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• Demystified - BI in SharePoint 2010

  - by Sahil Malik

  Ad:: SharePoint 2007 Training in .NET 3.5 technologies (more information). Frequently, my clients ask me if there is a good guide on deciphering the seemingly daunting choice of products from Microsoft when it comes to business intelligence offerings in a SharePoint 2010 world. These are all described in detail in my book, but here is a one (well maybe two) page executive overview. Microsoft Excel: Yes, Microsoft Excel! Your favorite and most commonly used in the world database. No it isn’t a database in technical pure definitions, but this is the most commonly used ‘database’ in the world. You will find many business users craft up very compelling excel sheets with tonnes of logic inside them. Good for: Quick Ad-Hoc reports. Excel 64 bit allows the possibility of very large datasheets (Also see 32 bit vs 64 bit Office, and PowerPivot Add-In below). Audience: End business user can build such solutions. Related technologies: PowerPivot, Excel Services Microsoft Excel with PowerPivot Add-In: The powerpivot add-in is an extension to Excel that adds support for large-scale data. Think of this as Excel with the ability to deal with very large amounts of data. It has an in-memory data store as an option for Analysis services. Good for: Ad-hoc reporting and logic with very large amounts of data. Audience: End business user can build such solutions. Related technologies: Excel, and Excel Services Excel Services: Excel Services is a Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 shared service that brings the power of Excel to SharePoint Server by providing server-side calculation and browser-based rendering of Excel workbooks. Thus, excel sheets can be created by end users, and published to SharePoint server – which are then rendered right through the browser in read-only or parameterized-read-only modes. They can also be accessed by other software via SOAP or REST based APIs. Good for: Sharing excel sheets with a larger number of people, while maintaining control/version control etc. Sharing logic embedded in excel sheets with other software across the organization via REST/SOAP interfaces Audience: End business users can build such solutions once your tech staff has setup excel services on a SharePoint server instance. Programmers can write software consuming functionality/complex formulae contained in your sheets. Related technologies: PerformancePoint Services, Excel, and PowerPivot. Visio Services: Visio Services is a shared service on the Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 platform that allows users to share and view Visio diagrams that may or may not have data connected to them. Connected data can update these diagrams allowing a visual/graphical view into the data. The diagrams are viewable through the browser. They are rendered in silverlight, but will automatically down-convert to .png formats. Good for: Showing data as diagrams, live updating. Comes with a developer story. Audience: End business users can build such solutions once your tech staff has setup visio services on a SharePoint server instance. Developers can enhance the visualizations Related Technologies: Visio Services can be used to render workflow visualizations in SP2010 Reporting Services: SQL Server reporting services can integrate with SharePoint, allowing you to store reports and data sources in SharePoint document libraries, and render these reports and associated functionality such as subscriptions through a SharePoint site. In SharePoint 2010, you can also write reports against SharePoint lists (access services uses this technique). Good for: Showing complex reports running in a industry standard data store, such as SQL server. Audience: This is definitely developer land. Don’t expect end users to craft up reports, unless a report model has previously been published. Related Technologies: PerformancePoint Services PerformancePoint Services: PerformancePoint Services in SharePoint 2010 is now fully integrated with SharePoint, and comes with features that can either be used in the BI center site definition, or on their own as activated features in existing site collections. PerformancePoint services allows you to build reports and dashboards that target a variety of back-end datasources including: SQL Server reporting services, SQL Server analysis services, SharePoint lists, excel services, simple tables, etc. Using these you have the ability to create dashboards, scorecards/kpis, and simple reports. You can also create reports targeting hierarchical multidimensional data sources. The visual decomposition tree is a new report type that lets you quickly breakdown multi-dimensional data. Good for: Mostly everything :), except your wallet – it’s not free! But this is the most comprehensive offering. If you have SharePoint server, forget everything and go with performance point. Audience: Developers need to setup the back-end sources, manageability story. DBAs need to setup datawarehouses with cubes. Moderately sophisticated business users, or developers can craft up reports using dashboard designer which is a click-once App that deploys with PerformancePoint Related Technologies: Excel services, reporting services, etc.   Other relevant technologies to know about: Business Connectivity Services: Allows for consumption of external data in SharePoint as columns or external lists. This can be paired with one or more of the above BI offerings allowing insight into such data. Access Services: Allows the representation/publishing of an access database as a SharePoint 2010 site, leveraging many SharePoint features. Reporting services is used by Access services. Secure Store Service: The SP2010 Secure store service is a replacement for the SP2007 single sign on feature. This acts as a credential policeman providing credentials to various applications running with SharePoint. BCS, PerformancePoint Services, Excel Services, and many other apps use the SSS (Secure Store Service) for credential control. Comment on the article ....

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• Understanding the static keyword

  - by user985482

  I have some experience in developing with Java, Javascript and PHP. I am reading Microsoft Visual C# 2010 Step by Step which I feel it is a very good book on introducing you to the C# language. I seem to be having problems in understanding the static keyword. From what I understand this far if a class is declared static all methods and variable have to be static. The main method always is a static method so in the class that the main method exists all variables and methods are declared static if you have to call them in the main method. Also I have noticed that in order to call a static method from another class you do not need to create an object of that you can use the class name. What are the advantages of declaring static variables and methods? When should I declare static variable and methods?

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• KnownType Not sufficient for Inclusion

  - by Kate at LittleCollie

  Why isn't the use of KnownType attribute in C# sufficient for inclusion of a DLL? Working with Visual Studio 2012 with TFS responsible for builds, I am on a project in which a service required use of this attribute as in the following: using Project.That.Contains.RequiredClassName; [ServiceBehavior(InstanceContextMode = InstanceContextMode.PerCall, Namespace="SomeNamespace")] [KnownType(typeof(RequiredClassName))] public class Service : IService { } But to get the required DLL to be included in the bin output and therefore the installer from our production build, I had to add the follow to the constructor for Service: public Service() { // Exists only to force inclusion var ignore = new RequiredClassName(); } So, given that the project that contains RequiredClassName is itself referenced by the project that contains Service, why isn't the use of the KnownType attribute sufficient for inclusion of DLL in the output?

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• Do NOT remove the reference to System.Core from your VS2010 Project

  - by Lee Brandt

  One of the things I routinely do when adding a new class library project, is remove all references and just add them back in as I need them. That is NOT a good idea for Visual Studio 2010. When I DID need System.Core, and went to add it back, this is what I got: "A reference to 'System.Core' could not be added. This component is automatically referenced..." After some Googling I found this article: http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/525663/cannot-remove-system-core-dll-reference-from-a-vs2010-project It tells you to add it back manually. Here is the part that needs back in the project file. After the last PropertyGroup node, add this node:   <ItemGroup>     <Reference Include="System.Core" />   </ItemGroup> You should be good to go again. Hope this helps.

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• Google I/O 2012 - Native Client LIVE

  Google I/O 2012 - Native Client LIVE Colton McAnlis, Noel Allen In this talk, we will be porting an application to Native Client in 60 minutes, LIVE; showing the power of what Native Client can provide for traditional C++ developers looking to move to the web. In the porting process we'll cover specific tasks that a developer would need to perform during a port, and how to to address them with new tools and technologies including debugging integration with Visual Studio and a set of newly added utility libraries to the SDK. Attendees to this session will walk away with a clear understanding of what's required to port their applications to Native Client so that they can start their own projects For all I/O 2012 sessions, go to developers.google.com From: GoogleDevelopers Views: 16 0 ratings Time: 48:21 More in Science & Technology

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• Video: Telerik Silverlight Chart showing live data from SharePoint 2010

  - by Sahil Malik

  Ad:: SharePoint 2007 Training in .NET 3.5 technologies (more information). In this video, I demonstrate  - The process of writing, authoring, deploying, configuring, and debugging a Custom WCF service in SharePoint 2010 Integrating it with the Telerik Silverlight RAD Chart, that shows live data from the server showing CPU Usage of your web front end – can be enhanced to show whatever else you want. Doing all this in Visual Studio 2010, how you’d put your project together, how do you go about diagnosing it, debugging it – the whole bit. The whole presentation is about 45 mins, and it’s mostly all code, so plenty of juicy stuff here! At the end of this, you have a pretty sexy app running .. just fast forward to the end of the video below, and you’ll see what I’m talking about. :) You can watch the video here Comment on the article ....

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• TFS work items tips

  - by Michael Freidgeim

  We started to use TFS to track requests using Work items. 1. Telerik's  TFS Work Item Manager (beta version for TFS 2010 is available) that could be interesting to use instead of standard VS2010, especially for someone who doesn’t want to have VS installed on their machine.(thanks to dimarzionist who pointed to the tool).See also TFS Project Dashboa 2.Visual Studio TFS work item attachments Tab I've found that Outlook emails can be dropped to TFS work item attachments. Just open TFS work item attachment tab and drag and drop Outlook email to it. Also you can copy any selected text and paste it to TFS work item attachments tab. The text will be saved as an attachment file.

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• The Case of the Extra Page: Rendering Reporting Services as PDF

  - by smisner

  I had to troubleshoot a problem with a mysterious extra page appearing in a PDF this week. My first thought was that it was likely to caused by one of the most common problems that people encounter when developing reports that eventually get rendered as PDF is getting blank pages inserted into the PDF document. The cause of the blank pages is usually related to sizing. You can learn more at Understanding Pagination in Reporting Services in Books Online. When designing a report, you have to be really careful with the layout of items in the body. As you move items around, the body will expand to accommodate the space you're using and you might eventually tighten everything back up again, but the body doesn't automatically collapse. One of my favorite things to do in Reporting Services 2005 - which I dubbed the "vacu-pack" method - was to just erase the size property of the Body and let it auto-calculate the new size, squeezing out all the extra space. Alas, that method no longer works beginning with Reporting Services 2008. Even when you make sure the body size is as small as possible (with no unnecessary extra space along the top, bottom, left, or right side of the body), it's important to calculate the body size plus header plus footer plus the margins and ensure that the calculated height and width do not exceed the report's height and width (shown as the page in the illustration above). This won't matter if users always render reports online, but they'll get extra pages in a PDF document if the report's height and width are smaller than the calculate space. Beginning the Investigation In the situation that I was troubleshooting, I checked the properties: Item Property Value Body Height 6.25in   Width 10.5in Page Header Height 1in Page Footer Height 0.25in Report Left Margin 0.1in   Right Margin 0.1in   Top Margin 0.05in   Bottom Margin 0.05in   Page Size - Height 8.5in   Page Size - Width 11in So I calculated the total width using Body Width + Left Margin + Right Margin and came up with a value of 10.7 inches. And then I calculated the total height using Body Height + Page Header Height + Page Footer Height + Top Margin + Bottom Margin and got 7.6 inches. Well, page sizing couldn't be the reason for the extra page in my report because 10.7 inches is smaller than the report's width of 11 inches and 7.6 inches is smaller than the report's height of 8.5 inches. I had to look elsewhere to find the culprit. Conducting the Third Degree My next thought was to focus on the rendering size of the items in the report. I've adapted my problem to use the Adventure Works database. At the top of the report are two charts, and then below each chart is a rectangle that contains a table. In the real-life scenario, there were some graphics present as a background for the tables which fit within the rectangles that were about 3 inches high so the visual space of the rectangles matched the visual space of the charts - also about 3 inches high. But there was also a huge amount of white space at the bottom of the page, and as I mentioned at the beginning of this post, a second page which was blank except for the footer that appeared at the bottom. Placing a textbox beneath the rectangles to see if they would appear on the first page resulted the textbox's appearance on the second page. For some reason, the rectangles wanted a buffer zone beneath them. What's going on? Taking the Suspect into Custody My next step was to see what was really going on with the rectangle. The graphic appeared to be correctly sized, but the behavior in the report indicated the rectangle was growing. So I added a border to the rectangle to see what it was doing. When I added borders, I could see that the size of each rectangle was growing to accommodate the table it contains. The rectangle on the right is slightly larger than the one on the left because the table on the right contains an extra row. The rectangle is trying to preserve the whitespace that appears in the layout, as shown below. Closing the Case Now that I knew what the problem was, what could I do about it? Because of the graphic in the rectangle (not shown), I couldn't eliminate the use of the rectangles and just show the tables. But fortunately, there is a report property that comes to the rescue: ConsumeContainerWhitespace (accessible only in the Properties window). I set the value of this property to True. Problem solved. Now the rectangles remain fixed at the configured size and don't grow vertically to preserve the whitespace. Case closed.

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• Goodbye XML&hellip; Hello YAML (part 2)

  - by Brian Genisio's House Of Bilz

  Part 1 After I explained my motivation for using YAML instead of XML for my data, I got a lot of people asking me what type of tooling is available in the .Net space for consuming YAML.  In this post, I will discuss a nice tooling option as well as describe some small modifications to leverage the extremely powerful dynamic capabilities of C# 4.0.  I will be referring to the following YAML file throughout this post Recipe: Title: Macaroni and Cheese Description: My favorite comfort food. Author: Brian Genisio TimeToPrepare: 30 Minutes Ingredients: - Name: Cheese Quantity: 3 Units: cups - Name: Macaroni Quantity: 16 Units: oz Steps: - Number: 1 Description: Cook the macaroni - Number: 2 Description: Melt the cheese - Number: 3 Description: Mix the cooked macaroni with the melted cheese Tooling It turns out that there are several implementations of YAML tools out there.  The neatest one, in my opinion, is YAML for .NET, Visual Studio and Powershell.  It includes a great editor plug-in for Visual Studio as well as YamlCore, which is a parsing engine for .Net.  It is in active development still, but it is certainly enough to get you going with YAML in .Net.  Start by referenceing YamlCore.dll, load your document, and you are on your way.  Here is an example of using the parser to get the title of the Recipe: var yaml = YamlLanguage.FileTo("Data.yaml") as Hashtable; var recipe = yaml["Recipe"] as Hashtable; var title = recipe["Title"] as string; In a similar way, you can access data in the Ingredients set: var yaml = YamlLanguage.FileTo("Data.yaml") as Hashtable; var recipe = yaml["Recipe"] as Hashtable; var ingredients = recipe["Ingredients"] as ArrayList; foreach (Hashtable ingredient in ingredients) { var name = ingredient["Name"] as string; } You may have noticed that YamlCore uses non-generic Hashtables and ArrayLists.  This is because YamlCore was designed to work in all .Net versions, including 1.0.  Everything in the parsed tree is one of two things: Hashtable, ArrayList or Value type (usually String).  This translates well to the YAML structure where everything is either a Map, a Set or a Value.  Taking it further Personally, I really dislike writing code like this.  Years ago, I promised myself to never write the words Hashtable or ArrayList in my .Net code again.  They are ugly, mostly depreciated collections that existed before we got generics in C# 2.0.  Now, especially that we have dynamic capabilities in C# 4.0, we can do a lot better than this.  With a relatively small amount of code, you can wrap the Hashtables and Array lists with a dynamic wrapper (wrapper code at the bottom of this post).  The same code can be re-written to look like this: dynamic doc = YamlDoc.Load("Data.yaml"); var title = doc.Recipe.Title; And dynamic doc = YamlDoc.Load("Data.yaml"); foreach (dynamic ingredient in doc.Recipe.Ingredients) { var name = ingredient.Name; } I significantly prefer this code over the previous.  That’s not all… the magic really happens when we take this concept into WPF.  With a single line of code, you can bind to the data dynamically in the view: DataContext = YamlDoc.Load("Data.yaml"); Then, your XAML is extremely straight-forward (Nothing else.  No static types, no adapter code.  Nothing): <StackPanel> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Recipe.Title}" /> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Recipe.Description}" /> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Recipe.Author}" /> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Recipe.TimeToPrepare}" /> <TextBlock Text="Ingredients:" FontWeight="Bold" /> <ItemsControl ItemsSource="{Binding Recipe.Ingredients}" Margin="10,0,0,0"> <ItemsControl.ItemTemplate> <DataTemplate> <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal"> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Quantity}" /> <TextBlock Text=" " /> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Units}" /> <TextBlock Text=" of " /> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Name}" /> </StackPanel> </DataTemplate> </ItemsControl.ItemTemplate> </ItemsControl> <TextBlock Text="Steps:" FontWeight="Bold" /> <ItemsControl ItemsSource="{Binding Recipe.Steps}" Margin="10,0,0,0"> <ItemsControl.ItemTemplate> <DataTemplate> <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal"> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Number}" /> <TextBlock Text=": " /> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Description}" /> </StackPanel> </DataTemplate> </ItemsControl.ItemTemplate> </ItemsControl> </StackPanel> This nifty XAML binding trick only works in WPF, unfortunately.  Silverlight handles binding differently, so they don’t support binding to dynamic objects as of late (March 2010).  This, in my opinion, is a major lacking feature in Silverlight and I really hope we will see this feature available to us in Silverlight 4 Release.  (I am not very optimistic for Silverlight 4, but I can hope for the feature in Silverlight 5, can’t I?) Conclusion I still have a few things I want to say about using YAML in the .Net space including de-serialization and using IronRuby for your YAML parser, but this post is hopefully enough to see how easy it is to incorporate YAML documents in your code. Codeplex Site for YAML tools Dynamic wrapper for YamlCore

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• What is the most efficient way to blur in a shader?

  - by concernedcitizen

  I'm currently working on screen space reflections. I have perfectly reflective mirror-like surfaces working, and I now need to use a blur to make the reflection on surfaces with a low specular gloss value look more diffuse. I'm having difficulty deciding how to apply the blur, though. My first idea was to just sample a lower mip level of the screen rendertarget. However, the rendertarget uses SurfaceFormat.HalfVector4 (for HDR effects), which means XNA won't allow linear filtering. Point filtering looks horrible and really doesn't give the visual cue that I want. I've thought about using some kind of Box/Gaussian blur, but this would not be ideal. I've already thrashed the texture cache in the raymarching phase before the blur even occurs (a worst case reflection could be 32 samples per pixel), and the blur kernel to make the reflections look sufficiently diffuse would be fairly large. Does anyone have any suggestions? I know it's doable, as Photon Workshop achieved the effect in Unity.

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• Choosing 3D modeling software Maya or 3D max?

  - by Kenneth J

  I've am a developer whose has spent most of my programming life developing web and business applications. I want to try my hand at something more challenging (but stay in the comfort of Visual Studio) ...perhaps XNA. Want 3D modeling software would be best for someone developing XNA? I have played with 3d MAX and Maya but never really did anything too involved. What are the pros and cons between them (in terms of game development)? Does one win out over the other for game development? Or is it pretty much just preference? I am new to game development and just trying to figure out the best tools to use before I really started. Any advice or other suggections would be greatly appreciated.

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• Donald Ferguson says end-user programming is next big thing. Is it?

  - by Joris Meys

  You can guess how I came to ask this question... Anyway : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11944966 Donald Ferguson claiming that his websphere was his biggest disaster and proclaiming that end-user programming will be the way forward. This genuinely spurs the question : what with current programming languages. Honestly, I don't think that end-user programming will go much beyond a rather rigid template where you can build some apps around. If you see how many people actually manage to understand the basic functionality of functions in EXCEL... Plus, I fail to see how complex and performant systems can be built in such an end-user programming language ( Visual Basic, anyone?) Nice to play around with, but for many applications they're just not the thing. So no worries for the old languages if you ask me. What's your ideas?

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• Free E-Book - TypeScript Succinctly

  - by TATWORTH

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/TATWORTH/archive/2013/06/22/free-e-book---typescript-succinctly.aspxAt http://www.syncfusion.com/resources/techportal/ebooks/typescript, Syncfusion are a free E-book "TypeScript Succinctly""The extensive adoption of JavaScript for application development, and the ability to use HTML and JavaScript to create Windows Store apps, led Microsoft to develop TypeScript, a superset of JavaScript. Though the messiness of JavaScript causes many .NET developers to avoid the language, Microsoft's additions extend many familiar features of .NET programming to JavaScript. With TypeScript Succinctly by Steve Fenton, you will learn how TypeScript provides optional static typing and classes to JavaScript development, how to create and load modules, and how to work with existing JavaScript libraries through ambient declarations. TypeScript is even significantly integrated with Visual Studio to provide the autocompletion and type checking you are most comfortable with."

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• Searching for the Perfect Developer&rsquo;s Laptop.

  - by mbcrump

  I have been in the market for a new computer for several months. I set out with a budget of around $1200. I knew up front that the machine would be used for developing applications and maybe some light gaming. I kept switching between buying a laptop or a desktop but the laptop won because: With a Laptop, I can carry it everywhere and with a desktop I can’t. I searched for about 2 weeks and narrowed it down to a list of must-have’s : i7 Processor (I wasn’t going to settle for an i5 or AMD. I wanted a true Quad-core machine, not 2 dual-core fused together). 15.6” monitor SSD 128GB or Larger. – It’s almost 2011 and I don’t want an old standard HDD in this machine. 8GB of DDR3 Ram. – The more the better, right? 1GB Video Card (Prefer NVidia) – I might want to play games with this. HDMI Port – Almost a standard on new Machines. This would be used when I am on the road and want to stream Netflix to the HDTV in the Hotel room. Webcam Built-in – This would be to video chat with the wife and kids if I am on the road. 6-Cell Battery. – I’ve read that an i7 in a laptop really kills the battery. A 6-cell or 9-cell is even better. That is a pretty long list for a budget of around $1200. I searched around the internet and could not buy this machine prebuilt for under $1200. That was even with coupons and my company’s 10% Dell discount. The only way that I would get a machine like this was to buy a prebuilt and replace parts. I chose the  Lenovo Y560 on Newegg to start as my base. Below is a top-down picture of it.   Part 1: The Hardware The Specs for this machine: Color :  GrayOperating System : Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bitCPU Type : Intel Core i7-740QM(1.73GHz)Screen : 15.6" WXGAMemory Size : 4GB DDR3Hard Disk : 500GBOptical Drive : DVD±R/RWGraphics Card : ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5730Video Memory : 1GBCommunication : Gigabit LAN and WLANCard slot : 1 x Express Card/34Battery Life : Up to 3.5 hoursDimensions : 15.20" x 10.00" x 0.80" - 1.30"Weight : 5.95 lbs. This computer met most of the requirements above except that it didn’t come with an SSD or have 8GB of DDR3 Memory. So, I needed to start shopping except this time for an SSD. I asked around on twitter and other hardware forums and everyone pointed me to the Crucial C300 SSD. After checking prices of the drive, it was going to cost an extra $275 bucks and I was going from a spacious 500GB drive to 128GB. After watching some of the SSD videos on YouTube I started feeling better. Below is a pic of the Crucial C300 SSD. The second thing that I needed to upgrade was the RAM. It came with 4GB of DDR3 RAM, but it was slow. I decided to buy the Crucial 8GB (4GB x 2) Kit from Newegg. This RAM cost an extra $120 and had a CAS Latency of 7. In the end this machine delivered everything that I wanted and it cost around $1300. You are probably saying, well your budget was $1200. I have spare parts that I’m planning on selling on eBay or Anandtech.  =) If you are interested then shoot me an email and I will give you a great deal mbcrump[at]gmail[dot]com. 500GB Laptop 7200RPM HDD 4GB of DDR3 RAM (2GB x 2) faceVision HD 720p Camera – Unopened In the end my Windows Experience Rating of the SSD was 7.7 and the CPU 7.1. The max that you can get is a 7.9. Part 2: The Software I’m very lucky that I get a lot of software for free. When choosing a laptop, the OS really doesn’t matter because I would never keep the bloatware pre-installed or Windows 7 Home Premium on my main development machine. Matter of fact, as soon as I got the laptop, I immediately took out the old HDD without booting into it. After I got the SSD into the machine, I installed Windows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit. The BIOS was out of date, so I updated that to the latest version and started downloading drivers off of Lenovo’s site. I had to download the Wireless Networking Drivers to a USB-Key before I could get my machine on my wireless network. I also discovered that if the date on your computer is off then you cannot join the Windows 7 Homegroup until you fix it. I’m aware that most people like peeking into what programs other software developers use and I went ahead and listed my “essentials” of a fresh build. I am a big Silverlight guy, so naturally some of the software listed below is specific to Silverlight. You should also check out my master list of Tools and Utilities for the .NET Developer. See a killer app that I’m missing? Feel free to leave it in the comments below. My Software Essential List. CPU-Z Dropbox Everything Search Tool Expression Encoder Update Expression Studio 4 Ultimate Foxit Reader Google Chrome Infragistics NetAdvantage Ultimate Edition Keepass Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 Microsoft Security Essentials 2  Mindscape Silverlight Elements Notepad 2 (with shell extension) Precode Code Snippet Manager RealVNC Reflector ReSharper v5.1.1753.4 Silverlight 4 Toolkit Silverlight Spy Snagit 10 SyncFusion Reporting Controls for Silverlight Telerik Silverlight RadControls TweetDeck Virtual Clone Drive Visual Studio 2010 Feature Pack 2 Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate VS KB2403277 Update to get Feature Pack 2 to work. Windows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit Windows Live Essentials 2011 Windows Live Writer Backup. Windows Phone Development Tools That is pretty much it, I have a new laptop and am happy with the purchase. If you have any questions then feel free to leave a comment below.  Subscribe to my feed

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• What can i use as a 3d Tile map editor?

  - by alfa64

  I need to make grid based levels with 3d models for a dungeon crawler ( as a recent example Legend of Grimrock), but i need to have several layers and place entities with properties and position, angle, etc. I was considering Tiled, using layers as height for each level, but it's very hard to work with and visualize. What can i use for this pourpose? The output format needs to be json, xml, or something i can use on my engine. Ideally i'd want something like Tiled with a 3d visualization/edit mode and support for loading models or at least some visual representation of them.

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• Record Screen Activity with CamStudio

  - by Asian Angel

  Sometimes a visual demonstration works much better than a list of instructions. If you need to make a demo video for family and/or friends then you might want to have a look at CamStudio. Using CamStudio To get properly set up you will need to install two different files (the main program followed by the codec). Once that is done you are ready to get started. When you start the program you will see a surprisingly small window. Notice the highlighted Record to text…it serves as a visual indicator for the video type selected for recording. Before you start creating a video it would be a good idea to look through some of the settings. The first one to look at is the region or area that you want to record. Next you will want to look through the video options since these will affect the quality and final size of your video files. The default setting for quality is 70…adjust that to the level that best suits your needs. Note: For our example we maxed out the various video settings for best quality. On our system Microsoft Video 1 was listed as the default compressor but as you can see there were other options available. You can configure the settings for the compressor you want to use if desired. Keep in mind that each compressor will have unique settings of their own, so if you change it, be certain to go back and check. We decided to use the CamStudio Lossless Codec for our example (it gave the best results while trying the software). Going back to the main window you can toggle back and forth between .avi and .swf output using the last button. Once you are satisfied with the settings click on the red record button to start. If you need to pause while recording or stop recording click on the system tray icon and select the appropriate command. When you are finished recording, you will be presented with the save file window. Browse for the desired save location and name your new file. Once you have saved the file the movie player window will automatically open so that you view your new video. Our sample video shown here is at 50% of original size so may look slightly “gritty”. The detail was much better at 100%. If you decide to record and save as .swf the process will be identical to recording in .avi format until the movie player window opens. At that time the conversion process from .avi to .swf will begin. When complete you will have a new flash video and html file that goes with it. Depending on which browser you have set as default, you may run into a small problem when the preview for your new .swf file tries to open. There is a small bug in the generated html file. You can use this work-around or… Just open the .swf file directly in your favorite browser. Conclusion CamStudio may not produce the highest quality videos, but it’s free and does a very nice job nonetheless. If you are working on a tight budget or only need to make an occasional video then CamStudio is a very sensible choice. Links Download CamStudio Stable Version & CamStudio Codec *Download links are approximately half-way down the page. Download CamStudio Stable Version & CamStudio Codec at SourceForge *Beta version also available here. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Get the Classic Style Network Activity Indicator Back in Windows 7How To Copy a DVD with VLC 1.0ALLCapture 3.0 [Review]Listen and Record Over 12,000 Online Radio Stations with RadioSureGeek Reviews: Play And Record Internet Radio With Screamer Radio TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 TimeToMeet is a Simple Online Meeting Planning Tool Easily Create More Bookmark Toolbars in Firefox Filevo is a Cool File Hosting & Sharing Site Get a free copy of WinUtilities Pro 2010 World Cup Schedule Boot Snooze – Reboot and then Standby or Hibernate

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• Addressing a variable in VB

  - by Jeff

  Why doesn't Visual Basic.NET have the addressof operator like C#? In C#, one can int i = 123; int* addr = &i; But VB has no equivalent counter part. It seems like it should be important. UPDATE Since there's some interest, Im copying my response to Strilanc below. The case I ran into didnt necessitate pointers by any means, but I was trying to trouble shoot a unit test that was failing and there was some confusion over whether or not an object being used at one point in the stack was the same object as an object several methods away.

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• Test Driven Development with vxml

  - by Malcolm Anderson

  It's been 3 years since I did any coding and am starting back up with Java using netBeans and glassfish.  Right off the bat I noticed two things about Java's ease of use.  The java ide (netBeans) has finally caught up with visual studio, and jUnit, has finally caught up with nUnit.  netBeans intellisense exists and I don't have to subclass everything in jUnit.    Now on to the point of this very short post ( request)   I'm trying to figure out how to do test driven development with vxml and have not found anythnig yet.  I've done my google search, but unfortunately, TDD in IVR land has something to do with helping the hearing impared. I've found a vxml simulator or two, but none of their marketing is getting my hopes up.    My request - if you have done any agile engineering work with vxml, contact me, I need to pick your brain and bring some ideas back to my team.   Thanks in advance.

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• Using SQL Source Control with Fortress or Vault &ndash; Part 1

  - by AjarnMark

  I am fanatical when it comes to managing the source code for my company.  Everything that we build (in source form) gets put into our source control management system.  And I’m not just talking about the UI and middle-tier code written in C# and ASP.NET, but also the back-end database stuff, which at times has been a pain.  We even script out our Scheduled Jobs and keep a copy of those under source control. The UI and middle-tier stuff has long been easy to manage as we mostly use Visual Studio which has integration with source control systems built in.  But the SQL code has been a little harder to deal with.  I have been doing this for many years, well before Microsoft came up with Data Dude, so I had already established a methodology that, while not as smooth as VS, nonetheless let me keep things well controlled, and allowed doing my database development in my tool of choice, Query Analyzer in days gone by, and now SQL Server Management Studio.  It just makes sense to me that if I’m going to do database development, let’s use the database tool set.  (Although, I have to admit I was pretty impressed with the demo of Juneau that Don Box did at the PASS Summit this year.)  So as I was saying, I had developed a methodology that worked well for us (and I’ll probably outline in a future post) but it could use some improvement. When Solutions and Projects were first introduced in SQL Management Studio, I thought we were finally going to get our same experience that we have in Visual Studio.  Well, let’s say I was underwhelmed by Version 1 in SQL 2005, and apparently so were enough other people that by the time SQL 2008 came out, Microsoft decided that Solutions and Projects would be deprecated and completely removed from a future version.  So much for that idea. Then I came across SQL Source Control from Red-Gate.  I have used several tools from Red-Gate in the past, including my favorites SQL Compare, SQL Prompt, and SQL Refactor.  SQL Prompt is worth its weight in gold, and the others are great, too.  Earlier this year, we upgraded from our earlier product bundles to the new Developer Bundle, and in the process added SQL Source Control to our collection.  I thought this might really be the golden ticket I was looking for.  But my hopes were quickly dashed when I discovered that it only integrated with Microsoft Team Foundation Server and Subversion as the source code repositories.  We have been using SourceGear’s Vault and Fortress products for years, and I wholeheartedly endorse them.  So I was out of luck for the time being, although there were a number of people voting for Vault/Fortress support on their feedback forum (as did I) so I had hope that maybe next year I could look at it again. But just a couple of weeks ago, I was pleasantly surprised to receive notice in my email that Red-Gate had an Early Access version of SQL Source Control that worked with Vault and Fortress, so I quickly downloaded it and have been putting it through its paces.  So far, I really like what I see, and I have been quite impressed with Red-Gate’s responsiveness when I have contacted them with any issues or concerns that I have had.  I have had several communications with Gyorgy Pocsi at Red-Gate and he has been immensely helpful and responsive. I must say that development with SQL Source Control is very different from what I have been used to.  This post is getting long enough, so I’ll save some of the details for a separate write-up, but the short story is that in my regular mode, it’s all about the script files.  Script files are King and you dare not make a change to the database other than by way of a script file, or you are in deep trouble.  With SQL Source Control, you make your changes to your development database however you like.  I still prefer writing most of my changes in T-SQL, but you can also use any of the GUI functionality of SSMS to make your changes, and SQL Source Control “manages” the script for you.  Basically, when you first link your database to source control, the tool generates scripts for every primary object (tables and their indexes are together in one script, not broken out into separate scripts like DB Projects do) and those scripts are checked into your source control.  So, if you needed to, you could still do a GET from your source control repository and build the database from scratch.  But for the day-to-day work, SQL Source Control uses the same technique as SQL Compare to determine what changes have been made to your development database and how to represent those in your repository scripts.  I think that once I retrain myself to just work in the database and quit worrying about having to find and open the right script file, that this will actually make us more efficient. And for deployment purposes, SQL Source Control integrates with the full SQL Compare utility to produce a synchronization script (or do a live sync).  This is similar in concept to Microsoft’s DACPAC, if you’re familiar with that. If you are not currently keeping your database development efforts under source control, definitely examine this tool.  If you already have a methodology that is working for you, then I still think this is worth a review and comparison to your current approach.  You may find it more efficient.  But remember that the version which integrates with Vault/Fortress is still in pre-release mode, so treat it with a little caution.  I have found it to be fairly stable, but there was one bug that I found which had inconvenient side-effects and could have really been frustrating if I had been running this on my normal active development machine.  However, I can verify that that bug has been fixed in a more recent build version (did I mention Red-Gate’s responsiveness?).

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• AutoVue for Mobile Asset Management

  - by Warren Baird

  Our partner VentureForth is working with us on a solution to use AutoVue in their mobile asset management system. The idea is to allow workers in the field to easily be able to access visual information they might need while doing their work - and to annotate them.   For instance the worker can take a photo of something unexpected they found on-site, and indicate on the drawing what they found, so there's a record of it for the future.VentureForth's vMobile suite allows workers to take information for EBS eAM and PeopleSoft CAM, as well as multiple other systems) offline with them while working in the field, and with the AutoVue integration the workers can then view and annotate CAD drawings or photographs and have that information saved back into the asset management system.VentureForth has posted a video of this in action on YouTube:  http://youtu.be/X5Lv_X2v7uc - Check it out and let us know what your thoughts are!Learn more about VentureForth at http://ventureforth.com/

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• Microsoft C# Most Valuable Professional

  Recently I was awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for Visual C#. For those that dont know its an annual award based on nominations from peers and Microsoft. Although there are just over 4,000 MVPs worldwide from all kinds of specializations, there are less than 100 C# MVPs in the US. There is more information at the site: https://mvp.support.microsoft.com The Microsoft MVP Award is an annual award that recognizes exceptional technology community leaders worldwide who actively...Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• DevConnections Conference

  - by ScottGu

  The excellent DevConnections conference will be held in Florida later this month (March 27th to 30th).  DevConnections features multiple concurrent tracks – including ASP.NET Connections, Silverlight Connections, Visual Studio Connections, SQL Server Connections, and SharePoint Connections. I’ll be doing a keynote on the first day, and there will be dozens of fantastic talks that week by some of the best presenters in the .NET community.  You can learn more about the conference here. I highly recommend the conference – and hope to meet up with some of you there! Scott P.S. Use the discount code “DevCon1” to save $200 when registering.

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• Installed Ubuntu in VMware Player, Black side bars / broken GUI

  - by Eric

  I recently installed Ubuntu 12.10 in VMware Player and have came up with a black sidebar, missing icons, a pretty broken GUI. Everything works just fine though. I am able to run Firefox and open termainal and all that good stuff just fine, it's just that I can SEE them on the sidebar. I have to open up a seperate window on Windows with a picture of the Ubuntu 12.10 desktop in order for me to know what to click on, but once I do click on it, it's pretty much smooth sailing from there(not counting closing Firefox and several other things). Again, everything works just fine, but when it comes to the sidebar, the GUI, the dashboard (get a completely black screen for when I open dash board), they come up as completely black, broken (visual tears and what not), and hoving over them just brings up a big black bar (assuming it's the "zooming" in of the icon, but it just shows a black bar of where the icon should be). I'm not exactly sure what so do to get this to work (to fix the GUI), any ideas as to what I may do to fix this?

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• My Lightning Talk in MP3 format

  - by Rob Farley

  Download it now via http://bit.ly/RFCollation  Lots of people tell me they wish they’d heard my Lightning Talk from the PASS Summit. This was the one that was five minutes, in which I explained Collation using examples comparing US English, UK English and Australian English. At the end, I showed my Arsenal thongs. You can see a picture of them below. There was a visual joke involving the name Arsenal too... After the recordings became available, I asked the PASS legal people, and they said I could do what I liked with my own five-minute set, so long as I didn’t sell it. So I made an MP3. I’ve uploaded it to the LobsterPot Solutions web server, and provided an easy link via http://bit.ly/RFCollation. It’s a link straight to the MP3, and you’re welcome to download it, put it on your iPod, whatever you like. And also feel free to write comments here, to let me know what you think.

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• Is finding graph minors without single node pinch points possible?

  - by Alturis

  Is it possible to robustly find all the graph minors within an arbitrary node graph where the pinch points are generally not single nodes? I have read some other posts on here about how to break up your graph into a Hamiltonian cycle and then from that find the graph minors but it seems to be such an algorithm would require that each "room" had "doorways" consisting of single nodes. To explain a bit more a visual aid is necessary. Lets say the nodes below are an example of the typical node graph. What I am looking for is a way to automatically find the different colored regions of the graph (or graph minors)

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