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• Buck Woody in Adelaide via LiveMeeting

  - by Rob Farley

  The URL for attendees is https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/usergroups/join?id=ADL1005&role=attend . This meeting is with Buck Woody . If you don’t know who he is, then you ought to find out! He’s a Program Manager at Microsoft on the SQL Server team, and anything else I try to say about him will not do him justice. So it’s great to have him present to the Adelaide SQL Server User Group this week. The talk is on the topic of Data-Tier Applications (new in SQL 2008 R2), and I’m sure it will be a great...(read more)

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• C-Sharpen Up at Philly.NET

  - by Steve Michelotti

  On October 6th, I’ll be presenting at C-Sharpen Up at Philly.NET at the Microsoft Malvern, PA location. I’ll be presenting along with Stephen Bohlen, Andy Schwam, and Danilo Diaz. This is a great one-day event that covers real-world usage of all major C# language features from C# 1.0 to C# 5.0. It also includes a great presentation on the SOLID principles by Stephen Bohlen. Registration won’t be open much longer. You can register here. Hope to see you there!

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• Network Your Computers & Devices: Step by Step

  - by The Geek

  If you’re looking for a great book to help you learn more about Windows home networking, there’s a new book on the market by our good friend Ciprian, and published by none other than Microsoft Press. Note: our friend Ciprian has been a guest contributor here on How-To Geek in the past, and he’s not only a geek that knows what he’s talking about, he’s also one of the more honest and decent people I’ve worked with. In his spare time, he runs the 7 Tutorials web site. The Book One of the great things about this book is that you aren’t limited to just Windows networking—it also explains how to connect Windows 7, XP, Vista, Mac OS X, and even Linux on the same network and share folders and devices between them. Everything in the book is written in a typical How-To Geek step-by-step format, with plenty of screenshots and pictures to help you through the process. Book Outline If you’re going to be spending some money on the book, you probably want to know what it’s all about, and since the Amazon page doesn’t give, well, much information at all, here’s the entire outline for you: Setting Up a Router and Devices Setting User Account on All Computers Setting Up Your Libraries on All Windows 7 Computers Creating the Network Customizing Network Sharing Settings in Windows 7 Creating the Homegroup and Joining Windows 7 Computers Sharing Libraries and Folders Sharing and Working with Devices Streaming Media Over the Network and the Internet Sharing Between Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 Computers Sharing Between Mac OS X and Windows 7 Computers Sharing Between Ubuntu Linux and Windows 7 Computers Keeping the Network Secure Setting Up Parental Controls Troubleshooting Network and Internet Problems It’s a great book, with loads of information, and compared to most tech books isn’t very expensive—only $19.79 for the paperback and $9.99 for the Kindle version. Well worth it, and hey, it’s an official Microsoft Press book—written by a How-To Geek guest author. Network Your Computers & Devices Step by Step [Amazon] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How To Boot 10 Different Live CDs From 1 USB Flash Drive The 20 Best How-To Geek Linux Articles of 2010 The 50 Best How-To Geek Windows Articles of 2010 The 20 Best How-To Geek Explainer Topics for 2010 How to Disable Caps Lock Key in Windows 7 or Vista How to Use the Avira Rescue CD to Clean Your Infected PC 2011 International Space Station Calendar Available for Download (Free) Ultimate Elimination – Lego Black Ops [Video] BotSync Enables Secure FTP File Synchronization on Android Devices Enjoy Beautiful City Views with the Cityscape Theme for Windows 7 Luigi Installs Any OS on Google’s Cr-48 Notebook DIY iPad Stylus Offers Pen-Based Interaction on the Cheap

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• Join Me May 19th for 24 Hours of PASS

  - by KKline

  Check out all the great SQL Server sessions you can attend for FREE in this on-line event....(read more)

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• 2011 The Year of Awesomesauce

  - by MOSSLover

  So I was talking to one of my friends, Cathy Dew, and I’m wondering how to start out this post.  What kind of title should I put?  Somehow we’re just randomly throwing things out and this title pops into my head the one you see above. I woke up today to the buzz of a text message.  I spent New Years laying around until 3 am watching Warehouse 13 Episodes and drinking champagne.  It was one of the best New Year’s I spent with my boyfriend and my cat.  I figured I would sleep in until Noon, but ended up waking up around 11:15 to that text message buzz.  I guess my DE, Rachel Appel, had texted me “Happy New Years”, because Rachel is that kind of person.  I immediately proceeded to check my email.  I noticed my live account had a hit.  The account I rarely ever use had an email.  I sort of had that sinking suspicion I was going to get Silverlight MVP right?  So I open the email and something out of the blue happens it says “blah blah blah SharePoint Server MVP blah blah…”.  I’m sitting here a little confused what?  Really?  Just about when you give up on something the unexplained happens.  I am grateful for what I have every day. So let me tell you a story.  I was a senior in high school and it was December 31st, 1999.  A couple days prior my grandmother was complaining she had a cold and her assisted living facility was not going to let her see a doctor.  She claimed to be very sick.  New Year’s Eve Day 1999 my grandmother was rushed to the hospital sometime very early in the morning.  My uncle, my little brother, and myself were sitting in the waiting room eagerly awaiting news.  The Sydney Opera House was playing in the background as New Years 2000 for Australia was ringing in.  They come out and they tell us my grandmother has pneumonia.  She is in the ICU in critical condition.  Eventually time passes in the day and my parents take my brother and I home.  So in the car we had a huge fight that ended in the worst new years of my life.  The next 30 days were the worst 30 days of my life.  I went to the hospital every single day to do my homework and watch my grandmother.  Each day was a challenge mentally and physically as my grandmother berated me in her demented state.  On the 30th day my grandmother ended up in critical condition in the ICU maxed out on painkillers.  At approximately 3 am I hear my parents telling me they don’t want to wake me up and that my grandmother had passed away.  I must have cried more collectively that day than any other day in my life.  Every New Years Even since I have cried thinking about who she was and what she represented.  She was human looking back she wasn’t anything great, but she was one of the positive lights in my life.  Her and my dad and my other grandmother constantly tried to make me feel great when my mother was telling me the opposite.  I’d like to think since 2000 the past 11 years have been the best 11 years of my life.  I got out of a bad situation by using the tools that I had in front of me.  Good grades and getting into a college so I could aspire to be the person that I wanted to be.  I had some great people along the way to help me out. So getting to the point I like to help people further there lives somehow in the best way I can possibly help out.  This New Years was one of the great years that helped me forget the past and focus on the present.  It makes me realize how far I’ve come since high school and even since college.  The one thing I’ve been grappling with over the years is how do you feel good about making money while helping others out.  I’d to think I try really hard to give back to my community.  I could not have done what I did without other people’s help.  I sent out an email prior to even announcing I got the award today.  I can’t say I did everything on my own.  It’s not possible.  I had the help of others every step of the way.  I’m not sure if this makes sense but the award can’t just be mine.  This award is really owned by each and everyone who helped me get here.  From my dad to my grandmother to Rachel Appel to Bob Hunt to Jason Gallicchio to Cathy Dew to Mark Rackley to Johnny Ennion to Lee Brandt to Jeff Julian to John Alexander to Lori Gowin and to many others.  Thank you guys for all the help and support. Technorati Tags: SharePoint Community,MVP Award,Microsoft Community

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• My program at #MIX10

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  Getting ready to fly to Vegas and MIX10 is really an exciting time! It is also a very busy time, because we are working on a few projects that will be shown on stage, I have my presentation to prepare, and of course as always the book… though these days it has been a bit on the back burner to be honest ;) I arrive in Vegas on Sunday evening around 10PM, so I won’t be able to make it to the traditional IdentityMine dinner this year. I am sure it will be fun nonetheless! My session: Understanding the MVVM pattern http://live.visitmix.com/MIX10/Sessions/EX14 My session is scheduled on the first day, which is awesome, so I am crossing my fingers and hoping that the MIX team doesn’t change it at the last minute… The session will take place on Monday, the 15th of March, 2PM, Room Lagoon F Important: remember that the USA are moving to Summer time on Sunday, so don’t forget to adjust your watches!! Ask the Experts On Monday evening, I will attend the Ask the Experts event, which is taking place between 5Pm and 6:30PM in the main meal hall. This will be a great occasion to grab a beer and talk about code. The Commons MIX has a great place called the Commons, a great location to chill between sessions, and meet tons of interesting people. I love the Commons and plan to spend a lot of time there to meet as many people as I can. Parties I was invited to a few parties, and will do my best to avoid conflicts :) I plan to be at the following events: Silverlight Mixers on Monday evening Insiders MIX party on Tuesday Silverlight partner happy hour on Tuesday too This is a lot of fun, but at the same time we all know that the best value of a conference is to meet people face to face. This is just the right occasion.  And on Thursday… On Thursday I will be attending a Silverlight event at the Luxor. It will be a very busy day, perfect way to end the conference. I fly back home on Friday morning, but due to a long stop in Washington DC (where I intend to go downtown and take pictures… except if the weather is bad, in which case I will probably go to the museum of flight), I will reach home only on Sunday. Getting hold of me The best way to reach me during MIX is to send me a message on Twitter. I will regularly tweet my location at the conference, so make sure to come and meet me. I am eager to make new friends, to talk about the fantastic jobs we did in WPF and Silverlight over the past year and hear your war stories! http://www.twitter.com/lbugnion   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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• What are the most common AI systems implemented in Tower Defense Games

  - by the_Dan

  I'm currently in the middle of researching on the various types of AI techniques used in tower defense type games. If someone could be help me in understanding the different types of techniques and their associated advantages. Using Google I already found several techniques. Random Map traversal Path finding e.g. Cost based Traversing Algorithms i.e. A* I have already found a great answer to this type of question with the below link, but I feel that this answer is tailored to FPS. If anyone could add to this and make it specific to tower defense games then I would be truly great-full. How is AI most commonly implemented in popular games? Example of such games would be: Radiant Defense Plant Vs Zombies - Not truly Intelligent, but there must be an AI system used right? Field Runners Edit: After further research I found an interesting book that may be useful: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0123747317/?tag=stackoverfl08-20

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• Build 2012, some thoughts..

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  I think you probably read my rant about the logistics at Build 2012, as posted here, so I am not going into that anymore. Instead, let’s look at the content. (BTW If you did read that post and want some more info then read Nia Angelina’s post about Build. I have nothing to add to that.) As usual, there were good speakers and some speakers who could benefit from some speaker training. I find it hard to understand why Microsoft allows certain people on stage, people who speak English with such strong accents it’s hard for people, especially from abroad, to understand. Some basic training might be useful for some of them. However, it is nice to see that most speakers are project managers, program managers or even devs on the teams that build the stuff they talk about: there was a lot of knowledge on stage! And that means when you ask questions you get very relevant information. I realize I am not the average audience member here, I am regular speaker myself so I tend to look for other things when I am in a room than most audience members so my opinion might differ from others. All in all the knowledge of the speakers was above average but the presentation skills were most of the times below what I would describe as adequate. But let us look at the contents. Since the official name of the conference is Build Windows 2012 it is not surprising most of the talks were focused on building Windows 8 apps. Next to that, there was a lot of focus on Azure and of course Windows Phone 8 that launched the day before Build started. Most sessions dealt with C# and JavaScript although I did see a tendency to use C++ more. Touch. Well, that was the focus on a lot of sessions, that goes without saying. Microsoft is really betting on Touch these days and being a Touch oriented developer I can only applaud this. The term NUI is getting a bit outdated but the principles behind it certainly aren’t. The sessions did cover quite a lot on how to make your applications easy to use and easy to understand. However, not all is touch nowadays; still the majority of people use keyboard and mouse to interact with their machines (or, as I do, use keyboard, mouse AND touch at the same time). Microsoft understands this and has spend some serious thoughts on this as well. It was all about making your apps run everywhere on all sorts of devices and in all sorts of scenarios. I have seen a couple of sessions focusing on the portable class library and on sharing code between Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. You get the feeling Microsoft is enabling us devs to write software that will be ubiquitous. They want your stuff to be all over the place and they do anything they can to help. To achieve that goal they provide us with brilliant SDK’s, great tooling, a very, very good backend in the form of Windows Azure (I was particularly impressed by the Mobility part of Azure) and some fantastic hardware. And speaking of hardware: the partners such as Acer, Lenovo and Dell are making hardware that puts Apple to a shame nowadays. To illustrate: in Bellevue (very close to Redmond where Microsoft HQ is) they have the Microsoft Store located very close to the Apple Store, so it’s easy to compare devices. And I have to say: the Microsoft offerings are much, much more appealing that what the Cupertino guys have to offer. That was very visible by the number of people visiting the stores: even on the day that Apple launched the iPad Mini there were more people in the Microsoft store than in the Apple store. So, the future looks like it’s going to be fun. Great hardware (did I mention the Nokia Lumia 920? No? It’s brilliant), great software (Windows 8 is in a league of its own), the best dev tools (Visual Studio 2012 is still the champion here) and a fantastic backend (Azure.. need I say more?). It’s up to us devs to fill up the stores with applications that matches this. To summarize: it is great to be a Windows developer. PS. Did I mention Surface RT? Man….. People were drooling all over it wherever I went. It is fantastic :-) Technorati Tags: Build,Windows 8,Windows Phone,Lumia,Surface,Microsoft

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• AJI Report #20 | Devin Rader On Usability and REST

  - by Jeff Julian

  Devin is one of our great friends from days of ole'. Devin was a great community leader in St. Louis .NET space. The then moved to New Jersey to work at Infragistics where he was a huge asset for the .NET and Usability communities. He is now at Twilio as an evangelist and you will see him pretty much at every cool conference promoting Twilio and educating the masses. In this show, we talk about what Usability is and how developers can understanding what the how to solve problems with usability and some of the patterns we can use. Devin really wants to bring the focus back to the beginning of knowing who your users are and we talk about how to produce personas of the users of our products. We dive into REST for the second piece of this podcast. Devin helps us understand more about REST and what goes into a RESTful application or service. Listen to the Show Twilio Site: http://www.twilio.com Twitter: @DevinRader LinkedIn: Profile Link

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• Do I create new site or add to existing site?

  - by nitbuntu

  Hi, Suppose, as an example, I have a website with the address, www.cool-gifts.com and I'm getting regular sales and its a worthwhile site, but no great fireworks. After research I find that there is a great market for '2nd hand stuff' and I'd like to serve that market. Would it be best to add '2nd hand stuff' as an additional category of gifts in my existing site....or, since the 2nd hand stuff is a market in itself, would I be better off investing time and energy bringing up a whole new site (www.used-stuff.com)? If I had employees and financial resources, it probably would be a no-brainer...start a new site. But, what if you are a small guy, with limited resources? So...new site....or add to existing site?

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• Supply Chain Professionals: Get Connected, Stay Current

  - by Stephen Slade

  Each day, thousands of supply chain professionals like you face challenges to lower inventory, collaborate better with distant partners and stretch the value from depleting resources.  Meeting ever-changing customer demands, with products getting to market faster and lifecycles shortning, the challenges grow even faster.  How do we respond? It’s amazing how much material is available on-line for our supply chain community. Many want to stay informed and be connected with better information. One great way to stay current on rapidly changing markets and solutions is to subscribe to the Value Chain Transformation newsletter published quarterly by the content staff at Oracle. In this edition, there’s a few great articles on Cloud, OpenWorld, events and products with solid customer testimony to share with you, our supply chain community.  Below is the link to the newsletter and how to subscribe Sept ‘12 Value Chain Newsletter: http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/newsletter/archive/value-chain-and-procurement-1559127.html Subscription information is located at the bottom of the newsletter.

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• Resources for up-to-date Delphi programming

  - by Dan Kelly

  I'm a developer in a small department and have been using Delphi for the last 10 years. Whilst I've tried to keep up-to-date with movements there are a lot of changes that have occurred between Delphi 7 and (current for us) 2010. Stack Exchange and here have been great for answering the "how do you" questions, but what I'd like is a resource that shows great examples of larger scale programming. For example is there anywhere that hosts examples of well written, multi form applications? Something that can be looked at as a whole to illustrate why things should be done a certain way?

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• How to Convert News Feeds to Ebooks with Calibre

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  Setting up your ebook reader to receive bundles of articles from web sites that interest you is a great way to add functionality and great content. Read on as we show you how to turn the RSS feeds from your favorite sites into ebooks. If you’re a fan of the easy-on-the-eyes digital reading experience provided by your ebook reader, it only seems natural to set up your ebook reader to receive feeds from your favorite news sources so you can enjoy even more content. In this tutorial we’ll be walking you through a simple way to shuttle hand picked content to your ebook reader. HTG Explains: Why Linux Doesn’t Need Defragmenting How to Convert News Feeds to Ebooks with Calibre How To Customize Your Wallpaper with Google Image Searches, RSS Feeds, and More

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• RGB values from image into a one dimension array in c#

  - by velocityxyz

  I was wondering if there is a was a way to read rgb values from an image into a one dimensional array in C#. If it doesnt make sense, in java I would do something like this. int[] pixels; BufferedImage image = getClass().getResourceAsStream("asdfghjkl.png"); int w = image.getWidth(); int h = image.getHeight(); pixels = new int[w * h]; image.getRGB(0, 0, w, h, pixels, 0, w) ; So any help would be great, or if you can point me in the right direction, that'd be great

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• Some New .NET Downloads and Resources

  - by Kevin Grossnicklaus

  Last week I was fortunate enough to spend time in Redmond on Microsoft’s campus for the 2011 Microsoft MVP Summit.  It was great to hang out with a number of old friends and get the opportunity to talk tech with the various product teams up at Microsoft.  The weather wasn’t exactly sunny but Microsoft always does a great job with the Summit and everyone had a blast (heck, I even got to run the bases at SafeCo field) While much of what we saw is covered under NDA, there a ton of great things in the pipeline from Microsoft and many things that are already available (or just became so) that I wasn’t necessarily aware of.  The purpose of this post is to share some of the info I learned on resources and tools available to .NET developers today.  Please let me know if you have any questions (or if you know of something else cool which might benefit others). Enjoy! Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Microsoft has issued the RTM release of Visual Studio 2010 SP1.  You can download the full SP1 on MSDN as of today (March 10th to the general public) and take advantage of such things as: Silverlight 4 is included in the box (as opposed to a separate install) Silverlight 4 Profiling WCF RIA Services SP1 Intellitrace for 64-bit and SharePoint ASP.NET now easily supports IIS Express and SQL CE Want a description of all that’s new beyond the above biased list (which arguably only contains items I think are important)?  Check out this KB article. Portable Library Tools CTP Without much fanfare Microsoft has released a CTP of a new add-in to Visual Studio 2010 which simplifies code sharing between projects targeting different runtimes (i.e. Silverlight, WPF, Win7 Phone, XBox).   With this Add-In installed you can add a new project of type “Portable Library” and specify which platforms you wish to target.  Once that is done, any code added to this library will be limited to use only features which are common to all selected frameworks.  Other projects can now reference this portable library and be provided assemblies custom built to their environment.  This greatly simplifies the current process of sharing linked files between platforms like WPF and Silverlight.  You can find out more about this CTP and how it works on this great blog post. Visual Studio Async CTP Microsoft has also released a CTP of a set of language and framework enhancements to provide a much more powerful asynchronous programming model.   Due to the focus on async programming in all types of platforms (and it being the ONLY option in Silverlight and Win7 phone) a move towards a simpler and more understandable model is always a good thing. This CTP (called Visual Studio Async CTP) can be downloaded here.  You can read more about this CTP on this blog post. MSDN Code Samples Gallery Microsoft has also launched new code samples gallery on their MSDN site: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/.   This site allows you to easily search for small samples of code related to a particular technology or platform.  If a sample of code you are looking for is not found, you can request one via the site and other developers can see your request and provide a sample to the site to suit your needs.  You can also peruse requested samples and, if you find a scenario where you can provide value, upload your own sample for the benefit of others.  Samples are packaged into the VS .vsix format and include any necessary references/dependencies.  By using .vsix as the deployment mechanism, as samples are installed from the site they are kept in your Visual Studio 2010 Samples Gallery and kept for your future reference. If you get a chance, check out the site and see how it is done.  Although a somewhat simple concept, I was very impressed with their implementation and the way they went about trying to suit a need.  I’ll definitely be looking there in the future as need something or want to share something. MSDN Search Capabilities Another item I learned recently and was not aware of (that might seem trivial to some) is the power of the MSDN site’s search capabilities.  Between the Code Samples Gallery described above and the search enhancements on MSDN, Microsoft is definitely investing in their platform to help provide developers of all skill levels the tools and resources they need to be successful. What do I mean by the MSDN search capability and why should you care? If you go to the MSDN home page (http://msdn.microsoft.com) and use the “Search MSDN with Big” box at the very top of the page you will see some very interesting results.  First, the search actually doesn’t just search the MSDN library it searches: MSDN Library All Microsoft Blogs CodePlex StackOverflow Downloads MSDN Magazine Support Knowledgebase (I’m not sure it even ends there but the above are all I know of) Beyond just searching all the above locations, the results are formatted very nicely to give some contextual information based on where the result came from.  For example, if a keyword search returned results from CodePlex, each row in the search results screen would include a large amount of information specific to CodePlex such as: Looking at the above results immediately tells you everything from the page views to the CodePlex ratings.  All in all, knowing that this much information is indexed and available from a single search location will lead me to utilize this as one of my initial searches for development information.

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• Remote Display Config.sh Using SSH

  - by john.graves(at)oracle.com

  How often I see people look to VNC, NXMachine, RDP, etc to get a windowing environment on a remote system.  These products are great and I use them too, but there is a fancy feature in SSH to help. ssh –X remoteserver This is a great feature for hooking into headless VirtualBox machines and remote displaying an install wizard. The remote server must have some lines put in the /etc/ssh/sshd_conf file: X11Forwarding yes X11DisplayOffset 10 The second line is optional, but the first is required.  Restart sshd (sudo /etc/init.d/ssh restart). Now I can ssh –X remote server Then run /opt/app/wls10.3.4/wlserver_10.3/common/bin/config.sh to build a new domain. Note: For some reason, the jdk that comes with WebLogic often fails to work on the remote display.  In that case, I modify the config.sh to just use /usr/bin/java (from openjdk-6-jre package).

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• Announcing the Winnipeg Code Camp!

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  Alright, the event website will be up this weekend, but I wanted to get the word out sooner than later. For the third year, we’re holding the Winnipeg Code Camp! When: Saturday, February 26th Where: Red River College, Princess Street Campus Cost: FREE!!! Continental Breakfast and Hot Lunch Provided! We’re going to have four rooms worth of sessions going on like last year, so lots of great sessions and great content. To register for the event (we need to know numbers for ordering the food), please do so here: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/1180632303 If you’re interested in speaking at the Code Camp, please contact me at darcy.lussier at gmail.com. Note that we have only 20 slots for the day, so contact me sooner than later! D

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• Five development tools I can't live without

  - by bconlon

  When applying to join Geeks with Blogs I had to specify the development tools I use every day. That got me thinking, it's taken a long time to whittle my tools of choice down to the selection I use, so it might be worth sharing. Before I begin, I appreciate we all have our preferred development tools, but these are the ones that work for me. Microsoft Visual Studio Microsoft Visual Studio has been my development tool of choice for more years than I care to remember. I first used this when it was Visual C++ 1.5 (hats off to those who started on 1.0) and by 2.2 it had everything I needed from a C++ IDE. Versions 4 and 5 followed and if I had to guess I would expect more Windows applications are written in VC++ 6 and VB6 than any other language. Then came the not so great versions Visual Studio .Net 2002 (7.0) and 2003 (7.1). If I'm honest I was still using v6. 2005 was better and 2008 was simply brilliant. Everything worked, the compiler was super fast and I was happy again...then came 2010...oh dear. 2010 is a big step backwards for me. It's not encouraging for my upcoming WPF exploits that 2010 is fronted in WPF technology, with the forever growing Find/Replace dialog, the issues with C++ intellisense, and the buggy debugger. That said it is still my tool of choice but I hope they sort the issue in SP1. I've tried other IDEs like Visual Age and Eclipse, but for me Visual Studio is the best. A really great tool. Liquid XML Studio XML development is a tricky business. The W3C standards are often difficult to get to the bottom of so it's great to have a graphical tool to help. I first used Liquid Technologies 5 or 6 years back when I needed to process XML data in C++. Their excellent XML Data Binding tool has an easy to use Wizard UI (as compared to Castor or JAXB command line tools) and allows you to generate code from an XML Schema. So instead of having to deal with untyped nodes like with a DOM parser, instead you get an Object Model providing a custom API in C++, C#, VB etc. More recently they developed a graphical XML IDE with XML Editor, XSLT, XQuery debugger and other XML tools. So now I can develop an XML Schema graphically, click a button to generate a Sample XML document, and click another button to run the Wizard to generate code including a Sample Application that will then load my Sample XML document into the generated object model. This is a very cool toolset. Note: XML Data Binding is nothing to do with WPF Data Binding, but I hope to cover both in more detail another time. .Net Reflector Note: I've just noticed that starting form the end of February 2011 this will no longer be a free tool !! .Net Reflector turns .Net byte code back into C# source code. But how can it work this magic? Well the clue is in the name, it uses reflection to inspect a compiled .Net assembly. The assembly is compiled to byte code, it doesn't get compiled to native machine code until its needed using a just-in-time (JIT) compiler. The byte code still has all of the information needed to see classes, variables. methods and properties, so reflector gathers this information and puts it in a handy tree. I have used .Net Reflector for years in order to understand what the .Net Framework is doing as it sometimes has undocumented, quirky features. This really has been invaluable in certain instances and I cannot praise enough kudos on the original developer Lutz Roeder. Smart Assembly In order to stop nosy geeks looking at our code using a tool like .Net Reflector, we need to obfuscate (mess up) the byte code. Smart Assembly is a tool that does this. Again I have used this for a long time. It is very quick and easy to use. Another excellent tool. Coincidentally, .Net Reflector and Smart Assembly are now both owned by Red Gate. Again kudos goes to the original developer Jean-Sebastien Lange. TortoiseSVN SVN (Apache Subversion) is a Source Control System developed as an open source project. TortoiseSVN is a graphical UI wrapper over SVN that hooks into Windows Explorer to enable files to be Updated, Committed, Merged etc. from the right click menu. This is an essential tool for keeping my hard work safe! Many years ago I used Microsoft Source Safe and I disliked CVS type systems. But TortoiseSVN is simply the best source control tool I have ever used. --- So there you have it, my top 5 development tools that I use (nearly) every day and have helped to make my working life a little easier. I'm sure there are other great tools that I wish I used but have never heard of, but if you have not used any of the above, I would suggest you check them out as they are all very, very cool products. #

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• Gamification at OOW

  - by erikanollwebb

  Last week was Oracle OpenWorld, and for those of you not in tech or downtown San Francisco, that might not mean a whole lot.  However, if you are familiar with it, Oracle OpenWorld is our premier customer event.  This year, more than 50,000 people attended.  It's not a good week to visit San Francisco on vacation because Oracle customers take over all the hotels in town!  It was crazy, but a lot of fun and it's a great opportunity for the Apps UX group to do customer research with a range of customers.  This year, more than 100+ customers and partners took the time to team up with our UX experts and provide feedback on new designs and ideas. Over three days,  UX teams conducted 8  one-on-one user feedback sessions, 4 focus groups and 7 surveys. In addition, we conducted a voice capture activity and were able to collect close to 70 speech samples at the lab and DEMOgrounds. This was a great opportunity for us to do some testing on some specific gamification concepts with a set of business analysts.  We pulled in 8 folks for a focus group on gamification concepts and whether they thought those would work for their teams. To get ready for this, my designer extraordinaire, Andrea Cantú, flew into town and we spent almost a week locked in a room together brainstorming design ideas.  We killed a few trees trying to get all of our concepts and other examples together in the process, but in the end, we put together a whole series of examples of how you might gamify an Oracle app (in this case, CRM).  Andrea is a genius for this kind of thing and the comps she created looked great.  Here's a picture of her hard at work!  We also had the good fortune to have my boss, Laurie Pattison and my usability contractor, Shobana Subramanian there to note take and observe as well.  Here's a few shots of us, hard at work preparing for the day (or checking out something on Laurie's iPhone...) To start things off, we gave an overview of gamification and I talked about what it's used for.  Then we gave the participants a scenario about our sales person and what we were trying to get her to do. It was a great opportunity to highlight what our business goals might be and why we might want to add game mechanics.  It was also a good way to get them thinking about how that might work for them in their environments and workplaces. There were some surprises for the day.  We asked how many of them were already familiar with the concept of gamification--only two people had heard of it and only one was using game mechanics in his work.  That's in contrast to a survey we just ran internally with folks in a dev org where almost 50% of about 450 respondents had heard of gamification.  As we discussed the ways game mechanics could be used, it became clear that many of the folks had seen some game mechanics in action but didn't know that's what they were.  We also noticed that the folks in this group felt that if they were trying to sell the concept in their orgs, they wouldn't call it gamification.  That's not a huge surprise to me--they said what we've heard in the past, that gamification does not seem like a serious term for enterprise software.  They said they'd sell it with the goals--as a means to increase behaviors by rewarding users for activities.  It's a funny problem.  The word puts some folks off, but at the same time, I haven't seen another one word description that quite captures the range of things that "gamification" can cover.  My guess is that the more mainstream the term becomes, the more desensitized we'll become to the idea the it's trivializing enterprise software in some way.  Still, it was interesting to note that this group still felt that they would not take this concept to their bosses or teams and call it "gamification".  They focused on the goals, and how we could incentivize desired behaviors with game mechanics.  As I have already stated in other posts, I feel like my org is more receptive to discussing how this is just a more transparent type of usability and user experience methods than talking about gamification.  That's the argument they said they would use. All in all, it was a good session.  I love getting to talk to customers, present ideas and concepts, and get their feedback and input.  It's the type of thing that really helps drive our designs and keeps us grounded in what our customers need/want.  We're already planning where to get more feedback opportunities in the coming months. 

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• Session Report - Java on the Raspberry Pi

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  On mid-day Wednesday, the always colorful Oracle Evangelist Simon Ritter demonstrated Java on the Raspberry Pi at his session, “Do You Like Coffee with Your Dessert?”. The Raspberry Pi consists of a credit card-sized single-board computer developed in the UK with the intention of stimulating the teaching of basic computer science in schools. “I don't think there is a single feature that makes the Raspberry Pi significant,” observed Ritter, “but a combination of things really makes it stand out. First, it's $35 for what is effectively a completely usable computer. You do have to add a power supply, SD card for storage and maybe a screen, keyboard and mouse, but this is still way cheaper than a typical PC. The choice of an ARM (Advanced RISC Machine and Acorn RISC Machine) processor is noteworthy, because it avoids problems like cooling (no heat sink or fan) and can use a USB power brick. When you add in the enormous community support, it offers a great platform for teaching everyone about computing.”Some 200 enthusiastic attendees were present at the session which had the feel of Simon Ritter sharing a fun toy with friends. The main point of the session was to show what Oracle was doing to support Java on the Raspberry Pi in a way that is entertaining and fun. Ritter pointed out that, in addition to being great for teaching, it’s an excellent introduction to the ARM architecture, and runs well with Java and will get better once it has official hard float support. The possibilities are vast.Ritter explained that the Raspberry Pi Project started in 2006 with the goal of devising a computer to inspire children; it drew inspiration from the BBC Micro literacy project of 1981 that produced a series of microcomputers created by the Acorn Computer company. It was officially launched on February 29, 2012, with a first production of 10,000 boards. There were 100,000 pre-orders in one day; currently about 4,000 boards are produced a day. Ritter described the specification as follows:* CPU: ARM 11 core running at 700MHz Broadcom SoC package Can now be overclocked to 1GHz (without breaking the warranty!) * Memory: 256Mb* I/O: HDMI and composite video 2 x USB ports (Model B only) Ethernet (Model B only) Header pins for GPIO, UART, SPI and I2C He took attendees through a brief history of ARM Architecture:* Acorn BBC Micro (6502 based) Not powerful enough for Acorn’s plans for a business computer * Berkeley RISC Project UNIX kernel only used 30% of instruction set of Motorola 68000 More registers, less instructions (Register windows) One chip architecture to come from this was… SPARC * Acorn RISC Machine (ARM) 32-bit data, 26-bit address space, 27 registers First machine was Acorn Archimedes * Spin off from Acorn, Advanced RISC MachinesNext he presented its features:* 32-bit RISC Architecture–  ARM accounts for 75% of embedded 32-bit CPUs today– 6.1 Billion chips sold last year (zero manufactured by ARM)* Abstract architecture and microprocessor core designs– Raspberry Pi is ARM11 using ARMv6 instruction set* Low power consumption– Good for mobile devices– Raspberry Pi can be powered from 700mA 5V only PSU– Raspberry Pi does not require heatsink or fanHe described the current ARM Technology:* ARMv6– ARM 11, ARM Cortex-M* ARMv7– ARM Cortex-A, ARM Cortex-M, ARM Cortex-R* ARMv8 (Announced)– Will support 64-bit data and addressingHe next gave the Java Specifics for ARM: Floating point operations* Despite being an ARMv6 processor it does include an FPU– FPU only became standard as of ARMv7* FPU (Hard Float, or HF) is much faster than a software library* Linux distros and Oracle JVM for ARM assume no HF on ARMv6– Need special build of both– Raspbian distro build now available– Oracle JVM is in the works, release date TBDNot So RISCPerformance Improvements* DSP Enhancements* Jazelle* Thumb / Thumb2 / ThumbEE* Floating Point (VFP)* NEON* Security Enhancements (TrustZone)He spent a few minutes going over the challenges of using Java on the Raspberry Pi and covered:* Sound* Vision * Serial (TTL UART)* USB* GPIOTo implement sound with Java he pointed out:* Sound drivers are now included in new distros* Java Sound API– Remember to add audio to user’s groups– Some bits work, others not so much* Playing (the right format) WAV file works* Using MIDI hangs trying to open a synthesizer* FreeTTS text-to-speech– Should work once sound works properlyHe turned to JavaFX on the Raspberry Pi:* Currently internal builds only– Will be released as technology preview soon* Work involves optimal implementation of Prism graphics engine– X11?* Once the JavaFX implementation is completed there will be little of concern to developers-- It’s just Java (WORA). He explained the basis of the Serial Port:* UART provides TTL level signals (3.3V)* RS-232 uses 12V signals* Use MAX3232 chip to convert* Use this for access to serial consoleHe summarized his key points. The Raspberry Pi is a very cool (and cheap) computer that is great for teaching, a great introduction to ARM that works very well with Java and will work better in the future. The opportunities are limitless. For further info, check out, Raspberry Pi User Guide by Eben Upton and Gareth Halfacree. From there, Ritter tried out several fun demos, some of which worked better than others, but all of which were greeted with considerable enthusiasm and support and good humor (even when he ran into some glitches).  All in all, this was a fun and lively session.

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• Is it ok to become junior at 27? [closed]

  - by Dvole

  I'm having a computer unrelated job right now, but I want to become a programmer, I have some objective-c and iOS knowledge, studying hard in my free time, etc. I'm looking into getting a junior iOS developer position. It will probably pay half what I earn in my current job, and I am not sure if I will like that. But I am really tired of my job and want to get experience in this field. Also, working as iOS developer is great position, since they are in great demand. My country is Russia. What do you think? Or Should I just do it in my free time, get some programs out in Appstore and look for better position? What would you do?

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• Which free PHP based forum is the easiest to extend or customize? [closed]

  - by aditya menon

  Possible Duplicate: Which Content Management System (CMS) should I use? I am looking to start a new forum, with a traditional forum layout (like webhostingtalk, for example). In this space, I know phpBB and SMF are strong contenders. I do not know for sure the names of other great forum software that might exist... My most important need is that it should be easy to modify the display area, at the least, without having to dig too much into the core. Drupal excels in this area with its templating system, but the forum module doesn't look like the forum interface most people are used to... It would be a great plus if the software has alternative Captchas like question based or invisible Captcha. If it doesn't, I would like to be able to code it in without much trouble (that is, the software exposes a good API)

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• Seven Random Thoughts on JavaOne

  - by HecklerMark

  As most people reading this blog may know, last week was JavaOne. There are a lot of summary/recap articles popping up now, and while I didn't want to just "add to pile", I did want to share a few observations. Disclaimer: I am an Oracle employee, but most of these observations are either externally verifiable or based upon a collection of opinions from Oracle and non-Oracle attendees alike. Anyway, here are a few take-aways: The Java ecosystem is alive and well, with a breadth and depth that is impossible to adequately describe in a short post...or a long post, for that matter. If there is any one area within the Java language or JVM that you would like to - or need to - know more about, it's well-represented at J1. While there are several IDEs that are used to great effect by the developer community, NetBeans is on a roll. I lost count how many sessions mentioned or used NetBeans, but it was by far the dominant IDE in use at J1. As a recent re-convert to NetBeans, I wasn't surprised others liked it so well, only how many. OpenJDK, OpenJFX, etc. Many developers were understandably concerned with the change of sponsorship/leadership when Java creator and longtime steward Sun Microsystems was acquired by Oracle. The read I got from attendees regarding Oracle's stewardship was almost universally positive, and the push for "openness" is deep and wide within the current Java environs. Few would probably have imagined it to be this good, this soon. Someone observed that "Larry (Ellison) is competitive, and he wants to be the best...so if he wants to have a community, it will be the best community on the planet." Like any company, Oracle is bound to make missteps, but leadership seems to be striking an excellent balance between embracing open efforts and innovating in competitive paid offerings. JavaFX (2.x) isn't perfect or comprehensive, but a great many people (myself included) see great potential, are developing for it, and are really excited about where it is and where it may be headed. This is another part of the Java ecosystem that has impressive depth for being so new (JavaFX 1.x aside). If you haven't kicked the tires yet, give it a try! You'll be surprised at how capable and versatile it is, and you'll probably catch yourself smiling while coding again.  :-) JavaEE is everywhere. Not exactly a newsflash, but there is a lot of buzz around EE still/again/anew. Sessions ranged from updated component specs/technologies to Websockets/HTML5, from frameworks to profiles and application servers. Programming "server-side" Java isn't confined to the server (as you no doubt realize), and if you still consider JavaEE a cumbersome beast, you clearly haven't been using the last couple of versions. Download GlassFish or the WebLogic Zip distro (or another JavaEE 6 implementation) and treat yourself. JavaOne is not inexpensive, but to paraphrase an old saying, "If you think that's expensive, you should try ignorance." :-) I suppose it's possible to attend J1 and learn nothing, but you'd have to really work at it! Attending even a single session is bound to expand your horizons and make you approach your code, your problem domain, differently...even if it's a session about something you already know quite well. The various presenters offer vastly different perspectives and challenge you to re-think your own approach(es). And finally, if you think the scheduled sessions are great - and make no mistake, most are clearly outstanding - wait until you see what you pick up from what I like to call the "hallway sessions". Between the presentations, people freely mingle in the hallways, go to lunch and dinner together, and talk. And talk. And talk. Ideas flow freely, sparking other ideas and the "crowdsourcing" of knowledge in a way that is hard to imagine outside of a conference of this magnitude. Consider this the "GO" part of a "BOGO" (Buy One, Get One) offer: you buy the ticket to the "structured" part of JavaOne and get the hallway sessions at no additional charge. They're really that good. If you weren't able to make it to JavaOne this year, you can still watch/listen to the sessions online by visiting the JavaOne course catalog and clicking the media link(s) in the right column - another demonstration of Oracle's commitment to the Java community. But make plans to be there next year to get the full benefit! You'll be glad you did. All the best,Mark P.S. - I didn't mention several other exciting developments in areas like the embedded space and the "internet of things" (M2M), robotics, optimization, and the cloud (among others), but I think you get the idea. JavaOne == brainExpansion;  Hope to see you there next year!

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• Visual Studio 2010 Launch Events

  - by Jim Duffy

  Don’t miss out on the opportunity to learn about the new features in Visual Studio 2010. Check out the MSDN Events page and find out when the talented folks of the Developer & Evangelism group will be visiting your city to prove to you that /*Life Runs On Code*/. I’ll be attending the Raleigh event June 2, 2010 from 1:00 - 5:00 PM. North Carolina State University, Jane S. McKimmon Conference Center 1101 Gorman St Raleigh North Carolina 27606 United States From the Raleigh Event page: Event Overview Learn about the rich application platforms that Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2010 supports, including Windows® 7, the Web, SharePoint®, Windows Azure™, SQL®, and Windows® Phone 7 Series. From tighter tester and dev collaboration to new ALM tools, there’s a lot that’s new. Here’s what you can expect: Windows Development with Visual Studio 2010 Visual Studio has always been the best way to build compelling visual solutions for Windows. Visual Studio 2010 continues this trend with great new tooling support for Silverlight 4, WPF, and native development. In this demo heavy session, you’ll see how you can build rich Windows applications with Silverlight 4 using new trusted application features including out-of-browser execution, saving to the file system, and even COM Automation. You’ll also see how you can use the new Task Parallel Library from within a WPF application to take advantage of all those cores in today’s modern computers. Web and Cloud Development with Visual Studio 2010 If you build solutions for the web, then this session is for you. Come see how your existing skills move forward with Visual Studio 2010 both for in-house ASP.NET development and the new frontier of the Cloud. In this session, you’ll see improved designers, new HTML and JavaScript snippets, Web Forms enhancements, and how you can quickly build great web sites using Dynamic Data. You’ll see the changes made to testable web sites with MVC 2.0 and how we’ve integrated JQuery support into the platform. You’ll then see how easy it is to leverage your existing code and move to the cloud with Windows Azure. Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools and Platform Overview This session provides an overview of Visual Studio® 2010 for Windows Phone. Learn about the powerful capabilities of this new application platform and the developer tools experience including basic IDE usage, debugging, packaging, and deployment. This session also shows how you can use Microsoft Expression® Blend™ for Windows Phone to build great Silverlight applications. Have a day. :-|

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• Connectify Dispatch Links Multiple Network Nodes Into a Mega Connection

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  Connectify Dispatch wants to change the way you interact with the networks around you by making it dead simple to mesh all available Wi-Fi, Cellular, and Ethernet connections into a massive and stable pipeline. Dispatch makes it open-and-click easy to hook up multiple Wi-Fi nodes, your cellphone, and even Ethernet connections into a single blended connection. While the video above gives a great overview of the process, check out the video below to see it in real world action: The project is currently in the last phase of KickStarter funding, so now is a great time to score Connectify Dispatch at a steep discount–pledging as little as $10 to fund the project, for example, scores you 50% of a 6-month Pro license. Hit up the link below to read more about the project, check the KickStarter status, and see all the neat features in the development pipeline. Dispatch: The Internet, Faster. [KickStarter] HTG Explains: What The Windows Event Viewer Is and How You Can Use It HTG Explains: How Windows Uses The Task Scheduler for System Tasks HTG Explains: Why Do Hard Drives Show the Wrong Capacity in Windows?

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