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• Product Development Investment: A Measure of Vendor Performance

  - by Jim Mcglothlin

  The relationship between a large, complex organization and its key suppliers of information technology is normally more than just "strategic". Expectations about the duration of the relationship typically exceed 20 years. Enterprise applications and technology infrastructure are not expected to be changed out like petunias. So how would you rate the due diligence processes as performed in Higher Education when selecting critical, transformational information technology? My observation: I see a lot of effort put into elaborate demonstration of basic software functionality. I see a lot of attention paid to the cost element of technology acquisition, including the contracted cost of implementation consulting services. But the factor that receives only cursory analysis and due diligence is long-term performance--the ability of a vendor to grow, expand, and develop, and bring its customers along with it. So what should you look for in a long-term IT supplier? Oracle has a public track record for product development. The annual investment has been on a run rate of almost $3 Billion organic product development. Oracle's well-publicized acquisitions and mergers have been supplemental to its R&D. This is important for Higher Education. Another meaningful way to evaluate a company is to look at the tangible track record of enhancement. Consider the Oracle-PeopleSoft enterprise business platform since acquired by Oracle 6 years ago: Product or Technology Enhancement Customer or User Impact Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) 300+ new web services delivered in versions 9.0 & 9.1 provide flexibility, so that customers can integrate PeopleSoft with other applications. Campus Solutions has added Admissions and Constituent Web Services. Constituent Relationship Management PeopleSoft CRM 9.1 for Higher Education introduced new process flows for student recruiting and retention to support "Student Success" initiatives. A 360 view of the constituent is now delivered, and the concept of a single-stop Student Services Center is now in CRM 9.1 with tight integration to PeopleSoft Campus Solutions. Human Capital Management Contract Pay for Education, with flexibility for configuration and calculation, has been extended in HCM 9.1. New chartfield integration among Project Costing - Time & Labor - Payroll to serve the labor distribution requirements for Grants / Sponsored Research. Talent Management PeopleSoft 9.0 and 9.1 feature an integrated talent management approach centered on definitions in "Profile Manager", with all new usability improvements. Internal and external candidate pools, and the entire recruitment process, are driven by delivered configurable selection and on-boarding processes. Interview scheduling, and online job offers are newly delivered processes. Performance Management PeopleSoft HCM ePerformance 9.1 will include significant new functionality designed to help organizations more effectively align business objectives with employee goals. Using an Organization Chart view, your business goals can flow down to become tangible objectives per employee. Succession Planning / Workforce Development New in HCM 9.0, enhanced in 9.1, is a planning capability for regular or unusual (major organizational change) succession of internal or external candidates. PeopleSoft supports employee-based career planning, which ultimately increases the integrity of the succession planning process (identify their career needs, plans, preferences, and interests). Dashboards / Oracle Business Intelligence Application Suite Oracle Human Resources Analytics provides the workforce information foundation that integrates data from HR functional areas and Finance. Oracle Human Resources Analytics delivers 9 dashboards and over 200 reports. Provide your HR professionals and front-line managers the tools to analyze workforce staffing, retention, productivity, to better source high-quality applicants, and to reduce absence costs. Multi-year Planning and Commitment Control External funding sources, especially Grants, require a multi-year encumbrance business process. PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 adds multi-year funding and commitment control, including budget checking. The newly designed Real Time Budget Checking will provide the customer with an updated snapshot of their budget and encumbrances at any given time. Position Budgeting with Hyperion Hyperion Planning world-class products now include delivered integration to PeopleSoft HCM. Position Budgeting is available in the new Public Sector Planning module of Hyperion. Web 2.0 features for the latest in usability PeopleSoft 9.1 features a contemporary internet user experience: Partial-page refreshing Drag and drop pagelets New menu structure Navigation pagelets Modal popup message windows Favorites & recently used links Type-ahead Drag and drop grid columns, pop-out grids Portal Workspaces Enterprise 2.0 for your collaborative web communities, using new content management, along with Wikis, blogs, and discussion forums in PeopleSoft Portal 9.1. PeopleTools enhanced by Oracle Fusion Middleware Standards-based tools have been added to the PeopleTools application infrastructure: BI (XML) Publisher, Java tools. Certified for use with PeopleSoft: Oracle Business Intelligence (OBIEE), Oracle Enterprise Manager, Oracle Weblogic Server, Oracle SOA Suite. Hosting for PeopleSoft applications A solid new deployment option: Oracle On Demand remote hosting center for high scalability, security, and continuity of operations. Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) for HCM / Payroll functions Partnership with AT&T provides hosting of HR/Payroll application along with payroll business process operations, and subscription-based service fees (SaaS). AT&T BPO full service includes pay sheet processing, bank and 3rd party file transfer, payroll tax handling, etc. Continuous Delivery Model Feature Packs provide faster time-to-benefit; new features become available in PeopleSoft 9.1 (or Campus Solutions 9.0) without need to perform upgrade. Golden person data model across all campus applications Oracle Higher Education Constituent Hub provides synchronization and data governance of person data across any application, e.g. HR/ Payroll, Student Information System, Housing, Emergency Contact, LMS, CRM. Oracle's aggressive enhancement plans within the "Applications Unlimited" program continue, as new functionality is under development for a new version of a PeopleSoft release planned for 2012. Meanwhile, new capabilities are planned on an annual basis in Feature Packs. PeopleSoft just delivered the HCM 2010 Feature Pack and another is planned for 2011. In February we plan to have over 100 customers from our Customer Advisory Boards at our PeopleSoft Development Center in California to review designs for all of these releases. For those of you near New York City The investment and progressive development story described above is the subject of an Oracle road show event on February 9, 2011. Charting Your Course with Oracle Applications is a global event series designed to help business and IT executives assess the impact of new inflection points on their business and applications roadmap: changing workforces, shifting customer and constituent bases, and increased volatility. Learn how innovations ranging from new deployment models like cloud computing to the introduction of social applications and smart devices are delivering results across all areas of business and industry. THIS DOCUMENT IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY AND MAY NOT BE INCORPORATED INTO A CONTRACT OR AGREEMENT.

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• Use Autoruns to Manually Clean an Infected PC

  - by Mark Virtue

  There are many anti-malware programs out there that will clean your system of nasties, but what happens if you’re not able to use such a program?  Autoruns, from SysInternals (recently acquired by Microsoft), is indispensable when removing malware manually. There are a few reasons why you may need to remove viruses and spyware manually: Perhaps you can’t abide running resource-hungry and invasive anti-malware programs on your PC You might need to clean your mom’s computer (or someone else who doesn’t understand that a big flashing sign on a website that says “Your computer is infected with a virus – click HERE to remove it” is not a message that can necessarily be trusted) The malware is so aggressive that it resists all attempts to automatically remove it, or won’t even allow you to install anti-malware software Part of your geek credo is the belief that anti-spyware utilities are for wimps Autoruns is an invaluable addition to any geek’s software toolkit.  It allows you to track and control all programs (and program components) that start automatically with Windows (or with Internet Explorer).  Virtually all malware is designed to start automatically, so there’s a very strong chance that it can be detected and removed with the help of Autoruns. We have covered how to use Autoruns in an earlier article, which you should read if you need to first familiarize yourself with the program. Autoruns is a standalone utility that does not need to be installed on your computer.  It can be simply downloaded, unzipped and run (link below).  This makes is ideally suited for adding to your portable utility collection on your flash drive. When you start Autoruns for the first time on a computer, you are presented with the license agreement: After agreeing to the terms, the main Autoruns window opens, showing you the complete list of all software that will run when your computer starts, when you log in, or when you open Internet Explorer: To temporarily disable a program from launching, uncheck the box next to it’s entry.  Note:  This does not terminate the program if it is running at the time – it merely prevents it from starting next time.  To permanently prevent a program from launching, delete the entry altogether (use the Delete key, or right-click and choose Delete from the context-menu)).  Note:  This does not remove the program from your computer – to remove it completely you need to uninstall the program (or otherwise delete it from your hard disk). Suspicious Software It can take a fair bit of experience (read “trial and error”) to become adept at identifying what is malware and what is not.  Most of the entries presented in Autoruns are legitimate programs, even if their names are unfamiliar to you.  Here are some tips to help you differentiate the malware from the legitimate software: If an entry is digitally signed by a software publisher (i.e. there’s an entry in the Publisher column) or has a “Description”, then there’s a good chance that it’s legitimate If you recognize the software’s name, then it’s usually okay.  Note that occasionally malware will “impersonate” legitimate software, but adopting a name that’s identical or similar to software you’re familiar with (e.g. “AcrobatLauncher” or “PhotoshopBrowser”).  Also, be aware that many malware programs adopt generic or innocuous-sounding names, such as “Diskfix” or “SearchHelper” (both mentioned below). Malware entries usually appear on the Logon tab of Autoruns (but not always!) If you open up the folder that contains the EXE or DLL file (more on this below), an examine the “last modified” date, the dates are often from the last few days (assuming that your infection is fairly recent) Malware is often located in the C:\Windows folder or the C:\Windows\System32 folder Malware often only has a generic icon (to the left of the name of the entry) If in doubt, right-click the entry and select Search Online… The list below shows two suspicious looking entries:  Diskfix and SearchHelper These entries, highlighted above, are fairly typical of malware infections: They have neither descriptions nor publishers They have generic names The files are located in C:\Windows\System32 They have generic icons The filenames are random strings of characters If you look in the C:\Windows\System32 folder and locate the files, you’ll see that they are some of the most recently modified files in the folder (see below) Double-clicking on the items will take you to their corresponding registry keys: Removing the Malware Once you’ve identified the entries you believe to be suspicious, you now need to decide what you want to do with them.  Your choices include: Temporarily disable the Autorun entry Permanently delete the Autorun entry Locate the running process (using Task Manager or similar) and terminating it Delete the EXE or DLL file from your disk (or at least move it to a folder where it won’t be automatically started) or all of the above, depending upon how certain you are that the program is malware. To see if your changes succeeded, you will need to reboot your machine, and check any or all of the following: Autoruns – to see if the entry has returned Task Manager (or similar) – to see if the program was started again after the reboot Check the behavior that led you to believe that your PC was infected in the first place.  If it’s no longer happening, chances are that your PC is now clean Conclusion This solution isn’t for everyone and is most likely geared to advanced users. Usually using a quality Antivirus application does the trick, but if not Autoruns is a valuable tool in your Anti-Malware kit. Keep in mind that some malware is harder to remove than others.  Sometimes you need several iterations of the steps above, with each iteration requiring you to look more carefully at each Autorun entry.  Sometimes the instant that you remove the Autorun entry, the malware that is running replaces the entry.  When this happens, we need to become more aggressive in our assassination of the malware, including terminating programs (even legitimate programs like Explorer.exe) that are infected with malware DLLs. Shortly we will be publishing an article on how to identify, locate and terminate processes that represent legitimate programs but are running infected DLLs, in order that those DLLs can be deleted from the system. Download Autoruns from SysInternals Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Using Autoruns Tool to Track Startup Applications and Add-onsHow To Get Detailed Information About Your PCSUPERAntiSpyware Portable is the Must-Have Spyware Removal Tool You NeedQuick Tip: Windows Vista Temp Files DirectoryClear Recent Commands From the Run Dialog in Windows XP 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 15 Great Illustrations by Chow Hon Lam Easily Sync Files & Folders with Friends & Family Amazon Free Kindle for PC Download Stretch popurls.com with a Stylish Script (Firefox) OldTvShows.org – Find episodes of Hitchcock, Soaps, Game Shows and more Download Microsoft Office Help tab

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• Diagnosing ADF Mobile iOS deployment problems

  - by Chris Muir

  From time to time I encounter customers who have taken possession of a brand new Apple Mac, have that excited "I've just spent more on a computer then I ever wanted to but it's okay" crazy gleam in their eye, but on pre-loading all the necessary software for Oracle's ADF Mobile to start their mobile campaign, following Oracle's setup instructions and deploying their first app to Apple's XCode iPhone Simulator they hit this error message in the JDeveloper Log-Deployment window: [01:36:46 PM] Deployment cancelled. [01:36:46 PM] ----  Deployment incomplete  ----. [01:36:46 PM] Failed to build the iOS application bundle. [01:36:46 PM] Deployment failed due to one or more errors returned by '/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin/xcodebuild'.  The following is a summary of the returned error(s): Command-line execution failed (Return code: 69) "Oh, return code 69, I know that well" I hear you say.  Admittedly the error code is less than useful besides drawing some titters from the peanut gallery. Before explaining what's gone wrong, I think it's useful to teach customers how to diagnose these issues themselves.  When ADF Mobile commences a deployment, be it to Apple's iOS or Google's Android platforms, JDeveloper and ADF Mobile do a good job in the Log window of showing you what the deployment process entails.  In the case of deploying to iOS the log window will literally include the XCode commands executed to complete the deployment cycle. As example here's the log output that was produced before the error message was raised.... take the opportunity to read this line by line and note the command line calls highlighted in blue: (Note some of the following lines have been split over multiple lines to suit reading on this blog, each original line is preceded by a timestamp. Ensure to check the exact commands from JDev) [01:36:33 PM] Target platform is (iOS). [01:36:33 PM] Beginning deployment of ADF Mobile application 'LayoutDemo' to iOS using profile 'IOS_MOBILE_NATIVE_archive1'. [01:36:34 PM] Command-line executed: [/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin/xcodebuild, -version] [01:36:34 PM] Command-line execution succeeded. [01:36:34 PM] Running dependency analysis... [01:36:34 PM] Building... [01:36:34 PM] Deploying 3 profiles... [01:36:35 PM] Wrote Archive Module to /Users/chris/fmw/jdeveloper/jdev/extensions/ oracle.adf.mobile/Samples/PublicSamples/LayoutDemo/ApplicationController/ deploy/ApplicationController.jar [01:36:35 PM] WARNING: No Resource Catalog enabled ADF components found to package [01:36:36 PM] Wrote Archive Module to /Users/chris/fmw/jdeveloper/jdev/extensions/ oracle.adf.mobile/Samples/PublicSamples/LayoutDemo/ViewController/ deploy/ViewController.jar [01:36:36 PM] Verifying existence of the .adf source directory of the ADF Mobile application... [01:36:36 PM] Verifying Application Controller project exists... [01:36:36 PM] Verifying application dependencies... [01:36:36 PM] The application may not function correctly because the following dependent libraries are missing: /Users/chris/jdev/jdeveloper/jdeveloper/jdev/extensions/oracle.adf.mobile/ lib/adfmf.springboard.jar [01:36:36 PM] Verifying project dependencies... [01:36:36 PM] Validating application XML files... [01:36:36 PM] Validating XML files in project ApplicationController... [01:36:36 PM] Validating XML files in project ViewController... [01:36:40 PM] Copying common javascript files... [01:36:41 PM] Copying FARs to the ADF Mobile Framework application... [01:36:41 PM] Extracting Feature Archive file, "ApplicationController.jar" to deployment folder, "ApplicationController". [01:36:42 PM] Extracting Feature Archive file, "ViewController.jar" to deployment folder, "ViewController". [01:36:42 PM] Deploying skinning files... [01:36:43 PM] Copying the CVM SDK files built for the x86 processor... [01:36:43 PM] Copying the CVM JDK files built for the x86 processor... [01:36:43 PM] Command-line executed: [cp, -R, -p, /Users/chris/fmw/jdeveloper/jdev/extensions/oracle.adf.mobile/iOS/jvmti/x86/, /Users/chris/fmw/jdeveloper/jdev/extensions/oracle.adf.mobile/ Samples/PublicSamples/ LayoutDemo/deploy/IOS_MOBILE_NATIVE_archive1/temporary_xcode_project/lib] [01:36:43 PM] Command-line execution succeeded. [01:36:43 PM] Command-line executed: [cp, -R, -p, /Users/chris/fmw/jdeveloper/jdev/extensions/oracle.adf.mobile/iOS/jvmti/jar/, /Users/chris/fmw/jdeveloper/jdev/extensions/oracle.adf.mobile/Samples/ PublicSamples/LayoutDemo/deploy/IOS_MOBILE_NATIVE_archive1/ temporary_xcode_project/lib] [01:36:43 PM] Command-line execution succeeded. [01:36:43 PM] Copying security related files to the ADF Mobile Framework application... [01:36:44 PM] Command-line executed from path: /Users/chris/fmw/jdeveloper/jdev/extensions/oracle.adf.mobile/Samples/ PublicSamples/LayoutDemo/deploy/IOS_MOBILE_NATIVE_archive1/temporary_xcode_project/ [01:36:44 PM] Command-line executed: /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin/xcodebuild clean install -configuration Debug -sdk /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/ Developer/SDKs/iPhoneSimulator6.1.sdk DSTROOT=/Users/chris/fmw/jdeveloper/jdev/extensions/oracle.adf.mobile/Samples/ PublicSamples/LayoutDemo/deploy/IOS_MOBILE_NATIVE_archive1/Destination_Root/ IPHONEOS_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=5.0 TARGETED_DEVICE_FAMILY=1,2 PRODUCT_NAME=LayoutDemo ADD_SETTINGS_BUNDLE=NO As you can see when we move from JDeveloper undertaking its work, it then passes the code off in the last few lines for Apple's XCode to assemble and deploy the required .ipa file.  From the original error message which followed this complaining about xcodebuild failing with return code 69, we can quickly see the exact command line used to call xcodebuild. As this is the exact command line call with all its options, you're free to open a Terminal window in Mac OSX and execute the same command by simply copying and pasting the command line. And via this you'll then find out what return code actually 69 means.  Unfortunately it's not that exciting. For Macs that have just been installed and configured with XCode, XCode (and for that matter iTunes) which is required by ADF Mobile to deploy must have been run at least once before hand on your brand new Mac (to be clear that's once ever, not once every restart). On doing so you will be presented with a license agreement from Apple that you must accept. Only once you've done this will the command line calls work.  They're currently failing as you haven't accepted the legal terms and conditions. (arguably you an also accept the terms and conditions from the command line too, but ADF Mobile cannot do this on your behalf, so it's just easier to open the tools and confirm the legal requirements that way). Putting aside the error code and its meaning, watching the log window, watching what commands are executed, learning what they do, this will assist you to diagnose issues yourself and solve these sort of issues more relatively quickly.  From my perspective as an Oracle Product Manager, it allows me to say "this is the stuff you don't need to worry about when you use ADF Mobile when it's configured correctly" .... as you can see my salesman qualities shine through. For anyone who is happily using ADF Mobile on a Mac and wondering why you didn't hit these issues, it's quite likely that you already accepted the license conditions before deploying via ADF Mobile.  For instance, though I'm not a fan of iTunes itself, iTunes was one of the first things I loaded on my Mac to access my Justin Bieber albums. Image courtesy of winnond / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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• Thread placement policies on NUMA systems - update

  - by Dave

  In a prior blog entry I noted that Solaris used a "maximum dispersal" placement policy to assign nascent threads to their initial processors. The general idea is that threads should be placed as far away from each other as possible in the resource topology in order to reduce resource contention between concurrently running threads. This policy assumes that resource contention -- pipelines, memory channel contention, destructive interference in the shared caches, etc -- will likely outweigh (a) any potential communication benefits we might achieve by packing our threads more densely onto a subset of the NUMA nodes, and (b) benefits of NUMA affinity between memory allocated by one thread and accessed by other threads. We want our threads spread widely over the system and not packed together. Conceptually, when placing a new thread, the kernel picks the least loaded node NUMA node (the node with lowest aggregate load average), and then the least loaded core on that node, etc. Furthermore, the kernel places threads onto resources -- sockets, cores, pipelines, etc -- without regard to the thread's process membership. That is, initial placement is process-agnostic. Keep reading, though. This description is incorrect. On Solaris 10 on a SPARC T5440 with 4 x T2+ NUMA nodes, if the system is otherwise unloaded and we launch a process that creates 20 compute-bound concurrent threads, then typically we'll see a perfect balance with 5 threads on each node. We see similar behavior on an 8-node x86 x4800 system, where each node has 8 cores and each core is 2-way hyperthreaded. So far so good; this behavior seems in agreement with the policy I described in the 1st paragraph. I recently tried the same experiment on a 4-node T4-4 running Solaris 11. Both the T5440 and T4-4 are 4-node systems that expose 256 logical thread contexts. To my surprise, all 20 threads were placed onto just one NUMA node while the other 3 nodes remained completely idle. I checked the usual suspects such as processor sets inadvertently left around by colleagues, processors left offline, and power management policies, but the system was configured normally. I then launched multiple concurrent instances of the process, and, interestingly, all the threads from the 1st process landed on one node, all the threads from the 2nd process landed on another node, and so on. This happened even if I interleaved thread creating between the processes, so I was relatively sure the effect didn't related to thread creation time, but rather that placement was a function of process membership. I this point I consulted the Solaris sources and talked with folks in the Solaris group. The new Solaris 11 behavior is intentional. The kernel is no longer using a simple maximum dispersal policy, and thread placement is process membership-aware. Now, even if other nodes are completely unloaded, the kernel will still try to pack new threads onto the home lgroup (socket) of the primordial thread until the load average of that node reaches 50%, after which it will pick the next least loaded node as the process's new favorite node for placement. On the T4-4 we have 64 logical thread contexts (strands) per socket (lgroup), so if we launch 48 concurrent threads we will find 32 placed on one node and 16 on some other node. If we launch 64 threads we'll find 32 and 32. That means we can end up with our threads clustered on a small subset of the nodes in a way that's quite different that what we've seen on Solaris 10. So we have a policy that allows process-aware packing but reverts to spreading threads onto other nodes if a node becomes too saturated. It turns out this policy was enabled in Solaris 10, but certain bugs suppressed the mixed packing/spreading behavior. There are configuration variables in /etc/system that allow us to dial the affinity between nascent threads and their primordial thread up and down: see lgrp_expand_proc_thresh, specifically. In the OpenSolaris source code the key routine is mpo_update_tunables(). This method reads the /etc/system variables and sets up some global variables that will subsequently be used by the dispatcher, which calls lgrp_choose() in lgrp.c to place nascent threads. Lgrp_expand_proc_thresh controls how loaded an lgroup must be before we'll consider homing a process's threads to another lgroup. Tune this value lower to have it spread your process's threads out more. To recap, the 'new' policy is as follows. Threads from the same process are packed onto a subset of the strands of a socket (50% for T-series). Once that socket reaches the 50% threshold the kernel then picks another preferred socket for that process. Threads from unrelated processes are spread across sockets. More precisely, different processes may have different preferred sockets (lgroups). Beware that I've simplified and elided details for the purposes of explication. The truth is in the code. Remarks: It's worth noting that initial thread placement is just that. If there's a gross imbalance between the load on different nodes then the kernel will migrate threads to achieve a better and more even distribution over the set of available nodes. Once a thread runs and gains some affinity for a node, however, it becomes "stickier" under the assumption that the thread has residual cache residency on that node, and that memory allocated by that thread resides on that node given the default "first-touch" page-level NUMA allocation policy. Exactly how the various policies interact and which have precedence under what circumstances could the topic of a future blog entry. The scheduler is work-conserving. The x4800 mentioned above is an interesting system. Each of the 8 sockets houses an Intel 7500-series processor. Each processor has 3 coherent QPI links and the system is arranged as a glueless 8-socket twisted ladder "mobius" topology. Nodes are either 1 or 2 hops distant over the QPI links. As an aside the mapping of logical CPUIDs to physical resources is rather interesting on Solaris/x4800. On SPARC/Solaris the CPUID layout is strictly geographic, with the highest order bits identifying the socket, the next lower bits identifying the core within that socket, following by the pipeline (if present) and finally the logical thread context ("strand") on the core. But on Solaris on the x4800 the CPUID layout is as follows. [6:6] identifies the hyperthread on a core; bits [5:3] identify the socket, or package in Intel terminology; bits [2:0] identify the core within a socket. Such low-level details should be of interest only if you're binding threads -- a bad idea, the kernel typically handles placement best -- or if you're writing NUMA-aware code that's aware of the ambient placement and makes decisions accordingly. Solaris introduced the so-called critical-threads mechanism, which is expressed by putting a thread into the FX scheduling class at priority 60. The critical-threads mechanism applies to placement on cores, not on sockets, however. That is, it's an intra-socket policy, not an inter-socket policy. Solaris 11 introduces the Power Aware Dispatcher (PAD) which packs threads instead of spreading them out in an attempt to be able to keep sockets or cores at lower power levels. Maximum dispersal may be good for performance but is anathema to power management. PAD is off by default, but power management polices constitute yet another confounding factor with respect to scheduling and dispatching. If your threads communicate heavily -- one thread reads cache lines last written by some other thread -- then the new dense packing policy may improve performance by reducing traffic on the coherent interconnect. On the other hand if your threads in your process communicate rarely, then it's possible the new packing policy might result on contention on shared computing resources. Unfortunately there's no simple litmus test that says whether packing or spreading is optimal in a given situation. The answer varies by system load, application, number of threads, and platform hardware characteristics. Currently we don't have the necessary tools and sensoria to decide at runtime, so we're reduced to an empirical approach where we run trials and try to decide on a placement policy. The situation is quite frustrating. Relatedly, it's often hard to determine just the right level of concurrency to optimize throughput. (Understanding constructive vs destructive interference in the shared caches would be a good start. We could augment the lines with a small tag field indicating which strand last installed or accessed a line. Given that, we could augment the CPU with performance counters for misses where a thread evicts a line it installed vs misses where a thread displaces a line installed by some other thread.)

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• Packaging Swing apps with integrated JavaFX content

  - by igor

  JavaFX provides a lot of interesting capabilities for developing rich client applications in Java, but what if you are working on an existing Swing application and you want to take advantage of these new features?  Maybe you want to use one or two controls like the LineChart or a MediaView.  Maybe you want to embed a large Scene Graph as an initial step in porting your application to FX.  A hybrid Swing/FX application might just be the answer. Developing a hybrid Swing + JavaFX application is not terribly difficult, but until recently the deployment of hybrid applications has not simple as a "pure" JavaFX application.  The existing tools focused on packaging FX Applications, or Swing applications - they did not account for hybrid applications. But with JavaFX 2.2 the tools include support for this hybrid application use case.  Solution  In JavaFX 2.2 we extended the packaging ant tasks to greatly simplify deploying hybrid applications.  You now use the same deployment approach as you would for pure JavaFX applications.  Just bundle your main application jar with the fx:jar ant task and then generate html/jnlp files using fx:deploy.  The only difference is setting toolkit attribute for the fx:application tag as shown below: <fx:application id="swingFXApp" mainClass="${main.class}" toolkit="swing"/>  The value of ${main.class} in the example above is your application class which has a main method.  It does not need to extend JavaFX Application class. The resulting package provides support for the same set of execution modes as a package for a JavaFX application, although the packages which are created are not identical to the packages created for a pure FX application.  You will see two JNLP files generated in the case of a hybrid application - one for use from Swing applet and another for the webstart launch.  Note that these improvements do not alter the set of features available to Swing applications. The packaging tools just make it easier to use the advanced features of JavaFX in your Swing application. The same limits still apply, for example a Swing application can not use JavaFX Preloaders and code changes are necessary to support HTML splash screens. Why should I use the JavaFX ant tasks for packaging my Swing application?  While using FX packaging tool for a Swing application may seem like a mismatch at face value, there are some really good reasons to use this approach.  The primary justification for our packaging tools is to simplify the creation of your application artifacts, and to reduce manual errors.  Plus, no one should have to write JNLP by hand. Some specific benefits include: Your application jar will include a launcher program.  This improves your standalone launch by: checking for the JavaFX runtime guiding the user through any necessary installations setting the system proxy for Java The ant tasks will generate JNLP and HTML files for your swing app: avoids learning unnecessary details about JNLP, and eliminates the error-prone hand editing of JNLP files simplifies using advanced features like embedding JNLP and signing jars as BLOBs to improve launch performance.you can also embed the signing certificate details to improve the user's experience  allows the use of web page templates to inject the generated code directly into your actual web page instead of being forced to copy/paste the generated code snippets. What about native packing? Absolutely!  The very same ant task can generate a native bundle for a Swing application with JavaFX content.  Try running one of these sample native bundles for the "SwingInterop" FX example: exe and dmg.   I also used another feature on these examples: a click-through license agreement for .exe installers and OS X DMG drag installers. Small Caveat This packaging procedure is optimized around using the JavaFX packaging tools for your entire Swing application.  If you are trying to embed JavaFX content into existing project (with an existing build/packing process) then you may need to experiment in order to find the best way to integrate the JavaFX packaging steps into your existing build procedure. As long as you can use ant in your build process this should be a workable approach. It some cases solution could be less than ideal. For example, you need to use fx:jar to package your main jar file in order to produce a double-clickable jar or a native bundle.  The jar will be created from scratch, but you may already be creating the main jar file with a custom manifest.  This may lead to some redundant steps in your build process.  Hopefully the benefits will outweigh the problems. This is an area of ongoing development for the team, and we will continue to refine and improve both the tools and the process. Please share your experiences and suggestions with us.  You can comment here on the blog or file issues to JIRA. Sample code Here is the full ant code used to package SwingInterop.  You can grab latest JavaFX samples and try it yourself:  <target name="-post-jar"> <taskdef resource="com/sun/javafx/tools/ant/antlib.xml" uri="javafx:com.sun.javafx.tools.ant" classpath="${javafx.tools.ant.jar}"/> <!-- Mark application as Swing-based --> <fx:application id="swingFXApp" mainClass="${main.class}" toolkit="swing"/> <!-- Create doubleclickable jar file with embedded launcher --> <fx:jar destfile="${dist.jar}"> <fileset dir="${build.classes.dir}"/> <fx:application refid="swingFXApp" name="SwingInterop"/> <manifest> <attribute name="Implementation-Vendor" value="${application.vendor}"/> <attribute name="Implementation-Title" value="${application.title}"/> <attribute name="Implementation-Version" value="1.0"/> </manifest> </fx:jar> <!-- sign application jar. Use new self signed certificate --> <delete file="${build.dir}/test.keystore"/> <genkey alias="TestAlias" storepass="xyz123" keystore="${build.dir}/test.keystore" dname="CN=Samples, OU=JavaFX Dev, O=Oracle, C=US"/> <fx:signjar keystore="${build.dir}/test.keystore" alias="TestAlias" storepass="xyz123"> <fileset file="${dist.jar}"/> </fx:signjar> <!-- generate JNLPs, HTML and native bundles --> <fx:deploy width="960" height="720" includeDT="true" nativeBundles="all" outdir="${basedir}/${dist.dir}" embedJNLP="true" outfile="${application.title}"> <fx:application refId="swingFXApp"/> <fx:resources> <fx:fileset dir="${basedir}/${dist.dir}" includes="SwingInterop.jar"/> </fx:resources> <fx:permissions/> <info title="Sample app: ${application.title}" vendor="${application.vendor}"/> </fx:deploy> </target>

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• Pet Peeves with the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace

  - by Bil Simser

  Have you ever noticed how something things just gnaw at your very being. This is the case with the WP7 marketplace, the Zune software, and the things that drive me batshit crazy with a side of fries. To go. I wanted to share. XBox Live is Not the Centre of the Universe Okay, it’s fine that the Zune software has an XBox live tag for games so can see them clearly but do we really need to have it shoved down our throats. On every click? Click on Games in the marketplace: The first thing that it defaults to on the filters on the right is XBox Live: Okay. Fine. However if you change it (say to Paid) then click onto a title when you come back from that title is the filter still set to Paid? No. It’s back to XBox Live again. Really? Give us a break. If you change to any filter on any other genre then click on the selected title, it doesn’t revert back to anything. It stays on the selection you picked. Let’s be fair here. The Games genre should behave just like every other one. If I pick Paid then when I come back to the list please remember that. Double Dipping On the subject of XBox Live titles, Microsoft (and developers who have an agreement with Microsoft to produce Live titles, which generally rules out indie game developers) is double dipping with regards to exposure of their titles. Here’s the Puzzle and Trivia Game section on the Marketplace for XBox Live titles: And here’s the same category filtered on Paid titles: See the problem? Two indie titles while the rest are XBox Live ones. So while XBL has it’s filter, they also get to showcase their wares in the Paid and Free filters as well. If you’re going to have an XBox Live filter then use it and stop pushing down indie titles until they’re off the screen (on some genres this is already the case). Free and Paid titles should be just that and not include XBox Live ones. If you’re really stoked that people can’t find the Free XBox Live titles vs. the paid ones, then create a Free XBox Live filter and a Paid XBox Live filter. I don’t think we would mind much. Whose Trial is it Anyways? You might notice apps in the marketplace with titles like “My Fart App Professional Lite” or “Silicon Lamb Spleen Builder Free”. When you submit and app to the marketplace it can either be free or paid. If it’s a paid app you also have the option to submit it with Trial capabilities. It’s up to you to decide what you offer in the trial version but trial versions can be purchased from within the app so after someone trys out your app (for free) and wants to unlock the Super Secret Obama Spy Ring Level, they can just go to the marketplace from your app (if you built that functionality in) and upgrade to the paid version. However it creates a rift of sorts when it comes to visibility. Some developers go the route of the paid app with a trial version, others decide to submit *two* apps instead of one. One app is the “Free” or “Lite” verions and the other is the paid version. Why go to the hassle of submitting two apps when you can just create a trial version in the same app? Again, visibility. There’s no way to tell Paid apps with Trial versions and ones without (it’s an option, you don’t have to provide trial versions, although I think it’s a good idea). However there is a way to see the Free apps from the Paid ones so some submit the two apps and have the Free version have links to buy the paid one (again through the Marketplace tasks in the API). What we as developers need for visibility is a new filter. Trial. That’s it. It would simply filter on Paid apps that have trial capabilities and surface up those apps just like the free ones. If Microsoft added this filter to the marketplace, it would eliminate the need for people to submit their “Free” and “Lite” versions and make it easier for the developer not to have to maintain two systems. I mean, is it really that hard? Can’t be any more difficult than the XBox Live Filter that’s already there. Location is Everything The last thing on my bucket list is about location. When I launch Zune I’m running in my native location setting, Canada. What’s great is that I navigate to the Travel Tools section where I have one of my apps and behold the splendour that I see: There are my apps in the number 1 and number 4 slot for top selling in that category. I show it to my wife to make up for the sleepless nights writing this stuff and we dance around and celebrate. Then I change my location on my operation system to United States and re-launch Zune. WTF? My flight app has slipped to the 10th spot (I’m only showing 4 across here out of the 7 in Zune) and my border check app that was #1 is now in the 32nd spot! End of celebration. Not only is relevance being looked at here, I value the comments people make on may apps as do most developers. I want to respond to them and show them that I’m listening. The next version of my border app will provide multiple camera angles. However when I’m running in my native Canada location, I only see two reviews. Changing over to United States I see fourteen! While there are tools out there to provide with you a unified view, I shouldn’t have to rely on them. My own Zune desktop software should allow me to see everything. I realize that some developers will submit an app and only target it for some locations and that’s their choice. However I shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to see what apps are ahead of mine, or see people comments and ratings. Another proposal. Either unify the marketplace (i.e. when I’m looking at it show me everything combined) or let me choose a filter. I think the first option might be difficult as you’re trying to average out top selling apps across all markets and have to deal with some apps that have been omitted from some markets. Although I think you could come up with a set of use cases that would handle that, maybe that’s too much work. At the very least, let us developers view the markets in a drop down or something from within the Zune desktop. Having to shut down Zune, change our location, and re-launch Zune to see other perspectives is just too onerous. A Call to Action These are just one mans opinion. Do you agree? Disagree? Feel hungry for a bacon sandwich? Let everyone know via the comments below. Perhaps someone from Microsoft will be reading and take some of these ideas under advisement. Maybe not, but at least let’s get the word out that we really want to see some change. Egypt can do it, why not WP7 developers!

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• Fraud Detection with the SQL Server Suite Part 2

  - by Dejan Sarka

  This is the second part of the fraud detection whitepaper. You can find the first part in my previous blog post about this topic. My Approach to Data Mining Projects It is impossible to evaluate the time and money needed for a complete fraud detection infrastructure in advance. Personally, I do not know the customer’s data in advance. I don’t know whether there is already an existing infrastructure, like a data warehouse, in place, or whether we would need to build one from scratch. Therefore, I always suggest to start with a proof-of-concept (POC) project. A POC takes something between 5 and 10 working days, and involves personnel from the customer’s site – either employees or outsourced consultants. The team should include a subject matter expert (SME) and at least one information technology (IT) expert. The SME must be familiar with both the domain in question as well as the meaning of data at hand, while the IT expert should be familiar with the structure of data, how to access it, and have some programming (preferably Transact-SQL) knowledge. With more than one IT expert the most time consuming work, namely data preparation and overview, can be completed sooner. I assume that the relevant data is already extracted and available at the very beginning of the POC project. If a customer wants to have their people involved in the project directly and requests the transfer of knowledge, the project begins with training. I strongly advise this approach as it offers the establishment of a common background for all people involved, the understanding of how the algorithms work and the understanding of how the results should be interpreted, a way of becoming familiar with the SQL Server suite, and more. Once the data has been extracted, the customer’s SME (i.e. the analyst), and the IT expert assigned to the project will learn how to prepare the data in an efficient manner. Together with me, knowledge and expertise allow us to focus immediately on the most interesting attributes and identify any additional, calculated, ones soon after. By employing our programming knowledge, we can, for example, prepare tens of derived variables, detect outliers, identify the relationships between pairs of input variables, and more, in only two or three days, depending on the quantity and the quality of input data. I favor the customer’s decision of assigning additional personnel to the project. For example, I actually prefer to work with two teams simultaneously. I demonstrate and explain the subject matter by applying techniques directly on the data managed by each team, and then both teams continue to work on the data overview and data preparation under our supervision. I explain to the teams what kind of results we expect, the reasons why they are needed, and how to achieve them. Afterwards we review and explain the results, and continue with new instructions, until we resolve all known problems. Simultaneously with the data preparation the data overview is performed. The logic behind this task is the same – again I show to the teams involved the expected results, how to achieve them and what they mean. This is also done in multiple cycles as is the case with data preparation, because, quite frankly, both tasks are completely interleaved. A specific objective of the data overview is of principal importance – it is represented by a simple star schema and a simple OLAP cube that will first of all simplify data discovery and interpretation of the results, and will also prove useful in the following tasks. The presence of the customer’s SME is the key to resolving possible issues with the actual meaning of the data. We can always replace the IT part of the team with another database developer; however, we cannot conduct this kind of a project without the customer’s SME. After the data preparation and when the data overview is available, we begin the scientific part of the project. I assist the team in developing a variety of models, and in interpreting the results. The results are presented graphically, in an intuitive way. While it is possible to interpret the results on the fly, a much more appropriate alternative is possible if the initial training was also performed, because it allows the customer’s personnel to interpret the results by themselves, with only some guidance from me. The models are evaluated immediately by using several different techniques. One of the techniques includes evaluation over time, where we use an OLAP cube. After evaluating the models, we select the most appropriate model to be deployed for a production test; this allows the team to understand the deployment process. There are many possibilities of deploying data mining models into production; at the POC stage, we select the one that can be completed quickly. Typically, this means that we add the mining model as an additional dimension to an existing DW or OLAP cube, or to the OLAP cube developed during the data overview phase. Finally, we spend some time presenting the results of the POC project to the stakeholders and managers. Even from a POC, the customer will receive lots of benefits, all at the sole risk of spending money and time for a single 5 to 10 day project: The customer learns the basic patterns of frauds and fraud detection The customer learns how to do the entire cycle with their own people, only relying on me for the most complex problems The customer’s analysts learn how to perform much more in-depth analyses than they ever thought possible The customer’s IT experts learn how to perform data extraction and preparation much more efficiently than they did before All of the attendees of this training learn how to use their own creativity to implement further improvements of the process and procedures, even after the solution has been deployed to production The POC output for a smaller company or for a subsidiary of a larger company can actually be considered a finished, production-ready solution It is possible to utilize the results of the POC project at subsidiary level, as a finished POC project for the entire enterprise Typically, the project results in several important “side effects” Improved data quality Improved employee job satisfaction, as they are able to proactively contribute to the central knowledge about fraud patterns in the organization Because eventually more minds get to be involved in the enterprise, the company should expect more and better fraud detection patterns After the POC project is completed as described above, the actual project would not need months of engagement from my side. This is possible due to our preference to transfer the knowledge onto the customer’s employees: typically, the customer will use the results of the POC project for some time, and only engage me again to complete the project, or to ask for additional expertise if the complexity of the problem increases significantly. I usually expect to perform the following tasks: Establish the final infrastructure to measure the efficiency of the deployed models Deploy the models in additional scenarios Through reports By including Data Mining Extensions (DMX) queries in OLTP applications to support real-time early warnings Include data mining models as dimensions in OLAP cubes, if this was not done already during the POC project Create smart ETL applications that divert suspicious data for immediate or later inspection I would also offer to investigate how the outcome could be transferred automatically to the central system; for instance, if the POC project was performed in a subsidiary whereas a central system is available as well Of course, for the actual project, I would repeat the data and model preparation as needed It is virtually impossible to tell in advance how much time the deployment would take, before we decide together with customer what exactly the deployment process should cover. Without considering the deployment part, and with the POC project conducted as suggested above (including the transfer of knowledge), the actual project should still only take additional 5 to 10 days. The approximate timeline for the POC project is, as follows: 1-2 days of training 2-3 days for data preparation and data overview 2 days for creating and evaluating the models 1 day for initial preparation of the continuous learning infrastructure 1 day for presentation of the results and discussion of further actions Quite frequently I receive the following question: are we going to find the best possible model during the POC project, or during the actual project? My answer is always quite simple: I do not know. Maybe, if we would spend just one hour more for data preparation, or create just one more model, we could get better patterns and predictions. However, we simply must stop somewhere, and the best possible way to do this, according to my experience, is to restrict the time spent on the project in advance, after an agreement with the customer. You must also never forget that, because we build the complete learning infrastructure and transfer the knowledge, the customer will be capable of doing further investigations independently and improve the models and predictions over time without the need for a constant engagement with me.

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• Getting your bearings and defining the project objective

  - by johndoucette

  I wrote this two years ago and thought it was worth posting… Some may think this is a daunting task and some may even say “what a waste of time” and want to open MS Project and start typing out tasks because someone asked for an estimate and a task list. Hell, maybe you even use Excel and pump out a spreadsheet with some real scientific formula for guessing how long it will take to code a bunch of classes. However, this short exercise will provide the basis for the entire project, whether small or large and be a great friend when communicating to anyone on your team or even your client. I call this the Project Brief. If you find yourself going beyond a single page, then you must decompose the sections and summarize your findings so there is a complete and clear picture of the project you are working on in a relatively short statement. Here is a great quote from the PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge) relative to what a project is;   A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result. With this in mind, the project brief should encompass the entirety (objective) of the endeavor in its explanation and what it will take (goals) to create the product, service or result (deliverables). Normally the process of identifying the project objective is done during the first stage of a project called the Project Kickoff, but you can perform this very important step anytime to help you get a bearing. There are many more parts to helping a project stay on course, but this is usually the foundation where it can be grounded on. Through a series of 3 exercises, you should be able to come up with the objective, goals and deliverables on your project. Follow these steps, and in no time (about &frac12; hour), you will have the foundation of your project plan. (See examples below) Exercise 1 – Objectives Begin with the end in mind. Think about your project in business terms with a couple things to help you understand the objective; Reference the business benefit in terms of cost, speed and / or quality, Provide a higher level of what the outcome will look like (future sense) It should be non-measurable, that’s what the goals are all about The output should be a single paragraph with three sentences and take 10 minutes to write. *Typically, agreement must be reached on the objectives of the project before you would proceed to the next steps of the project. Exercise 2 – Goals A project goal is a statement that answers questions about who, what, why, where and when. A good project goal statement; Answers the five “W” questions for the project Is measurable in each of its parts Is published and agreed on by all the owners This helps the Project Manager receive confirmation on defining the project target. Using the established project objective done in the first exercise, think about the things it will take to get the job done. Think about tangible activities which are the top level tasks in a typical Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). The overall goal statement plus all the deliverables (next exercise) can be seen as the project team’s contract with the project owners. Write 3 - 5 goals in about 10 minutes. You should not write the words “Who, what, why, where and when, but merely be able to answer the questions when you read a goal. Exercise 3 – Deliverables Every project creates some type of output and these outputs are called deliverables. There are two classes of deliverables; Internal – produced for project team members to meet their goals External – produced for project owners to meet their expectations The list you enter here provides a checklist for the team’s delivery and/or is a statement of all the expectations of the project owners. Here are some typical project deliverables; Product and product documentation End product/system Requirements/feature documents Installation guides Demo/prototype System design documents User guides/help files Plans Project plan Training plan Conversion/installation/delivery plan Test plans Documentation plan Communication plan Reports and general documentation Progress reports System acceptance tests Outstanding bug list Procedures Risk and issue logs Project history Deliverables should go with each of the goals. Have 3-5 deliverables for each goal. When you are done, you will have established a great foundation for the clarity of your project. This exercise can take some time, but with practice, you should be able to whip this one out in 10 minutes as well, especially if you are intimate with an ongoing project. Samples  Objective [Client] is implementing a series of MOSS sites to support external public (Internet), internal employee (Intranet) and an external secure (password protected Internet) applications. This project will focus on the public-facing web site and will provide [Client] with architectural recommendations based on the current design being done by their design partner [Partner] and the internal Content Team. In addition, it will provide [Client] with a development plan and confidence they need to deploy a world class public Internet website. Goals 1.  [Consultant] will provide technical guidance and set project team expectations for the implementation of the MOSS Internet site based on provided features/functions within three weeks. 2.  [Consultant] will understand phase 2 secure password-protected Internet site design and provide recommendations.   Deliverables 1.1  Public Internet (unsecure) Architectural Recommendation Plan 1.2  Physical Site construction Work Breakdown Structure and plan (Time, cost and resources needed) 2.1  Two Factor authentication recommendation document   Objective [Client] is currently using an application developed by [Consultant] many years ago called "XXX". This application, although functional, does not meet their new updated business requirements and contains a few defects which [Client] has developed work-around processes. [Client] would like to have a "new and improved" system to support their membership management needs by expanding membership and subscription capabilities, provide accounting integration with internal (GL) and external (VeriSign) systems, and implement hooks to the current CRM solution. This effort will take place through a series of phases, beginning with envisioning. Goals 1. Through discussions with users, [Consultant] will discover current issues/bugs which need to be resolved which must meet the current functionality requirements within three weeks. 2. [Consultant] will gather requirements from the users about what is "needed" vs. "what they have" for enhancements and provide a high level document supporting their needs. 3. [Consultant] will meet with the team members through a series of meetings and help define the overall project plan to deliver a new and improved solution. Deliverables 1.1 Prioritized list of Current application issues/bugs that need to be resolved 1.2 Provide a resolution plan on the issues/bugs identified in the current application 1.3 Risk Assessment Document 2.1 Deliver a Requirements Document showing high-level [Client] needs for the new XXX application. · New feature functionality not in the application today · Existing functionality that will remain in the new functionality 2.2 Reporting Requirements Document 3.1 A Project Plan showing the deliverables and cost for the next (second) phase of this project. 3.2 A Statement of Work for the next (second) phase of this project. 3.3 An Estimate of any work that would need to follow the second phase.

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• PASS: Election Changes for 2011

  - by Bill Graziano

  Last year after the election, the PASS Board created an Election Review Committee.  This group was charged with reviewing our election procedures and making suggestions to improve the process.  You can read about the formation of the group and review some of the intermediate work on the site – especially in the forums. I was one of the members of the group along with Joe Webb (Chair), Lori Edwards, Brian Kelley, Wendy Pastrick, Andy Warren and Allen White.  This group worked from October to April on our election process.  Along the way we: Interviewed interested parties including former NomCom members, Board candidates and anyone else that came forward. Held a session at the Summit to allow interested parties to discuss the issues Had numerous conference calls and worked through the various topics I can’t thank these people enough for the work they did.  They invested a tremendous number of hours thinking, talking and writing about our elections.  I’m proud to say I was a member of this group and thoroughly enjoyed working with everyone (even if I did finally get tired of all the calls.) The ERC delivered their recommendations to the PASS Board prior to our May Board meeting.  We reviewed those and made a few modifications.  I took their recommendations and rewrote them as procedures while incorporating those changes.  Their original recommendations as well as our final document are posted at the ERC documents page.  Please take a second and read them BEFORE we start the elections.  If you have any questions please post them in the forums on the ERC site. (My final document includes a change log at the end that I decided to leave in.  If you want to know which areas to pay special attention to that’s a good start.) Many of those recommendations were already posted in the forums or in the blogs of individual ERC members.  Hopefully nothing in the ERC document is too surprising. In this post I’m going to walk through some of the key changes and talk about what I remember from both ERC and Board discussions.  I’ll pay a little extra attention to things the Board changed from the ERC.  I’d also encourage any of the Board or ERC members to blog their thoughts on this. The Nominating Committee will continue to exist.  Personally, I was curious to see what the non-Board ERC members would think about the NomCom.  There was broad agreement that a group to vet candidates had value to the organization. The NomCom will be composed of five members.  Two will be Board members and three will be from the membership at large.  The only requirement for the three community members is that you’ve volunteered in some way (and volunteering is defined very broadly).  We expect potential at-large NomCom members to participate in a forum on the PASS site to answer questions from the other PASS members. We’re going to hold an election to determine the three community members.  It will be closer to voting for Summit sessions than voting for Board members.  That means there won’t be multiple dedicated emails.  If you’re at all paying attention it will be easy to participate.  Personally I wanted it easy for those that cared to participate but not overwhelm those that didn’t care.  I think this strikes a good balance. There’s also a clause that in order to be considered a winner in this NomCom election, you must receive 10 votes.  This is something I suggested.  I have no idea how popular the NomCom election is going to be.  I just wanted a fallback that if no one participated and some random person got in with one or two votes.  Any open slots will be filled by the NomCom chair (usually the PASS Immediate Past President).  My assumption is that they would probably take the next highest vote getters unless they were throwing flames in the forums or clearly unqualified.  As a final check, the Board still approves the final NomCom. The NomCom is going to rank candidates instead of rating them.  This has interesting implications.  This was championed by another ERC member and I’m hoping they write something about it.  This will really force the NomCom to make decisions between candidates.  You can’t just rate everyone a 3 and be done with it.  It may also make candidates appear further apart than they actually are.  I’m looking forward talking with the NomCom after this election and getting their feedback on this. The PASS Board added an option to remove a candidate with a unanimous vote of the NomCom.  This was primarily put in place to handle people that lied on their application or had a criminal background or some other unusual situation and we figured it out. We list an explicit goal of three candidate per open slot. We also wanted an easy way to find the NomCom candidate rankings from the ballot.  Hopefully this will satisfy those that want a broad candidate pool and those that want the NomCom to identify the most qualified candidates. The primary spokesperson for the NomCom is the committee chair.  After the issues around the election last year we didn’t have a good communication plan in place.  We should have and that was a failure on the part of the Board.  If there is criticism of the election this year I hope that falls squarely on the Board.  The community members of the NomCom shouldn’t be fielding complaints over the election process.  That said, the NomCom is ranking candidates and we are forcing them to rank some lower than others.  I’m sure you’ll each find someone that you think should have been ranked differently.  I also want to highlight one other change to the process that we started last year and isn’t included in these documents.  I think the candidate forums on the PASS site were tremendously helpful last year in helping people to find out more about candidates.  That gives our members a way to ask hard questions of the candidates and publicly see their answers. This year we have two important groups to fill.  The first is the NomCom.  We need three people from our membership to step up and fill this role.  It won’t be easy.  You will have to make subjective rankings of your fellow community members.  Your actions will be important in deciding who the future leaders of PASS will be.  There’s a 50/50 chance that one of the people you interview will be the President of PASS someday.  This is not a responsibility to be taken lightly. The second is the slate of candidates.  If you’ve ever thought about running for the Board this is the year.  We’ve never had nine candidates on the ballot before.  Your chance of making it through the NomCom are higher than in any previous year.  Unfortunately the more of you that run, the more of you that will lose in the election.  And hopefully that competition will mean more community involvement and better Board members for PASS. Is this the end of changes to the election process?  It isn’t.  Every year that I’ve been on the Board the election process has changed.  Some years there have been small changes and some years there have been large changes.  After this election we’ll look at how the process worked and decide what steps to take – just like we do every year.

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• Creating a Training Lab on Windows Azure

  - by Michael Stephenson

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/michaelstephenson/archive/2013/06/17/153149.aspxThis week we are preparing for a training course that Alan Smith will be running for the support teams at one of my customers around Windows Azure. In order to facilitate the training lab we have a few prerequisites we need to handle. One of the biggest ones is that although the support team all have MSDN accounts the local desktops they work on are not ideal for running most of the labs as we want to give them some additional developer background training around Azure. Some recent Azure announcements really help us in this area: MSDN software can now be used on Azure VM You don't pay for Azure VM's when they are no longer used  Since the support team only have limited experience of Windows Azure and the organisation also have an Enterprise Agreement we decided it would be best value for money to spin up a training lab in a subscription on the EA and then we can turn the machines off when we are done. At the same time we would be able to spin them back up when the users need to do some additional lab work once the training course is completed. In order to achieve this I wanted to create a powershell script which would setup my training lab. The aim was to create 18 VM's which would be based on a prebuilt template with Visual Studio and the Azure development tools. The script I used is described below The Start & Variables The below text will setup the powershell environment and some variables which I will use elsewhere in the script. It will also import the Azure Powershell cmdlets. You can see below that I will need to download my publisher settings file and know some details from my Azure account. At this point I will assume you have a basic understanding of Azure & Powershell so already know how to do this. Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestrictedcls $startTime = get-dateImport-Module "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Azure\PowerShell\Azure\Azure.psd1"# Azure Publisher Settings $azurePublisherSettings = '<Your settings file>.publishsettings'  # Subscription Details $subscriptionName = "<Your subscription name>" $defaultStorageAccount = "<Your default storage account>"  # Affinity Group Details $affinityGroup = '<Your affinity group>' $dataCenter = 'West Europe' # From Get-AzureLocation  # VM Details $baseVMName = 'TRN' $adminUserName = '<Your admin username>' $password = '<Your admin password>' $size = 'Medium' $vmTemplate = '<The name of your VM template image>' $rdpFilePath = '<File path to save RDP files to>' $machineSettingsPath = '<File path to save machine info to>'    Functions In the next section of the script I have some functions which are used to perform certain actions. The first is called CreateVM. This will do the following actions: If the VM already exists it will be deleted Create the cloud service Create the VM from the template I have created Add an endpoint so we can RDP to them all over the same port Download the RDP file so there is a short cut the trainees can easily access the machine via Write settings for the machine to a log file  function CreateVM($machineNo) { # Specify a name for the new VM $machineName = "$baseVMName-$machineNo" Write-Host "Creating VM: $machineName"       # Get the Azure VM Image      $myImage = Get-AzureVMImage $vmTemplate   #If the VM already exists delete and re-create it $existingVm = Get-AzureVM -Name $machineName -ServiceName $serviceName if($existingVm -ne $null) { Write-Host "VM already exists so deleting it" Remove-AzureVM -Name $machineName -ServiceName $serviceName }   "Creating Service" $serviceName = "bupa-azure-train-$machineName" Remove-AzureService -Force -ServiceName $serviceName New-AzureService -Location $dataCenter -ServiceName $serviceName   Write-Host "Creating VM: $machineName" New-AzureQuickVM -Windows -name $machineName -ServiceName $serviceName -ImageName $myImage.ImageName -InstanceSize $size -AdminUsername $adminUserName -Password $password  Write-Host "Updating the RDP endpoint for $machineName" Get-AzureVM -name $machineName -ServiceName $serviceName ` | Add-AzureEndpoint -Name RDP -Protocol TCP -LocalPort 3389 -PublicPort 550 ` | Update-AzureVM    Write-Host "Get the RDP File for machine $machineName" $machineRDPFilePath = "$rdpFilePath\$machineName.rdp" Get-AzureRemoteDesktopFile -name $machineName -ServiceName $serviceName -LocalPath "$machineRDPFilePath"   WriteMachineSettings "$machineName" "$serviceName" }    The delete machine settings function is used to delete the log file before we start re-running the process.  function DeleteMachineSettings() { Write-Host "Deleting the machine settings output file" [System.IO.File]::Delete("$machineSettingsPath"); }    The write machine settings function will get the VM and then record its details to the log file. The importance of the log file is that I can easily provide the information for all of the VM's to our infrastructure team to be able to configure access to all of the VM's    function WriteMachineSettings([string]$vmName, [string]$vmServiceName) { Write-Host "Writing to the machine settings output file"   $vm = Get-AzureVM -name $vmName -ServiceName $vmServiceName $vmEndpoint = Get-AzureEndpoint -VM $vm -Name RDP   $sb = new-object System.Text.StringBuilder $sb.Append("Service Name: "); $sb.Append($vm.ServiceName); $sb.Append(", "); $sb.Append("VM: "); $sb.Append($vm.Name); $sb.Append(", "); $sb.Append("RDP Public Port: "); $sb.Append($vmEndpoint.Port); $sb.Append(", "); $sb.Append("Public DNS: "); $sb.Append($vmEndpoint.Vip); $sb.AppendLine(""); [System.IO.File]::AppendAllText($machineSettingsPath, $sb.ToString());  } # end functions    Rest of Script In the rest of the script it is really just the bit that orchestrates the actions we want to happen. It will load the publisher settings, select the Azure subscription and then loop around the CreateVM function and create 16 VM's  Import-AzurePublishSettingsFile $azurePublisherSettings Set-AzureSubscription -SubscriptionName $subscriptionName -CurrentStorageAccount $defaultStorageAccount Select-AzureSubscription -SubscriptionName $subscriptionName  DeleteMachineSettings    "Starting creating Bupa International Azure Training Lab" $numberOfVMs = 16  for ($index=1; $index -le $numberOfVMs; $index++) { $vmNo = "$index" CreateVM($vmNo); }    "Finished creating Bupa International Azure Training Lab" # Give it a Minute Start-Sleep -s 60  $endTime = get-date "Script run time " + ($endTime - $startTime)    Conclusion As you can see there is nothing too fancy about this script but in our case of creating a small isolated training lab which is not connected to our corporate network then we can easily use this to provision the lab. Im sure if this is of use to anyone you can easily modify it to do other things with the lab environment too. A couple of points to note are that there are some soft limits in Azure about the number of cores and services your subscription can use. You may need to contact the Azure support team to be able to increase this limit. In terms of the real business value of this approach, it was not possible to use the existing desktops to do the training on, and getting some internal virtual machines would have been relatively expensive and time consuming for our ops team to do. With the Azure option we are able to spin these machines up for a temporary period during the training course and then throw them away when we are done. We expect the costing of this test lab to be very small, especially considering we have EA pricing. As a ball park I think my 18 lab VM training environment will cost in the region of $80 per day on our EA. This is a fraction of the cost of the creation of a single VM on premise.

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• PASS: The Budget Process

  - by Bill Graziano

  Every fiscal year PASS creates a detailed budget.  This helps us set priorities and communicate to our members what we’re going to do in the upcoming year.  You can review the current budget on the PASS Governance page.  That page currently requires you to login but I’m talking with HQ to see if there are any legal issues with opening that up. The Accounting Team The PASS accounting team is two people.  The Executive Vice-President of Finance (“EVP”) and the PASS Accounting Manager.  Sandy Cherry is the accounting manager and works at PASS HQ.  Sandy has been with PASS since we switched management companies in 2007.  Throughout this document when I talk about any actual work related to the budget that’s all Sandy :)  She’s the glue that gets us through this process.  Last year we went through 32 iterations of the budget before the Board approved so it’s a pretty busy time for her us – well, mostly her. Fiscal Year The PASS fiscal year runs from July 1st through June 30th the following year.  Right now we’re in fiscal year 2011.  Our 2010 Summit actually occurred in FY2011.  We switched to this schedule from a calendar year in 2006.  Our goal was to have the Summit occur early in our fiscal year.  That gives us the rest of the year to handle any significant financial impact from the Summit.  If registrations are down we can reduce spending.  If registrations are up we can decide how much to increase our reserves and how much to spend.  Keep in mind that the Summit is budgeted to generate 82% of our revenue this year.  How it performs has a significant impact on our financials.  The other benefit of this fiscal year is that it matches the Microsoft fiscal year.  We sign an annual sponsorship agreement with Microsoft and it’s very helpful that our fiscal years match. This year our budget process will probably start in earnest in March or April.  I’d like to be done in early June so we can publish before July 1st.  I was late publishing it this year and I’m trying not to repeat that. Our Budget Our actual budget is an Excel spreadsheet with 36 sheets.  We remove some of those when we publish it since they include salary information.  The budget is broken up into various portfolios or departments.  We have 20 portfolios.  They include chapters, marketing, virtual chapters, marketing, etc.  Ideally each portfolio is assigned to a Board member.  Each portfolio also typically has a staff person assigned to it.  Portfolios that aren’t assigned to a Board member are monitored by HQ and the ExecVP-Finance (me).  These are typically smaller portfolios such as deferred membership or Summit futures.  (More on those in a later post.)  All portfolios are reviewed by all Board members during the budget approval process, when interim financials are released internally and at year-end. The Process Our first step is to budget revenues.  The Board determines a target attendee number.  We have formulas based on historical performance that convert that to an overall attendee revenue number.  Other revenue projections (such as vendor sponsorships) come from different parts of the organization.  I hope to have another post with more details on how we project revenues. The next step is to budget expenses.  Board members fill out a sample spreadsheet with their budget for the year.  They can add line items and notes describing what the amounts are for.  Each Board portfolio typically has from 10 to 30 line items.  Any new initiatives they want to pursue needs to be budgeted.  The Summit operations budget is managed by HQ.  It includes the cost for food, electrical, internet, etc.  Most of these come from our estimate of attendees and our contract with the convention center.  During this process the Board can ask for more or less to be spent on various line items.  For example, if we weren’t happy with the Internet at the last Summit we can ask them to look into different options and/or increasing the budget.  HQ will also make adjustments to these numbers based on what they see at the events and the feedback we receive on the surveys. After we have all the initial estimates we start reviewing the entire budget.  It is sent out to the Board and we can see what each portfolio requested and what the overall profit and loss number is.  We usually start with too much in expenses and need to cut.  In years past the Board started haggling over these numbers as a group.  This past year they decided I should take a first cut and present them with a reasonable budget and a list of what I changed.  That worked well and I think we’ll continue to do that in the future. We go through a number of iterations on the budget.  If I remember correctly, we went through 32 iterations before we passed the budget.  At each iteration various revenue and expense numbers can change.  Keep in mind that the PASS budget has 200+ line items spread over 20 portfolios.  Many of these depend on other numbers.  For example, if we decide increase the projected attendees that cascades through our budget.  At each iteration we list what changed and the impact.  Ideally these discussions will take place at a face-to-face Board meeting.  Many of them also take place over the phone.  Board members explain any increase they are asking for while performing due diligence on other budget requests.  Eventually a budget emerges and is passed. Publishing After the budget is passed we create a version without the formulas and salaries for posting on the web site.  Sandy also creates some charts to help our members understand the budget.  The EVP writes a nice little letter describing some of the changes from last year’s budget.  You can see my letter and our budget on the PASS Governance page. And then, eight months later, we start all over again.

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• Agilist, Heal Thyself!

  - by Dylan Smith

  I’ve been meaning to blog about a great experience I had earlier in the year at Prairie Dev Con Calgary.  Myself and Steve Rogalsky did a session that we called “Agilist, Heal Thyself!”.  We used a format that was new to me, but that Steve had seen used at another conference.  What we did was start by asking the audience to give us a list of challenges they had had when adopting agile.  We wrote them all down, then had everybody vote on the most interesting ones.  Then we split into two groups, and each group was assigned one of the agile challenges.  We had 20 minutes to discuss the challenge, and suggest solutions or approaches to improve things.  At the end of the 20 minutes, each of the groups gave a brief summary of their discussion and learning's, then we mixed up the groups and repeated with another 2 challenges. The 2 groups I was part of had some really interesting discussions, and suggestions: Unfinished Stories at the end of Sprints The first agile challenge we tackled, was something that every single Scrum team I have worked with has struggled with.  What happens when you get to the end of a Sprint, and there are some stories that are only partially completed.  The team in question was getting very de-moralized as they felt that every Sprint was a failure as they never had a set of fully completed stories. How do you avoid this? and/or what do you do when it happens? There were 2 pieces of advice that were well received: 1. Try to bring stories to completion before starting new ones.  This is advice I give all my Scrum teams.  If you have a 3-week sprint, what happens all too often is you get to the end of week 2, and a lot of stories are almost done; but almost none are completely done.  This is a Bad Thing.  I encourage the teams I work with to only start a new story as a very last resort.  If you finish your task look at the stories in progress and see if there’s anything you can do to help before moving onto a new story.  In the daily standup, put a focus on seeing what stories got completed yesterday, if a few days go by with none getting completed, be sure this fact is visible to the team and do something about it.  Something I’ve been doing recently is introducing WIP (Work In Progress) limits while using Scrum.  My current team has 2-week sprints, and we usually have about a dozen or stories in a sprint.  We instituted a WIP limit of 4 stories.  If 4 stories have been started but not finished then nobody is allowed to start new stories.  This made it obvious very quickly that our QA tasks were our bottleneck (we have 4 devs, but only 1.5 testers).  The WIP limit forced the developers to start to pickup QA tasks before moving onto the next dev tasks, and we ended our sprints with many more stories completely finished than we did before introducing WIP limits. 2. Rather than using time-boxed sprints, why not just do away with them altogether and go to a continuous flow type approach like KanBan.  Limit WIP to keep things under control, but don’t have a fixed time box at the end of which all tasks are supposed to be done.  This eliminates the problem almost entirely.  At some points in the project (releases) you need to be able to burn down all the half finished stories to get a stable release build, but this probably occurs less often than every sprint, and there are alternative approaches to achieve it using branching strategies rather than forcing your team to try to get to Zero WIP every 2-weeks (e.g. when you are ready for a release, create a new branch for any new stories, but finish all existing stories in the current branch and release it). Trying to Introduce Agile into a team with previous Bad Agile Experiences One of the agile adoption challenges somebody described, was he was in a leadership role on a team he had recently joined – lets call him Dave.  This team was currently very waterfall in their ALM process, but they were about to start on a new green-field project.  Dave wanted to use this new project as an opportunity to do things the “right way”, using an Agile methodology like Scrum, adopting TDD, automated builds, proper branching strategies, etc.  The problem he was facing is everybody else on the team had previously gone through an “Agile Adoption” that was a horrible failure.  Dave blamed this failure on the consultant brought in previously to lead this agile transition, but regardless of the reason, the team had very negative feelings towards agile, and was very resistant to trying it out again.  Dave possibly had the authority to try to force the team to adopt Agile practices, but we all know that doesn’t work very well.  What was Dave to do? Ultimately, the best advice was to question *why* did Dave want to adopt all these various practices. Rather than trying to convince his team that these were the “right way” to run a dev project, and trying to do a Big Bang approach to introducing change.  He would be better served by identifying problems the team currently faces, have a discussion with the team to get everybody to agree that specific problems existed, then have an open discussion about ways to address those problems.  This way Dave could incrementally introduce agile practices, and he doesn’t even need to identify them as “agile” practices if he doesn’t want to.  For example, when we discussed with Dave, he said probably the teams biggest problem was long periods without feedback from users, then finding out too late that the software is not going to meet their needs.  Rather than Dave jumping right to introducing Scrum and all it entails, it would be easier to get buy-in from team if he framed it as a discussion of existing problems, and brainstorming possible solutions.  And possibly most importantly, don’t try to do massive changes all at once with a team that has not bought-into those changes.  Taking an incremental approach has a greater chance of success. I see something similar in my day job all the time too.  Clients who for one reason or another claim to not be fans of agile (or not ready for agile yet).  But then they go on to ask me to help them get shorter feedback cycles, quicker delivery cycles, iterative development processes, etc.  It’s kind of funny at times, sometimes you just need to phrase the suggestions in terms they are using and avoid the word “agile”. PS – I haven’t blogged all that much over the past couple of years, but in an attempt to motivate myself, a few of us have accepted a blogger challenge.  There’s 6 of us who have all put some money into a pool, and the agreement is that we each need to blog at least once every 2-weeks.  The first 2-week period that we miss we’re eliminated.  Last person standing gets the money.  So expect at least one blog post every couple of weeks for the near future (I hope!).  And check out the blogs of the other 5 people in this blogger challenge: Steve Rogalsky: http://winnipegagilist.blogspot.ca Aaron Kowall: http://www.geekswithblogs.net/caffeinatedgeek Tyler Doerkson: http://blog.tylerdoerksen.com David Alpert: http://www.spinthemoose.com Dave White: http://www.agileramblings.com (note: site not available yet.  should be shortly or he owes me some money!)

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• Effectiveness and Efficiency

  - by Daniel Moth

  In the professional environment, i.e. at work, I am always seeking personal growth and to be challenged. The result is that my assignments, my work list, my tasks, my goals, my commitments, my [insert whatever word resonates with you] keep growing (in scope and desired impact). Which in turn means I have to keep finding new ways to deliver more value, while not falling into the trap of working more hours. To do that I continuously evaluate both my effectiveness and my efficiency. EFFECTIVENESS The first thing I check is my effectiveness: Am I doing the right things? Am I focusing too much on unimportant things? Am I spending more time doing stuff that is important to my team/org/division/business/company, or am I spending it on stuff that is important to me and that I enjoy doing? Am I valuing activities that maybe I have outgrown and should be delegated to others who are at a stage I have surpassed (in Microsoft speak: is the work I am doing level appropriate or am I still operating at the previous level)? Notice how the answers to those questions change over time and due to certain events, so I have to remind myself to revisit them frequently. Events that force me to re-examine them are: change of role, change of team/org/etc, change of direction of team/org/etc, re-org, new hires on the team that take on some of the work I did, personal promotion, change of manager... and if none of those events has occurred since the last annual review, I ask myself those at each annual review anyway. If you think you are not being effective at work, make a list of the stuff that you do and start tracking where your time goes. In parallel, have a discussion with your manager about where they think your time should go. Ultimately your time is finite and hence it is your most precious investment, don't waste it. If your management doesn't value as highly what you spend your time on, then either convince your management, or stop spending your time on it, or find different management: Lead, Follow, or get out of the way! That's my view on effectiveness. You have to fix that before moving to being efficient, or you may end up being very efficient at stuff that nobody wants you to be doing in the first place. For example, you may be spending your time writing blog posts and becoming better and faster at it all the time. If your manager thinks that is not even part of your job description, you are wasting your time to satisfy your inner desires. Nobody can help you with your effectiveness other than your management chain and your management peers - they are the judges of it. EFFICIENCY The second thing I check is my efficiency: Am I doing things right? For me, doing things right means that I deliver the same quality of work faster [than what I used to, and than my peers, and than expected of me]. The result is that I can achieve more [than what I used to, and than my peers, and than expected of me]. Notice how the efficiency goal is a more portable one. If, by whatever criteria, you think you are the best at [insert your own skill here], this can change at two events: because you have new colleagues (who are potentially better than your older ones), and it can change with a change of manager (who has potentially higher expectations). That's about it. Once you are efficient at something, you carry that with you... All you need to really be doing here is, when taking on new kinds of work that you haven't done before, try a few approaches and devise a system so that you can become efficient at this new activity too... Just keep "collecting" stuff that you are efficient at. If you think you are not being efficient at something, break it down: What are the steps you take to complete that task? How long do you spend on each step? Talk to others about what steps they take, to see if you can optimize some steps away or trade them for better steps, or just learn how to complete a step faster. Have a system for every task you take so that you can have repeatable success. That's my view on efficiency. You have to fix it so that you can free up time to do more. When you plan a route from A to B - all else being equal - you try to get there as fast as possible so why would you not want to do that with your everyday work? For example, imagine you are inefficient at processing email: You spend more time than necessary dealing with email, and you still end up with dropped email threads and with slower response times than others. How can you improve? Talk to someone that you think is good at this, understand their system (e.g. here is my email processing system) and come up with one that works for you. Parting Thoughts Are you considered, by your colleagues and manager, an effective and efficient person at your workplace? If you are, what would you change if you were asked by your management to do the job of two people? Seriously, think about that! Your immediate reaction may be "that is not possible", but it actually is. You just have to re-assess what things that were previously important will now stop being important, by discussing them with your management and reaching agreement on relative priorities. For example, stuff that was previously on your plate may now have to be delegated or dropped. Where you thought you were efficient, maybe now you have to find an even faster path to completion, perhaps keeping in mind that Perfect is the Enemy of “Good Enough”. My personal experience (from both observing others and from my own reflection) is that when folks are struggling to keep up at work it is because of two reasons: They are investing energy in stuff that they enjoy doing which the business regards as having a lower priority than a lot of other things on their plate. They are completing tasks to a level of higher quality than what is required (due to personal pride) missing the big picture which almost always mandates completing three tasks at good enough quality than knocking only one of them out of the park while the other two come in late or not at all. There is a lot of content on the web, so I strongly encourage you to use your favorite search engine to read other views on effectiveness and efficiency (Bing, Google). Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• How To Run XP Mode in VirtualBox on Windows 7 (sort of)

  - by Matthew Guay

  A few weeks ago we showed you how to run XP Mode on a Windows 7 computer without Hardware Virtualization using VMware. Some of you have been asking if it can be done in Virtual Box as well. The answer is “Yes!” and here we’ll show you how. Editor Update: Apparently there isn’t a way to activate XP Mode through VirtualBox using this method. You will however, be able to run it for 30 days. We have a new updated article on how to Install XP Mode with VirtualBox Using the VMLite Plugin.   Earlier we showed you how to run XP mode on windows 7 machines without hardware virtualization capability. Since then, a lot of you have been asking to a write up a tutorial about doing the same thing using VirtualBox.  This makes it another great way to run XP Mode if your computer does not have hardware virtualization.  Here we’ll see how to import the XP Mode from Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, or Ultimate into VirtualBox so you can run XP in it for free. Note: You need to have Windows 7 Professional or above to use XP Mode in this manner. In our tests we were able to get it to run on Home Premium as well, but you’ll be breaking Windows 7 licensing agreements. Getting Started First, download and install XP Mode (link below).  There is no need to download Virtual PC if your computer cannot run it, so just download the XP Mode from the link on the left. Install XP mode; just follow the default prompts as usual. Now, download and install VirtualBox 3.1.2 or higher(link below).  Install as normal, and simply follow the default prompts. VirtualBox may notify you that your network connection will be reset during the installation.  Press Yes to continue. During the install, you may see several popups asking you if you wish to install device drivers for USB and Network interfaces.  Simply click install, as these are needed for VirtualBox to run correctly. Setup only took a couple minutes, and doesn’t require a reboot. Setup XP Mode in VirtualBox: First we need to copy the default XP Mode so VirtualBox will not affect the original copy.  Browse to C:\Program Files\Windows XP Mode, and copy the file “Windows XP Mode base.vhd”.  Paste it in another folder of your choice, such as your Documents folder. Once you’ve copied the file, right-click on it and click Properties. Uncheck the “Read-only” box in this dialog, and then click Ok. Now, in VirtualBox, click New to create a new virtual machine. Enter the name of your virtual machine, and make sure the operating system selected is Windows XP. Choose how much memory you want to allow the virtual machine to use.  VirtualBox’ default is 192 Mb ram, but for better performance you can select 256 or 512Mb. Now, select the hard drive for the virtual machine.  Select “Use existing hard disk”, then click the folder button to choose the XP Mode virtual drive. In this window, click Add, and then browse to find the copy of XP Mode you previously made. Make sure the correct virtual drive is selected, then press Select. After selecting the VHD your screen should look like the following then click Next. Verify the settings you made are correct. If not, you can go back and make any changes. When everything looks correct click Finish. Setup XP Mode Now, in VirtualBox, click start to run XP Mode. The Windows XP in this virtual drive is not fully setup yet, so you will have to go through the setup process.   If you didn’t uncheck the “Read-only” box in the VHD properties before, you may see the following error.  If you see it, go back and check the file to makes sure it is not read-only. When you click in the virtual machine, it will capture your mouse by default.  Simply press the right Ctrl key to release your mouse so you can go back to using Windows 7.  This will only be the case during the setup process; after the Guest Additions are installed, the mouse will seamlessly move between operating systems. Now, accept the license agreement in XP.   Choose your correct locale and keyboard settings. Enter a name for your virtual XP, and an administrative password. Check the date, time, and time zone settings, and adjust them if they are incorrect.  The time and date are usually correct, but the time zone often has to be corrected. XP will now automatically finish setting up your virtual machine, and then will automatically reboot. After rebooting, select your automatic update settings. You may see a prompt to check for drivers; simply press cancel, as all the drivers we need will be installed later with the Guest Additions. Your last settings will be finalized, and finally you will see your XP desktop in VirtualBox. Please note that XP Mode may not remain activated after importing it into VirtualBox. When you activate it, use the key that is located at C:\Program Files\Windows XP Mode\key.txt.  Note: During our tests we weren’t able to get the activation to go through. We are looking into the issue and will have a revised article showing the correct way to get XP Mode in VirutalBox working correctly soon.    Now we have one final thing to install – the VirtualBox Guest Additions.  In the VirtualBox window, click “Devices” and then select “Install Guest Additions”. This should automatically launch in XP; if it doesn’t, click Start, then My Computer, and finally double-click on the CD drive which should say VirtualBox Guest Additions. Simply install with the normal presets. You can select to install an experimental 3D graphics driver if you wish to try to run games in XP in VirtualBox; however, do note that this is not fully supported and is currently a test feature. You may see a prompt informing you that the drivers have not passed Logo testing; simply press “Continue Anyway” to proceed with the installation.   When installation has completed, you will be required to reboot your virtual machine. Now, you can move your mouse directly from Windows XP to Windows 7 without pressing Ctrl. Integrating with Windows 7 Once your virtual machine is rebooted, you can integrate it with your Windows 7 desktop.  In the VirtualBox window, click Machine and then select “Seamless Mode”.   In Seamless mode you’ll have the XP Start menu and taskbar sit on top of your Windows 7 Start and Taskbar. Here we see XP running on Virtual Box in Seamless Mode. We have the old XP WordPad sitting next to the new Windows 7 version of WordPad. Another view of everything running seamlessly together on the same Windows 7 desktop. Hover the pointer over the XP taskbar to pull up the Virtual Box menu items. You can exit out of Seamless Mode from the VirtualBox menu or using “Ctrl+L”. Then you go back to having it run separately on your desktop again. Conclusion Running XP Mode in a Virtual Machine is a great way to experience the feature on computers without Hardware Virtualization capabilities. If you prefer VMware Player, then you’ll want to check out our articles on how to run XP Mode on Windows 7 machines without Hardware Virtualization, and how to create an XP Mode for Windows 7 Home Premium and Vista. Download VirtualBox Download XP Mode Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Install XP Mode with VirtualBox Using the VMLite PluginUsing Windows 7 or Vista Compatibility ModeMake Safari Stop Crashing Every 20 Seconds on Windows VistaForce Windows 7 / Vista to Boot Into Safe Mode Without Using the F8 KeyHow To Run Chrome OS in VirtualBox 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 Enable Check Box Selection in Windows 7 OnlineOCR – Free OCR Service Betting on the Blind Side, a Vanity Fair article 30 Minimal Logo Designs that Say More with Less LEGO Digital Designer – Free Create a Personal Website Quickly using Flavors.me

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• How To Run XP Mode in VirtualBox on Windows 7 (sort of)

  - by Matthew Guay

  A few weeks ago we showed you how to run XP Mode on a Windows 7 computer without Hardware Virtualization using VMware. Some of you have been asking if it can be done in Virtual Box as well. The answer is “Yes!” and here we’ll show you how. Editor Update: Apparently there isn’t a way to activate XP Mode through VirtualBox using this method. You will however, be able to run it for 30 days. We have a new updated article on how to Install XP Mode with VirtualBox Using the VMLite Plugin.   Earlier we showed you how to run XP mode on windows 7 machines without hardware virtualization capability. Since then, a lot of you have been asking to a write up a tutorial about doing the same thing using VirtualBox.  This makes it another great way to run XP Mode if your computer does not have hardware virtualization.  Here we’ll see how to import the XP Mode from Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, or Ultimate into VirtualBox so you can run XP in it for free. Note: You need to have Windows 7 Professional or above to use XP Mode in this manner. In our tests we were able to get it to run on Home Premium as well, but you’ll be breaking Windows 7 licensing agreements. Getting Started First, download and install XP Mode (link below).  There is no need to download Virtual PC if your computer cannot run it, so just download the XP Mode from the link on the left. Install XP mode; just follow the default prompts as usual. Now, download and install VirtualBox 3.1.2 or higher(link below).  Install as normal, and simply follow the default prompts. VirtualBox may notify you that your network connection will be reset during the installation.  Press Yes to continue. During the install, you may see several popups asking you if you wish to install device drivers for USB and Network interfaces.  Simply click install, as these are needed for VirtualBox to run correctly. Setup only took a couple minutes, and doesn’t require a reboot. Setup XP Mode in VirtualBox: First we need to copy the default XP Mode so VirtualBox will not affect the original copy.  Browse to C:\Program Files\Windows XP Mode, and copy the file “Windows XP Mode base.vhd”.  Paste it in another folder of your choice, such as your Documents folder. Once you’ve copied the file, right-click on it and click Properties. Uncheck the “Read-only” box in this dialog, and then click Ok. Now, in VirtualBox, click New to create a new virtual machine. Enter the name of your virtual machine, and make sure the operating system selected is Windows XP. Choose how much memory you want to allow the virtual machine to use.  VirtualBox’ default is 192 Mb ram, but for better performance you can select 256 or 512Mb. Now, select the hard drive for the virtual machine.  Select “Use existing hard disk”, then click the folder button to choose the XP Mode virtual drive. In this window, click Add, and then browse to find the copy of XP Mode you previously made. Make sure the correct virtual drive is selected, then press Select. After selecting the VHD your screen should look like the following then click Next. Verify the settings you made are correct. If not, you can go back and make any changes. When everything looks correct click Finish. Setup XP Mode Now, in VirtualBox, click start to run XP Mode. The Windows XP in this virtual drive is not fully setup yet, so you will have to go through the setup process.   If you didn’t uncheck the “Read-only” box in the VHD properties before, you may see the following error.  If you see it, go back and check the file to makes sure it is not read-only. When you click in the virtual machine, it will capture your mouse by default.  Simply press the right Ctrl key to release your mouse so you can go back to using Windows 7.  This will only be the case during the setup process; after the Guest Additions are installed, the mouse will seamlessly move between operating systems. Now, accept the license agreement in XP.   Choose your correct locale and keyboard settings. Enter a name for your virtual XP, and an administrative password. Check the date, time, and time zone settings, and adjust them if they are incorrect.  The time and date are usually correct, but the time zone often has to be corrected. XP will now automatically finish setting up your virtual machine, and then will automatically reboot. After rebooting, select your automatic update settings. You may see a prompt to check for drivers; simply press cancel, as all the drivers we need will be installed later with the Guest Additions. Your last settings will be finalized, and finally you will see your XP desktop in VirtualBox. Please note that XP Mode may not remain activated after importing it into VirtualBox. When you activate it, use the key that is located at C:\Program Files\Windows XP Mode\key.txt.  Note: During our tests we weren’t able to get the activation to go through. We are looking into the issue and will have a revised article showing the correct way to get XP Mode in VirutalBox working correctly soon.    Now we have one final thing to install – the VirtualBox Guest Additions.  In the VirtualBox window, click “Devices” and then select “Install Guest Additions”. This should automatically launch in XP; if it doesn’t, click Start, then My Computer, and finally double-click on the CD drive which should say VirtualBox Guest Additions. Simply install with the normal presets. You can select to install an experimental 3D graphics driver if you wish to try to run games in XP in VirtualBox; however, do note that this is not fully supported and is currently a test feature. You may see a prompt informing you that the drivers have not passed Logo testing; simply press “Continue Anyway” to proceed with the installation.   When installation has completed, you will be required to reboot your virtual machine. Now, you can move your mouse directly from Windows XP to Windows 7 without pressing Ctrl. Integrating with Windows 7 Once your virtual machine is rebooted, you can integrate it with your Windows 7 desktop.  In the VirtualBox window, click Machine and then select “Seamless Mode”.   In Seamless mode you’ll have the XP Start menu and taskbar sit on top of your Windows 7 Start and Taskbar. Here we see XP running on Virtual Box in Seamless Mode. We have the old XP WordPad sitting next to the new Windows 7 version of WordPad. Another view of everything running seamlessly together on the same Windows 7 desktop. Hover the pointer over the XP taskbar to pull up the Virtual Box menu items. You can exit out of Seamless Mode from the VirtualBox menu or using “Ctrl+L”. Then you go back to having it run separately on your desktop again. Conclusion Running XP Mode in a Virtual Machine is a great way to experience the feature on computers without Hardware Virtualization capabilities. If you prefer VMware Player, then you’ll want to check out our articles on how to run XP Mode on Windows 7 machines without Hardware Virtualization, and how to create an XP Mode for Windows 7 Home Premium and Vista. Download VirtualBox Download XP Mode Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Install XP Mode with VirtualBox Using the VMLite PluginUsing Windows 7 or Vista Compatibility ModeMake Safari Stop Crashing Every 20 Seconds on Windows VistaForce Windows 7 / Vista to Boot Into Safe Mode Without Using the F8 KeyHow To Run Chrome OS in VirtualBox 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 Enable Check Box Selection in Windows 7 OnlineOCR – Free OCR Service Betting on the Blind Side, a Vanity Fair article 30 Minimal Logo Designs that Say More with Less LEGO Digital Designer – Free Create a Personal Website Quickly using Flavors.me

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• How to Upgrade Your Netbook to Windows 7 Home Premium

  - by Matthew Guay

  Would you like more features and flash in Windows on your netbook?  Here’s how you can easily upgrade your netbook to Windows 7 Home Premium the easy way. Most new netbooks today ship with Windows 7 Starter, which is the cheapest edition of Windows 7.  It is fine for many computing tasks, and will run all your favorite programs great, but it lacks many customization, multimedia, and business features found in higher editions.  Here we’ll show you how you can quickly upgrade your netbook to more full-featured edition of Windows 7 using Windows Anytime Upgrade.  Also, if you want to upgrade your laptop or desktop to another edition of Windows 7, say Professional, you can follow these same steps to upgrade it, too. Please note: This is only for computers already running Windows 7.  If your netbook is running XP or Vista, you will have to run a traditional upgrade to install Windows 7. Upgrade Advisor First, let’s make sure your netbook can support the extra features, such as Aero Glass, in Windows 7 Home Premium.  Most modern netbooks that ship with Windows 7 Starter can run the advanced features in Windows 7 Home Premium, but let’s check just in case.  Download the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor (link below), and install as normal. Once it’s installed, run it and click Start Check.   Make sure you’re connected to the internet before you run the check, or otherwise you may see this error message.  If you see it, click Ok and then connect to the internet and start the check again. It will now scan all of your programs and hardware to make sure they’re compatible with Windows 7.  Since you’re already running Windows 7 Starter, it will also tell you if your computer will support the features in other editions of Windows 7. After a few moments, the Upgrade Advisor will show you want it found.  Here we see that our netbook, a Samsung N150, can be upgraded to Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional, or Ultimate. We also see that we had one issue, but this was because a driver we had installed was not recognized.  Click “See all system requirements” to see what your netbook can do with the new edition. This shows you which of the requirements, including support for Windows Aero, your netbook meets.  Here our netbook supports Aero, so we’re ready to go upgrade. For more, check out our article on how to make sure your computer can run Windows 7 with Upgrade Advisor. Upgrade with Anytime Upgrade Now, we’re ready to upgrade our netbook to Windows 7 Home Premium.  Enter “Anytime Upgrade” in the Start menu search,and select Windows Anytime Upgrade. Windows Anytime Upgrade lets you upgrade using product key you already have or one you purchase during the upgrade process.  And, it installs without any downloads or Windows disks, so it works great even for netbooks without DVD drives. Anytime Upgrades are cheaper than a standard upgrade, and for a limited time, select retailers in the US are offering Anytime Upgrades to Windows 7 Home Premium for only $49.99 if purchased with a new netbook.  If you already have a netbook running Windows 7 Starter, you can either purchase an Anytime Upgrade package at a retail store or purchase a key online during the upgrade process for $79.95.  Or, if you have a standard Windows 7 product key (full or upgrade), you can use it in Anytime upgrade.  This is especially nice if you can purchase Windows 7 cheaper through your school, university, or office. Purchase an upgrade online To purchase an upgrade online, click “Go online to choose the edition of Windows 7 that’s best for you”.   Here you can see a comparison of the features of each edition of Windows 7.  Note that you can upgrade to either Home Premium, Professional, or Ultimate.  We chose home Premium because it has most of the features that home users want, including Media Center and Aero Glass effects.  Also note that the price of each upgrade is cheaper than the respective upgrade from Windows XP or Vista.  Click buy under the edition you want.   Enter your billing information, then your payment information.  Once you confirm your purchase, you will directly be taken to the Upgrade screen.  Make sure to save your receipt, as you will need the product key if you ever need to reinstall Windows on your computer. Upgrade with an existing product key If you purchased an Anytime Upgrade kit from a retailer, or already have a Full or Upgrade key for another edition of Windows 7, choose “Enter an upgrade key”. Enter your product key, and click Next.  If you purchased an Anytime Upgrade kit, the product key will be located on the inside of the case on a yellow sticker. The key will be verified as a valid key, and Anytime Upgrade will automatically choose the correct edition of Windows 7 based on your product key.  Click Next when this is finished. Continuing the Upgrade process Whether you entered a key or purchased a key online, the process is the same from here on.  Click “I accept” to accept the license agreement. Now, you’re ready to install your upgrade.  Make sure to save all open files and close any programs, and then click Upgrade. The upgrade only takes about 10 minutes in our experience but your mileage may vary.  Any available Microsoft updates, including ones for Office, Security Essentials, and other products, will be installed before the upgrade takes place. After a couple minutes, your computer will automatically reboot and finish the installation.  It will then reboot once more, and your computer will be ready to use!  Welcome to your new edition of Windows 7! Here’s a before and after shot of our desktop.  When you do an Anytime Upgrade, all of your programs, files, and settings will be just as they were before you upgraded.  The only change we noticed was that our pinned taskbar icons were slightly rearranged to the default order of Internet Explorer, Explorer, and Media Player.  Here’s a shot of our desktop before the upgrade.  Notice that all of our pinned programs and desktop icons are still there, as well as our taskbar customization (we are using small icons on the taskbar instead of the default large icons). Before, with the Windows 7 Starter background and the Aero Basic theme: And after, with Aero Glass and the more colorful default Windows 7 background.   All of the features of Windows 7 Home Premium are now ready to use.  The Aero theme was activate by default, but you can now customize your netbook theme, background, and more with the Personalization pane.  To open it, right-click on your desktop and select Personalize. You can also now use Windows Media Center, and can play-back DVD movies using an external drive. One of our favorite tools, the Snipping Tool, is also now available for easy screenshots and clips. Activating you new edition of Windows 7 You will still need to activate your new edition of Windows 7.  To do this right away, open the start menu, right-click on Computer, and select Properties.   Scroll to the bottom, and click “Activate Windows Now”. Make sure you’re connected to the internet, and then select “Activate Windows online now”. Activation may take a few minutes, depending on your internet connection speed. When it is done, the Activation wizard will let you know that Windows is activated and genuine.  Your upgrade is all finished! Conclusion Windows Anytime Upgrade makes it easy, and somewhat cheaper, to upgrade to another edition of Windows 7.  It’s useful for desktop and laptop owners who want to upgrade to Professional or Ultimate, but many more netbook owners will want to upgrade from Starter to Home Premium or another edition.  Links Download the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor Windows Team Blog: Anytime Upgrade Special with new PC purchase Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How To Upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 Home Premium EditionAnother Blog You Should Subscribe ToMysticgeek Blog: Turn Vista Home Premium Into Ultimate (Part 3) – Shadow CopyUpgrade Ubuntu from Breezy to DapperHow to Upgrade the Windows 7 RC to RTM (Final Release) 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 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 Yes, it’s Patch Tuesday

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• Run Windows in Ubuntu with VMware Player

  - by Matthew Guay

  Are you an enthusiast who loves their Ubuntu Linux experience but still needs to use Windows programs?  Here’s how you can get the full Windows experience on Ubuntu with the free VMware Player. Linux has become increasingly consumer friendly, but still, the wide majority of commercial software is only available for Windows and Macs.  Dual-booting between Windows and Linux has been a popular option for years, but this is a frustrating solution since you have to reboot into the other operating system each time you want to run a specific application.  With virtualization, you’ll never have to make this tradeoff.  VMware Player makes it quick and easy to install any edition of Windows in a virtual machine.  With VMware’s great integration tools, you can copy and paste between your Linux and Windows programs and even run native Windows applications side-by-side with Linux ones. Getting Started Download the latest version of VMware Player for Linux, and select either the 32-bit or 64-bit version, depending on your system.  VMware Player is a free download, but requires registration.  Sign in with your VMware account, or create a new one if you don’t already have one. VMware Player is fairly easy to install on Linux, but you will need to start out the installation from the terminal.  First, enter the following to make sure the installer is marked as executable, substituting version/build_number for the version number on the end of the file you downloaded. chmod +x ./VMware-Player-version/build_number.bundle Then, enter the following to start the install, again substituting your version number: gksudo bash ./VMware-Player-version/build_number.bundle You may have to enter your administrator password to start the installation, and then the VMware Player graphical installer will open.  Choose whether you want to check for product updates and submit usage data to VMware, and then proceed with the install as normal. VMware Player installed in only a few minutes in our tests, and was immediately ready to run, no reboot required.  You can now launch it from your Ubuntu menu: click Applications \ System Tools \ VMware Player. You’ll need to accept the license agreement the first time you run it. Welcome to VMware Player!  Now you can create new virtual machines and run pre-built ones on your Ubuntu desktop. Install Windows in VMware Player on Ubuntu Now that you’ve got VMware setup, it’s time to put it to work.  Click the Create a New Virtual Machine as above to start making a Windows virtual machine. In the dialog that opens, select your installer disk or ISO image file that you want to install Windows from.  In this example, we’re select a Windows 7 ISO.  VMware will automatically detect the operating system on the disk or image.  Click Next to continue. Enter your Windows product key, select the edition of Windows to install, and enter your name and password. You can leave the product key field blank and enter it later.  VMware will ask if you want to continue without a product key, so just click Yes to continue. Now enter a name for your virtual machine and select where you want to save it.  Note: This will take up at least 15Gb of space on your hard drive during the install, so make sure to save it on a drive with sufficient storage space. You can choose how large you want your virtual hard drive to be; the default is 40Gb, but you can choose a different size if you wish.  The entire amount will not be used up on your hard drive initially, but the virtual drive will increase in size up to your maximum as you add files.  Additionally, you can choose if you want the virtual disk stored as a single file or as multiple files.  You will see the best performance by keeping the virtual disk as one file, but the virtual machine will be more portable if it is broken into smaller files, so choose the option that will work best for your needs. Finally, review your settings, and if everything looks good, click Finish to create the virtual machine. VMware will take over now, and install Windows without any further input using its Easy Install.  This is one of VMware’s best features, and is the main reason we find it the easiest desktop virtualization solution to use.   Installing VMware Tools VMware Player doesn’t include the VMware Tools by default; instead, it automatically downloads them for the operating system you’re installing.  Once you’ve downloaded them, it will use those tools anytime you install that OS.  If this is your first Windows virtual machine to install, you may be prompted to download and install them while Windows is installing.  Click Download and Install so your Easy Install will finish successfully. VMware will then download and install the tools.  You may need to enter your administrative password to complete the install. Other than this, you can leave your Windows install unattended; VMware will get everything installed and running on its own. Our test setup took about 30 minutes, and when it was done we were greeted with the Windows desktop ready to use, complete with drivers and the VMware tools.  The only thing missing was the Aero glass feature.  VMware Player is supposed to support the Aero glass effects in virtual machines, and although this works every time when we use VMware Player on Windows, we could not get it to work in Linux.  Other than that, Windows is fully ready to use.  You can copy and paste text, images, or files between Ubuntu and Windows, or simply drag-and-drop files between the two. Unity Mode Using Windows in a window is awkward, and makes your Windows programs feel out of place and hard to use.  This is where Unity mode comes in.  Click Virtual Machine in VMware’s menu, and select Enter Unity. Your Windows desktop will now disappear, and you’ll see a new Windows menu underneath your Ubuntu menu.  This works the same as your Windows Start Menu, and you can open your Windows applications and files directly from it. By default, programs from Windows will have a colored border and a VMware badge in the corner.  You can turn this off from the VMware settings pane.  Click Virtual Machine in VMware’s menu and select Virtual Machine Settings.  Select Unity under the Options tab, and uncheck the Show borders and Show badges boxes if you don’t want them. Unity makes your Windows programs feel at home in Ubuntu.  Here we have Word 2010 and IE8 open beside the Ubuntu Help application.  Notice that the Windows applications show up in the taskbar on the bottom just like the Linux programs.  If you’re using the Compiz graphics effects in Ubuntu, your Windows programs will use them too, including the popular wobbly windows effect. You can switch back to running Windows inside VMware Player’s window by clicking the Exit Unity button in the VMware window. Now, whenever you want to run Windows applications in Linux, you can quickly launch it from VMware Player. Conclusion VMware Player is a great way to run Windows on your Linux computer.  It makes it extremely easy to get Windows installed and running, lets you run your Windows programs seamlessly alongside your Linux ones.  VMware products work great in our experience, and VMware Player on Linux was no exception. If you’re a Windows user and you’d like to run Ubuntu on Windows, check out our article on how to Run Ubuntu in Windows with VMware Player. Link Download VMware Player 3 (Registration required) Download Windows 7 Enterprise 90-day trial Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Enable Copy and Paste from Ubuntu VMware GuestInstall VMware Tools on Ubuntu Edgy EftRestart the Ubuntu Gnome User Interface QuicklyHow to Add a Program to the Ubuntu Startup List (After Login)How To Run Ubuntu in Windows 7 with VMware 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 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 Get a free copy of WinUtilities Pro 2010 World Cup Schedule Boot Snooze – Reboot and then Standby or Hibernate Customize Everything Related to Dates, Times, Currency and Measurement in Windows 7 Google Earth replacement Icon (Icons we like) Build Great Charts in Excel with Chart Advisor

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• Bug Triage

  In this blog post brain dump, I'll attempt to describe the process my team tries to follow when dealing with new bug reports (specifically, code defect reports). This is not official Microsoft policy, just the way we do things… if you do things differently and want to share, you can do so at the bottom in the comments (or on your blog).Feature Triage TeamA subset of the feature crew, the triage team (which has representations from the PM, Dev and QA disciplines), looks at all unassigned bugs at regular intervals. This can be weekly or daily (or other frequency) dependent on which part of the product cycle we are in and what the untriaged bug load looks like. They discuss each bug considering the evidence and make a decision of whether the bug goes from Not Yet Assigned to Assigned (plus the name of the DEV to fix this) or whether it goes from Active to Resolved (which means it gets assigned back to the requestor for closure or further debate if they were not present at the triage meeting). Close to critical milestones, the feature triage team needs to further justify bugs they take to additional higher-level triage teams.Bug Opened = Not Yet AssignedSomeone (typically an SDET from the QA team) creates the bug item (e.g. in TFS), ensuring they populate all the relevant fields including: Title, Description, Repro Steps (including the Actual Result at the end of the steps), attachments of code and/or screenshots, Build number that they observed the issue in, regression details if applicable, how it was found, if a test case exists or needs to be created etc. They also indicate their opinion on the Priority and Severity. The bug status is left as Not Yet Assigned."Issue" versus "Fix for issue"The solution to some bugs is easy to determine, e.g. "bug: the column name is misspelled". Obviously the fix is to correct the spelling – still, the triage team should be explicit and enter the correct spelling in the bug's Description. Note that a bad bug name here would be "bug: fix the spelling of the column" (it describes the solution, rather than the problem).Other solutions are trickier to establish, e.g. "bug: the column header is not accessible (can only be clicked on with the mouse, not reached via keyboard)". What is the correct solution here? The last thing to do is leave this undetermined and just assign it to a developer. The solution has to be entered in the description. Behind this type of a bug usually hides a spec defect or a new feature request.The person opening the bug should focus on describing the issue, rather than the solution. The person indicates what the fix is in their opinion by stating the Expected Result (immediately after stating the Actual Result). If they have a complex suggested solution, that should be split out in a separate part, but the triage team has the final say before assigning it. If the solution is lengthy/complicated to describe, the bug can be assigned to the PM. Note: the strict interpretation suggests that any bug with no clear, obvious solution is always a hole in the spec and should always go to the PM. This also ensures the spec gets updated.Not Yet Assigned - Not Yet Assigned (on someone else's plate)If the bug is observed in our feature, but the cause is actually another team, we change the Area Path (which is the way we identify teams in TFS) and leave it as Not Yet Assigned. The triage team may add more comments as appropriate including potentially changing the repro steps. In some cases, we may even resolve the bug in our area path and open a new bug in the area path of the other team.Even though there is no action on a dev on the team, the bug still needs to be tracked. One way of doing this is to implement some notification system that informs the team when the tracked bug changed status; another way is to occasionally run a global query (against all area paths) for bugs that have been opened by a member of the team and follow up with the current owners for stale bugs.Not Yet Assigned - ResolvedThis state transition can only be made by the Feature Triage Team.0. Sometimes the bug description is not clear and in that case it gets Resolved as More Information Needed, so the original requestor can provide it.After understanding what the bug item is about, the first decision is to determine whether it needs to go to a dev.1. If it is a known bug, it gets resolved as "Duplicate" and linked to the existing bug.2. If it is "By Design" it gets resolved as such, indicating that the triage team does not think this is a bug.3. If the bug does not repro on latest bits, it is resolved as "No Repro"4. The most painful: If it is decided that we cannot fix it for this release it gets resolved as "Postponed" or "Won't Fix". The former is typically due to resources and time constraints, while the latter is due to deciding that it is not important enough to consume our resources in any release (yes, not all bugs must be fixed!). For both cases, there are other factors that contribute to the decision such as: existence of a reasonable workaround, frequency we expect users to encounter the issue, dependencies on other team to offer a solution, whether it breaks a core scenario, whether it prohibits customer feedback on a major feature, is it a regression from a previous release, impact of the fix on other partner teams (e.g. User Education, User Experience, Localization/Globalization), whether this is the right fix, does the fix impact performance goals, and last but not least, severity of bug (e.g. loss of customer data, security threat, crash, hang). The bar for fixing a bug goes up as the release date approaches. The triage team becomes hardnosed about which bugs to take, while the developers are busy resolving assigned bugs thus everyone drives for Zero Bug Bounce (ZBB). ZBB is when you have 0 active bugs older than 48 hours.Not Yet Assigned - AssignedIf the bug is something we decide to fix in this release and the solution is known, then it is assigned to a DEV. This is either the developer that will do the work, or a Lead that can further assign it to one of his developer team based on a load balancing algorithm of their choosing.Sometimes, the triage team needs the dev to do some investigation work before deciding whether to take the fix; similarly, the checkin for the fix may be gated on code review by the triage team. In these cases, these instructions are provided in the comments section of the bug and when the developer is done they notify the triage team for final decision.Additionally, a Priority and Severity (from 0 to 4) has to be entered, e.g. a P0 means "drop anything you are doing and fix this now" whereas a P4 is something you get to after all P0,1,2,3 bugs are fixed.From a testing perspective, if the bug was found through ad-hoc testing or an external team, the decision is made whether test cases should be added to avoid future regressions. This is communicated to the QA team.Assigned - ResolvedWhen the developer receives the bug (they should be checking daily for new bugs on their plate looking at bugs in order of priority and from older to newer) they can send it back to triage if the information is not clear. Otherwise, they investigate the bug, setting the Sub Status to "Investigating"; if they cannot make progress, they set the Sub Status to "Blocked" and discuss this with triage or whoever else can help them get unblocked. Once they are unblocked, they set the Sub Status to "Working on Solution"; once they are code complete they send a code review request, setting the Sub Status to "Fix Available". After the iterative code review process is over and everyone is happy with the fix, the developer checks it in and changes the state of the bug from Active (and Assigned to them) to Resolved (and Assigned to someone else).The developer needs to ensure that when the status is changed to Resolved that it is assigned to a QA person. For example, maybe the PM opened the bug, but it should be a QA person that will verify the fix - the developer needs to manually change the assignee in that case. Typically the QA person will send an email to the original requestor notifying them that the fix is verified.Resolved - ??In all cases above, note that the final state was Resolved. What happens after that? The final step should be Closed. The bug is closed once the QA person verifying the fix is happy with it. If the person is not happy, then they change the state from Resolved to Active, thus sending it back to the developer. If the developer and QA person cannot reach agreement, then triage can be brought into it. An easy way to do that is change the status back to Not Yet Assigned with appropriate comments so the triage team can re-review.It is important to note that only QA can close a bug. That means that if the opener of the bug was a PM, when the bug gets resolved by the dev it may land on the PM's plate and after a quick review, the PM would re-assign to an SDET, which is the only role that can close bugs. One exception to this is if the person that filed the bug is external: in that case, we leave it Resolved and assigned to them and also send them a notification that they need to verify the fix. Another exception is if specialized developer knowledge is needed for verifying the bug fix (e.g. it was a refactoring suggestion bug typically not observable by the user) in which case it is fine to have a developer verify the fix, and ideally a different developer to the one that opened the bug.Other links on bug triageA quick search reveals that others have talked about this subject, e.g. here, here, here, here and here.Your take?If you have other best practices your team uses to deal with incoming bug reports, feel free to share in the comments below or on your blog. Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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• CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server

  - by The Geek

  Overview CloudBerry Online Backup version 1.5 is a front end application for Amazon S3 storage for backing up your Windows Home Server data. It makes backing up your essential data to Amazon S3 an easy process in the event the disaster strikes. Installation You install the Cloudberry Addin as you do for any addins for Windows Home Server. On a PC on your network, browse to the shared folders on your server and open the Add-Ins folder and copy over WHS_CloudBerryOnlineBackupSetup_v1.5.0.81S3o.msi (link below), then close out of the folder. Next launch the Windows Home Server Console, click Settings, then Add-Ins. Click on the Available tab and click the Install button. It installs very quickly, and when you get the Installation Succeeded dialog click OK. You will lose connection through the Console, just click OK, then reconnect. After reconnecting, you’ll see CloudBerry Backup has been installed, and you can begin using it. You can setup a backup plan right away or find out what’s new with version 1.5. Amazon S3 Account If you don’t already have an Amazon S3 account, you’ll be prompted to create a new one. Click on the Create an account hyperlink, which takes you to the Amazon S3 page where you can sign up. After reviewing the functionality of Amazon S3, click on the Sign Up for Amazon S3 button. Enter in your contact information and accept the Amazon Web Services Customer Agreement. You’re then shown their pricing for storage plans. The amount of storage space you use will depend on your needs. It’s relatively cheap for smaller amounts of data. Just keep in mind the more data you store and download, the more S3 is going to cost. Note: Amazon S3 is introducing Reduced Redundancy Storage which will lower the cost of the data stored on S3. CloudBerry 1.5 will support this new feature. You can find out more about this new pricing structure. Note: Keep in mind that after you first sign up for an Amazon S3 account, it can take up to 24 hours to be authorized. In fact, you may want to sign up for the S3 account before installing the Add-In. After you sign up for your S3 Account, you’ll be given access credentials which you can enter in and create a Storage Bucket name. Features & Use CloudBerry is wizard driven, straight-forward and easy to use. Here we take a look at creating a backup plan. To begin, click on the Setup Backup Plan button to kick off the wizard. Select your backup mode based on the amount of features you want. In our example we’re going to select Advanced Mode as it offers more features than Simple Mode. Select your backup storage account or create a new one. You can select a default account by checking Use currently selected account as default. Now you can go through and select the files and folders you want to backup from your home server. Check the box Show physical drives to get more of a selection of files and folders. This also allows you to backup files from your data drive as well. It has full support for drive extenders so you can backup your shares as well. The cool thing about Cloudberry is it allows you to drill down specific files and folders unlike other WHS backup utilities. Next you can use advanced filters to specify files and/or folders to skip if you want. There are compression and encryption options as well. This will save storage space, bandwidth, and keep your data secure. Purge Options allow you to customize options for getting rid of older files. You can also select the option to delete files from the S3 service that have been deleted locally. Be careful with this option however, as you won’t be able to restore files if you delete them locally. You have some nice scheduling options from running backups manually, specific date and time, or recurring daily, weekly or monthly. Receive email notifications in all cases or when a backup fails. This is a good option so you know if things were successful or something failed, and you need to back it up manually. Email notifications… Give your plan a name… Then if the summary page looks good you can continue, or still go back at this point if something doesn’t look correct and needs adjusting. That’s it! You’re ready to go, and you have an option to start your first backup right away. After you’ve created a backup plan, you can go in and edit, delete, view history, or restore files. Restoring Files using CloudBerry To restore data from your backups kick off the Restore Wizard and select the backup to restore from. You can select the last backup, a specific point in time, or manually browse through the files. Browse through the directory and select the files you need to restore. Choose the destination to restore the files to. You can select from the original location, a specific location, to overwrite existing files, or set the location as the default for future restores. If the files are encrypted, enter in the correct passwords. If the summary looks good, click on Next to start the restore process. You’ll be shown a progress bar at the bottom of the screen while the files are restored. After the process has completed, close out of the Restore Wizard. In this example we restored a couple of music files to the desktop of Windows Home Server… But as shown above you can save them to the original location, other network locations, or WHS shared folders. This can make it a lot easier to keep track of files you’ve restored. You can also access different options for CloudBerry by clicking Settings in WHS Console then CloudBerry Backup. Here you can set up a new storage account, check for updates, app options, Diagnostics, and send feedback. Under Options there are several settings you can tweak to get the best experience for your WHS backups. CloudBerry Web Interface Another nice feature is the CloudBerry Web Interface so you can access your data from anywhere you have an Internet connection. To check it out in WHS Console, click on the Backup Web Interface link…you’ll probably want to bookmark the link in your favorite browser. Note: This feature is still in beta and at the time of this review, the Web Interface wasn’t up and running so we weren’t able to test it out. Performance The Cloudberry app works very well through the Windows Home Server Console. The amount of time it takes to backup or restore your data will depend on the speed of your Internet connection and size of the files. In our tests, backing up 1GB of data to the Amazon S3 account took around an hour, but we were running it on a DSL with limited upload speeds so your mileage will vary. Product Support In our experience, the team at CloudBerry offered great support in a timely manner when contacting them. You can fill out a help request through a form on their website and they also have a community forum. Conclusion We were very pleased with CloudBerry Online Backup for WHS. It’s wizard driven interface makes it extremely easy to use, and offers comprehensive backup choices for your Amazon S3 account. CloudBerry will only backup files that have been modified, so if files haven’t been changed, they won’t be backed up again.They offer a free 15 day trial and is $29.99 after that for a full license. Once you buy the app you own it, and charges to your S3 account will vary depending on the amount of data you upload. If you’re looking for an effective and easy to use front end application to backup your Windows Home Server data to your Amazon S3 account, CloudBerry is a recommended affordable choice. Download CloudBerry for Windows Home Server Sign Up For Amazon S3 Account Rating Installation: 9 Ease of Use: 8 Features: 8 Performance: 8 Product Support: 8 Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Restore Files from Backups on Windows Home ServerGMedia Blog: Setting Up a Windows Home ServerBackup Windows Home Server Folders to an External Hard DriveBackup Your Windows Home Server Off-Site with Asus WebstorageRemove a Network Computer from Windows Home Server 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 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup Sculptris 1.0, 3D Drawing app AceStock, a Tiny Desktop Quote Monitor Gmail Button Addon (Firefox) Hyperwords addon (Firefox) Backup Outlook 2010 Daily Motivator (Firefox)

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• Oracle WebCenter Partner Program

  - by kellsey.ruppel

  In competitive marketplaces, your company needs to quickly respond to changes and new trends, in order to open opportunities and build long-term growth. Oracle has a variety of next-generation services, solutions and resources that will leverage the differentiators in your offerings. Name your partnering needs: Oracle has the answer. This week we’d like to focus on Partners and the value your organization can gain from working with the Oracle PartnerNetwork. The Oracle PartnerNetwork will empower your company with exceptional resources to distinguish your offerings from the competition, seize opportunities, and increase your sales. We’re happy to welcome Christine Kungl, and Brian Buzzell, from Oracle’s World Wide Alliances & Channels (WWA&C) WebCenter Partner Enablement team, as today’s guests on the Oracle WebCenter blog. Q: What is the Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN)?A: Christine: Oracle’s PartnerNetwork (OPN) is a collaborative partnership which allows registered companies specific added value resources to help differentiate themselves from their competition. Through OPN programs it provides companies the ability to seize and target opportunities, educate and train their teams, and leverage unparalleled opportunity given Oracle’s large market footprint. OPN’s multi-level programs are targeted at different levels allowing companies to grow and evolve with Oracle based on their business needs.  As part of their OPN memberships partners are encouraged to become OPN Specialized allowing those partners additional differentiation in Oracle’s Partner Network Community.  Q: What is an OPN Specialization and what resources are available for Specialized Partners?A: Brian: Oracle wanted a better way for our partners to differentiate their special skills and expertise, as well a more effective way to communicate that difference to customers.  Oracle’s expanding product portfolio demanded that we be able to identify partners with significant product knowledge—those who had made an investment in Oracle and a continuing commitment to deliver Oracle solutions. And with more than 30,000 Oracle partners around the world, Oracle needed a way for our customers to choose the right partner for their business. So how did Oracle meet this need? With the new partner program:  Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Specialized. In this new program, Oracle partners are: Specialized :  Differentiating themselves from the competition with expertise that set them apart Recognized:  Being acknowledged for investing in becoming Oracle experts in specialized areas. Preferred :  Connecting with potential customers who are seeking  value-added solutions for their business OPN Specialized provides all partners with educational opportunities, training, and tools specially designed to build competency and grow business.  Partners can serve their customers better through key resources:OPN Specialized Knowledge Zones – Located on the updated and enhanced OPN portal— provide a single point of entry for all education and training information for Oracle partners. Enablement 2.0 Resources —Enablement 2.0 helps Oracle partners build their competencies and skills through a variety of educational opportunities and expanded training choices. These resources include: Enablement 2.0 “Boot camps” provide three-tiered learning levels that help jump-start partner training The role-based training covers Oracle’s application and technology products and offers a combination of classroom lectures, hands-on lab exercises, and case studies. Enablement 2.0 Interactive guided learning paths (GLPs) with recommendations on how to achieve specialization Upgraded partner solution kits Enhanced, specialized business centers available 24/7 around the globe on the OPN portal OPN Competency Center—Tracking ProgressThe OPN Competency Center keeps track as a partner applies for and achieves specialization in selected areas. You start with an assessment that compares your organization’s current skills and experience with the requirements for specialization in the area you have chosen. The OPN Competency Center then provides a roadmap that itemizes the skills and the knowledge you need to earn specialized status. In summary, OPN Specialization not only includes key training resources but a way to track and show progression for your partner organization. Q: What is are the OPN Membership Levels and what are the benefits?A:  Christine: The base OPN membership levels are: Remarketer: At the Remarketer level, retailers can choose to resell select Oracle products with the backing of authorized, regionally located, value-added distributors (VADs). The Remarketer level has no fees and no partner agreement with Oracle, but does offer online training and sales tools through the OPN portal.Program Details: RemarketerSilver Level: The Silver level is for Oracle partners who are focused on reselling and developing business with products ordered through the Oracle 1-Click Ordering Program. The Silver level provides a cost-effective, yet scalable way for partners to start an OPN Specialized membership and offers a substantial set of benefits that lets partners increase their competitive positioning. Program Details: SilverGold Level: Gold-level partners have the ability to specialize, helping them grow their business and create differentiation in the marketplace. Oracle partners at the Gold level can develop, sell, or implement the full stack of Oracle solutions and can apply to resell Oracle Applications.Program Details: GoldPlatinum Level: The Platinum level is for Oracle partners who want the highest level of benefits and are committed to reaching a minimum of five specializations. Platinum partners are recognized for their expertise in a broad range of products and technology, and receive dedicated support from Oracle.Program Details: PlatinumIn addition we recently introduced a new level:Diamond Level: This level is the most prestigious level of OPN Specialized. It allows companies to differentiate further because of their focused depth and breadth of their expertise. Program Details: DiamondSo as you can see there are various levels cost effective ways that Partners can get assistance, differentiation through OPN membership. Q: What role does the Oracle's World Wide Alliances & Channels (WWA&C), Partner Enablement teams and the WebCenter Community play?  A: Brian: Oracle’s WWA&C teams are responsible for manage relationships, educating their teams, creating go-to-market solutions and fostering communities for Oracle partners worldwide.  The WebCenter Partner Enablement Middleware Team is tasked to create, manage and distribute Specialization resources for the WebCenter Partner community. Q: What WebCenter Specializations are currently available?A: Christine:  As of now here are the following WebCenter Specializations and their availability: Oracle WebCenter Portal Specialization (Oracle WebCenter Portal): Available NowThe Oracle WebCenter Specialization provides insight into the following products: WebCenter Services, WebCenter Spaces, and WebLogic Portal.Oracle WebCenter Specialized Partners can efficiently use Oracle WebCenter products to create social applications, enterprise portals, communities, composite applications, and Internet or intranet Web sites on a standards-based, service-oriented architecture (SOA). The suite combines the development of rich internet applications; a multi-channel portal framework; and a suite of horizontal WebCenter applications, which provide content, presence, and social networking capabilities to create a highly interactive user experience. Oracle WebCenter Content Specialization: Available NowThe Oracle WebCenter Content Specialization provides insight into the following products; Universal Content Management, WebCenter Records Management, WebCenter Imaging, WebCenter Distributed Capture, and WebCenter Capture.Oracle WebCenter Content Specialized Partners can efficiently build content-rich business applications, reuse content, and integrate hundreds of content services with other business applications. This allows our customers to decrease costs, automate processes, reduce resource bottlenecks, share content effectively, minimize the number of lost documents, and better manage risk. Oracle WebCenter Sites Specialization: Available Q1 2012Oracle WebCenter Sites is part of the broader Oracle WebCenter platform that provides organizations with a complete customer experience management solution.  Partners that align with the new Oracle WebCenter Sites platform allow their customers organizations to: Leverage customer information from all channels and systems Manage interactions across all channels Unify commerce, merchandising, marketing, and service across all channels Provide personalized, choreographed consumer journeys across all channels Integrate order orchestration, supply chain management and order fulfillment Q: What criteria does the Partner organization need to achieve Specialization? What about individual Sales, PreSales & Implementation Specialist/Technical consultants?A: Brian: Each Oracle WebCenter Specialization has unique Business Criteria that must be met in order to achieve that Specialization.  This includes a unique number of transactions (co-sell, re-sell, and referral), customer references and then unique number of specialists as part of a partner team (Sales, Pre-Sales, Implementation, and Support).   Each WebCenter Specialization provides training resources (GLPs, BootCamps, Assessments and Exams for individuals on a partner’s staff to fulfill those requirements.  That criterion can be found for each Specialization on the Specialize tab for each WebCenter Knowledge Zone.  Here are the sample criteria, recommended courses, exams for the WebCenter Portal Specialization: WebCenter Portal Specialization Criteria Q: Do you have any suggestions on the best way for partners to get started if they would like to know more?A: Christine:   The best way to start is for partners is look at their business and core Oracle team focus and then look to become specialized in one or more areas.  Once you have selected the Specializations that are right for your business, you need to follow the first 3 key steps described below. The fourth step outlines the additional process to follow if you meet the criteria to be Advanced Specialized. Note that Step 4 may not be done without first following Steps 1-3.1. Join the Knowledge Zone(s) where you want to achieve Specialized status Go to the Knowledge Zone lick on the "Why Partner" tab Click on the "Join Knowledge Zone" link 2. Meet the Specialization criteria - Define and implement plans in your organization to achieve the competency and business criteria targets of the Specialization. (Note: Worldwide OPN members at the Gold, Platinum, or Diamond level and their Associates at the Gold, Platinum, or Diamond level may count their collective resources to meet the business and competency criteria required for specialization in this area.) 3. Apply for Specialization – when you have met the business and competency criteria required, inform Oracle by completing the following steps: Click on the "Specialize" tab in the Knowledge Zone Click on the "Apply Now" button Complete the online application form Oracle will validate the information provided, and once approved, you will receive notification from Oracle of your awarded Specialized status. Need more information? Access our Step by Step Guide (PDF) 4. Apply for Advanced Specialization (Optional) – If your company has on staff 50 unique Certified Implementation Specialists in your company's approved Specialization's product set, let Oracle know by following these steps: Ensure that you have 50 or more unique individuals that are Certified Implementation Specialists in the specific Specialization awarded to your company If you are pooling resources from another Associate or Worldwide entity, ensure you know that company’s name and country Have your Oracle PRM Administrator complete the online Advanced Specialization Application Oracle will validate the information provided, and once approved, you will receive notification from Oracle of your awarded Advanced Specialized status. There are additional resources on OPN as well as the broader WebCenter Community: v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* 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:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; 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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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, October 27, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, October 27, 2011Popular ReleasesAcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.6: ?? ● AcDown??????????、??????，??????????????????????，???????Acfun、Bilibili、???、???、???、Tucao.cc、SF???、?????80????，???????????、?????????。 ● AcDown???????????????????????????，???，???????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7 ????????????? ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)?.NET Framework 2.0???(x64)，?????"?????????"??? ??????????????，??????????： ??"AcDown?????"????????? ?? v3.6?? ??“????”...Facebook C# SDK: 5.3.1: This is a BETA release which adds new features and bug fixes to v5.2.1. removed dependency from Code Contracts enabled Task Parallel Support in .NET 4.0+ added support for early preview for .NET 4.5 added additional method overloads for .NET 4.5 to support IProgress<T> for upload progress added new CS-WinForms-AsyncAwait.sln sample demonstrating the use of async/await, upload progress report using IProgress<T> and cancellation support Query/QueryAsync methods uses graph api instead...SQL Backup Helper: SQL Backup Helper v1.0: Version 1.0 Changes Description added to settings table Automatic LOG files truncation added to BACKUP stored procedure Only database in status ONLINE will be backed upFlowton: Release 0.2: This release is the first official release of Flowton along with Source. Printpreview/Print is enabled with minor bug fixes from 0.1 alpha release locally.MySemanticSearch Sample: MySemanticSearch Installer (CTP3): Note: This release of the MySemanticSearch Sample works with SQL Server 2012 CTP3. Installation InstructionsDownload this self-extracting archive to your computer Execute the self-extracting archive Accept the licensing agreement Choose a target directory on your computer and extract the files Open Windows PowerShell command prompt with elevated priveleges Execute the following command: Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted Close the Windows PowerShell command prompt Run C:\MySema...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.33: Add JSParser.ParseExpression method to parse JavaScript expressions rather than source-elements. Add -strict switch (CodeSettings.StrictMode) to force input code to ECMA5 Strict-mode (extra error-checking, "use strict" at top). Fixed bug when MinifyCode setting was set to false but RemoveUnneededCode was left it's default value of true.Path Copy Copy: 8.0: New version that mostly adds lots of requested features: 11340 11339 11338 11337 This version also features a more elaborate Settings UI that has several tabs. I tried to add some notes to better explain the use and purpose of the various options. The Path Copy Copy documentation is also on the way, both to explain how to develop custom plugins and to explain how to pre-configure options if you're a network admin. Stay tuned.MVC Controls Toolkit: Mvc Controls Toolkit 1.5.0: Added: The new Client Blocks feaure of Views A new "move" js method for the TreeViews The NewHtmlCreated js event to the DataGrid Improved the ChoiceList structure that now allows also the selection list of a dropdown to be chosen with a lambda expression Fixed: Issue with partial thrust Client handling of conditional attributes Bug in TreeView node moves that sometimes were not reflected on the server An issue in the Mvc3 Nuget package that wasn't able to uninstall properly ...Free SharePoint Master Pages: Buried Alive (Halloween) Theme: Release Notes *Created for Halloween, you will find theme file, custom css file and images. *Created by Al Roome @AlstarRoome Features: Custom styling for web part Custom background *Screenshot https://s3.amazonaws.com/kkhipple/post/sharepoint-showcase-halloween.pngDevForce Application Framework: DevForce AF 2.0.3 RTW: PrerequisitesWPF 4.0 Silverlight 4.0 DevForce 2010 6.1.3.1 Download ContentsDebug and Release Assemblies API Documentation Source code License.txt Requirements.txt Release HighlightsNew: EventAggregator event forwarding New: EntityManagerInterceptor<T> to intercept EntityManger events New: IHarnessAware to allow for ViewModel setup when executed inside of the Development Harness New: Improved design time stability New: Support for add-in development New: CoroutineFns.To...NicAudio: NicAudio 2.0.5: Minor change to accept special DTS stereo modes (LtRt, AB,...)Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone: Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone v1.3.1: Upgraded Windows Azure projects to Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 1.5 – September 2011 Upgraded the tools tools to support the Windows Phone Developer Tools RTW Update SQL Azure only scenarios to use ASP.NET Universal Providers (through the System.Web.Providers v1.0.1 NuGet package) Changed Shared Access Signature service interface to support more operations Refactored Blobs API to have a similar interface and usage to that provided by the Windows Azure SDK Stor...xUnit.net Contrib: xunitcontrib-resharper 0.4.4 (dotCover): xunitcontrib release 0.4.4 (ReSharper runner) This release provides a test runner plugin for Resharper 6.0 RTM, targetting all versions of xUnit.net. (See the xUnit.net project to download xUnit.net itself.) This release addresses the following issues:Support for dotCover code coverage 4132 Note that this build work against ALL VERSIONS of xunit. The files are compiled against xunit.dll 1.8 - DO NOT REPLACE THIS FILE. Thanks to xunit's version independent runner system, this package can r...BookShop: BookShop: BookShop WP7 clientRibbon Editor for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: Ribbon Editor (0.1.2122.266): Added CodePlex and PayPal links New icon Bug fix: can't connect to an IFD deployment when the discovery service url has been customizedSiteMap Editor for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: SiteMap Editor (1.0.921.340): Added CodePlex and PayPal links New iconDotNet.Framework.Common: DotNet.Framework.Common 4.0: ??????????，????????????XML Explorer: XML Explorer 4.0.5: Changes in 4.0.5: Added 'Copy Attribute XPath to Address Bar' feature. Added methods for decoding node text and value from Base64 encoded strings, and copying them to the clipboard. Added 'ChildNodeDefinitions' to the options, which allows for easier navigation of parent-child and ID-IDREF relationships. Discovery happens on-demand, as nodes are expanded and child nodes are added. Nodes can now have 'virtual' child nodes, defined by an xpath to select an identifier (usually relative to ...CODE Framework: 4.0.11021.0: This build adds a lot of our WPF components, including our MVVC and MVC components as well as a "Metro" and "Battleship" style.WiX Toolset: WiX v3.6 Beta: First beta release of WiX v3.6. The primary focus is on Burn but there are also many small bug fixes to the core toolset. For more information see: http://robmensching.com/blog/posts/2011/10/24/WiX-v3.6-Beta-releasedNew Projects5by5by4 Tic Tac Toe Project: 5by5by4 Tic Tac Toe project for CS 3420.ASP.Net Membership provider for MongoDb: A role and membership provider for ASP.Net with MongoDb as the database. Makes use of the Norm Linq provider for MongoDb.Bazookabird TFS Dashboard: Just a simple TFS dashboard. Show build results, tfs queries of your choice and display availability of build machines. Only a feature-lacking proof of concept yet, will hopefully be useful in the end. BestWebApp: Web service and web application.Code Made Simple: A group of projects to make coding life simple.DefenseXna: ??xna??Digibib.NET: Digibib.NET ist eine Portierung der Lesesoftware Digibux für die Digitale Bibliothek der Directmedia Publishing.FaceComparerDistributed: project of face compare distributed versionFMSSolution: FMSISO Analyzer: ISO Analyzer is a tool that makes it easier to analyze ISO 8583 financial transactions and also provides a platform to create a host simulator, capable of receiving requests and sending back the responses. It’s a WinForms application and it’s developed using C#.ITU Project: ITU Projekt - Víc než len klávesové skratky (navigace mezi bežicími aplikacemi)Maintenance Province Data: Help people find your project. Write a concise, reader-focused summary. Example: <project name> makes it easier for <target user group> to <activity>. You'll no longer have to <activity>. It's developed in <programming language>.m?ng chia s? công vi?c: m?ng chia s? công vi?cMetroTask: MetroTask, An example Metro based application using C#MyHomeFinance: Helps to add and keep a record of financeMySemanticSearch Sample: MySemanticSearch is a sample content management application that demonstrates semantic search capabilities introduced in SQL Server 2012. MySemanticSearch allows you to visualize tag clouds for content stored in FileTables and find similar content using semantic search.NetBlocks: This project is an implementation of the Unit-of-Work and Repository patterns using Entity Framework 4.1 and Unity. The project also includes code that can be used to initialize an application’s run-time environment from a set of components. The project includes example components for typed configuration settings, caching and a factory component based on Unity. Also included is an example of how to represent a database command with a C# class that transforms the results to typed objects.Online shopping website in ASP.NET- Open Source Project: asp.net,C#,shopping cart,college project,visual studio 2010,visual web developer 2010Pak Master: Pak Explorer for the fourth coming four.Pizza Service: A mvc3 project which aims to host both a backend webservice and a frontend page for ordering pizza and managing orders, customers and provide a drivermapScadaEveryWhere: ScadaEveryWhereSilverTwitterSearch: SilverTwitterSearch is a Siliverlight library for the Twitter Search API.Snst Salix: Salix is codename for custom solution of time management and task assignment software.SolutionManagementKit: SolutionManagementKit This product will try to combine several monitoring / support tools available right now. the primary focus will be on (T) SQL / MDX parsing for SQL 2008 R2 SSAS 2008 R2 as well as cube maintance Development in C# / VB .NETTarget: Blank Orchard Module: If enabled, outgoing links open in new window (just like with the deprecated target="_blank" attribute)WPPersonality: Psychological tests for windows phoneXrmLibrary: A base library to be used for rapid integration with one or more Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 environments. The XrmLibrary contains thread-safe singleton implementations of both the CRM IOrganizationService (1 or many instances) and a tracer/logger that utilizes Apache's log4net.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, June 15, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, June 15, 2010New ProjectsBackup on Build: Backup critical files on each Visual Studio build.CDN Support for EPiServer CMS: This module adds CDN support for EPiServer CMS by modifying outgoing links.Custom WCF Bindings: This project contains some custom WCF LOB SDK bindings I have created including a SalesForce one. I will blog on updates as they occur. Please se...DocIcon for SharePoint 2010: DocIcon for SharePoint re-enables links from document icons in SharePoint 2010. This feature was in previous versions of SharePoint, but was remove...EEG Peak Detection: EEG Peak Detectionemployeemanagement1: employeemanagement1Enables map services on top of existing map providers like Google Maps: Services include Map visualization services, Map decoration services, Spot registration services and Spot naming services.fbprivacy: Tool to assess your Facebook Privacy SettingsfMRI SVM Toolbox: fMRI SVM ToolboxGCMS – using .Net for human CMS: GCMS makes only what you need to do with a CMS and nothing more and it makes it with .NETqjblog: My First Blog.Send2Sharepoint: Office(Word,Excel,Outlook) and windows explorer addin to upload documents to sharepoint document library. SharePoint Find and Replace: SharePoint Find & Replace allows you to replace a specific string within a site collection with a different value. For example, when you change a l...SharePoint Management Studio: This project developed on Visula Studio 2008 and c# language. The main aim is manage your SharePoint 2007 FARM.SharePoint PageController: A SharePoint solution which provides an extensible framework to perform actions on a per-page basis in SharePoint. OOTB functionality allows for f...SilverNotePad: Simple notepad built using MVVM patern.SolidWorks Addin Development: The SolidWorks Addin Development project is dedicated to helping developers and non-developers with creating fully functional addins.Sunlit World Scheme: Sunlit World Scheme is a nearly R4RS-compliant Scheme implementation that supports threading, TCP, UDP, cryptography, and simple graphics and windo...TimeBend: Time tracking gone wild.TinyCMS: Jednostavan CMS s mogućnosti unosa vijesti, linkova i natječaja. CSS je napravljen tek toliko... Aplikacija izrađena za dev4Fun natjecanje.Ujimanet Android: text categorization tool for androidVisual Storm Engine: Visual Storm es un motor para probar nuevas tecnologias orientadas a la creacion de video juegos. Por ahora solo soporta Windows Vista/7 y usa Dire...New ReleasesAjax ASP.Net Forum: developer.insecla.com-forum_v0.1.4: *VERSION: 0.1.4* FEATURES ADDED Rating Threads (Through AjaxCTK (included Ms .DLL in the BIN folder)) Empowered Within AJAX Custom star ima...AlphaGet: Alpha 3: Important: from this release WinGet changes its name to AlphaGet in order to identify it better and make it search-engine friendly. New Features N...Backup on Build: Backup on Build v1.0.0 Initial Release: Initial Release version 1.0.0Boleto.Net: BoletoNet: Última versão estável da BoletoNet.dll. O código fonte dessa versão pode ser encontrado em http://boletonet.codeplex.com/SourceControl/list/change...CDN Support for EPiServer CMS: CDN Support v1: See links on start page for information on how to use and install this module.Chargify.NET: Chargify.NET v0.750: Adding support for creating freemium subscription plans Adding preliminary JSON support Adding ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2 data embedded in the library ...Community Forums NNTP bridge: Community Forums NNTP Bridge V38: Release of the Community Forums NNTP Bridge to access the social and anwsers MS forums with a single, open source NNTP bridge. This release has ad...ContainerOne - C# application server: V0.1.3.0: New minor release containing: Infrastructure - core service An installer of a windows service which provides the following: Service registry Even...DocIcon for SharePoint 2010: wwEsp.DocIcon Deployment Package Release 1.0.0: This package installs the DocIcon feature on a SharePoint 2010 server farm. The solution is deployed as a Farm-level feature that can be enabled or...Ethical Hacking ASP.NET: Version 1.2.0.0: For the complete list of changes, new features and fixes in the new version, please view the Version History page. Read more about the available te...Folder Bookmarks: Folder Bookmarks 1.6.3: The latest version of Folder Bookmarks (1.6.3), with new features and Mini-Menu UI Changes (1.4). Once you have extracted the file, do not delete ...Hades: Projet Hadès - Official Demo - Version 0.1.1 Beta: Second release correcting some bugs... ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Projet Hadès - Official Demo...KooBoo Image Gallery: RC 1: This new Version has this features 1) Refactoring to change the mispelled word galery to gallery 2) Change to use the plugin in the same page of ...LibWowArmory: LibWowArmory 0.3 beta: LibWowArmory 0.3 betaThis release of the LibWowArmory source code matches the WoW Armory as of version 3.3.3. Changes since version 0.2.3:Solution...MailChimp4Umbraco: 0.90 stable: Can be used in productionMapWindow6: MapWindow 6.0 June 14: This version adds the WebMercator projection and fixes a bug that was causing some perfect spheres to be created as oblate WGS1984 spheroids.MDownloader: MDownloader-0.15.18.59782: Supported FileServe. Supported SharingMatrix. Fixed minor bugs.MGM - MyGroupManager: MyGroupManager v0.1.5 - Alpha: At this point the application appears feature complete and works pretty well. The code still needs some tweaks (error handling), and a general look...MvcPager: MvcPager 1.4: MvcPager 1.4 source codes and demo projects MvcPager 1.4版源代码及示例文件Nito.LINQ: Beta (v0.6): Rx version The "with Rx" versions of Nito.LINQ are built against Rx 1.0.2563.0, released 2010-06-09. Supported Platforms .NET 4.0 Client Profile, ...open gaze and mouse analyzer: Ogama 3.3: This release was published on 14.06.2010 and is a bugfix release. For the list of changes please visit http://www.ogama.net. Only use this installe...patterns & practices: Prism: Prism 4.0 Drop 2: Prism 4.0 Drop 2 Welcome to the second drop of Prism 4.0 (formally known as the Composite Application Guidance for WPF and Silverlight). This drop ...Prism Software Factory Light: 0.5 Beta: 4ward Prism Software Factory Light - 0.5 Beta releaseThis is the first public beta release of the 4ward Prism Software Factory Light that allows to...PROGRAMMABLE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT: PROGRAMMABLE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT--3.3: Over the last several months, my primary research effort has been directed at producing strictly portable development methods between C and C# . T...qjblog: v1.source: v1.sourceqjblog: v1blog: V1 BlogQuick Performance Monitor: Version 1.4.2: Added 'Move to new window' functionality.Refix - .NET dependency management: Refix v0.1.0.90 ALPHA: Added console tree-style visualisation of solution dependencies, as well as some bug fixes. This version should work out of the box with the demons...SEMICO Framework: Version Stable 1.0.0.3: Version Stable 1.0.0.3SharePoint Find and Replace: 1.0.16: Version: 1.0.16 This release is the first stable release of this project, including the Microsoft public license agreement. Fixes: Added about dia...SharePoint Management Studio: v1: v1SharePoint PageController: SharePoint PageController: For SharePoint 2010 and 2007 running on IIS 7Software Is Hardwork: Sw. Is Hw. Lib. 3.0.0.x+06: Sw. Is Hw. Lib. 3.0.0.x+06SolidWorks Addin Development: GenericAddinFramework-06.14.2010: R1.SourceGrid: SourceGrid 4.30: Sources are here Note that SourceGrid sources are not hosted on CodePlex. The sources are hosted on bitbucket.org Main Changes Improved hidden ...SSIS Expression Editor & Tester: Expression Editor and Tester v1.0.2.0: Corrected release of expression editor tool, no changes to control. Download and extract the files to get started, no install required. Changes Co...Sunlit World Scheme: Sunlit World Scheme - 20100614 - source and binary: This is the result of building the current source code in Debug mode. The source code is included.TinyCMS: TinyCMS: Source kodVCC: Latest build, v2.1.30614.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVianaNET - Videoanalysis for physical motion: VianaNET 1.2 - beta: This is the VianaNET beta release with some bug fixes. Would like to have some comments on it. Regards, AdrianWorkLogger: Worklogger Beta 1: Simple work logger for Windows in WPFMost Popular ProjectsWBFS ManagerRawrAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)patterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryPHPExcelMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesASP.NETMost Active Projectspatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryRhyduino - Arduino and Managed CodeCassandraemonCommunity Forums NNTP bridgedotSpatialjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesBlogEngine.NETLightweight Fluent WorkflowNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleUmbraco CMS

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, May 07, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, May 07, 2010New ProjectsBibleBrowser: BibleBrowserBibleMaps: BibleMapsChristianLibrary: ChristianLibraryCLB Podcast Module: DotNetNuke Module used to allow DNN to host one or more podcasts within a portal.Coletivo InVitro: Nova versão do Site do ColetivoCustomer Care Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM: Customer Care Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM.EasyTFS: A very lightweight, quick, web-based search application for Team Foundation Server. EasyTfs searches as you type, providing real-time search resul...FSCommunity: abcGeocache Downloader: GeocacheDownloader helps you download geocache information in an organised way, making easier to copy the information to your device. The applicati...Grabouille: Grabouille aims to be an incubation project for Microsoft best patterns & practices and also a container for last .Net technologies. The goal is, i...Klaverjas: Test application for testing different new technologies in .NET (WCF, DataServices, C# stuff, Entity...etc.)Livecity: Social network. Alpha 0.1MarxSupples: testMOSS 2007 - Excel Services: This helps you understand MOSS 2007 - Excel Services and how to use the same in .NETmy site: a personal web siteNazTek.Extension.Clr35: Contains a set of CLR 3.5 extensions and utility APInetDumbster: netDumbster is a .Net Fake SMTP Server clone of the popular Dumbster (http://quintanasoft.com/dumbster/) netDumbster is based on the API of nDumbs...Object-Oriented Optimization Toolbox (OOOT): A library (.dll) of various linear, nonlinear, and stochastic numerical optimization techniques. While some of these are older than 50 years, they ...OMap - Object to Object Mapper: OMap is a simple object to object mapper. It could be used for scenarios like mapping your data from domain objects into data transfer objects.PDF Renderer for BlackBerry.: Render and view PDF files on BlackBerry using a modified version of Sun's PDF Renderer.Pomodoro Tool: Pomodoro Tool is a timer for http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/ . It's a timer and task tracker with a text task editing interface.ReadingPlan: ReadingPlanRil#: .net library to use the public Readitlater.com public APISCSM Incident SLA Management: This project provides an extension to System Center Service Manager to provide more granular control over incident service level agreement (SLA) ma...SEAH - Sistema Especialista de Agravante de Hipertensão: O SEAH tem como propósito alertar o indivíduo em relação ao seu agravante de hipertensão arterial e a órgãos competentes, entidades de ensino, pesq...StudyGuide: StudyGuideTest Project (ignore): This is used to demonstrate CodePlex at meetings. Please ignore this project.YCC: YCC is an open source c compiler which compatible with ANSI standard.The project is currently an origin start.We will work it for finally useable a...New ReleasesAlbum photo de club - Club's Photos Album: App - version 0.5: Modifications : - Ajout des favoris - Ajout de l'update automatique /*/ - Add favorites - Add automatic updateBoxee Launcher: Boxee Launcher 1.0.1.5: Boxee Launcher finds the BOXEE executable using a registry key that BOXEE creates. The new version of BOXEE changed the location. Boxee Launcher ha...CBM-Command: 2010-05-06: Release Notes - 2010-05-06New Features Creating Directories Deleting Files and Directories Renaming Files and Directories Changes 40 columns i...Customer Care Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM: Customer Care Accelerator for Dynamics CRM R1: The Customer Care Accelerator (CCA) for Microsoft Dynamics CRM focuses on delivering contact center enabling functionality, such as the ability to ...D-AMPS: D-AMPS 0.9.2: Add .bat files for command-line running Bug fixed (core engine) Section 6, 8, 9 modifications Sources (Fortran) for core engineDynamicJson: Release 1.1.0.0: Add - foreach support Add - Dynamic Shortcut of IsDefined,Delete,Deserialize Fix - Deserialize Delete - LengthEasyTFS: EasyTfs 1.0 Beta 1: A very lightweight, quick, web-based search application for Team Foundation Server. EasyTfs searches as you type, providing real-time search resul...Event Scavenger: Add installer for Admin tool: Added installer for Admin tool. Removed exe's for admin and viewer from zip file - were replaced by the msi installers.Expression Blend Samples: PathListBoxUtils for Expression Blend 4 RC: Initial release of the PathListBoxUtils samples.HackingSilverlight Code Browser: HackingSilverlight Code Browser: Out with the old and in with the new... the HackingSilverlight Code Browser is a reference tool for code snippets so that I can not have to remembe...Hammock for REST: Hammock v1.0.3: v1.0.3 ChangesFixes for OAuth escaping and API usage Added FollowRedirects feature to RestClient/RestRequest v1.0.2 Changes.NET 4.0 and Client P...ImmlPad: ImmlPad Beta 1.1.1: Changes in this release: Added more intelligent right-click menu's to allow opening an IMML document with a specific Player version Fixed issue w...LinkedIn® for Windows Mobile: LinkedIn for Windows Mobile v0.8: Improved error message dumping + moved OAuth parameters from www.* to api.* In case of unexpected errors, check "Application Data\LinkedIn for Wind...Live-Exchange Calendar Sync: Installer: Alpha release of Live-Exchange Calendar SyncMAPILab Explorer for SharePoint: MAPILab Explorer for SharePoint ver 2.1.0: 1) Get settings form old versions 2) Rules added to display enumerable object items. 3) Bug fixed with remove persisted object How to install:Do...MapWindow6: MapWindow 6.0 msi May 6, 2010: This release enables output .prj files to also show the ESRI names for the PRJCS, GEOCS, and the DATUM. It also fixes a bug that was preventing th...MOSS 2007 - Excel Services: Calculator using Excel Services: Simple calculator using Excel ServicesMvcMaps - Unified Bing/Google Mapping API for ASP.NET MVC: MvcMaps Preview 1 for ASP.NET 4.0 and VS'2010: There was a change in ASP.NET 4.0 that broke the release, so a small modification needed to be made to the reflection code. This release fixes that...NazTek.Extension.Clr35: NazTek.Extension.Clr35 Binary Cab: Binary cab fileNazTek.Extension.Clr35: NazTek.Extension.Clr35 Source Cab: Source codePDF Renderer for BlackBerry.: PDF Renderer 0.1 for BlackBerry: This library requires a BlackBerry Signing Key in order to compile for use on a BlackBerry device. Signing keys can be obtained at BlackBerry Code ...Pomodoro Tool: PomodoroTool Clickonce installer: PomodoroTool Clickonce installerPOS for .Net Handheld Products Service Object: POS for .Net Handheld Products Service Object 1002: New version (1.0.0.2) which should support 64 bit platforms (see ReadMe.txt included with source for details). Source code only.QuestTracker: QuestTracker 0.4: What's New in QuestTracker 0.4 - - You can now drag and drop the quests on the left pane to rearrange or move quests from one group to another. - D...RDA Collaboration Team Projects: Property Bag Cmdlet: This cmdlet allows to retrieve, insert and update property bag values at farm, web app, site and web scope. The same operations can be in code usi...Ril#: Rilsharp 1.0: The first version of the Ril# (Readitlater sharp) library.Scrum Sprint Monitor: v1.0.0.47911 (.NET 4-TFS 2010): What is new in this release? Migrated to .NET Framework 4 RTM; Compiled against TFS 2010 RTM Client DLLs; Smoother animations with easing funct...SCSM Incident SLA Management: SCSM Incident SLA Management Version 0.1: This is the first release of the SCSM SLA Management solution. It is an 'alpha' release and has only been tested by the developers on the project....StackOverflow Desktop Client in C# and WPF: StackOverflow Client 0.4: Shows a popup that displays all the new questions and allows you to navigate between them. Fixed a bug that showed incorrect views and answers in t...Transcriber: Transcriber V0.1: Pre-release, usable but very rough.VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30506.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVisual Studio CSLA Extension for ADO.NET Entity Framework: CslaExtension Beta1: Requirements Visual Studio 2010 CSLA 4.0. Beta 1 Installation Download VSIX file and double click to install. Open Visual Studio -> Tools -> Exte...Most Popular ProjectsRawrWBFS ManagerAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight Toolkitpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETDotNetNuke® Community EditionMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesMost Active Projectspatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryAJAX Control FrameworkIonics Isapi Rewrite FilterRawrpatterns & practices: Azure Security GuidanceCaliburn: An Application Framework for WPF and SilverlightBlogEngine.NETTweetSharpNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleTinyProject

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• The Internet of Things & Commerce: Part 3 -- Interview with Kristen J. Flanagan, Commerce Product Management

  - by Katrina Gosek, Director | Commerce Product Strategy-Oracle

  Internet of Things & Commerce Series: Part 3 (of 3) And now for the final installment my three part series on the Internet of Things & Commerce. Post one, “The Next 7,000 Days”, introduced the idea of the Internet of Things, followed by a second post interviewing one of our chief commerce innovation strategists, Brian Celenza.  This final post in the series is an interview with Kristen J. Flanagan, lead product manager for Oracle Commerce omnichannel strategy. She takes us through the past, present, and future of how our Commerce Solution is re-imagining the way physical and digital shopping come together. ------- QUESTION: It’s your job to stay on top of what our customers’ need to not only run their online businesses effectively, but also to make sure they have product capabilities they can innovate and grow on. What key trend has been top-of-mind for you and our customers around this collision of physical and digital shopping? Kristen: I’ll agree with Brian Celenza that hands down mobile has forced a major disruption in shopping and selling behavior. A few years ago, mobile exploded at a pace I don't think anyone was expecting. Early on, we saw our customers scrambling to establish a mobile presence---mostly through "screen scraping" technologies. As smartphones continued to advance (at lightening speed!), our customers started to investigate ways to truly tap in to their eCommerce capabilities to deliver the mobile experience. They started looking to us for a means of using the eCommerce services and capabilities to deliver a mobile experience that is tailored for mobile rather than the desktop experience on a smaller screen. In the future, I think we'll see customers starting to really understand what their shoppers need and expect from a mobile offering and how they can adapt their content and delivery of that content to meet those needs. And, mobile shopping doesn’t stop at the consumer / buyer. Because the in-store experience is compelling and has advantages that digital just can't offer, we're also starting to see the eCommerce services being leveraged for mobile for in-store sales associates. Brick-and-mortar retailers are interested in putting the omnichannel product catalog, promotions, and cart into the hands of knowledgeable associates. Retailers are now looking to connect and harness the eCommerce data in-store so that shoppers have a reason to walk-in. I think we'll be seeing a lot more customers thinking about melding the in-store and digital experiences to present a richer offering for shoppers.    QUESTION: What are some examples of what our customers are doing currently to bring these concepts to reality? Kristen: Well, without question, connecting digital and brick-and-mortar worlds is becoming tablestakes for selling experiences. If a brand has a foot in both worlds (i.e., isn’t a pureplay online retailer), they have to connect the dots because shoppers – whether consumers or B2B buyers –don't think in clearly defined channels anymore. The expectation is connectedness – for on- and offline experiences, promotions, products, and customer data. What does this mean practically for businesses selling goods on- and offline? It touches a lot of systems: inventory info on the eCommerce site, fulfillment options across channels (buy online/pickup in store), order information (representing various channels for a cohesive view of shopper order history), promotions across digital and store, etc.  A few years ago, the main link between store and digital was the smartphone. We all remember when “apps” became a thing and many of our customers were scrambling to get a native app out there. Now we're seeing more strategic thinking around the benefits of mobile web vs. native and how that ties in to the purpose and role of mobile within the digital channel. Put it more broadly, how these pieces fit together in the overall brand puzzle.  The same could be said for “showrooming.” Where it was a major concern (i.e., shoppers using stores to look at merchandise and then order online from Amazon), in recent months, it’s emerged that the inverse is now becoming a a reality as well. "Webrooming" (using digital sites to do research before making a purchase in the store) is a new behavior pure play retailers are challenged with. There are many technologies, behaviors, and information that need to tie together to offer a holistic omnichannel shopping experience. As a result, brands are looking for ways to connect the digital and in-store experiences to bridge the gaps: shared assortments across channels, assisted selling apps that arm associates with information about shoppers, shared promotions, inventory, etc. QUESTION: How has Oracle Commerce been built to help brands make the link between in-store and digital over the last few years? Kristen: Over the last seven years, the product has been in step with the changes in industry needs. Here is a brief history of the evolution: Prior to Oracle’s acquisition of ATG and Endeca, key investments were made to cross-channel functionality that we are still building on today. Commerce Service Center (v2007.1) ATG introduced the Commerce Service Center in 2007.1 and marked the first entry into what was then called “cross-channel.” The Commerce Service Center is a call-center-agent-facing application that enables agents to see shopper orders, online catalog, promotions, and pricing. It is tightly integrated with the eCommerce capabilities of the platform and commerce engine and provided a means of connecting data from the call center and online channels.  REST services framework (v9.1)  In v9.1 we introduced the REST services framework and interface in the Platform that enabled customers to use ATG web services in other applications. This framework has become the basis for our subsequent omni-channel features and functionality. Multisite Architecture (v10) With the v10 release, we introduced the Multisite Architecture, which enabled customers to manage multiple sites (and channels) within a single instance of the BCC. Customers could create site- and channel-specific catalogs, promotions, targeters, and scenarios. Endeca Page Builder (2.x) / Experience Manager (3.x) With the introduction of Endeca for Mobile (now part of the core platform, available through the reference store – see blow) on top of Page Builder (and then eventually Experience Manager), Endeca gave business users the tools to create and manage native and mobile web applications. And since the acquisition of both ATG (2011) and Endeca (2012), Oracle Commerce has leveraged the best of each leading technology’s capabilities for omnichannel commerce to continue to drive innovation for our customers. Service enablement of core Oracle Commerce capabilities (v10.1.1, 10.2, & 11) After the establishment of the REST services framework and interface, we followed up in subsequent releases with service enablement of core Oracle Commerce capabilities throughout the iOS native app and the enablement of the core Commerce Service Center features. The result is that customers can leverage these services for their integrations with other systems, as well as their omnichannel initiatives.  Mobile web reference application (v10.1) In 10.1 we introduced the shopper-facing mobile reference application that showed how to use Oracle Commerce to deliver a mobile web experience for shoppers. This included the use of Experience Manager and cartridges to drive those experiences on select pages.  Native (iOS) reference application (v10.1.1)  We came out with the 10.1.1 shopper-facing native iOS ref app that illustrated how to use the Commerce REST services to deliver an iOS app. Also included Experience Manager-driven pages.   Assisted Selling reference application (v10.2.1)  The Assisted Selling reference application is our first reference application designed for the in-store associate. This iOS app shows customers how they can use Oracle Commerce data and information to provide a high-touch, consultative sales environment as well as to put the endless aisle into hands of their associates. Shoppers can start a cart online, and in-store associates can access that cart via the application to provide more information or add products and then transact using the ATG engine. Support for Retail promotions (v11) As part of the v11 release, we worked with teams in the Oracle Retail Global Business Unit (RGBU) to assess which promotion types and capabilities are supported across our products. Those products included Oracle Commerce, Oracle Point of Service (ORPOS), and Oracle Retail Price Management (RPM). The result is that customers can now more easily support omnichannel use cases between the store and digital.  Making sure Oracle Commerce can help support the omnichannel needs of our customers is core to our product strategy. With 89% of consumers now use two or more channels to make a single purchase, ensuring that cross-channel interactions are linked is critical to a great customer experience – and to sales. As Oracle Commerce evolves, we want to make it simple for organizations to create, deliver, and scale experiences across touchpoints with our create once, deploy commerce anywhere framework. We have a flexible, services-oriented architecture that allows data, content, catalogs, cart, experiences, personalization, and merchandising to be shared across touchpoints and easily extended in to new environments like mobile, social, in-store, Call Center, and new Websites. [For the latest downloads and Oracle Commerce documentation, please visit the Oracle Technical Network.] ------ Thank you to both Brian and Kristen for their contributions and to this blog series and their continued thought leadership for Oracle Commerce. We are all looking forward to the coming years of months of new shopping behaviors and opportunities to innovate. Because – if the digital fabric of our everyday lives continues to change at the same pace – the next five years (that just under 2,000 days), will be dramatic. ---------- THIS DOCUMENT IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY AND MAY NOT BE INCORPORATED INTO A CONTRACT OR AGREEMENT

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, July 31, 2014

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, July 31, 2014Popular ReleasesDbEntry.Net (Leafing Framework): DbEntry.Net 4.2: DbEntry.Net is a lightweight Object Relational Mapping (ORM) database access compnent for .Net 4.0+. It has clearly and easily programing interface for ORM and sql directly, and supoorted Access, Sql Server, MySql, SQLite, Firebird, PostgreSQL and Oracle. It also provide a Ruby On Rails style MVC framework. Asp.Net DataSource and a simple IoC. DbEntry.Net.v4.2.Setup.zip include the setup package. DbEntry.Net.v4.2.Src.zip include source files and unit tests. DbEntry.Net.v4.2.Samples.zip ...Recaptcha for .NET: Recaptcha for .NET v1.5: What's NewMinor bug fixes Support for legacy .NET framework 4.0 and ASP.NET MVC 4. Support for .NET Framework 4.5.1.Azure Storage Explorer: Azure Storage Explorer 6 Preview 1: Welcome to Azure Storage Explorer 6 Preview 1 This is the first release of the latest Azure Storage Explorer, code-named Phoenix. What's New?Here are some important things to know about version 6: Open Source Now being run as a full open source project. Full source code on CodePlex. Collaboration encouraged! Updated Code Base Brand-new code base (WPF/C#/.NET 4.5) Visual Studio 2013 solution (previously VS2010) Uses the Task Parallel Library (TPL) for asynchronous background operat...Wsus Package Publisher: release v1.3.1407.29: Updated WPP to recognize the very latest console version. Some files was missing into the latest release of WPP which lead to crash when trying to make a custom update. Add a workaround to avoid clipboard modification when double-clicking on a label when creating a custom update. Add the ability to publish detectoids. (This feature is still in a BETA phase. Packages relying on these detectoids to determine which computers need to be updated, may apply to all computers).VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: PG-Ripper 1.4.32: changes NEW: Added Support for 'ImgMega.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'ImgCandy.net' links NEW: Added Support for 'ImgPit.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'Img.yt' links FIXED: 'Radikal.ru' links FIXED: 'ImageTeam.org' links FIXED: 'ImgSee.com' links FIXED: 'Img.yt' linksDynamics AX Development tools: Version 1.0.0: Alpha release of the package. I am just combining greate community tools into a package. I have not go through testing every function of the tools. However, feel free to point out if you found any bugs!Asp.Net MVC-4,Entity Framework and JQGrid Demo with Todo List WebApplication: Asp.Net MVC-4,Entity Framework and JQGrid Demo: Asp.Net MVC-4,Entity Framework and JQGrid Demo with simple Todo List WebApplication, Overview TodoList is a simple web application to create, store and modify Todo tasks to be maintained by the users, which comprises of following fields to the user (Task Name, Task Description, Severity, Target Date, Task Status). TodoList web application is created using MVC - 4 architecture, code-first Entity Framework (ORM) and Jqgrid for displaying the data.Waterfox: Waterfox 31.0 Portable: New features in Waterfox 31.0: Added support for Unicode 7.0 Experimental support for WebCL New features in Firefox 31.0:New Add the search field to the new tab page Support of Prefer:Safe http header for parental control mozilla::pkix as default certificate verifier Block malware from downloaded files Block malware from downloaded files audio/video .ogg and .pdf files handled by Firefox if no application specified Changed Removal of the CAPS infrastructure for specifying site-sp...SuperSocket, an extensible socket server framework: SuperSocket 1.6.3: The changes below are included in this release: fixed an exception when collect a server's status but it has been stopped fixed a bug that can cause an exception in case of sending data when the connection dropped already fixed the log4net missing issue for a QuickStart project fixed a warning in a QuickStart projectYnote Classic: Ynote Classic 2.8.5 Beta: Several Changes - Multiple Carets and Multiple Selections - Improved Startup Time - Improved Syntax Highlighting - Search Improvements - Shell Command - Improved StabilityHead First C#: The Quest: The Quest: Stable release of "The Quest" game ( Lab 2 from Head First C#, 3rd edition)TCP/IP Adapter BizTalk 2013: TCPIP Adapter for BizTalk 2013 - Version 1.0: Version 1.0 This is an updated version of the BizTalk 2010 TCP/IP adapter. References have been updated and a new setup (ISLE) has been used. Follow the installation instructions below to install the adapter. Still want to automate step 4, but haven't got to it yet. Installation instructions Make sure to close the BizTalk Administration Console. Just to make sure everything gets refreshed after installation. Download and install the setup. The setup makes sure the adapter will be regis...gicon: gicon HTTP service v1.0.0: core: 1.0.0.26592 service: 1.0.0.27190 Github: http://rynnwang.github.io/gicon/ Github.io: http://rynnwang.github.io/gicon/ Codeplex: http://gicon.codeplex.com .NET required: 2.0 or above. Installation notes: 1. You need to run intallutil command to install ifunction.GuidIconHttpService.exe file as Windows Service 2. You need to update ifunction.GuidIconHttpService.exe.config file in the folder to set correct HTTP URI prefixes. In release zip by default, it is set as http://localhost:20000...TEBookConverter: 1.2: Fixed: Could not start convertion in some cases Fixed: Progress show during convertion was truncated Fixed: Stopping convertion didn't reset program titlenewmail_OutlookCOM: newmail_OutlookCOM: First Stable ReleaseSharePoint - Data View Web Part Documenter: Data View Web Part Documenter 1.0: .NET Framework 4 Client Profile required for this to run on your PC. Please see the documentation for running the tool.LOL zmena skinu klienta: LOL jednoduchý menic skinu klienta: Jednoduchý prográmek, který ušetrí cas pri zmene klienta. Nemusí se proklikáva18541855 adresáru :)SSRS Plus+: Latest - SSRS Plus Application and Source Code: This release contains the Beta version with significant changes in comparison to the old release which I am keeping for legacy reasons. At some point a changeover will be made once it has been confirmed that my branch is stable and Mr Bagwan is in agreement also.CS-Script Source: Release v3.8.4: CSScript.Evaluator is migrated to Mono v3.3.0 Added aggregating //css_ignore_ns from the imported scripts cs-script.7z - CS-Script Suite (binaries, documentation, samples) cs-script.ExtensionPack.7z - CS-Script Extension Pack (additional binaries and samples) cs-scriptDocs.7z - CS-Script DocumentationDotSpatial: DotSpatial 1.7: DotSpatial.Full - includes all DotSpatial libraries, extensions and DemoMap application DotSpatial.Core - includes only DotSpatial core libraries Entire list of changes see in the issue tracker. Main changes: Improved common stability, optimized memory and speed when loading and rendering shapefiles, fixed some memory leaks in rasters and shape layers. Simplified plugin infrastructure. Now there are predefined implementations for all required components (IStatusControl, IDockManager, IHead...New ProjectsBrilliantORM: ????ORM??，??SQL?????????。???????????。Crafter: ?????? ??? ????Dotnetnuke xblog // Blog, Article, Events, Documents: xBlog is a blog program based on DNN, it has powerful functions and unique design style. In addition to article management function which common blog module hasIn Plain Sight: Embedding plain text into an image so one can hide the text "In Plain Sight". A cursory view into the world of Steganography.JS Koans Visual Studio Friendly Version: A Version of JS koans loaded into Visual StudioMy Troop First: just adding to the siteOFX Parser: Biblioteca desenvolvida em C# que traduz arquivos OFX e gera a instância de uma classe que representa o arquivo. Um exemplo de uso está disponível, assim como aOrchard Custom Code module: This module adds a very simple tool to add custom code in front-end pages head and foot.SPB Export to KeePass Import Conversion: A simple script to convert the .xml-file by konste's "SPB Wallet Export" (https://spbwalletexport.codeplex.com/) into an import format accepted by KeePass 2The unTroublemaker: The unTroublemaker is a troubleshooter program that helps your project quickly find and fix missing dependency issues using simple XML-based specifications.

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