detect the changes and generate the scripts was amazing! Something that normally takes half a day was done in under a minute. Since then, a few months have passed and a BI Tools team has been created at Red Gate to work full time on BI tools for BI developers, starting with SSAS Compare. How cool is that? So download the free beta and give us your feedback. And the flamenco? I still need to deliver that. Tilman reminds me every day! I need to get the full flamenco costume.

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• Play the Microsoft Game “Are You Certifiable?”

  - by Mysticgeek

  Want to know if you have what it takes to be certified by Microsoft? Today we check out an enjoyable way to practice and test your IT knowledge of Microsoft products.  There are two modes, one where you log in with your Live account so you can save your progress, and play additional levels.   If you log in with your Live account, it’s obvious that Microsoft wants to sell you some certification courses, so just be aware of that. Or Guest Play where you can only play one episode and scores are not saved.   Playing the Game We’ll take a look at the Guest Play just so you get a sense of what the game is about. Enter in a username and pick an avatar… Then read the instructions…we won’t go over them all here, there are a lot of options and points are scored by correct answers, amount of time it takes to answer them, you get vouchers to play a question before answers are shown…etc. Once you start playing, you get certification questions, you can take as much time to read the question as you want, then hit the Answer button when you’re ready. Now you have four answers to choose from…notice the time clicking down, so you want to try to answer as quickly as possible. After selecting the answer, you’re told if it is correct or not, then given an answer explaination, along with your score. You can flag the topic so it comes up again, which is a good way to get repetition of various topics, which really helps when taking the cert tests. If you get an answer wrong, you still get an answer explanation which is cool, so you can learn and better understand the topic. Conclusion This game is definitely not for everyone, only those who are curious or want a fun way to practice for Microsoft certifications. If you are interested in a cert from Microsoft, it’s a fun way to practice up. Play Are You Certifiable? Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Geek Fun: Play Alien Arena the Free FPS GameFriday Fun: Get Your Mario OnFriday Fun: Play Bubble QuodFriday Fun: 13 Days in HellFriday Fun: Open Doors 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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