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• Week in Geek: LastPass Rescues Xmarks Edition

  - by Asian Angel

  This week we learned how to breathe new life into an aging Windows Mobile 6.x device, use filters in Photoshop, backup and move VirtualBox machines, use the BitDefender Rescue CD to clean an infected PC, and had fun setting up a pirates theme on our computers. Photo by _nash. Weekly Feature Do you love using the Faenza icon set on your Ubuntu system but feel that there are a few much needed icons missing (or you desire a different version of a particular icon)? Then you may want to take a look at the Faenza Variants icon pack. The icons are available in the following sizes: 16px, 22px, 32px, 48px and scalable sizes. Photo by Asian Angel. Faenza Variants Random Geek Links Another week with extra link goodness to help keep you on top of the news. Photo by Asian Angel. LastPass acquires Xmarks, premium service announced Xmarks announced that it has been acquired by LastPass, a cross-platform password management service. This also means that Xmarks is now in transition from a “free” to a “freemium” business model. WikiLeaks reappears on European Net domains WikiLeaks has re-emerged on a Swiss Internet domain followed by domains in Germany, Finland, and the Netherlands, sidestepping a move that had in effect taken the controversial site off the Internet. Iran: Yes, Stuxnet hurt our nuclear program The Stuxnet worm got some big play from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who acknowledged that the malware dinged his nuclear program. More Windows Rogues than Just AV – Fake Defragmenter Check Disk Don’t think for a second that rogues are limited to scareware, because as so-called products such as “System Defragmenter”, “Scan Disk” “Check Disk” prove, they’re not. Internet Explorer’s Protected Mode can be bypassed Researchers from Verizon Business have now described a way of bypassing Protected Mode in IE 7 and 8 in order to gain access to user accounts. Can you really see who viewed your Facebook profile? Rogue application spreads virally Once again, a rogue application is spreading virally between Facebook users pretending to offer you a way of seeing who has viewed your profile. More holes in Palm’s WebOS Researchers Orlando Barrera and Daniel Herrera, who both work for security firm SecTheory, have discovered a gaping security hole in Palm’s WebOS smartphone operating system. Next-gen banking Trojans hit APAC With the proliferation of banking Trojans, Web and smartphone users of online banking services have to be on constant alert to avoid falling prey to fraud schemes, warned Etay Maor, project manager for RSA Fraud Action. AVG update cripples 64-bit computers A signature update automatically deployed by the AVG virus scanner Thursday has crippled numerous computers. Article includes link to forums to fix computers affected after a restart. Congress moves to outlaw ‘mystery charges’ for Web shoppers Legislation that makes it illegal for Web merchants and so-called post-transaction marketers to charge credit cards without the card owners’ say-so came closer to becoming law this week. Ballmer Set to “Look Into” Windows Home Server Drive Extender Fiasco Tuesday’s announcement from Microsoft regarding the removal of Drive Extender from Windows Home Server has sent shock waves across the web. Google tweaks search recipe to ding scam artists Google has changed its search algorithm to penalize sites deemed to provide an “extremely poor user experience” following a New York Times story on a merchant who justified abusive behavior towards customers as a search-engine optimization tactic. Geek Video of the Week Watch as our two friends debate back and forth about the early adoption of new technology through multiple time periods (Stone Age to the far future). Will our reluctant friend finally succumb to the temptation? Photo by CollegeHumor. Early Adopters Through History Random TinyHacker Links Fix Issues in Windows 7 Using Reliability Monitor Learn how to analyze Windows 7 errors and then fix them using the built-in reliability monitor. Learn About IE Tab Groups Tab groups is a useful feature in IE 8. Here’s a detailed guide to what it is all about. Google’s Book Helps You Learn About Browsers and Web A cool new online book by the Google Chrome team on browsers and the web. TrustPort Internet Security 2011 – Good Security from a Less Known Provider TrustPort is not exactly a well-known provider of security solutions. At least not in the consumer space. This review tests in detail their latest offering. How the World is Using Cell phones An infographic showing the shocking demographics of cell phone use. Super User Questions See the great answers to these questions from Super User. I am unable to access my C drive. It says it is unable to display current owner. List of Windows special directories/shortcuts like ‘%TEMP%’ Is using multiple passes for wiping a disk really necessary? How can I view two files side by side in Notepad++ Is there any tool that automatically puts screenshots to my Dropbox? How-To Geek Weekly Article Recap Look through our hottest articles from this past week at How-To Geek. How to Create a Software RAID Array in Windows 7 9 Alternatives for Windows Home Server’s Drive Extender Why Doesn’t Disk Cleanup Delete Everything from the Temp Folder? Ask the Readers: How Much Do You Customize Your Operating System? How to Upload Really Large Files to SkyDrive, Dropbox, or Email One Year Ago on How-To Geek Enjoy reading through these awesome articles from one year ago. How To Upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 Home Premium Edition How To Fix No Aero Transparency in Windows 7 Troubleshoot Startup Problems with Startup Repair Tool in Windows 7 & Vista Rename the Guest Account in Windows 7 for Enhanced Security Disable Error Reporting in XP, Vista, and Windows 7 The Geek Note That wraps things up here for this week. Regardless of the weather wherever you may be, we hope that you have an opportunity to get outside and have some fun! Remember to keep sending those great tips in to us at [email protected]. Photo by Tony the Misfit. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 8: Filters Get the Complete Android Guide eBook for Only 99 Cents [Update: Expired] Improve Digital Photography by Calibrating Your Monitor The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 7: Design and Typography How to Choose What to Back Up on Your Linux Home Server How To Harmonize Your Dual-Boot Setup for Windows and Ubuntu Hang in There Scrat! – Ice Age Wallpaper How Do You Know When You’ve Passed Geek and Headed to Nerd? On The Tip – A Lamborghini Theme for Chrome and Iron What if Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner were Human? [Video] Peaceful Winter Cabin Wallpaper Store Tabs for Later Viewing in Opera with Tab Vault

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• Week in Geek: FBI Back Door in OpenBSD Edition

  - by Asian Angel

  This week we learned how to migrate bookmarks from Delicious to Diigo, fix annoying arrows, play old-school DOS games, schedule smart computer shutdowns, use breaks in Microsoft Word to better format documents, check the condition of hard-disks using Linux disk utilities, & what the Linux fstab is and how it works. Photo by Jameson42. Random Geek Links Another week with extra news link goodness to help keep you up to date. Photo by justmakeit. Report of FBI back door roils OpenBSD community Allegations that the FBI surreptitiously placed a back door into the OpenBSD operating system have alarmed the computer security community, prompting calls for an audit of the source code and claims that the charges must be a hoax. Fortinet: Job outlook improving for cybercrooks In an ironic twist in the job market, more positions will open up for developers who can write customized malware packers, people who can break CAPTCHA codes, and distributors who can spread malicious code, according to Fortinet. Enisa: Malware for smartphones is a ’serious risk’ Businesses and consumers are at risk of data breaches through smartphone use, according to the European Network and Information Security Agency. The trick with the f: Google and Microsoft web sites distribute malware Last week, Google’s DoubleClick advertising platform and Microsoft’s rad.msn.com online ad network briefly distributed malware to other web sites in the form of advertising banners. New scam tactic: Fake disk defraggers It would appear that scammers are trying out new programs to see which might best confuse potential victims and evade detection by legitimate antivirus software. Microsoft closes IE and Stuxnet holes As previously announced, Microsoft has released 17 security updates to close 40 security holes. All four Windows holes so far disclosed in connection with Stuxnet have now been closed. Microsoft Offers H.264 Support to Firefox on Windows via Add-On The new HTML5 Extension for Windows Media Player Firefox Plug-in add-on from Microsoft offers users that are running Firefox on Windows 7 H.264 support for HTML5 video playback. Google proclaims Chrome business-ready Google has announced that Chrome is ready for corporate use. Microsoft Tells Exchange Customers to Think Twice Before Opting for Google Message Continuity This week, Microsoft is telling companies still running Exchange 2010’s precursors that they should carefully consider the implications of embracing Google Message Continuity. Who Google has in mind for its Chrome OS users Steven Vaughan-Nichols explains why he feels that Chrome OS will be ideal for either office-workers or people who need a computer, but do not know the first thing about how to use one safely. Oracle takes office suite to the cloud Oracle has introduced Cloud Office 1.0, a cloud-based version of its office suite, which is aimed at web and mobile users. Mozilla pays premiums for reports of vulnerabilities The Mozilla Foundation has followed Google’s example by expanding its rewards program for reports of vulnerabilities in its Web applications. Who bought those 882 Novell patents? Not just Microsoft The mysterious CPTN Holdings — the organization that bought the 882 Novell patents as part of the terms of the Attachmate acquisition of Novell – has been unmasked (Microsoft, Apple, EMC and Oracle). Appeals court: Feds need warrants for e-mail Police must obtain search warrants before perusing Internet users’ e-mail records, a federal appeals court ruled today in a landmark decision that struck down part of a 1986 law allowing warrantless access. Geek Video of the Week What happens when someone plays a wicked prank by shoveling crazy snow paths that lead to dead ends or turn back on themselves? Watch to find out! Photo by CollegeHumor. Janitor Snow Shoveling Prank Random TinyHacker Links The Oatmeal on Cat vs Internet What lengths will our poor neglected kitty hero have to go to in order to get some attention? Guide On Using JoliCloud With Windows JoliCloud is a nifty operating system that’s made for people who need a light-weight OS that’s mostly cloud based. Check this guide on using it with Windows. Use Cameyo to Easily Create Portable Programs Here’s a nifty tool to make portable apps out of programs in Windows. Check out the guide to do it. Better Family Tech Support A nice new site by Google to help members of family understand how computers work. Track Your Stolen Mobile Phone With F-Secure A useful anti-theft tool for your mobile phone. Super User Questions Another week with great answers to popular questions from Super User. What Chrome password manager fits my requirements? What’s the best way to be able to reimage windows computers? Could you suggest feature-rich disk-based personal backup program for linux (and I’ve seen a few)? What is IPv6 and why should I care? Is there any way to find out what programs are trying to connect to Internet on windows? How-To Geek Weekly Article Recap Here are our hottest articles full of geeky goodness from this past week at HTG. 20 OS X Keyboard Shortcuts You Might Not Know Microsoft Security Essentials 2.0 Kills Viruses Dead. Download It Now. Is Your Desktop Printer More Expensive Than Printing Services? Ask the Readers: Would You Be Willing to Give Windows Up and Use a Different O.S.? The Twelve Days of Geekmas One Year Ago on How-To Geek Enjoy reading through our latest batch of retro-geek goodness from one year ago. Macrium Reflect is a Free and Easy To Use Backup Utility How To Turn a Physical Computer Into A Virtual Machine with Disk2vhd How To Restore Windows 7 from a System Image How To Manage Hard Drive Space Used by Windows 7 Backup and Restore How To Manage Hibernate Mode in Windows 7 The Geek Note That is all we have for you this week, so see you back here again after the holidays! Got a great tip? Send it in to us at [email protected]. Photo by mitjamavsar. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials The 50 Best Registry Hacks that Make Windows Better The How-To Geek Holiday Gift Guide (Geeky Stuff We Like) LCD? LED? Plasma? The How-To Geek Guide to HDTV Technology The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 8: Filters Improve Digital Photography by Calibrating Your Monitor Deathwing the Destroyer – WoW Cataclysm Dragon Wallpaper Drag2Up Lets You Drag and Drop Files to the Web With Ease The Spam Police Parts 1 and 2 – Goodbye Spammers [Videos] Snow Angels Theme for Windows 7 Exploring the Jungle Ruins Wallpaper Protect Your Privacy When Browsing with Chrome and Iron Browser

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• Running an intern program

  - by dotneteer

  This year I am running an unpaid internship program for high school students. I work for a small company. We have ideas for a few side projects but never have time to do them. So we experiment by making them intern projects. In return, we give these interns guidance to learn, personal attentions, and opportunities with real-world projects. A few years ago, I blogged about the idea of teaching kids to write application with no more than 6 hours of training. This time, I was able to reduce the instruction time to 4 hours and immediately put them into real work projects. When they encounter problems, I combine directions, pointer to various materials on w3school, Udacity, Codecademy and UTube, as well as encouraging them to  search for solutions with search engines. Now entering the third week, I am more than encouraged and feeling accomplished. Our the most senior intern, Christopher Chen, is a recent high school graduate and is heading to UC Berkeley to study computer science after the summer. He previously only had one year of Java experience through the AP computer science course but had no web development experience. Only 12 days into his internship, he has already gain advanced css skills with deeper understanding than more than half of the “senior” developers that I have ever worked with. I put him on a project to migrate an existing website to the Orchard content management system (CMS) with which I am new as well. We were able to teach each other and quickly gain advanced Orchard skills such as creating custom theme and modules. I felt very much a relationship similar to the those between professors and graduate students. On the other hand, I quite expect that I will lose him the next summer to companies like Google, Facebook or Microsoft. As a side note, Christopher and I will do a two part Orchard presentations together at the next SoCal code camp at UC San Diego July 27-28. The first part, “creating an Orchard website on Azure in 60 minutes”, is an introductory lecture and we will discuss how to create a website using Orchard without writing code. The 2nd part, “customizing Orchard websites without limit”, is an advanced lecture and we will discuss custom theme and module development with WebMatrix and Visual Studio.

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• Upgrading Windows 8 boot to VHD to Windows 8.1&ndash;Step by step guide

  - by Liam Westley

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/twickers/archive/2013/10/19/upgrading-windows-8-boot-to-vhd-to-windows-8.1ndashstep-by.aspxBoot to VHD – dual booting Windows 7 and Windows 8 became easy When Windows 8 arrived, quite a few people decided that they would still dual boot their machines, and instead of mucking about with resizing disk partitions to free up space for Windows 8 they decided to use the boot from VHD feature to create a huge hard disc image into which Windows 8 could be installed.  Scott Hanselman wrote this installation guide, while I myself used the installation guide from Ed Bott of ZD net fame. Boot to VHD is a great solution, it achieves a dual boot, can be backed up easily and had virtually no effect on the original Windows 7 partition. As a developer who has dual booted Windows operating systems for years, hacking boot.ini files, the boot to VHD was a much easier solution. Upgrade to Windows 8.1 – ah, you can’t do that on a virtual disk installation (boot to VHD) Last week the final version of Windows 8.1 arrived, and I went into the Windows Store to upgrade.  Luckily I’m on a fast download service, and use an SSD, because once the upgrade was downloaded and prepared Windows informed that This PC can’t run Windows 8.1, and provided the reason, You can’t install Windows on a virtual drive.  You can see an image of the message and discussion that sparked my search for a solution in this Microsoft Technet forum post. I was determined not to have to resize partitions yet again and fiddle with VHD to disk utilities and back again, and in the end I did succeed in upgrading to a Windows 8.1 boot to VHD partition.  It takes quite a bit of effort though … tldr; Simple steps of how you upgrade Boot into Windows 7 – make a copy of your Windows 8 VHD, to become Windows 8.1 Enable Hyper-V in your Windows 8 (the original boot to VHD partition) Create a new virtual machine, attaching the copy of your Windows 8 VHD Start the virtual machine, upgrade it via the Windows Store to Windows 8.1 Shutdown the virtual machine Boot into Windows 7 – use the bcedit tool to create a new Windows 8.1 boot to VHD option (pointing at the copy) Boot into the new Windows 8.1 option Reactivate Windows 8.1 (it will have become deactivated by running under Hyper-V) Remove the original Windows 8 VHD, and in Windows 7 use bcedit to remove it from the boot menu Things you’ll need A system that can run Hyper-V under Windows 8 (Intel i5, i7 class CPU) Enough space to have your original Windows 8 boot to VHD and a copy at the same time An ISO or DVD for Windows 8 to create a bootable Windows 8 partition Step by step guide Boot to your base o/s, the real one, Windows 7. Make a copy of the Windows 8 VHD file that you use to boot Windows 8 (via boot from VHD) – I copied it from a folder on C: called VHD-Win8 to VHD-Win8.1 on my N: drive. Reboot your system into Windows 8, and enable Hyper-V if not already present (this may require reboot) Use the Hyper-V manager , create a new Hyper-V machine, using half your system memory, and use the option to attach an existing VHD on the main IDE controller – this will be the new copy you made in Step 2. Start the virtual machine, use Connect to view it, and you’ll probably discover it cannot boot as there is no boot record If this is the case, go to Hyper-V manager, edit the Settings for the virtual machine to attach an ISO of a Windows 8 DVD to the second IDE controller. Start the virtual machine, use Connect to view it, and it should now attempt a fresh installation of Windows 8.  You should select Advanced Options and choose Repair - this will make VHD bootable When the setup reboots your virtual machine, turn off the virtual machine, and remove the ISO of the Windows 8 DVD from the virtual machine settings. Start virtual machine, use Connect to view it.  You will see the devices to be re-discovered (including your quad CPU becoming single CPU).  Eventually you should see the Windows Login screen. You may notice that your desktop background (Win+D) will have turned black as your Windows installation has become deactivate due to the hardware changes between your real PC and Hyper-V. Fortunately becoming deactivated, does not stop you using the Windows Store, where you can select the update to Windows 8.1. You can now watch the progress joy of the Windows 8 update; downloading, preparing to update, checking compatibility, gathering info, preparing to restart, and finally, confirm restart - remember that you are restarting your virtual machine sitting on the copy of the VHD, not the Windows 8 boot to VHD you are currently using to run Hyper-V (confused yet?) After the reboot you get the real upgrade messages; setting up x%, xx%, (quite slow) After a while, Getting ready Applying PC Settings x%, xx% (really slow) Updating your system (fast) Setting up a few more things x%, (quite slow) Getting ready, again Accept license terms Express settings Confirmed previous password Next, I had to set up a Microsoft account – which is possibly now required, and not optional Using the Microsoft account required a 2 factor authorization, via text message, a 7 digit code for me Finalising settings Blank screen, HI .. We're setting up things for you (similar to original Windows 8 install) 'You can get new apps from the Store', below which is ’Installing your apps’ - I had Windows Media Center which is counts as an app from the Store ‘Taking care of a few things’, below which is ‘Installing your apps’ ‘Taking care of a few things’, below ‘Don't turn off your PC’ ‘Getting your apps ready’, below ‘Don't turn off your PC’ ‘Almost ready’, below ‘Don't turn off your PC’ … finally, we get the Windows 8.1 start menu, and a quick Win+D to check the desktop confirmed all the application icons I expected, pinned items on the taskbar, and one app moaning about a missing drive At this point the upgrade is complete – you can shutdown the virtual machine Reboot from the original Windows 8 and return to Windows 7 to configure booting to the Windows 8.1 copy of the VHD In an administrator command prompt do following use the bcdedit tool (from an MSDN blog about configuring VHD to boot in Windows 7) Type bcedit to list the current boot options, so you can copy the GUID (complete with brackets/braces) for the original Windows 8 boot to VHD Create a new menu option, copy of the Windows 8 option; bcdedit /copy {originalguid} /d "Windows 8.1" Point the new Windows 8.1 option to the copy of the VHD; bcdedit /set {newguid} device vhd=[D:]\Image.vhd Point the new Windows 8.1 option to the copy of the VHD; bcdedit /set {newguid} osdevice vhd=[D:]\Image.vhd Set autodetection of the HAL (may already be set); bcdedit /set {newguid} detecthal on Reboot from Windows 7 and select the new option 'Windows 8.1' on the boot menu, and you’ll have some messages to look at, as your hardware is redetected (as you are back from 1 CPU to 4 CPUs) ‘Getting devices ready, blank then %xx, with occasional blank screen, for the graphics driver, (fast-ish) Getting Ready message (fast) You will have to suffer one final reboots, choose 'Windows 8.1' and you can now login to a lovely Windows 8.1 start screen running on non virtualized hardware via boot to VHD After checking everything is running fine, you can now choose to Activate Windows, which for me was a toll free phone call to the automated system where you type in lots of numbers to be given a whole bunch of new activation codes. Once you’re happy with your new Windows 8.1 boot to VHD, and no longer need the Windows 8 boot to VHD, feel free to delete the old one.  I do believe once you upgrade, you are no longer licensed to use it anyway. There, that was simple wasn’t it? Looking at the huge list of steps it took to perform this upgrade, you may wonder whether I think this is worth it.  Well, I think it is worth booting to VHD.  It makes backups a snap (go to Windows 7, copy the VHD, you backed up the o/s) and helps with disk management – want to move the o/s, you can move the VHD and repoint the boot menu to the new location. The downside is that Microsoft has complete neglected to support boot to VHD as an upgradable option.  Quite a poor decision in my opinion, and if you read twitter and the forums quite a few people agree with that view.  It’s a shame this got missed in the work on creating the upgrade packages for Windows 8.1.

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• Tools to Help Post Content On Your WordPress Blog

  - by Matthew Guay

  Now that you’ve got a nice blog, you want to do more with it and start posting content.  Here we look at some tools that will allow you to post directly to your WordPress blog. Writing a new blog post is easy with WordPress as we saw in our previous post about Starting your own WordPress blog.  The web editor gives you a lot of features and even lets you edit your post’s source code if you enjoy hacking HTML.  There are other tools that will allow you to post content, here we look at how you can post with dedicated apps, browser plugins, and even by email. Windows Live Writer Windows Live Writer (part of the Windows Live Essentials Suite) is a great app for posting content to your blog.  This free program for Microsoft lets you post content to a variety of blogging services, including Blogger, Typepad, LiveJournal, and of course WordPress.  You can write blog posts directly from its Word-like editor, complete with pictures and advanced formatting.  Even if you’re offline, you can still write posts and save them for when you’re online again. For more information about installing Live writer, check out our article on how to Install Windows Live Essentials In Windows 7. Once Live Writer is installed, open it to add your blog.  If you already had Live Writer installed and configured for a blog, you can add your new blog, too.  Just click your blog’s name in the top right corner, and select “Add blog account”. Select “Other blog service” to add your WordPress blog to Writer, and click Next.   Enter your blog’s web address, and your username and password.  Check Remember my password so you don’t have to enter it every time you write something. Writer will analyze your blog and setup your account. During the setup process it may ask to post a temporary post.  This will let you preview blog posts using your blog’s real theme, which is helpful, so click Yes. Finally, add your Blog’s name, and click Finish. You can now use the rich editor to write and add content to a new blog post.   Select the Preview tab to see how your post will look on your blog… Or, if you’re a HTML geek, select the Source tab to edit the code of your blog post. From the bottom of the window, you can choose categories, insert tags, and even schedule the post to publish on a different day.  Live Writer is fully integrated with WordPress; you’re not missing anything by using the desktop editor. If you want to edit a post you’ve already published, click the Open button and select the post.  You can chose and edit any post, including ones you published via the web interface or other editors. Add Multimedia Content to your Posts with Live Writer Back in the Edit tab, you can add pictures, videos and more from the sidebar.  Select what you want to insert. Pictures If you insert a picture, you can add many nice borders and designs to it. Or, you can even add artistic effects from the Effects tab in the sidebar. Photo Gallery If you want to post several pictures, say some of your vacation shots, then inserting a picture gallery may be the best option.  Select Insert Photo Gallery in the sidebar, and then choose the pictures you want in the gallery. Once the gallery is inserted, you can choose from several styles to showcase your pictures. When you post the blog, you will be asked to sign in with your Windows Live ID as the gallery pictures will be stored in the free Skydrive storage service. Your blog readers can see the preview of your pictures directly on your blog, and then can view each individual picture, download them, or see a slideshow online via the link. Video If you want to add a video to your blog post, select Video from the sidebar as above.  You can select a video that’s already online, or you can choose a new video from file and upload it via YouTube directly from Windows Live Writer.   Note that you will have to sign in with your YouTube account to upload videos to YouTube, so if you’re not logged in you’ll be prompted to do so when you click Insert. Geek Tip:  If you ever want to copy your Live Writer settings to another computer, check out our article on how to Backup Your Windows Live Writer Settings. Microsoft Office Word Word 2007 and 2010 also let you post content directly to your blog.  This is especially nice if you’ve already typed up a document and think it would be good on your Blog as well.  Check out our in-depth tutorial on posting blog posts via Word 2007 using Word 2007 as a blogging tool. This works in Word 2010 too, except the Office Orb has been replaced by the new Backstage view.  So, in Word 2010, to start a new blog post, click File \ New then select Blog post.  Proceed as you would in Word 2007 to add your blog settings and post the content you want. Or, if you’ve already written a document and want to post it, select File \ Share (or Save and Send in the final version of Word 2010), and then click Publish as Blog Post.  If you haven’t setup your blog account yet, set it up as shown in the Word 2007 article. Post Via Email Most of us use email daily, and already have our favorite email app or service.  Whether on your desktop or mobile phone, it’s easy to create rich emails and add content.  WordPress lets you generate a unique email address that you can use to easily post content and email to your blog.  Just compose your email with the subject as the title of your post, and send it to this unique address.  Your new post will be up in minutes. To active this feature, click the My Account button in the top menu bar in your WordPress.com account, and select My Blogs. Click the Enable button under Post by Email beside your blog’s name.   Now you’ll have a private email you can use to post to your blog.  Anything you send to this email will be posted as a new post.  If you think your email may be compromised, click Regenerate to get a new publishing email address. Any email program or webapp now is a blog post editor.  Feel free to use rich formatting or insert pictures; it all comes through great.  This is also a great way to post to your blog from your mobile device.  Whether you’re using webmail or a dedicated email client on your phone, you can now blog from anywhere.   Mobile Applications WordPress also offer dedicated applications for blogging directly from your mobile device.  You can write new posts, edit existing ones, and manage comments all from your Smartphone.  Currently they offer apps for iPhone, Android, and Blackberry.  Check them out at the link below. Conclusion Whether you want to write from your browser or email a post to your blog, WordPress is flexible enough to work right along with your preferences.  However you post, you can be sure that it will look professional and be easily accessible with your WordPress blog. Download Windows Live Writer Download WordPress apps for your mobile device Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Quick Tip: Set a Future Date for a Post in WordPressAdd Social Bookmarking (Digg This!) Links to your Wordpress BlogFuture Date a Post in Windows Live WriterHow To Start Your Own Professional Blog with WordPressUsing Word 2007 as a Blogging Tool 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 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows Fun with 47 charts and graphs Tomorrow is Mother’s Day Check the Average Speed of YouTube Videos You’ve Watched OutlookStatView Scans and Displays General Usage Statistics How to Add Exceptions to the Windows Firewall Office 2010 reviewed in depth by Ed Bott

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• Michael Crump&rsquo;s notes for 70-563 PRO &ndash; Designing and Developing Windows Applications usi

  - by mbcrump

  TIME TO GO PRO! This is my notes for 70-563 PRO – Designing and Developing Windows Applications using .NET Framework 3.5 I created it using several resources (various certification web sites, msdn, official ms 70-548 book). The reason that I created this review is because a) I am taking the exam. b) MS did not create a book for this exam. Use the(MS 70-548)book. c) To make sure I am familiar with each before the exam. I hope that it provides a good start for your own notes. I hope that someone finds this useful. At least, it will give you a starting point of what to expect to know on the PRO exam. Also, for those wondering, the PRO exam does contains very little code. It is basically all theory. 1. Validation Controls – How to prevent users from entering invalid data on forms. (MaskedTextBox control and RegEx) 2. ServiceController – used to start and control the behavior of existing services. 3. User Feedback (know winforms Status Bar, Tool Tips, Color, Error Provider, Context-Sensitive and Accessibility) 4. Specific (derived) exceptions must be handled before general (base class) exceptions. By moving the exception handling for the base type Exception to after exception handling of ArgumentNullException, all ArgumentNullException thrown by the Helper method will be caught and logged correctly. 5. A heartbeat method is a method exposed by a Web service that allows external applications to check on the status of the service. 6. New users must master key tasks quickly. Giving these tasks context and appropriate detail will help. However, advanced users will demand quicker paths. Shortcuts, accelerators, or toolbar buttons will speed things along for the advanced user. 7. MSBuild uses project files to instruct the build engine what to build and how to build it. MSBuild project files are XML files that adhere to the MSBuild XML schema. The MSBuild project files contain complete file, build action, and dependency information for each individual projects. 8. Evaluating whether or not to fix a bug involves a triage process. You must identify the bug's impact, set the priority, categorize it, and assign a developer. Many times the person doing the triage work will assign the bug to a developer for further investigation. In fact, the workflow for the bug work item inside of Team System supports this step. Developers are often asked to assess the impact of a given bug. This assessment helps the person doing the triage make a decision on how to proceed. When assessing the impact of a bug, you should consider time and resources to fix it, bug risk, and impacts of the bug. 9. In large projects it is generally impossible and unfeasible to fix all bugs because of the impact on schedule and budget. 10. Code reviews should be conducted by a technical lead or a technical peer. 11. Testing Applications 12. WCF Services – application state 13. SQL Server 2005 / 2008 Express Edition – reliable storage of data / Microsoft SQL Server 3.5 Compact Database– used for client computers to retrieve and save data from a shared location. 14. SQL Server 2008 Compact Edition – used for minimum possible memory and can synchronize data with a corporate SQL Server 2008 Database. Supports offline user and minimum dependency on external components. 15. MDI and SDI Forms (specifically IsMDIContainer) 16. GUID – in the case of data warehousing, it is important to define unique keys. 17. Encrypting / Security Data 18. Understanding of Isolated Storage/Proper location to store items 19. LINQ to SQL 20. Multithreaded access 21. ADO.NET Entity Framework model 22. Marshal.ReleaseComObject 23. Common User Interface Layout (ComboBox, ListBox, Listview, MaskedTextBox, TextBox, RichTextBox, SplitContainer, TableLayoutPanel, TabControl) 24. DataSets Class - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.data.dataset%28VS.71%29.aspx 25. SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services (SSRS) 26. SystemIcons.Shield (Vista UAC) 27. Leverging stored procedures to perform data manipulation for a database schema that can change. 28. DataContext 29. Microsoft Windows Installer Packages, ClickOnce(bootstrapping features), XCopy. 30. Client Application Services – will authenticate users by using the same data source as a ASP.NET web application. 31. SQL Server 2008 Caching 32. StringBuilder 33. Accessibility Guidelines for Windows Applications http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms228004.aspx 34. Logging erros 35. Testing performance related issues. 36. Role Based Security, GenericIdentity and GenericPrincipal 37. System.Net.CookieContainer will store session data for webapps (see isolated storage for winforms) 38. .NET CLR Profiler tool will identify objects that cause performance issues. 39. ADO.NET Synchronization (SyncGroup) 40. Globalization - CultureInfo 41. IDisposable Interface- reports on several questions relating to this. 42. Adding timestamps to determine whether data has changed or not. 43. Converting applications to .NET Framework 3.5 44. MicrosoftReportViewer 45. Composite Controls 46. Windows Vista KNOWN folders. 47. Microsoft Sync Framework 48. TypeConverter -Provides a unified way of converting types of values to other types, as well as for accessing standard values and sub properties. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.componentmodel.typeconverter.aspx 49. Concurrency control mechanisms The main categories of concurrency control mechanisms are: Optimistic - Delay the checking of whether a transaction meets the isolation rules (e.g., serializability and recoverability) until its end, without blocking any of its (read, write) operations, and then abort a transaction, if the desired rules are violated. Pessimistic - Block operations of a transaction, if they may cause violation of the rules. Semi-optimistic - Block operations in some situations, and do not block in other situations, while delaying rules checking to transaction's end, as done with optimistic. 50. AutoResetEvent 51. Microsoft Messaging Queue (MSMQ) 4.0 52. Bulk imports 53. KeyDown event of controls 54. WPF UI components 55. UI process layer 56. GAC (installing, removing and queuing) 57. Use a local database cache to reduce the network bandwidth used by applications. 58. Sound can easily be annoying and distracting to users, so use it judiciously. Always give users the option to turn sound off. Because a user might have sound off, never convey important information through sound alone.

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• Best Practices for Building a Virtualized SPARC Computing Environment

  - by Scott Elvington

  Normal 0 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;} Oracle just published Best Practices for Building a Virtualized SPARC Computing Environment, a white paper that provides guidance on the complete hardware and software stack for deploying and managing your physical and virtual SPARC infrastructure. The solution is based on Oracle SPARC T4 servers, Oracle Solaris 11 with Oracle VM for SPARC 2.2, Sun ZFS storage appliances, Sun 10GbE 72 port switches and Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c. The paper emphasizes the value and importance of planning the resources (compute, network and storage) that will comprise the virtualized environment to achieve the desired capacity, performance and availability characteristics. The document also details numerous operational best practices that will help you deliver on those characteristics with unique capabilities provided by Enterprise Manager Ops Center including policy-based guest placement, pool resource balancing and automated guest recovery in the event of server failure. Plenty of references to supplementary documentation are included to help point you to additional resources. Whether you’re building the first stages of your private cloud or a general-purpose virtualized SPARC computing environment, these documented best practices will help ensure success. Please join Phil Bullinger and Steve Wilson from Oracle to learn more about breakthrough efficiency in private cloud infrastructure and how SPARC based virtualization can help you get started on your cloud journey. Stay Connected: Twitter |  Face book |  You Tube |  Linked in |  Newsletter

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• Getting Started with ASP.NET Membership, Profile and RoleManager

  - by Ben Griswold

  A new ASP.NET MVC project includes preconfigured Membership, Profile and RoleManager providers right out of the box.  Try it yourself – create a ASP.NET MVC application, crack open the web.config file and have a look.  First, you’ll find the ApplicationServices database connection: <connectionStrings>   <add name="ApplicationServices"        connectionString="data source=.\SQLEXPRESS;Integrated Security=SSPI;AttachDBFilename=|DataDirectory|aspnetdb.mdf;User Instance=true"        providerName="System.Data.SqlClient"/> </connectionStrings>   Notice the connection string is referencing the aspnetdb.mdf database hosted by SQL Express and it’s using integrated security so it’ll just work for you without having to call out a specific database login or anything. Scroll down the file a bit and you’ll find each of the three noted sections: <membership>   <providers>     <clear/>     <add name="AspNetSqlMembershipProvider"          type="System.Web.Security.SqlMembershipProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a"          connectionStringName="ApplicationServices"          enablePasswordRetrieval="false"          enablePasswordReset="true"          requiresQuestionAndAnswer="false"          requiresUniqueEmail="false"          passwordFormat="Hashed"          maxInvalidPasswordAttempts="5"          minRequiredPasswordLength="6"          minRequiredNonalphanumericCharacters="0"          passwordAttemptWindow="10"          passwordStrengthRegularExpression=""          applicationName="/"             />   </providers> </membership>   <profile>   <providers>     <clear/>     <add name="AspNetSqlProfileProvider"          type="System.Web.Profile.SqlProfileProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a"          connectionStringName="ApplicationServices"          applicationName="/"             />   </providers> </profile>   <roleManager enabled="false">   <providers>     <clear />     <add connectionStringName="ApplicationServices" applicationName="/" name="AspNetSqlRoleProvider" type="System.Web.Security.SqlRoleProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />     <add applicationName="/" name="AspNetWindowsTokenRoleProvider" type="System.Web.Security.WindowsTokenRoleProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />   </providers> </roleManager> Really. It’s all there. Still don’t believe me.  Run the application, walk through the registration process and finally login and logout.  Completely functional – and you didn’t have to do a thing! What else?  Well, you can manage your users via the Configuration Manager which is hiding in Visual Studio behind Projects > ASP.NET Configuration. The ASP.NET Web Site Administration Tool isn’t MVC-specific (neither is the Membership, Profile or RoleManager stuff) but it’s neat and I hardly ever see anyone using it.  Here you can set up and edit users, roles, and set access permissions for your site. You can manage application settings, establish your SMTP settings, configure debugging and tracing, define default error page and even take your application offline.  The UI is rather plain-Jane but it works great. And here’s the best of all.  Let’s say you, like most of us, don’t want to run your application on top of the aspnetdb.mdf database.  Let’s suppose you want to use your own database and you’d like to add the membership stuff to it.  Well, that’s easy enough. Take a look inside your [drive:]\%windir%\Microsoft.Net\Framework\v2.0.50727\ folder.  Here you’ll find a bunch of files.  If you were to run the InstallCommon.sql, InstallMembership.sql, InstallRoles.sql and InstallProfile.sql files against the database of your choices, you’d be installing the same membership, profile and role artifacts which are found in the aspnet.db to your own database.  Too much trouble?  Okay. Run [drive:]\%windir%\Microsoft.Net\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_regsql.exe from the command line instead.  This will launch the ASP.NET SQL Server Setup Wizard which walks you through the installation of those same database objects into the new or existing database of your choice. You may not always have the luxury of using this tool on your destination server, but you should use it whenever you can.  Last tip: don’t forget to update the ApplicationServices connectionstring to point to your custom database after the setup is complete. At the risk of sounding like a smarty, everything I’ve mentioned in this post has been around for quite a while. The thing is that not everyone has had the opportunity to use it.  And it makes sense. I know I’ve worked on projects which used custom membership services.  Why bother with the out-of-the-box stuff, right?   And the .NET framework is so massive, who can know it all. Well, eventually you might have a chance to architect your own solution using any implementation you’d like or you will have the time to play around with another aspect of the framework.  When you do, think back to this post.

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• The Importance of a Security Assessment - by Michael Terra, Oracle

  - by Darin Pendergraft

  Today's Blog was written by Michael Terra, who was the Subject Matter Expert for the recently announced Oracle Online Security Assessment. You can take the Online Assessment here: Take the Online Assessment Over the past decade, IT Security has become a recognized and respected Business discipline.  Several factors have contributed to IT Security becoming a core business and organizational enabler including, but not limited to, increased external threats and increased regulatory pressure. Security is also viewed as a key enabler for strategic corporate activities such as mergers and acquisitions.Now, the challenge for senior security professionals is to develop an ongoing dialogue within their organizations about the importance of information security and how it can impact their organization's strategic objectives/mission. The importance of conducting regular “Security Assessments” across the IT and physical infrastructure has become increasingly important. Security standards and frameworks, such as the international standard ISO 27001, are increasingly being adopted by organizations and their business partners as proof of their security posture and “Security Assessments” are a great way to ensure a continued alignment to these frameworks.Oracle offers a number of different security assessment covering a broad range of technologies. Some of these are short engagements conducted for free with our strategic customers and partners. Others are longer term paid engagements delivered by Oracle Consulting Services or one of our partners. The goal of a security assessment, (also known as a security audit or security review), is to ensure that necessary security controls are integrated into the design and implementation of a project, application or technology.  A properly completed security assessment should provide documentation outlining any security gaps that exist in an infrastructure and the associated risks for those gaps. With that knowledge, an organization can choose to either mitigate, transfer, avoid or accept the risk. One example of an Oracle offering is a Security Readiness Assessment:The Oracle Security Readiness Assessment is a practical security architecture review focused on aligning an organization’s enterprise security architecture to their business principals and strategic objectives. The service will establish a multi-phase security architecture roadmap focused on supporting new and existing business initiatives.Offering OverviewThe Security Readiness Assessment will: Define an organization’s current security posture and provide a roadmap to a desired future state architecture by mapping  security solutions to business goals Incorporate commonly accepted security architecture concepts to streamline an organization’s security vision from strategy to implementation Define the people, process and technology implications of the desired future state architecture The objective is to deliver cohesive, best practice security architectures spanning multiple domains that are unique and specific to the context of your organization. Offering DetailsThe Oracle Security Readiness Assessment is a multi-stage process with a dedicated Oracle Security team supporting your organization.  During the course of this free engagement, the team will focus on the following: Review your current business operating model and supporting IT security structures and processes Partner with your organization to establish a future state security architecture leveraging Oracle’s reference architectures, capability maps, and best practices Provide guidance and recommendations on governance practices for the rollout and adoption of your future state security architecture Create an initial business case for the adoption of the future state security architecture If you are interested in finding out more, ask your Sales Consultant or Account Manager for details.

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• Xobni Free Powers Up Outlook’s Search and Contacts

  - by Matthew Guay

  Want to find out more about your contacts, discover email trends, and even sync Yahoo! email accounts in Outlook?  Here’s how you can do this and more with Xobni Free. Email is one of the most important communications mediums today, but even with all of the advances in Outlook over the years it can still be difficult to keep track of conversations, files, and contacts.  Xobni makes it easy by indexing your emails and organizing them by sender.  You can use its powerful search to quickly find any email, find related messages, and then view more information about that contact with information from social networks.  And, to top it off, it even lets you view your Yahoo! emails directly in Outlook without upgrading to a Yahoo! Plus account.  Xobni runs in Outlook 2003, 2007, and 2010, including the 64 bit version of Outlook 2010, and users of older versions will especially enjoy the new features Xobni brings for free. Getting started Download the Xobni Free installer (link below), and run to start the installation.  Make sure to exit Outlook before installing.  Xobni may need to download additional files which may take a few moments. When the download is finished, proceed with the install as normal.  You can opt out of the Product Improvement Program at the end of the installation by unchecking the box.  Additionally, you are asked to share Xobni with your friends on social networks, but this is not required.   Next time you open Outlook, you’ll notice the new Xobni sidebar in Outlook.  You can choose to watch an introduction video that will help you quickly get up to speed on how Xobni works. While this is playing, Xobni is working at indexing your email in the background.  Once the first indexing is finished, click Let’s Go! to start using Xobni. Here’s how Xobni looks in Outlook 2010: Advanced Email Information Select an email, and now you can see lots of info about it in your new Xobni sidebar.   On the top of the sidebar, select the graph icon to see when and how often you email with a contact.  Each contact is given an Xobni rank so you can quickly see who you email the most.   You can see all related emails sorted into conversations, and also all attachments in the conversation, not just this email. Xobni can also show you all scheduled appointments and links exchanged with a contact, but this is only available in the Plus version.  If you’d rather not see the tab for a feature you can’t use, click Don’t show this tab to banish it from Xobni for good.   Searching emails from the Xobni toolbar is very fast, and you can preview a message by simply hovering over it from the search pane. Get More Information About Your Contacts Xobni’s coolest feature is its social integration.  Whenever you select an email, you may see a brief bio, picture, and more, all pulled from social networks.   Select one of the tabs to find more information.  You may need to login to view information on your contacts from certain networks. The Twitter tab lets you see recent tweets.  Xobni will search for related Twitter accounts, and will ask you to confirm if the choice is correct.   Now you can see this contact’s recent Tweets directly from Outlook.   The Hoovers tab can give you interesting information about the businesses you’re in contact with. If the information isn’t correct, you can edit it and add your own information.  Click the Edit button, and the add any information you want.   You can also remove a network you don’t wish to see.  Right-click on the network tabs, select Manage Extensions, and uncheck any you don’t want to see. But sometimes online contact just doesn’t cut it.  For these times, click on the orange folder button to request a contact’s phone number or schedule a time with them. This will open a new email message ready to send with the information you want.  Edit as you please, and send. Add Yahoo! Email to Outlook for Free One of Xobni’s neatest features is that it let’s you add your Yahoo! email account to Outlook for free.  Click the gear icon in the bottom of the Xobni sidebar and select Options to set it up. Select the Integration tab, and click Enable to add Yahoo! mail to Xobni. Sign in with your Yahoo! account, and make sure to check the Keep me signed in box. Note that you may have to re-signin every two weeks to keep your Yahoo! account connected.  Select I agree to finish setting it up. Xobni will now download and index your recent Yahoo! mail. Your Yahoo! messages will only show up in the Xobni sidebar.  Whenever you select a contact, you will see related messages from your Yahoo! account as well.  Or, you can search from the sidebar to find individual messages from your Yahoo! account.  Note the Y! logo beside Yahoo! messages.   Select a message to read it in the Sidebar.  You can open the email in Yahoo! in your browser, or can reply to it using your default Outlook email account. If you have many older messages in your Yahoo! account, make sure to go back to the Integration tab and select Index Yahoo! Mail to index all of your emails. Conclusion Xobni is a great tool to help you get more out of your daily Outlook experience.  Whether you struggle to find attachments a coworker sent you or want to access Yahoo! email from Outlook, Xobni might be the perfect tool for you.  And with the extra things you learn about your contacts with the social network integration, you might boost your own PR skills without even trying! Link Download Xobni Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Speed up Windows Vista Start Menu Search By Limiting ResultsFix for New Contact Group Button Not Displaying in VistaGet Maps and Directions to Your Contacts in Outlook 2007Backup Windows Mail Messages and Contacts in VistaHow to Import Gmail Contacts Into Outlook 2007 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 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows iFixit Offers Gadget Repair Manuals Online Vista style sidebar for Windows 7 Create Nice Charts With These Web Based Tools Track Daily Goals With 42Goals Video Toolbox is a Superb Online Video Editor Fun with 47 charts and graphs

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• T4 Template error - Assembly Directive cannot locate referenced assembly in Visual Studio 2010 proje

  - by CodeSniper

  I ran into the following error recently in Visual Studio 2010 while trying to port Phil Haack’s excellent T4CSS template which was originally built for Visual Studio 2008.   The Problem Error Compiling transformation: Metadata file 'dotless.Core' could not be found In “T4 speak”, this simply means that you have an Assembly directive in your T4 template but the T4 engine was not able to locate or load the referenced assembly. In the case of the T4CSS Template, this was a showstopper for making it work in Visual Studio 2010. On a side note: The T4CSS template is a sweet little wrapper to allow you to use DotLessCss to generate static .css files from .less files rather than using their default HttpHandler or command-line tool.    If you haven't tried DotLessCSS yet, go check it out now!  In short, it is a tool that allows you to templatize and program your CSS files so that you can use variables, expressions, and mixins within your CSS which enables rapid changes and a lot of developer-flexibility as you evolve your CSS and UI. Back to our regularly scheduled program… Anyhow, this post isn't about DotLessCss, its about the T4 Templates and the errors I ran into when converting them from Visual Studio 2008 to Visual Studio 2010. In VS2010, there were quite a few changes to the T4 Template Engine; most were excellent changes, but this one bit me with T4CSS: “Project assemblies are no longer used to resolve template assembly directives.” In VS2008, if you wanted to reference a custom assembly in your T4 Template (.tt file) you would simply right click on your project, choose Add Reference and select that assembly.  Afterwards you were allowed to use the following syntax in your T4 template to tell it to look at the local references: <#@ assembly name="dotless.Core.dll" #> This told the engine to look in the “usual place” for the assembly, which is your project references. However, this is exactly what they changed in VS2010.  They now basically sandbox the T4 Engine to keep your T4 assemblies separate from your project assemblies.  This can come in handy if you want to support different versions of an assembly referenced both by your T4 templates and your project. Who broke the build?  Oh, Microsoft Did! In our case, this change causes a problem since the templates are no longer compatible when upgrading to VS 2010 – thus its a breaking change.  So, how do we make this work in VS 2010? Luckily, Microsoft now offers several options for referencing assemblies from T4 Templates: GAC your assemblies and use Namespace Reference or Fully Qualified Type Name Use a hard-coded Fully Qualified UNC path Copy assembly to Visual Studio "Public Assemblies Folder" and use Namespace Reference or Fully Qualified Type Name.  Use or Define a Windows Environment Variable to build a Fully Qualified UNC path. Use a Visual Studio Macro to build a Fully Qualified UNC path. Option #1 & 2 were already supported in Visual Studio 2008, so if you want to keep your templates compatible with both Visual Studio versions, then you would have to adopt one of these approaches. Yakkety Yak, use the GAC! Option #1 requires an additional pre-build step to GAC the referenced assembly, which could be a pain.  But, if you go that route, then after you GAC, all you need is a simple type name or namespace reference such as: <#@ assembly name="dotless.Core" #> Hard Coding aint that hard! The other option of using hard-coded paths in Option #2 is pretty impractical in most situations since each developer would have to use the same local project folder paths, or modify this setting each time for their local machines as well as for production deployment.  However, if you want to go that route, simply use the following assembly directive style: <#@ assembly name="C:\Code\Lib\dotless.Core.dll" #> Lets go Public! Option #3, the Visual Studio Public Assemblies Folder, is the recommended place to put commonly used tools and libraries that are only needed for Visual Studio.  Think of it like a VS-only GAC.  This is likely the best place for something like dotLessCSS and is my preferred solution.  However, you will need to either use an installer or a pre-build action to copy the assembly to the right folder location.   Normally this is located at:  C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\PublicAssemblies Once you have copied your assembly there, you use the type name or namespace syntax again: <#@ assembly name="dotless.Core" #> Save the Environment! Option #4, using a Windows Environment Variable, is interesting for enterprise use where you may have standard locations for files, but less useful for demo-code, frameworks, and products where you don't have control over the local system.  The syntax for including a environment variable in your assembly directive looks like the following, just as you would expect: <#@ assembly name="%mypath%\dotless.Core.dll" #> “mypath” is a Windows environment variable you setup that points to some fully qualified UNC path on your system.  In the right situation this can be a great solution such as one where you use a msi installer for deployment, or where you have a pre-existing environment variable you can re-use. OMG Macros! Finally, Option #5 is a very nice option if you want to keep your T4 template’s assembly reference local and relative to the project or solution without muddying-up your dev environment or GAC with extra deployments.  An example looks like this: <#@ assembly name="$(SolutionDir)lib\dotless.Core.dll" #> In this example, I’m using the “SolutionDir” VS macro so I can reference an assembly in a “/lib” folder at the root of the solution.   This is just one of the many macros you can use.  If you are familiar with creating Pre/Post-build Event scripts, you can use its dialog to look at all of the different VS macros available. This option gives the best solution for local assemblies without the hassle of extra installers or other setup before the build.   However, its still not compatible with Visual Studio 2008, so if you have a T4 Template you want to use with both, then you may have to create multiple .tt files, one for each IDE version, or require the developer to set a value in the .tt file manually.   I’m not sure if T4 Templates support any form of compiler switches like “#if (VS2010)”  statements, but it would definitely be nice in this case to switch between this option and one of the ones more compatible with VS 2008. Conclusion As you can see, we went from 3 options with Visual Studio 2008, to 5 options (plus one problem) with Visual Studio 2010.  As a whole, I think the changes are great, but the short-term growing pains during the migration may be annoying until we get used to our new found power. Hopefully this all made sense and was helpful to you.  If nothing else, I’ll just use it as a reference the next time I need to port a T4 template to Visual Studio 2010.  Happy T4 templating, and “May the fourth be with you!”

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• Silverlight Cream for April 03, 2010 -- #829

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Scott Marlowe, Nokola, SilverLaw, Brad Abrams, Jeff Wilcox, Jesse Liberty, Alexey Zakharov, ondrejsv, Ward Bell, and David Anson. Shoutouts: Bart Czernicki has a post up about the latest with HTML5: HTML 5 is Born Old - Quake in HTML 5 I was sent a link to shoebox360 a while back and had to sign up to see the Silverlight use, but it does work very nice. I like the panoramic carousel in the viewer: shoebox360 Jeff Handley has a post up on RIA Services - Documentation Guidance and Community Samples... the team is looking for feedback from all of us Shawn Wildermuth posted his My MIX Talks' Source Code Laurent Bugnion posted his Sample code and slides for my TechDays10 (Belgium) talks From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight to WCF Cross Domain SecurityException Scott Marlowe wrote an article about an often-encountered security exception having to do with cross-domain policies. He details the problem, the response, the solution, and yet another problem/solution associated... good stuff, Scott! Simple Functions for HTML Interop You've seen Nokola's graphic work... how about some HTML Interop from him? He's exposing the code he uses in his work. New Video: ChildWindow Styling - Silverlight 3 SilverLaw has a new video tutorial on Silerlight 3 ChildWindow Styling up - in German - but the video is language-agnostic :) Silverlight 4 + RIA Services - Ready for Business: Exposing WCF (SOAP\WSDL) Services Brad Abrams' continuation in his RIA series is this one demonstrating exposing RIA Services as a Soap\WSDL service Silverlight 4: New parser implementation. New parser features. Jeff Wilcox has a post up highlighting some of the new features in Silverlight 4 such as a new parser implementation with new XAML features. New Video Series – Getting Started With Silverlight Jesse Liberty is starting a new video tutorial series that's going to build out to be a "complete survey of Silverlight programming". The first two are in this post and are Getting Started and Adding Controls to a Silverlight App... looks like good material, Jesse, and all the source is there for the taking as well. Silverlight layout hack: Centered content with fixed maxwidth Alexey Zakharov has a quick tip up on creating centered content with fixed maxwidth. He calls it a dirty trick... looks like code to me :) Silverlight DataForm’s autogenerated fields send empty strings to database ondrejsv points up a problem he had with the Toolkit's DataForm, and his solution to it... with code for all of us following along behind :) DevForce Extensibility With MEF InheritedExport Ward Bell has a post up describing how they got DevForce MEF'd up, and looks like a good post to get you all excited about MEF as well... lots of external links and good info. Tip: Read-only custom DependencyProperties don't exist in Silverlight, but can be closely approximated David Anson's latest Tip is about Read-only custom DependencyProperties in Silverlight -- which strictly is not possible, but he has a code example up that gets close. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• CDN CNAMEs not resolving to customer origin

  - by Donald Jenkins

  I have set up an Edgecast CDN to mirror all my static content. Because I use the root of my domain (donaldjenkins.com) to host my main site—using Google Analytics which sets cookies—I've stored the corresponding static files in a separate cookieless domain (donaldjenkins.info) which is used only for this purpose. I've set it up (using this guide for general guidance), with the following structure, based on a combination of customer origin and CDN origin to make the most of the chosen short domain name and provide meaningful URLs: http://donaldjenkins.info:80 is set as the customer origin for the content stored in the CDN at directory http://wac.62E0.edgecastcdn.net/8062E0/donaldjenkins.info; I've then set up various subdomains of a separate domain, the conveniently-named cdn.dj, as CDN-origin Edge CNAMEs for each of the corresponding static content types: js.cdn.dj points to the origin directory http://wac.62E0.edgecastcdn.net/0062E0/donaldjenkins.info/js; css.cdn.dj points to the origin directory http://wac.62E0.edgecastcdn.net/0062E0/donaldjenkins.info/css; images.cdn.dj points to the origin directory http://wac.62E0.edgecastcdn.net/0062E0/donaldjenkins.info/images and so on. This results in some pretty nice, short, clear URLs. The DNS zone file for cdn.dj (yes, it's a real domain name registered in Djibouti) is set properly: cdn.dj 43200 IN A 205.186.157.162 css.cdn.dj 43200 IN CNAME wac.62E0.edgecastcdn.net. images.cdn.dj 43200 IN CNAME wac.62E0.edgecastcdn.net. js.cdn.dj 43200 IN CNAME wac.62E0.edgecastcdn.net. The DNS resolves to the Edgecast URL: $ host js.cdn.dj js.cdn.dj is an alias for wac.62E0.edgecastcdn.net. wac.62E0.edgecastcdn.net is an alias for gs1.wac.edgecastcdn.net. gs1.wac.edgecastcdn.net has address 93.184.220.20 But whenever I try to fetch a file in any of the directories to which the CNAME assets map, I get a 404: $ curl http://js.cdn.dj/combined.js <?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> <head> <title>404 - Not Found</title> </head> <body> <h1>404 - Not Found</h1> </body> </html> despite the fact that the corresponding customer origin file exists: $ curl http://donaldjenkins.info/js/combined.js fetches the content of the combined.js file. Yet it's been more than enough time for the DNS to propagate since I set up the CDN. There's obviously some glaring mistake in the above-described setup, and I'm a bit of a novice with CDNs—but any suggestions would be gratefully received.

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

  - by Edith Mireles-Oracle

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

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• OWB 11gR2 &ndash; Flexible and extensible

  - by David Allan

  The Oracle data integration extensibility capabilities are something I love, nothing more frustrating than a tool or platform that is very constraining. I think extensibility and flexibility are invaluable capabilities in the data integration arena. I liked Uli Bethke's posting on some extensibility capabilities with ODI (see Nesting ODI Substitution Method Calls here), he has some useful guidance on making customizations to existing KMs, nice to learn by example. I thought I'd illustrate the same capabilities with ODI's partner OWB for the OWB community. There is a whole new world of potential. The LKM/IKM/CKM/JKMs are the primary templates that are supported (plus the Oracle Target code template), so there is a lot of potential for customizing and extending the product in this release. Enough waffle... Diving in at the deep end from Uli's post, in OWB the table operator has a number of additional properties in OWB 11gR2 that let you annotate the column usage with ODI-like properties such as the slowly changing usage or for your own user-defined purpose as in Uli's post, below you see for the target table SALES_TARGET we can use the UD5 property which when assigned the code template (knowledge module) which has been modified with Uli's change we can do custom things such as creating indices - provides The code template used by the mapping has the additional step which is basically the code illustrated from Uli's posting just used directly, the ODI 10g substitution references also supported from within OWB's runtime. Now to see whether this does what we expect before we execute it, we can check out the generated code similar to how the traditional mapping generation and preview works, you do this by clicking on the 'Inspect Code' button on the execution units code template assignment. This then  creates another tab with prefix 'Code - <mapping name>' where the generated code is put, scrolling down we find the last step with the indices being created, looks good, so we are ready to deploy and execute. After executing the mapping we can then use the 'Audit Information' panel (select the mapping in the designer tree and click on View/Audit Information), this gives us a view of the execution where we can drill into the tasks that were executed and inspect both the template and the generated code that was executed and any potential errors. Reflecting back on earlier versions of OWB, these were the kinds of features that were always highly desirable, getting under the hood of the code generation and tweaking bit and pieces - fun and powerful stuff! We can step it up a bit here and explore some further ideas. The example below is a daisy-chained set of execution units where the intermediate table is a target of one unit and the source for another. We want that table to be a global temporary table, so can tweak the templates. Back to the copy of SQL Control Append (for demo purposes) we modify the create target table step to make the table a global temporary table, with the option of on commit preserve rows. You can get a feel for some of the customizations and changes possible, providing some great flexibility and extensibility for the data integration tools.

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• Making Money from your SQL Server Blog

  - by Bill Graziano

  My SQL Server blog reading list is around one hundred blogs.  Many people are writing great content and generating lots of page views.  I see some of them running Google AdSense and trying to make a little money off their traffic.  If you want to earn some some extra money from what you’ve written there are a couple of options.  And one new option that I’m announcing here. Background Internet advertising is sold based on a few different pricing schemes.  Flat Fee.  You offer either all your impressions (page views) or some percentage of your impressions in exchange for a flat monthly fee.  CPM or cost per thousand impressions.  If the quoted price is $2 CPM you’ll get $2 for every 1,000 times the ad is displayed.  While you might think the “M” means millions, the “M” in CPM is the roman numeral for 1,000. CPC or cost per click.  This is also called PPC or pay per click.  In this method you get paid based on how many clicks there are on the ad.  CPA or cost per action.  In this method you get paid based on an action that occurs on the advertisers site after they click on the ad.  This is typically some type of sign up form.  This is how most affiliate programs work. Darren Rowse at ProBlogger has been writing about blogging and making money off blogs for years.  He has a good introduction to making money on your blog in his “Making Money” section.  If you’re interested in learning more he has a post up titled How to Make More Money From Your Blog in the New Year that links to many of his best posts on the subject. Google AdSense This is the most common method for people earning money from their blogging.  It’s easy to setup and administer.  You tell AdSense what size ads you’d like to run and it gives you a little piece of JavaScript to put on your site.  AdSense quickly learns the topics you write about and displays ads that are appropriate for your site.  I typically see ads for hosting, SQL Server tools and developer tools running in AdSense slots.  AdSense pays on a CPC model.  If you translate that back to CPM pricing you’ll see rates from $0.50 to $1.00 CPM. Amazon While you might not make much money writing books it’s now possible to make even less helping Amazon sell them.  You can sign up for an Amazon affiliate program.  Each time you send Amazon a link and someone buys the book you get a cut of that sale.  This is the CPA model from above.  Amazon can help you build some pretty nice “stores”.  Here’s the SQL Server bookstore I built for SQLTeam.com.  If you’re just putting in a page with books like I’ve done on SQLTeam you should keep your expectations low.  If you’re writing book reviews of suggesting books on your blog it really does make sense to setup an Amazon affiliate link.  People are much more likely to buy a book based on a review from a trusted source.  I always try to buy through a referral link if there is one. Amazon pays about 4% of the price as a referral fee.  You also get credit for anything else they buy while on the site.  I recently had someone buy an iPod nano with their SQL Server book making me an extra $5.60 richer!  Estimating how much you can make is difficult though.  How much attention you draw to the links and book reviews can dramatically affect the earnings. Private Ad Sales This is the hardest but potentially most lucrative option.  You sell advertising directly to companies that want to sell things to your readers.  Typically this would be SQL Server tool vendors, hosting companies or anyone else that wants to make money off database administrators.  This is also the most difficult to do.  You’ll need the contacts at the companies and enough page views to make it worth their while.  You’ll also need software to track the page views and clicks, geo-target your ads and smooth out the impressions.  Your earnings are based on whatever you can negotiate with the companies. SQL Server Ad Network For the last couple of years I’ve run any extra ads that I sold on the SQLTeam Weblogs.  You can see an example of that on Mladen’s blog.  The ad in the upper right corner is one that I’m running for him.  (Note: Many of the ads I’m running are geo-targeted to only appear in English speaking countries.  You may see a different set of ads outside the US, Canada and the UK.  You can also see he has a couple of Google ads on his blog.)  When I run ads on his blog I split the advertising revenue with him.  They make a little and I make a little. I recently started to expand this and sell advertising specifically to run on SQL Server-related blogs.  I’m also starting to run ads on non-SQLTeam blogs.  The only way I can sell more advertising is to have more blogs to run it on.  And that’s where you come in. I’ve created a SQL Server advertising network.  I handle all the ad sales and provide the technology to serve the ads.  I handle collections and payments back to you.  You get paid at the end of each month regardless of when (or if) the advertiser actually pays.  All you need to do is add a small piece of JavaScript to your site to display the ads. If you’re writing about SQL Server and interested in earning a little money for your site I’d like to talk to you.  You can use the Contact Us page on SQLTeam.com to reach me.  Running advertising on your blog isn’t for everyone.  If you’re concerned about what advertisers might think about certain posts then you might not be a good fit.  For the most part this isn’t an issue.  You’ll also need to have a PayPal account to receive payments.  You probably won’t get rich doing this.  But you can earn extra cash on the side for doing what you would do anyway.  I do know that people have earned enough to buy themselves a nice laptop doing this. My initial target is blogs with more than 10,000 page views per month.  I expect to pay two to three times what Google pays.  If you have less than 10,000 page views per month but are still interested I’d still like to hear from you.  I may not be able to sign up smaller blogs right away but we’ll get the process started.  If you’re unsure about your traffic Google Analytics is a free tool that provides great reporting on traffic, popular posts and how people find your blog.  If you have any questions or are just curious drop me a line and I’ll try to answer your questions.

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• The hidden cost of interrupting knowledge workers

  - by Piet

  The November issue of pragpub has an interesting article on interruptions. The article is written by Brian Tarbox, who also mentions the article on his blog. I like the subtitle: ‘Simple Strategies for Avoiding Dumping Your Mental Stack’. Brian talks about the effective cost of interrupting a ‘knowledge worker’, often with trivial questions or distractions. In the eyes of the interruptor, the interruption only costs the time the interrupted had to listen to the question and give an answer. However, depending on what the interrupted was doing at the time, getting fully immersed in their task again might take up to 15-20 minutes. Enough interruptions might even cause a knowledge worker to mentally call it a day. According to this article interruptions can consume about 28% of a knowledge worker’s time, translating in a $588 billion loss for US companies each year. Looking for a new developer to join your team? Ever thought about optimizing your team’s environment and the way they work instead? Making non knowledge workers aware You can’t. Well, I haven’t succeeded yet. And believe me: I’ve tried. When you’ve got a simple way to really increase your productivity (’give me 2 hours of uninterrupted time a day’) it wouldn’t be right not to tell your boss or team-leader about it. The problem is: only productive knowledge workers seem to understand this. People who don’t fall into this category just seem to think you’re joking, being arrogant or anti-social when you tell them the interruptions can really have an impact on your productivity. Also, knowledge workers often work in a very concentrated mental state which is described here as: It is the same mindfulness as ecstatic lovemaking, the merging of two into a fluidly harmonious one. The hallmark of flow is a feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture, while performing a task. Yes, coding can be addictive and if you’re interrupting a programmer at the wrong moment, you’re effectively bringing down a junkie from his high in just a few seconds. This can result in seemingly arrogant, almost aggressive reactions. How to make people aware of the production-cost they’re inflicting: I’ve been often pondering that question myself. The article suggests that solutions based on that question never seem to work. To be honest: I’ve never even been able to find a half decent solution for this question. People who are not in this situations just don’t understand the issue, no matter how you try to explain it. Fun (?) thing I’ve noticed: Programmers or IT people in general who don’t get this are often the kind of people who just don’t get anything done. Interrupt handling (interruption management?) IRL Have non-urgent questions handled in a non-interruptive way It helps a bit to educate people into using non-interruptive ways to ask questions: “duh, I have no idea, but I’m a bit busy here now could you put it in an email so I don’t forget?”. Eventually, a considerable amount of people will skip interrupting you and just send an email right away. Some stubborn-headed people however will continue to just interrupt you, saying “you’re 10 meters from my desk, why can’t we just talk?”. Just remember to disable your email notifications, it can be hard to resist opening your email client when you know a new email just arrived. Use Do Not Disturb signals When working in a group of programmers, often the unofficial sign you can only be interrupted for something important is to put on headphones. And when the environment is quiet enough, often people aren’t even listening to music. Otherwise music can help to block the indirect distractions (someone else talking on the phone or tapping their feet). You might get a “they’re all just surfing and listening to music”-reaction from outsiders though. Peopleware talks about a team where the no-interruption sign was placing a shawl on the desk. If I remember correctly, I am unable to locate my copy of this really excellent must-read book. If you have all standardized on the same IM tool, maybe that tool has a ‘do not disturb’ setting. Also some phone-systems have a ‘DND’ (do not disturb) setting. Hide Brian offers a number of good suggestions, some obvious like: hide away somewhere they can’t find you. Not sure how long it’ll be till someone thinks you’re just taking a nap somewhere though. Also, this often isn’t possible or your boss might not understand this. And if you really get caught taking a nap, make sure to explain that your were powernapping. Counter-act interruptions Another suggestion he offers is when you’re being interrupted to just hold up your hand, blocking the interruption, and at least giving you time to finish your sentence or your block/line of code. The last suggestion works more as a way to make it obvious to the interruptor that they really are interrupting your work and to offload some of the cost on the interruptor. In practice, this can also helps you cool down a bit so you don’t start saying nasty things to the interruptor. Unfortunately I’ve sometimes been confronted with people who just ignore this signal and keep talking, as if they’re sure that whatever they’ve got to say is really worth listening to and without a doubt more important than anything you might be doing. This behaviour usually leaves me speechless (not good when someone just asked a question). I’ve noticed that these people are usually also the first to complain when being interrupted themselves. They’re generally not very liked as colleagues, so try not to imitate their behaviour. TDD as a way to minimize recovery time I don’t like Test Driven Development. Mainly for only one reason: It interrupts flow. At least, that’s what it does for me, but maybe I’m just not grown used to TDD yet. BUT a positive effect TDD has on me when I have to work in an interruptive environment and can’t really get into the ‘flow’ (also supposedly called ‘the zone’ by software developers, although I’ve never heard it 1st hand), TDD helps me to concentrate on the tasks at hand and helps me to get back at work after an interruption. I feel when using TDD, I can get by without the need for being totally ‘in’ the project and I can be reasonably productive without obtaining ‘flow’. Do you have a suggestion on how to make people aware of the concept of ‘flow’ and the cost of interruptions? (without looking like an arrogant ass or a weirdo)

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• LLBLGen Pro v3.1 released!

  - by FransBouma

  Yesterday we released LLBLGen Pro v3.1! Version 3.1 comes with new features and enhancements, which I'll describe briefly below. v3.1 is a free upgrade for v3.x licensees. What's new / changed? Designer Extensible Import system. An extensible import system has been added to the designer to import project data from external sources. Importers are plug-ins which import project meta-data (like entity definitions, mappings and relational model data) from an external source into the loaded project. In v3.1, an importer plug-in for importing project elements from existing LLBLGen Pro v3.x project files has been included. You can use this importer to create source projects from which you import parts of models to build your actual project with. Model-only relationships. In v3.1, relationships of the type 1:1, m:1 and 1:n can be marked as model-only. A model-only relationship isn't required to have a backing foreign key constraint in the relational model data. They're ideal for projects which have to work with relational databases where changes can't always be made or some relationships can't be added to (e.g. the ones which are important for the entity model, but are not allowed to be added to the relational model for some reason). Custom field ordering. Although fields in an entity definition don't really have an ordering, it can be important for some situations to have the entity fields in a given order, e.g. when you use compound primary keys. Field ordering can be defined using a pop-up dialog which can be opened through various ways, e.g. inside the project explorer, model view and entity editor. It can also be set automatically during refreshes based on new settings. Command line relational model data refresher tool, CliRefresher.exe. The command line refresh tool shipped with v2.6 is now available for v3.1 as well Navigation enhancements in various designer elements. It's now easier to find elements like entities, typed views etc. in the project explorer from editors, to navigate to related entities in the project explorer by right clicking a relationship, navigate to the super-type in the project explorer when right-clicking an entity and navigate to the sub-type in the project explorer when right-clicking a sub-type node in the project explorer. Minor visual enhancements / tweaks LLBLGen Pro Runtime Framework Entity creation is now up to 30% faster and takes 5% less memory. Creating an entity object has been optimized further by tweaks inside the framework to make instantiating an entity object up to 30% faster. It now also takes up to 5% less memory than in v3.0 Prefetch Path node merging is now up to 20-25% faster. Setting entity references required the creation of a new relationship object. As this relationship object is always used internally it could be cached (as it's used for syncing only). This increases performance by 20-25% in the merging functionality. Entity fetches are now up to 20% faster. A large number of tweaks have been applied to make entity fetches up to 20% faster than in v3.0. Full WCF RIA support. It's now possible to use your LLBLGen Pro runtime framework powered domain layer in a WCF RIA application using the VS.NET tools for WCF RIA services. WCF RIA services is a Microsoft technology for .NET 4 and typically used within silverlight applications. SQL Server DQE compatibility level is now per instance. (Usable in Adapter). It's now possible to set the compatibility level of the SQL Server Dynamic Query Engine (DQE) per instance of the DQE instead of the global setting it was before. The global setting is still available and is used as the default value for the compatibility level per-instance. You can use this to switch between CE Desktop and normal SQL Server compatibility per DataAccessAdapter instance. Support for COUNT_BIG aggregate function (SQL Server specific). The aggregate function COUNT_BIG has been added to the list of available aggregate functions to be used in the framework. Minor changes / tweaks I'm especially pleased with the import system, as that makes working with entity models a lot easier. The import system lets you import from another LLBLGen Pro v3 project any entity definition, mapping and / or meta-data like table definitions. This way you can build repository projects where you store model fragments, e.g. the building blocks for a customer-order system, a user credential model etc., any model you can think of. In most projects, you'll recognize that some parts of your new model look familiar. In these cases it would have been easier if you would have been able to import these parts from projects you had pre-created. With LLBLGen Pro v3.1 you can. For example, say you have an Oracle schema called CRM which contains the bread 'n' butter customer-order-product kind of model. You create an entity model from that schema and save it in a project file. Now you start working on another project for another customer and you have to use SQL Server. You also start using model-first development, so develop the entity model from scratch as there's no existing database. As this customer also requires some CRM like entity model, you import the entities from your saved Oracle project into this new SQL Server targeting project. Because you don't work with Oracle this time, you don't import the relational meta-data, just the entities, their relationships and possibly their inheritance hierarchies, if any. As they're now entities in your project you can change them a bit to match the new customer's requirements. This can save you a lot of time, because you can re-use pre-fab model fragments for new projects. In the example above there are no tables yet (as you work model first) so using the forward mapping capabilities of LLBLGen Pro v3 creates the tables, PK constraints, Unique Constraints and FK constraints for you. This way you can build a nice repository of model fragments which you can re-use in new projects.

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• SQL SERVER – Challenge – Puzzle – Usage of FAST Hint

  - by pinaldave

  I was recently working with various SQL Server Hints. After working for a day on various hints, I realize that for one hint, I am not able to come up with good example. The hint is FAST. Let us look at the definition of the FAST hint from the Book On-Line. FAST number_rows Specifies that the query is optimized for fast retrieval of the first number_rows. This is a nonnegative integer. After the first number_rows are returned, the query continues execution and produces its full result set. Now the question is in what condition this hint can be useful. I have tried so many different combination, I have found this hint does not make much performance difference, infect I did not notice any change in time taken to load the resultset. I noticed that this hint does not change number of the page read to return result. Now when there is difference in performance is expected because if you read the what FAST hint does is that it only returns first few results FAST – which does not mean there will be difference in performance. I also understand that this hint gives the guidance/suggestions/hint to query optimizer that there are only 100 rows are in expected resultset. This tricking the optimizer to think there are only 100 rows and which (may) lead to render different execution plan than the one which it would have taken in normal case (without hint). Again, not necessarily, this will happen always. Now if you read above discussion, you will find that basic understanding of the hint is very clear to me but I still feel that I am missing something. Here are my questions: 1) In what condition this hint can be useful? What is the case, when someone want to see first few rows early because my experience suggests that when first few rows are rendered remaining rows are rendered as well. 2) Is there any way application can retrieve the fast fetched rows from SQL Server? 3) Do you use this hint in your application? Why? When? and How? Here are few examples I have attempted during the my experiment and found there is no difference in execution plan except its estimated number of rows are different leading optimizer think that the cost is less but in reality that is not the case. USE AdventureWorks GO SET STATISTICS IO ON SET STATISTICS TIME ON GO --------------------------------------------- -- Table Scan with Fast Hint SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail GO SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail OPTION (FAST 100) GO --------------------------------------------- -- Table Scan with Where on Index Key SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE OrderQty = 14 GO SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE OrderQty = 14 OPTION (FAST 100) GO --------------------------------------------- -- Table Scan with Where on Index Key SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE SalesOrderDetailID < 1000 GO SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE SalesOrderDetailID < 1000 OPTION (FAST 100) GO Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• SQL SERVER – Extending SQL Azure with Azure worker role – Guest Post by Paras Doshi

  - by pinaldave

  This is guest post by Paras Doshi. Paras Doshi is a research Intern at SolidQ.com and a Microsoft student partner. He is currently working in the domain of SQL Azure. SQL Azure is nothing but a SQL server in the cloud. SQL Azure provides benefits such as on demand rapid provisioning, cost-effective scalability, high availability and reduced management overhead. To see an introduction on SQL Azure, check out the post by Pinal here In this article, we are going to discuss how to extend SQL Azure with the Azure worker role. In other words, we will attempt to write a custom code and host it in the Azure worker role; the aim is to add some features that are not available with SQL Azure currently or features that need to be customized for flexibility. This way we extend the SQL Azure capability by building some solutions that run on Azure as worker roles. To understand Azure worker role, think of it as a windows service in cloud. Azure worker role can perform background processes, and to handle processes such as synchronization and backup, it becomes our ideal tool. First, we will focus on writing a worker role code that synchronizes SQL Azure databases. Before we do so, let’s see some scenarios in which synchronization between SQL Azure databases is beneficial: scaling out access over multiple databases enables us to handle workload efficiently As of now, SQL Azure database can be hosted in one of any six datacenters. By synchronizing databases located in different data centers, one can extend the data by enabling access to geographically distributed data Let us see some scenarios in which SQL server to SQL Azure database synchronization is beneficial To backup SQL Azure database on local infrastructure Rather than investing in local infrastructure for increased workloads, such workloads could be handled by cloud Ability to extend data to different datacenters located across the world to enable efficient data access from remote locations Now, let us develop cloud-based app that synchronizes SQL Azure databases. For an Introduction to developing cloud based apps, click here Now, in this article, I aim to provide a bird’s eye view of how a code that synchronizes SQL Azure databases look like and then list resources that can help you develop the solution from scratch. Now, if you newly add a worker role to the cloud-based project, this is how the code will look like. (Note: I have added comments to the skeleton code to point out the modifications that will be required in the code to carry out the SQL Azure synchronization. Note the placement of Setup() and Sync() function.) Click here (http://parasdoshi1989.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/code-snippet-1-for-extending-sql-azure-with-azure-worker-role1.pdf ) Enabling SQL Azure databases synchronization through sync framework is a two-step process. In the first step, the database is provisioned and sync framework creates tracking tables, stored procedures, triggers, and tables to store metadata to enable synchronization. This is one time step. The code for the same is put in the setup() function which is called once when the worker role starts. Now, the second step is continuous (or on demand) synchronization of SQL Azure databases by propagating changes between databases. This is done on a continuous basis by calling the sync() function in the while loop. The code logic to synchronize changes between SQL Azure databases should be put in the sync() function. Discussing the coding part step by step is out of the scope of this article. Therefore, let me suggest you a resource, which is given here. Also, note that before you start developing the code, you will need to install SYNC framework 2.1 SDK (download here). Further, you will reference some libraries before you start coding. Details regarding the same are available in the article that I just pointed to. You will be charged for data transfers if the databases are not in the same datacenter. For pricing information, go here Currently, a tool named DATA SYNC, which is built on top of sync framework, is available in CTP that allows SQL Azure <-> SQL server and SQL Azure <-> SQL Azure synchronization (without writing single line of code); however, in some cases, the custom code shown in this blogpost provides flexibility that is not available with Data SYNC. For instance, filtering is not supported in the SQL Azure DATA SYNC CTP2; if you wish to have such a functionality now, then you have the option of developing a custom code using SYNC Framework. Now, this code can be easily extended to synchronize at some schedule. Let us say we want the databases to get synchronized every day at 10:00 pm. This is what the code will look like now: (http://parasdoshi1989.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/code-snippet-2-for-extending-sql-azure-with-azure-worker-role.pdf) Don’t you think that by writing such a code, we are imitating the functionality provided by the SQL server agent for a SQL server? Think about it. We are scheduling our administrative task by writing custom code – in other words, we have developed a “Light weight SQL server agent for SQL Azure!” Since the SQL server agent is not currently available in cloud, we have developed a solution that enables us to schedule tasks, and thus we have extended SQL Azure with the Azure worker role! Now if you wish to track jobs, you can do so by storing this data in SQL Azure (or Azure tables). The reason is that Windows Azure is a stateless platform, and we will need to store the state of the job ourselves and the choice that you have is SQL Azure or Azure tables. Note that this solution requires custom code and also it is not UI driven; however, for now, it can act as a temporary solution until SQL server agent is made available in the cloud. Moreover, this solution does not encompass functionalities that a SQL server agent provides, but it does open up an interesting avenue to schedule some of the tasks such as backup and synchronization of SQL Azure databases by writing some custom code in the Azure worker role. Now, let us see one more possibility – i.e., running BCP through a worker role in Azure-hosted services and then uploading the backup files either locally or on blobs. If you upload it locally, then consider the data transfer cost. If you upload it to blobs residing in the same datacenter, then no transfer cost applies but the cost on blob size applies. So, before choosing the option, you need to evaluate your preferences keeping the cost associated with each option in mind. In this article, I have shown that Azure worker role solution could be developed to synchronize SQL Azure databases. Moreover, a light-weight SQL server agent for SQL Azure can be developed. Also we discussed the possibility of running BCP through a worker role in Azure-hosted services for backing up our precious SQL Azure data. Thus, we can extend SQL Azure with the Azure worker role. But remember: you will be charged for running Azure worker roles. So at the end of the day, you need to ask – am I willing to build a custom code and pay money to achieve this functionality? I hope you found this blog post interesting. If you have any questions/feedback, you can comment below or you can mail me at Paras[at]student-partners[dot]com Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Azure, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Need help with software licensing? Read on&hellip;

  - by juanlarios

  Figuring out which software licensing options best suit your needs while being cost-effective can be confusing. Some businesses end up making their purchases through retail stores which means they miss out on volume licensing opportunities and others may unknowingly be using unlicensed software which means their business may be at risk. So let me help you make the best decision for your situation. You may want to review this blog post that lays out licensing basics for any organization that needs to license software for more than 5 or less than 250 devices or users. It details the different ways you can buy a license and what choices are available for volume licensing, which can give you pricing advantages and provide flexible options for your business. As technology evolves and more organizations move to online services such as Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, Windows Azure Platform, Windows Intune and others, it’s important to understand how to purchase, activate and use online service subscriptions to get the most out of your investment. Once purchased through a volume licensing agreement or the Microsoft Online Subscription Program, these services can be managed through web portals: · Online Services Customer Portal (Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Intune) · Dynamics CRM Online Customer Portal (Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online) · Windows Azure Customer Portal (Windows Azure Platform) · Volume Licensing Service Center (other services) Learn more >> Licensing Resources: The SMB How to Buy Portal – receive clear purchasing and licensing information that is easy to understand in order to help facilitate quick decision making. Microsoft License Advisor (MLA) – Use MLA to research Microsoft Volume Licensing products, programs and pricing. Volume Licensing Service Center (VLSC) – Already have a volume License? Use the VLSC to get you easy access to all your licensing information in one location. Online Services – licensing information for off-premise options. Windows 7 Comparison: – Compare versions of Windows and find out which one is right for you. Office 2010 Comparison: – Find out which Office suite is right for you. Licensing FAQs – Frequently Asked Questions About Product Licensing. Additional Resources You May Find Useful: · TechNet Evaluation Center Try some of our latest Microsoft products For free, Like System Center 2012 Pre-Release Products, and evaluate them before you buy. · Springboard Series Your destination for technical resources, free tools and expert guidance to ease the deployment and management of your Windows-based client infrastructure.   · AlignIT Manager Tech Talk Series A monthly streamed video series with a range of topics for both infrastructure and development managers.  Ask questions and participate real-time or watch the on-demand recording.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, September 07, 2012

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

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• Need to Know

  - by Tony Davis

  Sometimes, I wonder whether writers of documentation, tutorials and articles stop to ask themselves one very important question: Does the reader really need to know this? I recently took on the task of writing a concise series of articles about the transaction log, what is it, how it works and why it's important. It was an enjoyable task; rather like peering inside a giant, complex clock mechanism. Initially, one sees only the basic components, which work to guarantee the integrity of database transactions, and preserve these transactions so that data can be restored to a previous point in time. On closer inspection, one notices all of small, arcane mechanisms that are necessary to make this happen; LSNs, virtual log files, log chains, database checkpoints, and so on. It was engrossing, escapist, stuff; what I'd written looked weighty and steeped in mysterious significance. Suddenly, however, I jolted myself back to reality with the awful thought "does anyone really need to know all this?" The driver of a car needs only to be dimly aware of what goes on under the hood, however exciting the mechanism is to the engineer. Similarly, while everyone who uses SQL Server ought to be aware of the transaction log, its role in guaranteeing the ACID properties, and how to control its growth, the intricate mechanisms ticking away under its clock face are a world away from the daily work of the harassed developer. The DBA needs to know more, such as the correct rituals for ensuring optimal performance and data integrity, setting the appropriate growth characteristics, backup routines, restore procedures, and so on. However, even then, the average DBA only needs to understand enough about the arcane processes to spot problems and react appropriately, or to know how to Google for the best way of dealing with it. The art of technical writing is tied up in intimate knowledge of your audience and what they need to know at any point. It means serving up just enough at each point to help the reader in a practical way, but not to overcook it, or stuff the reader with information that does them no good. When I think of the books and articles that have helped me the most, they have been full of brief, practical, and well-informed guidance, based on experience. This seems far-removed from the 900-page "beginner's guides" that one now sees everywhere. The more I write and edit, the more I become convinced that the real art of technical communication lies in knowing what to leave out. In what areas do the SQL Server technical materials suffer from "information overload"? Where else does it seem that concise, practical advice is drowned out by endless discussion of the "clock mechanisms"? Cheers, Tony.

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• WCF – interchangeable data-contract types

  - by nmarun

  In a WSDL based environment, unlike a CLR-world, we pass around the ‘state’ of an object and not the reference of an object. Well firstly, what does ‘state’ mean and does this also mean that we can send a struct where a class is expected (or vice-versa) as long as their ‘state’ is one and the same? Let’s see. So I have an operation contract defined as below: 1: [ServiceContract] 2: public interface ILearnWcfServiceExtend : ILearnWcfService 3: { 4: [OperationContract] 5: Employee SaveEmployee(Employee employee); 6: } 7:  8: [ServiceBehavior] 9: public class LearnWcfService : ILearnWcfServiceExtend 10: { 11: public Employee SaveEmployee(Employee employee) 12: { 13: employee.EmployeeId = 123; 14: return employee; 15: } 16: } Quite simplistic operation there (which translates to ‘absolutely no business value’). Now, the data contract Employee mentioned above is a struct. 1: public struct Employee 2: { 3: public int EmployeeId { get; set; } 4:  5: public string FName { get; set; } 6: } After compilation and consumption of this service, my proxy (in the Reference.cs file) looks like below (I’ve ignored the rest of the details just to avoid unwanted confusion): 1: public partial struct Employee : System.Runtime.Serialization.IExtensibleDataObject, System.ComponentModel.INotifyPropertyChanged I call the service with the code below: 1: private static void CallWcfService() 2: { 3: Employee employee = new Employee { FName = "A" }; 4: Console.WriteLine("IsValueType: {0}", employee.GetType().IsValueType); 5: Console.WriteLine("IsClass: {0}", employee.GetType().IsClass); 6: Console.WriteLine("Before calling the service: {0} - {1}", employee.EmployeeId, employee.FName); 7: employee = LearnWcfServiceClient.SaveEmployee(employee); 8: Console.WriteLine("Return from the service: {0} - {1}", employee.EmployeeId, employee.FName); 9: } The output is: I now change my Employee type from a struct to a class in the proxy class and run the application: 1: public partial class Employee : System.Runtime.Serialization.IExtensibleDataObject, System.ComponentModel.INotifyPropertyChanged { The output this time is: The state of an object implies towards its composition, the properties and the values of these properties and not based on whether it is a reference type (class) or a value type (struct). And as shown above, we’re actually passing an object by its state and not by reference. Continuing on the same topic of ‘type-interchangeability’, WCF treats two data contracts as equivalent if they have the same ‘wire-representation’. We can do so using the DataContract and DataMember attributes’ Name property. 1: [DataContract] 2: public struct Person 3: { 4: [DataMember] 5: public int Id { get; set; } 6:  7: [DataMember] 8: public string FirstName { get; set; } 9: } 10:  11: [DataContract(Name="Person")] 12: public class Employee 13: { 14: [DataMember(Name = "Id")] 15: public int EmployeeId { get; set; } 16:  17: [DataMember(Name="FirstName")] 18: public string FName { get; set; } 19: } I’ve created two data contracts with the exact same wire-representation. Just remember that the names and the types of data members need to match to be considered equivalent. The question then arises as to what gets generated in the proxy class. Despite us declaring two data contracts (Person and Employee), only one gets emitted – Person. This is because we’re saying that the Employee type has the same wire-representation as the Person type. Also that the signature of the SaveEmployee operation gets changed on the proxy side: 1: [System.CodeDom.Compiler.GeneratedCodeAttribute("System.ServiceModel", "4.0.0.0")] 2: [System.ServiceModel.ServiceContractAttribute(ConfigurationName="ServiceProxy.ILearnWcfServiceExtend")] 3: public interface ILearnWcfServiceExtend 4: { 5: [System.ServiceModel.OperationContractAttribute(Action="http://tempuri.org/ILearnWcfServiceExtend/SaveEmployee", ReplyAction="http://tempuri.org/ILearnWcfServiceExtend/SaveEmployeeResponse")] 6: ClientApplication.ServiceProxy.Person SaveEmployee(ClientApplication.ServiceProxy.Person employee); 7: } But, on the service side, the SaveEmployee still accepts and returns an Employee data contract. 1: [ServiceBehavior] 2: public class LearnWcfService : ILearnWcfServiceExtend 3: { 4: public Employee SaveEmployee(Employee employee) 5: { 6: employee.EmployeeId = 123; 7: return employee; 8: } 9: } Despite all these changes, our output remains the same as the last one: This is type-interchangeability at work! Here’s one more thing to ponder about. Our Person type is a struct and Employee type is a class. Then how is it that the Person type got emitted as a ‘class’ in the proxy? It’s worth mentioning that WSDL describes a type called Employee and does not say whether it is a class or a struct (see the SOAP message below): 1: <soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" 2: xmlns:tem="http://tempuri.org/" 3: xmlns:ser="http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/ServiceApplication"> 4: <soapenv:Header/> 5: <soapenv:Body> 6: <tem:SaveEmployee> 7: <!--Optional:--> 8: <tem:employee> 9: <!--Optional:--> 10: <ser:EmployeeId>?</ser:EmployeeId> 11: <!--Optional:--> 12: <ser:FName>?</ser:FName> 13: </tem:employee> 14: </tem:SaveEmployee> 15: </soapenv:Body> 16: </soapenv:Envelope> There are some differences between how ‘Add Service Reference’ and the svcutil.exe generate the proxy class, but turns out both do some kind of reflection and determine the type of the data contract and emit the code accordingly. So since the Employee type is a class, the proxy ‘Person’ type gets generated as a class. In fact, reflecting on svcutil.exe application, you’ll see that there are a couple of places wherein a flag actually determines a type as a class or a struct. One example is in the ExportISerializableDataContract method in the System.Runtime.Serialization.CodeExporter class. Seems like these flags have a say in deciding whether the type gets emitted as a struct or a class. This behavior is different if you use the WSDL tool though. WSDL tool does not do any kind of reflection of the data contract / serialized type, it emits the type as a class by default. You can check this using the two command lines below:   Note to self: Remember ‘state’ and type-interchangeability when traversing through the WSDL planet!

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• User Experience Highlights in PeopleSoft and PeopleTools: Direct from Jeff Robbins

  - by mvaughan

  By Kathy Miedema, Oracle Applications User Experience  This is the fifth in a series of blog posts on the user experience (UX) highlights in various Oracle product families. The last posted interview was with Nadia Bendjedou, Senior Director, Product Strategy on upcoming Oracle E-Business Suite user experience highlights. You’ll see themes around productivity and efficiency, and get an early look at the latest mobile offerings coming through these product lines. Today’s post is on the user experience in PeopleSoft and PeopleTools. To learn more about what’s ahead, attend PeopleSoft or PeopleTools OpenWorld presentations.This interview is with Jeff Robbins, Senior Director, PeopleSoft Development. Jeff Robbins Q: How would you describe the vision you have for the user experience of PeopleSoft?A: Intuitive – Specifically, customers use PeopleSoft to help their employees do their day-to-day work, and the UI (user interface) has been helpful and assistive in that effort. If it’s not obvious what they need to do a task, then the UI isn’t working. So the application needs to make it simple for users to find information they need, complete a task, do all the things they are responsible for, and it really helps when the UI just makes sense. Productive – PeopleSoft is a tool used to support people to do their work, and a lot of users are measured by how much work they’re able to get done per hour, per day, etc. The UI needs to help them be as productive as possible, and can’t make them waste time or energy. The UI needs to reflect the type of work necessary for a task -- if it's data entry, the UI needs to assist the user to get information into the system. For analysts, the UI needs help users assess or analyze information in a particular way. Innovative – The concept of the UI being innovative is something we’ve been working on for years. It’s not just that we want to be seen as innovative, the fact is that companies are asking their employees to do more than they’ve ever asked before. More often companies want to roll out processes as employee or manager self-service, where an employee is responsible to review and maintain their own data. So we’ve had to reinvent, and ask,  “How can we modify the ways an employee interacts with our applications so that they can be more productive and efficient – even with tasks that are entirely unfamiliar?”  Our focus on innovation has forced us to design new ways for users to interact with the entire application.Q: How are the UX features you have delivered so far resonating with customers?  A: Resonating very well. We’re hearing tremendous responses from users, managers, decision-makers -- who are very happy with the improved user experience. Many of the individual features resonate well. Some have really hit home, others are better than they used to be but show us that there’s still room for improvement.A couple innovations really stand out; features that have a significant effect on how users interact with PeopleSoft.First, the deployment of PeopleSoft in a way that’s more like a consumer website with the PeopleSoft Home page and Dashboards.  This new approach is very web-centric, where users feel they’re coming to a website rather than logging into an enterprise application.  There’s lots of information from all around the organization collected in a way that feels very familiar to users. In order to do your job, you can come to this web site rather than having to learn how to log into an application and figure out a complicated menu. Companies can host these really rich web sites for employees that are home pages for accessing critical tasks and information. The UI elements of incorporating search into the whole navigation process is another hit. Rather than having to log in and choose a task from a menu, users come to the web site and begin a task by simply searching for data: themselves, another employee, a customer record, whatever.  The search results include the data along with a set of actions the user might take, completely eliminating the need to hunt through a complicated system menu. Search-centric navigation is really sitting well with customers who are trying to deploy an intuitive set of systems. Q: Are any UX highlights more popular than you expected them to be?  A: We introduced a feature called Pivot Grid in the last release, which is a combination of an interactive grid, like an Excel Pivot Table, along with a dynamic visual chart that automatically graphs the data. I wasn’t certain at first how extensively this would be used. It looked like an innovative tool, but it wasn’t clear how it would be incorporated in business process applications. The fact is that everyone who sees Pivot Grids is thrilled with that kind of interactivity.  It reflects the amount of analytical thinking customers are asking employees to do. Employees can’t just enter data any more. They must interact with it, analyze it, and make decisions. Pivot Grids fit into this way of working. Q: What can you tell us about PeopleSoft’s mobile offerings?A: A lot of customers are finding that mobile is the chief priority in their organization.  They tell us they want their employees to be able to access company information from their mobile devices.  Of course, not everyone has the same requirements, so we’re working to make sure we can help our customers accomplish what they’re trying to do.  We’ve already delivered a number of mobile features.  For instance, PeopleSoft home pages, dashboards and workcenters all work well on an iPad, straight out of the box.  We’ve delivered a number of key functions and tasks for mobile workers – those who are responsible for using a mobile device to manage inventory, for example.  Customers tell us they also need a holistic strategy, one that allows their employees to access nearly every task from a mobile device.  While we don’t expect users to do extensive data entry from their smartphone, it makes sense that they have access to company information and systems while away from their desk.  That’s where our strategy is going now.  We plan to unveil a number of new mobile offerings at OpenWorld.  Some will be available then, some shortly after. Q: What else are you working on now that you think is going to be exciting to customers at Oracle OpenWorld?A: Our next release -- the big thing is PeopleSoft 9.2, and we’ll be talking about the huge amount of work that’s gone into the next versions. A new toolset, 8.53, will be coming, and there’s a lot to talk about there, and the next generation of PeopleSoft 9.2.  We have a ton of new stuff coming.Q: What do you want PeopleSoft customers to know? A: We have been focusing on the user experience in PeopleSoft as a very high priority for the last 4 years, and it’s had interesting effects. One thing is that the application is better, more usable.  We’ve made visible improvements. Another aspect is that in customers’ minds, the PeopleSoft brand is being reinvigorated. Customers invested in PeopleSoft years ago, and then they weren’t sure where PeopleSoft was going.  This investment in the UI and overall user experience keeps PeopleSoft current, innovative and fresh.  Customers  are able to take advantage of a lot of new features, even on the older applications, simply by upgrading their PeopleTools. The interest in that ability has been tremendous. Knowing they have a lot of these features available -- right now, that’s pretty huge. There’s been a tremendous amount of positive response, just on the fact that we’re focusing on the user experience. Editor’s note: For more on PeopleSoft and PeopleTools user experience highlights, visit the Usable Apps web site.To find out more about these enhancements at Openworld, be sure to check out these sessions: GEN8928     General Session: PeopleSoft Update and Product RoadmapCON9183     PeopleSoft PeopleTools Technology Roadmap CON8932     New Functional PeopleSoft PeopleTools Capabilities for the Line-of-Business UserCON9196     PeopleSoft PeopleTools Roadmap: Mobile ApplicationsCON9186     Case Study: Delivering a Groundbreaking User Interface with PeopleSoft PeopleTools

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