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• Reporting Services Sum of Inner Group in Outer Group

  - by Spoonybard

  I have a report in Reporting Services 2008 using ASP.net 3.5 and SQL Server 2008. The report has 2 groupings and a detail row. This is the current format: Outer Group Inner Group Detail Row The Detail Row represents an item on a receipt and a receipt can have multiple items. Each receipt was paid with a certain payment method. So the Outer Group is grouped by payment type, the Inner Group is grouped by the receipt's ID, and the Detail Row is each item for the given receipt. My raw data result set has two important columns: The Amount Received and the Amount Applied. The Amount Received is how much money in total was collected for all the items on the receipt. The Amount Applied is how much money each item got from the total Amount Received. Sample Result Set: ReceiptID Item ItemID AmountReceived AmountApplied Payment Method ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1 Book 1 $200.00 $40.00 Cash 1 CD 2 $200.00 $20.00 Cash 1 Software 3 $200.00 $100.00 Cash 1 Backpack 4 $200.00 $40.00 Cash The Inner Group displays the AmountReceived correctly as $200. However, the Outer Group displays the AmountReceived as $800, because I believe that it is going off each detail row which in this case is a count of 4 items. What I want is to see in the Outer Group that the Amount Received is $200. I tried restricting the scope in my SUM function to be the Inner Group, but I get the error "The scope parameter must be set to a string constant that is equal to either the name of a containing group, the name of a containing data region, or the name of a dataset." Does anyone have any suggestions on how to solve this issue? Thanks.

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• Porting VB6 app to VB.Net: Can anyone ballpark how much effort this is?

  - by Robusto

  In 2002 I did a pretty large VB6 app for a client. It used a lot of UserControls and a 3rd party menu control (for putting icons next to menu names). It had dynamically "splittable" panels, TreeViews with multi-state checkboxes, etc. A very rich UI. My total time on the project was about 500 hours, which the client graciously let me spread over a whole month. (Yeah, it was that kind of job.) They were very happy, though, and they paid the bill on time with no argument. So after having no contact with them for years, they suddenly call and wonder if I can update the app to .Net for them. My initial reaction is just to decline, since I don't use VB.Net. And having read a bunch of posts on SO about the difficulties of porting, etc., etc., I'm even more inclined to decline, so to speak. Still, before I tell them no I am interested in roughly quantifying the effort it would take. I would love to hear from anyone who has done this kind of thing and has a feel for how much work it is. Was it: Significantly less than the effort you used on the original? Somewhat less than the effort you used on the original? The same as the effort you used on the original? More? A lot more? Please only respond if you have actually done this kind of port. And the answer doesn't have to be exact, since I really am only trying to ballpark this. My feeling is that the effort will be at least as much as it took for the original, if not more. But I could be wrong. Thanks for any help.

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• Google Chrome forgetting registration cookie immediately

  - by Ryan Giglio

  I'm having trouble with cookies on my site's registration form. When a user creates an account, PHP sets one cookie with their user id, and one cookie with a hash containing their user agent and a few other things. Both of these cookies are set to expire in an hour. This is the code that sets the cookie after creating your account $registerHash = hash( "sha512", $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] ); setcookie("register_user_id", $newUserID, time() + 7200, "/"); setcookie("register_hash", $registerHash, time() + 7200, "/"); The next page is a confirmation page which sends an email and then optionally lets the user go on to fill out more account information. If the user goes on to fill out more, it uses the cookie to know what account to save it to. It works correctly in Firefox and IE, but in Chrome the cookie is forgotten as soon as you go to the next page. The cookie simply doesn't exist. You can see the problem here: http://crewinyourcode.com/register/paid/ If you use Chrome, you will get a registration timeout error as soon as you try to advance past the confirmation page. However on Firefox it works fine.

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• Split user.config into different files for faster saving (at runtime)

  - by HorstWalter

  In my c# Windows Forms application (.net 3.5 / VS 2008) I have 3 settings files resulting in one user.config file. One setting file consists of larger data, but is rarely changed. The frequently changed data are very few. However, since the saving of the settings is always writing the whole (XML) file it is always "slow". SettingsSmall.Default.Save(); // slow, even if SettingsSmall consists of little data Could I configure the settings somehow to result in two files, resulting in: SettingsSmall.Default.Save(); // should be fast SettingsBig.Default.Save(); // could be slow, is seldom saved I have seen that I can use the SecionInformation class for further customizing, however what would be the easiest approach for me? Is this possible by just changing the app.config (config.sections)? --- added information about App.config The reason why I get one file might be the configSections in the App.config. This is how it looks: <configSections <sectionGroup name="userSettings" type="System.Configuration.UserSettingsGroup, System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" <section name="XY.A.Properties.Settings2Class" type="System.Configuration.ClientSettingsSection, System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" allowExeDefinition="MachineToLocalUser" requirePermission="false" / <section name="XY.A.Properties.Settings3Class" type="System.Configuration.ClientSettingsSection, System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" allowExeDefinition="MachineToLocalUser" requirePermission="false" / </sectionGroup </configSections I got the sections when I've added the 2nd and 3rd settings file. I have not paid any attention to this, so it was somehow the default of VS 2008. The single user.config has these 3 sections, it is absolutely transparent. Only I do not know how to tell the App.config to create three independent files instead of one. I have "played around" with the app.config above, but e.g. when I remove the config sections my applications terminates with an exception.

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• iPhone application purchase verification -- possible?

  - by Sedate Alien

  The iPhone 3.0 SDK's StoreKit.framework provides support for in-app purchases to give the user additional content, functionality and so on. It is possible for an app to send the transactionReceipt property of SKPaymentTransaction objects to the developer's server for verification of successful purchasing before granting service. Is there any analogous SDK to verify the initial application purchase itself? A developer that wishes for their server to only provide services to genuine applications (i.e. not pirated) without using IAP could do so by verifying the application in this manner, e.g. ensure that only users with the correct transactionReceipt are catered for. I understand that this approach would still be vulnerable to replay attacks; a dedicated group of pirates could share a valid transactionReceipt. However, my server provides a consumable service to users, i.e. once they've connected and done the work, it needn't work a second time so replay attacks are nullified. The service that my app provides is relatively niche. I could distribute it on the App Store as a free application that requires at least one IAP to do anything useful, but I am lead to believe that this would be a very unpopular move among users as it would be considered misleading. If I distribute it as a paid app, I do not know how to ensure that only genuine apps can access the webservice. This is important as every invocation of the webservice costs me money! What are my options?

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• How to explain to client that you can't give them some of the source

  - by Bo

  We have a number of AS/Flex components that we've built over time and improved upon. They've been turned into components so they can be reused in different projects and save us time. So you can think of them as part of an in-house framework of sorts. We're now realizing that it doesn't make sense to release the source code for these components to the various clients as part of the project, because technically this code isn't really owned by the clients. So my question When a client comes to you, how do you explain to them that you can't give them the full source code for those components. The client doesn't understand the difference, he just expects you to give them all the code for the site that he paid you to do. He doesn't understand that this code has taken you a lot longer to write than what he's paying for his site. But since he doesn't understand, he would get turned off and thinks you're ripping him off or something. How do you handle this situation? What do you tell clients upfront? Do you advertise it on your site from the very beginning? How do you handle their objections so they still hire you? As a side question, how often do you give AS and Flex source code to your clients? In the case when the code doesn't have any in-house components that you reuse in several projects, and in the case when it does have in-house components.

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• In Lua, can I easily select the Nth result without custom functions?

  - by romkyns

  Suppose I am inserting a string into a table as follows: table.insert(tbl, mystring) and that mystring is generated by replacing all occurrences of "a" with "b" in input: mystring = string.gsub(input, "a", "b") The obvious way to combine the two into one statement doesn't work, because gsub returns two results: table.insert(tbl, string.gsub(input, "a", "b")) -- error! -- (second result of gsub is passed into table.insert) which, I suppose, is the price paid for supporting multiple return values. The question is, is there a standard, built-in way to select just the first return value? When I found select I thought that was exactly what it did, but alas, it actually selects all results from N onwards, and so doesn't help in this scenario. Now I know I can define my own select as follows: function select1(n, ...) return arg[n] end table.insert(tbl, select1(1, string.gsub(input, "a", "b"))) but this doesn't look right, since I'd expect a built-in way of doing this. So, am I missing some built-in construct? If not, do Lua developers tend to use a separate variable to extract the correct argument or write their own select1 functions?

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• Guidance on E-commerce in a Python Framework

  - by Ant

  I am looking for guidance in making decisions on using Python for E-commerce. My reasoning to use Python in the first place is i do a lot of 3D so it's a real help to use Python for web server side as well as 3D so I do not need to learn a new language. When I say E-commerce i mean the logic behind displaying products and a check out system that is Robust....and yes I really want to build this myself so I can change it. I do not want to use an out the box solution that costs a lot of money every month. I want control of server side, data bases, e-commerce etc. My questions are: What Frameworks are out there? I looked at previous questions on stackoverflow but only found old posts about Sachmo and Get paid. What is the learning path, I do not want to make a mistake that costs six months of studying? Python then Django? How long if I spent 10 hours a day studying this would it take to get up and running? I write javaScript badly, so I am not a complete noob, I understand the basics of programming languages. many thanks in advance

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• Standalone Calendar App/Software

  - by Hewittnbut

  We're looking for a standalone (non-cms) calendaring solution to display on the web. It could be open source or a paid service. We're primarily looking for a way to display a calendar on the web complete with when the events are and what the names of the events are. It would be great if it can display in different views like by week, month, year. Month view would be the most important one. We want to keep it as simple as possible. We mainly just want users to view the calendar. The events do not even have to be editable on the end user's side just as long as there is some way for us on the backend to add/delete/import events into the calendar whether it be through .ics (iCal files)/desktop software/via some web interface. We know Google Calendar is around and there is also PHPiCalendar. Are there any other alternatives around? Any suggestions would be appreciated! Thanks!

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• VB Change Calulator

  - by BlueBeast

  I am creating a VB 2008 change calculator as an assignment. The program is to use the amount paid - the amount due to calculate the total.(this is working fine). After that, it is to break that amount down into dollars, quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies. The problem I am having is that sometimes the quantity of pennies, nickels or dimes will be a negative number. For example $2.99 = 3 Dollars and -1 Pennies. SOLVED Thanks to the responses, here is what I was able to make work with my limited knowledge. Option Explicit On Option Strict Off Option Infer Off Public Class frmMain Private Sub btnClear_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles btnClear.Click 'Clear boxes lblDollarsAmount.Text = String.Empty lblQuartersAmount.Text = String.Empty lblDimesAmount.Text = String.Empty lblNickelsAmount.Text = String.Empty lblPenniesAmount.Text = String.Empty txtOwed.Text = String.Empty txtPaid.Text = String.Empty lblAmountDue.Text = String.Empty txtOwed.Focus() End Sub Private Sub btnExit_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles btnExit.Click 'Close application' Me.Close() End Sub Private Sub btnCalculate_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles btnCalculate.Click ' Find Difference between Total Price and Total Received lblAmountDue.Text = Val(txtPaid.Text) - Val(txtOwed.Text) Dim intChangeAmount As Integer = lblAmountDue.Text * 100 'Declare Integers Dim intDollarsBack As Integer Dim intQuartersBack As Integer Dim intDimesBack As Integer Dim intNickelsBack As Integer Dim intPenniesBack As Integer ' Change Values Const intDollarValue As Integer = 100 Const intQuarterValue As Integer = 25 Const intDimeValue As Integer = 10 Const intNickelValue As Integer = 5 Const intPennyValue As Integer = 1 'Dollars intDollarsBack = CInt(Val(intChangeAmount \ intDollarValue)) intChangeAmount = intChangeAmount - Val(Val(intDollarsBack) * intDollarValue) lblDollarsAmount.Text = intDollarsBack.ToString 'Quarters intQuartersBack = CInt(Val(intChangeAmount \ intQuarterValue)) intChangeAmount = intChangeAmount - Val(Val(intQuartersBack) * intQuarterValue) lblQuartersAmount.Text = intQuartersBack.ToString 'Dimes intDimesBack = CInt(Val(intChangeAmount \ intDimeValue)) intChangeAmount = intChangeAmount - Val(Val(intDimesBack) * intDimeValue) lblDimesAmount.Text = intDimesBack.ToString 'Nickels intNickelsBack = CInt(Val(intChangeAmount \ intNickelValue)) intChangeAmount = intChangeAmount - Val(Val(intNickelsBack) * intNickelValue) lblNickelsAmount.Text = intNickelsBack.ToString 'Pennies intPenniesBack = CInt(Val(intChangeAmount \ intPennyValue)) intChangeAmount = intChangeAmount - Val(Val(intPenniesBack) * intPennyValue) lblPenniesAmount.Text = intPenniesBack.ToString End Sub End Class

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• Windows Server 2003 IPSec Tunnel Connected, But Not Working (Possibly NAT/RRAS Related)

  - by Kevinoid

  Configuration I have setup a "raw" IPSec tunnel between a Windows Server 2003 (SBS) machine and a Netgear FVG318 according to the instructions in Microsoft KB816514. The configuration is as follows (using the same conventions as the article): NetA | SBS2003 | FVG318 | NetB 10.0.0.0/24 | 216.x.x.x | 69.y.y.y | 10.0.254.0/24 Both the Main Mode and Quick Mode Security Associations are successfully completed and appear in the IP Security Monitor. I am also able to ping the SBS2003 server on its private address from any computer on NetB. The Problem Any traffic sent from a computer on NetA to NetB, or from SBS2003 to NetB (excluding ICMP Ping responses), is sent out on the public network interface outside the IPSec tunnel (no encryption or header authentication, as if the tunnel were not there). Pings sent from a computer on NetB to a computer on NetA successfully reach computers on NetA, but the responses are silently discarded by SBS2003 (they do not go out in the clear and do not generate any encrypted traffic). Possible Solutions Incorrect Configuration I could have mistyped something, somewhere, or KB816514 could be incorrect in some way. I have tried very hard to eliminate the first option. Have re-created the configuration several times, tried tweaking and adjusting all the settings I could without success (most prevent the SA from being established). NAT/RRAS I have seen multiple posts elsewhere suggesting that this could be due to interaction between NAT and the IPSec filters. Possibly the NetA private addresses get rewritten to 216.x.x.x before being compared with the Quick Mode IPSec filters and don't get tunneled because of the mismatch. In fact, The Cable Guy article from June 2005 "TCP/IP Packet Processing Paths" suggests that this is the case, (see step 2 and 4 of the Transit Traffic path). If this is the case, is there a way to exclude NetA-NetB traffic from NAT? Any thoughts, ideas, suggestions, and/or comments are appreciated. Update (2011-06-26) After failing to solve the problem, I resorted to paid Microsoft support. They were unable to solve the problem. Since then I have implemented a solution based on Linux that is working quite well. I will attempt to evaluate any proposed answers as best I can, but current configurations and time constraints will make this slow...

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• Windows 7 file-based backup service

  - by Ben Voigt

  I'm looking for a good replacement for Lazy Mirror, since it doesn't support Windows 7 well. Pros: One of the things I really loved about Lazy Mirror is that it always maintains a "full" backup, but does so by only copying modified files. As each file was copied, the old version got archived (moved to an out-of-the-way location). So after mirroring ran, there'd be a complete copy of the file system, which could even be booted if necessary. At the same time, extra space on the backup media was used to store as many older versions of files as possible, without wasting space storing multiple copies of the same version. It seems that with Windows 7 backup, there'd be wasted space storing the same data in both the system image and file backup. It was completely file-based, but also aware of the registry (it had a feature to dump the live registry to hive files in the correct format). The backups were normal NTFS filesystems, no special tool was needed to read them. It automatically cleaned out the oldest previous versions when space ran out (unlike Windows 7 backup which apparently simply starts failing the the backup media fills.) It copied all file attributes including security. Cons: It doesn't deal well with junction points, symbolic links, and hard links. It didn't run as a service without lots of help from firesrv or srvany, and then you couldn't interact with the GUI. Running as a service was necessary to be able to mirror protected OS files. It didn't have open file handling, except for registry hives. I guess that the file-by-file archive and replacement could leave mismatched sets of files, if the mirror was interrupted. This would be the advantage of incremental backup techniques that require old full backup + all intermediate incremental backups to restore. But I don't see this as presenting much of a problem, you'd really only have a boot failure if you had a mixture of pre- and post-service pack files, and I can run a full image backup using another tool before applying a service pack. Does anyone know of a tool that does both full-system backup and storage of old versions of files like Lazy Mirror did (without storing the same data multiple times), and also can run as a service in Windows 7? Free is best of course, but a reasonably priced paid program (e.g. It would be absolutely awesome if it also triggered a backup/mirror pass when a particular external drive was plugged in and generated popup warnings if backups hadn't been run recently)

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• Do RAID controllers commonly have SATA drive brand compatibility issues?

  - by Jeff Atwood

  We've struggled with the RAID controller in our database server, a Lenovo ThinkServer RD120. It is a rebranded Adaptec that Lenovo / IBM dubs the ServeRAID 8k. We have patched this ServeRAID 8k up to the very latest and greatest: RAID bios version RAID backplane bios version Windows Server 2008 driver This RAID controller has had multiple critical BIOS updates even in the short 4 month time we've owned it, and the change history is just.. well, scary. We've tried both write-back and write-through strategies on the logical RAID drives. We still get intermittent I/O errors under heavy disk activity. They are not common, but serious when they happen, as they cause SQL Server 2008 I/O timeouts and sometimes failure of SQL connection pools. We were at the end of our rope troubleshooting this problem. Short of hardcore stuff like replacing the entire server, or replacing the RAID hardware, we were getting desperate. When I first got the server, I had a problem where drive bay #6 wasn't recognized. Switching out hard drives to a different brand, strangely, fixed this -- and updating the RAID BIOS (for the first of many times) fixed it permanently, so I was able to use the original "incompatible" drive in bay 6. On a hunch, I began to assume that the Western Digital SATA hard drives I chose were somehow incompatible with the ServeRAID 8k controller. Buying 6 new hard drives was one of the cheaper options on the table, so I went for 6 Hitachi (aka IBM, aka Lenovo) hard drives under the theory that an IBM/Lenovo RAID controller is more likely to work with the drives it's typically sold with. Looks like that hunch paid off -- we've been through three of our heaviest load days (mon,tue,wed) without a single I/O error of any kind. Prior to this we regularly had at least one I/O "event" in this time frame. It sure looks like switching brands of hard drive has fixed our intermittent RAID I/O problems! While I understand that IBM/Lenovo probably tests their RAID controller exclusively with their own brand of hard drives, I'm disturbed that a RAID controller would have such subtle I/O problems with particular brands of hard drives. So my question is, is this sort of SATA drive incompatibility common with RAID controllers? Are there some brands of drives that work better than others, or are "validated" against particular RAID controller? I had sort of assumed that all commodity SATA hard drives were alike and would work reasonably well in any given RAID controller (of sufficient quality).

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• Unextending Sharepoint 2007 Web Application from a zone

  - by dunxd

  When our Sharepoint was migrated from Sharepoint 2003 to Sharepoint 2007 (both fully paid versions), the consultants who carried it out extended each web app into two IIS sites/zones (e.g. the original Web App was http://intranet, then http://newintranet and http://intranet would be created for Sharepoint 2007 - each with its own IIS site). The idea was that during the migration period we would set up DNS to point the old url to SP2003 servers and the new one to SP2007, then once the migration was complete, do a DNS change so the SP2007 would recieve the requests to the http://intranet type URLs. Unfortunately the contractors did not tidy up the application extensions and IIS sites after the migration, and for some time both URLs were in use, resulting in many document links pointing to the http://newintranet type URLs. This means I need to maintain these URLs. Due to a rejig of organisation structure we now need to relocate some Sharepoint sites, and I'd like to use the RDA Collaboration Sharepoint URL Redirector feature. However a limitation of this is that it doesn't work for Web Applications which have been extended into multiple zones. So I have a need to tidy up the situation that our consultants left behind. I think the right thing to do is use the "Remove Sharepoint from IIS Web Site" page in Central Admin to remove the zone for the newintranet type sites, and select the option to also delete the IIS site. That should result in having no IIS sites listening for http://newintranet type URLs. Is this the right procedure? Once I have done that I need to set up Sharepoint to receive requests sent to the http://newintranet type URLs so they will continue to work. I am not sure if I should do this: using Alternative Access Mappings or, by adding a host header to the IIS site or, creating a non Sharepoint IIS site for each http://newintranet type URL, and use IIS redirection to forward the requests to the new URL using variables to pass the path to the Sharepoint site. Does anyone have any thoughts on these options, or any other way of achieving this? Sharepoint 2007 is running on Windows 2003 with IIS6. We don't currently have plans/budget to upgrade to Sharepoint 2010.

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• Monitoring the status of accounts with IT Service providers (ISP, Domain Registrar etc.)

  - by Sholom

  Hi All, Short version: You have software that tells you when your servers power-outlet is down. It monitors multiple servers from one management console, alerts you when something is wrong etc. Does anyone know of software that will let me take the same approach to monitor if the money-outlet (the bill!) is down (not paid) to my IT Services providers (ISP, Domain Registrar, MX Backup service etc). I need a top down, centrally managed service that is capable of sending out alerts. Just like the one that monitors my own exchange server etc. I don't mind if i have to manually enter every payment. Long version: Our very likable but absent minded bookkeeper keeps neglecting to pay our IT vendors on time. Just this past week our internet service was disconnected. Same could happen to many other mission critical accounts (domain registrar, backup MX, anti-virus license, HackerSafe (McAfee secure) service and even an 800 number to name a few). As the sysadmin, i monitor my severs to make sure they are plugged into the power-outlet. I believe i should also monitor my services to make sure they are plugged in to their money-outlet. To compound the problem, when the power goes out someone else will likely notice and notify me. But if a bill is not payed, no one will ever notice until service is lost. Lost as in losing our domain name which would cause a lot more damage then the power failing on our server. [Solution] = [Doesn't work because]: Retrain the bookkeeper = Wishful thinking. Notify my manager = Already have (via email). Protects me, does not solve problem. Fire bookkeeper = What makes you so sure the next one will never forget? Bottom line: Humans are humans and sooner or later something critical will be royally messed up. We need to partner with a machine to help us out here. Anybody have the same problem? What software/solution do you use? I would like software that emails me when a bill is passed due just like i get an email when the power outlet fails. Anyone hear of anything like that? Thanks

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• How to encrypt dual boot windows 7 and xp (bitlocker, truecrypt combo?) on sdd (recommended?)

  - by therobyouknow

  I would like to setup a dual boot Windows 7 and Windows XP laptop/notebook computer where each operation system's partition is fully encrypted. I would like to do this on a SSD - a 128Gb Crucial M4. My research Dual boot of truecrypt encrypted OSs on one drive (not possible - in Truecript 7.x at time of writing) This cannot be done on a standard Truecrypt setup - it will only support encrypting one of the operating systems. I have tried this and also read about it here on superuser.com However, I did see a solution here that uses grub4dos as the initial bootloader to chain to separate truecrypt encrypted OSs, in my case Windows 7 and Windows XP: http://yyzyyz.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/truecrypt-how-to-encrypt-multiple.html I am not going to consider this solution as it relies upon some custom code for use in the bootloader that is provided by the author. I would prefer a solution that can be fully understood so that I can be sure that there is nothing undesirable occuring (i.e. malware or just simply bugs in the code). I would like to believe such a solution doesn't have those risks but I can't be sure. BitLocker and Truecrypt combination - possible solution? So I am now considering a combination of encryption programs: I now aim to encrypt Windows XP with Truecrypt and Windows 7 with BitLocker. Assuming Truecrypt bootloader can boot into non-Truecrypt OSs (e.g. via hitting Escape to go to another menu), then this solution may be viable. SSDs and Encryption (use fastest possible spinning hard disk instead (?)) I read on various superuser.com posts and elsewhere that current SSDs are not suited to whole drive encryption for various reasons: impact of performance algorithms that give SSDs advantage over spinning harddisks. Algorithms used in compression of data for example. Wear on the SSD, shortening its life Security issues whereby data is repeated, as indicated in some Truecrypt documentation So I am now considering not using SSD. But with the aim to have the fastest drive possible, I am considering using the Western Digital Scorpion black 2.5" 7200rpm harddisk as this appears to be top rated among spinning platter-based harddrives (don't work for Western Digital). Summary So to achieve whole drive encrypted dual boot Windows 7 and Windows XP with minimal performance impact I intend to use a combination of Truecrypt and Bitlocker on a top-rated conventional spinning platter-based harddisk. Questions Will my summary: achieve whole disk encryption of the dual-boot Windows XP, Windows 7? OR an you suggest a simpler solution, including one that only requires only Truecrypt (BitLocker not available on XP). Or another encryption tool, including paid-for? provide the highest performance. Am I correct to avoid using SDD with encryption for the reasons I discovered? Are the concerns about SSDs and encryption still very real (some articles I read go back to 2010) Thanks for your input!

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• Add Your Own Domain to Your WordPress.com Blog

  - by Matthew Guay

  Now that you’ve got a nice blog on WordPress.com, why not get your own domain to brand your site?  Here’s how you can easily register a new domain or move your existing domain to your WordPress site. By default, your free WordPress address is yourblog’sname.wordpress.com.  But whether this is a personal or a company blog, it can be nice to have your own domain to really brand your site and make it your own.  Or, if you already have another website and want to use WordPress as a blog for it, you could even add blog.yoursite.com or any other subdomain. Adding a domain to your WordPress.com is a paid upgrade; registering and mapping a new domain to your account costs $14.97 a year, while mapping a domain you already own to your WordPress blog costs $9.97 a year. Getting Started Login to your blog’s dashboard, click the arrow beside Upgrades in the sidebar, and select Domains. Enter the domain or subdomain you want to add to your site in the text box, and click Add domain to blog.   If you entered a new domain you want to register, WordPress will make sure the domain is available and then present you a registration form to register the domain.  Enter your information, and then click Register Domain.   Or, if you enter a domain that’s already registered, you will see the following prompt. If this domain is a domain you own, you can map it to WordPress.com.  Login to your domain registrar account and switch your nameserver to: NS1.WORDPRESS.COM NS2.WORDPRESS.COM NS3.WORDPRESS.COM Your DNS settings page for your domain may be different, depending on your registrar.  Here’s how our domain settings looked. Alternately, if you’re wanting to map a subdomain, such as blog.yoursite.com to your WordPress blog, create the following CNAME record on your domain register.  You may have to contact your domain registrar’s support to do this.  Substitute your subdomain, domain, and blog name when creating the record. subdomain.yourdomain.com. IN CNAME yourblog.wordpress.com. Once your settings are correct, click Try Again in your WordPress dashboard.  The DNS settings may take a while to update, but once WordPress can tell your DNS settings point to it, you will see the following confirmation screen.  Click Map Domain to add this domain to your WordPress blog. Now you’re ready to pay for your domain mapping or registration.  Depending on your purchase, the information and price shown may be different.  Here we’re mapping a domain we already have registered, so it costs $9.97.  Select your method of payment, enter your payment information or signin with your Paypal account, and continue as usual. Once your purchase is finished, you’ll be returned to the Domains page on WordPress.  Try going to your new domain, and make sure it opens your blog.  If it works, then click the bullet beside the new domain, and click Update Primary Domain.  Now, when people visit your WordPress site, they’ll see your new domain in the address bar.  You can still access your blog from your old yourname.wordpress.com address, but it will redirect to you new domain. Conclusion Having a personalized domain is a great way to make your blog more professional, while still taking advantage of the ease of use that WordPress.com offers.  And, if you have your own domain, you can easily move to your site traffic to a different hosting provider in the future if you need to.  The process is slightly complicated, but for $15/year we found this one of the best upgrades you could do to your WordPress.com blog. If you want to see an example of a site created with Wordpress, check out Matthew’s tech site techinch.com. And, if you’re just getting started with WordPress, check out our series on how to Start your WordPress.com blog, Personalize it, and Easily Post Content to it from anywhere. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Add Social Bookmarking (Digg This!) Links to your Wordpress BlogHow-To Geek SoftwareHow To Start Your Own Professional Blog with WordPressDisable Logon to Windows Computers When Not Connected to a DomainMake a Backup Copy of your Production Wordpress Blog on Ubuntu 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 Use ILovePDF To Split and Merge PDF Files 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

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• How to Use An Antivirus Boot Disc or USB Drive to Ensure Your Computer is Clean

  - by Chris Hoffman

  If your computer is infected with malware, running an antivirus within Windows may not be enough to remove it. If your computer has a rootkit, the malware may be able to hide itself from your antivirus software. This is where bootable antivirus solutions come in. They can clean malware from outside the infected Windows system, so the malware won’t be running and interfering with the clean-up process. The Problem With Cleaning Up Malware From Within Windows Standard antivirus software runs within Windows. If your computer is infected with malware, the antivirus software will have to do battle with the malware. Antivirus software will try to stop the malware and remove it, while the malware will attempt to defend itself and shut down the antivirus. For really nasty malware, your antivirus software may not be able to fully remove it from within Windows. Rootkits, a type of malware that hides itself, can be even trickier. A rootkit could load at boot time before other Windows components and prevent Windows from seeing it, hide its processes from the task manager, and even trick antivirus applications into believing that the rootkit isn’t running. The problem here is that the malware and antivirus are both running on the computer at the same time. The antivirus is attempting to fight the malware on its home turf — the malware can put up a fight. Why You Should Use an Antivirus Boot Disc Antivirus boot discs deal with this by approaching the malware from outside Windows. You boot your computer from a CD or USB drive containing the antivirus and it loads a specialized operating system from the disc. Even if your Windows installation is completely infected with malware, the special operating system won’t have any malware running within it. This means the antivirus program can work on the Windows installation from outside it. The malware won’t be running while the antivirus tries to remove it, so the antivirus can methodically locate and remove the harmful software without it interfering. Any rootkits won’t be able to set up the tricks they use at Windows boot time to hide themselves from the rest o the operating system. The antivirus will be able to see the rootkits and remove them. These tools are often referred to as “rescue disks.” They’re meant to be used when you need to rescue a hopelessly infected system. Bootable Antivirus Options As with any type of antivirus software, you have quite a few options. Many antivirus companies offer bootable antivirus systems based on their antivirus software. These tools are generally free, even when they’re offered by companies that specialized in paid antivirus solutions. Here are a few good options: avast! Rescue Disk – We like avast! for offering a capable free antivirus with good detection rates in independent tests. avast! now offers the ability to create an antivirus boot disc or USB drive. Just navigate to the Tools -> Rescue Disk option in the avast! desktop application to create bootable media. BitDefender Rescue CD – BitDefender always seems to receive good scores in independent tests, and the BitDefender Rescue CD offers the same antivirus engine in the form of a bootable disc. Kaspersky Rescue Disk – Kaspersky also receives good scores in independent tests and offers its own antivirus boot disc. These are just a handful of options. If you prefer another antivirus for some reason — Comodo, Norton, Avira, ESET, or almost any other antivirus product — you’ll probably find that it offers its own system rescue disk. How to Use an Antivirus Boot Disc Using an antivirus boot disc or USB drive is actually pretty simple. You’ll just need to find the antivirus boot disc you want to use and burn it to disc or install it on a USB drive. You can do this part on any computer, so you can create antivirus boot media on a clean computer and then take it to an infected computer. Insert the boot media into the infected computer and then reboot. The computer should boot from the removable media and load the secure antivirus environment. (If it doesn’t, you may need to change the boot order in your BIOS or UEFI firmware.) You can then follow the instructions on your screen to scan your Windows system for malware and remove it. No malware will be running in the background while you do this. Antivirus boot discs are useful because they allow you to detect and clean malware infections from outside an infected operating system. If the operating system is severely infected, it may not be possible to remove — or even detect — all the malware from within it. Image Credit: aussiegall on Flickr     

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• 6 Reasons Why You Can’t Move Your Cell Phone To Any Carrier You Want

  - by Chris Hoffman

  You can buy a laptop or Wi-Fi tablet and use it on Wi-Fi anywhere in the world, so why are cell phones and devices with mobile data not portable between different cellular networks in the same country? Unlike with Wi-Fi, there are many different competing cellular network standards — both around the world and within countries. Cellular carriers also like locking you to their specific network and making it difficult to move. That’s what contracts are for. Phone Locking Many phones are sold locked to a specific network. When you buy a phone from a cellular carrier, they often lock that phone to their network so you can’t take it to a competitor’s network. That’s why you’ll often need to unlock a phone before you can move it to a different cellular provider or take it to a different country and use it on a local provider instead of roaming. Cellular carriers will generally unlock your phone for you as long as you’re no longer in a contract with them. However, unlocking a cell phone you’ve paid for without your carrier’s permission is currently a crime in the USA. GSM vs. CDMA Some cellular networks use the GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) standard, while some use CDMA (Code-division multiple access). Worldwide, most cellular networks use GSM. In the USA, both GSM and CDMA are popular. Verizon, Sprint, and other carriers that use their networks use CDMA. AT&T, T-Mobile, and other carriers that use their networks are use GSM. These are two competing standards and are not interoperable. This means you can’t simply take a phone from Verizon to T-Mobile, or from AT&T to Sprint. These carriers have incompatible phones. CDMA Restrictions CDMA is more restricted than GSM. GSM phones have SIM cards. Simply open the phone, pop out the SIM card, and pop in a new SIM card to switch carriers. (In reality, it’s more complicated thanks to phone locking and other factors here.) CDMA phones don’t have removable modules like this. All CDMA phones ship locked to a specific network and you’d have to get both your old carrier and your new carrier to cooperate to switch phones between them. In reality, many people just consider CDMA phones eternally locked to a specific carrier. Frequencies Different cellular networks throughout the USA and the rest of the world use different frequencies. These radio frequencies have to be supported by your phone’s hardware or your phone simply can’t work on a network using those frequencies. Many GSM phones support three or four bands of frequencies — 900/1800/1900 MHz, 850/1800/1900 MHz, or 850/900/1800/1900 MHz. These are sometimes called “world phones” because they allow easier roaming. This allows the manufacturer to produce a phone that will support all GSM networks in the world and allows their customers to travel with those phones. If your phone doesn’t support the appropriate frequencies, it won’t work on certain networks. LTE Bands When it comes to newer, faster LTE networks, different frequencies are still a concern. LTE frequencies are generally known as “LTE bands.” To use a smartphone on a certain LTE network, that smartphone will have to support that LTE network’s frequency. Different models of phones are often created to work on different LTE networks around the world. However, phones are generally supporting more and more LTE networks and becoming more and more interoperable over time. SIM Card Sizes The SIM cards used in GSM phones come in different sizes. Newer phones use smaller SIM cards to save space and be more compact. This isn’t a big obstacle, as the different sizes of SIM cards — full-size SIM, mini-SIM, micro-SIM, and nano-SIM are actually compatible. The only difference between them is the size of the plastic card surrounding the SIM’s chip. The actual chip is the same size between all the SIM cards. This means you can take an old SIM card and cut the plastic off until it becomes a smaller-size SIM card that fits in a modern phone. Or, you can take a smaller-size SIM card and insert it into a tray so that it becomes a larger-size SIM card that fits in an older phone. Be aware that it’s very possible to damage your SIM card and make it not work properly by cutting it to the wrong dimensions. Your cellular carrier will often be able to cut your SIM card for you or give you a new one if you want to use an old SIM card in a new phone. Hopefully they won’t overcharge you for this service, too. Be sure to check what types of networks, frequencies, and LTE bands your phone supports before trying to move it between networks. You may have to buy a new phone when moving between certain cellular carriers. Image Credit: Morgan on Flickr, 22n on Flickr

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• ICC Cricket World Cup 2011- Free Online Live Streaming, Mobile Apps, TV and Radio Guide

  - by Kavitha

  The ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 will be hosted jointly by Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka. This 10th edition of World Cup is held between 19 February-2 April 2011. The World Cup drive will be starting in Dhaka on 19 February with the inaugural match between India and Bangladesh. The 43 days long ICC World Cup Cricket 2011 event will host 49 matches, day matches starting as early as 9.30am IST and day-night matches starting at 2.30pm IST. Here is our guide to follow 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup live on your computers, televisions,mobiles and radios Free Live Streaming On The Web (Official & Unofficial) http://espnstar.com will live stream all the matches of World Cup 2011 and they will be available in HD quality as they are the official broadcasters of World Cup 2011 cricket event. This is the first time ever a world cup cricket event is streamed online officially. If you are not able to access the official live streaming of Cricket World Cup due to regional restrictions, point your browser to any of the following unofficial live streams on the web. NOTE: MAKE SURE THAT YOUR ANTIVIRUS and ANTIMALWARE software are up and running before opening any of these sites. crictime.com - this site offers 6 live streaming servers that offer World Cup 2011 Cricket matches streams. Don’t mind the ads that are displayed left,right and center and just enjoy the cricket. Web pages dedicated for the world cup streaming are already live and you can bookmark them for your reference. cricfire.com/live-cricket: cricfire   gathers cricket live streams available around the web and provides them for easy access. Also they provide links for watching highlights and other post match analysis shows. Other sites that provide live streaming videos extracover.net webcric.com Searching for Unofficial Streams On Live Video Streaming Sites One of the best ways to find the unofficial streams is look for live streaming feeds on popular video streaming websites. We can be assured that these sites does not spread malware and spammy ads as they are well established. Here are the queries that you can use to search the popular sites FreedoCast  http://freedocast.com/search.aspx?go=cricket%20world%20cup Justin.tv      http://www.justin.tv/search?q=cricket+world+cup Ustream.tv  http://www.ustream.tv/discovery/live/all?q=cricket%20world%20cup TV Channels That Telecast Cricket World Cup Live Even though web is the place where we spend most of our time for entertainment, TVs are still popular for watching sports events. Mostly 90% of us are going to follow this cricket world cup matches on television sets. Here is the list of TV channels that paid whooping amounts of money for broadcasting rights and going to telecast live cricket Afghanistan – Ariana Television Network: Lemar TV Australia – Nine Network, Fox Sports Bangladesh – Bangladesh Television Canada – Asian Television Network China – ESPN Star Sports Europe (Except UK & Ireland) – Eurosport2 Fiji – Fiji TV India – ESPN Star Sports, Star Cricket, DD National (mostly India matches alone) Ireland – Zee Cafe Jamaica – Television Jamaica Middle East – Arab Radio and Television Network Nepal – ESPN Star Sports New Zealand – Sky Sport Pacific Islands – Sky Pacific Pakistan – GEO Super, Pakistan Television Corporation Pan-Africa – South African Broadcasting Corporation Singapore – Star Cricket South Africa – Supersport, Sabc3 Sport Sri Lanka – Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation United Kingdom – Sky Sports HD USA – Willow Cricket, DirecTV, Dish Network West Indies – Caribbean Media Corporation Radio Stations That Provide Live Commentary Don’t we listen to radio? Yes we still listen to radios, especially when we are on the go. Radios are part of our mobiles as well as music players like iPods. Here are the stations that you can tune into for catching live cricket commentary Australia – ABC Local Radio Bangladesh – Bangladesh Betar Canada , Central America – EchoStar India – All India Radio Pakistan, United Arab Emirates – Hum FM Sri Lanka – FM Derana United Kingdom, Ireland – BBC Radio West Indies – Caribbean Media Corporation Watch World Cup Cricket On Your Mobile This section is for Indian users. 3G rollout is happening at very high pace in all part of the India and most of the metros and towns are able to access 3G services. With 3G on your mobile you will be able to watch live ICC world cricket on your Reliance Mobiles and you can read more about it here. Top 10 Cricket Websites Check out our earlier post on top 10 cricket web sites for information. This article titled,ICC Cricket World Cup 2011- Free Online Live Streaming, Mobile Apps, TV and Radio Guide, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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• What’s Your Tax Strategy? Automate the Tax Transfer Pricing Process!

  - by tobyehatch

  Does your business operate in multiple countries? Well, whether you like it or not, many local and international tax authorities inspect your tax strategy.  Legal, effective tax planning is perceived as a “moral” issue. CEOs are being asked to testify on their process of tax transfer pricing between multinational legal entities.  Marc Seewald, Senior Director of Product Management for EPM Applications specializing in all tax subjects and Product Manager for Oracle Hyperion Tax Provisioning, and Bart Stoehr, Senior Director of Product Strategy for Oracle Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management joined me for a discussion/podcast on this interesting subject.  So what exactly is “tax transfer pricing”? Marc defined it this way. “Tax transfer pricing is a profit allocation methodology required to be used by multinational corporations. Specifically, the ultimate goal of the transfer pricing is to ensure that the global multinational pays their fair share of income tax in each of their local markets. Specifically, it prevents companies from unfairly moving profit from ‘high tax’ countries to ‘low tax’ countries.” According to Marc, in today’s global economy, profitability can be significantly impacted by goods and services exchanged between the related divisions within a single multinational company.  To ensure that these cost allocations are done fairly, there are rules that govern the process. These rules ensure that intercompany allocations fairly represent the actual nature of the businesses activity- as if two divisions were unrelated - and provide a clear audit trail of how the costs have been allocated to prove that allocations fall within reasonable ranges.  What are the repercussions of improper tax transfer pricing? How important is it? Tax transfer pricing allocations can materially impact the amount of overall corporate income taxes paid by a company worldwide, in some cases by hundreds of millions of dollars!  Since so much tax revenue is at stake, revenue agencies like the IRS, and international regulatory bodies like the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) are pushing to reform and clarify reporting for tax transfer pricing. Most recently the OECD announced an “Action Plan for Base Erosion and Profit Shifting”. As Marc explained, the times are changing and companies need to be responsive to this issue. “It feels like every other week there is another company being accused of avoiding taxes,” said Marc. Most recently, Caterpillar was accused of avoiding billions of dollars in taxes. In the last couple of years, Apple, GE, Ikea, and Starbucks, have all been accused of tax avoidance. It’s imperative that companies like these have a clear and auditable tax transfer process that enables them to justify tax transfer pricing allocations and avoid steep penalties and bad publicity. Transparency and efficiency are what is needed when it comes to the tax transfer pricing process. Bart explained that tax transfer pricing is driving a deeper inspection of profit recognition specifically focused on the tax element of profit.  However, allocations needed to support tax profitability are nearly identical in process to allocations taking place in other parts of the finance organization. For example, the methods and processes necessary to arrive at tax profitability by legal entity are no different than those used to arrive at fully loaded profitability for a product line. In fact, there is a great opportunity for alignment across these two different functions.So it seems that tax transfer pricing should be reflected in profitability in general. Bart agreed and told us more about some of the critical sub-processes of an overall tax transfer pricing process within the Oracle solution for tax transfer pricing.  “First, there is a ton of data preparation, enrichment and pre-allocation data analysis that is managed in the Oracle Hyperion solution. This serves as the “data staging” to the next, critical sub-processes.  From here, we leverage the Oracle EPM platform’s ability to re-use dimensions and legal entity driver data and financial data with Oracle Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management (HPCM).  Within HPCM, we manage the driver data, define the legal entity to legal entity allocation rules (like cost plus), and have the option to test out multiple, simultaneous tax transfer pricing what-if scenarios.  Once processed, a tax expert can evaluate the effectiveness of any one scenario result versus another via a variance analysis configured with HPCM’s pre-packaged reporting capability known as Oracle Hyperion SmartView for Office.”   Further, Bart explained that the ability to visibly demonstrate how a cost or revenue has been allocated is really helpful and auditable.  “HPCM’s Traceability Maps are that visual representation of all allocation flows that have been executed and is the tax transfer analyst’s best friend in maintaining clear documentation for tax transfer pricing audits. Simply click and drill as you inspect the chain of allocation definitions and results. Once final, the post-allocated tax data can be compared to the GL to create invoices and journal entries for posting to your GL system of choice.  Of course, there is a framework for overall governance of the journal entries, allocation percentages, and reporting to include necessary approvals.” Lastly, Marc explained that the key value in using the Oracle Hyperion solution for tax transfer pricing is that it keeps everything in alignment in one single place. Specifically, Oracle Hyperion effectively becomes the single book of record for the GAAP, management, and the tax set of books. There are many benefits to having one source of the truth. These include EFFICIENCY, CONTROLS and TRANSPARENCY.So, what’s your tax strategy? Why not automate the tax transfer pricing process!To listen to the entire podcast, click here.To learn more about Oracle Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management (HPCM), click here.

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• Guest Post: Christian Finn: Is Facebook About to Become a Victim of its Own Success?

  - by Michael Snow

  12.00 Print 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}  Since we have a number of new members of the WebCenter Evangelist team - I thought it would be appropriate to close the week with the newest hire and leader of the global WebCenter Evangelists, Christian Finn, who has just joined the Red team after many years with the small technology company up in Redmond, WA. He gave an intro to himself in an earlier post this morning but his post below is a great example of how customer engagement takes on a life of its own in our global online connected and social digital ecosystem. Is Facebook About to Become a Victim of its Own Success? What if I told you that your brand could advertise so successfully, you wouldn’t have to pay for the ads? A recent campaign by Ford Motor Company for the Ford Focus featuring Doug the spokespuppet (I am not making this up) did just that—and it raises some interesting issues for marketers and social media alike in the brave new world of customer engagement that is the Social Web. Allow me to elaborate. An article in the Wall Street Journal last week—“Big Brands Like Facebook, But They Don’t Like to Pay” tells the story of Ford’s recently concluded online campaign for the 2012 Ford Focus. (Ford, by the way, under the leadership of people such as Scott Monty, has been a pioneer of effective social campaigns.) The centerpiece of the campaign was the aforementioned Doug, who appeared as a character on Facebook in videos and via chat. (If you are not familiar with Doug, you can see him in action here, and read the WSJ story here.) You may be thinking puppet ads are a sign of Internet Bubble 2.0 and want to stop now, but bear with me. The Journal reported that Ford spent about $95M on its overall Ford Focus campaign, with TV accounting for over $60M of that spend. The Internet buy for the campaign was just over $10M, which included ad buys to drive traffic to Facebook for people to meet and ‘Like’ Doug and some amount on Facebook ads, too, to promote Doug and by extension, the Ford Focus. So far, a fairly straightforward consumer marketing story in the Internet Era. Yet here’s the curious thing: once Doug reached 10,000 fans on Facebook, Ford stopped paying for Facebook ads. Doug had gone viral with people sharing his videos with one another; once critical mass was reached there was no need to buy more ads on Facebook. Doug went on to be Liked by over 43,000 people, and 61% of his fans said they would be more likely to consider buying a Focus. According to the article, Ford says Focus sales are up this year—and increasing sales is every marketer’s goal. And so in effect, Ford found its Facebook campaign so successful that it could stop paying for it, instead letting its target consumers communicate its messages for fun—and for free. Not only did they get a 3X increase in fans beyond their paid campaign, they had thousands of customers sharing their messages in video form for months. Since free advertising is the Holy Grail of marketing both old and new-- and it appears social networks have an advantage in generating that buzz—it seems reasonable to ask: what would happen to brands’ advertising strategies—and the media they use to engage customers, if this success were repeated at scale? It seems logical to conclude that, at least initially, more ad dollars would be spent with social networks like Facebook as brands attempt to replicate Ford’s success. Certainly Facebook ad revenues are on the rise—eMarketer expects Facebook’s ad revenues to quintuple by 2012 compared with 2009 levels, to nearly 2.9B. That’s bad news for TV and the already battered print media and good news for Facebook. But perhaps not so over the longer run. With TV buys, you have to keep paying to generate impressions. If Doug the spokespuppet is any guide, however, that may not be true for social media campaigns. After an initial outlay, if a social campaign takes off, the audience will generate more impressions on its own. Thus a social medium like Facebook could be the victim of its own success when it comes to ad revenue. It may be there is an inherent limiting factor in the ad spend they can capture, as exemplified by Ford’s experience with Dough and the Focus. And brands may spend much less overall on advertising, with as good or better results, than they ever have in the past. How will these trends evolve? Can brands create social campaigns that repeat Ford’s formula for the Focus with effective results? Can social networks find ways to capture more spend and overcome their potential tendency to make further spend unnecessary? And will consumers become tired and insulated from social campaigns, much as they have to traditional advertising channels? These are the questions CMOs and Facebook execs alike will be asking themselves in the brave new world of customer engagement. As always, your thoughts and comments are most welcome.

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• The Winds of Change are a Blowin&rsquo;

  - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

  For six years I have been an avid and outspoken fan and paying customer of SourceGear products…from Vault to Dragnet to Fortress and on to Vault Professional, but that is all changing now.  Not the fan part, but the paying customer part.  I’m still a huge fan.  I think that SourceGear does a great job with their product and support has been fantastic when needed (which is not very often).  I think that Eric Sink has done a fine job building a quality company and products, and I appreciate his contributions to the tech community through this blogging and books.  I still think their products are high quality and do a fantastic job of what they do.  But there’s the rub…what they do is no longer enough for me. As I have rebuilt our development team over the last couple of years, and we have begun to investigate Scrum and Kanban, I realize that I need more visibility into the progress of the team.  I need better project management tools, and this is where Vault Professional lags behind several other tools.  Granted, in the latest release (Vault 6.0) they added a nice time tracking feature, but I want more.  (Note, I did contact SourceGear about my quest for more, but apparently, the rest of their customer base has not been clamoring for this and so they have not built it.  Granted, I wasn’t clamoring for it either until just recently, but unfortunately for SourceGear, I want it now and don’t want to wait for them to build it into their system.) Ironically, it was SourceGear themselves who started to turn me on to the possibilities of other tools.  They built a limited integration with Axosoft OnTime which I read about several times on their support site (I used to regularly read and occasionally comment on their Support Forum).  I decided to check out OnTime and was very impressed with the tool for work item tracking and project management (not to mention their great Scrum Master in 10 Minutes video).  I fell in love with the capabilities of OnTime.  Unfortunately, the integration with Vault for source control management was, as I mentioned, limited.  I could have forfeited the integration between work items and source code, but there is too much benefit to linking check-ins to work items for me to give that up.  So then I did what was previously unthinkable for me, I considered switching not just the work tracking tool, but also the source code management tool.  This was really stepping outside my comfort zone because source code is Gold, and not to be trifled with.  When you find a good weapon to protect your gold, stick with it. I looked at Git and Tortoise SVN, but the integration methods for those was pretty rough compared to what I was used to.  The recommended tool from Axosoft’s point of view appeared to be RocketSVN, but I really wasn’t sure I wanted to go the “flavor of Subversion” route.  Then I started thinking about that other tool I liked back when I first chose to go with Vault, but couldn’t afford:  Team Foundation Server.  And what do you know…Microsoft has not only radically improved it over that version from back in 2006, but they also came to their senses about how it should be licensed, and it is much more affordable now.  So I started looking into the latest capabilities in the 2012 version, and I fell in love all over again. I really went deep on checking out the tools.  I watched numerous webcasts from Microsoft partners, went to a beta preview on Microsoft’s campus, and watched a lot of Channel 9 videos on the new ALM features (oooh…shiny).  Frankly, I was very impressed with the capabilities of the newest version, and figured this was probably our direction.  As an interesting twist of fate, one of my employees crossed paths with an ALM Consultant from Northwest Cadence, a local Microsoft Partner, and one of the companies that produced several of the webcasts that I had been watching.  So I gave Bryon a call and started grilling him to see if he really knew anything or was just another guy who couldn’t find a job so he called himself a consultant.  It turns out Bryon actually knows a lot, especially in an area that was becoming a frustration point for us: Branching strategies and automated builds (that’s probably a whole separate blog entry).  As we talked, Bryon suggested we look into doing a DTDPS (Developer Tools Deployment Planning Services) session with his company.  This is a service that can be paid for by Microsoft Enterprise Agreement planning services credits or SA training benefits, and, again, coincidentally, we had several that were just about to expire, so I put them to good use. The DTDPS sessions were great; and Bryon, Rick, and the rest of the folks at Northwest Cadence have been a pleasure to work with.  We have just purchased a new server for our TFS rollout and are planning the steps and options right now.  This is still a big project ahead of us to not only install and configure TFS, but also to load all of our source code (many different systems, not just one program) and transition to the new way of life with TFS, but I am convinced that it is the right move for my team at this point in time.  We need the new capabilities that are in alignment with Scrum and Kanban methodologies in order to more efficiently manage all the different projects that we have going on at one time. I would still wholeheartedly endorse SourceGear’s products and Axosoft’s OnTime for those whose needs are met by those tools, but for me and my team, I think that TFS is the right fit, and I am looking forward to the change.

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• SQL SERVER – Guest Post by Sandip Pani – SQL Server Statistics Name and Index Creation

  - by pinaldave

  Sometimes something very small or a common error which we observe in daily life teaches us new things. SQL Server Expert Sandip Pani (winner of Joes 2 Pros Contests) has come across similar experience. Sandip has written a guest post on an error he faced in his daily work. Sandip is working for QSI Healthcare as an Associate Technical Specialist and have more than 5 years of total experience. He blogs at SQLcommitted.com and contribute in various forums. His social media hands are LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Once I faced following error when I was working on performance tuning project and attempt to create an Index. Mug 1913, Level 16, State 1, Line 1 The operation failed because an index or statistics with name ‘Ix_Table1_1′ already exists on table ‘Table1′. The immediate reaction to the error was that I might have created that index earlier and when I researched it further I found the same as the index was indeed created two times. This totally makes sense. This can happen due to many reasons for example if the user is careless and executes the same code two times as well, when he attempts to create index without checking if there was index already on the object. However when I paid attention to the details of the error, I realize that error message also talks about statistics along with the index. I got curious if the same would happen if I attempt to create indexes with the same name as statistics already created. There are a few other questions also prompted in my mind. I decided to do a small demonstration of the subject and build following demonstration script. The goal of my experiment is to find out the relation between statistics and the index. Statistics is one of the important input parameter for the optimizer during query optimization process. If the query is nontrivial then only optimizer uses statistics to perform a cost based optimization to select a plan. For accuracy and further learning I suggest to read MSDN. Now let’s find out the relationship between index and statistics. We will do the experiment in two parts. i) Creating Index ii) Creating Statistics We will be using the following T-SQL script for our example. IF (OBJECT_ID('Table1') IS NOT NULL) DROP TABLE Table1 GO CREATE TABLE Table1 (Col1 INT NOT NULL, Col2 VARCHAR(20) NOT NULL) GO We will be using following two queries to check if there are any index or statistics on our sample table Table1. -- Details of Index SELECT OBJECT_NAME(OBJECT_ID) AS TableName, Name AS IndexName, type_desc FROM sys.indexes WHERE OBJECT_NAME(OBJECT_ID) = 'table1' GO -- Details of Statistics SELECT OBJECT_NAME(OBJECT_ID) TableName, Name AS StatisticsName FROM sys.stats WHERE OBJECT_NAME(OBJECT_ID) = 'table1' GO When I ran above two scripts on the table right after it was created it did not give us any result which was expected. Now let us begin our test. 1) Create an index on the table Create following index on the table. CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX Ix_Table1_1 ON Table1(Col1) GO Now let us use above two scripts and see their results. We can see that when we created index at the same time it created statistics also with the same name. Before continuing to next set of demo – drop the table using following script and re-create the table using a script provided at the beginning of the table. DROP TABLE table1 GO 2) Create a statistic on the table Create following statistics on the table. CREATE STATISTICS Ix_table1_1 ON Table1 (Col1) GO Now let us use above two scripts and see their results. We can see that when we created statistics Index is not created. The behavior of this experiment is different from the earlier experiment. Clean up the table setup using the following script: DROP TABLE table1 GO Above two experiments teach us very valuable lesson that when we create indexes, SQL Server generates the index and statistics (with the same name as the index name) together. Now due to the reason if we have already had statistics with the same name but not the index, it is quite possible that we will face the error to create the index even though there is no index with the same name. A Quick Check To validate that if we create statistics first and then index after that with the same name, it will throw an error let us run following script in SSMS. Make sure to drop the table and clean up our sample table at the end of the experiment. -- Create sample table CREATE TABLE TestTable (Col1 INT NOT NULL, Col2 VARCHAR(20) NOT NULL) GO -- Create Statistics CREATE STATISTICS IX_TestTable_1 ON TestTable (Col1) GO -- Create Index CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX IX_TestTable_1 ON TestTable(Col1) GO -- Check error /*Msg 1913, Level 16, State 1, Line 2 The operation failed because an index or statistics with name 'IX_TestTable_1' already exists on table 'TestTable'. */ -- Clean up DROP TABLE TestTable GO While creating index it will throw the following error as statistics with the same name is already created. In simple words – when we create index the name of the index should be different from any of the existing indexes and statistics. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Error Messages, SQL Index, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: SQL Statistics

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• 10 Great Free Icon Packs To Theme Your Android Phone

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Android allows you to customize your home screen, adding widgets, arranging shortcuts and folders, choosing a background, and even replacing the included launcher entirely. You can install icon packs to theme your app icons, too. Third-party launchers use standard app icons by default, but they don’t have to. You can install icon packs that third-party launchers will use in place of standard app icons. How to Use Icon Packs To use icon packs, you’ll need to use a third-party launcher that supports them, such as Nova, Apex, ADW, Go Launcher, Holo Launcher, or Action Launcher Pro. Once you’re using a third-party launcher, you can install an icon pack and go into your launcher’s settings. You’ll find an option that allows you to choose between the icon packs you’ve installed. Many of these icon packs also include wallpapers, which you can set in the normal way. MIUI 5 Icons This icon pack offers over 1900 free icons that are similar to the icons used by the MIUi ROM developed by China’s Xiaomi Tech. The large list of icons is a big plus — this pack will give the majority of your app icons a very slick, consistent look. DCikonZ Theme DCikonZ is a free icon theme that includes a whopping 4000+ icons with a consistent look. This icon theme stands out not just because it’s huge, but also for offering for going in its own direction and avoiding the super-simple, flat look many icon packs use. Holo Icons Holo Icons replaces many app icons with simple, consistent-looking that match Google’s Holo style. If you’re a fan of Android’s Holo look, give it a try. It even tweaks many of the icons from Google’s own apps to make them look more consistent. Square Icon Pack Square Icon Pack turns your icons into simple squares. Even Google Chrome becomes an orb instead of a square. This makes every icon a consistent size and offers a unique look. The icons here almost look a bit like the small-size tiles available on Windows Phone and Windows 8.1. The free version doesn’t offer as many icons as the paid version, but it does offer icons for many popular apps. Rounded Want rounded icons instead? Try the Rounded icon theme, which offers simple rounded icons. The developer says they’re inspired by the consistently round icons used on Mozilla’s Firefox OS. Crumbled Icon Pack Crumbled Icon Pack applies an effect that makes icons look as if they’r crumbling. Rather than theming individual icons, Crumbled Icon Pack adds an effect to every app icon on your device. This means that all your app icons will be themed and consistent. Dainty Icon Pack Is your Android home screen too colorful? Dainty Icon Pack offers simple, gray-on-white icons for over 1200 apps. It’d be ideal over a simple background. The contrast may be a bit low here with the gray-on-white, but it’s otherwise very slick. Simplex Icons Simplex Icons offers more contrast, with black-on-gray icons. This icon pack could simplify busy home screens, allowing photographic wallpapers to come through. Min Icon Set Min attempts to go as minimal as possible, offering simple white icons for over 570 apps. It would be ideal over a simple wallpaper with app names hidden in your launcher, offering a calming, minimal home screen. For apps it doesn’t recognize, it will enclose part of the app’s icon in a white circle. Elegance Elegance goes in another direction entirely, offering icons that incorporate more details and gradients rather than going for minimalism. Its over 1200 icons offer another good option for people who aren’t into the minimal, flat look. Icon pack designers generally have to create and include their own icons to replace icons associated with specific apps, so you’ll probably find a few of your app icons aren’t replaced with most of these themes. Of course, a standard Android phone without an icon pack doesn’t have consistent icons, either. Even if all the icons in your app drawer aren’t themed, the few app icons you have on your home screen will be if you use widely used apps.     

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