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  • The Presentation Isn't Over Until It's Over

    - by Phil Factor
    The senior corporate dignitaries settled into their seats looking important in a blue-suited sort of way. The lights dimmed as I strode out in front to give my presentation.  I had ten vital minutes to make my pitch.  I was about to dazzle the top management of a large software company who were considering the purchase of my software product. I would present them with a dazzling synthesis of diagrams, graphs, followed by  a live demonstration of my software projected from my laptop.  My preparation had been meticulous: It had to be: A year’s hard work was at stake, so I’d prepared it to perfection.  I stood up and took them all in, with a gaze of sublime confidence. Then the laptop expired. There are several possible alternative plans of action when this happens     A. Stare at the smoking laptop vacuously, flapping ones mouth slowly up and down     B. Stand frozen like a statue, locked in indecision between fright and flight.     C. Run out of the room, weeping     D. Pretend that this was all planned     E. Abandon the presentation in favour of a stilted and tedious dissertation about the software     F. Shake your fist at the sky, and curse the sense of humour of your preferred deity I started for a few seconds on plan B, normally referred to as the ‘Rabbit in the headlamps of the car’ technique. Suddenly, a little voice inside my head spoke. It spoke the famous inane words of Yogi Berra; ‘The game isn't over until it's over.’ ‘Too right’, I thought. What to do? I ran through the alternatives A-F inclusive in my mind but none appealed to me. I was completely unprepared for this. Nowadays, longevity has since taught me more than I wanted to know about the wacky sense of humour of fate, and I would have taken two laptops. I hadn’t, but decided to do the presentation anyway as planned. I started out ignoring the dead laptop, but pretending, instead that it was still working. The audience looked startled. They were expecting plan B to be succeeded by plan C, I suspect. They weren’t used to denial on this scale. After my introductory talk, which didn’t require any visuals, I came to the diagram that described the application I’d written.  I’d taken ages over it and it was hot stuff. Well, it would have been had it been projected onto the screen. It wasn’t. Before I describe what happened then, I must explain that I have thespian tendencies.  My  triumph as Professor Higgins in My Fair Lady at the local operatic society is now long forgotten, but I remember at the time of my finest performance, the moment that, glancing up over the vast audience of  moist-eyed faces at the during the poignant  scene between Eliza and Higgins at the end, I  realised that I had a talent that one day could possibly  be harnessed for commercial use I just talked about the diagram as if it was there, but throwing in some extra description. The audience nodded helpfully when I’d done enough. Emboldened, I began a sort of mime, well, more of a ballet, to represent each slide as I came to it. Heaven knows I’d done my preparation and, in my mind’s eye, I could see every detail, but I had to somehow project the reality of that vision to the audience, much the same way any actor playing Macbeth should do the ghost of Banquo.  My desperation gave me a manic energy. If you’ve ever demonstrated a windows application entirely by mime, gesture and florid description, you’ll understand the scale of the challenge, but then I had nothing to lose. With a brief sentence of description here and there, and arms flailing whilst outlining the size and shape of  graphs and diagrams, I used the many tricks of mime, gesture and body-language  learned from playing Captain Hook, or the Sheriff of Nottingham in pantomime. I set out determinedly on my desperate venture. There wasn’t time to do anything but focus on the challenge of the task: the world around me narrowed down to ten faces and my presentation: ten souls who had to be hypnotized into seeing a Windows application:  one that was slick, well organized and functional I don’t remember the details. Eight minutes of my life are gone completely. I was a thespian berserker.  I know however that I followed the basic plan of building the presentation in a carefully controlled crescendo until the dazzling finale where the results were displayed on-screen.  ‘And here you see the results, neatly formatted and grouped carefully to enhance the significance of the figures, together with running trend-graphs!’ I waved a mime to signify an animated  window-opening, and looked up, in my first pause, to gaze defiantly  at the audience.  It was a sight I’ll never forget. Ten pairs of eyes were gazing in rapt attention at the imaginary window, and several pairs of eyes were glancing at the imaginary graphs and figures.  I hadn’t had an audience like that since my starring role in  Beauty and the Beast.  At that moment, I realized that my desperate ploy might work. I sat down, slightly winded, when my ten minutes were up.  For the first and last time in my life, the audience of a  ‘PowerPoint’ presentation burst into spontaneous applause. ‘Any questions?’ ‘Yes,  Have you got an agent?’ Yes, in case you’re wondering, I got the deal. They bought the software product from me there and then. However, it was a life-changing experience for me and I have never ever again trusted technology as part of a presentation.  Even if things can’t go wrong, they’ll go wrong and they’ll kill the flow of what you’re presenting.  if you can’t do something without the techno-props, then you shouldn’t do it.  The greatest lesson of all is that great presentations require preparation and  ‘stage-presence’ rather than fancy graphics. They’re a great supporting aid, but they should never dominate to the point that you’re lost without them.

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  • Taking Linux into the Wild Woods

    <b>Raiden's Realm:</b> "One of the things that's been wandering around my mind lately (one of thousands) is the thought of the wild woods. In other words, places in the world that are away from civilization, away from the normal creature comforts of daily life, such as areas in Northern Canada, Alaska, Siberia, sections of Africa, and others like that."

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  • Anyone With a Pulse Should Have a Website

    If you don't have a website, get one. We are living in the internet age, and any anyone with a pulse, and the ability to speak of course, could tell you how much a part of life the internet has become; especially for younger generations.

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  • The 4 'P's of SEO

    Search engine optimization (SEO) and its role in building a successful online business is about the 4 'P's. Passion, personal relationships, process and persistence. Like everything in life, rewards follow process and persistence. But those alone will not work without good personal relationships which build trust, and passion which is really about caring about what you are offering and to whom you are offering it.

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  • When Web Trends Go Bad

    There are few areas of modern life as rife with hype, hoopla and hazy prognosticating as the Internet. Before the Web era, the Holy Grail was the "paperless office," but since the mid-1990s it';s been... [Author: Chris Haycox - Web Design and Development - March 26, 2010]

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  • SQL Rally Presentations

    - by AllenMWhite
    As I drove to Dallas for this year's SQL Rally conference (yes, I like to drive) I got a call asking if I could step in for another presenter who had to cancel at the last minute. Life happens, and it's best to be flexible, and I said sure, I can do that. Which presentation would you like me to do? (I'd submitted a few presentations, so it wasn't a problem.) So yesterday I presented "Gathering Performance Metrics With PowerShell" at 8:45AM, and my newest presentation, "Manage SQL Server 2012 on Windows...(read more)

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  • Mapping local folder with an Ubuntu One folder

    - by Titus
    TrendMicro's Safesync has a nice feature, you can map your local folder to a folder in the cloud with a different name, e.g: PC1: C:\my_documents\pictures ===> office_pictures c:\my_documents\docs ===> office_docs PC2: C:\my_documents\pictures ===> private_pictures c:\my_documents\docs ===> private_docs Would this be possible with UbuntuOne? The reason is that I have multiple computers, and I don't want all my "my_documents" folders to sync across work and personal life...

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  • Free Document/Content Management System Using SharePoint 2010

    - by KunaalKapoor
    That’s right, it’s true. You can use the free version of SharePoint 2010 to meet your document and content management needs and even run your public facing website or an internal knowledge bank.  SharePoint Foundation 2010 is free. It may not have all the features that you get in the enterprise license but it still has enough to cater to your needs to build a document management system and replace age old file shares or folders. I’ve built a dozen content management sites for internal and public use exploiting SharePoint. There are hundreds of web content management systems out there (see CMS Matrix).  On one hand we have commercial platforms like SharePoint, SiteCore, and Ektron etc. which are the most frequently used and on the other hand there are free options like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and Plone etc. which are pretty common popular as well. But I would be very surprised if anyone was able to find a single CMS platform that is all things to all people. Infact not a lot of people consider SharePoint’s free version under the free CMS side but its high time organizations benefit from this. Through this blog post I wanted to present SharePoint Foundation as an option for running a FREE CMS platform. Even if you knew that there is a free version of SharePoint, what most people don’t realize is that SharePoint Foundation is a great option for running web sites of all kinds – not just team sites. It is a great option for many reasons, but in reality it is supported by Microsoft, and above all it is FREE (yay!), and it is extremely easy to get started.  From a functionality perspective – it’s hard to beat SharePoint. Even the free version, SharePoint Foundation, offers simple data connectivity (through BCS), cross browser support, accessibility, support for Office Web Apps, blogs, wikis, templates, document support, health analyzer, support for presence, and MUCH more.I often get asked: “Can I use SharePoint 2010 as a document management system?” The answer really depends on ·          What are your specific requirements? ·          What systems you currently have in place for managing documents. ·          And of course how much money you have J Benefits? Not many large organizations have benefited from SharePoint yet. For some it has been an IT project to see what they can achieve with it, for others it has been used as a collaborative platform or in many cases an extended intranet. SharePoint 2010 has changed the game slightly as the improvements that Microsoft have made have been noted by organizations, and we are seeing a lot of companies starting to build specific business applications using SharePoint as the basis, and nearly every business process will require documents at some stage. If you require a document management system and have SharePoint in place then it can be a relatively straight forward decision to use SharePoint, as long as you have reviewed the considerations just discussed. The collaborative nature of SharePoint 2010 is also a massive advantage, as specific departmental or project sites can be created quickly and easily that allow workers to interact in a variety of different ways using one source of information.  This also benefits an organization with regards to how they manage the knowledge that they have, as if all of their information is in one source then it is naturally easier to search and manage. Is SharePoint right for your organization? As just discussed, this can only be determined after defining your requirements and also planning a longer term strategy for how you will manage your documents and information. A key factor to look at is how the users would interact with the system and how much value would it get for your organization. The amount of data and documents that organizations are creating is increasing rapidly each year. Therefore the ability to archive this information, whilst keeping the ability to know what you have and where it is, is vital to any organizations management of their information life cycle. SharePoint is best used for the initial life of business documents where they need to be referenced and accessed after time. It is often beneficial to archive these to overcome for storage and performance issues. FREE CMS – SharePoint, Really? In order to show some of the completely of what comes with this free version of SharePoint 2010, I thought it would make sense to use Wikipedia (since every one trusts it as a credible source). Wikipedia shows that a web content management system typically has the following components: Document Management:   -       CMS software may provide a means of managing the life cycle of a document from initial creation time, through revisions, publication, archive, and document destruction. SharePoint is king when it comes to document management.  Version history, exclusive check-out, security, publication, workflow, and so much more.  Content Virtualization:   -       CMS software may provide a means of allowing each user to work within a virtual copy of the entire Web site, document set, and/or code base. This enables changes to multiple interdependent resources to be viewed and/or executed in-context prior to submission. Through the use of versioning, each content manager can preview, publish, and roll-back content of pages, wiki entries, blog posts, documents, or any other type of content stored in SharePoint.  The idea of each user having an entire copy of the website virtualized is a bit odd to me – not sure why anyone would need that for anything but the simplest of websites. Automated Templates:   -       Create standard output templates that can be automatically applied to new and existing content, allowing the appearance of all content to be changed from one central place. Through the use of Master Pages and Themes, SharePoint provides the ability to change the entire look and feel of site.  Of course, the older brother version of SharePoint – SharePoint Server 2010 – also introduces the concept of Page Layouts which allows page template level customization and even switching the layout of an individual page using different page templates.  I think many organizations really think they want this but rarely end up using this bit of functionality.  Easy Edits:   -       Once content is separated from the visual presentation of a site, it usually becomes much easier and quicker to edit and manipulate. Most WCMS software includes WYSIWYG editing tools allowing non-technical individuals to create and edit content. This is probably easier described with a screen cap of a vanilla SharePoint Foundation page in edit mode.  Notice the page editing toolbar, the multiple layout options…  It’s actually easier to use than Microsoft Word. Workflow management: -       Workflow is the process of creating cycles of sequential and parallel tasks that must be accomplished in the CMS. For example, a content creator can submit a story, but it is not published until the copy editor cleans it up and the editor-in-chief approves it. Workflow, it’s in there. In fact, the same workflow engine is running under SharePoint Foundation that is running under the other versions of SharePoint.  The primary difference is that with SharePoint Foundation – you need to configure the workflows yourself.   Web Standards: -       Active WCMS software usually receives regular updates that include new feature sets and keep the system up to current web standards. SharePoint is in the fourth major iteration under Microsoft with the 2010 release.  In addition to the innovation that Microsoft continuously adds, you have the entire global ecosystem available. Scalable Expansion:   -       Available in most modern WCMSs is the ability to expand a single implementation (one installation on one server) across multiple domains. SharePoint Foundation can run multiple sites using multiple URLs on a single server install.  Even more powerful, SharePoint Foundation is scalable and can be part of a multi-server farm to ensure that it will handle any amount of traffic that can be thrown at it. Delegation & Security:  -       Some CMS software allows for various user groups to have limited privileges over specific content on the website, spreading out the responsibility of content management. SharePoint Foundation provides very granular security capabilities. Read @ http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee537811.aspx Content Syndication:  -       CMS software often assists in content distribution by generating RSS and Atom data feeds to other systems. They may also e-mail users when updates are available as part of the workflow process. SharePoint Foundation nails it.  With RSS syndication and email alerts available out of the box, content syndication is already in the platform. Multilingual Support: -       Ability to display content in multiple languages. SharePoint Foundation 2010 supports more than 40 languages. Read More Read more @ http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd776256(v=office.12).aspxYou can download the free version from http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=5970

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  • Fix import hint

    - by Martin Janicek
    Good news everyone! I've implemented 'Fix import hint' which should make your life (and most probably also the groovy development) much easier! It looks in the same way as in Java editor, so you might choose between classes with the same name. Hope you will enjoy it! And as usual if you would like to try it on your own, download the latest development build and I will be more than happy for every feedback!

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  • Byldan

    - by csharp-source.net
    Byldan is a framework for managing the build life-cycle of .NET applications. Its goal is to support multiple-platforms (Linux/Windows) and multiple compiler vendors (Novell/Microsoft). This minor release of Byldan adds support for unit testing with NUnit and for signing of assemblies.

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  • Stupid Geek Tricks: 6 Ways to Open Windows Task Manager

    - by Patrick Bisch
    Bringing up Windows Task Manager is not much of a task itself, but when a virus disables Ctrl+Alt+Del and takes it hostage, how else are you going to open task manager? Or maybe you’re just looking for some diversity in your life, so here are 6 different ways to open Windows Task Manager.HTG Explains: Photography with Film-Based CamerasHow to Clean Your Dirty Smartphone (Without Breaking Something)What is a Histogram, and How Can I Use it to Improve My Photos?

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  • The Impact of Names

    - by Akemi Iwaya
    Most of the time you may not give much thought to a person’s name, or your own for that matter. But does your name, or the letters used in it (i.e. spelling), have an impact on your life that you may not be aware of? Vsauce looks at names, how they could affect your self-perception, how other people relate to you based on your name, and more in their latest video. Names [YouTube]     

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  • WordPress SEO - The Best Free Themes

    As a blogging platform WordPress is already pretty competent at letting the search engines know about the new content you put up on your site, but there is always more you can do too improve traffic and help improve the monetization of your web real estate. Believing the best things in life are free I have been experimenting with the most popular free SEO themes to be found on the WordPress site and two themes in particular have proven themselves particularly effective.

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  • The Tortoise and the Cyber-Hare

    The relentless pace of life we now live gives many the impression that everything works at this pace and that millionaires are made overnight. Unfortunately, it's not like that with SEO - time is you biggest friend and your biggest enemy.

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  • Google I/O Sandbox Case Study: Apps4Android

    Google I/O Sandbox Case Study: Apps4Android We interviewed Apps4Android at the Google I/O Sandbox on May 11, 2011 and they explained to us the benefits of building accessibility applications on the Android platform. Apps4Android creates high-quality applications that enhance the quality-of-life and independence of individuals with disabilities. For more information about developing accessibility applications, visit: google.com For more information on Apps4Android, visit: www.apps4android.org From: GoogleDevelopers Views: 26 0 ratings Time: 02:01 More in Science & Technology

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  • Is anyone teaching the application of ethics to programming?

    - by blueberryfields
    Ethical questions come up more and more in the news, and can be core to a software developers' life. On several occasions this year I was asked for advice that amounts to answering ethical questions, in a computer programming context, and I was surprised to see how much fretting and trouble questions which I consider trivial can lead to. Are there any courses or programs specializing in teaching what is expected of an ethical programmer? Has anyone put together a formal curriculum anywhere?

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  • I cancelled gparted operation ,what to do next?

    - by abcd
    I cancelled gparted operation by mistake .Now one of the partition became corrupted ,what to next? Should I format it? Data is important to me ;( Edit1: I tried to recover partition using testdisk and successfully recoverd losted partition ,but another partition(an extended partition containing ubuntus ) gone ,How to recover it? :) Edit2: testdisk saved my life ,it recovered all my partition without losing data ,

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  • Auditing made easy by Microsoft SQL Server 2008

    Microsoft SQL Server 2008 made the life of a DBA easier by providing an enhanced auditing feature, "SQL Server Audit". The first article of this series illustrates the various components for auditing and the action groups provided by Microsoft SQL Server 2008.

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  • Linkedin recommendations, useful? [closed]

    - by scottyab
    Linkedin has been around a few years now and while not everyone is keen on it. Chatting to a few people they viewed Linkedin recommendations as mutual back starching where poor candidates can recommend each other and and provide little value. I take a honest approach when recommending colleagues, trying to note specifics that person has performed well at and don't recommend colleagues on linkedin who wouldn't recommend in real life. What regard do people hold the Linkedin recommendations? would it effect your hiring decision?

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  • On PASS Summit Locations, Time Will Tell

    - by andyleonard
    Introduction The PASS Board, continuing a trend of more openness championed by Board members, released the results of its Location Survey . Along with this, PASS President Rushabh Mehta added a blog post explaining the interpretation and logic behind the decision to not move the location of upcoming PASS Summits. Kudos Less than a week ago, Rushabh and I shared beverages and talked about life, database work, SSIS Frameworks, SQL Saturdays, PASS, and business. I know most members of the PASS Board...(read more)

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  • WebCenter Customer Spotlight: Marvel

    - by me
    Author: Peter Reiser - Social Business Evangelist, Oracle WebCenter  Solution SummaryMarvel Entertainment, LLC (Marvel) is one of the world's most prominent character-based entertainment companies, built on a proven library of over 8,000 characters featured in a variety of media over seventy years. The customer wanted to optimize their brand licensing process, so Marvel worked with Oracle WebCenter partner Fishbowl Solutions and implemented a centralized Content Hub based on Oracle WebCenter Content. The 100% web based secure Intranet/Partner Extranet solution is now managing the entire life cycle of the brand licensing process. Marvel and their brand licensees have  now complete visibility of brand license operations including the history of approval request and related content.  Company OverviewMarvel Entertainment, LLC (Marvel) a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company, is one of the world's most prominent character-based entertainment companies, built on a proven library of over 8,000 characters featured in a variety of media over seventy years.  Marvel utilizes its character franchises in entertainment, licensing and publishing.   Sample  characters:    - Spider-Man    - Iron Man    - Captain America    - X-MEN    - Thor    - Avengers    - And a host of others  Business ChallengesMarvel wanted to optimize their brand licensing process for their characters and had following business requirements : Facilitating content worldwide Scalable and flexible infrastructure to manage multiple content types and huge file sizes Optimize the licensing process workflow trough automatic notifications, tracking reviews, issuing approvals, etc. Solution DeployedMarvel worked with Oracle WebCenter partner Fishbowl Solutions and implemented a centralized Content Hub based on Oracle WebCenter Content. The 100% web based secure Intranet/Partner Extranet solution is now managing the entire life cycle of the brand licensing process. The internal users can now manage all digital assets related to a character trough proper categorization of all items, workflow based review and approval of branding styles and a powerful search and retrieval service. The licensees of Marvel brands can now online develop and submit  concepts and prototypes which are reviewed and approved using a collaborative process. Business ResultMarvel and their brand licensees have now complete visibility of brand license operations including the history of approval request and related content. The character brand related content is now in the right place, at the right time at the user's fingertips with highly improved quality. Additional Information Marvel Open World Presentation Oracle WebCenter Content

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  • PowerPivot FILTER condition optimizations

    - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)
    In the comments of a recent post from Alberto Ferrari there was an interesting note about different performance related to the order of conditions in a FILTER call. I investigated about that and Jeffrey Wang has been so nice to give me some info about actual implementation that I can share on a blog post. First of all, an important disclaimer: PowerPivot is intended to make life easier, not requiring the user to think how to write the order of elements in a formula just to get better performance....(read more)

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  • Starting this week: Dublin, Maidenhead, and London

    - by KKline
    This might be most most overcommitted four-week period of time ever in my life. I’m tired just thinking about it! Not only am I traveling internationally and speaking over the next few weeks, I’m also helping on two book projects, learning some new applications from Quest Software, and helping on a small Transact-SQL refactoring project. Swag on hand? I’ve got a special printing of 500 video training DVDs for this trip: SQL Server Training on DMVs Performance Monitor and Wait Events Plus, I’ll have...(read more)

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  • What should come first: testing or code review?

    - by Silver Light
    Hello! I'm quite new to programming design patterns and life cycles and I was wondering, what should come first, code review or testing, regarding that those are done by separate people? From the one side, why bother reviewing code if nobody checked if it even works? From the other, some errors can be found early, if you do the review before testing. Which approach is recommended and why? Thank you!

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  • Microsoft Visual C# MVP 2012

    - by James Michael Hare
    I was informed on July 1st, 2012 that I was awarded a Microsoft Visual C# MVP recognition for 2012.  This is my second year now, and I'm doubly thankful to have been nominated and selected, and thankful that you guys all find my posts informative and useful! Even though life has thrown me some curve balls in this past last year, I look forward to continuing my posts (especially the Little Wonders) as much as possible!Thanks again!

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